Six Major Problems with UN Chief's Statements Promoting a Palestinian State - by Aaron Klein -
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres visited Ramallah on Tuesday, where he made public remarks about the so-called Israeli-Palestinian conflict and key issues related to the region.
Below, in no particular order, are six significant problems with the views and ideology expressed by the UN chief on his visit to the West Bank city.
1 - Guterres promoted the failed so-called two-state solution.
"I want to express very strongly the total commitment of the United Nations but my personal total commitment to do everything for a two-state solution to materialize," he said. "I have said several times there is no Plan B to a two-state solution."
The two-state solution refers to creating a Palestinian state in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and eastern sections of Jerusalem.
Guterres ignored that a central problem with finalizing any two-state solution is that the Palestinian Authority has rejected every single Israeli offer of a state. State offers were made at Camp David in 2000, Taba in 2001, the Annapolis Conference in 2007 and more offers were made in 2008. It was recently reported that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu quietly made another such offer in 2014. In each of these cases, the PA refused generous Israeli offers of statehood and bolted negotiations without counteroffers. There is no evidence to suggest that the Palestinians would accept any future Israeli offer.
2 - Guterres wrongly assumes that there is a Palestinian partner for peace.
Guterres made his remarks today after meeting Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah in Ramallah. The PA would lead any talks aimed at creating a future Palestinian state. However, the PA and its leader, Mahmoud Abbas, support terrorism, incite violence against Israel and routinely promote the delegitimization of the Jewish state.
The Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, a terrorist group responsible for scores of suicide bombings and deadly shooting attacks, is closely aligned with Abbas's Fatah party and is routinely referred to as Fatah's so-called military wing.
Only yesterday, Abbas exclaimed that he would continue official PA payments to convicted terrorists "until my dying day." Earlier this month, it was reported that the PA's 2017 budget for payments to terrorists and their families amounts to about half of all foreign aid the PA expects to receive this year.
Abbas's official PA organs and media outlets routinely glorify murderous terrorists. Breitbart Jerusalem recently reported on a Fatah summer camp named after Dalal Mughrabi, who led the 1978 Coastal Road massacre in which 38 people - including 13 children - were murdered.
3 - A Palestinian state would be at war with Israel and would not advance moderate interests.
The very basis for Guterres's efforts to create a Palestinian state are flawed. There is no significant evidence to suggest that such a state would be moderate and a force against regional radicalism.
The PA's official support for terrorism indicates that a Palestinian state would be an extremist entity in a constant state of war with Israel. This is highlighted by the PA's repeated use of maps that erase Israel and PA propaganda calling for the dismantling of the Jewish state. Today, Breitbart Jerusalem reported on a song featured on a children's program on official PA television calling the entire State of Israel, including major Israeli cities, "my country Palestine."
The ailing 82-year-old Abbas, meanwhile, is unpopular and hasn't held a presidential election since 2005. He is at odds with Hamas and a slew of other radical Palestinian factions that are either outright terrorist groups or support terror ideology. Hamas itself is under threat by the even more extremist Islamic State. There is no known moderate Palestinian leader or political party viewed as capable of taking over the PA. Indeed, there is no known moderate leader in any senior position in the Palestinian arena.
4 - Guterres promoted the falsehood that settlements are an impediment to peace.
Guterres specifically singled out Israeli settlements as an obstacle to peace in his statements in Ramallah today.
Settlements refer to any construction of Jewish homes beyond the so-called 1967 borders, meaning in the West Bank or eastern Jerusalem, including the Old City, which houses the Western Wall, Temple Mount and the ancient Jewish quarter.
The reference to "settlement building" has become so routine that few notice the anti-Semitic undertones of singling out Jewish construction, promoting the concept that Jews should not be allowed to build in certain territories.
The idea that "settlements" are an impediment to peace is contradicted by history. In 1948, even before Israel controlled the areas referred to as "settlements," Arab states formed a coalition and went to war to destroy the newly established state of Israel.
The PA walked away from numerous statehood offers, which would have included the evacuation of major Israeli settlements and the creation of a state in the West Bank and eastern Jerusalem.
If "settlements" were the obstacle, then why did the PA fail to respond to Netanyahu's unprecedented attempts to jump-start negotiations aimed at creating a Palestinian state, including the freezing of Jewish construction in the West Bank and eastern Jerusalem?
5 - Guterres promoted the disputed charge that settlements are "illegal under international law."
United Nations Security Council Resolution 242 calls on Israel to withdraw under a future final-status solution "from territories occupied" as a result of the 1967 Six Day War. The resolution does not call for a withdrawal from "all territories," a designation deliberately left out to ensure Israel's ability to retain some territory for security purposes under a future deal.
The Jewish Virtual Library explains:
The Security Council did not say Israel must withdraw from "all the" territories occupied after the Six-Day War. This was quite deliberate. The Soviet delegate wanted the inclusion of those words and said that their exclusion meant "that part of these territories can remain in Israeli hands." The Arab states pushed for the word "all" to be included, but this was rejected. They nevertheless asserted that they would read the resolution as if it included the word "all." The British ambassador who drafted the approved resolution, Lord Caradon, declared after the vote: "It is only the resolution that will bind us, and we regard its wording as clear."
Also, as the Committee for Accuracy for Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA) pointed out in an email blast, international law does not make Israeli settlements illegal:
CAMERA notes:
Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Conventions, which is relied upon by those who claim the settlements are illegal, does not apply in the case of the West Bank. This is because the West Bank was never under self-rule by a nation that was a party to the Convention, and therefore there is no "partial or total occupation of the territory of a High Contracting Party," as Article 2 of the Convention specifies. Moreover, even if it did apply, by its plain terms, it applies only to forcible transfers, and not to voluntary movement. Therefore, it can't prohibit Jews from choosing to move to areas of great historical and religious significance to them.
6 - Guterres ignored rampant illegal Palestinian construction.
Guterres's statements about Israeli settlements, which Israel maintains are not illegal but disputed, ignores undisputedly rampant illegal Palestinian construction taking place in key areas of eastern Jerusalem.
The illegal Palestinian construction has worked to generate facts on the ground, creating de facto Palestinian neighborhoods inside peripheral Jerusalem that are virtual no-go zones for Israeli civilians. The illegal housing has impacted previous Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. Numerous Israeli-Palestinian peace proposals designated these very areas future Palestinian territory due to the large concentrations of Palestinians living in them.
Lost in the news media coverage of eastern Jerusalem is that major swaths of land there are legally owned by Jews, including at the Atarot Airport and in Qalandia where the plans for the new Jewish homes are centered.
In 2007, this reporter extensively investigated those areas and found Jewish-owned land was utilized to illegally construct Palestinian apartment buildings, a refugee camp and a United Nations school.
I reported at the time:
The properties in question include about 270 acres in the northern Jerusalem neighborhoods of Qalandia and Kfar Akev, located near an old Israeli airport, and about 50 acres in a north Jerusalem suburb known as Shoafat, which is adjacent to the Jewish neighborhood of Pisgat Zeev.
The lands were legally purchased on behalf of JNF using Jewish donations in the early 1900s, immediately after the organization was founded in 1901 with the specific charge of repurchasing and developing the land of Israel for Jewish settlement.
A tour of Qalandiya and Kfar Akev found dozens of Arab apartment complexes, a Palestinian refugee camp and a United Nations school for Palestinians constructed on the land.
I also further reported in 2009 that these de facto Palestinian enclaves in peripheral Jerusalem neighborhoods have become virtual no-go zones for Jewish Israelis due to security concerns. The Jerusalem police confirmed at the time that security arrangements discourage Israeli Jews from entering the neighborhoods. Those security arrangements are still in effect today.
UN chief in Ramallah says no alternative to two-state solution -
During meeting with Palestinian PM, Guterres condemns settlements, calls for all sides to 'avoid forms of incitement'
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said Tuesday a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict remained the only viable option as he made his first visit to the West Bank since taking office.
Guterres spoke after meeting Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah in Ramallah following talks with Israeli leaders on Monday.
"I want to express very strongly [not only] the total commitment of the United Nations but my personal total commitment to do everything for a two-state solution to materialize," he said.
"I have said several times there is no Plan B to a two-state solution."
A two-state solution to the conflict has been endorsed by Israeli and Palestinian leaders for over a decade, but support for the framework has recently been called into question in Jerusalem and Washington.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu heads what is seen as one of the most right-wing government's in Israel's history, and on Monday said his government would not evacuate Israeli settlements in the West Bank, land which the Palestinians see as the basis of their future state.
Some members of Netanyahu's coalition advocate annexing large swaths of the West Bank currently under full Israeli civil and military control, which critics say would make an independent Palestinian state unviable.
US President Donald Trump has said he wants to reach the "ultimate deal," but has not himself spoke out in favor of the two-state solution, saying he could support whatever solution "both parties like," breaking with decades of US support for Palestinian statehood.
Palestinian leaders have continued to express their support for a two-state solution, but a State Department spokeswoman said last week the US did not want to "bias one side over the other" in peace talks by supporting a two-state solution and no mention of it was made in official statements following a meeting last week between White House Senior Adviser Jared Kushner and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.
Guterres on Tuesday said Israeli settlements are an obstacle to peace, while also noting that they are "illegal under international law."
After meeting Netanyahu Monday, he criticized settlements but also said Palestinians must condemn terrorism.
He said on Tuesday that "it is important to create conditions for leaders of all sides to appeal for calm, to avoid forms of incitement, for violence to settle down."
Israeli leaders have said Palestinian incitement against the Jewish state is a key reason why peace efforts have not advanced.
Peace efforts have been at a standstill since a US-led initiative collapsed in 2014.
Following the meeting with Guterres, Hamdallah called on the United Nations to compel Israel to abide by the rules of international law and impose what he said was international justice that has been absent for 70 years, the official Wafa news agency reported.
I Won't Stop Paying Terrorists 'Until My Dying Day' - by Deborah Danan -
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas reportedly told President Donald Trump's senior adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner that he wouldn't stop payments to convicted terrorists "until his dying day," a leading Palestinian newspaper said Monday.
According to the PA-affiliated Al-Quds newspaper, Kushner once again told Abbas in their Thursday meeting in Ramallah that the "pay to slay" program - in which convicted terrorists and their families are paid a monthly stipend, sometimes to the tune of $3,300 - must stop.
The article quoted Gal Berger, an Israeli journalist covering Arab affairs, as saying that "Abbas informed Kushner that he would never stop paying these salaries until his dying day, even if this cost him the presidency."
After his meeting with Kushner, Abbas issued a statement on Facebook confirming the Al-Quds article in which he vowed: "I will never stop [paying] the allowances to the families of the prisoners and released prisoners, even if this costs me my position and my presidency."
"I will pay them until my dying day," he added.
The PA has paid out over $1 billion in terrorist salaries over the past four years.
"Abbas's statements reflect a measure of the Palestinian anger over the focus of the US delegation on this topic and its disregard of core issues such as the two-state solution and the halting of the settlements," Berger said, according to a translation of the article by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI).
Abbas was also reportedly furious at Kushner's reticence in "defin[ing] the borders on the Palestinian state as the 1967 borders." Kushner, the report said, "stressed the impossibility of halting the settlements in the Palestinian territories, since this would lead to the downfall of the Netanyahu government."
However, the White House adviser was said to have shown "some openness" on the idea of the two-state solution, but that ultimately it "would be a matter to be agreed upon by the Israeli and Palestinian sides."
Abbas was also said to have reemphasized his wish that the 2002 Saudi-led Arab Initiative - which calls for a Palestinian state with its capital in eastern Jerusalem - serve as the basis for any future talks.
If U.S. efforts fail, the report said, Abbas will turn to the UN and demand that resolutions against Israel be passed at the UN Security Council, in addition to petitioning the international body to accept "Palestine" as a full member state.
Hamas, Palestinian Front Leaders: Jared Kushner's Mideast Peace Efforts Will Fail - by Ali Waked -
The Trump administration's efforts to secure an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal will fail, members of Hamas and the National Front for the Liberation of Palestine stated in interviews with Breitbart Jerusalem.
The Palestinian spokesmen were responding to last week's visit to the region by a U.S. delegation led by Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law and senior adviser.
Hamas official Husam Badran claimed to Breitbart Jerusalem that, "This administration is like those before it, standing with the Israeli occupation against the national Palestinian project."
"We don't trust or place hope in the American delegation for what's called the Middle East peace process. All these attempts will fail because of the extremist right-wing government in Israel and because of the extremist American administration and its delegates who actually belong to the Israeli occupation and consistently support it," he claimed.
Badran's statements do not comport with reality. Israel has offered the Palestinians a state numerous times, including during U.S.-brokered talks, only for the Palestinian leadership to turn down the successive offers. Badran's Hamas claims the entire state of Israel is "occupied" territory.
Badran, however, warned that, "The only option to deal with Israeli machinations is through resistance in all its forms in order to achieve an independent Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital."
In order to achieve such a state, he said, the Palestinian Authority must "return to national reconciliation and summarize the agreed methods of resistance, since it has been proven that the entire political project has failed."
"Resistance" is a euphemism for terrorism against Israelis.
An official with the National Front for the Liberation of Palestine, meanwhile, blamed the Palestinian Authority for pursuing "illusions" about the possibility of a political solution in meetings with American officials. Kayed al-Goul called on Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to give up the negotiating process and return to the option of achieving national unity.
According to al-Goul, "The American administration is part of the effort to establish the occupation in the region by trying to market a regional initiative at the expense of the Palestinians. There are Arab countries that, under the auspices of the American effort, are trying to normalize their relations with the Israeli occupation, something that the Palestinian factions oppose and we expect the Palestinian Authority to also take a clear stance on the issue."
Al-Goul warned the PA that "the American administration will try to impose regional political deals on it, with the intention of protecting the interests of Israel in the area and in order to create alliances with which Israel will be part as if this country were a friend of the Arab countries and not their enemy."
Al-Goul urged Abbas to end the Palestinian divide, "and to adopt a national strategy and rebuild PLO institutions with the cooperation of the factions led by the Hamas movement with the intent to draft a new national document that includes the political process and supports the full rights of the Palestinian people."
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres: Israel will be more secure if Palestinians have a state - By Herb Keinon -
NOTE: THE LAND BELONGS TO ISRAEL. THIS IS A COVENANT PROMISE FROM GOD. IT DOES NOT BELONG TO ANYONE ELSE....TERRY/PWNW
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called to lift closures around Gaza and for an end to 'Militantism.'
The Palestinians need to unify if they hope to achieve a state, and Israel will enjoy greater security and prosperity when that state comes into existence, UN Secretary- General Antonio Guterres said to separate audiences on Wednesday.
Guterres, on the final day of his three-day visit here - his first as the UN head - crossed over to Gaza at the Erez crossing, where his convoy was met by protesting family members of prisoners in Israeli jails.
He then went to an UNRWA school in Beit Lahiya, where he issued an appeal for Palestinian unity, saying that the division between Ramallah and Gaza "only undermines the cause of the Palestinian people."
Guterres said his dream is of a day when there would be two states - Israel and Palestine - in the Holy Land. To pursue that end, he said, he has appealed for "a credible political process, in order to address the problems that exist and to allow for the two-state solution to be implemented, removing the obstacles on the ground."
At the same time, there needs to be a program of action to improve the living conditions of the Palestinians, he said. It is important to remove the closure on the Gaza Strip, and also important "to avoid the buildup of the 'militantism' that can undermine the confidence between the two peoples."
Guterres, who said he was "deeply impressed by the suffering of the Gaza people in these tragic circumstances," announced the "immediate release of $4 million" to support UN activities inside the Strip.
He declared that what he saw in Gaza was "one of the most dramatic humanitarian crises that I have seen in many years working as a humanitarian in the United Nations."
Before going into the Gaza Strip, Guterres - who received a helicopter tour and security briefing of the border area - met residents in a bomb shelter in nearby Kibbutz Nahal Oz.
Oshrit Sabag told Guterres that "we see a huge amount of money that is used in order to build terrorist tunnels and rockets instead of reconstructing the Gaza Strip." She added, "We think that the people on the other side of the border suffer from Hamas terrorism just as we do."
And Tammy Halevy, a resident of the kibbutz since 1960, said that "over the years, we had a great relationship with the people of Gaza, but today every time a rocket falls in Israel, it is hurting both Israelis and the people of Gaza. So we ask you to help us bring peace."
Later in the day, Jason Greenblatt, the US special representative for international negotiations, also visited Nahal Oz, as part of a tour of the South he took with the coordinator of government activities in the territories, Maj.-Gen. Yoav Mordechai.
Mordechai stressed that it costs an estimated $200,000 to build 1 kilometer of an attack tunnel, money that could go instead to building hospitals and improving the living conditions in the Gaza Strip. "But Hamas's priorities are first the military branches' interests and terrorism, and only then, as a low priority, supporting the civil population," he said.
Greenblatt said, "I again call upon Hamas to return the IDF soldiers, Hadar Goldin and Oren Shaul, who were taken by Hamas, and I call on Hamas to release the Israeli civilians they are holding - Avera Mangistu, Hisham al-Sayed and Jumaa Abu Ghanima."
Guterres went from the South to Beit Hatfutsot - The Museum of the Jewish People in north Tel Aviv, where he said Israel would enjoy greater security and prosperity when Palestinians are living as citizens in their own state.
"These lands are the ancestral homelands of two peoples who both have an undeniable historical and religious bond to it," he said. "Both have a right to live on it as independent, free people as masters of their own fate."
Anyone visiting Israel, he continued, will have no doubt that it has fulfilled the rights and national aspirations of the Jews. "It is now overdue that the Palestinians also fulfill their legitimate rights and national aspirations."
The UN secretary-general said that he remains firm in his belief that a two-state solution is the "only way forward," and that he has and will continue to express disagreement in the face of "unilateral measures and facts on the ground that have or could undermine that solution, including settlement activities, but also continued violence, terrorism and incitement."
Guterres said he was impressed by the families he met in Nahal Oz who expressed a desire for "peace and reconciliation" instead of a "natural feeling of anger." This, he said, was a "fantastic example of solidarity, humanity and tolerance."
Guterres began his speech by condemning antisemitism and the fact that "so many communities where Jews once lived and survived for so many centuries no longer exist, because of countless waves of persecution and genocide."
He said he was ashamed that his own country, Portugal, "is marred by this history."
Guterres called the expulsion of the Jews from Portugal in the 16th century a "hideous crime that caused tremendous suffering." In addition, he added, "it was also a colossally stupid act that deprived Portugal of much of the country's dynamism, and led to long periods of cultural and economic stagnation."
He noted that when he was Portugal's prime minister in the 1990s, parliament revoked the expulsion edict of 1496. "This was an admittedly symbolic act, but the spirit of repentance was genuine," he said.
Guterres said that many of the Jews driven from Portugal moved to the Netherlands and helped build that country into a 17th-century power, until that community - as well - was devastated by the Holocaust.
"As we see again and again, antisemitism tends to come back," and today it remains "disturbingly widespread," the UN chief said. He mentioned the chants in Charlottesville early this month of "The Jews will not replace us" as an example.
And, he added, when he talks about antisemitism he is including "calls for the destruction of Israel."
Israel, he said, is a "member state of the United Nations and bears all the responsibilities and enjoys all the rights of all member states, and therefore must be treated as such."
PLEASE VISIT MY WIFES WEBSITE. SHE RUNS "YOUNG LIVING" WHICH PROVIDES ALL NATURAL OILS THAT CAN BE USED INTERNALLY AND EXTERNALLY INCLUDING A DEFUSER WHICH PUTS AN AMAZING ODOR IN THE AIR. THIS PRODUCT IS SO AMAZING AND KNOW THAT YOU WILL GET YEARS OF ENJOYMENT FROM IT. GOTO HTTP://WWW.YOUNGLIVING.ORG/CDROSES
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.