Doc's Talk: The Siren Song of Arab Rejectionism

Friday, September 03, 2010

The Siren Song of Arab Rejectionism

Victor Sharpe

Another round of peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians began yesterday at the White House. Present were the two Arab leaders and autocrats who are putatively at peace with Israel, Egypt's Hosni Mubarak and Jordan's kinglet, Abdullah. Despite promises by both President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that there will be no preconditions imposed at the talks, Palestinian Chairman Mahmoud Abbas has already made it abundantly clear that he will most certainly demand preconditions and bolt from the peace conference if they are not met. Blackmail?

What he insists on is a permanent freeze on building homes within Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria (aka the West Bank). On September 26, 2010, the self-imposed Israeli building freeze expires.

It was rigorously enforced by Israel, with all the hardships it imposed upon Israeli families, as a goodwill gesture to Abbas to encourage him to attend peace negotiations. Abbas refused up until the very last moment to agree to attend, which underlines the familiar and dreary reluctance by the Palestinian leadership to truly enter into genuine peace talks with the Jewish state.

So, finally, he will attend, but true to type, he could not resist saying that: "if upcoming direct talks between Israel and the PA will fail, Israel would be to blame if it continues to build in Judea and Samaria."

In a televised speech, Abbas said, "Israel alone will bear the responsibility of threatening these negotiations with collapse and failure if it continues settlement expansion in all its forms."

And recently, Saeb Erakat, the wily and disingenuous chief Palestinian negotiator, was reported as stating that Israel must choose "settlements or peace."

The Arab strategy is to make the so-called settlements -- within the territory liberated in 1967 by Israel from Jordanian occupation -- the acid test for peace. But it is a red herring, or perhaps in this case, a red shish-kebab.

If there were no Jewish communities within Judea and Samaria (the biblical ancestral Jewish heartland), it would make no difference to the conflict. The Muslim Arabs would still not accept a Jewish state in any territory previously conquered by Muslim force of arms in the name of Allah.

Before the 1967 Six-Day War, Arab regimes never permitted a single Jew to live in the Jordanian-occupied West Bank or Egyptian-occupied Gaza Strip, and not once was there any intention by Jordan, Egypt, Syria, or Lebanon (the Arab states having borders with Israel) to make peace with the Jewish state.

Listen today to sermons in mosques within the Arab world; the desire to destroy Israel has not abated one iota. It is the relentless Arab rejection of Israel that is at the very heart of the conflict, not the so-called settlements.

In one of his clearer-thinking moments, Thomas Friedman of the New York Times wrote, "To think that the Palestinians are only enraged about settlements is also fatuous. Talk to the 15 year olds. Their grievance is not just with Israeli settlements, but with Israel."

In other words, like their elders, they follow the Muslim line that no non-Muslim state must be permitted to exist and must be warred against perpetually until it is no more.

But Arab rejection predates the modern 1948 reconstitution of Israel within its ancient homeland. In 1937, the British occupiers of Mandatory Palestine appointed the Peel Commission, which proposed a partition plan to separate Jews and Arabs.

The Jews were offered a sliver of land, mostly along the coast, representing a mere 10% of historic geographical Palestine. Remember that in 1921-22, Britain had already torn away all of the Palestinian land east of the River Jordan (amounting to nearly 80% of the mandatory territory and three times the size of present-day Israel) and had given it to the Arab Bedouin Hashemite tribe. Jordan subsequently announced its independence in 1946.

The Jewish leadership reluctantly accepted the 1937 partition. The Arabs -- no surprise -- rejected the plan outright. Instead, again no surprise, the Arab leadership fomented and organized violence and terror against the Jewish inhabitants.

The same occurred with the 1947 U.N. partition of geographical Palestine. The Jews accepted; the Arabs rejected. In 1967, the Arab leaders again rejected any agreement to Jewish sovereignty. Just nine days before the June 5, 1967 outbreak of the Six-Day War, Gamal Abdul Nasser, President of Egypt, clearly enunciated what he had in store for the Jewish state. He said, "Our basic objective is the destruction of Israel. The Arab people want to fight."

And the Iraqi president, Abd-al-Rahman, was equally belligerent. He said, "Our goal is clear: to wipe Israel off the map."

But after the resounding and crushing 1967 Israeli victory over a constellation of Arab armies, Israel's Foreign Minister, Abba Eban, offered to give away territories in exchange for peace.

A victor rarely comes to the defeated party and offers to give away the fruits of victory, but Israel, now as then, sought peace above all else. Sadly but predictably, the Arab world meeting in Khartoum responded with the infamous "three nos" to Israel's unheard of offer: "No peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel, no negotiations with Israel."

At the peace talks in President Obama's White House, the Egyptian and Jordanian leaders now abide by a peace treaty with Israel, but one upon which both have imposed an Arctic frigidity whereby the normal intercourse between friendly neighboring states is not permitted by them to exist.

Netanyahu will face the same implacable rejection of Israel as always exists, which forms the fundamental reason for the dreary Arab and Muslim strategy of using one excuse after another to render true peace negotiations an exercise in futility.

They will never embrace the Jewish state in the Middle East, but merely use their immense powers of dissimilitude to blame Israel for the absence of peace with one red herring after another. Today it is the so-called settlements. If that fails, there are countless other excuses in their deceptive armory.

To prove the point, even if Israel were foolish enough to commit national suicide by giving to the Arabs the strategic high ground that stretches north and south in Samaria and Judea and which overlooks the Israeli coastal plain, the words of a Fatah Central Committee member, Rafik Natche, are startlingly ominous. He said,

Hamas says all of the territory belongs to us from the sea to the river and we want to take it in one fell swoop. But the Fatah, which is the armed wing of the PLO, thinks it is more efficient to proceed according to the Step by Step plan. The two organizations are in agreement on the final goal. Our discord is only on the method to adopt in order to achieve the goal.

In other words, the Arabs know that to obtain a state -- not living side-by-side with Israel, but in place of Israel -- the first step must be to gain disputed territories.

They already have Gaza, which the Israelis gave to them in 2005 in the hope of a true and lasting peace, even forcing out ten thousand Israeli villagers from their homes and farms. Instead, Israel received for its pains a relentless barrage of thousands of lethal missiles targeting its civilian population.

With Israel's unpleasant experience of concession after concession to the Arabs, including the disastrous Gaza experience and the creation of the Palestinian Authority, the vain hope is that the Arab leadership finally recognizes that peace is a two-way street.

It is tragically apparent, however, that barring a miracle, it will be Israel yet again that is leaned upon to make more concessions imperiling its own security. If Netanyahu remains steadfast that the building freeze ends as agreed, then the ever-present threat of Palestinian aggression will once again erupt.

But if he extends the freeze, it will gain Israel nothing and merely embolden the Arab side to demand ever more. Netanyahu will be told by Presidents Obama and Mubarak, as well as by the Jordanian kinglet Abdullah, that Israel must take "risks for peace," which is code for national suicide.

Then there is the joker in the pack, President Barak Hussein Obama, who is the most extreme, radical left-wing president in America's history, who sympathizes with the Muslim world and is no true friend of Israel.

Meanwhile, the Arab attendees of the peace talks, as always, will give nothing in return.

Victor Sharpe is the author of several books, including Volumes One and Two of Politicide: The attempted murder of the Jewish state.

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The IDF’s Minorities in Numbers and Pictures

In honor of IDF Diversity Week, we present diversity through numbers and pictures. Each year, more and more Muslims, Christians, Druze, Bedouin and immigrants from around the world take on the responsibility of defending Israel.

MUSLIMS:

Muslim Arab Israelis are not required to draft in the IDF, but there are many who volunteer. In 2013, there were over 200 Muslims serving in the IDF and over 300 in the reserves.

Bedouins:

Bedouins are nomadic Muslims who were in Israel when modern borders were set in place and are now considered Israeli citizens. They are not required to draft but a growing number choose to enlist. In 2012, there were over 1,400 Bedouin Muslim soldiers doing regular IDF service and almost 1,500 in the reserves.

Read more:http://www.idfblog.com/2014/02/27/truth-idf-numbers-pictures/#more-34027

Are you aware that in 2013, Middle class taxes go up-significantly?

In January of next year, the federal income tax rate for middle-class taxpayers is scheduled to rise from 25 percent to 28 percent, and the payroll tax is scheduled to rise from 13.3 percent to 15.3 percent… This drives the marginal tax rate based on the aforementioned three taxes to 48.12 percent. Add in state and local property, corporate, excise, and other state and local taxes, and the percentage of each additional dollar that is taxed hovers around 50 percent… When half of each additional dollar earned is taxed away, taxpayers experience a disincentive to start businesses or expand existing ones. This leads to fewer jobs being created.

Why is HAMAS Inside Tampa Schools?

Clare Lopez

Kelly Miliziano, who teaches history classes at Steinbrenner High School in the Tampa, Florida area apparently thinks it’s perfectly OK to invite a senior official of a HAMAS-affiliated organization into her classroom to discuss Islam with her students. According to local media reports, not only has this been going on for years, but in spite of the civil and criminal proceedings that could result from such reckless negligence, the Hillsborough County school superintendent, Mary Ellen Elia, and the chairman of the school board, Candy Olson, also expressed approval for students under their responsibility to be exposed repeatedly to guest speaker, Hassan Shibly, who is the Executive Director for the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) in the Tampa area.
More...

Did You Know... Ignoring the Call to Islam will Bring Jihad

‘Conquest through Da’wa [proselytizing] that is what we hope for. We will conquer Europe, we will conquer America! Not through sword but through Da’wa.’
-- Yousef al-Qaradawi , Muslim Brotherhood spiritual leader The Arabic word ‘Da’wa’ means the “call to Islam.” But do not think that Da’wa is the same thing as an invitation to an optional holiday event. The classical Islamic doctrine of jihad mandates that enemies must be given the opportunity to convert to Islam or pay the jizya tax before it is permissible to attack them.
Clare M. Lopez

Who is being discriminated-facts tell the truth

Religious bias

Hate crimes motivated by religious bias accounted for 1,409 offenses reported by law enforcement. A breakdown of the bias motivation of religious-bias offenses showed:

65.4 percent were anti-Jewish.
13.2 percent were anti-Islamic.
9.5 percent were anti-other religion, i.e., those not specified.
4.3 percent were anti-Catholic.
3.8 percent were anti-multiple religions, group.
3.3 percent were anti-Protestant.
0.5 percent were anti-Atheism/Agnosticism/etc.

http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/hate-crime/2010/narratives/hate-crime-2010-incidents-and-offenses.

On March 31, 1977, the Dutch newspaper Trouw published an interview

with PLO executive committee member Zahir Muhsein. Here's what he said:

"The Palestinian people does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct "Palestinian people" to oppose Zionism.

For tactical reasons, Jordan, which is a sovereign state with defined borders, cannot raise claims to Haifa and Jaffa, while as a Palestinian, I can undoubtedly demand Haifa, Jaffa, Beer-Sheva and Jerusalem. However, the moment we reclaim our right to all of Palestine, we will not wait even a minute to unite Palestine and Jordan."

In March 1977, Zahir Muhsein, a PLO executive, said:

"The Palestinian people does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct Palestinian people to oppose Zionism."

"For tactical reasons, Jordan, which is a sovereign state with defined borders, cannot raise claims to Haifa and Jaffa, while as a Palestinian, I can undoubtedly demand Haifa, Jaffa, Beer-Sheva and Jerusalem. However, the moment we reclaim our right to all of Palestine, we will not wait even a minute to unite Palestine and Jordan."

The Arab Apartheid

Ben-Dror Yemini
In 1948, the Arab countries refused to accept the UN partition proposal and they launched a war of annihilation against the State of Israel which had barely been established. All precedents in this matter showed that the party that starts the war - and with a declaration of annihilation, yet - pays a price for it. Between 550,000 and 710,000 Arabs fled because of the war and a larger number of 850,000 Jews were expelled or fled from Arab countries (the "Jewish nakba").
Population exchanges and expulsions were the norm at that time, occurring in dozens of other conflict points and affecting about 52 million people. In all the population exchange precedents that occurred during or at the end of an armed conflict, there was no return of refugees to the previous region, which had turned into a new national state.
Only the Arab states acted completely differently from the rest of the world. Instead of assimilating the refugees, they crushed them despite the fact that they were their coreligionists and members of the Arab nation - instituting a regime of apartheid. So the "nakba" was not caused by the actual dispossession, which had also been experienced by tens of millions of others. The "nakba" is the story of the apartheid, oppression, abuse and denial of rights suffered by the Arab refugees at the hands of the Arab countries. (Maariv)

International Law and Military Operations in Practice - Col. Richard Kemp

"Islamist fighting groups study the international laws of armed conflict carefully and they understand it well. They know that a British or Israeli commander and his men are bound by international law and the rules of engagement that flow from it. They then do their utmost to exploit what they view as one of their enemy's main weaknesses. Their very modus operandi is built on the correct assumption that Western armies will normally abide by the rules, while these insurgents employ a deliberate policy of operating consistently outside international law. "

Lost Historical Moments

What Rabin’s last Knesset speech really said:repudiation of a Palestinian state

Rabin ruled out a fully sovereign Palestinian state :

“We view the permanent solution in the framework of State of Israel which will include most of the area of the Land of Israel as it was under the rule of the British Mandate, and alongside it a Palestinian entity which will be a home to most of the Palestinian residents living in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. We would like this to be an entity which is less than a state, and which will independently run the lives of the Palestinians under its authority.”

Rabin ruled out a total withdrawal from Judea and Samaria and thus a return to the pre-June 1967 borders :

“The borders of the State of Israel, during the permanent solution, will be beyond the lines which existed before the Six Day War. We will not return to the 4 June 1967 lines.”

Rabin ruled out withdrawing form the Jordan Valley:

“The security border of the State of Israel will be located in the Jordan Valley, in the broadest meaning of that term.”

Rabin ruled out uprooting settlement blocs, like the Gush Katif bloc in Gaza (which was subsequently uprooted by former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon):

“The establishment of blocs of settlements in Judea and Samaria, like the one in Gush Katif.

AND

Rabin ruled out removing any settlement before coming to a full peace agreement with the Palestinians:

“I want to remind you: we committed ourselves, that is, we came to an agreement, and committed ourselves before the Knesset, not to uproot a single settlement in the framework of the interim agreement, and not to hinder building for natural growth.”

Rabin insisted on Israel retaining full security control of the borders with Egypt and Jordan, contrary to Israel’s relinquishment of the Philadelphia Corridor on the border with Egypt:

“The responsibility for external security along the borders with Egypt and Jordan, as well as control over the airspace above all of the territories and Gaza Strip maritime zone, remains in our hands.”

Correcting Oslo Myths-Part 2

3) Kuttab laments that the post-1993 Oslo process resulted in a Palestinian Authority "whose ministers and legislators are not guaranteed passage between Gaza and the West Bank ...."

Before free passage or other perquisites, PA leaders were obligated, among other things, to eliminate the terrorist infrastructure in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, end anti-Israeli, antisemitic incitement in schools, mosques, and communications media, and resolve all outstanding issues through peaceful negotiations. They met none of these commitments, sometimes bolstering terrorism and greatly increasing incitement.

4) Kuttab complains that under Oslo the PA got "lightly armed police ---- but no real sovereignty over the land or contiguity between our communities in Gaza and the West Bank."

Oslo agreements repeatedly were revised, regardless of Palestinian non-compliance, until the authorized number of police grew from 8,000 to 40,000. Though they were to be the only armed forces in the territories, Israeli estimates early in the second intifada put the number of gunmen - police, "security services," terrorists, and armed gangs - at 85,000. Their armament reportedly included not only heavy machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades, but also anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles.

Sovereignty was to be negotiated in the envisioned 1998 "final status" talks - after a five-year period of confidence-building. Palestinian leadership chronically undermined the process. Palestinian terrorism made the 1993 - 1998 Oslo period more deadly for Israelis than the 15 years preceding it.

The United States doesn't have contiguity between the lower 48 states and Alaska and Hawaii; territorial contiguity between the West Bank and Gaza Strip - that is, through the 20 miles of Israeli territory between them - was never promised and would destroy Israeli contiguity.

5) "Palestinians have been made to endure hundreds of checkpoints in the West Bank, an eight-foot wall deep in our territories, and tight Israeli control over borders."

The security barrier is not "deep in Palestinian territories," but rather encompasses less than 8 percent of Judea and Samaria, and is mostly a fence, rarely a wall; the land in question is not "our [Palestinian] territories" but disputed territory to which, according to the authors of U.N. Security Council Resolution 242, Jews as well as Arabs have claims; and there are no international borders, only the 1949 armistice lines with Jordan. Under 242, borders remain to be negotiated. As for checkpoints - like the security barrier and "tight Israeli control" - Palestinian Arabs precipitated these measures themselves. No terrorism and there would be no fence or tight Israeli control and few checkpoints - like before the first intifada.

Correcting Some Oslo Myths

1) In Oslo "Israeli, Palestinian and other world leaders promised that ... Palestinian sovereignty would be solidified."

No, they didn't. The 1993 Declaration of Principles and subsequent Oslo agreements outlined a process by which final status negotiations about the West Bank and Gaza Strip would be reached. The process required an end to anti-Israel terrorism and incitement and a commitment to peaceful negotiations. The PA, Fatah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and other terrorist groups, sabotaged the process from the start.

2) "The reality is that, in defiance of U.N. Security Council Resolution 242, which states that it is inadmissible to occupy land by force, Palestinian territories are still under foreign military occupation."
Wrong again. Resolution 242 (1967) does note "the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war." It also affirms the right of every state in the area "to live in peace with secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force." There were no "Palestinian territories." Jordan occupied the West Bank, Egypt controlled Gaza. Israel did not have "secure and recognized boundaries," so retention of some of those territories was possible under 242. Israel is not a "foreign" military occupier in the West Bank but, pending final negotiations, the lawful military administrator as a result of a successful war of self-defense.

Doc's Talk