It
is amazing how many massive revelations pass people by completely.
Consider this new gleaning from the British Archives from early 1948,
which sheds much light on current events. British officials in the
Palestine Mandate were reporting as
follows:
”The
[Palestine] Arabs have suffered a series of overwhelming
defeats…."Jewish victories … have reduced Arab morale to zero and,
following the cowardly example of their inept leaders, they are fleeing
from the mixed areas in their thousands. It is now obvious that the only
hope of regaining their position lies in the regular armies of the Arab
states."
This
is confirmation from hostile British official sources of what Israel
and its supporters have been saying for 60 years: that the origin of the
Palestinian Arab refugee problem was due to the actions of the
Palestinian Arabs themselves: first, their leaders decision to reject
the partition into Arab and Jewish states, then their decision to go to
war, and then their disorganization and poor leadership. The British
Foreign Office even uses the word, “cowardice.”
Some
things have changed since then; many have not. Today, as in 1948, the
Zionist
side is more eager for the existences of an independent Palestinian
state living in peace inside permanent borders than is the Palestinian
Arab leadership.
That
statement might strike misinformed people as ludicrous, but it is
nonetheless true, as they should have known since Yasir Arafat’s
destruction of the Camp David summit meeting and rejection of the
Clinton peace initiative of 2000. And that only followed on the earlier
Palestinian rejectionism of the original Camp David summit in 1977,
which offered a pathway to statehood, or various other initiatives.
And
this pattern of behavior is being reinforced daily. Consider a recent
incident. On April 30, an Israeli civilian father of five was stabbed to
death by a Palestinian at the Tapuach Junction on the West Bank. The
killer was a prisoner who had just completed his sentence and been
released by Israel, as Secretary of State John Kerry wants Israel to
release hundreds of other prisoners before their sentences are done.
The killer is a member of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade. Note the following details:
--For
many years Fatah, the ruling party in the Palestinian Authority (PA),
denied the link with the brigade. Legal cases were held in the United
States over the murder of Americans by the al-Aqsa Brigade in which PA
lawyers strenuously denied any connection. But in 2009, the Fatah
Congress, that organization’s highest authority, admitted that the
al-Aqsa Brigades were part of Fatah, a fact one might have known earlier
since that’s what it said on the Brigades
web-site.
Fatah proudly took responsibility for earlier terrorist attacks by the group.
In the case of the April 30 murder, the official
Al-Aqsa Brigades statement was very interesting, saying it had
"received a green light to carry out military actions against Israeli
targets in response to the deaths of prisoners Arafat Jaradat and
Maysara Abu Hamdia in an Israeli prison."
A
green light from whom? Since the Brigades did not receive a green light
from itself, this is an open admission that they were ordered to murder
military civilians by the Fatah leadership, in other words by those
ruling the PA, a Western-financed and supported entity.
--The
two prisoners had been examined at autopsies conducted in the presence
of PA officials. Thus, the PA knew that these two men died of natural
causes. It was thus lying to its own people to incite them into
supporting murders of Israeli civilians that the PA was ordering.
--In
this case, however, a junior member of the Fatah Central Committee
named Jamal Muheisen, while defending the attack, tried to
distance his organization from responsibility:
"The
Za'atra action was a natural response to attacks by the occupation and
settlers [on Palestinians], but it does not express the general policy
of the Palestinian Authority and of Fatah, who have espoused [the option
of] popular resistance to the occupation."
But
it was Muheisen and not the killer or the al-Aqsa Brigades that was
criticized universally by Fatah. Nobody came to Muheisen’s defense. On
the contrary, the killer was praised as a hero who restored Fatah’s
pride. No doubt, a street, a square, or something else will be named in
his honor in future.
One Fatah member put it this way:
“[The
killer] is a hero of the Fatah movement, a revolutionary and a fighter
who restores Fatah's pride and former glory; he exposes the dark [face
of] interested parties and unmasks the mercenaries."
--But
why use the phrase about restoring Fatah’s pride? Because the
organization’s pride is counted by the number of Israelis it kills.
That’s how score is kept in Palestinian politics, even in 2013. When
Fatah isn’t killing Israelis it is ashamed (restores…former glory),
while any Palestinian—like Muheisen—who doesn’t support it is one of the
“mercenaries,” presumably of the Zionists and Americans. If Fatah doesn't keep up the killings, it believes that means it loses ground to Hamas.
Today,
though, the PA is in a box of its own making. It cannot win militarily
against Israel, nor will it engage in serious diplomacy with Israel.
During a recent public relations’ meeting in Washington, supposedly to
show Arab state support for a two-state solution, the PA’s
representatives glowered in making clear they weren’t interested in
serious negotiations with Israel.
Meanwhile,
on the domestic front, the Fatah
chiefs finally rid themselves of relatively moderate Prime Minister
Salam Fayyad who was too honest for their purposes. Fayyad blasted the
PA's corruption and incompetence in a New York Times interview
and then denied he had said these things, hoping for political
survival. It isn't clear whether he might return but clearly the
credibility of the PA regime's front-man, who was effective at
collecting international donation, should be undermined.
So
what can the PA do? Collect billions of dollars in Western aid, stage
occasional
terrorist attacks, try to use the UN General Assembly’s designation of
Palestine as a “non-member state” to try to get into international
groups and someday sue Israel in the World Court.
It
is precisely because it lacks any active alternative that the PA and
its allies are engaged in an unprecedented public relations' campaign
complete with strenuous attempts to subvert support for Israel in Jewish
communities, boycotts, and disinvestment drives. This echoes the old
PLO strategy although in this case it is not Arab state armies but
armies of activists that will weaken Israel to the point that it must
make huge
concessions and subsequently collapse. Of course, this strategy won't work as it did not work in the 1960s and 1970s.
Meanwhile,
the PA leadership benefits from the status quo, they live well, pocket
the aid money, posture as revolutionaries, and avoid being “traitors” by
refusing to make peace.
A
Western reader of this article might well think that such a situation
is possible. It certainly isn’t what he’s seeing in the Western mass
media. Yet the above description is nonetheless true.
The
same person might conclude, with more justification, that such a
situation cannot be sustained. He would look for a “solution,”
assuming that the Palestinian leadership wanted such a solution. You
know, we all know the broad outlines of a potential comprehensive
agreement and we can play at drawing borders and have fun imagining the
status of Jerusalem.
Yet the deadlock nonetheless prevails and it will prevail.
There
is, of course, one way out: A Hamas takeover. Indeed, Hamas is becoming
gradually more popular on the West Bank. Yet Western donations would
dry up, Israel will keep the PA in power as the better of two bad
alternatives.
Is
it because Israel builds more apartments in settlements? That should be
an argument for making the Palestinians more eager, not more negative,
about making a deal to get rid of all settlements on Palestine’s
territory.
While
many in Israel, especially on the political right, wanted to keep the
West Bank and Gaza Strip in the 1970s and 1980s, there is a broad
Israeli consensus today that the goal is to get rid of involvement with
these territories as long as it can be done in a way that reduces the
likelihood of war and enhances security.
The
problem is that there has been no way found to do so. The left's
solution is to walk away from any present there;
the problem with that idea is what has happened in southern Lebanon and
the Gaza Strip where that strategy has been tried, plus the growing
radical Islamist wave in the region to which a new state of Palestine
would probably fall prey.
No,
it’s because of the same thinking and strategy on the Arab side that
has prevailed for more than 60 years. It is that thinking that views the
murder of Israeli civilians as a source of glory and negotiations with
Israel or moderation as a sign of treason.
Why,
a colleague asks, is there such a growing gap between the lynch mobs
hating Israel being trained on many college campuses and other public or
media institutions, and the far different Western policies toward
Israel on the government level?
The
answer is this: the policymakers know the truth but conceal it from
their publics sometimes because it benefits their perceived state
interests (make Arabs and
Muslims generally happy) and political interests (plays up to the
left-wing activists). That’s too bad but reality remains unchanged.
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--------------------
Barry
Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs
(GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International
Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His next
book, Nazis, Islamists and the Making of the Modern Middle East,
written with Wolfgang G. Schwanitz, will be published by Yale University
Press in January 2014. His latest book is Israel: An Introduction, also published by Yale. Thirteen of his books can be read and downloaded for free at the website of the GLORIA Center including The Arab States and the Palestine Conflict, The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East and The Truth About Syria. His blog is Rubin Reports. His original articles are published at PJMedia.
Professor Barry Rubin, Director, Global Research in International
Affairs (GLORIA) Center http://www.gloria-center.org
Forthcoming Book: Nazis, Islamists, and the Making of the Modern Middle East (Yale University Press)
The Rubin Report
blog http://rubinreports.blogspot.com/
He is a featured columnist at PJM http://pajamasmedia.com/barryrubin/.
Editor, Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal http://www.gloria-center.org
He is a featured columnist at PJM http://pajamasmedia.com/barryrubin/.
Editor, Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal http://www.gloria-center.org
Editor Turkish Studies,http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~db=all~content=t713636933%22
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