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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

Yaakov Katz, in the Jerusalem Post:

It is being dubbed the “largest” military exercise in Hizbullah history. Thousands of guerrillas from infantry, anti-tank and anti-aircraft units are reported to have participated in the three days of maneuvers in southern Lebanon, right under the noses of UNIFIL and the Lebanese Armed Forces. During the exercise, Hizbullah also activated the unit responsible for firing its short- and long-range missiles, which the terror group boasted have a proven ability “to strike any point in the territory of Palestine.”

As everyone expected, UNIFIL is not a match for Hizbullah. A steady flow of armaments from Iran via Syria has continued since the 2006 cease-fire. Israel has chosen to try to keep track of weapons shipments, but has not tried to interdict them. Hizbullah has also rebuilt its fortifications and has installed its own communications networks. The question is not whether there will be another war, but rather when.

But Hamas, too, has been preparing for war, stockpiling arms and explosives and building tunnels and bunkers near the border fence. And it’s obvious that whenever the war in the North happens — whether Hizbullah launches an attack or Israel preempts it — Israel will be fighting on two fronts, with Hamas in Gaza coordinating with Hizbullah.

Recently, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak has suggested that the time is drawing near when Israel will need to mount a large operation in Gaza to stop the continued rocket and mortar fire, as well as attempts to breach the border fence, from Hamas. I’m sure Israeli military planners understand that such an operation will be a cue to Hizbullah as well. So regardless of how it starts, Israel must be prepared for a two-front war.

Deputy commander of the Northern Command during the Second Lebanon War, [Maj.-Gen. (res.) Eyal] Ben-Reuven said that Israel needs to make it clear to the Lebanese government that it will pay a heavy price if it continues allowing Hizbullah to build up militarily.

“I do not recommend going to war today,” he said. “But I do recommend sending clear messages to the Lebanese government that it is responsible for what happens, and that if diplomacy does not work, then it will pay the price.”

I don’t know what to make of this statement. It seems to me that this strategy was tried in 2006, and the lesson should have been learned that the Lebanese government does not control Hizbullah. In addition to failing to stop Hizbullah, it led to a public relations debacle. Maybe it would make sense to threaten Iran and Syria, but not Lebanon!

In a few weeks Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is supposed to travel to Annapolis for a peace summit with Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas. Upon his return, he will no longer have an excuse for pushing off what the IDF calls “the inevitable large-scale operation” in Gaza. Israel will not want to fight on two fronts simultaneously.

What’s inevitable is that Israel will be fighting on two fronts. Israel should make it totally clear to Iran and Syria — who are driving this conflict — that they will not escape the consequences of the war that they are provoking and perhaps even planning to participate in.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Hizbullah, Hamas, Iran, Syria, Gaza, Lebanon

Everyone knows (or should know) that the chance that the coming Annapolis conference will reduce tensions between Israel and the Palestinians is small to zero.

Many observers are worried that either nothing will come out of it, which will seriously damage the Abbas/Fayyad faction vis-a-vis Hamas, or conversely that an agreement will be reached, Israel will make massive concessions impacting her security, and Palestinian terrorism against an emasculated Israel will become an existential threat.

A good outcome — in which an agreement is reached that results in a peaceful Palestinian State alongside Israel — is the least likely possibility, especially with Hamas waiting in the wings.

So, why is the US pushing so hard? Here’s one attempt to answer this question:

This was one of the questions experts who addressed the Saban Forum in Jerusalem this week attempted to answer.

One theme that emerged was the threat posed by the extremist Iran-Hizbullah-Hamas axis, not only to Israel and the moderate Palestinian leadership, but to the Sunni Arab states as well.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice warned that without progress toward Palestinian statehood, a generation of Palestinians would lose hope and the moderate center might collapse.

Quartet envoy Tony Blair noted that Islamic extremists use the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to ensnare moderates.

In the past the leaders of Arab states, despite public comments to the contrary, used the Palestinian issue to divert their own populations from more pressing issues.

Today, the Arab leaders realize that perpetuating the conflict will only play into the hands of the extremists, and thereby undermine their own legitimacy.

Thus, the moon and the sun are aligned. The interests of Israel, the moderate Palestinian leaders, nearly the entire Arab world and, indeed, the international community as a whole are one and the same - to end the festering sore of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as soon as possible. — Mark Weiss, Jerusalem Post

Sorry, I’m not buying it.

While it is certainly true that the leadership of the Sunni Arab world fed — and continues to feed — the beast of Israel hatred amongst its population to divert attention from the difficulties faced in everyday life under their oppressive dictatorships, they have not suddenly decided that the Iranian threat will best be met by becoming Zionists.

Exactly how would a deal between Israel and the Abbas faction affect Iran? Certainly the Iranian-sponsored Hezbollah and Hamas would redouble their hostility, and indeed, one can argue that an Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank would improve Hamas’ strategic position enormously. This is to Iran’s advantage. A weak Israel would also be less able to prevent a Hezbollah (i.e., Iranian/Syrian) takeover of Lebanon.

The ‘festering sore’ theory of the ‘realists’ is nonsense. As I’ve argued before, the geopolitical weight of the Israeli-Palestinian issue is negligible; its primary importance is as a psychological tool for such as Assad, who needs an external threat to justify his antipathy to reform at home. If they wanted to stop demonizing Israel, they could. But they haven’t. They could offer actual recognition of the Jewish state in return for territory. But they won’t.

The position of Saudi Arabia, for example, is that Israel could get some kind of ‘normal relations’ if she would allow the results of the 1967 war to be entirely reversed and absorb millions of descendants of the Arab refugees of 1948. Of course, if this were to happen it wouldn’t be a Jewish state any more.

Where are the interests of the US here? Do we think that an Israeli/Palestinian agreement will make Iran less likely to develop nuclear weapons?

No, I’m afraid the actual explanation lies on the dark side.

I believe that the Saudis are really the major players here. As far as they are concerned, the moon and the sun are aligned insofar as both the US, stuck in Iraq and massively in debt, and Israel, unable to beat Hezbollah, are weaker than they have been for years. Just as the early 1990’s, when both the Palestinian terrorists and the forces of Arab rejectionism were weak, was a positive opportunity (unfortunately sabotaged by Yasser Arafat) , the present time is an opportunity to tip the balance against Israel. By doing so, the Saudis intend to regain the mantle of leadership in the struggle against Zionism.

The US State Department has long felt that its relationship with the its Arab ‘allies’ — especially oil-producing ones — is far more important than that with Israel, and it had promised them as far back as the 1970’s that it will work to push Israel back to pre-1967 lines. Now the Saudis are asking us to meet our commitments.

As the price of oil edges ever closer to $100/bbl., we are moving to appease the single nation on earth with the greatest leverage over that number.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Palestinians, Saudi Arabia, Annapolis conference

On the one hand, according to UNWRA, Gazans are being strangled by an Israeli ‘blockade’:

UNITED NATIONS (AP) - The head of the U.N. agency responsible for aiding Palestinian refugees said Wednesday that Israel’s near economic blockade of the Gaza Strip is fueling support for extremists and shattering hopes for a peaceful future.

“They’re trying to punish those who’ve taken control of Gaza but in fact they’re punishing everybody inside Gaza, a very small percentage of whom support the people who are controlling Gaza right now,” Karen Koning AbuZayd of the United Nations Works and Relief Agency said…

At a news conference at U.N. headquarters in New York, AbuZayd painted a grim picture of life in the Gaza Strip, saying there has been a 71 percent decrease in goods going into Gaza since May, there is “zero stock” of 91 drugs compared to 61 last month, and farmers do not have the money to get their crops picked or send them to market so they are rotting.

That means that there are no fruits and vegetables to supplement the basic rations that 80 percent of Gaza’s population receive — flour, oil, sugar, a bit of lentils and powdered milk — either from UNRWA or the U.N. World Food Program, she said.

But on the other hand,

Hamas is smuggling as much as $20 million into the Gaza Strip each month, a U.S. lawmaker said.

Rep. Gary Ackerman (D-N.Y.), chairman of the House Subcommittee on the Middle East and South Asia, said in a Ha’aretz interview published Tuesday that monthly cash smuggling across the Gaza-Egypt border “provides somewhere between $12 million and $20 million to the economy of a rogue government that staged a coup against the wishes of the Palestinian people.” — JTA

Recently, Yuval Diskin, head of the Israeli internal security service (Shabak), said that since Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza, Palestinians have smuggled 112 tons of explosives across (well, actually under) the Egyptian border.

Israel is continuing to supply electricity to Gaza, as the Israeli supreme court has at least temporarily blocked a plan to reduce the amount of power being transmitted. This electricity is, for example, powering the welders used to attach fins onto the Qassam rockets that are a major product of Palestinian industry.

Meanwhile, Hamas continues to find money to fund the war it is fighting against Israel:

Reserve-duty paratroopers who completed a month of duty in the Gaza Strip last week say that facing militant groups such as Hamas was like taking part in a “mini-war.”

During the patrol company’s operations deep in Palestinian territory, four Hamas militants and one Israel Defense Forces soldier, Sergeant-Major (Res.) Ehud Efrati, were killed. “The people we killed weren’t terrorists, they were soldiers,” an officer in the company told Haaretz.

“In a direct confrontation, the IDF has superiority over them, but in all parameters - training, equipment quality, operational discipline - we are facing an army, not gangs,” he said…

On the bodies of the Hamas fighters the reservists found, in addition to their weapons, night-vision equipment identical to the IDF’s. And it was not from Israel. “It’s available on the Internet, you can order it from eBay and have it sent to an Arab country and then smuggle it to Gaza,” the intelligence officer said. — Ha’aretz

Technorati Tags: Israel, Hamas, Gaza, IDF

In a speech to diplomats back in August, French President Nicolas Sarkozy said the following:

“A nuclear-armed Iran is for me unacceptable…This [diplomatic] approach is the only one that would prevent a catastrophic alternative: the Iranian bomb or the bombing of Iran.”

There are a number of interesting things about this statement. Obviously, Mr. Sarkozy thinks that a diplomatic initiative that would succeed in keeping Iran from getting the bomb is the desirable alternative, and that is supposed to be the main point of his remark.

But it also means that he believes that barring a diplomatic solution, one of two things will happen: Iran will get the bomb soon, or someone will bomb Iran, postponing or even preventing it.

Nobody is going to bomb Iran. Not the US and not Israel (except in the case of a credible warning that Iran is about to bomb Israel). This is because even if Iran’s nuclear capability is wiped out, it still maintains the ability to do enormous damage directly and by proxy to Israel, the US, and — last but not least — the world’s oil-based economy. Possibly the US has the power to preempt the response to some extent by turning the entire country into slag, but they are not going to do this.

So that means that either there will be a diplomatic solution, or Iran will get the bomb.

Although it seems insane, there are nations that are opposed to a diplomatic solution, at least at this time. For example, apparently Russia is quite happy with the present uncertain situation, since — as an energy exporter — the stratospheric price of oil is desirable. I think also that Putin believes that he can control Iran and either prevent nuclearization at the last moment, or actually derive advantage from a nuclear Iran.

And there are other nations which feel that it’s possible to live with it — especially if they are big customers of Iranian oil today, like China. After all, Pakistan and India have nuclear weapons and nobody’s been bombed by them (yet). These major players can do much to prevent a diplomatic solution.

I could be wrong about either or both of these factors. Maybe the US or Israel will see the prospect of an Iranian bomb as so threatening that they will take military action. If so, it will not be ’surgical’. It will probably extend beyond Iran’s nuclear facilities and be open-ended to deter Iranian counterattacks. Or maybe Russia will realize that it really is not in her own interest to allow Islamic fundamentalists to have this much power. Or something totally unexpected could happen.

But as things stand today it looks as though Iran will be a nuclear power.

Technorati Tags: Iran

I am not the only one who thinks that a deal between Israel and the Abbas/Fayyad Palestinian Authority at Annapolis may be followed by a rapprochement between Fatah and Hamas.

from The Dry Bones Blog

Technorati Tags: Israel, Annapolis conference, Dry Bones

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.

(more…)

Palestinians and their friends continue to claim that Israel is ’strangling’ the Gaza strip in an act of collective punishment, and that Israeli and international sanctions are causing widespread hunger and hardship.

But look at what the IDF found in just 36 hours:

IDF forces have uncovered seven smuggling tunnels in the Gaza Strip within 36 hours.

Military officials said Thursday that the tunnels, which were unearthed near the village of Dahaniya in the southern Strip, were used by terror organizations to smuggle weapons from Egypt into Gaza.

The tunnels were found about 1.5 kilometers from the border fence. According to IDF sources, they were all active and had been used by terror groups to smuggle weapons until recently.

A senior officer said several months ago that the smuggling attempts in the southern Gaza Strip have become “import-like, both in terms of their extent and legitimization.” — YNet [my emphasis]

Someone is paying for the weapons and explosives (at premium smuggler’s prices), someone is paying for the labor and materials to dig the tunnels and manufacture the rockets, and someone is paying the terrorists who launch the rockets.

The priorities of Hamas are clear: fight Israel regardless of the cost to Gaza residents.

We also should keep in mind that all of these tunnels go somewhere — Egypt. Surely the Egyptian authorities, whose nation is at ‘peace’ with Israel, must notice some of the activity.

Meanwhile, it is not incorrect to say that a state of war exists between Israel and Hamas:

Earlier Thursday, nine Kassam rockets were launched into the western Negev, including four that struck Sderot. In response, the IDF bombed two Kassam launchers in northern Gaza…

Also Thursday, the IDF shot and killed five terrorists who were spotted planting bombs along the Gaza security fence. — Jerusalem Post

Technorati Tags: Israel, Hamas, Gaza

Rumors that have been circulating in Israel for some time have now hit the mainstream press:

The September 6 raid over Syria was carried out by the US Air Force, the Al-Jazeera Web site reported Friday. The Web site quoted Israeli and Arab sources as saying that two strategic US jets armed with tactical nuclear weapons carried out an attack on a nuclear site under construction.

The sources were quoted as saying that Israeli F-15 and F-16 jets provided cover for the US planes.

The sources added that each US plane carried one tactical nuclear weapon and that the site was hit by one bomb and was totally destroyed. — Jerusalem Post [my emphasis]

If this is true, it would be the first time since 1945 — at least, as far as I know! — that a nuclear weapon has been employed operationally.

On October 17, I received a copy of an email (in Hebrew) that was circulating in Israel. In addition to the above, it said that at least one Israeli plane was damaged by Syrian antiaircraft fire, but returned safely to base. And it added that

The target included three nuclear weapons, which had been shipped in pieces by sea from North Korea and assembled by North Korean technicians in Syria.

Technorati Tags: Syria, North Korea, nuclear weapons

Part of the program of delegitimizing the Jewish state is an attempt to deny a historical connection between Jews and the land, in particular the Temple Mount.

In recent years, the Muslim Waqf, which was given physical control over the Mount by Israel in 1967 in an attempt to address Islamic sensitivities, has conducted construction activities which have done great damage to archaeological artifacts (see my earlier articles here and here) which could attest to Jewish provenance.

The Israeli government has shown remarkable ‘restraint’ (read: fear of Arab violence) in allowing this to go on. Now some private citizens are trying to stop it:

JERUSALEM, Nov. 1 /PRNewswire/ — A group of 150 Israeli citizens, which represent a broad cross section of the Israeli public, have initiated an unprecedented criminal prosecution of WAQF (Islamic trust) leaders in Jerusalem — alleging that Islamic officials have engaged in the deliberate destruction of ancient Jewish relics on the Temple Mount. The indictment was filed in the Jerusalem District Court today by means of a private law suit. The private indictment is first of its kind in Israeli legal history and utilizes a seldom applied section of the criminal code. If convicted, the WAQF officials face years in prison.

The legal action, which is led by Shurat HaDin - Israel Law Center, accuses members of the Islamic Trust (”the WAQF”) of the intentional demolishing of priceless Jewish artifacts, including the remains of the Second Temple.

In recent months the WAQF has brought in bulldozers and heavy digging equipment to carry out “renovations”. Israeli archaeologists who have sifted through the discarded earth were shocked to have discovered a great number of Jewish artifacts brutally trashed by the bulldozers. A wall from the outer courtyard of the Second Temple is believed to have been completely pulverized.

The court papers contend that the recent accelerated destruction is part of a four decade long campaign by the WAQF to eradicate all evidence of the historical Jewish connection and claim to the Temple Mount.

The idea that the Jews have nothing to do with Jerusalem was a favorite theme of Yasser Arafat, and the controversial Barnard faculty member Nadia Abu El-Haj’s book ‘Facts on the Ground: Archaeological Practice and Territorial Self-Fashioning in Israeli Society’ argues that Israel has improperly interpreted the archaeological record to justify her existence.

It is of course exactly in keeping with the Palestinian attitude toward truth that they would on the one hand deny a Jewish connection to the land and at the same time destroy evidence of it!

Update [1 Nov 2154 PDT]: Sources at Barnard College leak that El-Haj has received tenure. More proof that politics has replaced scholarship in the academic world.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Jerusalem, Waqf