On Saturday, Israeli envoy Yitzhak Molcho delivered a letter to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas outlining Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s stance on the stalled “peace process”. According to Israeli media, Netanyahu again called for the immediate resumption of negotiations without preconditions, as called for by the Middle East Quartet, consisting of the US, UN, EU and Russia. Netanyahu’s Office later issued a joint statement saying “Israel and the Palestinian Authority are committed to achieving peace and the sides hope that the exchange of letters…will further this goal.”
On Sunday, Palestinian officials formally rejected Netanyahu’s overture, saying “the content of the letter did not represent grounds for returning to negotiations.” Yasser Abed Rabbo, a member of the PLO Executive Committee, thereafter reiterated the Palestinians’ refusal to resume peace talks unless Israel halts all construction across the Green Line and accepts the 1967 borders as a basis for negotiations.
Meanwhile, Palestinian officials today confirmed that Egyptian mediators are working to end a mass hunger strike by some 2000 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails.
KICKING THE PALESTINIAN ADDICTION
P. David Hornik
American Spectator, May 8, 2012
The Palestinians have faded from view lately. There’s been an “Arab Spring,” an intensifying Iranian issue, elections in the U.S., economic travails. True, the Obama administration and the EU keep forking over funds to the Palestinian Authority. But the obsession with securing sovereign statehood for the Palestinians seems to have fallen off lately.…
There is, to begin with, the “Arab Spring” itself. Not much more than a year ago, it was still seen in some quarters as a harbinger of democracy and progress. By now this “spring” has dissolved into a spectacle of empowered Islamism, anarchy, and severe brutality—particularly, at present, in the daily atrocity stories from Syria.
Against this backdrop, it needs to be asked whether creating still another Arab state—a Palestinian one—would be either prudent or moral. Indeed, several of the already-existing Arab states were 20th-century Western creations. Of these, Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon, for instance, have been afflicted with internal strife sometimes escalating to the mass murder of tens of thousands of people. All the 21 sovereign states of the Arab League are dictatorships beset with corruption and poverty.…
The two already-existing Palestinian entities, of course, exhibit these pathologies. Semi-sovereign, Hamas-run Gaza is an Islamist dictatorship that fires rockets into Israel. The West Bank Palestinian Authority…is also a dictatorship, torture rampant in its prisons, journalists muzzled. Its corruption is notorious. And like Gaza, the West Bank PA is an incubator of anti-Israeli incitement and hatred. As for internal strife, already in 2007 Hamas and Fatah fought a vicious skirmish in Gaza, throwing each other off tall buildings.…
It is, then, hard to see how conferring full sovereignty on the Palestinians would promote peace with Israel, or U.S. and Western interests. Terror and possibly war with Israel, further destabilizing rather than stabilizing the region, would be much more probable from any empirical standpoint.
To this the likely objection is that the status quo is “untenable,” that Israel cannot keep “ruling” (i.e., maintaining security control over) the West Bank without losing its Jewish-democratic character. “Untenable,” however, is a figment of Western and some Israeli imaginations. It essentially means “morally untenable.” But creating yet another Arab dictatorship is hardly a moral requirement.…
A variant of the “untenable” claim is the “demographic argument,” which says the Israeli Jewish population will soon be swamped by the total Arab-Palestinian population between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean. That argument, though, is irrelevant to Gaza now that Israel has left it. And as for the West Bank, the vast majority of the Palestinians in it live under PA jurisdiction in all areas of life including educational, religious, legal, administrative, and even most aspects of internal security. They are, in short, not part of the Israeli polity and no more demographically relevant to it than their Gaza counterparts. Moreover, the latest data show that even the supposedly higher Arab-Palestinian fertility rate is declining while the Israeli Jewish rate is on the upswing.…
[Given these circumstances], for the U.S., there [is] no upside to resuming the pressure on Israel to pursue a chimerical “peace.” Far too much U.S. and European attention has already been lavished on the Palestinians compared to other, truly distressed populations of the world. It’s time to kick the habit.
WHAT THE PALESTINIANS WANT
Khaled Abu Toameh
Gatestone Institute, May 4, 2012
No matter how much the US tries to help the Palestinians, it will always be viewed by many of them as an enemy.
[Recently], President Barack Obama gave $147 million to the Palestinians. A few days later, Palestinians demonstrated in Ramallah against the US and boycotted a ceremony held by the US Consulate-General. The protesters carried placards which read: “USAID go out!” and “We reject aid from those who deny our people the right to self-determination.”
USAID is the leading provider of bilateral development assistance to the Palestinians. This agency has given the Palestinians more than $3.5 billion since 1994 for programs in the areas of democracy and governance, education, health, humanitarian assistance, private enterprise and water resources and infrastructure.… [Nevertheless], the protesters chanted slogans denouncing US “bias” in favor of Israel. They accused the US of “covering up” for Israeli “war crimes” and of blocking [efforts by] the Palestinian leadership to seek UN recognition of a Palestinian state. More than 20 Palestinian professional unions and other organizations announced a boycott of the US-sponsored event for the same reason.
Many Palestinian journalists who were invited to cover the event also decided to stay away. Their representatives accused the US of supporting Israel and working toward “normalizing” relations between Israelis and Palestinians. In a similar show of hostility, US diplomats who visited Ramallah several months ago had shoes thrown at their vehicles.
As far as most Palestinians are concerned, the “friend of my enemy is my enemy.” Palestinians hate the US because of its continued support for Israel. The Palestinians want the US to endorse all their demands and force Israel to give them everything. As one of the leaders of the demonstrators explained, “The US will remain our enemy for as long as it does not fully support the Palestinians.…” The Americans can pour billions of dollars on the Palestinians every year, but that won’t change their hearts and minds.…
The anti-US sentiments are the direct result of incitement by the Palestinian Authority.… Palestinians are reminded almost every day that the US, which has been providing them with billions of dollars, is a foe rather than friend, although no one seems to ask how come a foe is so generous.
US aid should be conditioned not only on transparency and accountability in the Palestinian Authority, but also on an end to the campaign of hatred and incitement, as officially agreed in the Oslo Accords, but never implemented.
(Khaled Abu Toameh, an Arab Muslim, is an award-winning journalist
who has been covering Palestinian affairs for nearly three decades.)
THE REAL PALESTINIAN REFUGEE PROBLEM
Clifford D. May
National Review, May 10, 2012
After World War II, the British left India, which was to be partitioned into two independent nations. One of them would have a Hindu majority, the other a Muslim majority. More than 7 million Muslims moved to the territory that became Pakistan. A similar number of Hindus and Sikhs moved to India. Today, not one remains a refugee.
After World War II, the British left Palestine, which was to be partitioned into two independent nations. One would have a Jewish majority, the other a Muslim majority. About 750,000 Muslims left the territories that became Israel. A similar number of Jews left Arab/Muslim lands. Today, not one of the Jews remains a refugee. But there are still Palestinian refugees—indeed, their number has mushroomed to almost 5 million. How is that possible? Through two mechanisms: First of all, a refugee, by definition, lives on foreign soil, but for Palestinians the definition has been changed, so that a displaced Palestinian on Palestinian soil also receives refugee status. Second, the international organization responsible for resettling refugees, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), was cut out from the start. A new organization was set up exclusively for Palestinians: the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA).
In 1950, UNRWA defined a refugee as someone who had “lost his home and his means of livelihood” during the war launched by Arab/Muslim countries in response to Israel’s declaration of independent statehood. Fifteen years later, UNRWA decided—against objections from the United States—to include as refugees the children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren of those who left Israel. And in 1982, UNRWA further extended eligibility to all subsequent generations of descendants—forever.
Under UNRWA’s rules, even if the descendant of a Palestinian refugee has become a citizen of another state, he’s still a refugee. For example, of the 2 million refugees registered in Jordan, all but 167,000 hold Jordanian citizenship. (In fact, approximately 80 percent of Jordan’s population is Palestinian—not surprising, since Jordan occupies more than three-fourths of the area historically referred to as Palestine.) By adopting such a policy, UNRWA is flagrantly violating the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, which states clearly that a person shall cease to be considered a refugee if he has “acquired a new nationality.…”
But UNRWA’s plan is to continue expanding—rather than shrinking—the Palestinian refugee population ad infinitum. According to UNHCR projections, by 2030 UNRWA’s refugee list will reach 8.5 million. By 2060 there will be 25 times the number registered by UNRWA in 1950—even though not one of those who actually left Israel is likely to still be breathing. Everyone understands what it would mean if all these refugees were actually to be granted a “right to return” to Israel.…
But, of course, that’s the goal: The descendants of those displaced more than 60 years ago—when the first offer of what we’ve come to call a “two-state solution” was rejected—are being used as pawns to prevent a two-state solution now or in the future. By increasing the number of refugees, by maintaining that population in poverty, dependence, and anger, by understanding that the “right of return” will be demanded by some Palestinian leaders, UNRWA is helping the extremists to prevent peace and continue to wage a war of annihilation against Israel. This anti-peace policy is being funded largely by Americans: We’ve always been the largest donor to UNRWA, contributing about $4.4 billion since 1950.
A few members of Congress have figured out what’s going on and plan to do something about it. Senator Mark Kirk (R., Ill.) is working on an amendment to the Fiscal Year 2013 State-Foreign Operations Appropriations bill that, for the first time, would establish as U.S. policy that only a Palestinian refugee can be classified as a Palestinian refugee—not a son, grandson, or great-grandson, and not someone who has resettled and taken citizenship in another country.… Representative Howard Berman (D., Calif.), ranking member of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, also is considering legislative options in response to these problems. At the very least, these approaches would ensure that descendants of refugees would be listed—with unaccustomed clarity—as “descendants of refugees.”
They might still be eligible to receive UNRWA “services,” but as “Palestinian Authority citizens” who could look forward to becoming citizens of a Palestinian state—if and when the Palestinians come to the conclusion that establishing a Palestinian state is worth what it will cost: giving up the dream of destroying the Jewish state. Too few Palestinians are there yet. If Congress can rein in UNRWA, more may be moved in that direction.
(Clifford D. May is president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.)
LEGITIMATE GRIEVANCE OR POLITICAL STUNT?
Editorial
Jerusalem Post, May 13, 2012
In mid-April several dozen Palestinians began a hunger strike that has since grown to include almost 2,000 Palestinian prisoners. The prisoners demand not only an end to the practice of administrative detention, but also increased family visits and an end to solitary confinement.…
The use of administrative detention or other types of detention of terror suspects without charging them is not a uniquely Israeli method. Under UK law, suspects may be detained for up to 28 days.… In addition, the Israeli Supreme Court in 2008 noted that the “purpose [of the law] is to protect state security by removing from the cycle of hostilities anyone who is a member of a terrorist organization…in view of the threat that he represents to the security of the state and the lives of its inhabitants.” One of the laws on administrative detention applies to Israeli citizens just as it does to Palestinians in the West Bank.…
The fact that some Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails are subject to solitary confinement is also not exceptional. Many Jewish prisoners are placed in solitary confinement, including Hagai Amir, the recently released brother of the assassin of Yitzhak Rabin.… That some Palestinian prisoners have been punished by this method of imprisonment is not remarkable, in the Israeli or international context.
[Accordingly], the hunger strike being carried out by the Palestinians should be viewed in its context as a political tool, much as Gilad Schalit was used as a bargaining chip to obtain the release of Palestinian prisoners. The discovery of this new tool was made after Islamic Jihad activist Khader Adnan was released from detention after a hunger strike earlier this year. Hana Shalabi, another Islamic Jihad hunger striker, was released by Israel to the Gaza Strip on April 1. This led directly to the expansion of this method of protest among Islamic Jihad members and then among Palestinian prisoners in general.…
Israel must realize that it gains little by negotiating with the striking prisoners. Too many concessions to these strikers will encourage this method of “resistance.”
PEACEMAKING MYTHOLOGIES FROM TABA TO OLMERT
Dore Gold
Israel Hayom, May 11, 2012
Former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was interviewed [earlier this month] by CNN’s Christiana Ammanpour and sought to give his audience the impression that he had been on the verge of a historic peace agreement with Mahmoud Abbas in 2008, and only because of the interference of individuals from the US that brought in outside money, an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement was not reached.…
Leaving aside his dramatic accusations about millions of dollars that were transferred from what he called “the extreme right wing” in the US to hamper his peace initiative, Olmert was not even close to a final agreement, as he implied to his CNN audience. In fact, when carefully examined, Olmert’s secret talks with Abbas should be seen as the latest proof that the fundamental gaps between the most maximal concession made by an Israeli prime minister did not meet the minimal requirements of Abbas for an agreement. This was not the first time that the myth of an impending Israeli-Palestinian breakthrough, that never happened, was widely promoted.
Israeli and Palestinian negotiators at end of the Taba talks issued a joint statement on January 27, 2001 when their meetings concluded, saying: “The sides declare that they have never been closer to reaching an agreement.” Yet when Israeli Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben Ami repeated this to a radio reporter from Kol Yisrael, Muhammad Dahlan, [former leader of Fatah in Gaza], responded immediately afterwards by saying Kharta Barta (slang for baloney). The EU representative Miguel Moratinos even wrote in his internal report on Taba that “serious gaps remain” between the parties.… Nevertheless the myth that Israel and the Palestinians had been on the verge of an imminent breakthrough persisted.
What do we know about Olmert’s talks with Abbas?… Olmert made a proposal to [Abbas] in 2008, that he never made public in its entirety.… The most detailed version of the Olmert proposal was outlined in a cover story for the New York Times Magazine by Bernard Avishai.… Olmert told Avishai: “We were very close, more than ever in the past, to complete an agreement on principles that would have led to the end of the conflict between us and the Palestinians.” But was Olmert’s description accurate?
Avishai writes that Olmert used “constructive ambiguity” to deal with the toughest issues like the Palestinian refugees. Abbas told the Washington Post in May 2009 that…Olmert accepted the principle of the “right of return.” Yet, Olmert told Avishai two years later that the exact number of refugees that would return was still subject to further negotiation. How could this obvious gap lead Olmert to conclude that he was “very close” to completing an agreement with Abbas?
In the area of security, the Olmert proposals were even more troubling. Abbas told Avishai in the New York Times that “the file on security is closed.” But he then added “we do not claim it was an agreement but the file was finalized.” How was security “finalized” without an agreement between the parties on such an important topic? Abbas explained that the Israeli security concerns had been worked out with General James Jones, [then-US Secretary of State Condoleezza] Rice’s security advisor, but not with Israel. Unfortunately, Olmert did not seem to have a problem with this. Indeed, according Rice’s memoirs…there were Israeli security requirements that the Palestinians would not accept.…
There are different versions about what Olmert intended for Jerusalem, each more problematic than the next. He told Bernard Avishai that he was willing to give up Israeli sovereignty over what he called the Holy Basin—an area including the Old City, with the Temple Mount and the Western Wall, the Mount of Olives and the area of the City of David. Did these concessions bring Olmert as close to a final agreement as he claims? Rice write in her memoirs that Abu Mazen “refused” to accept Olmert’s offer, even after President Bush appealed to him to reconsider his position. In 2009, Abbas was interviewed by Jackson Diehl of the Washington Post and explained why he could not take Olmert’s offer to the Palestinians: “The gaps were too wide.”
Why is this question about the Olmert proposals important today? No matter who wins the upcoming US elections, the next administration will seek to shape an Israeli-Palestinian peace initiative and push the parties to accept it. [And despite] the failure of Camp David and Taba, the US foreign policy establishment has been locked on to trying to go back to proposals that plainly did not work. Alternatives have not even been considered.
In 2010, former President Clinton wrote…that because of past diplomacy and Olmert’s initiative, “everyone knows what a final agreement would look like.” Unfortunately, misinformed American presidents who are led to believe that a peace agreement was within our grasp, inevitably launch initiatives based on the terms that they heard were agreed to, only to end up clashing with their Israeli allies and walking away with a diplomatic embarrassment. Despite his tarnished reputation, Olmert’s appearances reinforce the misimpression that there was a full Israeli-Palestinian deal that once existed, that now needs to be revived.…
Israel is in a very different situation today than it was when these peace proposals were made in the past. Israelis have gone through a second intifada with suicide bomb attacks in the heart of their cities, the failure of Gaza withdrawal that led to a massive escalation of rocket attacks on southern Israel, and an Arab Spring, that has demonstrated the fragility of the regimes with which Israel has signed peace treaties as well as the probability that they could be replaced by Islamist elements. Under these circumstances, Israeli security needs in future negotiations must be stressed harder.… What is required is an alternative diplomatic strategy…rather than trying to revive a formula that has only led to diplomatic failure.
(Dore Gold, a former Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations,
is president of the Jerusalem center for Public Affairs.)
