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→ 3 July 2020
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No peace until Jewish presence accepted | Stuff

Mahmoud Abbas has refused to allow elections since 2006

In 2018 I visited Ramallah with two colleagues. In an unanticipated conversation on a street very near Yasser Arafat’s tomb, a friendly and engaging Palestinian lawyer explained to us that their leaders were like gangs, they were corrupt and ‘monopolise the money’. He complained that they do not care about human rights but are only interested in blaming Israel. In this Palestinian’s view, Israel was not the problem – but rather the corrupt and self-serving Palestinian leadership.

It is not uncommon to view the Israel-Palestinian conflict as a power battle, with Israel as the dominant power and the Palestinians as the victims. However, this type of analysis ignores realities on the ground and twists historical facts to suit a political agenda.

A more useful exercise, which might bring real change for Palestinians, would be to consider the power relations within Palestinian society. Why have there been no elections in the Palestinian Territories since 2006? Why does Gaza’s Hamas devote untold resources to terrorism rather than building a state? Where do the millions of dollars of international aid go?

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→ 29 June 2020
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Can Palestinian Despair Lead to an End of Conflict? | Jewish Journal

Mahmoud Abbas

The great English novelist George Eliot once wrote: “But what we call our despair is often only the painful eagerness of unfed hope.”

Recent days have seen the release of two very interesting polls on Palestinian attitudes regarding a myriad of issues regarding the conflict with Israel, especially relating to the anticipated application of Israeli sovereignty to parts of Judea and Samaria.

Both polls, one conducted by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PSR) and the other by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, paint a picture of Palestinian despair.

According to the PSR survey, a large plurality of Palestinian respondents do not think that Jordan, Egypt or Europe will take any meaningful steps against Israel in response to its application of sovereignty, while 78 percent do not expect Arab countries in the Gulf to end normalization measures with Israel.

Furthermore, very high percentages of Palestinians believe the consequences of the Israeli application of sovereignty beyond the Green Line, the armistice line created by Jordanian and Israeli negotiators in 1949, will be dire for them.

Seventy-three percent say they are worried that people will not be able to travel from the Gaza Strip to the West Bank or Israel for medical treatment, while 70 percent are worried that they will soon witness shortages or a complete cut-off of supplies of water and electricity from Israel. Sixty-five percent are worried that armed clashes will erupt with Israel. Another 65 percent are worried that the Palestinian Authority will collapse or fail to deliver services. Finally, 63 percent are worried that security chaos and anarchy will return to Palestinian life.

These results demonstrate a population in despair.

The Washington Institute’s surveys have been taking the pulse of Palestinian society for ten years now. In the past six years, Palestinian acceptance of the principle of “two states for two peoples—the Palestinian people and the Jewish people,” has massively eroded. In 2014 43 percent of the Palestinian population definitely or probably accepted this international standard for an end to the conflict, while today only nine percent do. A full 67 percent of the Palestinian population definitely reject this formula for a resolution to the long-standing conflict.

Taken together, these surveys actually might offer a glimmer of hope to those who wish to see the conflict finally ended.

Historically, wars and conflicts have ended when one side gives up and understands it will not be able to achieve its war aims.

HISTORICALLY, WARS AND CONFLICTS HAVE ENDED WHEN ONE SIDE GIVES UP AND UNDERSTANDS IT WILL NOT BE ABLE TO ACHIEVE ITS WAR AIMS.

The Israel-Palestinian conflict began in earnest over a century ago, before there was one Israeli foot in Judea and Samaria and even before the State of Israel was established in 1948.

The bloody conflict began in the early part of the 20th century when the Jewish people’s national liberation movement began to pick up momentum and achieve international legal, diplomatic and political successes. The Palestinian leadership reacted with a strategy of violent rejectionism and upheld a maximalist position that it would not countenance any reestablishment of sovereignty in the indigenous and ancestral land of the Jewish people.

The conflict was not about land because the Jews had none, and not about power and control because the Jews remained a largely subjugated and marginalized community, as opposed to the Arab community which had direct access to the colonial powers, whether Ottoman or British.

Unfortunately, violent Arab rejectionism to the Jewish people’s legal, historical and moral right to return as a state among the family of nations did not abate with time or reality. While a Palestinian state was offered on the vast majority of all of the territory of Mandatory Palestine in 1937 and by the international community in 1947, the reaction was more violence and rejection.

THE PALESTINIAN LEADERSHIP HAS CONTINUED TO REJECT ANY PEACEFUL RESOLUTION TO THE CONFLICT, AS LONG AS THEIR GOALS REMAIN INTACT.

In recent years, as opposed to the strongly held views of many in the West, the Palestinian leadership has continued to reject any peaceful resolution to the conflict, as long as their goals remain intact.

In 2001 and 2008, successive Israeli prime ministers offered a Palestinian state in all, or almost all, of the West Bank and Gaza, as well as a division of Jerusalem and control of the holy sites. These overly generous offers were rejected out of hand, even though they constituted full Israeli agreement to almost every ostensible Palestinian demand.

However, in 2008, Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas gave an indication as to what the conflict was really about when he walked away from negotiations, even as the offer sat on the proverbial table, because he would have to sign end-of-claims and end-of-conflict clauses in any final status agreement.

In other words, this was never about territory, borders, settlements or Jerusalem. It was about recognizing the permanence of the State of Israel as the national homeland of the Jewish People.

In 2014, Abbas said he would in “no way” ever recognize Israel as a Jewish state.

It is clear that this absolutist position has influenced a steadily increasing rejectionism among his population in the intervening years, as the poll by the Washington Institute indicates. Palestinians have demonstrated that they would rather not have a state than have to recognize the right of the Jewish people to a state.

This obviously means that there is little hope for the “two states for two peoples” formula, used by every president, both Democrat and Republican, for decades, to end the conflict.

This was true when Israel made generous offers and when it made substantial concessions, like disengaging from Gaza, freezing the building of settlements and releasing Palestinian terrorists from its prisons.

However, perhaps despair will succeed where promise and compromise failed.

PERHAPS THE IDEA OF ISRAEL APPLYING ITS SOVEREIGNTY TO TERRITORY THAT THE PALESTINIANS HAVE LONG SEEN AS THEIRS WILL FINALLY BREAK THEIR WILL TO CONTINUE FIGHTING, TO VIOLENTLY RESIST A PEACEFUL RESOLUTION TO THE CONFLICT, AND FINALLY BRING THEM BACK TO NEGOTIATIONS.

Perhaps the idea of Israel applying its sovereignty to territory that the Palestinians have long seen as theirs will finally break their will to continue fighting, to violently resist a peaceful resolution to the conflict, and finally bring them back to negotiations.

As Eliot noted, despair can be the painful eagerness of unfed hope. It might be time to feed this hope through a prism of despair that finally convinces the Palestinians that the end of the conflict is in their best interests and that the longer they continue to resist it, the more painful the process will be.

Nave Dromi is an Israeli commentator and director of the Middle East Forum’s Israel office.

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→ 27 June 2020
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Does Israel train America’s police forces? | Spectator

Show me who you lie about and I’ll tell you what you are. The big lie in this, our season of historical illiteracy and gratuitous destruction, is that the Jews are responsible for police killings of black Americans. How? The racist police of Amerikkka are trained by the Zionists.

That’s right. America has no history of violence against blacks and no history of anti-black policing. In the new blood libel, America was one big interracial paradise before the Jews taught Derek Chauvin to put his knee on George Floyd’s neck.

‘Israel security forces are training American cops despite history of rights abuses,’ tweeted Charlotte Greensit in 2017. Greensit, an editor at the left-conspiracist website the Intercept, was promoting a demi-literate promotion of this conspiracy theory by Alice Speri. Greensit is now the managing editor of the New York Times’s opinion page. As she slithered up the greasy pole, Greensit deleted thousands of old tweets, this one included. But the snail-trail of slander is quite clear, and not at all new.

As soon as the Ferguson, Missouri protests began in August 2014, the slogan ‘Ferguson is Palestine’ appeared on the placards. When the Movement for Black Lives, a group affiliated with Black Lives Matter, promulgated a common platform in August 2016, its only foreign policy was that Israel must be shunned and destroyed as an ‘apartheid state’ that commits ‘genocide’ against the Palestinians. Another big lie.

In the same month, Amnesty USA claimed that ‘hundreds’ of American law enforcement officials from many states had received ‘training on crowd control, use of force and surveillance’ from Israel’s ‘national police, military and intelligence services’. That’s not true.

Amnesty’s claims are routinely cited as fact by the hard left and radical black identity groups. Its report and the libel it fosters have filtered into outlets as varied as the the British communist newspaper the Morning Star, the Washington Post and the website of the New York Review of Books.

‘The Israeli military trains US police in racist and repressive policing tactics, which systematically targets Black and Brown bodies,’ tweeted the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights, which rejects Israel’s existence, in late May.

This is also inaccurate. As Amnesty itself admitted, the programs that took American officers to Israel were for ‘police chiefs, assistant chiefs, and captains’. Amnesty’s report contained no evidence that American officers received any information, let alone ‘training’, from their Israeli peers on relevant matters such as the militarising of the American police, targeting minorities for traffic stops and minor violations, or using deadly force in routine encounters.

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→ 25 June 2020
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Israel could annex parts of the West Bank on July 1. Here’s what you need to know. | JTA

Israeli PM Netanyahu and Speaker of the Knesset, Gantz

While the world has had its attention fixed on the George Floyd protests and the ongoing threat of COVID-19, a political development with monumental implications has been brewing in the Middle East: Israel’s potential annexation of parts of the West Bank.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promised his supporters during multiple election campaigns last year that he would make areas outside of the country’s borders part of the state.

Now his chance is fast approaching. The terms of a government coalition deal he struck with political rival Benny Gantz allow Netanyahu to put annexation to a government vote as early as July 1. The pair reportedly differ over details, but the U.S. ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, is trying to broker an agreement.

What happens with annexation has potentially steep stakes for Israel’s relationship with the United States, with its allies in Europe and beyond, and with American Jews. Some of the country’s fiercest supporters oppose Netanyahu’s annexation push.

The opposition and other factors complicate the chances of annexation happening on July 1, but the possibility remains on the table. So here’s what you need to know before that important date.

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→ 25 June 2020
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Progressive Jews hail NZ censure of Israeli annexation | J-Link

NZFOI: Hmmm….

PRESS RELEASE

THURSDAY, 25 JUNE 2020

J-LINK AOTEAROA, a group of New Zealand Jews, welcomed Aotearoa-New Zealand’s condemnation of Israel’s illegal plan to annex up to one third of the occupied West Bank in flagrant breach of international law.

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“The Aotearoa-New Zealand government has courageously followed its sponsorship of the 2016 UN Security Council resolution declaring Israel’s West Bank settlements illegal with a powerful statement condemning the planned annexation,” J-LINK spokeswoman Dr. Margalit Toledano.

“Israel is attempting to do this in breach of the Geneva Convention and United Nations international rights while the world’s attention is diverted by Covid19 and Black Lives Matter.

“Jews around the world know this is wrong, illegal and a prescription for bloodshed.”

“The world condemned Russia’s annexation of Crimea and it should damn this equally aggressive action.”

Foreign Affairs Minister Hon Winston Peters today called on Israel to reconsider its illegal plan. He said annexation would gravely undermine the two-state solution, breach international law, and pose significant risks to regional security.

J-LINK, an international network of Jewish organisations committed to democracy and peace, says annexation plans would lead to permanent Israeli military control over millions of Palestinians while denying them basic civil and political rights. It would put an end to Israel’s democracy and kill any hope for a Two state solution and peace in the Middle East.

“This new land grab will intensify the undemocratic and inhumane reality of Israeli’s 53-year occupation of whatever is left of the Palestinian territory. It is prescription for a violent conflict and bloodshed.” Dr Toledano said

Fifty Jewish organisations from all over the world signed J-LINK’s appeal to the Israeli government to take the annexation plan off the Israeli government agenda.

J-Link Aotearoa calls on all democratic countries to follow Aotearoa-New Zealand’s lead against Israel’s illegal plan.

J-LINK Aotearoa is part of J-LINK, an international network of Jewish organisations committed to democracy and peace.

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→ 12 June 2020
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In the eyes of the Palestinians: What do the annexes think about the annexation? | News 13

Netanyahu explains Annexation Plan

The Authority makes a lot of threats towards the application of sovereignty. However, in many cases the street level thinks differently – and some would rather want to get rid of its rule.

“It is better than a million times for Israel to be responsible for the whole area”

When the question of what the Palestinians think is, there is a gap between the will of the people and the statements made by its leaders. It could be seen for two decades – during Arafat, what he also wanted the people to want, but for the current PA chairman, Abu Mazen, is something else. He says one thing and the people want something else and are not afraid to say it.

When the Palestinian Authority wanted to burn the area, citizens wanted work permits in Israel, and when the United States moved the embassy to Jerusalem, the Palestinians promised a wave of violence and the public chose not to take to the streets.

One of the Palestinians who wrote News 13 met with him said: “I am from the village of Jeba. I want the villagers to be happy. They are subject to the authority today and they want Netanyahu and no one else, they want an Israeli identity card.” The realization that there is an opportunity to get another life out of the gut brings out talk they once heard only inside the houses.

According to another resident of the Occupied Territories, “It is better than a million times for Israel to be responsible for the entire territory. We are prepared to be under Israeli military shoes and not under Abu Mazen’s head.”

A meeting with a Palestinian businessman explained the will of the people from another angle: “I do not want a state – I want money. Money is better than a state. All the Palestinian people want it. The authority has looted us and destroyed us.”

Again, this gaping chasm between the PA and its leaders and the people who, after 25 years, understand that Palestinian sovereignty has not really improved their lives. The dream on the way to the country is also stuck in the middle. The question is what will be heard in a month, the voice of the PA leaders or the voice of the people who totally think otherwise?

Source: Zvi Yehezkeli (9 June 2020). In the Eyes of the Palestinians. Channel 13 News. https://13news.co.il/item/news/politics/state-policy/in-the-eyes-of-the-palestinians-1075194/. Accessed 11 June 2020. Translated.

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→ 9 June 2020
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The Holy Six day War | Arutz Sheva

NZFOI: June 2020 marks the 53rd anniversary of the Six Day War when for the second time, Israel’s Arab neighbours illegally invaded the country in order to destroy it.

During the annual Yom HaAzmaut celebration at Yeshivat Mercaz HaRav in Jerusalem, some three weeks before the Six Day War, the Rosh Yeshiva, HaRav Tzvi Yehuda HaKohen Kook, gave a powerful and prophetic speech to the students and gathered guests, describing his initial anguished reaction when he had heard the news, some twenty years previously, that the United Nations had voted to partition the Land of Israel in approving the creation of a truncating Jewish State. While joyous Israelis danced outside on the streets, he sat at home, stunned by the announcement that the Inheritance of Hashem and Jerusalem had been cut into pieces and divided. Raising his voice, he shouted, “THEY DIVIDED OUR LAND!” Everyone in the hall was silent. “AND WHERE IS OUR HEVRON? AND OUR SHECHEM? WHERE IS EVERY METER OF THE LAND WHICH HASHEM BEQUEATHED TO US ALONE?! HAVE WE FORGOTTEN THAT ALL OF THE LAND IS OURS?!”

One of the yeshiva’s students, the late HaRav Yehuda Hazani wrote down his teacher’s words. “Yehuda had a phenomenal memory,” his wife, Hannah, told the Jewish Press. “After he made a neat copy of his scribbled writing, he showed it to HaRav Tzvi Yehuda for final editing and then arranged for its publication in the HaTzofet newspaper. At the time, no one in the country spoke about our returning to Judea and Samaria, nor about capturing the Temple Mount. The idea was like science fiction. Then, three weeks later, it came true.”

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→ 9 June 2020
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Israel hits “emergency brake” on reopening as coronavirus cases rise | CNN

Israel will “hit the emergency brake” on its reopening plans as the number of coronavirus cases rises sharply, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Monday during a meeting of the coronavirus cabinet.

“There has been a very steep increase in morbidity. It could be that we are already seeing the doubling of the rate of infection within ten days. I very much hope not, ” Netanyahu said during the meeting.

For the past eight days, Israel has seen approximately 100 new infections a day, up from approximately 20 new infections a day a week earlier.

According to the Ministry of Health, 298 people have now died as a result of coronavirus in Israel.

Netanyahu said that Israel would freeze further reopening measures that were supposed to take place in the coming days, reevaluating the situation in one week.

Though schools, malls, and restaurants reopened under certain health restrictions, the resumption of train service and the reopening of theaters, music halls, and other cultural venues will now be delayed.

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→ 1 June 2020
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EU having second thoughts over hostility towards Israel and annexation? | Melanie Phillips

Netanyahu explains Annexation Plan

Has the European Union reached a tipping point over Israel? Or to be more precise, is the Europeans’ bluff finally to be called over Israel’s proposal to extend its sovereignty over parts of Judea and Samaria?

The E.U. has been mulling over punitive measures against Israel if it goes ahead with what its western critics call “annexation of the occupied territories of the West Bank.”

A number of member states, headed by France along with Spain, Italy, the Netherlands, Ireland, Sweden, Denmark, Poland, Belgium and Luxembourg are calling for a hard line.

Measures being considered include supporting any U.N. moves against “annexation”; public support of proceedings against Israel currently underway in the International Criminal Court at The Hague; and increasing the boycott of settlements in various ways, along with increased financial support for the Palestinians.

The E.U. and Britain maintain that Israel is illegally occupying the disputed territories, and that its settlements there amount to a transfer of population into those lands in contravention of the Geneva Convention.

This is a serious misreading of international law. Israel is not “occupying” these territories. In law, occupation can only occur if the land belongs to a sovereign power, which was never the case here; and a state can also hold onto land which continues to be used for belligerent purposes against it.

It is also a gross misreading of the Geneva Convention, as the Israelis living in these territories were not transferred but moved there entirely of their own volition.

The animus against Israel by both the E.U. and Britain is of long standing. Let’s rephrase that: the animus against Israel by the European and British political class and intelligentsia is of long standing.

For although the E.U. and Britain condemn Israel for “illegal occupation,” fail to defend it against the malice of the United Nations and endorse the meretricious rulings against it at the European Court of Justice, they are nevertheless trading with Israel at ever-increasing levels as well as depending heavily upon it for crucial military and intelligence support.

So while defaming Israel in the court of world opinion, they have been simultaneously milking its genius for their own benefit. They want to hurt it — but not enough to hurt themselves.

Their hostility is the product of three factors: historic and ineradicable anti-Jewish prejudice; the pathological inability to deal with collective guilt over the Holocaust; and the perception that their interests have for decades lain with the Arab world.

Now, though, something more interesting has been occurring to undermine this collective animus.

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→ 8 May 2020
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Incitement amidst cooperation | AIR

Abdul Azim Salhab

By all accounts, cooperation between the Palestinian Authority (PA) and the Israeli government and military to deal with the coronavirus crisis has been very good. Amos Harel, the veteran military correspondent and defence analyst for Israel’s Haaretz newspaper recently wrote that “Cooperation with the Palestinians is at its tightest ever.”

This is all the more notable because as recently as February, Israeli-Palestinian relations seemed to be unprecedently precarious. In the wake of the release of the Trump Administration’s peace plan in late January, PA President Mahmoud Abbas promised to withdraw all cooperation with Israel, including the vital security cooperation. While similar threats had been made before, this time Palestinian anger seemed more palpable and serious. Israeli government plans to annex the Jordan valley or other parts of the West Bank, as the peace plan allowed, looked set to deepen the crisis in relations. 

Now, that is all gone. No one is talking about the Trump plan or annexations. Coronavirus has swept all such issues aside, as the two sides seek to manage the pandemic which threatens both Israelis and Palestinians who live intermixed with each other. There is even reportedly an Israeli-Palestinian “joint operations room” to oversee the shared response to the pandemic threat. 

Amid the pandemic doom and gloom, this at least is good news, right?

Yes. However… why is it that even in this shared medical emergency the PA cannot stop its official media from engaging in ongoing incitement against Israel?

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