The Last Exile

I have not done any ‘fun with Lieberman’ posts in a while so it is probably long past the time for one. Israel’s Foreign Minister has gotten into hot water for saying what a great many of us only say in our head.

It would be a blessing if Palestinian Authority Mahmoud Abbas quit his position, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman told reporters in Jerusalem on Monday, adding that the PA president is a hurdle to peace.
“It is Abu Mazen [Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas] who is the stumbling block to peace and not the settlements,” he said. Lieberman added it would be a blessing and not a threat if Abbas were to quit. He explained that there are many other Western-trained Palestinians who could replace him. (Jpost)

And count on a spokesman from that bastion of liberal democracy to come to the defense of Mahmoud Abbas.

BETHLEHEM (Ma’an) — Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman’s remarks Monday calling for President Mahmoud Abbas’ resignation were “deeply troubling,” said UN spokesman Richard Miron.

Miron, spokesman for UN special envoy for the peace process Robert Serry, told Ma’an that Lieberman’s statement “appears to be an attempt to delegitimize President Abbas.” …Miron criticized Lieberman’s “inflammatory remarks,” adding that such statements “undermine trust at a time when the Quartet is working towards the resumption of negotiations.” (Ma’an News Agency)

Of course, what Miron fails to acknowledge, is that any legitimacy to office Abbas held -expired three years ago on January 9, 2009 when his term of elected office ended. Today, Abbas is just another version of Arafat. In fact, both only allowed one election within the Palestinian Authority before they assumed the mantle of leader for life.

I realize it is fashionable for the Euroweanies to align themselves with Palestinian ’causes’ but when the Palestinians represent a direct perversion of your organizations core values; it is an act of moral treason to vote them into your organization with the status of ‘partner for Democracy’.

The Jerusalem Post:

The Palestinians on Tuesday welcomed as “historic” a decision by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe [PACE] to grant the PLO’s parliament-in-exile, the Palestinian National Council [PNC], the status of “Partner for Democracy.” The new status, which is reserved for parliamentarians from countries neighboring the Council of Europe, enables members of the PNC to speak before the PACE assembly and most of its committees.

The Iranians are far more deserving of partnership status than the Palestinians, and at least the Iranians do regularly hold elections – even if the fix is in. Meanwhile the Palestinians are lead by a man whose term of office expired over two years ago and who has post-poned elections – indefinitely.

Never ends in the West Bank:

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas announced on Monday that he has decided to delay the local elections for a third time, without setting a new date. Palestinian democracy has been crippled since the Islamic militant Hamas violently overran Gaza Strip in 2007, forming a rival government to President Abbas’ West Bank-based Palestinian Authority. (Ynet News)

From Palestinian Media Watch comes this Palestinian Authority TV documentary which recently aired on August 10th.

“They [Israelis] know for certain that our [Palestinian] roots are deeper than their false history. We, from the balcony of our home, look out over [Islamic] holiness and on sin and filth (Jews’ praying at Western Wall) in an area that used to have [Arab] people and homes. We are drawing our new maps. When they [Israelis] disappear from the picture, like a forgotten chapter in the pages of our city’s history, we will build it anew (residential area). The Mughrabi Quarter will be built here (on the Western Wall Plaza).

The television network of the so-called ‘moderate’ Palestinians. Now according to a certain blogger of my acquaintance, accusing the Palestinians of “anti-Semitism or racism, is a stretch. To put it mildly.” For some strange reason ’stretch’ isn’t the word which comes to mind when I think Palestinian anti-Semitism. As rampant as Jewish anti-Semitism has been for centuries within the Arab world; what I find far more disturbing is those who enable Palestinian racism and prejudice by giving it a complete pass.

Update: Since Dr. Dawg just can’t seem to get it. Maybe a picture of the handiwork of the people he works so hard to provide moral cover will help him get it.

The NY Times is carrying an op-ed of Mustafa Barghouthi wherein he argues that the time has come for the Palestinian Authority to declare unilateral statehood based on the entirety of the lands captured by the Israelis in the Six Days War.

The only way to save the two-state solution is for the Palestinians to declare the establishment of an independent Palestinian state on the territories occupied by Israel in 1967, including East Jerusalem, and to demand that the world community recognize it and its borders — as it did in the case of Kosovo.

That would also mean supporting the right of Palestinians to struggle nonviolently to end the occupation of their state. Any future negotiations, therefore, would not be about the right of the Palestinians to have their own sovereign independent state, but rather about how to apply and implement that right.

This would be the true test of the state-building strategy of the United States and the donor community. It would be the real instrument to finally demarcate the difference between support for free Palestinian institutions in a sovereign and viable state, or footing the bill of occupation and using E.U. and U.S. tax dollars to maintain under various guises what will never amount to anything but an apartheid system denying Palestinians their human and national rights.

If the world community turns its back on such a declaration of independence by using the well-worn and insulting argument that every step should first be verified with the Israeli government, then the message will be clear: Peace based on two states is no longer an option.

There is a distinct aspect to this kind of airy-fairy-pie-in-the-sky-quality to Barghouthi’s unilateral declaration of statehood which I find particularly intriguing – if only for the complete and utter disregard he holds for the nearly half a million Israelis who currently live (and often work) within the disputed territories. Any unilateral declarations of statehood the Palestinian Authority make which fails to account for or take proper notice and/or consideration for this group – needs to have their ideas summarily dismissed outright and not published in the NY Times.

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu offered to extend the building freeze in the disputed territories. Arutz Sheva:

“If the Palestinian leadership will unequivocally say to its people that it recognizes Israel as the national state of the Jewish people, I will be ready to convene my Cabinet and ask for another moratorium on building,” Netanyahu told the Knesset at the opening of its winter session. “Just as the Palestinians expect us to recognize their state, we expect reciprocal treatment.”

He said that a clear statement by Abbas on the Jewish character of Israel “would create wide-ranging trust among the Israeli people, who have lost trust in the Palestinian will for peace over the last 10 years.”

He reminded legislators that the 10-month freeze that expired three weeks ago was designed to meet Abbas’ condition for sitting down with Israel for face-to-face discussions on the proposed new Arab country within Israel’s current borders and to be headed by the PA.

“The Palestinians wasted 10 months and now they demand to continue the [settlement] freeze]. I hope their demand isn’t a ploy to avoid the concessions that must be made in order to achieve a peace deal,” Prime Minister Netanyahu said. “Unfortunately up until now the Palestinians have not responded to this call and the United States is searching for different ways to continue the talks,” he said.

The Prime Minister quoted David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first Prime Minister, who once declared, “The State that will rise will be Jewish in its function, purpose, and aim. Not a country of Jews settled in a land but a state for Jews, the Jewish people.”

The Palestinian Authority’s answer. Hell no.

A Jew can sell land to an Arab in Israel and the laws of the state of Israel has nothing on the books to prevent. If an Arab sells land to a Jew – well, its the death penalty. Jerusalem Post:

The Palestinian Authority on Sunday reaffirmed the death penalty for any Palestinian found guilty of selling land to Israelis. The decision came in response to a ruling by a Palestinian court according to which such acts were only a “minor offense.”

PA Prosecutor-General Ahmed al-Mughni appealed against the ruling to a higher court, arguing that the sale of land to Israelis was a “major offense” punishable by death. The appeal was accepted.

That verdict considering such offenses a major offense is aimed at reminding Palestinians of the PA law that prohibits selling land to Jews, Mughni said. The land law, which was originally put in force by Jordan between 1948 and 1967, carries the death sentence. The PA says the law is necessary to prevent the expansion of Jewish settlements in the West Bank and east Jerusalem.

In 1997, the PA announced that it would seek the death penalty for any Palestinian convicted of selling land to Jews or Israelis, in accordance with the Jordanian “Law for Preventing the Sale of Real Estate to the Enemy.” According to the 1973 legislation, the sale of property to Jews or Israelis constitutes a crime against state security and well-being, punishable by death and the confiscation of the culprit’s possessions. The PA later drafted its own law to replace the Jordanian statute. The law is called the “Property Law for Foreigners.” It describes the sale of land to “occupiers” as an act of “national treason.”

And while no one has been officially ‘executed’, Palestinians suspected of selling land to Jews have a strange way of dying shortly after being accused. If this law was really necessary to ‘control’ the expansion of Jewish settlements why does the PA insist on a settlement freeze?

Less than 24 hours after the Israeli Prime Minister left Israel to go the United States to participate in the ongoing peace talks four Israeli civilians were murdered in an ambush as they drove on highway 60 outside the Hebron area.

Their deaths were inevitable. It is a cycle, a pattern, we have seen it play out over and over again as peace negotiations begin. Every time it happens, there are official announcements from all interested parties that the participants will not let these deaths deter them from continuing negotiations which lead nowhere quickly.

Why this time should be different from any other talks when the Palestinian leadership is represented by the weakest leader the PLO has ever produced, a leadership camp which fractured and fraught with competing and conflicted interests should produce a different result than all the other xxx times peace talks have commenced; beyond my ability to engage in irrationality. And the Americans this time around are no better. Ynet News is quoting US Assistant Secretary of State Phillip Crowley as saying:

“We also are cognizant that there may well be actors in the region who are deliberately making these kinds of attacks in order to try to sabotage the process,” he said.

All of which goes to prove he just doesn’t get it. These aren’t actors, actors pretend to kill people, but are instead Israel’s neighbours and alleged peace partners except they are not prime for peace but war.

As a show of …good faith – the Palestinian Authority has rounded up 200 suspected Hamas members in the West Bank. Personally, given the area and its’ history, I would suggest rounding up the Palestinian security forces for interrogation would be a far more fruitful endeavour for appending the murderers. Colour me cynical, but using the ambush as a pretext for jailing one’s political proponents doesn’t strike me as taking one for Team Justice and Peace.

Ha’aretz is reporting Labor Minister of Defense Ehud Barak is suggesting Israel is willing to cede part of Jerusalem ahead of negotiations – and this after the murder of four Israelis. It just might be in Israel’s best interest to cede Barak to the Palestinians instead. It certainly couldn’t hurt.

What Bibi needs tell Obama is simply this; He is ready to meet the Palestinian leadership after the Palestinian have worked out their internal matters, and the Palestinian people are prepared for peace, real peace, which includes painful compromises on their part - as otherwise there is simply not anything to negotiate or even say. Time to go home and bury the dead and fortify Yisrael for the next round.

Until then, let’s shelve the two-state peace talks and explore the possiblity of a one state discussion.

The only people who would probably be surprised by this Ynet News report is probably the Obama Administration and the Euroweiners who have invested (literally) so much in the bona fides of Mahmoud Abbas. If I were to summarize the Palestinian position it would be thus -the so-called Palestinian moderates are afraid they will lose to the ‘radicals’ so they want the election post-poned. Ynet News.

The Fatah movement is considering filing an appeal with the Elections Committee and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, in an effort to postpone the local elections in the Palestinian Authority due to internal disagreement and division within the faction. The Palestinians consider next month’s elections crucial, as they symbolize another important step on the way to building the institutions of the Palestinian state, as President Salam Fayyad described them.

Fatah hasn’t been able to reach an agreement over the candidates for many of the municipalities and councils, and in many places a list of senior Fatah officials is expected to run against the movement’s official list. The Palestinian Central Committee has failed in their efforts to reconcile the camps, and some fear Fatah’s image might significantly be jeopardized over the internal rift.

The Fatah has also failed to ward off pressures mounted by the large local clans. The clans, who have witnessed their influence decline both on the national and governmental levels, consequently held on to the local authorities with all their power. “The clans in Hebron have made it clear that they are not interested in factional elections, but rather in the division of the council according to a clan hierarchy,” a Fatah source told Ynet.
“People in the clans told us: ‘Fatah, Hamas, we don’t care about any of these. We want our own people regardless of their party affiliation,” the source said, adding, “No one so far has had the courage to confront the clans, and according to estimations the elections in Hebron will be clan-based and not according to party distribution.”

Another matter that is pushing the Fatah to postpone elections is the fear that Hamas supporters will back Fatah opponents, despite Hamas’ official announcement that it will boycott the elections.  ”We are concerned that in many places, especially where Fatah is weak and divided, the Hamas will tell its supporters to vote for our opponents, which will ensure Fatah’s defeat in the elections,” said the source.

The peace process is officially dead in spite of any indirect or even direct negotiations between the Israelis and Palestinians. If Abbas cannot even garnish enough support for his party membership within local councils then there simply is no viable Palestinian leader who can step up to the plate and negotiate on the behalf of the Palestinian people with the Israeli state. Nor will there be a viable Palestinian leader as long as the Americans and Europeans continue to place all their bets on a man who lacks support among his own base.

I have no idea if this report is true, in fact, Palestinian officials from the security branch have issued denials but its just too funny not to post. Ynet News

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Sunday discovered to his astonishment that he was without a bodyguard and even his drivers were absent. He was therefore compelled to drive his granddaughter, who wasn’t feeling well, to the Red Crescent clinic by himself, according to the al-Arabiya television network. As a result, 250 members of the presidential guard were arrested.

The security detail could have been moonlighting as inspectors looting inspecting stores looking for Israeli produced goods. My next best guest would be to suggest they were either moonlighting for Hamas or Islamic Jihad.