Palestine – Israel Sheds PLO As Negotiating Partner
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has concluded that completing successful negotiations with the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) on the allocation of territorial sovereignty in Judea and Samaria (the West Bank), Gaza and East Jerusalem is a mission impossible to achieve.
Addressing the Saban Forum on 6 December – Netanyahu made his position clear and unequivocal:
“I have said and I continue to say it, that ultimately the only workable solution is not a unitary state, but a demilitarized Palestinian state that recognizes the Jewish state. That’s the solution. But the Palestinians have to recognize the Jewish state and they persistently refuse to do so. They refuse to recognize a nation-state for the Jewish people in any boundary. That was and remains the core of the conflict. Not this or that gesture or the absence of this or that gesture, but the inability or unwillingness of the Palestinian leadership to make the leap.”
Whilst the issue of a “demilitarized Palestinian State” is one possibly capable of being further negotiated – the issue of recognizing the Jewish State is definitely not.
Recognition of the right of Jewish self-determination in Palestine – whilst simultaneously recognizing the right of Arab self-determination in Syria, Lebanon and Mesopotamia (now Iraq) – has always been an issue with the Arabs – since these decisions were first made at the San Remo Conference in April 1920 establishing the Mandates for Palestine, Mesopotamia and Syria and Lebanon.
These decisions delivered to the Arabs 99.99% of the lands won from the defeated Ottoman Empire in World War 1 whilst setting aside the remaining 0.01% for the Jews.
95 years of bloody conflict between Jews and Arabs has ensued since then because the Arabs wanted – and still want – 100% of the Ottoman Empire pie and have never been prepared to settle for 99.99%.
Netanyahu points out where the Arab world now finds itself in 2015 because of such Arab irredentism:
“And what we see is the old order established after the Ottoman Empire collapsing and militant Islam, either of the Shiites, Shiite hue led by Iran, or the Sunni hue, led by ISIS, rushing in to fill the void.”
The PLO has never accepted the San Remo carve up of the Ottoman Empire between Jews and Arabs – as its current Charter declares:
“The Balfour Declaration, the Mandate for Palestine, and everything that has been based upon them, are deemed null and void.”
The PLO’s rejection of the right of Jews to have one State whilst the Arabs presently have 22 States is also virulently expressed in the PLO Charter:
“Claims of historical or religious ties of Jews with Palestine are incompatible with the facts of history and the true conception of what constitutes statehood.”
The PLO leader Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) has no intention of changing this racist and utterly offensive position – as Netanyahu points out:
“You got a hint of that the other day when Abu Mazen spoke about the “occupation of Palestinian lands for the last 67 years”. Did you hear that? Occupation of Palestinian lands? For the last 67 years? Sixty-seven years ago was 1948. That’s when the State of Israel was established. Does Abu Mazen mean that Tel Aviv is occupied Palestinian territory? Or Haifa? Or Beer Sheba?”
The demise of the PLO as Israel’s negotiating partner is long overdue.
President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry must urgently move to fill this negotiating void by replacing the PLO with Israel’s Arab partners in two long-standing signed peace agreements – Jordan and Egypt.
The Jewish-Arab conflict can still be peacefully resolved with the right partners sitting at the negotiating table.
David Singer is a Sydney Lawyer and Foundation Member of the International Analysts Network
You all are missing the point. Everyone needs to object to the name, State of Israel” It’s the Land of Israel and until you get that right, what are you complaining about. In that respect the Arabs/Palestinians have got it Right. So why argue with them, tell them you agree and call it the Land of Israel. That will shut all the politicians and would-be politicians, up, and open the way for true completion to take place, in recognizing the Land of Israel with Jerusalem as its capital.
Secondly, peace is a process, not an outcome, Get that right too, please. I’m not interested in peace as an outcome. It’s on every grave, with equal respect given to whomever lies there. Better than peace, let’s focus on life and completion, completion, shalem of the Promise G-d gave to Abraham, in which merit Moses agreed to lead us out of Egypt. Isn’t it time we got out of golut, when will you understand that time is now, just do it. Call a spade a spade and complete the promise. Start by calling Israel the Promised Land, by its real and true name.
Peace is not a process, it is the desired outcome of whatever preceded it be it conflict between people, negotiations between countries, or a family disagreement. Peace in Hebrew is “Shalom”, perfection in Hebrew is “Moushlam” which is derived from it . There is nothing better to experience in life than peace, be it in your country, your community, your neighbour, your spouse, or yourself. That is the outcome we want for the living. The dead are no longer concerned with the events of this world. They are not so much at peace as separated from life.
David,
I wasn’t going to waste my time responding any further to your 40 year obsession on this, but your final reply urged me to do otherwise.
Your comment below: “Ever heard of the UN Headquarters located in New York or diplomatic embassies located everywhere around the World or Julian Assange holing out in the Ecuadorian Embassy bang smack in the middle of London?” and comparing this to the Temple Mount is absurd.
For the record I will not play your endless games.
My comment to you was in response to this question posed by you:
“The question is, if as Netanyahu claims, a unified Jerusalem is the eternal capital of Israel, how can this be so if right smack in the middle there is a piece of real estate that is not 100% under Israeli/Jewish jurisdiction?”
Every capital city of every country throughout the world has pieces of real estate right smack in their middle that is not 100% under their jurisdiction. That does not affect their status as the capital of the country concerned.
Cool down.
David, your repeated calls the former occupiers of Gaza and of Judea and Samaria are getting rather tedious. Additionally, they are divorced from reality.
The two illegal occupiers – Egypt and Jordan – who refused to allow grant the local Arabs self-determination are not going to do that if they ever have a say on how that territory is allocated. They will never get a say, because the so-called Palestinians will reject them. Israel cannot accept them because showing Arab/mohammedan solidarity, they will demand that Israel retreat to the 1967 armistice lines and that the Pallies exercise their right of return, both non-starters for Israel.
There is turmoil in the MUD-east and Israel cannot risk another Moslem Brotherhood regime in Egypt, something the USA favours under Obama. Jordan can fall at any time to the jihadis. With Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Iran all funding their proxy (poxy) terror militias Israel cannot take any chances. And please don’t sneer at me as you have at Gil, that I am making my comments from the safety of Australia. You are just as safe as I am and you are making suggestions that I believe endanger Israel. Netanyahu and his ilk believe that Israel is strong and can survive blows, but that is a cruel and callous game: no Jew should die or be disabled for jihadi pride and mohammedan power challenging.
The peace processors whom Israelis are trying to appease should butt out; they are after all telling Jews to take risks from countries where they are safe. They are telling Jews to take risks that they themselves would not even contemplate.
The Oslo process is dead and deserves and urgent and indecent burial. Gaza must be retaken and Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the local resistance committees must be demolished with utmost prejudice. Same for the PA and the local Northern Alliance. The UN, EU and other players must be told to play elsewhere and the Arabs confined to the major cities in Gaza, Judea and Samaria, where they can exercise disarmed local self-government. And any who don’t like that arrangement can be given funds to resettle elsewhere in the umma.
There are too many Arab/mohammedan parties with conflicting and changing interests to allow any to veer from the party line and the cynical Jew-hating Europeans and the antisemitic State Dept, UN and EU care little for the local Arabs, less for Jews and support anything that serves their own interests. Israel needs to find leaders who will bite the bullet and act in its own interest, instead of trying to appease its cynical and implacable haters.
Paul
While my repeated calls for negotiations between Israel, Egypt and Jordan may seem to be tedious to you – they represent the last and only real possibility of achieving some resolution to the Jewish-Arab conflict.
These negotiations have always been the only way forward since I first started writing about this negotiating process 40 years ago.
Imagine how many Jews and Arabs would still be alive today if this process had been initiated then or attempted subsequently?
How would the Middle East have looked to-day?
It may be tedious to you – but it is a matter of life and death to me.
Your gung-ho approach – like Gil’s – is assuredly going to see conflict massively escalating. My approach certainly will not.
Sorry, David, I must beg to differ. The proof of the error of your approach is the failure of the past two decades of hot air hurricanes and peace further away than ever. Even that hopeless scheming peacenik, Peres, once commented that there can be peace-peace or war-war, but not peace-war, which is all that would-be negotiators like you have achieved.
The Jewish-Arab conflict will not be settled by negotiations because no Arab will agree to anything other than eliminating the Jewish homeland in the mohammedan Waqf. Even if most agree, it would only take one nation of terrorist proxy determined to show that they are prouder, fiercer, more religiously observant, more hating than the others to frustrate negotiations.
Take revolutionary Iran. Their support for the so-called Palestinians is based on traditional Jew-hating, on jihadism and proving the superiority of Shi’a Islam; they will never agree to a Sunni led peace with Israel. Take the Arabs where a tyrant like Saddam Hussein was admired for his manly qualities of cruelty, implacability, lack of mercy of remorse and willingness to go to war. Qatar and Saudi Arabia financing Sunni led jihad would never agree to a peace with Israel, nor would their proxies and never to a peace sponsored by Shi’a. And of course there is Pakistan which would export terrorists to prove its islamic credentials. Perhaps the best example of the impossibility of a negotiated peace is Indonesia which would always side with any mohammedan spoiler against the Jew.
Negotiations have not resulted in anything since you started to write about the Jewish-mohammedan conflict. The only advances that have been made have been through IDF victories on the battle field. The situation could have been better had Israel ignored calls for peace and wiped out enough Arabs to compel them to sue for peace. (And incidentally, the world would be a better place had India not yielded to peace processors and wiped out Pakistan resulting in no moslem nukes and no Talibaan/ISIS funding in Afghanistan).
I accept that you are concerned for Israel. So to is Gil and so too am I. I am not gung-ho, rather I am realistic. We are not dealing with rational, truth-telling, Western, life respecting people. The mohammedan realm displays and understands only one language with its vocabulary of barbarism, hate, revenge and blood letting.
Your problem David is that you are a decent human being and a lawyer. You err in ascribing your values to people who are completely dissimilar to yourself. You also err in your belief that negotiations will result in peace and assume that both parties negotiate in good faith; the mohammedans don’t. Your ego blunts your reality testing.
And on final closing point. The Arabs rejected the 1948 peace plan. They have repeatedly rejected peace and they have broken every treaty they signed. It is pure insanity and antisemitism that the court of world opinion demands that Israel adhere to the terms of every undertaking (even if they misrepresent it) while its purported peace partner is free to serially violate its undertakings. Jews are commanded to seek justice. The world denies justice to the Jewish state, so it has no choice but to command justice for itself and to impose its justice on its vanquished aggressors who have never been made to answer for their lies, back-sliding and viciousness.
Paul
You state:
(i) “Negotiations have not resulted in anything since you started to write about the Jewish-mohammedan conflict.”
Wrong – negotiations have resulted in Israel signing a peace treaty with Egypt in 1979 and one with Jordan in 1994.
(ii) “They have repeatedly rejected peace and they have broken every treaty they signed. ”
Wrong – not so far as the two above treaties are concerned.
(iii) ” The Jewish-Arab conflict will not be settled by negotiations because no Arab will agree to anything other than eliminating the Jewish homeland in the mohammedan Waqf.”
Wrong again – so far as the above two treaties are concerned.
It is difficult to have a serious conversation when factually wrong and unsubstantiated claims are being constantly aired.
So it’s taken Netanyahu years to come to this conclusion.
During this time, with concession after foolish concession, there has been a lot a Jewish blood spilt in pursuing negotiations with this rabble.
Will it take decades for Israel to realise that calling for negotiations with other parties will prove as fruitless as trying to negotiate with Abbas & Co. When is it ever going to sink into Netanyahu’s head that the Arab world never wants to resolve the issue of the so called “Palestinians”? For their own political reasons, they want nothing more than to let this boil fester and keep bubbling on the world stage.
The only way to end this is for Israel to once and for all take unilateral action to end this in the only way the Arab world understands. That is by sheer military force.
The enemy needs to be crushed, brought to their knees and where appropriate, expelled.
Unfortunately all Netanyahu ever does is talk.
The time for talking is well and truly over.
Someone should tell this to Netanyahu.
Gil
Easy for you to be so gung ho from the comfort of Australia.
Negotiations with Jordan and Egypt over Jewish and Arab claims to sovereignty in Judea,Samaria, Gaza and East Jerusalem have real prospects of being successfully concluded since:
1. Both Egypt and Jordan have peace agreements with Israel signed in 1979 and 1994 respectively
2. Egypt and Jordan were the last Arab States to occupy Gaza, Judea and Samaria and East Jerusalem between 1948-1967.
3. Arab States are directly in the firing line of Islamic State
If such negotiations fail – they fail – and once again another opportunity to resolve the Jewish-Arab conflict will have slipped through the Arabs’ hands to join many such missed opportunities over the last 95 years.
Certainly preferable to the kind of action you are suggesting.
David,
As you say, if the negotiations fail “they fail”.
How much more Jewish blood will be shed in the process of pursuing another useless negotiating process that will, as sure as night follows day, fail.
Just one example of stupidity reigning supreme, Netanyahu keeps stating that he will maintain the status quo over the Temple Mount, the most prized piece of real estate in all of Judaism, a site where both Jewish Temples once stood, a site that was held briefly in 1967 but given on a platter back to the WAQF to administer. Netanyahu’s policies ensure that Israeli police will continue working for the WAQF in ensuring that the Temple Mount remain “Judenfrei”.
What a great negotiating stance that is when he sits down in talks with Jordan. With a stance like that, he will be regarded as a beggar with his hand out for any tit bit that they may deem fit to throw at him.
Those that criticise me for my supposed gung ho attitude should ask themselves what exactly has Israel accomplished in the last 4 decades of virtually the same policies. I’ll answer my own question, absolutely nothing.
It is time Israel got up off its knees and started acting like a sovereign power in control of its own destiny and if that means taking unilateral action, then so be it.
Gil
You ask:
“How much more Jewish blood will be shed in the process of pursuing another useless negotiating process that will, as sure as night follows day, fail.”
Answer: A lot less Jewish blood than will occur if your proposals are adopted.
You state:
“Netanyahu’s policies ensure that Israeli police will continue working for the WAQF in ensuring that the Temple Mount remain “Judenfrei”.
What a great negotiating stance that is when he sits down in talks with Jordan”.
Reply:
You are obviously unaware of what the Jordan-Israel Peace Treaty has to say on this issue:
“Each Party will provide freedom of access to places of religious and historical significance.
2. In this regard, in accordance with the Washington Declaration, Israel respects the present special role of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan in Muslim Holy shrines in Jerusalem. When negotiations on the permanent status will take place, Israel will give high priority to the Jordanian historic role in these shrines.
3. The Parties will act together to promote interfaith relations among the three monotheistic religions, with the aim of working towards religious understanding, moral commitment, freedom of religious worship, and tolerance and peace.”
You further state:
“Those that criticise me for my supposed gung ho attitude should ask themselves what exactly has Israel accomplished in the last 4 decades of virtually the same policies. I’ll answer my own question, absolutely nothing.”
Reply:
“Absolutely nothing?” – You cannot be taken seriously whilst expressing such an outrageous opinion.
David,
All I can say is that by the many positive responses I receive, my opinions are in fact taken seriously.
In regard to the Temple Mount, this site was Jewish going back at least to the time the first Temple was constructed by King Solomon in 960BCE. No other religious group has any claim whatsoever to this site. The question is, if as Netanyahu claims, a unified Jerusalem is the eternal capital of Israel, how can this be so if right smack in the middle there is a piece of real estate that is not 100% under Israeli/Jewish jurisdiction? If as many would agree that the Temple Mount is holy Jewish property since time immemorial, then the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan nor anyone else has any role to play in its administration. So in this regard, I for one do not respect or acknowledge any special role of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan and these clauses in the Jordan-Israel treaty might just as well be shredded as far as I am concerned. They are another example of utter foolishness that Israel ended up signing without regard to the consequences we see today. If Israel held on to this site after 1967, this issue would no longer be under discussion. In fact, this is where foreign dignitaries would have been escorted to on arrival to Israel, the site of our heritage and not to Yad Vashem, a memorial to our various gravesites.
The final question for everyone to ask themselves is – Is Israel a sovereign nation in control of its own destiny or a geographical land mass where everyone wants authority over this or that piece of the land mass pie?
It’s time Israel got up off its knees and exercised some authority or forever go on with endless chaos and negotiations which will simply lead nowhere.
Gil
If anyone takes your opinion seriously that Israel has achieved “absolutely nothing” in the last four decades then they – like you – have no conception of what Israel has achieved during that time.
I believe the Jordan-Egypt-Israel negotiations have a good chance of achieving some positive successes. I don’t write those negotiations off before the parties have even sat down at the negotiating table. Neither should you.
What you are now advocating is the unilateral termination by Israel of the 1994 peace agreement between Israel and Jordan. Strange view indeed.
You continue to engage in asking ridiculous questions like this:
“The question is, if as Netanyahu claims, a unified Jerusalem is the eternal capital of Israel, how can this be so if right smack in the middle there is a piece of real estate that is not 100% under Israeli/Jewish jurisdiction?”
Ever heard of the UN Headquarters located in New York or diplomatic embassies located everywhere around the World or Julian Assange holing out in the Ecuadorian Embassy bang smack in the middle of London?
Enough with this mindless nonsense.
“Mindless nonsense” !!!!
The Temple Mount was and is Jewish since time immemorial and sharing or handing administrative control of this site to another entity represents a loss of sovereignty, period.
In fact, the victory of 1967 was turned on its head by the one act of relinquishing sovereignty of this site to the WAQF to administer. Unless you don’t know, the same WAQF now denies Jews access to this site and thoroughly rejects any claim or connection that Jews have to this site.
Many would say enough with your mindless nonsense.
Gil
During 400 years of Ottoman rule, 25 years of British Mandate rule and 19 years of Jordanian rule did the Jews have “administrative control” of the Temple Mount?
The UN wanted to internationalize Jerusalem. The Jews agreed at that time.
There is a peace treaty that deals with the issue of Jerusalem and Jews and Arabs will negotiate on Jerusalem in accordance with what was agreed in 1994.
Stop getting carried away and get a grip on yourself.
At least support giving Jordan-Egypt-Israel negotiations a chance and then crow and brag if nothing is achieved.
I cannot understand your wish to bring on a massive backlash of violence and international outcry rather than supporting negotiations with new Arab negotiating partners to replace the thoroughly discredited and racist PLO.
My final post on this is that Israel FINALLY had full control and sovereignty after the 1967 victory and that control was squandered by one foolish act of magnanimity by the victor to the vanquished.
Gil
You continue to respond to my criticism of your claims by raising further issues in order to avoid admitting your earlier errors after they have been pointed out to you.
Whilst you continue to so act I do not intend to play that game.
I’ll never forget Abba Eban’s famous comment after the ’67 war:
“I think that this is the first war in history that on the morrow the victors sued for peace and the vanquished called for unconditional surrender.”
Marta
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