Video of the week -The Story of the Jewish people in Israel - http://tinyurl.com/yatcxdc3
Unless the U.S. is willing to bite the bullet
and finally confront Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian Authority, the
forthcoming mission to the region by U.S. representatives Jared Kushner and
Jason Greenblatt to “restart the peace process” on behalf of President Donald
Trump may prove to be highly counterproductive.
Abbas is coming to the end of his reign. A
brutal and corrupt dictator, he is determined that his legacy be that of an
embattled “freedom fighter” committed to reversal of the Nakba, his ultimate
objective being the restoration of Arab hegemony from the Jordan River to the
Mediterranean Sea. His means to achieve this necessitate the dismemberment of
the Jewish state in stages through terrorism and international pressure.
Until now, he has basically ignored Trump’s
requests and demands. Incitement and calls for “resistance” via the media and
imams urging Palestinians to kill Israelis and become shahids (martyrs) have
reached a record high. Abbas himself whipped up religious hysteria based on the
false cry that Jews were taking over and desecrating Al-Aqsa mosque, thus
triggering the recent riots and encouraging further terror attacks. Children
are brainwashed into regarding Jews as subhuman descendants of apes and pigs,
propaganda reminiscent of and frequently replicated from Nazi sources.
The PA and its leaders continue honoring mass
murders as freedom fighters, dedicating mosques, city squares, schools and
other institutions in their names to commemorate their murderous acts.
Despite personal demands from Trump, Abbas has
vowed that he will never close the Palestine National Fund, which provides
generous pensions and massive financial awards for imprisoned or killed
terrorists and their families, the amounts proportionate to the success of the
terrorist act. Incarcerated murderers top the list with monthly payments of
11,000 shekels (more than $3,000), which is augmented with $25,000 if they are
released from jail. This year. the fund has distributed $345 million,
comprising half of the $693 million the PA receives in foreign aid. Thus the
U.S. and European countries have effectively been providing funds to
incentivize Palestinians to murder Israelis.
The U.S. Congress has now passed legislation to
deduct an equivalent of these funds from aid provided to the Palestinians. The
Europeans have taken no action, although Germany, the U.K. and Norway are
“reviewing” the situation.
Abbas has responded by vowing to maintain the
payouts, which he describes as “social welfare” and in recent weeks has even
increased the payments.
His recent proclamation that security
arrangements with the Israelis had been terminated was never effectively
implemented. The reality is that the Abbas regime would be undermined if it
annulled the security coordination whereby police constrain the enormous
popular resentment by the people against the regime. While the security
arrangements did reduce pressure on the IDF, the party with the most to lose if
it were terminated would be the corrupt PA—which would then probably collapse or
be taken over by Hamas.
Abbas has now condemned the U.S. as being
biased and unfit to act as an intermediary.
The Israelis, on the other hand, appreciate
that with the Trump administration in disarray, mixed messages have emerged in
relation to the peace process. Trump repeatedly reaffirms that he stands by
Israel, but he has yet to fulfill his promise to move the U.S. embassy to
Jerusalem.
U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley has
been exceptionally forthright; the recent flow of statements from Secretary of
State Rex Tillerson and his departmental releases, however, are highly
disconcerting and ominously reminiscent of the Obama era.
Tillerson informed the Senate that the
Palestinians were moving forward positively in the peace process and had
undertaken to bring an end to “martyr” payments. This was promptly denied. In
July, the State Department released a report commending Abbas for having
“significantly” addressed incitement. The report also stated that Palestinian
terror was prompted “by a lack of hope in achieving Palestinian statehood,
Israeli settlement construction in the West Bank, settler violence against
Palestinians in the West Bank, the perception that the Israeli government was
changing the status quo on the Temple Mount and IDF tactics that the
Palestinians considered overly aggressive.” Such observations could match those
issued two years ago, at the height of then-U.S. President Barack Obama’s
diplomatic campaign against Israel.
This should not be interpreted as an indication
that the U.S. has abandoned Israel. It merely reflects the divisions inside the
administration, which were unlikely to have emerged had Trump not been diverted
by the chaos in other areas. Fortunately, Tillerson has largely been excluded
from direct engagement in peace negotiations and Trump has now authorized
Kushner and Greenblatt “to restart the peace process.” They will visit the
region in the next few days.
To further complicate matters, both the
Palestinians and Israelis are entangled in domestic turmoil. Abbas, the
duplicitous rogue with the forked tongue, rules as a dictator and has created a
culture of death. However, he is aged and his people realize that his time in
office is limited. He has never been willing to make any meaningful concessions
to Israelis, who were desperate to separate themselves from the Palestinians,
and is now unlikely to make any moves in that direction. On the contrary, he
has been actively strengthening relations with the Iranians and the Turks who
now support him as well as Hamas. But the people are restless and there is
already jockeying among those seeking to replace him.
Israelis are also facing domestic problems with
the endless campaigns to demonize Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and indict
him on charges of corruption. Fortunately, he is unlikely to face major
political pressures in relation to the peace process because the opposition
would become a laughingstock if it sought to pressure him to make concessions
to the PA.
In this context—setting aside the problem of
Hamas in Gaza—it is impossible to envisage Trump’s representatives making any
progress. Kushner has even recently conceded that he feared that a realistic
solution to the impasse at present could well be impossible.
The question is, how will the American
representatives respond when, as is likely, Abbas gives them the thumbs up.
Will they once again engage in the farce of an ongoing “peace process” that
fails to bring Abbas to account? Or will they urge Trump to realize that it is
time to state openly that the protective cover for the aggressive Palestinian
leaders is over, and call on the world to cease providing them with the power
to continue their incitement and terrorism against Israel?
They should outline an economic program, which
Israel will certainly endorse, focused on building institutions and creating
infrastructure that will enhance the living standards of Palestinians, few of
whom have benefited from the huge amounts of foreign aid that their corrupt
leaders siphoned off into their own bank accounts. They should also encourage
the moderate Arab states to press for a new leadership that would be willing to
make peace with Israel.
However, should they decide, yet again, to
paper over reality and continue “pursuing peace,” the visit will actually prove
to be counterproductive and Israel by itself will be compelled, as was the case
hitherto, to look after its own interests.
