June 25, 2020
The picture Palestinian
Authority officials are painting is that the Israeli annexation of any part
of the West Bank is the one and only obstacle to
regional peace, security and stability. According to these officials, the
Israeli plan would deprive the Palestinians of their right to establish an
independent and sovereign state on the pre-1967 armistice lines.
A large group of Palestinian
Islamic scholars and clerics, however, evidently disagree with the Palestinian
Authority's claim.
On June 21, the Association
of Palestine Scholars held a meeting in the Gaza
Strip to discuss the Israeli plan. The meeting was attended by several Islamic
religious judges representing the Supreme Council of Sharia Judiciary, senior
officials of the Hamas-controlled Ministry of Waqf and Religious Affairs,
academics from several Islamic colleges and universities, as well as jurists
who issue rulings on Islamic law (sharia).
In a statement issued
after the meeting, the Islamic religious personalities, referring to Israel as
the "usurping entity," condemned as "dangerous" the Israeli
plan to extend sovereignty to parts of the West Bank.
Their statement quickly makes
clear that what is really bothering the Islamic scholars and clerics is not the
possibility that Israel might impose its sovereignty on Jewish settlements and
the Jordan Valley.
They are not really worried
about the possibility that Israel might annex 10% or 20% or 30% of the West
Bank. There is something that worries them much more than any part of the West
Bank, and that is the very existence of Israel. The Islamic scholars and
clerics believe that Israel has no right to sovereignty over Tel Aviv, Haifa,
Nazareth, Tiberias, Jerusalem or and any other part of Israel.
The Islamic leaders even contradict
their own statement by pretending to be worried only about the ostensible loss
of West Bank land to Israel.
On the one hand, they say that "one
of the most dangerous things that this [Israeli] enemy intends to do is to
annex a part of the Palestinian lands to its usurping entity." They are
pretending, in other words, that they are worried only about the
"annexation" of parts of the West Bank.
On the other hand, The
Islamic leaders emphasize that
"Palestine, all of Palestine, from the [Mediterranean] sea to the [Jordan]
river, is a Palestinian Arab Islamic land for which the Jews and Zionists have
no right." They go on to explain that "this fact won't be changed by
any measures taken by the [Israeli] enemy."
It is clear from the
statement that whether the "annexation" plan is implemented or not,
many Muslims would still reject the State of Israel because, in their view, it
continues to "usurp" Palestinian Arab Islamic land stretching from
the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River. It is dead wrong to assume that if
Israel abandons its plan, most Muslims would give up their desire to destroy
Israel and replace it with an extremist Iran-style Islamic state.
To back up their argument
even further that the main problem is not the West Bank, the scholars and
clerics said that
"recognizing the state of this usurping entity is a religious, legal,
humanitarian and historical crime that must be immediately corrected by
cancelling the abhorrent Oslo Accords."
So, the problem is not really
the "annexation" plan that they want to see cancelled, but the Oslo
Accords signed in 1993 and 1995 between Israel and the PLO. These accords
marked the beginning of the so-called Israeli-Palestinian peace process after
the PLO purportedly recognized Israel's right to exist in peace and security.
