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Yesterday, Mahmoud Abbas explained what he expects to get from the UN:

“We are going to the United Nations to request our legitimate right, obtaining full membership for Palestine in this organization,” Abbas said in a televised speech, indicating he would seek a vote on the issue in the UN Security Council…

“If we succeed, and this is what we are working towards, then we must know that the day following the recognition of the state, the occupation will not end,” Abbas said.

“But we will have obtained the world’s recognition that our state is occupied and that our land is occupied and not disputed territory, as the Israeli government claims,” he said.

He added that the move is not intended to isolate Israel or delegitimize its legal status. “Israel is there, no one can isolate or take away its legal status, but we need to isolate the policies of Israel. We need to put an end to the occupation and take away the legal status of the occupation.”

The PA president said that recognition of statehood with pre-1967 borders is necessary for renewed negotiations with Israel. “We need to have full [UN] membership within [pre-1967] borders in order to go to negotiations on a basis adopted by the world so that we may discuss the permanent issues of Jerusalem, borders, refugees – and our prisoners in Israeli prisons.”

For once, he’s telling the truth. Although they don’t like to admit it, and no matter how often their friends in the media say “settlements are illegal under international law,” the Palestinians realize that in fact the territories are at most ‘disputed’, and Jewish settlements east of the Green Line legal (see scholar Howard Grief’s arguments for Israel’s legal title to all of the area of the mandate here).

Abbas believes that a Security Council resolution that recognizes a state of ‘Palestine’ in the territories will overcome the precedents set by

the San Remo Resolution of April 25, 1920, the Mandate for Palestine conferred on Britain by the Principal Allied Powers and confirmed by the League of Nations on July 24, 1922, and the Franco-British Boundary Convention of December 23, 1920 [Grief]

as well as UNSC resolutions 242 and 338, which state that the disposition of the territories captured in 1967 shall be determined by the agreement of all of the parties (and not imposed by the UN), and of course the Oslo accords which reaffirmed that principle.

All of this, he hopes, will disappear. But statehood will not confer any responsibilities on the Palestinians, such as to feed their own people or resettle any of the Arab refugees (except in Israel).

A PLO official remarked that statehood would not affect the right of refugees to return to their ‘original homes’ in Israel. Indeed, it will not affect the status of any Palestinian ‘refugees’, not even the ones within the PA.  They will remain in refugee camps, supported by the UN (mainly with US money) until they can be mobilized to overrun Israel and turn it into West Palestine!

The arrogance is remarkable, considering that the Palestinians have no economy, have created no real institutions, do not have a unified leadership, and have proudly announced that they plan to create an apartheid state which will engage in ethnic cleansing of its Jewish inhabitants. But none of this seems to matter.

The PA — and this doesn’t include payments to the UN refugee organization, UNRWA — receives half  a billion dollars a year of US taxpayer funds, plus millions more from the EU. US instructors train its army, which is armed with US weapons. Much of the money is paid to PA officials in Gaza, which is under Hamas control. Without this international dole, there would be no PA.

They are asking the UN for statehood while Hamas — an explicitly racist group which espouses genocide against the Jewish population of Israel, which is holding a kidnapped Israeli incommunicado in violation of international law, and which continues to fire rockets at random against a civilian population (a war crime) — is officially part of the PA.

All of this is justified by an invented, inverted historical narrative, and — in the case of Hamas — a radical Islamist ideology.

The only thing preventing the passage of such a resolution is a threatened US veto. Abbas claims that a veto would “destroy the two-state solution.” In Abbas-speak, a “two-state solution” does not mean a Palestinian state alongside a Jewish one. It means that there will be a Palestinian state where Jews are forbidden to live, and an ‘Israel’ where 4.5 million Arab ‘refugees’ will have the right to join the existing Arab minority to create another Arab state. So according to this definition, he is correct.

Direct negotiations with Israel could have given the Palestinians a state in the territories with generous borders and serious concessions on Jerusalem. But it could not, ever, give them a right of return for refugees because no imaginable Israeli government would commit suicide.

It’s also the case that any bilateral agreement would have to include recognition of Israel as the state of the Jewish people, and a statement that the Palestinians have no further claims, territorial or otherwise, against Israel.  These conditions would not be acceptable to the Arabs for obvious reasons. It is not “Israeli intransigence” or construction within settlements that has prevented a bilateral agreement. It is simply that Israel won’t negotiate itself out of existence.

The Obama Administration has promised to veto the Palestinian proposal in the Security Council. Most analysts believe that it will do so. Polls show that most Americans support Israel. It is already becoming a partisan issue, with Republicans increasingly staking out pro-Israel positions. Can you imagine what would happen if Obama became the first president in history to permit an anti-Israel resolution to pass in the Security Council?

But in my opinion, the President and his advisers are a slim reed to lean on. And supposing that there is a veto, what will Israel have to pay to get it?

Technorati Tags: Palestinian Authority, Israel, Abbas, UN, Security Council, Palestinian statehood

Jewish refugees, Czechoslovakia, 1946. Israel made room for them.

The very first thing Israel did as a state was to do its absolute best to bring Jewish refugees everywhere home.

European refugees from the Holocaust, Jews expelled from Arab countries with little more than the clothes on their backs, Jews in danger in Ethiopia — every Jew who needed a home was given one, despite the enormous cost, the lack of food and housing, and the precarious existence of the Jewish state.

Now that the Palestinian Arabs are, or think they are, on the verge of statehood, what do they plan to do for the 4.5 million or so people who claim Palestinian refugee status?

After all, statehood is supposed to provide a solution for the “plight of the Palestinians” and part of their plight has always been said to be the horrible circumstances of the ‘refugees.’ So surely one would expect that a top priority for the new state of ‘Palestine’ would be to help these people: give them citizenship, homes, education, jobs, etc. Get them out of camps and help restore their self-respect.

But in keeping with the Fundamental Axiom of Arab Prioritiesâ„¢ which says that “Hurting Jews is Always More Important than Helping Arabs,” that is not the case.

Thanks to Elder of Ziyon for bringing this to our attention:

BEIRUT: Palestinian refugees will not become citizens of a new Palestinian state, according to Palestine’s ambassador to Lebanon.

From behind a desk topped by a miniature model of Palestine’s hoped-for blue United Nations chair, Ambassador Abdullah Abdullah spoke to The Daily Star Wednesday about Palestine’s upcoming bid for U.N. statehood.

The ambassador unequivocally says that Palestinian refugees would not become citizens of the sought for U.N.-recognized Palestinian state, an issue that has been much discussed. “They are Palestinians, that’s their identity,” he says. “But … they are not automatically citizens.”

This would not only apply to refugees in countries such as Lebanon, Egypt, Syria and Jordan or the other 132 countries where Abdullah says Palestinians reside. Abdullah said that “even Palestinian refugees who are living in [refugee camps] inside the [Palestinian] state, they are still refugees. They will not be considered citizens.”

Abdullah said that the new Palestinian state would “absolutely not” be issuing Palestinian passports to refugees.

Neither this definitional status nor U.N. statehood, Abdullah says, would affect the eventual return of refugees to Palestine. “How the issue of the right of return will be solved I don’t know, it’s too early [to say], but it is a sacred right that has to be dealt with and solved [with] the acceptance of all.” He says statehood “will never affect the right of return for Palestinian refugees.” –  Daily Star, Lebanon

In other words, the refugees will continue to be stateless, living on the UN (mostly US) dole, in ‘refugee camps’, as they have for the past three generations, until they can finally fulfill their purpose — to overrun the Jewish state.

So not only will ‘Palestine’ be a racist, antisemitic, apartheid state, it will not lift a finger to help its own people. They want a ‘right of return’ to Israel, but they will not get one to Palestine!

Tell me again why the UN will vote for Palestinian statehood, please.

Technorati Tags: Palestine, statehood, refugees, Israel

Maen Areikat tells reporters that Palestine will be free of Jews

The Palestinians are so confident that their program will succeed that they have stopped trying to hide its real nature:

By Oren Dorell, USA TODAY

WASHINGTON – The Palestine Liberation Organization’s ambassador to the United States said Tuesday that any future Palestinian state it seeks with help from the United Nations and the United States should be free of Jews.

After 44 years of Palestinian-Israeli conflict, “it would be in the best interest of the two people to be separated,” PLO Ambassador Maen Areikat says.

“After the experience of the last 44 years of military occupation and all the conflict and friction, I think it would be in the best interest of the two people to be separated,” Maen Areikat, the PLO ambassador, said during a meeting with reporters sponsored by The Christian Science Monitor. He was responding to a question about the rights of minorities in a Palestine of the future.

Such a state would be the first to officially prohibit Jews or any other faith since Nazi Germany, which sought a country that was judenrein, or cleansed of Jews, said Elliott Abrams, a former U.S. National Security Council official.

In case there is any question about what he means by ‘separation’, here is a snippet from an interview with Areikat last year in Tablet  (big h/t to Challah Hu Akbar):

Q: When you imagine a future Palestinian state, do you imagine it being a place where Jews, if they wish to become Palestinian citizens, could own property, vote in elections, and practice their religion freely?

A: I remember in the mid-’90s, the late [PLO official] Faisal Husseini said repeatedly “OK, if Israelis choose to stay in a future Palestinian state, they are more than welcome to do that. But under one condition: They have to respect and obey Palestinian laws, they cannot be living as Israelis. They have to respect Palestinian laws and abide by them.” When Faisal Husseini died, basically no Palestinian leader has publicly supported the notion that they can stay.

What we are saying is the following: We need to separate. We have to separate. We are in a forced marriage. We need to divorce. After we divorce, and everybody takes a period of time to recoup, rebound, whatever you want to call it, we may consider dating again.

Q: So, you think it would be necessary to first transfer and remove every Jew—

A: Absolutely. No, I’m not saying to transfer every Jew, I’m saying transfer Jews who, after an agreement with Israel, fall under the jurisdiction of a Palestinian state.

Q: Any Jew who is inside the borders of Palestine will have to leave?

A: Absolutely. I think this is a very necessary step, before we can allow the two states to somehow develop their separate national identities, and then maybe open up the doors for all kinds of cultural, social, political, economic exchanges, that freedom of movement of both citizens of Israelis and Palestinians from one area to another. You know you have to think of the day after.

There is a word for separation on racial/ethnic grounds — apartheid.

One could ask Areikat if his argument doesn’t also imply that Arab citizens of Israel must pick up and leave, or if it doesn’t invalidate the alleged ‘right of return’ for Arab refugees to Israel, but you already know he doesn’t think so.

Mahmoud Abbas also said something similar recently, but he didn’t use the word ‘Jew’. He said that “not one Israeli” would remain in the Palestinian state. No antisemitism here, it was suggested. Well, now there’s no doubt.

So the UN will vote for a declaration of an explicitly antisemitic, apartheid state, in effect validating the third major ethnic cleansing of Jews in the last 100 years — while at the same time they will be holding a conference condemning ‘racism’ (except of course that the conference will ignore racism and condemn the Jewish state).

Areikat was also asked whether homosexuals would be allowed in ‘Palestine’. “Ah, this is an issue that’s beyond my [authority],” he responded. No wonder Hitler is a hero to so many Palestinians.

Technorati Tags: Palestine, Maen Areikat, Jews, PLO