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Mahmoud Abbas reacts to President Obama's UN speech. What could he have been expecting?

When I read the part of President Obama’s speech to the UN yesterday (May 21, 2011) that dealt with Israel and the Palestinians — which, by the way, was only a small part of it — I was surprised.

I had read Palestinian and Israeli reactions to it first, and judging from them, I would have thought it represented a major tilt toward Israel. But what I saw in the text was more or less a reiteration of prior positions. So why was Mahmoud Abbas covering his eyes, and why did Israeli PM Netanyahu thank Obama so effusively? Let’s look at what Obama said — and didn’t say.

One year ago, I stood at this podium and I called for an independent Palestine. I believed then, and I believe now, that the Palestinian people deserve a state of their own. But what I also said is that a genuine peace can only be realized between the Israelis and the Palestinians themselves. One year later, despite extensive efforts by America and others, the parties have not bridged their differences. Faced with this stalemate, I put forward a new basis for negotiations in May of this year. That basis is clear. It’s well known to all of us here. Israelis must know that any agreement provides assurances for their security. Palestinians deserve to know the territorial basis of their state.

Well, Abbas should have liked that. Obama emphasized his commitment to a Palestinian state and reaffirmed the plan that he put forward in May, pre-1967 lines plus swaps — and everything else in that plan, which I and many others felt represented a aharp pro-Palestinian shift in the US position.

Now, I know that many are frustrated by the lack of progress. I assure you, so am I. But the question isn’t the goal that we seek — the question is how do we reach that goal. And I am convinced that there is no short cut to the end of a conflict that has endured for decades. Peace is hard work. Peace will not come through statements and resolutions at the United Nations — if it were that easy, it would have been accomplished by now. Ultimately, it is the Israelis and the Palestinians who must live side by side. Ultimately, it is the Israelis and the Palestinians — not us –- who must reach agreement on the issues that divide them: on borders and on security, on refugees and Jerusalem.

Abbas has known for months that the US opposed a unilateral declaration of statehood at the UN. There is nothing new here. Did Abbas harbor a secret hope that Obama would finally hand him Israel on a silver platter, with no compromises required? If so, where did he get that idea? Certainly not from the public statements of the President, which — no matter how pro-Palestinian they may have been — always called for an agreement between the parties.

We seek a future where Palestinians live in a sovereign state of their own, with no limit to what they can achieve. There’s no question that the Palestinians have seen that vision delayed for too long. It is precisely because we believe so strongly in the aspirations of the Palestinian people that America has invested so much time and so much effort in the building of a Palestinian state, and the negotiations that can deliver a Palestinian state.

But understand this as well: America’s commitment to Israel’s security is unshakeable. Our friendship with Israel is deep and enduring. And so we believe that any lasting peace must acknowledge the very real security concerns that Israel faces every single day.

Again, this is precisely what he said in May. But what comes next is interesting — not because there is any substantive policy change, but because of the tone:

Let us be honest with ourselves: Israel is surrounded by neighbors that have waged repeated wars against it. Israel’s citizens have been killed by rockets fired at their houses and suicide bombs on their buses. Israel’s children come of age knowing that throughout the region, other children are taught to hate them. Israel, a small country of less than eight million people, look out at a world where leaders of much larger nations threaten to wipe it off of the map. The Jewish people carry the burden of centuries of exile and persecution, and fresh memories of knowing that six million people were killed simply because of who they are. Those are facts. They cannot be denied. (my emphasis)

Here Obama recognizes:

1. The wider context of the conflict. It is not all about the Palestinians getting their ‘rights,’ an Israeli Goliath persecuting an Arab David. Israel is tiny, surrounded by hostile neighbors with large populations. It is in danger.
2. The fact of hateful  incitement against Israel and Jews by both the Palestinians and Israel’s other neighbors.
3. The part played by specifically Palestinian terrorism — the rockets and suicide bombers.
4. The real threat of Iran.

This directly contradicts the line of the anti-Zionist Left in the US and Europe.  It must have infuriated Obama’s friend Rashid Khalidi. And it isn’t the sort of thing advisers like Samantha Power would be likely to agree with.

And now comes the real zinger:

The Jewish people have forged a successful state in their historic homeland. Israel deserves recognition. It deserves normal relations with its neighbors. And friends of the Palestinians do them no favors by ignoring this truth, just as friends of Israel must recognize the need to pursue a two-state solution with a secure Israel next to an independent Palestine.

Although it is again not new in US policy, this indicates an understanding of the Israeli demand that Israel must be recognized as the nation of the Jewish people. It is in direct contradiction to the Palestinian position that there is no Jewish people (only a religion), and that Israel in fact ‘belongs’ to the Palestinian Arabs who should have the right to ‘return’ to their ‘original homes’ in Israel (where probably less than 1% of today’s ‘Palestinians’ ever lived).

Of course, I would have preferred an unequivocal statement that the Palestinians must recognize Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish People. Nevertheless, I see the statement that Israel is our historic homeland as very significant. This may have been the moment that Abbas put his hand over his eyes.

And what didn’t he say?

He did not mention settlements or construction therein. He did not blame Israel or PM Netanyahu for the failure of bilateral negotiations. He did not make any new demands on Israel.

From a diplomatic point of view there is absolutely nothing new. But in a rhetorical sense, it was a very pro-Israel speech.

So we’re left with this question:

Was this a true expression of heretofore hidden warmth toward the Jewish state and its leadership, a warmth which was definitely not present in Obama’s Cairo speech, his Arab Spring speech, or his treatment of Netanyahu on several occasions?

Or was it a cynical exercise to mollify pro-Israel American voters who have found his policy abhorrent, a carefully crafted way to give the impression of a changed policy without actually changing it?

You decide.

Technorati Tags: Obama, UN, Israel, Palestinians

Palestinian refugees in a Lebanese camp

Yesterday I suggested that (among other things) there needs to be a major change in world policy toward ‘Palestinian refugees’. Today I want to elaborate on this.

In 1948, somewhere around 600,000 Arabs (serious estimates range from 550,000 750,000) left their homes as a result of the war. It is a fundamental part of Palestinian mythology, abetted by the remarkable dishonesty of the so-called ‘new historians’ (see Efraim Karsh’s books on the subject, here and here) that these refugees were all forced out of their homes at gunpoint, but in fact most of them fled simply to avoid the expected war. Lack of leadership helped — wealthy Arabs left first, some to summer homes in Beirut — and in many cases they were encouraged to do so by the local leadership and by propaganda from the Arab nations.

The Palestinian narrative is based on the idea that Israel’s creation was a nakba, or catastrophe for the ‘Palestinian people,’ that it was a deliberate crime against them, and that Israel must make it right by accepting a ‘right of return’ for the refugees and all of their 4.5 million descendants, whereby they could “return to their original homes” inside Israel or receive compensation.

There are several inconvenient facts that this narrative ignores, in addition to the fact that there was no attempt to expel Arabs en masse. For one thing, the Palestinian Arabs initiated hostilities against the Jewish population in 1947 (I am ignoring the various ‘riots’ and pogroms that they perpetrated from about 1920), and their allies invaded the area with the exit of the British in 1948. If it is possible to assign responsibility for the war and the nakba, it is not the Jews that bear that responsibility.

It is also important, if we are discussing compensation, to recall that about 800,000 Jews were in one way or another forced out of Arab countries before, during and after the 1948 war, usually bringing only the clothes on their backs. Countries that had flourishing communities of hundreds of thousands of Jews lost almost all of them. For example, the Jewish population of Iraq went from 150,000 to 100 between 1948 and 2003.

It is also important to compare the way Palestinian refugees have been treated by international institutions with the way other refugee problems have been solved. Most refugee situations — like that of the millions, especially Jews that were made homeless by WWII as well as the Jewish refugees from Arab countries — were resolved in a few years, primarily by resettlement.

In the case of the Arab refugees, a special agency, UNRWA was created just for them. Refugee status — for the first and only time in the history of the UN — was made hereditary. Host nations refused to grant the refugees and their descendents citizenship, kept them in UN-funded camps, and in many cases denied them opportunities for education or employment that were available to non-Palestinians. The condition of the refugees in Lebanon has been compared to South African apartheid!

When Israel took control of the Gaza strip in 1967, Israelis were horrified by the conditions of the refugees in the formerly Egyptian-controlled camps. Israel actually built new housing for them, but the PLO and UN prevented the refugees from occupying it.

While the refugees and their descendents are not permitted to be absorbed by their host countries, UNRWA continues to support them on the international dole, providing aid to families on the basis of size — thus creating an incentive for ‘refugee’ families to have many children. UNRWA’s budget is in excess of $1.2 billion per year, much of which, naturally, is paid by the USA.

The Palestinian Authority has indicated that if they are granted statehood there will be no change in the status of refugees, even those that live in the area that they expect to become part of their state. They will not get Palestinian citizenship, and the UN will continue to support them. The only solution for them that is acceptable to the Palestinians and the Arab states is their ‘return’ to their ‘original homes’ in Israel.

Everyone, from Barack Obama and Ban Ki-Moon on down (or up) knows that a ‘return’ of up to 4.5 million hostile Arabs to Israel would simply be the end of Israel. And yet, although they know this, and although at the same time they purport to be committed to Israel’s security, they do not call for change in the pernicious Arab refugee system!

Everyone also agrees that a solution to the Isareli-Arab conflict will require a solution to the refugee problem.  So here is a restatement of my simple proposal to solve this problem for once and for all:

1. Palestinian refugee status will be given only to those Arabs who actually left their homes during Israel’s War of Independence. It will no longer be hereditary.
2. The remaining refugees will receive services from UNHCR, which serves all other kinds of refugees.
3. UNRWA will be abolished.
4. Former refugees will be given all the rights and privileges of citizens of their host countries. The system of ethnic apartheid which exists in Lebanon, Syria, the PA, the Gaza strip and (to a lesser extent) Jordan will be dismantled.
5. The UN may give humanitarian aid to the host countries in order to aid in the absorption of the former refugees, but will not directly maintain them. Aid will be carefully targeted, monitored and strictly limited in duration.

This will be a large undertaking, but it is absolutely necessary for there to be peace in the Middle East. Just as world Jewry collected funds to help the European Jewish refugees after WWII and the Jews from Arab lands after 1948, we can expect that the Arab countries will invest some of their petrodollars into helping their Palestinian brothers.

After all, they do care about the Palestinians — don’t they?

Technorati Tags: Palestinian refugees

It’s a reality-based proposal, for once:

WHEREAS the PLO has shown itself to be a racist organization whose ultimate goal is to destroy Israel, and whose proximate intent is to ethnically cleanse Jews from their historic homeland; and,

WHEREAS the Palestinian Authority (PA) now includes Hamas as well, a just-as-racist terrorist organization that right now this minute is engaged in terrorism against Israel; and,

WHEREAS nevertheless the Gaza strip is separately governed and in fact the ‘President’ of the PA is not able to set foot there; and,

WHEREAS the ‘President’ of the PA’s term expired months ago and the PA can’t hold elections because Hamas would win them; and,

WHEREAS the only thing keeping the PA from being entirely overwhelmed by Hamas is the IDF; and,

WHEREAS everyone knows that the PA has no economy, no real institutions, is entirely dependent on huge amounts of money from the UN, EU and US (the Arabs also make promises but don’t pay), and cannot possibly constitute a viable state; and,

WHEREAS the PA states that it will not grant citizenship to Arab refugees, even those within its borders; and,

WHEREAS  the only function of ‘statehood’ is to provide a platform for continued legal, diplomatic and terrorist warfare against Israel; and,

WHEREAS the plan to grant statehood to what is in essence a bunch of terrorist militias and corrupt functionaries is not conceived out of actual concern for the welfare of Palestinian Arabs, but rather from an irrational antisemitic hatred for the Jewish state;

THEREFORE the civilized world:

a) rejects the idea of statehood for the PA, and calls for an immediate end to aid to the PA other than temporary humanitarian aid to residents;

b) outlaws the PLO as a racist and terrorist organization and demands that its terrorist militias disarm;

c) declares that the status of ‘Palestinian refugee’ only applies to those Arabs who left their homes in 1948 and not their descendents, with said descendants being granted the status of ‘normal’ residents of their place of residence;

d) calls for the abolition of UNRWA, and placing the 1948 refugees under UNHCR, like all other refugees;

e) declares that the Hamas regime in Gaza is a terrorist, racist, aggressor entity which shall be quarantined until the rogue Hamas regime is replaced and its military forces disbanded and disarmed;

f) reaffirms UN resolutions 242 and 338 and calls for three-party negotiations between Israel, Jordan and representatives of the residents of Judea and Samaria to determine the status of the territories based on demographic considerations and the need for all states to have secure and recognized boundaries;

g) declares that the state of Israel has a legitimate right of self-defense against aggression from Hamas, Hizballah or anyone else, and affirms that it will stand behind Israel if she is attacked;

h) affirms that Israel is the state of the Jewish people with all that entails, and that while it is required to protect the civil rights of all of its inhabitants (suffrage, housing, education, economic opportunity), it is not required to provide for expression of the nationalistic aspirations of ethnic minorities, except insofar as they may be permitted to emigrate if they choose;

i) demands that the UN abolish its “Division for Palestinian rights” and end its annual “Day of solidarity with the Palestinian People,” since these are simply expressions of the Arabs’ racist project to expel the Jews from the Middle East.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Israeli-Arab conflict, PLO, Hamas, UN

As we get closer and closer to the UN vote on Palestinian statehood, as relations between Israel and Turkey and Egypt deteriorate, the usual suspects are responding in the usual way — and even more so.

The NY Times’ Tom Friedman has gone over to “Israel lobby” conspiracy theories:

The crumbling of key pillars of Israel’s security — the peace with Egypt, the stability of Syria and the friendship of Turkey and Jordan — coupled with the most diplomatically inept and strategically incompetent [I would put ‘U.S.’ here — ed] government in Israel’s history have put Israel in a very dangerous situation.

This has also left the U.S. government fed up with Israel’s leadership but a hostage to its ineptitude, because the powerful pro-Israel lobby in an election season can force the administration to defend Israel at the U.N., even when it knows Israel is pursuing policies not in its own interest or America’s.

Oh, really? Please explain how the “powerful pro-Israel lobby” can swing a presidential election. The problem for President Obama here is that many Americans understand the Middle East too well. They get it that Israel is struggling against the combined forces of Islamism and Arab rejectionism. They get it that the US was attacked by Islamists, not Israelis, on 9/11 (while Palestinians cheered). And they get it that appeasement doesn’t work.

These Americans, 98% of whom are not Jewish and not members of Congress, are not influenced by “the Lobby.” Many of them are independents who will simply be morally outraged if the administration screws Israel.

Friedman says that it’s Netanyahu’s fault for not ‘responding’ to the challenges facing Israel:

Mr. Netanyahu has a strategy: Do nothing vis-à-vis the Palestinians or Turkey that will require him to go against his base, compromise his ideology or antagonize his key coalition partner, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, an extreme right-winger. Then, call on the U.S. to stop Iran’s nuclear program and help Israel out of every pickle, but make sure that President Obama can’t ask for anything in return — like halting Israeli settlements — by mobilizing Republicans in Congress to box in Obama and by encouraging Jewish leaders to suggest that Obama is hostile to Israel and is losing the Jewish vote. And meanwhile, get the Israel lobby to hammer anyone in the administration or Congress who says aloud that maybe Bibi has made some mistakes, not just Barack.

A few minor points:

First, Jews in the US are a small proportion — 1.7% in 2007 — and at least half of them will vote for Obama regardless of his position on Israel. Some of them are in swing states (Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania) but many are in states which are unlikely to go Republican, like California. The “Jewish vote” is not a big deal.

Second, could we leave the settlements alone? Israel is not building new settlements or expanding the boundaries of old ones. The most it is doing is allowing construction within existing settlements, and it tried a 10-month freeze on that without results. This issue never was a barrier to negotiations, until the “inept and strategically incompetent” Barack Obama made it so. The media have been exceptionally dishonest about this, always referring to “settlement construction,” which any reasonable person would understand as building new settlements.

Third, Israel offered to express regret for the deaths of several Turkish IHH terrorists, but would not agree that it was at fault when its soldiers defended themselves, and would not agree to open the gates to unlimited transit of weapons into Gaza by ending the blockade. Turkey would not accept less.

Fourth, the US has done little to stop Iran’s nuclear program. In fact, by not supplying Israel with refueling aircraft and “bunker buster” weapons, it reduced Israel’s power of deterrence, which encouraged Iran.

Fifth, is Friedman really blaming Bibi for “mobilizing Republicans?” Can’t they mobilize themselves? What else is it possible to blame him for?

And one major point: the failure of bilateral negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority is not due to Netanyahu’s concern for his ‘base’, but rather due to the Palestinians’ refusal to negotiate without preconditions that amount to giving up the store. To a great extent, this situation is Obama’s fault, for allowing the Palestinians to think that they could get more from American pressure than they could from negotiations.

Friedman must be getting tired if the best he can do is trot out the Israel Lobby, along with pathological Israel-haters Stephen Walt,  Glenn Greenwald and Philip Weiss.

Friedman’s suggestion for a solution is that Israel (preferably with a new, more pliant, government) should make a “peace overture that fair-minded people would recognize as serious, and thereby reduce its isolation.” So after Israel

1. returned the Sinai to Egypt (and now the treaty is in question),
2. allowed the murderous PLO to return from exile and set up a government,
3. transferred weapons to the PA ‘police’,
4. withdrew its troops from southern Lebanon (and got a war in return),
5. evacuated all the Jews, living and dead, from Gaza (and got a war in return),
6. adopted the idea of a Palestinian state in the territories,
7. withdrew from much of Judea and Samaria,
8. released Palestinian prisoners to strengthen Mahmoud Abbas,
9. removed many checkpoints and roadblocks from Judea/Samaria,
10. provided humanitarian aid to the Gaza strip while Hamas bombarded it with rockets,
11. made offers of up to 97% of the disputed territories plus swaps and major concessions on Jerusalem in 2000 and 2008 —

after all of this, and while the PA still has not changed those parts of its charter calling for the destruction of Israel, still insists on a “right of return” for refugees, still broadcasts anti-Israel and antisemitic incitement in its media, mosques and educational system, and adamantly refuses to recognize Israel as the state of the Jewish people — now Tom Friedman thinks Israel should make yet another ‘peace overture’!

Technorati Tags: Israel, Thomas L. Friedman, Palestinians

About six weeks ago I caught PLO official Nabil Shaath (former PM of the Palestinian Authority) explaining that the Palestinians do not, and will not, accept the idea of two states for two peoples.

Shaath gave an interview on Army Radio yesterday and made three notable statements:

1. Asked why the Palestinian leadership refuses to recognize Israel as the state of the Jewish people, Shaath responded that the Jewish people, on their own, decided “that they have really built their state that is not only for the Jewish people because 22 percent of Israelis are not Jewish.”

Jewish tradition is clear about the need to treat the ‘stranger that resides in your midst’ justly. It is therefore possible to have a Jewish state, a homeland for the Jewish people, whose national symbols and national character are Jewish, which nevertheless has some non-Jewish inhabitants who are treated fairly. Indeed, it would not be a truly ‘Jewish’ state otherwise!

But Shaath cannot understand this, because his idea of a national state is one that will expel everyone who is not a Palestinian Arab.

2. Presented with statements attributed to the Palestinian Authority envoy to the United States last week that a Palestinian state would be without Jews, Shaath said that Maen Areikat “never said ‘Jewish free,'” but rather “that at the beginning of our peace, we want to separate.”

But Areikat did say, quite explicitly, that Jews would not be permitted to live in ‘Palestine’, in an interview in Tablet magazine last year. And he said it in the context of explaining a similar statement about ‘separation’. He was speaking in English on both occasions. He was not misquoted, quoted out of context or mistranslated.

3. Asked whether settlers would be allowed to live in a future Palestinian state, [Shaath] added, “If [settlers] decide to accept Palestinian citizenship and buy the territory that they have and live as individual citizens, then why not?”

Why not? Well, for one thing, because PA residents are forbidden by law — on pain of death — to sell land to Jews.

Technorati Tags: Nabil Shaath, Israel, Palestinians