Lieberman, Berman Fail To Press Fayyad
Monday, December 07, 2009
Jerusalem - At a recent press conference in Ramallah, Jerusalem Post Editor David Horovitz described how “two staunch Jewish supporters of Israel,” Senator Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., former Democratic vice presidential candidate, and current Representative Howard Berman, D-Ca., chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, “nodded their encouragement” when Palestinian Authority (PA) Prime Minister Salam Fayyad explained how he was preparing Palestinians for statehood. Mr. Fayyad outlined a Palestinian state in formation regarding security forces, the economy, and civic institutions, with an optimistic sense of what the PA is achieving.
Regrettably, Senator Lieberman and Representative Berman did not use the press conference to raise some troublesome questions, conveying the notion that all is well with Palestinian statehood plans.
Questions that Senator Lieberman, Rep. Berman or Mr. Horovitz could have asked might have centered around these issues:
Renunciation Of PLO State Of War With Israel
The charter of Fatah, the predominant element in the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and the PA, to this day, continues to call for the destruction of Israel. Written in 1964, before Israel controlled the West Bank and Gaza, it uses the term “Palestine” to refer exclusively to Israel within the Green Line. The charter declares that “Liberating Palestine is a national obligation,” and that “Armed public revolution is the inevitable method” for doing so. This cannot be dismissed as an irrelevant anachronism. Last August, Fatah held its first General Congress in 20 years. Hope was held out for a charter revision, with violence officially renounced, but it never happened. Instead, Fatah continued to unambiguously embrace “armed resistance” to liberate Palestine.
Cessation Of Incitement From PA Textbooks
The Institute for Monitoring Peace and Tolerance in School Education has issued six reports on new PA textbooks issued over the last eight years. Journalist and scholar Dr. Arnon Groiss, who translated these PA textbooks, has just completed an update. He writes that the new PA texts:
• Deny the historical and religious presence of Jews in Palestine.
• Fail to recognize the State of Israel.
• Demonize Jews and Israel.
• Assign blame for the conflict exclusively on Israel, totally absolving Palestinians.
• Stress the idea of a violent struggle of liberation rather than a peaceful settlement.
It is disingenuous for Mr. Fayyad to profess dedication to peace, while the PA curriculum infuses these ideas within its youngsters. Peace is impossible until the message changes. Why do visiting elected officials and journalists not hold Mr. Fayyad and the PA accountable for the new PA textbooks?
Cessation Of PA Pursuit Of Hamas As A Partner
The PA inclination to participate in a government that includes Hamas remains an “elephant in the room” that the international community, somewhat inexplicably, has chosen to ignore: Hamas is recognized by the U.S. and the European Union as a terrorist entity. Yet, in March 2007, Fatah and Hamas briefly formed a “unity government,” negotiated by Saudi Arabia via the Mecca Accord, which saw Fatah acceding to Hamas demands. It fell apart with the Hamas coup in Gaza, but, in recent months the news is awash with reports of negotiations via Egypt for a Fatah-Hamas reconciliation. Pursuing negotiations with Israel and Hamas at one and the same time is not acceptable. Why not ask the PA to make a choice?
Renunciation Of The “Right Of Return”
The “right of return,” promoted for 60 years by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) and embraced by the PA as a non-negotiable right, remains a recipe for the destruction of Israel from within. If Mr. Fayyad and the PA are serious about peace, why not ask them to accept the principle of permanent resettlement of the refugees? The United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), which oversees all refugees except Palestinians, operates according to this principle. Only Palestinian refugees are not resettled, but, instead, for purely political reasons, are forced to linger in a rage-inducing state of limbo. Mr. Fayyad, in his master plan for a Palestinian state, openly states that he supports the “right of return.” Isn’t it time to ask for Senator Lieberman and Representative Berman to ask Mr. Fayyad and the PA to openly embrace the UNHCR policy and pave the way for UNRWA to adjust its mandate?
David Bedein can be reached at bedein@thebulletin.us
Showing posts with label Mecca Accord. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mecca Accord. Show all posts
Monday, December 7, 2009
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
Ten Obstacles to Middle East Peace
by David Bedein
1. November 2, 2009 marked the 92nd anniversary of Balfour day, which led to the 1922 San Remo Treaty and to the 1924 League of Nations ratification of the San Remo Treaty, which recognized the right of Jews to purchase land in the Jewish national homeland, defined as anywhere west of the Jordan River. Ratified by the UN in 1945, that is the basis of international law by which Israel can, indeed, settle the land of Israel with Jews who come from the four corners of the earth. The internationally ratified legal basis for Israel has been forgotten.
2. The Arab league rejected the idea of a Jewish national home, declaring a war of extermination in 1945 and actualizing that declaration in 1948. That declaration which is still extant, and the Arab League’s war to exterminate Israel continues. Egypt was then the dominant factor of the Arab League. The Saudis, however, remain the dominant factor of the Arab League today, as the only nation contiguous to Israel to have never signed any armistice or peace treaty with the Jewish state.
3. Perhaps the most effective tactic of the Arab League was to spawn the PLO under its aegis, whose task it would be to coordinate indigenous Palestinian Arabs to join the Arab States in their war to conquer and displace the Jewish state. To this day, the PLO, led by the Fatah reports to the Arab League, which has never changed its charter to destroy Israel. For that matter, neither has the PLO changed its charter to destroy Israel. At the same time, the Fatah conveys the false impression to the world that it is the product of a grass roots Palestinian national movement. Yet the PLO, course, changed the map and the perception of the Arab war to exterminate Israel, to make the war look like some kind of war of national liberation.
4. The Arab League continued its war of extermination by confining Palestinian Arab refugees from 1948 to the squalor of refugee camps, under the premise and promise of the right of return. Their presence in UNRWA refugee camps continues to this day, under the aegis of the UN, through UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency.
5. The purpose of UNRWA is to fulfill successive UN resolutions that promote the supposed “inalienable right” of Palestinian Arab refugees and their descendent's to return to villages from before 1948. Palestinian Arab refugees and their descendants in the UNRWA camps learn that the 531 Israeli villages, kibbutzim, moshavim and neighborhoods that replaced the Arab villages are the illegal Israeli settlements, which are located in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Haifa, Ashkelon, BeerSheva, Ashdod, Sderot and hundreds of other Israeli communities that were established on the ruins of Arab villages after 1948. While the popular imagination posits that the Palestinian Arab national ambition is only to replace the Israeli communities in Judea, Samaria and Katif, the Palestinian Arab ambition as dictated by the PLO and its patron in the Arab League, is to take back the lands lost in 1948. UNRWA, financed by the US and other western nations, reinforces that ambition. UNRWA has recently been taken over by Hamas, to ensure that the ambition to actualize the right of return has gained a new, Islamic emphasis. Just look at how many Palestinian Arab refugees have left the teeming UNRWA Arab refugee camps in Gaza to live on the lands of the expelled Jewish communities from Katif. Not one. Why? Because the dictate of the PA, the PLO and Hamas is that Palestinian Arab refugees and their descendants must return to the homes and villages that they left after 1948 - to Jaffa, Beer Sheva, Ashdod, Ashkelon, etc.
6. The Palestinian Authority, established in 1994, instead of spurring the newly recognized Palestinian national entity to establish a nation state alongside Israel, has instead launched a base from where they can liberate the rest of of Palestine.
7. Meanwhile, the PA has established an educational system to educate the next generation that Israel must not exist. The new PA school books and the new PA maps speak for themselves, as the first school curriculum since the Third Reich that inculcates the idea that you must make war on the Jews and that Jews are less than human. The PA school books go one step beyond the Nazis, however, as they introduce lesson plans which praise those who murder Jews. While the Nazis murdered Jews, the Nazis always tried to obfuscate their acts. The Palestinian Authority instead teaches their children to take pride in the act of murdering a Jew.
8. To further reinforce the Palestinian entity around a renewed religious determination of the continued war to liberate all of Palestine, the Palestinian Authority adopted the draft of an Islamic constitution, based on the Sharia law. This was revealed to the public by a senior official in the Vatican who addressed visiting US congressmen in March 2003. This radical constitution was sponsored by the US government, through US AID.
9. Meanwhile, the Hamas Islamic movement took control of the PA legislature in democratic elections that were held under the sponsorship of the American government, in January 2006, which led to a Fatah-Hamas power sharing agreement known as the Mecca Accord, signed between the Fatah and the Hamas in March 2007. When the Fatah began to hesitate in carrying out the Mecca Accord, Hamas took over Gaza in its entirety in June, 2007.
10. The PA has made it clear that it will make no deal with Israel that does not assure the right of return of Palestinian Arab refugees, the PA control over Jerusalem, and the establishment of full and total sovereignty, which includes an army.
View the Original Link at Israel Behind the News: Ten Obstacles to Middle East Peace
1. November 2, 2009 marked the 92nd anniversary of Balfour day, which led to the 1922 San Remo Treaty and to the 1924 League of Nations ratification of the San Remo Treaty, which recognized the right of Jews to purchase land in the Jewish national homeland, defined as anywhere west of the Jordan River. Ratified by the UN in 1945, that is the basis of international law by which Israel can, indeed, settle the land of Israel with Jews who come from the four corners of the earth. The internationally ratified legal basis for Israel has been forgotten.
2. The Arab league rejected the idea of a Jewish national home, declaring a war of extermination in 1945 and actualizing that declaration in 1948. That declaration which is still extant, and the Arab League’s war to exterminate Israel continues. Egypt was then the dominant factor of the Arab League. The Saudis, however, remain the dominant factor of the Arab League today, as the only nation contiguous to Israel to have never signed any armistice or peace treaty with the Jewish state.
3. Perhaps the most effective tactic of the Arab League was to spawn the PLO under its aegis, whose task it would be to coordinate indigenous Palestinian Arabs to join the Arab States in their war to conquer and displace the Jewish state. To this day, the PLO, led by the Fatah reports to the Arab League, which has never changed its charter to destroy Israel. For that matter, neither has the PLO changed its charter to destroy Israel. At the same time, the Fatah conveys the false impression to the world that it is the product of a grass roots Palestinian national movement. Yet the PLO, course, changed the map and the perception of the Arab war to exterminate Israel, to make the war look like some kind of war of national liberation.
4. The Arab League continued its war of extermination by confining Palestinian Arab refugees from 1948 to the squalor of refugee camps, under the premise and promise of the right of return. Their presence in UNRWA refugee camps continues to this day, under the aegis of the UN, through UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency.
5. The purpose of UNRWA is to fulfill successive UN resolutions that promote the supposed “inalienable right” of Palestinian Arab refugees and their descendent's to return to villages from before 1948. Palestinian Arab refugees and their descendants in the UNRWA camps learn that the 531 Israeli villages, kibbutzim, moshavim and neighborhoods that replaced the Arab villages are the illegal Israeli settlements, which are located in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Haifa, Ashkelon, BeerSheva, Ashdod, Sderot and hundreds of other Israeli communities that were established on the ruins of Arab villages after 1948. While the popular imagination posits that the Palestinian Arab national ambition is only to replace the Israeli communities in Judea, Samaria and Katif, the Palestinian Arab ambition as dictated by the PLO and its patron in the Arab League, is to take back the lands lost in 1948. UNRWA, financed by the US and other western nations, reinforces that ambition. UNRWA has recently been taken over by Hamas, to ensure that the ambition to actualize the right of return has gained a new, Islamic emphasis. Just look at how many Palestinian Arab refugees have left the teeming UNRWA Arab refugee camps in Gaza to live on the lands of the expelled Jewish communities from Katif. Not one. Why? Because the dictate of the PA, the PLO and Hamas is that Palestinian Arab refugees and their descendants must return to the homes and villages that they left after 1948 - to Jaffa, Beer Sheva, Ashdod, Ashkelon, etc.
6. The Palestinian Authority, established in 1994, instead of spurring the newly recognized Palestinian national entity to establish a nation state alongside Israel, has instead launched a base from where they can liberate the rest of of Palestine.
7. Meanwhile, the PA has established an educational system to educate the next generation that Israel must not exist. The new PA school books and the new PA maps speak for themselves, as the first school curriculum since the Third Reich that inculcates the idea that you must make war on the Jews and that Jews are less than human. The PA school books go one step beyond the Nazis, however, as they introduce lesson plans which praise those who murder Jews. While the Nazis murdered Jews, the Nazis always tried to obfuscate their acts. The Palestinian Authority instead teaches their children to take pride in the act of murdering a Jew.
8. To further reinforce the Palestinian entity around a renewed religious determination of the continued war to liberate all of Palestine, the Palestinian Authority adopted the draft of an Islamic constitution, based on the Sharia law. This was revealed to the public by a senior official in the Vatican who addressed visiting US congressmen in March 2003. This radical constitution was sponsored by the US government, through US AID.
9. Meanwhile, the Hamas Islamic movement took control of the PA legislature in democratic elections that were held under the sponsorship of the American government, in January 2006, which led to a Fatah-Hamas power sharing agreement known as the Mecca Accord, signed between the Fatah and the Hamas in March 2007. When the Fatah began to hesitate in carrying out the Mecca Accord, Hamas took over Gaza in its entirety in June, 2007.
10. The PA has made it clear that it will make no deal with Israel that does not assure the right of return of Palestinian Arab refugees, the PA control over Jerusalem, and the establishment of full and total sovereignty, which includes an army.
View the Original Link at Israel Behind the News: Ten Obstacles to Middle East Peace
Thursday, March 1, 2007
Special Report: March 2007 - Addendum to the Myth of a “Moderate” Fatah (The Center for Near East Policy Research)
This is an appendix to the original Center for Near Easy Policy Research Report: Inside Fatah - A “Moderate” Entity?
New Developments
The Fatah-Hamas Accord at Mecca
On February 8, 2007, Fatah and Hamas leaders, meeting in Mecca under the sponsorship
of Saudi Arabia, reached agreement on the formation of a PA unity government.
The Accord they produced, roughly based upon the Prisoners Document, was couched in
general terms and did not bridge all gaps in the positions between Fatah and Hamas.
What it did was establish certain broad principles and obligate the two sides to attempt to create a stable regime.
While a unity government has not yet been established as this is written – and continuing Fatah-Hamas friction casts some doubt on the likelihood that it will be – the Accord must be examined for what it reveals about the intentions and commitments of Fatah and PA president Mahmoud Abbas.
Abbas has stated that the agreement was concerned only with an internal Palestinian
matter – prevention of a Palestinian civil war – and was not intended to address relations with Israel. In the words of Lt. Col. (res.) Jonathan D. Halevi,1 the Accord is a “tactical political measure calculated to create a false impression regarding Hamas' political flexibility in order to whitewash the organization into being accepted as a legitimate player in the international arena...”
Since his return from Mecca, Abbas has been promoting the position that he can negotiate with Israel as the head of the PLO, rather than as president of the PA.3 The implication, on first blush, appears to be one of trying to achieve negotiations by circumventing the unity government, which will not have recognized Israel nor agreed to abide by previous agreements.
View the Full Report: March 2007 Addendum to Myth of a “Moderate” Fatah
New Developments
The Fatah-Hamas Accord at Mecca
On February 8, 2007, Fatah and Hamas leaders, meeting in Mecca under the sponsorship
of Saudi Arabia, reached agreement on the formation of a PA unity government.
The Accord they produced, roughly based upon the Prisoners Document, was couched in
general terms and did not bridge all gaps in the positions between Fatah and Hamas.
What it did was establish certain broad principles and obligate the two sides to attempt to create a stable regime.
While a unity government has not yet been established as this is written – and continuing Fatah-Hamas friction casts some doubt on the likelihood that it will be – the Accord must be examined for what it reveals about the intentions and commitments of Fatah and PA president Mahmoud Abbas.
Abbas has stated that the agreement was concerned only with an internal Palestinian
matter – prevention of a Palestinian civil war – and was not intended to address relations with Israel. In the words of Lt. Col. (res.) Jonathan D. Halevi,1 the Accord is a “tactical political measure calculated to create a false impression regarding Hamas' political flexibility in order to whitewash the organization into being accepted as a legitimate player in the international arena...”
Since his return from Mecca, Abbas has been promoting the position that he can negotiate with Israel as the head of the PLO, rather than as president of the PA.3 The implication, on first blush, appears to be one of trying to achieve negotiations by circumventing the unity government, which will not have recognized Israel nor agreed to abide by previous agreements.
View the Full Report: March 2007 Addendum to Myth of a “Moderate” Fatah
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