Palestinians threaten America!
When the incoming Trump
Administration spoke about the possibility of moving the US Embassy to
Jerusalem the Palestinians began making threats.
Hamas, the Islamic terror regime
that controls the Gaza Strip, threatened a new upsurge of violence and
terrorism by saying that the move would ”open a new chapter of conflict” and
“add fuel to the fire.”
Nasser al-Kidwa, a close relation
to the deceased Yasser Arafat and a member of Fatah, threatened to downgrade
Palestinian Authority ties with the United States.
Mahmoud Abbas said that his
leadership would declare that the US is no longer a broker in the Middle East
peace process and turn to the United Nations, as if they haven’t already done
this.
Palestinian Authority diplomat
Saeb Erekat said that the Palestine Liberation Organization, an entity that considers
all of Israel as an illegitimate country occupying ‘Palestine,’ would
revoke its 1993 decision to recognize the State of Israel.
This is an empty threat. They
have never accepted the State of Israel. The PLO Charter still contains Article
2 stating that “Palestine, with the boundaries it had during the
British Mandate, is an indivisible territorial unit.” The
British Mandate stated that all of Palestine was to be the National Home of the
Jewish People.
It is the so-called Palestinian entity
that is the fraud here, not the Jewish state.
They are throwing out vacuous
statements of “infringements of international law” and “historic
legitimate rights” when there aren’t any.
Palestinian leaders like Erekat have
a history of saying one thing to the foreign media and something completely
different to their own people.
Threatening violence, Article 9
of the PLO Charter says that “Armed struggle is the only way to liberate
Palestine.”
“Two-state” solution advocates should note that this Article would remain the
core belief of radical Palestinians should Israel be forced to withdraw from
territory and these “Two-State diplomats now insist that the essential heart of
the Jewish People be included in this so-called solution. What is commonly defined as “1967 lines”
behind which Israel must relinquish includes the eastern parts of Jerusalem and
the Old City which contains most of the most important shrines of Judaic
heritage.
Erekat said that all agreements
signed with Israel would be dead should the United States move its embassy to
Jerusalem. Palestinian signatures are apparently meaningless. When Yasser
Arafat signed the Oslo Accords on the White House lawn in 1993 he agreed to renounce
violence. Seven years later he ordered major terror attacks against Israel.
This terrorism, known as the Second Intifada, went on for two years peaking
with the Passover Massacre at Netanya’s Park Hotel when a Palestinian suicide
bomber murdered Jews who had gathered to celebrate the Jewish festival of
deliverance.
Palestinian signatures and
promises are temporary appeasements, convenient pauses until a more favorable
opportunity to eradicate Israel.
Proving this point, Erekat
threatened that the entity he represents would consider all agreements signed
with Israel null and void and that Israel would be responsible for paying all
the salaries of the Arabs in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem. In
other words, he threatened to disband the Palestinian Authority.
This opens up the possibility of
applying alternative and better solutions for Israel and for the local Arabs
than the two-state failure.
Erekat also warned that he would
ask the UN General Assembly to suspend Israel’s membership if the United States
moves its embassy. Erekat may have forgotten that the PLO is a non-member
observer at the UN and cannot ask the UN to do anything.
The United Nations has proven by
it incessant anti-Israel voting that it is at war against the Jewish state. Yet
Israel continues to thrive and develop. It is the Palestinians that threaten
and shrivel and, take note; the Arab world is fed up of them.
Erekat threatened to disband the
Palestinian Authority. The Palestinians should know that this is an opportunity
for Israel and the United States to initiate a move away from the failed
two-state paradigm.
There are a number of feasible
alternative solutions some of which require the dismantling of the Palestinian
Authority and replacing it with something better for the Arab population of the
area. The PA has been a corrupt, undemocratic, violent governing body while the
people under its divided authoritarian rule continue to suffer.
Israel, since its inception, has
known Arab wars and terror. Israel is strong. Israel will not fold under new threats.
If the Palestinian cannot stop
roaring and get back to the negotiation table with a sense of pragmatism that
has been so lacking for decades, the time has come for bold new initiatives
that would allow Israel to withdraw from the diplomatic cul-de-sac in which it
finds itself today.
For this it needs the support of
the United States.
The United States should set a
marker by moving its embassy to Jerusalem because there is justice in it and it
is the right and moral thing to do.
It should acknowledge to the
Palestinians and to a world in denial that without the Jews Jerusalem would not
have been built thousands of years ago and it is their eternal capital.
The Palestinians Arabs should be
told that their stubborn refusal to accept this fact will never bring peace or
a state
The United States should move its
embassy to Jerusalem and tell the Palestinians that any violent rejection of it
would be interpreted as an act of war against the United States.
One more point. The Trump
Administration is filtering citizens of countries that promote terror to prevent
potential terrorists from entering into the United States. The Palestinians have
been at the forefront of inciting and inflicting terrorism for decades. One of
them murdered the US Attorney-General Robert Kennedy in 1968.
Yasser Arafat
ordered the murder the kidnapping and murder of the US Ambassador and his
deputy in Khartoum, Sudan, in 1973. Arafat also ordered the kidnapping, torture
and execution of William Buckley, the CIA station chief in Beirut in 1984.
Other Americans have been killed by Palestinian terrorists.
In 2016, a New York
appeal court threw out a $655 million judgement brought by American victims of
Palestinian terror not because the Palestinian Authority was innocent. On the
contrary, the case was dismissed because the judges claimed an American court
has no jurisdiction over the Palestinian Authority or Fatah.
In other words,
the Palestinians can get away with the murder of Americans if they are targeted
in Jerusalem or elsewhere in Israel.
To now have these people threaten
America and Israel is disgraceful and must not be rewarded by meekness. The
United States should assert its right to work out of Jerusalem where the
Israeli Government is based and it should warn the Palestinians that it would
incur the wrath of the United States if it fails to advance peace or practice
further violence.
Furthermore, Brexit and the
phenomenon of a Trump ascendancy herald the start of a new World Order. We saw signs of change when Britain, who had
voted for the iniquitous UNSC Resolution 2234 that attempted to rob Israel of
the vital Jewish heart of Jerusalem, reverse itself under the looming presence
of a Trump presidency by defending Israel and refusing to sign the anti-Israel
statement at the Paris Conference. This was followed by the UK vetoing an
attempted endorsement by the EU Foreign Ministers.
The Palestinian Authority has
opened a campaign to embarrass the British Government over the Balfour
Declaration which celebrates this year a century of forging the way to the
re-establishment of the National Home of the Jewish People with Jerusalem as
its capital.
As both the United States and
Britain have taken a stand and acknowledged that Jerusalem is the capital of
Israel and an integral part of the Jewish People they have little choice in
honesty and justice but to move their embassies to Jerusalem.
And the Palestinian be damned if
they refuse to accept it.
Barry Shaw is the Senior Associate for Public Diplomacy
at the Israel Institute for Strategic Studies. He is the author of the new
book ‘1917. From Palestine to the
Land of Israel.’ https://www.createspace.com/6830537