Palestinan Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas was in Cuba the other day, and presented his ‘peace’ plan:
“An Israeli withdrawal from Palestine, the Syrian Golan Heights, and the Lebanese territories is a top priority,” he said. “Once that is achieved, Israel will enjoy normal relations with all Arab and Islamic countries.”
He added, “We tell Israel that if they withdraw from the Palestinian territories, all Arab and Islamic countries will be able to normalize relations with you.”
Abbas then explained that the alternative to such a withdrawal would be terrorism, tension, and violence, which he insisted is not what Palestinians want for their people and region.
An aside: the ‘Lebanese territory’ he refers to is the Shabaa Farms area, a tiny piece of land — 8 sq. mi. –Â with no strategic importance, determined by the UN to be part of the Golan Heights but claimed by Hezbollah and (apparently) the PA to be Lebanese. It is used as a pretext for aggression by Hezbollah, which thereby claims that Israel is still ‘occupying’ Lebanon.
So here’s the context: Israel is almost surrounded by hostile states and non-state terrorist militias which have been sporadically starting wars and killing Israelis since there was an Israel.
And here’s the deal: if Israel will give up the strategic depth which prevented it from being overrun in 1973 and allow the creation of another hostile state to the east to complete its encirclement, then all the Arab states will suddenly give up their oft-repeated desire to end the Jewish state. But if not — well, don’t say I didn’t warn you, but you know how hard it is to control those extremists!
Surrender first, and then the Arab and Muslim states will be able to normalize relations.
And he didn’t mention his continuing demand for the entry of millions of hostile Arabs claiming refugee status into Israel, his refusal to ever recognize Israel as the state of the Jewish People, etc.
As a ‘peace plan’, this is completely insane. Nobody in their right mind could see it as anything other than a demand for Israel to place its head on the chopping block. There is no way negotiation based on these principles can result in peace.
Of course, there’s nothing surprising about it when you consider who Mahmoud Abbas is. He is the leader of Fatah, the organization that has always controlled the PLO, the terrorist group that has killed more Israelis than any other, even Hamas. He is the man who for years was second in command to the Original Terrorist, Yasser Arafat (may his name be erased).
What is surprising is that the US supports Abbas and arms and trains his soldiers (excuse me, ‘security forces’), and is pushing a ‘peace plan’ that is only superficially different from that of Mahmoud Abbas.
Time for a new peace plan. Here’s mine:
- The Palestinian Authority, UNRWA, etc. will be informed that Palestinians will not get another penny of international assistance until they get a leadership that recognizes Israel as the state of the Jewish people, stops terrorism, and agrees to the principle that a solution to the Arab refugee problem must be found in Arab countries, not Israel.
- Arab and Muslim nations will be informed that until they agree to the above, there will be no pressure on Israel to negotiate with the Palestinians.
Recognition first, then negotiations. It’s only reasonable. If the Palestinians will not compromise their ‘ideals’ and continue violent ‘resistance’ then they will have to take time off from resistance to create an economy, because otherwise they won’t be eating.
The international community needs to understand that by supporting the PA and by sending ‘humanitarian’ aid to ‘refugees’ after 61 years, they are not doing anything that could be remotely understood as humanitarian. They are simply helping extremists like Mahmoud Abbas, Hassan Nasrallah and the Hamas leadership maintain their long war against Israel.
Maybe some do understand this and want to help get rid of the “shitty little country” that’s always upsetting their Arab friends. But I think that the majority of people in the US do want Israel to survive, and their government should do more than pay lip service to this.
Technorati Tags: Israel, Abbas, Israeli-Arab conflict
Bibi’s solution is too simple for the anti-Israeli crowd to understand. How can Israel go on without being recognized as a soverign nation? The war of propaganda has been working on the not-so-bright-bulbs in the U.S. and other supposedly pro-Israel countries.
With the news coming out of Iran, I don’t think it matters anymore. It seems war is imminent. I suppose it is the only way the issue will be settled. I have never felt such dread since we were sandbagging our homes in the 1960’s. Speaking of war and the necessity of it, check this out:
http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/
Absolutely agree. The first step towards the peace plan I outline in my comment under “Netanyahu doesn’t surrender” would be to pin the PA to the wall in this fashion to recognize Israel as a Jewish state.
It wouldn’t even have to be the whole world community. The U.S. can do this unilaterally to great effect.
The U.S. provides more aid to UNRWA than any other entity besides the EU, and the $900 million package for the PA in the wake of the recent Gaza war – still largely undisbursed – is the largest of it’s kind.
If we combine a cutoff, even from only the U.S., with solid backing of Israel, their goose is cooked. If we tell Abbas: “Either you formally recognize Israel as a Jewish state – in your charter and everything, no wiggle room – or we cut you off, AND we back Israel 100% no matter what you do and no matter what they do to defend themselves.”, then he is finished. He won’t cave, of course (he can’t or his clerics will kill him), and this will mean, in the short term, a last bloody, desperate intifada, but at the end of this, with full U.S. backing in the UN, etc., we are looking at the PA being out of the picture.
Then we can start working on a real peace that could actually work, as I’ve referenced above.
Pie in the sky? Looks that way right now, what with Neville Carter Hussein Obama in the Oval Office, but Congress controls the purse strings, and there are encouraging signs. Last month, 71 senators signed the Bayh-Risch letter to President Obama, encouraging him to put more pressure on the Arabs to improve ties with Israel in exchange for the overtures she has made up to now. And also last month, Rep. Ros-Lehtinen (R, FL), the ranking Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, issued a statement demanding that the U.S. cut off all aid to the PA unless they recognize Israel as a Jewish state.
I would also add that Obama is almost certainly a one-term president, and his replacement three years and four months from now (but who’s counting?), will certainly be more pro-Israel than he is (anything is better than nothing). If his replacement is Palin or Huckabee, we’d be looking at the most pro-Israel president in U.S. history.
Anyway, there is fertile ground to turn our parlor discussion here into political results, if we act and start calling/writing/e-mailing our representatives accordingly.
It’s a start.