PA Using US as Platform for Diplomatic War against Israel

Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu

Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad’s upcoming speech to a top US-Arab group may be a move to use the United States as a stage against Israel as he implies a ”one-state” solution in his recent “Berlin Wall” remark.

The American Task Force on Palestine has invited Fayyad to speak later this month at a gala fair held by the organization, which usually draws major Obama administration officials, according to Politico’s Ben Smith.

He noted, “His visit seems to grant the organization…the beginnings of the sort of central status among (often feuding) pro-Palestinian group that AIPAC holds among the (also rivalrous) pro-Israel groups."
American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) is considered the most prominent and influential pro-Israel group in Washington.

Task Force on Palestine president Zaud Asali said in an e-mail statement quoted by Smith, "We are gratified that ATFP and its flagship annual event have acquired the stature and impact in our nation's capital to merit being the sole purpose of a visit to Washington, a place he understands so well, by the Prime Minister Fayyad."

Fayyad was the American-backed candidate for prime minister and has close ties with academic and political leaders in the United States, where he earned an economics degree.

He recently compared Israel’s terrorist-stopping security fence with the Berlin Wall, vowing that the fence will face the same fate as the Berlin Wall and will be torn down.

Brad Hirschfield, president of the National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership, wrote in his column in the liberal Washington Post that the claim “suggests that there will not be a two-state solution but a one-state solution.”

“What are the implications of Fayyad’s remarks for Middle East peace?” he wrote. “Do they actually confirm the worst suspicions of the Israeli right? Do they make Israeli PM Netanyahu look more reasonable for insisting that the Palestinians affirm their acceptance of Israel as a Jewish state?”

Israel has repeatedly pointed out that the PA’s refusal to recognize Israel as a Jewish state is predicated on its demand to flood the country with several million foreign Arabs claiming Israel as their home and thereby reducing Jews to a minority.