Palestinians Win Their ‘Venomous’ Status Upgrade at the UN
The Palestinian Authority was finally successful today in its attempt to achieve nonmember observer state status, provoking criticism from both sides of the aisle on Capitol Hill and especially vociferous outcry from embattled UN Ambassador Susan Rice.
The vote was 138 in favor and nine opposed, with 41 abstentions; Norway even tweeted a photo of its representative voting yes. The “no” votes came from Canada, Czech Republic, Palau, Nauru, Micronesia, Marshall Islands, Panama, the U.S., and Israel.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office slammed as “defamatory and venomous” a 22-minute speech by Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas in which the PLO leader said the “rope of patience is shortening and hope is withering” as the international community faced “the last chance to save the two-state solution.”
Abbas said the Palestinians would accept “no less than the independence of the state of Palestine with East Jerusalem as its capital” yet vowed to act “responsibly” if the General Assembly granted its new status.
“I have a simple message for those people gathered in the General Assembly today: No decision by the UN can break the 4,000-year-old bond between the people of Israel and the land of Israel,” Netanyahu said before the vote.
Rice seemed to be moving to make up ground lost in her potential nomination for secretary of State as she made the rounds on Capitol Hill this week.
“Today’s grand pronouncements will soon fade. And the Palestinian people will wake up tomorrow and find that little about their lives has changed, save that the prospects of a durable peace have only receded,” she said at the UN. “…Progress toward a just and lasting two-state solution cannot be made by pressing a green voting button here in this hall. Nor does passing any resolution create a state where none indeed exists or change the reality on the ground.”
“For this reason, today’s vote should not be misconstrued by any as constituting eligibility for UN membership. It does not. This resolution does not establish that Palestine is a state,” Rice added.
Rice then tweeted multiple bits of the speech. “Today’s unfortunate & counterproductive resolution places further obstacles in the path to peace. The U.S. therefore voted against it,” she said.
One of her biggest critics on the Hill, though, was joining hands with Democrats to take concrete punitive action against the UN vote.
“Granting United Nations membership to the Palestinian Authority is a nightmare in the making for the peace process,” tweeted Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.).
Earlier in the day, Graham held a press conference with Sens. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), and Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) to introduce legislation that would force the closure of the PLO’s office in Washington unless Palestinians have entered into “meaningful” negotiations with Israel.
It also would eliminate American foreign assistance to the Palestinian Authority if the International Criminal Court adjudicates any matter proposed or supported by the Palestinians. The PA is expected to use its new status to attempt to go after Israel in the ICC.
“We are committed to using every means at our disposal to ensure that this UN vote does not serve as a precedent for elevating the status of the PLO in other UN bodies or international forums,” Schumer said.
“We will not use American taxpayer dollars to support a Palestinian entity whose primary goal, if they file a complaint in the ICC, is to marginalize the Jewish state rather than live in peace with the people of Israel,” Graham said.
“We will not stand idly by and allow the Palestinians to evade the peace process by pressing their political cause through alternate means and we will not provide financial support, or political support in the form of offices in the U.S., if the Palestinians aren’t serious about pursuing real peace through real negotiations,” said Menendez. “The choice is theirs.”
The bill comes on the heels of an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act introduced yesterday by Barrasso, along with Sens. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), and Mike Lee (R-Utah), that would cut 50 percent of the total U.S. funds to the PA and also to any UN entity that grants the Palestinians a status change. It also cuts all U.S. foreign assistance to any country voting for the status change by 20 percent.
“The Palestinian Authority’s attempt to change their United Nations’ status is a purely political maneuver that will circumvent direct peace process negotiations with Israel,” Barrasso said. “If the Palestinians move forward with this irresponsible plan, they will violate international agreements, undermine the peace process and threaten the security of our ally.”
House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairwoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.) echoed the sentiment that there should be consequences for today’s UN move.
“Abu Mazen, instead of condemning the Gaza rocket fire and negotiating with Israel for lasting peace, spent the past week congratulating Hamas for its efforts to murder Israeli civilians, while offering condolences for Hamas’s ‘martyrs.’ Now the UN’s vote to grant de facto UN recognition of a non-existent Palestinian state has pushed peace with Israel even further away,” she said.
“It’s crystal clear that Abu Mazen and his cronies are not partners for peace and do not value their relationship with the U.S. The U.S must stand with our ally Israel and offer no U.S. taxpayer dollars and no political support for the PLO,” Ros-Lehtinen continued. “As other UN bodies will no doubt use General Assembly resolution as an excuse to grant membership to a non-existent Palestinian state, U.S. law is clear: UN agencies that grant membership to a Palestinian state lose their U.S. funding. If the administration again seeks to gut U.S. law and keep funding those reckless UN agencies, Congress’ response must be simple: No.”
The White House didn’t issue comment after the vote.
“They’ve declared the state twice before. There’s no Palestinian state today,” Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren said on CNN. “…If they move forward against us in an aggressive way, trying to declare Israeli soldiers, say, as war criminals, we’re going to have to defend ourselves, just the way defend ourselves against Hamas rockets a few days ago. But again, if they’re willing to sit down with us, we will talk to them.”
Jewish groups reacted swiftly to the move and Abbas’ violation of the Oslo Accords.
“In requesting this action, PLO Chairman Mahmoud Abbas is effectively turning his back on talks with Israel and destroying his credibility as someone genuinely interested in a serious peace process,” AIPAC said in a statement. “Instead, Abbas has reinforced the message he sent in a May 2011 New York Times op-ed that he intends to widen the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by pursuing claims against Israel before international bodies that can neither bring peace nor well-being to his people.”
The Simon Wiesenthal Center summed up today’s action as Abbas showing “he never misses an opportunity to miss an opportunity for peace.”
“Today’s vote in the UN has nothing to do with reality. Peace in the Middle East will only come when the Palestinians sit down with the Israelis and negotiate,” said Rabbi Marvin Hier. “There is no other way to achieve peace in the Middle East.”
The Center announced a new initiative in coming weeks to counter the “Big Lie” — that the Jewish people are intruders in their own land.
But the National Jewish Democratic Council tried to use today’s vote as proof of their assertion that Obama moving away from Israel is just a big lie.
“Those who cried ‘wolf’ about an alleged radical change in the U.S.-Israel relationship during President Obama’s second term need to do some serious reflecting on the events of November 2012 and give the reelected pro-Israel President of the United States the thanks and respect that he is due,” NJDC Chairman Marc R. Stanley said.
this world is seriously messed up.
why wont western countries leave the UN …they are the only ones funding it.
Maybe now you will all understand that the Palestinians are playing a cynical game and the gullible UN is a joke who’s usefulness has long past and a hindrance to commonsense, lets not forget 138 countries that went along on this ride.
Anonymous, NOT only are you correct, but the fact of the matter is that a terror/genocidal state fits in very well, in the UN halls of disrepute. Their amen chorus also dovetails with international jackals, obsessed with deconstructing Israel – piece by piece.
But few ask the most salient question: requirements for statehood are very clear. The ‘people’ must have unique, ‘separate’ qualifications and with all the attendant, legal trappings. There is no need to repeat all these requirements, however, straight from the horses’s mouth is a good place to start.
In other words, over many years, some notable Arab leaders have spilled the beans, yet EVERYONE refuses to take them at their word. Most historically adept people know about them too.
YET – http://adinakutnicki.com/2012/09/27/another-arab-leader-spills-the-beans-the-palestinians-as-a-separate-people-do-not-exist-adina-kutnicki/
So, aside from the fact that a terror/genocidal state is disqualified – at least in a civilized world – for statehood, then how about the facts stated above?
Schumer is right and this IS an end around. It’s as if the Japanese in 1945 ignored the U.S. and appealed to the world to undercut the American position. Had the American position at that time had been one of negotiation, it would have meant what actually happened.
Similarly, to ignore their own part in the history of conflict in the British Mandate through to 1948 and until today, the PA essentially wants their poker chips back after having lost them all. While I commiserate with the seemingly eternal status of having a boot on their necks, the PA would have long since had a nation if they would simply give up their endemic hostility towards Israel, egged on by their neighbors and which ignores the fact you simply cannot undo history, no matter how right you think you are.
The ICC is worthless in terms of its jurisdiction, which is an illusion. It is backed up by raw force and no one can inflict that on an atomic armed Israel.
You cannot have a nation on Israel’s borders that has not grown up enough to resolve the source of their hostility and at least come to some kind of realization of their true bargaining position which is non-existent. The U.N. won’t change that with declarations.
Give up the fight PA. It’s over, and it’s been over a long time. When an NFL team is behind by 48 points in the fourth quarter, you can’t appeal to the NFL commissioner’s office. Give up violence, give up the rhetoric, just give it up. Tenochtitlan and Constantinople aren’t coming back so a country that never existed in the first place certainly isn’t going to.
The vote was 138 in favour and nine opposed, with 41 abstentions.
This is democracy,it also shows that you can make progress without violence and politics can work.
If it is so pointless and a stupid act,why the anger towards those who support it?
Mags, Mags, Mags, you are probably of the opinion that prior agreements, when they are inconvenient can be dismissed unilaterally. How absolutely post-modern of you or Medieval or Marxist, or all of the foregoing. Law is for the peons, but really important people can do as they wish. I certainly would not wish to be married to you, nor be one of your children. I would hazard a guess that you will simply abandon your parents when they get too old to offer you any useful services. The concept of trust is really so bourgeois.
What? Can you put a cohesive sentence together to make your point,hopefully without
referring to my extended family and possibly including the issue being discussed.
Mags…the Palestinian authority violated its agreement reached with Israel in Camp David. Therefore under any legal interpretation Israel is no longer bound by any agreement reached with the above mentioned entity.
This just killed any chance for a peaceful solution.
Sorry should have said Oslo instead of camp David above.
Somewhere people got the idea that literally anything you can get a majority vote on is good and right and should immediately become binding because it’s “the will of the people.”
Sort of nine cannibals voting to eat the tenth.
yes it is democracy in the vain of mob rule.
democracy without checks and balances is just a method of electing dictators. which you seem to think is just fine.
good day fool
Two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch.
At least the majority voted for the final entree.
41 nations abstaining = 41 wet fingers in the air = 41 new enemies. It’s now open season on the US, not just Israel. Rice and the State Dep’t are the front line of defense.
And the band played on…
A majority of undemocratic rulers is democracy?
Without violence? The PA is Fatah, which got where it is by murdering innocent civilians, not to mention two American diplomats?
I’m sorry, is there a state? Are there borders?
It is clear that the PA has violated the Oslo Accords in that no unilateral changes of status were to be permitted. All parties had to agree. The PA now has two choices: 1)Voluntarily withdraw from their new status at the UN to reinstate Oslo or 2) accept that Israel now has the right to make unilateral changes to the status quo.
Unfortunately, until the matter of Iran and its nuclear weapons is resolved, there will be no changes that Israel will wish impose on the Palestinians for their overreaching. The first business at hand is Iran and the needed American support for any such efforts.
It is all a fraud. There is no “Two-State” solution because, a) the “Palestinian” terror dons have no interest in it (murdering Jews is what they do, why would they put themselves out of business? — and what the hell else could they do for a living?); and b) the massive Arab-Muslim caucus, together with their Leftist allies in Europe and American, who LIKEWISE do not desire any sort of “national” accountability on the part of their most favorite of all international VICTIMS of blah blah blah.
If “Palestine” were to become a bona-fide UN-authorized state tomorrow morning? THEN what? Of course that cannot be allowed to happen if you are a friend of Islam.
Not since the Third Reich has such a country existed.
Tuttle you will find that no such Country or State called Palestine exists now nor has there ever been a Country or State called Palestine. The term ‘Palestinian’ was INVENTED by Yasser Arafat, an Egyptian ARAB, in the 60′s. The UK and France were given the Palestine REGION as a Mandate after WW1. The formed TWO Mohammedan Invader States Syria and Trans Jordan then in 1948 Israel on a portion of the Mandate far SMALLER than had been expected and far SMALLER than historical Israel. The ‘Palestinians’ were ORDERED by the ARABS to vacate their homes and land is Israel so the ARAB armies could wipe Israel off the map. But we all know what happened to these Arab armies don’t we. ‘Palestinians’ are mainly Jordanian ARABS descendants of the 7th Century Mohammedan ARAB INVADERS nothing more nothing less. The Jews are the ‘true’ indigenous people.
The “Nations United” against the United States and the civilized world in general have simply become a circular, self-feeding group of individually insignificant entities which together have morphed into a very troublesome bloc of fractious basket cases……having no redeeming characteristics. None. They’re leeches.
In this sense, these mainly artificially contrived nations, witness the Sykes-Picot Agreement and the Mandates created at the end of the First World War and various Protectorates and such, have all been nourished at some point with American cash infusions.
The impotence of the current governments of France and Britain to contribute anything meaningful to the solving or even amelioration of the massive interlocking problems they’ve created and perpetrated during Colonialism and it’s post WWII collapse means that, as usual, the automatic expectation was, is, and will remain, that the Treasury of The United States has the “obligation” to set things right. The World-wide ingratitude for the support of the United States spread around our planet since 1917 is as irritating as it is indicative of the ultimate shallowness of international relations.
The sensible move for us Americans now with our own severe financial problems is simply stop dropping our cash into this sucking vortex, and look after our own interests.
The seeds were created by the League of Nations, these have metastasized now into the ogre called the United Nations, culminating in the “news of today” which we read in the form of this faux “Palestinian” definition-debate. It is the summation of our folly.
Let’s leave this basket of crabs to claw each other. There’s simply nothing we can do.
So tomorrow the government of Palestine will meet with the government of Israel. They will figure out borders and all of those pesky details about water, energy, transportation and trade.
No worries.
We need to promote fundamental American interests-not those of tribal religious haters in the Levant.
Enough is enough
We need to nation building at home in the USA-the Levant is irrelevant
Time to focus upon what is important-the US economy
Umm not really. If we pull out of the region, it’s not like Islamism and terrorism will leave us alone. Like it or not, they’ve drafted us into a fight against them. If Israel falls, we’ll be next, whether you choose the fight or not.
In essence the UN has just voted not only for the destruction of Israel but for the death of all Jews because that is exactly what ISLAM, HAMAS, Hezbollah, Iran and now Egypt too, is all about.
Islam is a ‘Hate and Death’ CULT its bloodlust is such that when they have killed all the Jews and converted or Dhimmified all the Kaffirs they will turn on each other. The 1400 year old Sunni/Shia schism is evidence of this and Sunni’s and Shia’s are killing each other on a daily basis all over the world to this day. Events in Syria, Lebanon, Jordan Iraq, Pakistan Iran, Saudi Arabia are testament to this
On the Quran, al-Razi said: You claim that the evidentiary miracle is present and available, namely, the Koran. You say: “Whoever denies it, let him produce a similar one.” Indeed, we shall produce a thousand similar, from the works of rhetoricians, eloquent speakers and valiant poets, which are more appropriately phrased and state the issues more succinctly. They convey the meaning better and their rhymed prose is in better meter. … By God what you say astonishes us! You are talking about a work which recounts ancient myths, and which at the same time is full of contradictions and does not contain any useful information or explanation. Then you say: “Produce something like it”?!”
Winston Churchill on Islam
‘How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live. A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property – either as a child, a wife, or a concubine – must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men.”
Why we can never be Muslims or brainwashed Left Wing Islamophile moonbats come to that.
We like to have an alcoholic drink.
We like to live in a land of freedom where one religion cannot dictate what we do.
We like to be able to go see a good movie.
We like to be able to listen to good music of our choosing.
We like to choose our personal beliefs. We like to live in a democracy.
We like to be able to argue about any subject we choose.
We like to get educated without the influence of religious dogma.
We like to think independently.
We like to treat our women with respect.
We like to wipe our ass without instructions from a religious book.
We like to work all day without regard to having to pray.
We like to eat the foods that taste good without regard to religious dogma.
We like to go to the beach and get sunburned.
We like to think that the sun does not set in a muddy pond.
We like science that totally refutes a 7th Century mad man’s ideas.
We like to explore and expand knowledge regardless of what God has told us in some ancient text.
We would like to live in a world where religious fanatics leave us alone.
We like not being condemned to hell by some religious fanatics.
We like being able to work in a skyscraper without fear of religious fanatics flying jetliners into it and killing us.
We like freedom of speech where we can tell the religious fanatics that they are stupid.
We like freedom of the press where we get the news as fact instead of through a religious filter.
Did I say we like freedom?
You made my day!
This is not a fight over land its a fight against extermination for the Jews and the land issue is just a convenient issue to obscure the true aims of Muslims and to allow gullible, naive, half educated left wing moonbats the Lame Stream EneMedia and Western Politicians to hide behind to save exposing their real ANTISEMITIC selves.
Pragmatist said it all. I’d like to add, the US should, for its own sake leave the UN immediately, and in so doing cease the financing of this organization. It should also declare the closure of its headquarter in NYC and to all UN diplomats in US territory revoke the diplomatic status and declare them persona non grata.
If the UN would like to continue its useless function, they are welcome to do so in any country of the world, except the US. I guess there will be many countries following the US step…
(I’m well aware it is wishful thinking…for the time being)
There is no chance of the US leaving the UN. That the UN headquarters is in New York makes it a major source of intelligence data. Period.
That the US may be more simpatico with the philosophy of the UN and world government makes it more unlikely that we will leave the institution of hate.
I am amazed at myself and my shallow thinking that I cannot comprehend or fully appreciate the wide range of moral judgments that are possible by members of the august UN, not unlike the various world cuisines that were not part of my childhood upbringing. No doubt now in post-modern times that “Death to the Infidel” stands on a par with “Love thy Neighbor”.
Abbas and the PA have outlived their usefulness. If Bibi hopes to retain his position,he will have to ignore the US and punish the PA ( withold money, prevent workers from coming in etc) or else look impotent right before the election. Although many state that the electoral math favors the right, it is better to have a strong Likud with a few coalition partners than a multiheaded hydra with several egomaniacs demanding their bribes. Remember how Shas screwed him over in 1996.
As for the statehood bid, lets face it, the only reason anyone professes love and support for the Palestinians is because they hate the Jews and the Palestinians have been eager and foolish tools to be expended in that war.
Bibi authorized construction of 3000 new homes in Jerusalem, with the promise of more to come.
Rick,1389AD,General P. Malaise,some of my best friends.
If the 138 countries had opposed the issue,would that count as mob rule?
A state of Palestine has already been recognised by 132 countries, and the Palestinians have embassies and representative offices across the world
France, Italy, Spain, Switzerland, Sweden and Ireland, as well as Japan and New Zealand are among the countries that backed entry to U.N. The U.K abstained,so that makes us an enemy of the U.S?
I will send your regards to the families of the soldiers that have been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.
To believe this makes us the same as a dictatorship is absurd considering the amount of dictatorships the U.S does support
If Americans want to punish France over this,some advice.Changing the name of French fries to ‘Freedom fries’ made no sense.
French comes from the word frenched-a way to cut a potato,it has nothing to do with France.
You might as well call for a boycott of Turkey by not eating turkey.It made as much sense as that.
So a peaceful act will stand in the way of a peaceful solution,but Israels aggressive expanding settlements and occupation does not?
Where did all the libertarians go?
The Two – State Solution is 87 Years Old
By Victor Sharpe
In 1920, Great Britain was given the responsibility by the League of Nations to oversee the Mandate over the geographical territory known as Palestine with the express intention of reconstituting within its territory a Jewish National Home.
The territory in question stretched from the Mediterranean Sea to the eastern boundary of Mandatory Palestine, which was a border that would separate it from what was to become the future state of Iraq.
The League of Nations created a number of articles, which were in line with the original intent of the Balfour Declaration of November 29th, 1917. At the last minute, however, a new article was introduced by the British Colonial Office: article number 25.
At first the sudden addition of this article was not a cause for alarm but gradually it became apparent that its inclusion directly enabled Great Britain in 1921 to tear away all the territory of geographical Palestine, east of the River Jordan, and give it to the Arab Hashemite family; the territory to become Trans-Jordan and led by the emir Abdullah.
Britain presented this gift to Abdullah, the son of the Sherif of Mecca, as a consolation prize for its awarding of the Hedjaz territory and Arabia, which included Mecca, to the rival Saud family: That vast territory is now Saudi Arabia.
British officials also claimed that the gift of Mandatory Palestine east of the Jordan River was in gratitude to the Hashemites for their contribution in helping defeat the Turks. However, even T.S. Lawrence later described in derisory terms the Hashemite role as “a side show of a side show.”
This was the first partition of Palestine and created a brand new entity 87 years ago covering some 35,000 square miles or nearly four-fifths of the geographical territory of Palestine. Immediately Jewish residence in the territory was forbidden and it became in effect judenrein – the German term for the ethnic cleansing of Jews from a territory.
This betrayal by none other than Winston Churchill, the Colonial Secretary at the time, was a devastating blow to the Jewish and Zionist leadership, which now saw the promised Jewish homeland reduced to the remaining narrow territory between the Mediterranean Sea and the River Jordan – an area barely 50 miles at its widest.
Shortly after, in 1923, the British and French colonial powers also divided up the northern part of the Palestine Mandate. Britain stripped away the Golan Heights (ancient biblical Bashan) and gave it to French occupied Syria.
The Balfour Declaration issued by Lord Balfour, British Foreign Secretary, never envisaged that the Jordan River would be the eastern boundary of the reconstituted Jewish homeland. Indeed, the Zionist leadership had put forward in February 1919 its first submission that the eastern boundary would run well east of the Hedjaz railway. The incorporation of the railway would be an economically essential requirement for the Jewish community living east of the River Jordan as well as providing it with vital security.
The squabbling by the French and British colonial powers over the final frontiers of the Palestine Mandate had earlier led the London Times to urge Paris to accept sensible and rational frontiers in both the north and east of Jewish Palestine. As early as September 19th, 1919 it had thundered in an editorial:
“The Jordan will not do as the eastern frontier of Palestine … Palestine must have a good military frontier east of Jordan … Our duty as Mandatory is to make Jewish Palestine not a struggling state but one that is capable of vigorous and independent life … ”
But Jewish aspirations inevitably were dashed as a new British Foreign Secretary, Lord Curzon, took the place of Lord Balfour. This new British official within weeks of succeeding Balfour made it clear that Britain was intent upon separating Transjordan from Palestine: the first two-state solution.
The succeeding history of the remaining one fifth of the original territory promised to the Jewish people by Lord Balfour and the British government was one of continuing British betrayal as each successive Mandatory administration displayed pro-Arab and anti-Jewish policies.
During its administration up until 1947, Britain severely restricted Jewish immigration and purchases of land while turning a blind eye to massive illegal Arab immigration into the territory from neighboring Arab states.
Britain’s sorry record of appeasement of the Arabs, at the expense of Jewish destiny in the remaining territory, culminated in the infamous 1939 White Paper, which limited Jewish immigration to just 75,000 souls for the next five years. This onerous and draconian policy, coming as it did on the eve of the outbreak of World War 2, was a death blow to millions of Jews attempting to flee extermination by Nazi Germany.
Britain’s mismanagement of the Mandate finally led to the United Nation’s Partition Plan of 1947. The Jewish Agency reluctantly accepted this additional dismemberment of what was left in Mandatory Palestine of the promised Jewish National Home.
They did this in order to provide a refuge for the surviving Jewish remnants of the Holocaust and for the growing numbers of Jewish refugees being driven out of their homes throughout the Arab world. In contrast, the Arab regimes rejected the Partition Plan. Then, as now, they worked against the existence of an independent Jewish state.
Israel was officially re-born as a sovereign nation in 1948 and its 600,000 Jews fought to survive the massive Arab onslaught, which was intended to wipe out the Jewish state.
In 1948, Trans-Jordan, renamed the Kingdom of Jordan since 1946, had joined the other Arab nations in invading the Jewish state, illegally annexing the Biblical and ancestral Jewish heartland of Judea and Samaria and renaming it the West Bank. Only Britain and Pakistan recognized the annexation.
The war ended in tortuous armistice lines resulting in an Israeli border a mere nine miles wide at the most densely populated area, which stretched from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordanian occupied West Bank. Israel’s late Foreign Minister, Abba Eban, described these dangerously vulnerable armistice lines as the Auschwitz borders.
Nineteen years later the Arab states declared again their imminent intention to destroy Israel. In the June 1967 Six Day War Israel liberated Judea and Samaria from Jordan in a defensive war. Israel offered to give away the newly liberated West Bank to the Hashemite regime in Jordan and the Gaza Strip to its erstwhile Egyptian occupiers in return for a full and lasting peace. But the Arab League, meeting in Khartoum in August, 1967, delivered the infamous three No’s: No peace with Israel, no negotiations with Israel, no recognition of Israel.
[b]It is within the narrow territory remaining for the Jewish state, if one includes Judea and Samaria, that the world now demands the establishment of yet another Arab state. Hamas controlled Gaza would be included in this future state to be called Palestine; a state which has never existed before by that name in all of recorded history – certainly not as an independent Arab state.
Gaza has already been given to the Arabs and they have turned it into a terror base from which they have launched a lethal missile blitz against Israel numbering to date over 10,000 rockets.
Israeli leaders should never have accepted even one missile fired from Gaza at its citizens in southern Israel. To let thousands fall with relative impunity for so many years led the world to believe that it was acceptable. After all, if Israel wasn’t interested in safeguarding its own civilians, why then should the world be. It was accepted as business as usual.
[/b]
The Gaza War thus came as a surprise to the world community and, just as the Second Lebanon War, it was launched by Israeli leaders too late and ended too soon, leaving both Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon free to wreak future havoc upon the Jewish state.
The disputed West Bank, which is the ancient biblical heartland of Israel, is now the territory U.S. Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, is pressuring Israel to give away to the Arabs who call themselves Palestinians. This is the present day so-called two – state solution and will dismember what is left of Israel and drive some 250,000 Jewish residents from their homes and farms. Why? Because just as in Jordan, Jews will not be permitted to live within Arab territory, while Arabs can remain free to live within Israel.
It is instructive to remember that upon the granting of the Palestine Mandate to Great Britain, an eminent British celebrity and supporter of Zionism, Josiah Wedgwood, addressed a Jewish crowd of thousands at the Royal Albert Hall in London in which he urged the audience to stand up for Jewish rights in its homeland.
According to the late Shmuel Katz in his groundbreaking biography of the great Zionist leader, Vladimir Ze’ev Jabotinsky, titled The Lone Wolf, Wedgwood said:
“… This lesson I want the new Jewish nation to learn and to get by heart: Stand up for your rights. Let us have more of the spirit in the Jewish movement of my good and gallant friend Jabotinsky.”
Sadly, Israeli governments have become notoriously fearful of rejecting outright the deadly trap inherent in the so called two-state solution. Their muted responses have merely encouraged world leaders to repeatedly breathe new life into the discredited plan. The searing tragedy is that the two-state solution may presage for the Jewish people another Final Solution.
Perhaps the Secretary of State prefers to remain oblivious to the stark fact that the Arabs, whom she embraces and who today call themselves Palestinians, are as committed as their parents and grandparents before them to destroy the Jewish state; whatever size or shape its borders. The fact is that this is not a dispute over borders; this is a religious war and the Arabs, so long as the overwhelming majority remain Muslim, will never accept the existence of a non-Muslim state in territory previously conquered in the name of Allah -whatever the size or shape of its borders.
Only just recently, Muhammad Dahlan, speaking on behalf of Fatah and the Palestinian Authority, declared on PA TV that the PA will not recognize Israel — one of the primary demands made upon the Palestinian Arabs in the Oslo Peace Accords. Indeed, Dahlan admitted that the only reason they meet with Israelis at all is in order to continue receiving the immense flow of international funds.
Is Ms. Clinton aware of this Arab charade? Or does she dismiss it and care not for the absence of a sincere and honest Palestinian Arab peace partner and the inevitable plight of the quarter of a million plus Jewish residents who will become displaced refugees by enacting the next two-state solution. Perhaps she cares little for the resulting takeover of Judea and Samaria by Hamas and the inevitable missile blitz that will be launched by the Palestinian Arabs upon the rest of Israel.
Incidentally, what irony when the homes of Peace Now members living in Tel Aviv become daily targets of missiles launched from the very areas they campaign for their fellow Jews to be expelled from.
One wonders if Secretary Clinton knows that eighty seven years ago an original two-state solution was enacted in infamy. If she does, it is unlikely that she cares – anymore than the rest of the Obama Administration or State Department cares.
And what of those Jewish Americans who serve the Secretary and sadly will be in the forefront of destroying Jewish patrimony in the Land of Israel. Will they have a conscience or feel shame for the calamity they create? I think not.
Victor Sharpe is a freelance writer and author of Politicide: The attempted murder of the Jewish State.