Let’s Complete the Peace Process the Only Way Possible

 

Currently there are two processes ongoing which sound very similar, share much of the same terminology but have diametrically different end results targeted. Allow us to break down the ideas on the Israeli side and see what their actual desires really are, and then we can take the Arab side. There are at least two separate paths being traveled by the Israelis, each with their own divergent groups; so we will follow the first two and perhaps comment on such divergences. The first group is the dreamers, whose links, or even contacts which can barely be described as attachments, with reality are dubious at best. This group is made up of largely wonderful and loving people who dream of a world which is described in terms and terminology which speaks to the heart and has one’s spirit soar. Just thinking of their descriptions of life and the potential future should their dreams and designs ever actually materialize leaves one almost star-struck. They view the world seeing potential utopias coming at them from every crevice, every corner, every fold and through every door. It was from amongst these dreamers along with a few manipulators working for fame, glory and gold who banded together to give Yasser Arafat a fresh start and a makeover by giving the PLO* a new name with respectability calling it the Palestinian Authority (PA). These individuals who operated in quiet behind the scenes avoiding notice from media, officials, other party leaders, their own party leaders not included or necessary, and with the aid of the United States State Department and the Norwegian Foreign Office. The Israelis chasing peace above and beyond all other reason or consideration believing that through peace all other solutions would naturally flow were:

Yitzhak Rabin — Israeli Prime Minister during the Oslo peace process
Shimon Peres — Israeli Foreign Minister during the Oslo peace process
Yossi Beilin — Israeli negotiator during the Oslo peace process
Yair Hirschfeld — Israeli negotiator during the Oslo peace process
Ron Pundak — initial Israeli negotiator with Hirschfeld before official Israeli involvement
Uri Savir — former Director General of the Israeli Foreign Ministry, head of the Israeli negotiating team

 

The United States State Department and Norwegian Foreign Office participation were facilitators who took advantage of weak willed dreamers whose connections with reality were, and for some still are, tenuous at best. Neither the United States State Department and Norwegian Foreign Office were or are friends of Israel and simply used their ability to make the necessary connection for allowing the Israeli members of the team to hand Israel out to dry with peace as the shining treasure always just beyond reach. They were more likely working with Yasser Arafat then and Mahmoud Abbas now to facilitate the destruction and terminating of the Jewish State, seemingly the preferred and pursued aim of the United States State Department and Norwegian Foreign Office. At every turn, there was a State Department or European Union official right on the scene to suggest the little gift which Israel needed to, not just offer, grant the Arabs some simple concession and recognize the Arab intentions as honest and worthwhile pursuing their lead for peace. These men would have been wise to read more Torah and Bible, Jeremiah, Chapter 6, Verses 13-15 which read:

For, from their smallest to their greatest, they all commit robbery, and from prophet to priest they all deal falsely.
And they healed the breach of My people easily, saying, “Peace, peace,” but there is no peace.
They shall be put to shame since they have committed abomination. Neither are they ashamed nor do they know to feel disgrace. They will, therefore, fall among the slain; at the time I have visited upon them, they will stumble, says the Lord.

 

These men have fumbled and been shamed and accused of having committed abominations yet they appear not to have felt ashamed nor felt disgraced despite all the horrors and losses the ensuing terror wars and other violences and wars visited upon the Israelis and the Arabs as a result of their actions. Their initiatives for peace made a swamp in which Israel was mired and what began as a few starry-eyed Utopian zealots being led down the yellow-brick road seeking the Emerald City only to fall into endless dream-state hypnotized by their dream and willing to destroy their homeland just to be recognized as one who was willing to go to the farthest ends for the illusional peace always held just beyond reach. For closing on a quarter of a century, a mirage of peace was painted on the horizon while stumbling blocks were placed in the way by the Arab Palestinian leadership. The Palestinians and their Arab allies were willing to pay any price and suffer any embarrassment to destroy the Jewish State. This had been the efforts in the initial war of Jewish annihilation in 1948-49 (the war misnamed the Israeli War of Independence), the War to Drive the Jews into the Sea (The Six Day War of 1967), the Second War to Drive the Jews into the Sea (the Yom Kippur War) and two Intifadas: First Intifada from December 8, 1987 through September 13, 1993 and Second Intifada from September 28, 2000 through February 8, 2005. The first Intifada was fought largely with rocks, bricks, Molotov cocktails, guns, rifles, vehicles and suicide bombings. The toll on both sides of the first Intifada were: Israel suffered 277 killed, 175 civilians and 102 security-forces with the Palestinians suffered 1,962 killed, 1,603 killed by Israelis and 359 killed by Palestinians. The second Intifada was fought with the same weaponry as the first with a higher reliance of firearms, vehicular assaults, bombings suicide and planted devices, rioting, stabbings and other life-threatening types of assaults. The Second Intifada was far more violent than the first and the numbers support this fact. The toll on both sides of the second Intifada was: Israel suffered 1,053 killed, 719 civilians and 334 security-forces with the Palestinians suffered 4,789 killed, 2,204 civilians, 1,671 combatant and 914 unknown. These numbers are challenged with them ranging from far more combatant fatalities to all civilian fatalities on the Palestinian side. The United Nations and Red Cross both refused to give what they would term as definitive results and regularly simply pointed to numbers given by the Palestinian Authority. All of these efforts have been to find some additional forms of piece by the Arabs, whatever pieces of Israeli territory they could force through military action to negotiations to outside foreign pressures for Israel to calm the savage violence through sacrifice to simple blackmail of agreeing to end violence for the surrender of land or the alteration of boundaries granting the Arabs additional land.

 

The reason there can never be an agreed peace agreement is because while Israel is seeking peace, the Arabs simply want every piece of the lands between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. This reality can be witnessed at many of the college and university pro-Arab demonstrations usually sold as being pro-Palestinian. There will likely be a slogan chanted which goes, “From the River to the Sea, Palestine must be free.” That pretty much sums up the entire Arab side of the entire Peace Process which they see as a Pick up all the Jew Pieces Process. It is the Arab Piece Process running concurrently yet in opposition to the Peace Process the world claims they are operating and demanding more cooperation from Israel in the form of giving the Arabs what they desire most, pieces of Israel. Resultant from the Six Day War there was quite a lot of Israel to take. Egypt succeeded in grabbing the greatest part when they traded a cold peace agreement for the entirety of the Sinai Peninsula. Jordan simply traded Peace for Peace refusing to demand return of what they had renamed the West Bank, as they were probably well aware that their continued hold of these lands was illegal, as they had occupied them since 1949 against International Law. They had gained these territories, the areas of Judea and Samaria, from Israel by a war of aggression making the seizure illegal. Syria, well, Syria was never getting the Golan Heights returned simply because this area had been used by Syrian snipers to murder Israeli farmers and others who were within range driving down the road, walking to the market or simply tending the garden or repairing their house. Currently, there is no Syria to negotiate with in all reality. The problems with Lebanon resulted in two wars and eventually Israel returned every inch of land according to United Nations inspectors and surveyors, which did not satisfy Hezballah who has demanded an area which had belonged to the Golan Heights and Syria claiming it for Lebanon, and strangely enough, Syria agreed. Anything for the cause.

 

There is one guarantee which must be dealt with before any true Peace Process can move forward, and until it is settled, there will only be a Piece Process. That is what is used as the final stumbling block which is that Israel must either be destroyed or given over to Islamic rule and the Jews either enslaved or removed by whatever means are required. There is a piece of history which would shine the light of truth on this entire situation and the Arab demands. The originator of the Arab demands was also the most influential individual in one young Egyptian’s life, one Yasser Arafat. Quoting from an article in the Washington Times titled “Yasser Arafat: Nazi trained”, “Since he was a teenager in the 1940’s, the co-winner of the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize has ordered the murder of thousands of civilians while waging war against the Jews.” The article continues, “Mr. Arafat’s mentor, Haj Amin Al Husseini, the grand mufti of Jerusalem, indoctrinated him with hatred toward Israel. The grand mufti led Palestinian Arabs from 1920 until Mr. Arafat succeeded him in 1967.” Then, speaking of Haj Amin Al Husseini, the Mufti of Jerusalem as well as a native Egyptian, the article informs that, “During World War II, the mufti journeyed to Nazi Germany where he personally begged Adolf Hitler to invade British-ruled Palestine and rid it of Jews. The mufti received sympathy, but no help, from Hitler. Nevertheless, he broadcast radio tirades approving Hitler’s ‘final solution’ of the Jewish problem.” The article also tells that “In 1929 and 1936, the mufti personally led large-scale riots against Jewish settlers.” The article then moves on to Yasser Arafat reporting, “Palestinian politics and was the first Palestinian nationalist to declare, ‘Violence is the only solution,’ that ‘Liberating Palestine could only take place through the barrel of a gun.’” We are told that Yasser Arafat was an Engineer yet he made his life as a terror master and deceiver. We are finally informed that Yasser Arafat was somewhat less than popular once he left Israel and entered Arab countries where, “Mr. Arafat and his ruthless PLO terrorists were violently expelled from three different host countries: Syria in 1968; Jordan in 1971; and Lebanon in 1982.” We are told that Arafat supported Saddam Hussein during the 1990-91 Gulf War and closes hoping that, “Mr. Arafat now seemed discredited.”

 

Yasser Arafat had an understudy, Mahmoud Abbas. Both were trained by and supported by the KGB who was instrumental in the 1964 founding of the PLO. The founding date for the PLO is very informative in and of itself, as it was founded in 1964 to liberate Palestine, all of Palestine, before the Six Day War by almost three full years. What was the Palestine they were founded to liberate? Jordan held Judea and Samaria and Egypt held Gaza which leaves Israel within the Green Line. That was exactly what the PLO was founded to liberate and their Charter gave the destruction of Israel as one of the goals, just as the Hamas Charter names the destruction of Israel as one of its goals. The biggest difference between the two Charters is that Hamas also calls for the completion of the ‘Final Solution’ and the killing of every Jew on Earth. Yasser Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas have played one consistent part of the entire negotiating process; they are the final backstop who will accept only the complete and utter destruction of the Jewish State and anything short they reject. Their usual card of last resort has been the repatriation into Green Line Israel with guaranteed full citizenship of five to eight million Arabs who they claim are refugees or descendants of refugees or their descendants onto the future with no end date. The United Nations set up UNWRA** to care for the original Palestinian refugees, most of which were people who obeyed the Mufti’s demand that all Arabs leave Israel for the neighboring Arab states so that their invading armies could murder everyone on sight. The majority of Arabs left Israel and those who remained are today, along with their descendants, full citizens in Israel with full rights including the right to vote in any and all elections, serve in any profession, live wherever they please and anything else any other citizen of Israel is entitled. UNWRA decided that not only were the refugees permitted refugee status but so would their descendants and their descendants henceforth and forever into perpetuity. All other refugees have their status die when they die and their descendants are resettled into whatever country they may be located, but not the Arab refugees who can be utilized as another means for destroying Israel and as a bludgeon with which to smash any hope of peace. Israel cannot allow the resettlement with full rights of these Arabs as that would end Israel and the Jewish State instantly. This is the Ace in the Hole which is pulled out and demanded as the Demand of Last Resort to make any peace deal untenable to Israel. The Palestinian Arabs then claim that Israel broke off negotiations and are completely unprepared to make peace and etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. The European and American leftist media jump all over the Arab story and rejoice in skewering Israel in news and editorial. This becomes the story that the world celebrates while they berate Israel for their intransigence and that is when they destroy Israel ‘in pieces’ comes into play. Now the United States, often at the behest of the State Department or the President on the advice of the State Department, along with the European Union, the United Nations and the Arab League with countless NGO’s operating on petro-dollars plus European funding and State Department grants all demand that Israel make penance for their refusal to commit suicide and now surrender some property, some lands to the Palestinian Arabs. This is accomplished either by redrawing boundaries or by ripping up plans to build in Area C, the area according to the Oslo Accords intended for Israel to retain, or the destruction of housing already with Jews residing within the community tearing down their homes and businesses all to mollify the Arabs who refuse to be mollified. Then when the next President is elected or before one is leaving office, the world starts again with the mantra, pressure Israel and make them bend to our will and if that means the Jews must go, that is just fine with us.

 

Food for Thought

 

It is simply remarkable how the world looks at the Jews who, in a whole, have been such an advantage and given the world so many wonders, and their share of evils as well, though the good far outweighed the rest. Just as it was during World War II and during the Russian pogroms, the Spanish Inquisition, the Purification of France, the expulsion of the Jews from Britain and numerous other persecutions of the Jewish People, the world today still wants the Jews and especially the Jewish State gone. Things were not all that rosy for the Jews in the Arab world who were forced to live as Dhimmis with limited rights and no legal right to vote or in court or any standing in society. Sure there were times and places where the Jews lived productive lives both in Europe and in the MENA^* states of Islam but these times were never permanent. The MENA nations from 1948 through 1960 expelled almost one-million Jews as their reaction to the founding of the Jewish State. Unless these refugees who had their wealth stripped, their jewelry confiscated, even their precious metal picture frames taken before being deported, had relatives in Europe or the Americas; they were rejected by virtually every nation on Earth except, you guessed it, Israel. This made Israel a far richer nation with a much more diverse population. Israel has also taken in Ethiopian refugees, Indian Jews and Russian Jews amongst Jews from all the corners of the globe. Still, the Arabs will continue to hold out for the destruction of the Jewish State. The recent appearance of warming has simply been a reaction to the Iranian threat to the Sunni Arab supremacy. Once that passes or some means is found to rejoin Shiite and Sunni Islam, the destruction of Israel will return to front and center of their demands.

 

President Trump is the first President to break with business as usual and appears to listen to the voices of the State Department, the European Union and member nations, the United Nations and the Arab League as well as Iran and other Muslim nations very politely and then do something else, something which he desires and can live with. He does temper his statements just enough so as not to destroy everything from the past, but he makes his preferences known and what he expects understood. The Arab world now realizes that there can no longer be any doubt as to what city is the capital of Israel, though President Trump did leave open the possibility for Jerusalem becoming a shared city if both sides so desired. The Arabs have already adjusted and their latest demand is that all the religious sites must remain as Muslim only. These include the Temple Mount, the Cave of the Patriarchs, Joseph’s Tomb, Rachel’s Tomb, Shechem (now Nablus) and even now the Western Wall as their aim now that they will be unable to separate the Jews from Jerusalem, from Zion; their aim is to now separate the Jews from the Holy Sites in all of the lands as the next best way to deny the Jews their history. The Arabs are plating strategy where if they can remove Zion from Zionism they believe the Jews will just shrug and give-up walking away. They are a young religion almost fourteen hundred years while Judaism is amongst, if not the, oldest religion on Earth, older than Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism, Shinto and many others including every Christian religion coming in at over four-thousand years old. Jews have survived half of that time largely dispersed and without any true homeland or nations of their own and still retained their native language and feeling as a People returning to their ancestral homeland making the Jews the only People and religion to perform such a miracle. With everything the Jewish People have survived, a little additional hardship will not foil our efforts to return to our homelands no matter how much time it will take; we have waited longer than Islam has existed; how could they believe they will outlast the Jews, the eternal people.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

* PLO = Palestinian Liberation Organization, a recognized terrorist group founded in 1964
** UNWRA = United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East
^* MENA = Middle East and North Africa

 

And It Starts Once Again

 

United States Vice President Pence flew into Egypt on Tuesday and following will visit Israel. What remains to be seen is whether the royal Palestinian High Mucky-Muck Mahmoud Abbas will deem it worth his while to allow the United States Vice President to meet with him. Just after President Trump made his monumental recognition of the historically obvious, Jerusalem is the Capital City of the Jewish State of Israel, Palestinian Authority (PA) President, PLO Chairman, Fatah Party Chairman and chief swindler Mahmoud Abbas announced that he determined that the United States could no longer be acceptable as a just and impartial arbiter in the Arab-Israeli conflict. Abbas refused to give any reason beyond the recognition of Jerusalem as Israeli Capital despite the critical mention in that speech which stated a number of qualifiers which included the following:

“In making these announcements, I also want to make one point very clear: This decision is not intended, in any way, to reflect a departure from our strong commitment to facilitate a lasting peace agreement. We want an agreement that is a great deal for the Israelis and a great deal for the Palestinians. We are not taking a position of any final status issues, including the specific boundaries of the Israeli sovereignty in Jerusalem, or the resolution of contested borders. Those questions are up to the parties involved.
“The United States remains deeply committed to helping facilitate a peace agreement that is acceptable to both sides.
“I intend to do everything in my power to help forge such an agreement. Without question, Jerusalem is one of the most sensitive issues in those talks. The United States would support a two-state solution if agreed to by both sides.
“In the meantime, I call on all parties to maintain the status quo at Jerusalem’s holy sites, including the Temple Mount, also known as Haram al-Sharif.
“Above all, our greatest hope is for peace, the universal yearning in every human soul. With today’s action, I reaffirm my administration’s longstanding commitment to a future of peace and security for the region. There will, of course, be disagreement and dissent regarding this announcement. But we are confident that ultimately, as we work through these disagreements, we will arrive at a peace and a place far greater in understanding and cooperation.
“This sacred city should call forth the best in humanity, lifting our sights to what it is possible; not pulling us back and down to the old fights that have become so totally predictable. Peace is never beyond the grasp of those willing to reach.
“So today, we call for calm, for moderation, and for the voices of tolerance to prevail over the purveyors of hate. Our children should inherit our love, not our conflicts.”

 

Our bet is the Mahmoud Abbas may not have listened to the entire speech as with his keen sense of observation and knowledge of human nature and political insight that after the words, “Thank you. When I came into office, I promised to look…” he stopped listening already having figured out the remainder of the speech thus not needing to wait for the actual speech itself. He had judged that with just these words that everything had changed. He was partially correct. What is most interesting is that when, back in April of this year, President Putin announced that Russia was recognizing Jerusalem, West Jerusalem, as the Capital City of Israel Mahmoud Abbas saw nothing wrong with that announcement. After reading all, and we obviously mean all, of President Trump’s Jerusalem speech and making sure to see and fathom the meanings of every phrase, we see little difference in the actual recognitions. The measurable difference is that as long as the future does not alter things as they currently stand, then the default position is that all of Jerusalem, united and whole, will forever be the Capital City of Israel, but that is only if nothing changes. Should there come a peace between the Arabs and Israelis establishes a Palestinian State with its capital in East Jerusalem with the Temple Mount under “international” United Nations protection, then we will return to the situation from before 1967 within six weeks as the United Nations guardians of the Temple Mount flee to Tel Aviv and then back to wherever they came from while Israel will be forced to once again place a tall cement barricade between the two halves of the city. This wall will not be an apartheid Wall but a bullet stopper just as was necessary for nineteen years from 1948 through June of 1967 and the fateful six days that changed the world. Should their be a peace agreement with someplace other than East Jerusalem as the capital, then Jerusalem as a whole will be the Israeli Capital. Any negotiation result in the world attempting to impose an Arab state with all of Jerusalem as the capital, then that would be the equivalent of giving away sovereign Israeli soil and a casus belli for war.

 

Now to the reality of the threats from Mahmoud Abbas and his official echo chamber of underlings, they sent their usual threat to break relations with the United States and refuse the United States as a mediator and rely on the United Nations, European Union and other world bodies to find a suitable settlement. Well, it was nice of Mahmoud Abbas to all but list the groups which must never be permitted to mediate anything in the Middle East, not the European Union, not the United Nations, which in this case they means the General Assembly, Human Rights Commission, UNESCO and other pro-Palestinian NGO’s and not the remainder of those referenced do-goodies of the world. Mahmoud Abbas is not really going to break relations with the United States and the PA will continue to sit comfortably in their New York and Washington D.C. offices and retain their chair in the General Assembly Hall and their open back door at the United States State Department. What they are demanding is that the United States now proves their impartiality by forcing some concession out of the Israelis. They already have forced the cessation of any further construction by the Israelis with small allowances within the approved communities (settlements) as well as limitations on further destruction of illegal Arab structures with a special emphasis on those built by their friends at the European Union who even leave their flag on each structure just so the Israelis know who is placing these facts on the ground in Area C, where the Palestinian are not permitted to build and is completely under Israeli jurisdictions by the Oslo Accords, strategically placed to surround Jerusalem cutting it off from the other Israeli communities. These are the people Mahmoud Abbas trusts as impartial as truly impartial mediators favor Israel because they actually want peace allowing both sides to exist. Abbas defines impartial as anybody who agrees that all the land belongs to the Arabs and the Jews are not entitled to anything. So, now we will see what happens when, despite encouragement from the State Department to force further Israeli concession, President Trump actually dares to ignore the desire and threats from Mahmoud Abbas and simply leaves well enough alone and waits to see what develops.

 

For this, President Trump is taking a different tactic compared to his predecessors. Where President William Jefferson Clinton attempted to cajole and use friendly good-old-boy country charm to persuade an agreement out of the two sides and came close when he pushed and extracted from Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak to meet every last demand which he had somehow extracted through negotiations as the minimal demands which would satisfy Yasser Arafat. The next morning Yasser Arafat realized he had been snookered into actually making a deal, so he walked right past the gathered American and Israeli delegations, got into his limousine, drove to the airport, boarded his plane, returned to Nablus via Jordan and a short while later loosed the Second Intifada on Israel blaming it on the fact that Prime Minister elect Sharon had the audacity to take a walk through the Temple Mount which Arafat defined as entering the al-Aqsa Mosque setting the precedent that the Arabs consider the entirety of the Temple Mount to be the al-Aqsa Mosque.

 

This definition has been used in order to claim that the Jews who enter the Temple Mount are transgressing into the al-Aqsa Mosque and thus profaning its purity. This is what is used to justify and instigate the Temple Mount rioting which is used regularly whenever the Arabs feel like heightening tensions and raising a ruckus in the media. This is the means by which the Arabs force the closure of the Temple Mount to Jews by demanding such a closure to end the rioting, which still takes at least a week to wane to a safe level. The Israelis, should they ever choose, could end the rioting within a few minutes by using less measure force. The reality is the Israelis attempt to keep injuries on both sides to a minimum and avoid fatalities as much as possible. The Arabs see this as a sign of Israeli weakness and not as respect for human life. It is this supposed weakness which also makes the Arabs believe that they will win and that time is on their side. They believe they can out-wait the patience of the Israeli People; they can out-wait the Jewish People who have waited for two thousand years for their return to their ancestral homelands, that is almost one and a half times the length of time Islam has existed which is under fourteen hundred years.

 

Mahmoud Abbas will still rely on the United States to be the suckers using shuttle diplomacy flying between Washington D.C. and the Middle East from Jerusalem to Nablus and once around the capital cities of a number of Arab and even European cities so as to make the trips not entirely about the Arab-Israeli conflict. Perhaps there might be a trip which includes Moscow as getting Putin to back a proposed peace might make it more difficult for Abbas to simply refuse outright. The truth is that as long as any agreement permits even Tel Aviv metropolis to be considered the Jewish State, Abbas will either refuse or depend on the coming war to eradicate even that shred of Jewish land from continuing to exist. From the Khartoum Resolution and the “Three No’s”: “no peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel, no negotiations with Israel,” Yasser Arafat pledged the PLO’s continuing allegiance to the heart and soul of the Khartoum Resolution and guaranteed that there would be no permanent peace with Israel and that the resistance, code for terrorism, would continue after any agreement and that was how they would destroy Israel in stages. Mahmoud Abbas was beside Arafat as his second in command and fully invested in his mentor’s vision. This is the reality and it has supporters outside of the Arab world as has become obvious from many points across Europe, the European Union, the United Nations and its appendages such as UNESCO and numerous other NGO’s and individual nations. Sampling the college and university campuses, we see the future leaders of the developed world to be a frightening prospect with the anti-Israeli and accompanying anti-Semitism which has become pervasive at many of the leading schools.

 

Zechariah’s Jerusalem

 

The Biblical story could be taken from Zechariah, Chapter 12, which reads,

Zechariah – Chapter 12
1) The prophecy of the word of the Lord concerning Israel: Says the Lord, Who stretches out the heavens and founds the earth and forms the spirit of man within him:
2) Behold! I am making Jerusalem a cup of weakness for all the peoples around, and also on Judah, [that he] shall be in the siege against Jerusalem.
3) And it shall come to pass on that day that I will make Jerusalem a stone of burden for all peoples; all who bear it shall be gashed, and all the nations of the earth shall gather about it.
4) On that day, says the Lord, I will smite every horse with bewilderment, and its rider with madness. And upon the house of Judah I will open My eyes, and all the horses of the peoples I will smite with blindness.
5) And the princes of Judah shall say to themselves, “The inhabitants of Jerusalem were my strength through the Lord of Hosts, their God.”
6) On that day I will make the princes of Judah as a fiery stove among wood, and as a brand of fire among sheaves. And they shall consume on the right and on the left all the nations round about, and Jerusalem shall still stay in its place in Jerusalem.
7) And the Lord shall first save the tents of Judah, so that the boasting of the house of David and the boasting of the inhabitants of Jerusalem shall not increase over Judah.
8) On that day the Lord shall protect the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and the weakest of them shall be, on that day, like David. And the house of David shall be like angels, like the angel of the Lord before them.
9) And it shall come to pass on that day, that I will seek to destroy all the nations that come upon Jerusalem.
10) And I will pour out upon the house of David and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and supplications. And they shall look to me because of those who have been thrust through [with swords], and they shall mourn over it as one mourns over an only son and shall be in bitterness, therefore, as one is embittered over a firstborn son.
11) On that day there shall be great mourning in Jerusalem, like the mourning of Hadadrimmon in the Valley of Megiddon.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Trump Warning to Palestinian Authority Much ado About Nothing

 

The end of last week President Trump gave official warning to the Palestinian Authority (PA) that they had violated the terms under which they operate offices in Washington D.C. demanding that they enter talks with the Israelis in order to prevent their being shuttered. Some news termed these as the PLO offices which are simply further proof that there is no difference between the PLO and the PA thus they are either both patriotic peace seeking entities or terrorist entities to be shunned and shut down. This has been hailed by supporters of President Trump as an unprecedented move. Sorry folks, this has been part of the threat and promise operations since President William Jefferson Clinton had their office permitted, breaking numerous regulations and initiating something new and giving the State Department responsibility for seeing to it that the move resulted on a positive peace. Nobody ever actually defined positive but the State department saw positive as meaning giving the Arabs everything they desired and forcing Israel to commit suicide in the process. One need remember that it was the State Department which was so over the top opposed to permitting Israel to be recognized under President Truman. Fortunately, President Truman put more faith in what his strongly Christian mother taught him about the Bible including the Old Testament and especially Hashem’s promise to Avraham and repeated to Isaac and repeated again to Moses, that the lands between the Jordan River and the Great Sea were the Holy Land belonging to Hashem and for the Chosen People, the Jews being the remnant which remained, and that they would one day return and build a nation which would give man blessings and wonders. President Truman ignored the State Department and the Pentagon and virtually every advisor in his Administration and listened to his heart and the teaching of his childhood and recognized Israel despite the swarm of naysayers surrounding him screaming, “NO!” Mankind has not completely realized yet the great good President Truman committed on that day but anywhere on the globe willing to allow Israel to help has been thankful ever since. Israel has often reached a disaster area and set up before even the United States and is invariably the last nation to leave and they always leave the place better for their having been there.

 

But this threat to the PA is a meaningless gesture made to coerce, not intended to be carried out. This threat is in addition to the gifts Israel will be forced to turn over just so President Trump, Secretary of State Tillerson, if he is fortunate, the Middle East team members and Prime Minister Netanyahu and chief terrorist and President of the PA Mahmoud Abbas of the Munich Olympics terror attack fame, can all stand on the White House lawns on a sunny day with just the right number and size of puffy white nonthreatening clouds and have a thousand pictures per minute snapped by an overly eager media to eat up the momentous occasion of yet another handshake which will have the President centered watching and nodding approvingly. President Obama weaseled a handshake for the historic photo to put somewhere in his Presidential Library. President George W. Bush did not get his handshake mostly because he did not try and left well enough alone until Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice whispered in his ear the sweet nothings about the Palestinians deserving an opportunity to prove their great and wondrous ability to form an excellent and industrious state capable of great things. That was the start of the Gaza debacle which is responsible for the rocket attacks and terror tunnels in the Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other various undesirables’ war of attrition against Israel. Hamas took Gaza from the PA in a fairly quick and violent coup where the PA turned tail and fled. The one honest item which came from this disaster was the facts were made obvious that the Palestinian Arabs do not desire their own lands as much as they desire the destruction of everything Jewish. Hamas is honest enough in their charter to claim their goal is the destruction of the Zionist entity, Israel, and then the death of every Jew on the planet and world conquest. In all honesty, it is part of the Islamic religion as it is currently taught and interpreted by their leading Imams, that they are entitled to rule the world and must take it through violence and any means necessary as Allah has promised them victory in all things.

 

Bill Clinton looks on as Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat shake hands during the historic signing with Mahmoud Abbas standing at right edge of picture

 

 

President Obama got the Handshake between Prime Minister Netanyahu and Terror Organizer of Munich Olympics Mahmoud Abbas

 

Moving back to the present, President Trump has one of his trusted and top team manned by such people of importance as his son-in-law and chief Middle East adviser Jared Kushner; Jason Dov Greenblatt who is the executive vice president and chief legal officer to Donald Trump and The Trump Organization as well as a top advisor on Israel; the United States Ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, who is a renowned Zionist and friend of Israel, which is something almost an oddity with all things considered; and lastly some State Department officers and personnel which includes Deputy National Security Adviser for Strategy Dina Powell. It is truly an all-star team and is in pursuit of what President Trump calls “The Ultimate Deal.” The team has spent the last ten months educating themselves on the world’s most intractable dispute and its various complexities. Jason D. Greenblatt was quoted speaking for the entire team presenting the facts as, “We have spent a lot of time listening to and engaging with the Israelis, Palestinians and key regional leaders over the past few months to help reach an enduring peace deal. We are not going to put an artificial timeline on the development or presentation of any specific ideas and will also never impose a deal. Our goal is to facilitate, not dictate, a lasting peace agreement to improve the lives of Israelis and Palestinians and security across the region.” We have a really short and single piece of information which we bet the dream team might have overlooked when discussing what Mahmoud Abbas, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, the Arab League and just about every other entity which pretends to care about the Palestinian Arabs insist as part of any final solution, the complete, total and permanent eradication of the country known as Israel. Anything short of this makes the deal null and void and of little interest other than keeping the United States, United Nations, Europeans and any other fools in the world sending their millions of dollars and euros.

 

President Trump probably honestly believes that there is a deal he can reach which protects and preserves the country of Israel, makes some arrangement for the Arabs to govern themselves without posing any further threat to Israel and the other Arab interests will be ready to cooperate on finding some solutions to problems such as Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Iran and anything else that pops up or they forgot such as Libya. Fortunately for President Trump, there will be no miracle peace plan which Mahmoud Abbas will accept no matter how much the Saudi Royal Family threatens him. That is the secret which has preserved Israel even when the most gullible of political parties were elected and were willing to give away the farm, or almost if not all of Judea and Samaria in the name of peace and cooperation. Even the most presumably enticing offers have been turned down by Yasser Arafat and, after his death, then Mahmoud Abbas. There will be no peace deal now, next month, next year or ever as long as any deal allows Israel to remain. Oh, remain what, you ask? Simply remain as in exist; occupy any area on a map. The Ayatollahs of Iran made the only acceptable solution when they permitted then President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to state, “Israel, a small country of less than eight million people, looks out at a world where leaders of much larger nations threaten to wipe it off of the map.” There has been contention that the actual translation should have been that Israel would collapse. According to the Washington Post, “in the 1980’s Khomeini gave a speech in which he said in Persian ‘Een rezhim-i eshghalgar-i Quds bayad az sahneh-i ruzgar mahv shaved.’ This means, ‘This occupation regime over Jerusalem must vanish from the arena of time.’ But then anonymous wire service translators rendered Khomeini as saying that Israel ‘must be wiped off the face of the map,’ which Cole and Nourouzi say is inaccurate.”

 

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

 

All of the efforts will prove to be in vain. This is a case where the best plan is absolutely leave it all alone. Look at the world and ask yourself a simply question, is the Arab-Israeli conflict honestly the biggest problem facing humankind? Is this problem worse than Syria, Iraq, Iran, North Korea, China, Russian collusion or, wait, it might be a bigger problem than Russian collusion except that problem suffers from the same problem as the Arab-Israeli problem, the media have blown both way out of proportion. If the media and the rest of the world would ignore the Arab-Israeli problem for say six weeks, is that possible? Well, if it were ignored for six weeks, it is probable that it would be forgotten and would eventually solve on its own or simply melt like ice cream on a summer afternoon. Some day soon, we will discuss what makes the Arab-Israeli problem into a vital and central issue that the world cannot ignore or else. They never explain or else what because there is no actual or else. But that too is a secret.

 

Beyond the Cusp