All is not as it seems with Abbas… writes Gil Solomon
Mahmoud Abbas has again, as recently as January 11 stated publicly “We won’t recognize and accept the Jewishness of Israel” thereby admitting to the world that the Palestinian Authority (PA) he heads has no intention of making peace.
Gil Solomon
While other commentators may take the view that the PA has as usual lost an opportunity for ending this conflict once and for all, I do not agree. Mahmoud Abbas is not a fool.
He knows that peace will entail fading into some degree of obscurity, being inundated with the boring and mundane acts of good governance for the people he represents and heaven forbid may even require an expectation to participate in democratically held elections every four years or so.
Firstly, one has to ask, who in the PA apparatus is remotely interested in democracy? Democracy to them is some foolish western notion alien to the Muslim states in the region, so why would anyone think that Abbas & Co. are any different?
If Abbas signed any form of peace agreement, he would know that the western world would expect some sign of democracy taking shape in the territory under the PA’s control and to not dismantle the PA’s power structure would expose his organisation as the terrorists they truly are.
Secondly and more to the point, why would these terrorists in suits give up their perks, their lavish lifestyles, their status in being centre stage at world conferences where a doting world fawns over their every word? Peace might force them to cease indulging themselves with money that is bestowed on them by nations who think they are aiding the cause of peace and the supposed suffering of a people who have attempted to rewrite history. The lifestyle they have been accustomed to may be jeopardised by signing a piece of paper that signifies an end to hostilities.
No doubt by putting obstacles they know Israel would be insane to accept, they ensure this conflict will continue and in the process could work to their advantage. Having become masters of propaganda, they will at all times try to put the blame for any breakdown in the so called “peace process” on supposed Israeli intransigence, be it “settlements” or anything else, knowing full well that most of the world will probably agree with this false assessment.
The leaders of the PA have invested too much in demonizing Jews and Israel to ever turn this hatred around, thus ensuring the “Palestinian” population will forever be on their side on any decision they make. No, this lot will not trade their lifestyles for the sake of peace and the quicker Israel wakes up to this fact and treats them with the contempt and disrespect they truly deserve, the better.
I believe that these so called “peace talks” will formally break down and there will no doubt be a full scale resumption of terrorist acts. This time the gloves must come off with Israel taking unilateral action on whatever it deems to be in its sovereign interests while at the same time sending Abbas & Co. packing to the Arab capital of their choice.
The so called “Palestinians” would have had their brief time on the world centre stage and the curtain should finally be brought down on the PA, with its leaders finally exposed as the unrelenting, uncompromising Jew haters that they are.
Author Gil Solomon is a retired finance manager who takes an intense interest in current affairs impacting on the Jewish community
Otto,
Your impassioned arguments in reply to Paul about decency and humanity notwithstanding, the facts are that there was a monumental mistake after the 1967 war and no amount of pontificating, trying to rationalise the irrational or make excuses for an insane decision is justifiable.
By the capture after thousands of years of the Temple Mount in 1967 (a site where the Dome of the Rock mosque now stands), the God you trust gave the Jewish people a chance to reclaim their heritage, their birthright, the very essence of Judaism.
The facts are that the Muslim Waqf were allowed to retain control of the Temple Mount, this holiest of Jewish sites only because of then Chief of Staff Moshe Dayan’s desire to be magnanimous in victory. Contraray to popular misconceptions, Rabbis at the time wanted Israeli control of this holy site while researching where Jews were not allowed to go, a search the Waqf made extremely difficult by sealing off underground areas.
Dayan’s decision doesn’t say much about the people around him at the time in the Israeli cabinet who allowed this decision to prevail. This decision changed the course of history for the Jewish people in a profound and negative way. We could have had it all but squandered the gift Hashem presented to us on a platter.
This hallowed ground that was squandered was the location where both Jewish temples stood, but now having been replaced by the Dome of the Rock mosque, where in the courtyard today the so called “Palestinians” play soccer. So much for decency, humanity, holding hands and those other useless terms.
To give some perspective of time and the significance of what was squandered, I offer below some historical estimates about both temples.
The first temple was built by King Solomon in 960 BCE
This was destroyed by Nebuchadnezzer in 586 BCE
The second temple was built in 520 BCE (66 years after the destruction of the first temple).This one was destroyed by Titus in 70 AD.
Herod reigned from 37 BCE to 4 BCE. He is the one that enlarged and beautified the grounds of the second temple by the construction of the Kotel, the remaining “Wall” of what you see in existence today.
Had we retained this site, visiting foreign dignitaries would be taken to the Temple Mount, the reclaimed birthright of the Jewish people instead of Yad Vashem, a memorial to the slaughter of 6 million of our people in the holocaust.
So Otto, the fateful decision by Moshe Dayan was, in my opinion, one of the most defining moments in recent Jewish history and I for one am sick and tired of forever hearing how Jews must be more compassionate, more merciful, more decent, more of everything to those in our midst who clearly wish us dead.
Gil
Historic arguments make for necessary spirit encouragement, but, in terms of concrete decisions based on immediate circumstance, they tend to be relegated to “small talk”.
Israel at its incipient stage of security built-up, confidence in accomplished security measures and during a process of international acceptance as a state entity, NEDED to adopt measures which included ethical issues ADVERSE to immediate and long-term national interests.
Quite a few commentators considered a big mistake that Israel did not cede all West Bank teritories at once to Jordan, thus preventing the aparition of a completely NEW entity, the palestinians.
National enthusiasm, the feeeling that we have a historic obligation, the UNcalculated risk of administration of a people hostile to us and G-d knows what else, prompted our leaders to allow a LIMBO of the gravest proportions to take over.
The strategic hiatus therein is partly responsible for the serious problems Israel, and we all, are still struggling with today.
Paul, how can one argue with your so valid points.
I shall not argue as such, but try to rationalise by assumption the reasons Dayan and so many other Israeli leaders, some of whom have grown up practically in Arab cultures, have resorted to measures others would not conceive.
The main reason for all those concession must have been that there was a combination of fear of guilt and hope.
Fear of guilt if we, the righteous of nations, would break our Covenant of DECENCY, of humanity by being like those whose spirit of hatred we wanted to change. Implicit ws the second reason, that being that we believe ( they believed ) that by the mere survival of the Jew among the Arab, there must be a well hidden element of humanity which we have the responsibility to bring out and develop. That was the hope.
When, on occasions, we have seen Bibi HOLDING HANDS with Abbas, the same hope is there, the same belief that hatred is but a fleeting phase and eyes we see implanted in the face of the “others” can also see the SENSE of HUMANITY, can understand the BASIC principles of sanity…..
Some call it bribes, some call it strategies, those wonderful Jewish heroes called it TRUST that G-d shall be revealed to all who love their children in the same way the Children of G-d love their own.
Otto, your surmises about events 46 years ago and the motivations of people no longer with us may be right, but they are no longer with us and events have shown that their decisions turned out to be disasterous. Gil is perfectly right with regard to the facts and his point that Jews do not need to try to be perfect to just be treated like others; our existence is not conditional on being perfect especially when history has shown us (and the ’67 leaders), that too often we are considered bad, when in fact we were better than our persecutors. The unalloyed hate of Jews displayed by the Arabs should have made the leaders choose what is best for Jews who had just won a war that was meant to exterminate them. They should not have courted Hussein, whose tribe had been kicked out of Arabia by the Saudis and not having the holy cities to guard set about guarding the mosques made holy because a 7th century ruler also fighting the then rulers of Arabia declared that the mosques he built in Jerualem was the mosque Mohammed dreamed he had flown to on the back of a winged horse with a woman’s torso and from there went to heaven to chat with God, Moses and Jesus. They should not have tried to bribed the king who reneged on his agreement to let non-mohammedans pray in his part of Jerusalem, who had not only ignored Israeli requests to keep out of the fight, but in fact shelled the city oh so holy to Muslims. Israel should have given nothing and jelly-back Bibi should not have given Hebron to the Pallies when Jews had been kept out of the tomb of the Patriarch for seven centuries. All Israelis and Jews everywhere should keep iin mind Churchill’s observation: the Arab is either at your feet or at your throat. Jews need to learn to stand on their feet and use those feet to step on those who threaten us, in the same way that other people respond to their enemies.
You are almost right in believing that the talks will break down Gil; the current talks broke down before they started. It is bizarre that after violating their obligations to negotiate under UNSC242, they had to be bribed to talk about having a state of their own, particularly after they rejected offers by Barak and Olmert. And now, when they do talk, they only reiterate their maximalist demands which in essence call for Israel to surrender and commit national suicide, all the while engaging in cold war tactics of incitement, non-cooperation and lawfare.
It must however be admitted, that it is not the fault of the local Arabs, the so-called “Palestinians”. Israel has been so eager for peace that it got them used to having their cheekiness accepted as standard, the same result that an over indulgent parent gets from a brat that has been set no parameters.
The initial mistake was for Dayan to destroy the Allenby Bridge and to thus halt the Arab’s flight to Jordan. The second was to lower the Israeli flag over al Aqsa and hand the control of the Temple Mount to the Waqf. Other errors were to keep water and electricity flowing to Arab non-payers, failure to destroy homes built without permission – as is routinely done when Jews build illegally, failure to put down Arab violence by force, failure to expel foreign anti-Zionists, failure to tell other nations to butt out of internal matters and to punish Arabs for incitement.
Now clearly doing everything for peace is laudable and rational. But Israel is dealing with people who reason by the standard of the 7th century and a supremicist conquering religion where a triumphand dhimmi is not only an affront, but calls into question to power of their god. The only acceptable mohammedan response to Israel is to destroy it and to humiliate the Jews, even though that is weakening, according to Caroline Glick, as pan-Arabism is being frozen to death by the Arab winter.
The biggest problem is the elite in charge of Jewry, especially in Israel. Everyone wants to play the diplomat, when a simple assertion of Jewish rights, principles and pride – yes PRIDE! – is needed plus a plain denouncement of the double standards and the hypocrisy of the nations of the world. Israel should have implemented the Levy report and annexed the areas it needs for its security and built in areas it intends to keep. And any threats against the Jewish state should be met by Israeli threats against the West’s favourite victims, the Palestinians, so if the EU stops buying Israeli produce, the local Arabs get only enough water to drink. A water for weapons exchange would also develop a thirst for peace among the local Arabs.