FresnoZionism.org — ציונות פרסנו

In the Winter and Spring of 1947-48, Palestinian Arabs and Jordanian troops maintained a siege on several Jewish kibbutzim southeast of Jerusalem in the area known as Gush Etzion. Ultimately, after five months, Kibbutz Kfar Etzion was overrun, and 250 inhabitants — soldiers and civilians — were massacred. The other kibbutzim surrendered.

Early in January 1948, a detachment of Jewish soldiers numbering 35 tried to walk the twenty kilometers from Jerusalem to Gush Etzion to bring them needed supplies. Supposedly they were seen by an Arab shepherd, whom they captured.

The story is that they considered killing him but decided to release him because he was a noncombatant. This story is told to recruits in the Israeli army, where it is presented as correct behavior, an illustration of the concept of tohar haneshek (purity of arms).

Of course the shepherd reported what he had seen, and a large force of Arabs was sent against them. All 35 were killed. They are remembered as the “lamed-hey” (the 35).

This Friday, almost exactly 60 years after the deaths of the lamed-hey, three young Israelis, Na’ama Ohion, Ahikam Amihai and David Rubin, were hiking in a place called Nahal Telem, near Hebron. Here is how Na’ama Ohion described what happened:

Ohion told her friends that, at the beginning of the hike, an elderly Arab passed them, and they began to recall the story…

Ohion told her friends they were making black-humor jokes about the historical incident. “We could never imagine that our hike would end up like theirs,” her friends said she told them.

About an hour later, she said, a gray Land Rover appeared and drove toward the three hikers, with a rifle barrel sticking out of the window. A Palestinian sitting in the back seat sprayed the three with bullets. Amihai and Rubin were hit, and Ohion ran to hide behind bushes above the trail. When she heard the shooting die down and the terrorists’ vehicle drive away, she came out of her hiding place.

Ohion saw her friends’ bodies riddled with bullets. After her attempts to resuscitate them failed, she climbed out of the wadi to a high point where she could use her cell phone, and waited there until help came. — Nadav Shragai, Ha’aretz

Amihai and Rubin, both sons of rabbis, were off-duty soldiers, and they were armed. Before they died they managed to kill one of the terrorists and wound another. The Islamic Jihad, the Fatah al-Aksa Brigades, and Hamas have all claimed ‘credit’ for the murders.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Ahikam Amihai, David Rubin, terrorism, lamed-hey

Everything you need to know about Hamas:

Hamas on Thursday called on the UN to rescind the 1947 decision to partition Palestine into two states, one for Jews and one for Arabs.

The group said in a statement, released on the 60th anniversary of the UN vote, that “Palestine is Arab Islamic land, from the river to the sea, including Jerusalem… there is no room in it for the Jews.” — Jerusalem Post

Everything you need to know about Fatah:

• Salam Fayad, Palestinian Authority “prime minister”: “Israel can define itself as it likes, but the Palestinians will not recognize it as a Jewish state.”
• Yasser Abed Rabbo, secretary general of the Palestinian Liberation Organization’s executive committee: “This issue [recognition as a Jewish state] is not on the table; it is raised for internal [Israeli] consumption.”
• Ahmad Qurei, chief Palestinian negotiator: “This [demand] is absolutely refused.”
• Saeb Erekat, head of the PLO Negotiations Department: “The Palestinians will never acknowledge Israel’s Jewish identity. … There is no country in the world where religious and national identities are intertwined.” — Daniel Pipes

Everything you need to know about Arab citizens of Israel:

In a unanimous vote on Saturday, the Higher Arab Monitoring Committee decided to reject an Israeli request that the Palestinian Authority recognize Israel as a “Jewish state.” — Arutz Sheva

A large majority of Israel’s Arabs object to Israeli-Palestinian negotiations over territory swaps (73 percent), a survey conducted by Mada al-Carmel - the Arab Center for Applied Social Research in Haifa - finds. Most Arabs also object to recognizing Israel as a Jewish state (65 percent) and renouncing the Right of Return (79 percent). Israeli Arabs also believe that the Palestinians cannot back down on Jerusalem-related issues, according to the poll. — Ha’aretz [my emphasis]

Israel has agreed that there is a Palestinian people and that it is entitled to self-determination in its own state. One can argue long and hard about what makes a ‘people’, but there is no doubt that the Jewish people have it in at least as great a measure — and more — than the Palestinians.

And yet nothing seems to evoke rejection quite so violent as the Israeli demand to be recognized as a Jewish state — the state of the Jewish people. This applies not only to the Palestinians, but to most Arab nations, for example, the Saudis:

Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the United States rejected recognizing Israel as a Jewish state.

“There are 1.5 million civilians in Israel who do not define themselves as Jewish,” [referring to Arabs, Christians and others] Adel al-Jubeir told reporters at the U.S.-convened Israeli-Palestinian peace talks in Annapolis, Md. “We do not believe states should define themselves according to religion or ethnicity.” [!] — JTA

Leaving aside the hypocrisy — coming from the country that Jews are not allowed to enter, where Christian Bibles are prohibited, and where only Muslims can be citizens — the majority of states in the world are defined as the homeland of an ethnic group with a religious identity more or less intertwined, and the fact that they have citizens belonging to minority groups does not delegitimize them. But only Israel is denied this self-definition.

There is one simple explanation, and it is that the Arabs do not agree that there should be a Jewish Israel. They are prepared to accept a state called ‘Israel’ as long as it can be an Arab state, in which case they will quickly change the name anyway. The insistence on “right of return“, which would instantly change Israel from a Jewish to an Arab state, is proof of it.

Hamas, as always, does the best job of straightforwardly articulating the basic principle that they espouse — and share even with the ‘moderates’ of Fatah — which is that they will accept nothing less than the reversal of the creation of Israel and the outcome of the 1948 war. The pragmatic West and the optimistic Israeli Left never fathomed this, imagining the bellicose talk of the Arabs to be mere rhetoric. I would like to think that at least a few are finally beginning to understand.

Some commentators have recently started talking about how the US needs to apply “tough love” to Israel about such issues as settlements, roadblocks, prisoners, etc. But it’s the Arabs who need it, who need — for once and for all — to be forced to understand that there will be no going back to 1947. There is only one kind of peace to be had, and that is peace with Israel as a Jewish state.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Jewish state, right of return

So simple:

Cardinal Renato Martino, who heads the Vatican’s office for migrants, said an agreement to restart peace talks, reached Tuesday in Annapolis, Maryland, was encouraging and that he hoped by this time next year concrete measures would be under way.

“It is my hope that all the parts of the problem are taken into consideration such as that of the Palestinian refugees, who like all other refugees, have the right to return to their homeland,” Martino said. — Jerusalem Post

Here are seven reasons why it is not so simple, and indeed why the Palestinian demand is outrageous and unjust:

1. The war which created the refugees was started by the Palestinian Arabs and their allies and was the culmination of a campaign of terrorism and pogroms against Jews in Palestine since at least the 1920’s.
2. There were at most 700,000 Arab refugees (probably less). The Palestinians are demanding that almost 5 million descendants of these ‘return’ to Israel 60 years after the war (the Jewish population of Israel is about 5 million).
3. During and after the War of Independence, about 850,000 Jews were expelled from or fled their homes in Arab countries, in most cases leaving all of their property behind. These Jews were absorbed by other countries, most of them going to Israel. Do not their descendants have a claim on the Arab world?
4. The Arab nations hosting the Palestinian refugees refused to absorb them, and a special UN agency (UNRWA) was created just for them. The normal UN refugee agencies were not used, because they are concerned with finding homes for refugees. UNRWA’s job has been to keep them in camps and on welfare in order to nurture a hostile population to be used as a source of anti-Israel soldiers and ultimately as a demographic weapon. Some UNRWA personnel belong to terrorist organizations, such as Hamas.
5. When Jordan occupied the West Bank and East Jerusalem in 1948, the areas were ethnically cleansed of Jews, who fled or were murdered. The Palestinians are demanding that all Jewish settlements be removed from what is to be their state. Yet they expect Israel to absorb an additional 5 million Arabs!
6. If Israel were to agree to this, it would immediately have an Arab majority and would cease to be a state of the Jewish people. But the Palestinians insist that they must have a state because they have a right to self-determination. Apparently, they do not think that the Jewish people has this right as well.
7. Practically speaking, the influx would result in immediate civil war, which would make similar wars in Lebanon and Yugoslavia look like ping-pong tournaments.

Cardinal Martino, ironically, is President of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace!

He is also President of the Pontifical Council for Pastoral Care of Migrants and Itinerant Peoples. One would think that he might have some understanding of the prototypical “Itinerant People”, who have finally returned home after thousands of years.

Technorati Tags: Martino, Vatican, Palestinian refugees, Israel

The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs has published a document called “Israel, the Conflict and Peace: Answers to frequently asked questions“. It’s a remarkably straightforward and well-written exposition of the present government’s strategy of seeking peace with the Palestinians in the framework of a two-state solution.

Whatever you think of the prospects for success of this approach, it is based on the views expressed by President Bush in his speech of June 2002, and on the so-called ‘Roadmap‘ derived from that — although the Bush Administration may have moved further toward the Arab point of view since then (a recent Bush speech mentioned the Saudi/Arab League Peace Initiative approvingly).

The paper is very readable and interesting, building on the idea of the two-state solution while making clear what Israel expects from its partners in the upcoming negotiations. However, one section in particular — about incitement — struck me as being emblematic of the reason why the whole enterprise has such a small chance of success.

When you read this section, which is specifically directed to incitement against Israel by the Palestinian Authority and Hamas, keep in mind that similar remarks could be made about almost any Arab country, including (especially) Egypt, with whom Israel is allegedly at ‘peace’.

How does incitement harm peace?

There is a direct connection between anti-Israeli or antisemitic incitement and terrorism. The extreme anti-Israeli indoctrination that is so pervasive in Palestinian society nurtures a culture of hatred that, in turn, leads to terrorism.

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Here’s how Paul Reynolds of the BBC sees the chances that Annapolis will have a positive result:

There are perhaps only two reasons for any hope.

The first is the fear of something worse.

Annapolis can be seen as a way of trying to support the moderates.

The strategy is to show Palestinians that talks can produce results and that the confrontation promoted by Hamas in Gaza is not the way forward.

The danger is that this strategy might fail and leave the Palestinians with nothing and the Israelis still in the state of “siege” described by the Irish and UN diplomat Conor Cruise O’Brien in 1986.

I would suggest that the real danger is that this strategy might succeed, Israel will get out of the West Bank, and then the ‘moderates’ will stop pretending to be moderate or be replaced by Hamas. But Reynolds’ real point is to come:

The second is a better understanding that the philosophy behind Oslo and the road map might be wrong. Both those agreements sought to establish an atmosphere of peace and security first, leading to a final agreement second.

There is nothing wrong with trying to create better conditions, something for example that the former British Prime Minister Tony Blair has been trying to do on the economic front.

But without a final agreement, there can probably be no peace and security. Security will not lead to an agreement. It is an agreement that will lead to security.

In other words, unless Israel gives the Palestinians the agreement they want, there will not be peace and security. An ‘agreement’ sounds so civilized, but the word for concessions made to stop someone from trying to kill you is ‘appeasement’.

Is it too much to ask, as the roadmap and Oslo did, that the Palestinians stop terrorism before they get their state, especially since one would like to have some reason to think that they are capable of it before putting them in rocket range of Ben Gurion Airport? Apparently Reynolds thinks so.

It’s mind-boggling that the response to the failure of the Palestinians to meet their commitment to end terrorism, which was the primary reason for the collapse of Oslo and the Roadmap, should be to simply give up on the requirement and push Israel to hand over territory even while terrorism continues.

But there are other indications that Reynolds and the BBC see Israel, and not the Palestinians, as the main obstacle to peace:

There has been little sign that they are anywhere near agreement [on borders, Jerusalem, settlements, and ‘right of return’ for refugees].

Instead there has been a new argument - about an Israeli demand that Israel should be recognised as a “Jewish state”.

This is something fundamental for the Israelis but Palestinians see it as taking one of their cards - the refugees - off the table in advance.

First of all, this is not a ‘new’ argument. It is no more and no less than an insistence that the Palestinians (and the world) recognize that the Jews won the war of 1948, when a Jewish state was established in Mandatory Palestine. It is being articulated now because it is evident that the Arabs do not accept this.

The absolutely absurd, historically unprecedented, requirement that a hostile population of 4 to 5 million descendants of refugees from a war that their side lost 59 years ago ‘return’ — does not belong “on the table” at all, and it should be seen, along with the denial of Israel’s right to be a Jewish state, as a demand for the reversal of the outcome of the 1948 war. Far from a demand for self-determination for Palestinians, it is a refusal to grant this same right to Jews.

Reynolds and the BBC suggest that the issue is about such things as the size of the Palestinian state, how much of Jerusalem they will end up with, and the welfare of the refugee descendants.

What they don’t see, or (less charitably) pretend not to see is that this argument is not actually about the Palestinians and their state. More fundamentally, it’s about the Jews and theirs.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Palestinians, BBC, Annapolis meeting

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas unveiled a $1.75 million mausoleum for Yasser Arafat on Saturday, in a pomp-filled ceremony that helped him draw on the continued popularity of his iconic predecessor as he headed into peace talks with Israel. — YNet

What does it tell us about the Palestinian point of view that they venerate Arafat?

Let’s leave aside the early Arafat — the swaggering terrorist who tried to destabilize Jordan in 1970, was the immediate cause of the First Lebanon War in 1982, who gave the order to push the aged American Leon Klinghoffer’s wheelchair overboard from the hijacked Achille Lauro in 1985, and who was responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Israelis in countless terrorist attacks.

Let’s just consider the Arafat who returned triumphantly to Ramallah from exile in Tunis after the signing of the Oslo Accord, which recognized the PLO as the sole representative of the Palestinian people. The early ’90’s were a historic opportunity for a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians. After the Gulf war, Iraq — one of the primary fomenters of conflict — was temporarily out of the picture, Iran was still weak from the long war with Iraq during most of the 1980’s, and Syria was at least pretending to appease the US.

Arafat, as head of the newly-established Palestinian Authority (PA), immediately went to work. Although paying lip service to the idea of little by little building connections and reducing tensions between Israel and the Palestinians that was the Oslo process, he did exactly the opposite. He turned all PA institutions into agencies of incitement against Israel: the religious establishment, the media, the schools. He established summer camps and youth organizations dedicated to training future soldiers in the war against Israel.

While taking money and weapons from the US and Israel intended to build Palestinian ’security services’ which would ‘fight terrorism’, he actually paid terrorists (many of whom were members of the ’security services’) to kill Israelis. He transmitted a message of peace in his speeches in English, and one of jihad when he spoke Arabic.

Arafat got an enormous amount of aid from the US and the EU which was intended to build infrastructure for a Palestinian state, deposited much of it in his personal bank account (estimates of his net worth ranged from $300 million to billions), enriched his hangers-on, purchased huge amounts of arms and financed terrorism.

Nevertheless, Israeli and American negotiators convinced themselves that it was just a matter of getting the i’s dotted and the t’s crossed on a peace agreement. So Ehud Barak made an offer including unprecedented concessions on issues such as borders and Jerusalem at Camp David. As everyone knows, Arafat rejected it in July of 2000, without even making a counteroffer. Still not understanding, Israel sweetened the offer at the Taba negotiations in January 2001, after Arafat had already launched the violent second Intifada against Israel.

It was also rejected, and afterwards Arafat claimed that Israel had only offered the Palestinians “Bantustans” in the West Bank. But this was a lie.

So, what does Yasser Arafat represent? Apart from his tactics of duplicity and terrorism, Arafat consistently rejected the idea of a peaceful Palestinian state alongside Israel and did his best to prevent this from coming about, believing that continued ‘resistance’ would ultimately reverse the war of 1948.

What does this tell us about Mahmoud Abbas and the so-called ‘moderates’ who claim to want exactly this peaceful state? Why do they so greatly admire a man who was personally cruel and corrupt, who caused the Palestinian cause to become synonymous with terrorism throughout the world, who caused several mini-wars and whose legacy may yet cause a major one, and who absolutely rejected the idea of a state alongside Israel?

What part of Arafat don’t they understand?

Technorati Tags: Arafat, Israel, Abbas

Robert Novak’s latest anti-Israel hit piece in the New York Post really encapsulates so much of today’s left-of-center conventional wisdom about the conflict that I thought it would be useful to look at it in detail.

November 5, 2007 — Timing the placement into movie theaters the last two weeks of the new documentary “Jimmy Carter Man From Plains” before the proposed Middle East conference in Annapolis this year was not intentional. But the irony of the former president’s clarity on the Palestinian question contrasts sharply with the refusal by George W. Bush to face harsh reality that casts a pall over hopes to conclude his presidency with a diplomatic triumph.

I don’t know about the relation to Annapolis, but it seems to me that Carter, along with Mearsheimer and Walt and myriad other expressions of the point of view that Novak holds are coordinated, and the intent is to prepare the ground for forcing Israel back to the pre-1967 borders regardless of the consequences. The entire campaign is too pat to be unintentional, and judging by the relationships of some of its leading practitioners, there seems to be a Saudi connection.

In the film, Carter repeatedly and unequivocally states what Palestinian and Israeli peace advocates view as undeniable: To achieve Israeli-Palestinian peace with all its benefits for the world, Israel must end its illegal and oppressive occupation of the West Bank. [my emphasis]

Here Novak alludes to the idea that most of the problems of the Middle East — and even the greatest threat to world peace — spring from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The view is absurd, leaving out radical Islamism, the Iranian attempt to gain control of Gulf oil reserves, Sunni-Shiite conflict, Syrian meddling in Lebanon and Iraq, Arab rejectionism of Israel, Saudi sponsorship of international terrorism, horribly repressive and kleptocratic dictatorships in almost all Arab countries, Pakistani-sponsored nuclear proliferation, Turkish designs on northern Iraq (and PKK terrorism against Turkey) and on, and on. None of these has anything to do with the Palestinians or with Israel’s policies.

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The Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR) has strongly criticized both Hamas and Fatah over the mini-civil war in the Gaza Strip, citing

…serious violations of the provisions of international law concerning internal armed conflicts, including violations of the right to life and physical integrity perpetrated by the two movements. These violations included extra-judicial and willful killings; disregard for the lives of Palestinian civilians; abduction and torture of persons; attacks against civilian facilities, including houses and apartment buildings; shooting at peaceful demonstrations; attacks against hospitals and medical and civil defense crews; seizure, robbery and destruction of public and private institutions.

The report also criticizes the Palestinian Authority for not establishing a commission of inquiry to investigate these events.

At the time, I commented on the moral outrage and shame expressed by Palestinians, as compared to the lack of similar expressions when Palestinian terrorists have murdered Jews. For example, contrast this

Political analyst Ikrimah Thabet said: “…the bloody events have caused enormous damage to the reputation of the Palestinians, especially in light of the filthy and painful violence that has claimed the lives of children, activists, leaders and innocent civilians.” — Khaled Abu Toameh in the Jerusalem Post

With this

In the current interview [in “Al-Sharq al-Awsat”] as in earlier interviews Abu-Mazen [Mahmoud Abbas] has been very consistent on several points. The Intifada is legitimate and is part of the resistance to occupation, and it should continue; he supports attacking soldiers and settlers at any time; he opposes attacks on Israeli civilians inside Israel at this time because it is against Palestinian interests. — Michael Widlanski, Ha’aretz (Hebrew, my tr.) [2004]

This point of view — that terrorism against Jews or Israelis is bad only because it is presently ‘counterproductive’ — apparently characterizes the ‘moderate’ wing of the Palestinian movement and is one of the things that makes them ‘moderate’ (the other is that they do not want to replace all of Israel with an Arab state today, but will accept one in the territories as an intermediate step in the process).

Is it possible to accept the Palestinian narrative in which the current situation represents a denial of Palestinian rights without also justifying (or even ‘understanding’) terrorism? Palestinian-American journalist (and comedian!) Ray Hanania seems to be able to do it:

Once again, Palestinians are faced with a difficult choice. Do they continue to embrace 60-year old principles and demand the impossible - to return to land of the pre-1948 years? Or do they wake up and recognize that their only real chance for peace and a Palestinian state is to accept their own failures? The brutal truth is that Israel’s existence - which Palestinians reject - has much to do with their own failed policies and their own extremist acts.

More importantly, are Palestinians finally willing to stop lying to the Palestinian refugees and to their descendants - to acknowledge the truth that even though the Palestinians may have a legal right under international law to return to their lands taken in 1948, 60 years of continued conflict and failed Arab leadership has made the enforcement of that dream unrealistic?

What is important here is that for once, he places responsibility for the situation of the Palestinians where it belongs — on the policies of the Arab nations, and on their own choice of terrorism as a tactic. We are not going to make a Zionist out of this guy, but possibly we could talk to him.

Unfortunately, he lives in Chicago, not Ramallah.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Palestinians, Abbas, Hanania

If you want an honest statement of the Palestinian position free of the usual posturing, look no further:

In a letter to [Palestinian President Mahmoud] Abbas, Salman Abu Sitta, a prominent spokesman for Palestinian refugees, wrote: “We are aware of the pressure you are facing to abandon the Palestinian position and endorse Israel’s vision. But what has drawn our attention more than anything else is Israel’s attempt to redefine the idea of the two-state solution. Israel now wants mutual recognition - Israel as the national homeland of the Jews and, on what’s left of the land, Palestine as the national homeland of the Palestinians.”

Abu Sitta described the Israeli formula as “extremely dangerous,” saying it should be rejected by all Arabs. He said accepting this formula would be tantamount to abandoning the Arab right to Palestine and accepting the Jews’ ostensible historical and biblical rights to the land.

In addition, Abu Sitta argued, the Israeli stance abolishes the right of return for Palestinians on two levels: recognition of this right and its fulfillment.

“This would constitute a historic burden; no Palestinian could bear its consequences in front of his people and history,” he cautioned. He said it was inconceivable that the Palestinians would abandon the right of return after decades of fighting. — Khaled Abu Toameh, Jerusalem Post [my emphasis]

And all this time, proponents of a two-state solution have been arguing that the problem is that the correct formula for compromise hasn’t been found yet. They suggest that the Clinton-Barak proposals failed because Israel did not offer enough or because Arafat wasn’t ready for peace.

The real problem is that Israelis and Americans have never really paid attention to what Palestinians say, or have never believed that they actually meant it.

The Palestinians believe a false version of history. They are wrong about the connection of the Jews to the land, they are wrong about the history of the 19th and 20th centuries, and they are especially wrong about their understanding of the events of 1948.

In addition to being mistaken about what actually happened, they are totally blind to their own agency in bringing about their situation. They don’t take responsibility for the actions of al-Husseini (the Nazi Mufti of Jerusalem), Yasser Arafat, Hamas, or any number of murderers and terrorists.

But never mind, this is the version of reality that they believe, with the passion that only a truly miserable people can muster. And this misery has been carefully nurtured over the years by the Arab nations, the UNRWA which was created just for this purpose (and mostly paid for by the US), and the sympathetic international Left which has adopted their cause.

So they have never been, and are not now, willing to accept a compromise solution that leaves room for a Jewish state.

But this should not be Israel’s problem. Why should Israel have to pay for the perfidy of the British and French, the stupidity of al-Husseini, the evil and corruption of Arafat, the grandiose plans of Nasser, the machinations of the Assads, and the fact that the Palestinians have been lied to so thoroughly by themselves and others?

The responsibility for solving the problems of the descendants of the Arab refugees of 1948 should fall on those who really created and perpetuated the problem. Since the UN has entire departments and ‘divisions’ dedicated to Palestinian rights, since it has had several ‘human rights’ bodies that dealt with little else, maybe it could come up with an answer.

Such a solution would involve the abolition of UNRWA, compensation for the treatment these people have received from their ‘host’ nations since 1948, education and job-training programs, and finally resettlement in the host nations or ‘Palestine’ if such an entity is ultimately created — which of course will ultimately be up to the Palestinians themselves.

Technorati Tags: Palestinians, Israel

Former Time reporter in Iran Azadeh Moaveni was interviewed on NPR today, and she said that the Arab world is angry at the US because of its support for Israeli “mistreatment” of Palestinians. But how do the Arabs treat the Palestinians in their own countries?

Iraq

LONDON (AFP) - Thousands of Palestinian refugees in Iraq have been ill-treated, with many of them abducted, tortured and murdered by armed Shiite Muslim groups, Amnesty International said in a report published Monday.

“Palestinian refugees in Iraq have been subjected to gross human rights abuses including abduction, hostage-taking, unlawful killing, torture and other ill-treatment at the hands of armed militia groups,” it said.

Lebanon

Eli Bakhya, the cameraman who entered the [Nahr al-Bared Palestinian refugee] camp, said he was able to go only about a kilometre into the camp, and that the presence of snipers prevented him from going any farther and they were stuck in the middle.

He said buildings everywhere were destroyed.

Walid Abdullah, a nurse taking care of casualties in the camp, said the situation was disastrous.

He said the bombardment from the army was targeting civilians and that three mosques were hit.

“Many dead bodies are lying on the streets,” he said. “They are bloated and smelling and there is a threat of epidemics.” Al-Jazeera [May 22]

The Nahar al-Bared Palestinian refugee camp was wrecked, and Al-Jazeera reported today that “More than 400 people have died in the fighting between the Lebanese army and Fatah al-Islam, including at least 222 fighters”.

Kuwait

At the end of the Gulf War Kuwait expelled some 400,000 Palestinians because the Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat had aligned the PLO with Saddam Hussein, who had invaded Kuwait. The exodus took place during one week in March 1991, after Kuwait was liberated from Iraqi occupation. Although many Palestinians had joined the Kuwaiti resistance to Iraq’s occupation, they were scapegoated and blamed for the the position adopted by the PLO leader…

Prior to the exodus, Palestinians made up about 30% of Kuwait’s population. By 2006 only a few had returned to Kuwait and today the number of Palestinians living in Kuwait is less than 40,000 (under 3% of the population). — Wikipedia

Syria

The Syrian government…has refused to allow the Palestinians [refugees from the fighting in Iraq] entry into the country, leaving the refugees stranded at the border. Hundreds more are expected to attempt to make the journey.

“It’s hard to understand why Syria has provided refuge to nearly a million Iraqi refugees but is shutting the door on hundreds of Palestinians also fleeing Iraq,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “The Syrian government’s mistreatment of these Palestinian refugees contrasts sharply with its declarations of solidarity with the Palestinian people.” — Human Rights Watch

…and in general

Since 1948 the Arab nations (with the exception of Jordan) have never agreed to grant Palestinian refugees citizenship in their host countries, or allowed them freedom to work in occupations of their choice, or even freedom of movement. They have done their best to breed a mass of humanity kept miserable so that they will be a source of recruits for terrorist organizations and a weapon to use against Israel. Indeed, HRWs Whitson could have said with equal truth “The Arab nations’ mistreatment of these Palestinian refugees contrasts sharply with their declarations of solidarity with the Palestinian people”.

Technorati Tags: Palestinians

From time to time we see the argument made that a reasonable compromise on the Palestinian ‘right of return’ would be for Israel to accept the ‘right’ of the Palestinians to return, without it being ‘realized’:

We, the Jews, also do not surrender, nor can we surrender, our rights to the historic holdings of our forefathers in Hebron, Shilo, and Anatot. But the majority of Israelis are willing to relinquish the right to realize Jewish sovereignty and Jewish settlement at those Biblical sites, in proportion to Palestinian concessions. The vast majority of Palestinians are clearly aware that it is impossible for millions of refugees to return to their homes and land in Jaffa, Ramle, and Haifa.

Everyone knows that this is Israel’s red line. In an endless number of deliberations of a solution to the refugee problem and proposed solutions, a formula was suggested which would divide the “right of return” into two terms: “Right” and “return.” The right exists; it is not subject to appeal, nor is the somewhat problematic wording of UN Resolution 194, which recognizes that right, subject to appeal. But practical return to the geographic domain of the State of Israel is not feasible. Danny Rubinstein in Ha’aretz

There are several things wrong with this far too-clever formulation. For one, it is irrational to tell someone that he has a right to something, but in the same breath that he is forbidden from realizing it. What is the meaning of ‘right’ in this case?

Here in the United States there was a situation for many years in which blacks had the ‘right’ to vote, but were forbidden from exercising this right. People struggled and even gave their lives so that these rights could be realized, and ultimately they were.

Another problem is that granting this ‘right’, whether or not it is realized, implies that the Palestinian narrative that the land of Israel belongs to them, not to the present residents, is true. Is constitutes an admission that Jews do not have the ‘right’ to live there. Are we prepared to say “we are thieves, but the true owners are forbidden to take back their property?” Do we believe this?

And from a practical point of view: once we agree that they have a right to return, what argument do we use to prevent them from returning? “It would destroy the Jewish character of the state” might be meaningful to us, but who else would accept it? And why should they?

Indeed, this ‘compromise’ is not a compromise, it is a complete surrender in principle with the proviso that the physical surrender will take place at some later date.

Although Danny Rubinstein — who called Israel an ‘apartheid state’ at a UN conference in Brussels — is a particularly loose cannon, this idea has appeared in other circles as well.

It is to be hoped that Israeli leaders do not adopt this as a way to deal with Palestinian demands for a right of return at the November peace conference. They should make it quite clear that Jews live in Israel with full legitimacy and ownership of the land that they live on, and that there is no Palestinian ‘right of return’, realizable or otherwise.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Palestinians, right of return

I got called “anti-Peace” again recently. But I am not anti-Peace, I very much wish for Peace between Israel and the Arabs so that my children who live in Israel can be safe, so that my son, who has been some form of soldier for the past ten years, can be an artist as he wishes to be.

But what I am is anti-’peace’. What’s the difference?

A necessary condition for Peace is that the Arabs have stopped trying to kill Jews and destroy Israel. A 10-year hudna, such as Hamas offers, for example, is not Peace because it is only a particular tactic in the struggle; the goal remains the same. Peace is more or less what Israel has with Jordan today.

And what is ‘peace’? ‘Peace’ is a situation in which Israel and the Arabs have signed an agreement which states that both sides want Peace and spells out what they will do to get it, but which is either impossible to implement or which one or both sides intends to circumvent. The Oslo Accord is a good example of ‘peace’. Papers were signed, concessions were made, but Yasser Arafat never wanted Peace, never held up his end of the agreements, and ultimately made war.

Some Israelis said from the beginning that Oslo was only ‘peace’, but most thought it would lead to Peace and were bitterly disappointed.

Most ordinary people, Israelis and Palestinians, probably want Peace, although some other things that they want are incompatible. But who wants ‘peace’?

The US wants ‘peace’. The Bush Administration wants it because an agreement will make them look good in history and because they think that they can get Syria to stop supporting Iraqi insurgents by forcing Israel to give them the Golan Heights. The US State Department wants ‘peace’ because it is basically pro-Arab and knows that ‘peace’ will weaken Israel and make the Saudis happy.

Mahmoud Abbas wants ‘peace’, because it will mean more aid from the US and Europe for him, and because it will weaken Israel and serve as a stage on the way to replacing Israel with an Arab state.

Hamas and Syria want neither Peace nor ‘peace’. They do not want to help Abbas or the US. Hamas’ constituency will not accept even ‘peace’. Syria does not want ‘peace’, because ‘peace’ would (as Barry Rubin argues in The Truth About Syria) remove the excuse used by the Assad regime to oppress its population, drain the economy, and exploit Lebanon. Assad would much prefer the status quo without the Golan Heights to an agreement that would make him give up his influence in Lebanon.

The Israeli government is in an interesting position. Although Oslo taught them the difference between Peace and ‘peace’, ‘peace’ is very important to the Americans who are important to Israel. The international media, the UN and NGOs, the EU, Tony Blair, etc. — they all seem to think (or pretend) that ‘peace’ is Peace.

So the PM and the Foreign Minister need to pretend that they think ‘peace’ is Peace and are enthusiastic about it — otherwise they will be called “anti-Peace”.

It’s not a problem for me.

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