If You Do Not Give Us Everything, We Cannot Trust You - by Bassam Tawil -
The Palestinians are once again angry -- this time because the Trump administration does not seem to have endorsed their position regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The Palestinians are also angry because they believe that the Trump administration does not want to force Israel to comply with all their demands.
Here is how the Palestinians see it: If you are not with us, then you must be against us. If you do not accept all our demands, then you must be our enemy and we cannot trust you to play the role of an "honest" broker in the conflict with Israel.
Last week, unconfirmed reports once again suggested that the Trump administration has been working on a comprehensive plan for peace in the Middle East. The full details of the plan remain unknown at this time.
However, what is certain -- according to the reports -- is that the plan does not meet all of the Palestinians' demands. In fact, no peace plan -- by Americans or any other party -- would be able to provide the Palestinians with everything for which they are asking.
Palestinian requirements remain as unrealistic as ever. They include, among other things, the demand that millions of Palestinian "refugees" be allowed to enter Israel. Also, the Palestinians want Israel to withdraw to indefensible borders that would bring Hamas and other groups closer to Tel Aviv.
The Palestinian Authority (PA) and its leader, 82-year-old Mahmoud Abbas, now in the twelfth year of his four-year term, continue to insist that they will accept nothing less than a sovereign and independent Palestinian state, with east Jerusalem as its capital, on the entire lands captured by Israel in the 1967 Six Day War.
Most dangerous is that even in the unlikely event that Abbas would sign some deal, another leader can come along later and legitimately say that Abbas had no authority to sign anything as his term had long since expired.
Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist terror group controlling the Gaza Strip, maintains that it will never accept the presence of Israel on "Muslim-owned" land. Hamas wants all the land Israel supposedly "took" in 1948. Translation: Hamas wants the destruction of Israel in order to establish an Islamic Caliphate where non-Muslims would be granted the status of dhimmi ("protected person").
Unlike the Palestinian Authority, Hamas deserves credit for being clear and consistent about its true goal. Since its establishment three decades ago -- and despite recent illusory hopes expressed by Western pundits -- Hamas has refused to change its ideology or soften its policy. It resolutely sticks to its stance that no Muslim is entitled to give up any part of Muslim-owned lands to non-Muslims (in this instance, Jews. The same held true for "cleansing" Turkey of Armenian and Greek non-Muslims).
The Janus-faced Palestinian Authority, on the other hand, continues to speak in multiple voices, sending conflicting messages both to its people and the international community. No one really knows whether the PA has a clear and unified strategy in dealing with Israel.
Mahmoud Abbas knows how to sound extremely nice, and often does so when he meets with Israelis and Western leaders. But when he speaks in Arabic to his own people, sometimes it is hard to distinguish Abbas from Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh.
US President Donald Trump talks with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas on May 23, 2017 in Bethlehem. (Photo by PPO via Getty Images)
Some of Abbas's top officials sound even more extreme than Hamas. Except, of course, when these soft-spoken, Western-educated Palestinian officials are dispatched to talk to Westerners. Then, all of a sudden, comes the honey.
Because the Palestinian Authority leaders and their surrogates speak in more than one voice, they send conflicting messages to the world about their actual intentions, often managing to fool everyone. Too often the world believes the messages they want to hear instead of the less-comfortable real ones.
The Palestinian Authority's contradictory messages have created the impression that it is both a peace partner and an enemy -- depending on whom you heard and when you heard him.
One thing is clear: from the Palestinian angle, there is no love lost between the US and them. From their point of view -- and this is a point of view that they have held for an exhaustingly long time -- the US is unable to play an unbiased role as a mediator in the conflict with Israel. What eats at the Palestinians is the strong and strategic alliance between the US and Israel.
The Palestinians have accused every US administration over the past four or five decades of being "biased" in favor of Israel. The Palestinians would certainly like to see the hundreds of millions of dollars in financial aid every year they receive from the US continue. Yet, no matter what the US does for the Palestinians, the Americans will always be denounced for their alleged bias in favor of Israel.
The Trump administration is about to receive a lesson in Palestinian politics. If and when the Trump administration makes public its peace plan, the Palestinians will be the first to reject it, simply because it does not meet all their demands.
Mahmoud Abbas knows that he cannot come back to his people with anything less than what he has promised his people: 100%.
The past few days have already given us indications of the Palestinian response. Here, for instance, is what Abbas's spokesman, Nabil Abu Rudaineh, had to say when he was asked to comment on reports concerning the peace plan and the US threat to close down the PLO's diplomatic mission in Washington: "The American administration has lost its ability to play the role of mediator in the region. The US can no longer be seen as the sponsor of the peace process."
Abu Rudaineh's remarks were rather more restrained than comments concerning the Trump administration made by other Palestinian officials and factions.
The PLO's chief negotiator, Saeb Erekat, went as far as threatening that the Palestinians would suspend all communication with the US if the PLO's diplomatic mission is shuttered.
Of course, no one seems to take Erekat's threat seriously. Suspending contacts with the US is tantamount to suicide for the Palestinians. Without US financial and political support, the Palestinian Authority and Erekat would disappear from the scene within days. At this stage, it remains unclear whether Erekat's talk about suspending contacts with the Americans includes the refusal to accept US financial aid.
Yet, Erekat's threats should be seen in the context of growing Palestinian rage and hostility toward the Trump administration. This anger is now being translated into a rhetorical onslaught against Trump and his administration. Palestinians are now accusing the current administration of working and conspiring towards "liquidating" the Palestinian cause with the help of some Arab countries, including Saudi Arabia and Egypt.
The Palestinians have made up their mind: the Trump peace plan is bad for us and we will not accept it. The plan is bad because it does not force Israel to give the Palestinians everything. For the Palestinians, the plan is bad because it is viewed as part of a conspiracy concocted by Jared Kushner and Saudi Arabia's crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman. The Palestinians have convinced themselves that Trump wants to "liquidate" their cause, not solve it.
Trump is about to go through the same process that President Bill Clinton experienced at Camp David 17 years ago. Then, much to the astonishment of Clinton, Yasser Arafat turned down flat an astoundingly generous offer by then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak. Trump will soon learn that for Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinians, 99% is just not enough.
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OUR WORLD: Holding the PLO accountable - Caroline B. Glick - http://www.jpost.com/printarticle.aspx?id=514751
The PLO's campaign to get recognized as a state breached both of its agreements with Israel and the terms under which the US recognized it and permitted it to operate missions on US soil.
Is the PLO's long vacation from accountability coming to an end? How about the State Department's? In 1987 the US State Department placed the PLO on its list of foreign terrorist organizations. The PLO was removed from the list in 1994, following the initiation of its peace process with Israel in 1993.
As part of the Clinton administration's efforts to conclude a long-term peace deal between the PLO and Israel, in 1994 then president Bill Clinton signed an executive order waiving enforcement of laws that barred the PLO and its front groups from operating in the US. His move enabled the PLO to open a mission in Washington.
In 2010, then president Barack Obama upgraded the mission's status to the level of "Delegation General." The move was seen as a signal that the Obama administration supported moves by the PLO to initiate recognition of the "State of Palestine" by European governments and international bodies.
Whereas Obama's PLO upgrade was legally dubious, the PLO's campaign to get recognized as a state breached both of its agreements with Israel and the terms under which the US recognized it and permitted it to operate missions on US soil.
The operation of the PLO's missions in the US was contingent on periodic certification by the secretary of state that the PLO was not engaged in terrorism, including incitement of terrorism, was not encouraging the boycott of Israel and was not seeking to bypass its bilateral negotiations with Israel in order to achieve either diplomatic recognition or statehood. Under Obama, the State Department refused to acknowledge the PLO's breach of all the conditions of US recognition.
Angry at the administration's facilitation of PLO breaches, in 2015 Congress mandated stricter and more precise conditions for continued operation of the PLO's mission in Washington. Starting in 2016, the PLO was explicitly banned from advocating the prosecution of Israelis by the International Criminal Court. In 2015 the PLO joined the ICC with the explicit purpose of advocating the prosecution of Israelis. And in conformance with this purpose, in his speech before the UN General Assembly in September 2017, PLO/PA chief Mahmoud Abbas called for the ICC to prosecute Israelis for building communities in Judea and Samaria.
Given his experience with US administrations since Clinton, Abbas had every reason to believe that he would suffer no repercussions for his statement. No US administration had ever called the PLO/PA to account for its open breach of the terms of US recognition. So it isn't surprising that Abbas and his advisers were utterly shocked when on Friday, US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson sent a letter to the PLO mission in Washington informing PLO envoy Husam Zomlot that he could not renew certification of PLO compliance with US law in light of Abbas's statement in September.
The only way for the mission to remain in place is if President Donald Trump certifies within 90 days that the PLO is engaged in "direct, meaningful negotiations with Israel."
One of the primary functions of the PLO mission in Washington is to promote and fund the boycott movement against Israel - in contravention of the terms of its operation and the terms of its agreements with Israel.
In written testimony to the House Foreign Affairs subcommittee on the Middle East and North Africa in February, Jonathan Schanzer of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies revealed that the mission is "said to be actively promoting campus BDS [boycott, divestment and sanctions] activity in the US."
"PLO operatives in Washington, DC," Schanzer said, "are reportedly involved in coordinating the activities of Palestinian students in the US who receive funds from the PLO to engage in BDS activism. This, of course, suggests that the BDS movement is not a grassroots activist movement, but rather one that is heavily influenced by PLO-sponsored persons."
In April 2016, Schanzer informed Congress that the PLO consulate in Chicago is a major funder of the BDS campus group Students for Justice in Palestine. The chairman of the US Coalition to Boycott Israel, which among other things funds BDS, is Ghassan Barakat, an official at the PLO's Chicago consulate. His colleague, Senan Shaqdeh, is a member of the coalition. Shaqdeh also claims to be the founder of Students for Justice in Palestine, the antisemitic BDS group that operates on campuses throughout the US.
As Schanzer noted, in 2014 Shaqdeh traveled to Ramallah to meet with Abbas and PA Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah.
Aside from the fact that the US has refused to hold the PLO accountable for its actions for a quarter century, the PLO has another good reason to be shocked by Tillerson's letter: the US consulate in Jerusalem operates as almost a mirror to the PLO mission in Washington.
The US consulate in Jerusalem has the same status as an embassy. Like the US ambassador in Tel Aviv, the US consul general in Jerusalem reports directly to the State Department. He is not accredited to Israel. His area of operations includes Jerusalem and its environs within and beyond the 1949 armistice lines, including Beit Shemesh, Mevasseret Zion, Judea and Samaria.
Israeli citizens who live within the consulate's area of operations are not permitted to receive consular and visa services from the embassy in Tel Aviv. Among the hundreds of thousands of Israeli Jews that are required to receive US consular services from the consulate rather than the embassy are tens of thousands of Jewish dual nationals.
And yet, as Yisrael Medad has exhaustively documented, the Jerusalem consulate maintains an effective boycott of both these dual nationals and Israeli nationals who live in its area of operation. All of the consulate's activities for US citizens are directed specifically and openly toward "Palestinian residents of Jerusalem and the West Bank."
Consul General Donald Blome similarly directs all of his efforts toward reaching out to the Palestinians, ignoring as a regular practice the millions of Jews who live in his area of responsibility.
The consulate also openly rejects the notion that Israel and Jews have ties to its area of operations. For instance, Blome went on a hike around Judea and Samaria in July where he effectively erased the Jewish heritage sites in the areas. The consulate echoed UNESCO's Jew-free version of the history of the land of Israel in a press release that celebrated his walk along the "Masar Ibrahim Al-Khalil" trail in celebration of "the connection of the people with the land." Jews were not mentioned in the press release. And the historical name of the route he took is "Abraham's path."
Scholarships to study in the US and jobs listed on the website are open to "Palestinian residents of Jerusalem and the West Bank."
In other words, while the PLO missions are pushing the BDS agenda in the US, the US consulate in Jerusalem is implementing it on the ground in Israel.
Tillerson's letter to the PLO mission on Friday came two weeks before Trump will have to decide whether or not to sign a related waiver. On December 1, Trump will either allow the 1995 Jerusalem Embassy Act to come into force or he will sign a waiver postponing the embassy move for yet another six months.
In a congressional hearing on the issue of moving the embassy to Jerusalem on November 8, Rep. Ron DeSantis said that transfer of the embassy may be delayed due to the Trump administration's "efforts to pursue a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs."
DeSantis argued that until the embassy is moved the Trump administration should take "incremental steps" that move it toward the goal.
Among the steps he advocated, DeSantis said "the American consulates in Jerusalem should report to the American embassy in Israel, not directly to the State Department."
Tillerson's letter to Zomlot was shocking because it represented the first time since 1993 that the PLO has been held accountable for its actions. The time has come for the State Department, too, to be held accountable for its behavior. And the best way to start this process is to follow DeSantis's advice, subordinate the US consulates in Jerusalem to the US ambassador and end their boycott of Jews - US citizens and non-citizens - who live in the Jerusalem area, in Judea and Samaria.
Trump peace proposal will seek regional deal, won't set timetable - By Raphael Ahren -
Channel 2 says administration wants to bring Arab states to table, thinks Abbas is 'serious,' will not impose terms. US, in response, says no imminent intention to unveil its plan
US President Donald Trump's administration will shortly unveil a formal proposal for Middle East peace that aims to enable a "comprehensive regional arrangement," but that will not be imposed on the sides, and that will not feature a rigid timetable, Israel's Channel 2 news reported on Sunday evening.
The proposal has been drawn up on the basis that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is a credible leader who genuinely seeks a permanent accord, the report said, quoting unnamed sources in the Trump administration.
The sources said that, were that not the case, the Trump peace team would not have spent so much time on the issue.
The TV report said the US proposal would be aimed at bringing Arab states to the peace table with Israel, and that its components would be open to negotiation by all sides.
Such an approach would apparently represent a departure from previous US peace efforts, which focused primarily on Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has argued repeatedly that progress on the Palestinian front can be best achieved in the wider context of warming Israeli ties with Arab states.
President Donald Trump's administration aims to act quickly and efficiently to advance the goal of a comprehensive regional deal, but will not impose an "artificial timetable" and will not seek to impose terms, the TV report said. Again, the absence of a timetable would mark an adjusted US approach.
Contacted by The Times of Israel, an administration official said the US was continuing its peace efforts but had no immediate plans to present a proposal.
"It would be more newsworthy if we weren't working towards an enduring peace. We are engaged in a productive dialogue with all relevant parties about an enduring peace deal but are not going to put an artificial deadline on anything. We have no imminent plans beyond continuing our conversations. As we have always said, our job is to facilitate a deal that works for both the Israelis and Palestinians, not to impose anything on them," the official said.
Administration officials have in the past made plain that a proposal will be put forward at some point in the near future, and that the administration will discuss its specifics at that time.
The TV report said administration officials have revealed aspects of the proposal to Democratic politicians. An unnamed Democratic source was quoted saying that the Trump officials promised the Democrats that they would be "pleased" with the approach.
The TV report said the administration was highly aware of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's security concerns.
It said that Netanyahu has told his ministers that Trump is a businessman and that he would likely demand a price from those who say no to him. For that reason, Netanyahu prefers at this stage not to argue with the president, it further quoted the prime minister as saying.
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