FresnoZionism.org — ציונות פרסנו

There are several channels, open and secret, through which Israeli-PA negotiations are taking place. Here’s a report about the public one:

The new teams will work on common concerns about water, the environment, economic and judicial matters, while leaving the tough subjects of borders, Palestinian refugees and the status of Jerusalem to the political negotiators, said Arye Mekel, spokesman for chief negotiator Tzipi Livni, who is Israel’s foreign minister…

The main issues facing the negotiators have stymied decades of peace efforts. Arguably the touchiest is Jerusalem, where the Palestinians want to create a capital in the eastern sector. But both sides lay claim to the explosive joint holy site in the Old City, where the Al Aqsa Mosque compound sits atop the ruins of the biblical Jewish Temples.

No less volatile is the future of Palestinian refugees from the 1948-49 war that followed Israel’s creation. With their descendants, they number in the millions. Palestinians insist they have a right to return to their original homes in Israel, while Israel demands that they be resettled in the new Palestinian state. Other major issues are final borders and the future of Jewish settlements in the West Bank. No progress is reported in any of those areas. — Jerusalem Post

Leaving aside the issues about Palestinian ability or desire to perform if a deal is made, and of course what to do about Hamas, there is something else that is left out of this description.

That is that the real issue in dispute is whether or not there should continue to be a Jewish state. No Palestinian faction, not even Fatah as run by Mahmoud Abbas or by presently imprisoned murderer Marwan Barghouti, will accept this.

They make this totally clear by their demand for the resettlement of the ‘refugees’ in Israel, and by their refusal to accept that Israel is the Jewish state — can you imagine if someone refused to accept ‘Palestine’ as an Arab state?

It’s also clear that the elites of the Israeli Arab minority also do not agree that Israel should be a Jewish state, and wish to see national symbols such as the flag, the national anthem, etc. replaced. Of course they also want to see Israel’s Law of Return repealed.

In other words, everybody on the Arab side wants it to be 1947 again.

Is there any evidence that the Palestinians will change their minds and agree to another partition proposal after rejecting at least three?

No, the most that can be hoped for is that they will settle for getting the IDF and the settlements out of the West Bank, sovereignty over large portions of Jerusalem — including the holiest sites of Judaism — and some kind of arrangement that will accept in principle that the refugees are the real owners of Israel and pay them a bunch of money, but not actually allow them to take possession. At least, not today.

There is a danger that the present government, profoundly blind to symbolism and incapable of thinking in the long term, will agree to this.

But of course the Palestinians will not give up their dream of eliminating the Jewish state. The agreement will simply mark the beginning of a new round of threats, terrorism, international bullying of Israel, etc. And Israel will be in a far weaker position, militarily and diplomatically, to resist.

So what is the point of negotiating?

Technorati Tags: Israel, Palestinians

JTA writes,

Jewish groups blasted a Methodist study guide to Israel as riddled with inaccuracies and intemperate rhetoric.

The Jewish Council for Public Affairs, a public-polcy umbrella body of local and national groups, this week published a 25-page deconstruction of “Israel-Palestine: A Study Mission for 2007-2008.”

“I was particularly distressed to see the conditions created by the birth of Israel called ‘original sin’ and to see Israelis characterized as ‘hysterical’ and ‘paranoiac,'” said Steve Gutow, JCPA’s executive director. “The quest for peace is not helped by those who demonize and distort”…

B’nai B’rith called the report an “affront to Israel and Jews,” singling out passages from the guide that critique Jewish “obsessions” with the Holocaust and anti-Semitism, and notes the United Methodist Church general conference in April, when the church will consider divestment from Israel…

The author of the guide, Rev. Steven Goldstein, is the top mission official at the church. In personal history passages in the publication, he describes how he might have been described as a “self-hating Jew” prior to his conversion from Judaism to Christianity. 

So…how would he be described today?

Technorati Tags: Steven Goldstein, United Methodist Church

Another ‘international’ wounded in action:

Some 2,000 Palestinians and left-wing activists gathered in the West Bank village of Bil’in on Friday to commemorate three years of their struggle against the security barrier in the area.

According to the organizers of the demonstration, 10 people were wounded in clashes with security forces, including a US peace activist who was hit in the head by a rubber bullet and evacuated in moderate condition to a hospital in Ramallah…

Since 2002, 11 people have been killed and thousands wounded in the weekly demonstrations. — Jerusalem Post

It would be cruel, but correct, to say that the organizers of the demonstration intend for such things to happen. That’s what makes them effective, and that’s why they do their best to provoke reactions from the soldiers and police who are trying to protect the fence (otherwise the ‘demonstrators’ would tear it down).

In my local newspaper today, there was a letter that pretty much encapsulates the point of view of the people who would risk injury or death to help the Palestinians.

The writer mentions “41 years of military occupation”, and talks about limitations on the freedom of Palestinians, such as Gaza residents who are allegedly (but in fact not) suffering from electricity reductions, etc. “Wouldn’t you fight back?” he asks.

He is unable or unwilling to see that the situation of the Palestinians today is a result of not 41 but close to a hundred years of war waged on the Jewish population of the region by the Arab world, especially including the Palestinians. He is unable to understand that the Palestinians have consistently rejected attempts to partition the already-partitioned Jewish portion of the Palestine mandate in such a way as to create an independent state of Palestine, choosing to hold out for the replacement of the Jewish state with an Arab one.

Even a Zionist like myself will admit that the Palestinians are having a rough time. The thing is, we are simply not prepared to give up the Jewish state. The Palestinian position that it all belongs to them is not justified historically, and certainly their murderous behavior and serial failures of leadership — the Mufti, Arafat, Hamas, etc. — place the majority of the blame for their problems squarely on them.

But the poor ‘international’ who was injured and my local letter-writer have room in their brains only for a list of Palestinian grievances — they did this to us, they did that to us. They don’t notice or don’t believe that the security fence has anything to do with terrorism. They don’t see that the minimal (in truth, laughable) reductions of fuel and electricity to Gaza are direct results of Hamas rockets hitting Israeli cities. And they are unaware of the long history of Arab terrorism against Israel (and against Jews in Palestine, before there was an Israel).

At some point, very soon I’m afraid, a rocket will hit a school and kill a bunch of children. Then Israel will invade Gaza, having exhausted every other means of stopping the rocket fire, and the internationals and letter-writers will go into high gear, exaggerating Palestinian suffering, inventing massacres, etc.

As I have pointed out, Hamas knows this and are continuing to shoot. This means that they welcome a confrontation. They expect that they will be able to cause significant Israeli casualties, which they think will weaken Israel’s resolve (to exist?) But also, they know that there is great value for them in Palestinian casualties, real or made up. They expect that the US, UN, etc. will intervene, protect Hamas from Israel, and force concessions.

Like the Bil’in demonstrators, the more bad things that happen to them, the better they like it.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Bil’in, Hamas, Gaza

Yesterday I discussed a plan to station UN troops in Gaza, as an ‘exit strategy’ for the IDF after an incursion to remove Hamas from power.

Today, I am reading about plans to introduce NATO soldiers into the West Bank:

The plan, which is being spearheaded by US Special Envoy to the region Gen. James Jones, is being floated among European countries, which could be asked to contribute troops to a West Bank multinational force.

Jones, a former commander of NATO, was sent to Israel in November to help the Israelis and Palestinians frame some of the security mechanics necessary for a broader peace agreement.

As first reported in the Post last month, Jones’s plan calls for stationing third-party troops in the West Bank to secure the area in the interim period following an Israeli withdrawal and before the Palestinian Authority can take over full security control. — Jerusalem Post

Currently, the only thing keeping the Abbas/Fayad faction of Fatah in power in the West Bank is the IDF and its operations against Hamas and anti-Abbas segments of Fatah. NATO would not have the intelligence capabilities of the IDF, nor the knowledge of the area nor the stomach to replace the IDF. And Abbas/Fayad is growing weaker, not stronger.

Despite certain failure of this and similar plans, they continue to go forward. Why? Because the international community has one and only one goal: create a Palestinian state.

This goal is being promoted as a way to bring peace, but it is the opposite. It is based on false assumptions: that the conflict between Israel and the Arab nations is based on the Palestinian issue, and that it is possible to create a Palestinian entity that will be moderate — that is, that will not wage war on Israel. It pays only lip service to Israel’s security.

But this doesn’t matter, because it is only important to curry favor with the Arab oil powers by rolling history back before 1967 as promised. There is no concern for security. Get the Palestinian state, and everything will be OK, say the Saudis, and heads at the State Department and EU nod in unison.

This is only a first step. Assuming that a weak Israeli leadership allows this to happen, the next one — it is already beginning — will be agitation by and for the ‘oppressed’ Arab minority inside Israel, and of course the refugees. This is evidenced by the refusal of the Fatah moderates to accept that Israel is a Jewish state.

So what is supposed to come next? International troops inside Israel to help transition it to a ‘state of its citizens’? Will the US and EU time machine bring back the mandate?

Technorati Tags: Israel, NATO