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WHERE IS OBAMA, AS ABBAS & HAMAS MERGE? IS ENDING THE “PEACE PROCESS” A DISGUISED BLESSING?

A BLESSING IN DISGUISE?
Charles Bybelezer

On Monday, Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas revealed himself. In the presence of Qatar’s rabidly anti-Israel Sheikh Hamad Bin Khalifa, and alongside Hamas’ exiled Politburo chief Khaled Meshal, Abbas’ Fatah party signed a reconciliation agreement with Hamas, paving the way for the formation of a Palestinian unity government. With the stroke of a pen, Abbas’ prior assertion that “there are no more differences between [Fatah and Hamas]” was ratified. Abbas now clearly and officially considers, as a primary Palestinian aim, the annihilation of Israel.

And to alleviate all doubt (or misplaced hope), when asked the next day whether the reconciliation agreement would “moderate” Hamas, Political Bureau member Izzat al-Rishq declared: “The Palestinian people maintain their right to all forms of resistance, and we are committed to armed resistance…to confront the…Zionist enemy’s plans.”

As for the so-called “international community,” the response was relatively muted. A spokesman at the US mission in Tel Aviv said the Obama administration would not articulate a “formal position on a speculative event,” but rather would “wait to see what happens.” If only Israel’s “speculative” approval of the construction of a few hundred houses in its capital city drew such careful hesitation.

Surprisingly, the EU also refrained from assuming an official stance. However, given the EU’s reaction in November following a previous round of reunification talks—“[the EU has] consistently called for reconciliation under Abbas’ authority”—no doubt the Europeans still consider Hamas’ inclusion in Palestinian politics as “an opportunity rather than a threat,” as well as, incredibly and without justification, “essential for securing a lasting peace with Israel.”

Less surprising was UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon’s message to the PA President: Fatah’s affiliation with a terrorist organization committed to Israel’s destruction should not be viewed as contradictory to, or excluding, negotiating with the Jewish state. In a twisted sense, Ki-moon is correct. Abbas’ partnership with genocidal Hamas will in no manner affect his policy of rejecting direct negotiations with Israel.

For his part, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu left little to the imagination: “Hamas is a terrorist organization that strives to destroy Israel, and which is supported by Iran. I have said many times in the past that the Palestinian Authority must choose between an alliance with Hamas and peace with Israel. Hamas and peace do not go together.… If Abu Mazen [Abbas] implements what has been signed, he will have chosen to abandon the way of peace.…”

Speaking at the signing ceremony in Doha, Abbas reinforced the idea that the unity agreement was reached “not only so that it would be published, but in order to implement it on the ground.”

Netanyahu has spoken. Abbas has chosen. And what a tremendous blessing for Israel’s leader. The phony “peace process,” the thorn in Netanyahu’s, and Israel’s, side, is on hold. And try as they may, there is nothing the professional peace-processors can do about it.

As for Mr. Obama, he will continue to pressure Israel to make unilateral concessions to the Hamas-Fatah terrorist entity. One needs only to consider Obama’s current eagerness to “engage” (i.e., conduct “peace” negotiations with) the Taliban to deduce the President’s unwavering policy of appeasing sworn enemies. Thankfully, neither the US Congress nor Republicans will have any part of it, particularly during an election year. Obama, scavenging for a second term, cannot mistreat the Jewish state: he will need to pander, and should be adequately contained.

More important, however, is Israeli public opinion. Once upon a time, the people of Israel were duped into believing that a man by the name of Yasser Arafat would transform his terror organization into a viable partner for peace. Twenty years and thousands of casualties later, Israelis will not repeat this mistake with Hamas.

And so Mr. Netanyahu has been afforded the opportunity not only to strengthen his political base by casting aside the belligerent Palestinians, but also to shore up public support as he shifts Israel’s attention towards its most urgent priority—Iran.

Rest assured, in the coming months—be it April, May, or June, as strangely, and dangerously, leaked by US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, the military chief of Israel’s purported “best friend”—Netanyahu will need all the allies he can amass.

Ironically, Palestinian “reconciliation” will have played a small but useful part in Netanyahu’s drive to stop Iran’s nuclear weapons program. All eyes can now be focused exclusively on Tehran.

(Charles Bybelezer is Publications Chairman for the Canadian Institute for Jewish Research.)

PALESTINIANS MAKE THEMSELVES IRRELEVANT
Jonathan S. Tobin

Contentions, February 7, 2012

There was something interesting about the reaction to the consummation of the Fatah-Hamas unity pact. The agreement, which confirmed the entry of the Islamist terrorist group into the governing structure of the Palestinian Authority and the exit of the PA’s reform-minded Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, provoked the expected harsh words from Israel’s government. In Washington, the reaction from the Obama administration was equally predictable as the State Department spokesperson withheld judgment. Some members of Congress served notice that the PA’s embrace of Hamas meant the end of U.S. aid.

But the main conclusion to be drawn from the reaction to what can only be termed a momentous turn of events is something entirely different. The lack of alarm or even much worry about the impact of Hamas on the peace process makes it clear not only is there no more peace process to worry about, but that the Palestinians have made themselves irrelevant.

Where once the international chattering classes doted upon every aspect of Palestinian politics in a way that confirmed the prevalent myth that Israel’s antagonists were truly at the heart of all the problems of the Middle East, it is no longer possible for even their cheerleaders and apologists to pretend this is so. In the 18+ years since the signing of the Oslo Accords, the Palestinians have talked and bombed their way not only out of peace and the independent state they claimed they wanted but also off the front pages. While supporters of Israel still keep their eyes on the goings-on in Ramallah and Gaza, the rest of the world is gradually moving on.

After so many years of international attention on the aspirations of the Palestinians, after Yasir Arafat’s betrayal of Oslo and his successor Mahmoud Abbas’s similar refusal to talk peace with Israel, it has become increasingly difficult for even Israel’s most persistent critics to hold the attention of Western policymakers.… More to the point, the apathy with which the Fatah-Hamas unity pact has been viewed only makes it more obvious the world has more pressing concerns. Those who long argued the Palestinians were central to all Middle East conflicts have found their faulty arguments are no longer accepted at face value. At a time when it is clear to even the dimmest of foreign policy bulbs the real struggles in the Middle East are those between Islamists, autocrats and democracy activists as well as over the nuclear ambitions of Iran, the audience for the myth of Palestinian centrality has shrunk dramatically.…

It is true the presence of Hamas in the PA government presents a clear threat to Israel in terms of security on the West Bank. But in terms of diplomacy, all it has done is to confirm the irrelevance of the Palestinians.

OBAMA’S PALESTINE TEST
Editorial

Wall Street Journal, February 9, 2012

How should the Obama Administration respond to the news that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has signed a deal with Hamas to form a unity government? In 2009, Hillary Clinton was unequivocal. The U.S. “will not deal with, nor in any way fund, a Palestinian government that included Hamas,” said the Secretary of State, unless Hamas renounces terrorism and recognizes Israel.

That stern finger isn’t wagging now. “We are not going to give a grade to this thing until we have a chance to talk to Palestinian Authority leaders about the implications,” said State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland, along with the usual throat-clearing about U.S. red lines. She added that the deal was an “internal matter” for Palestinians.

Which is true. What’s also true is that the U.S. has budgeted some $500 million in direct assistance to the Palestinian Authority (PA) for the current fiscal year, plus another $232 million for the U.N. welfare agency that deals with the descendants of Palestinian refugees. U.S. law prohibits aid to any Palestinian government that includes Hamas. The question for the Administration is whether it will abide by the law—or search for a legal loophole.

That loophole might be a government of supposedly nonpartisan technocrats on whom both factions can agree. This week’s agreement, reached under Qatari auspices, takes one step in that direction by naming Mr. Abbas to succeed Salam Fayyad as prime minister while retaining his post as president. After that, however, the details of the plan become vague. Question: Would the U.S. continue to fund and train a Palestinian security apparatus that merges with Hamas’s paramilitary units? Let’s hope not.

Eventually the U.S. will have to make some determination about the utility of funding a Palestinian government that scorns negotiations with Israel and rarely bothers to pay even lip service to U.S. interests. So it was last year with the Palestinian statehood bid at the United Nations.…

It may not be too late for the U.S. to tell the Palestinians that they cannot bring a terrorist organization into government while continuing to expect American money and sympathy. But that would require sharp and public statements from Mrs. Clinton and President Obama of the kind they have used to rebuke Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The Administration likes to tout itself as the best friend Israel has ever had. Its attitude toward Palestinian “reconciliation” is a test of that boast.

ENDING THE PALESTINIAN ‘RIGHT OF RETURN’
Daniel Pipes

National Review, January 17, 2012

Between 1967 and 1993, just a few hundred Palestinians from the West Bank or Gaza won the right to live in Israel by marrying Israeli Arabs (who constitute nearly one-fifth of Israel’s population) and acquiring Israeli citizenship. Then the Oslo Accords offered a little-noted family-reunification provision that turned this trickle into a river: 137,000 residents of the Palestinian Authority (PA) moved between 1994 and 2002, some of them engaged in either sham or polygamous marriages.

Israel has two major reasons to fear this uncontrolled immigration. First, it presents a security danger. Yuval Diskin, head of the Shin Bet security service, noted in 2005 that of 225 Israeli Arabs involved in terror against Israel, 25 of them, or 11 percent, had legally entered Israel through the family-unification provision. They went on to kill 19 Israelis and wound 83.…

Second, it serves as a stealth form of Palestinian “right of return,” thereby undermining the Jewish nature of Israel. Those 137,000 new citizens constitute about 2 percent of Israel’s population, not a small number. Yuval Steinitz, now the finance minister, in 2003 discerned in the PA encouragement for family reunification “a deliberate strategy” to increase the number of Palestinians in Israel and undermine its Jewish character.…

In response to these two dangers, Israel’s parliament in July 2003 passed the “Citizenship and Entry into Israel Law.” The law bans Palestinian family members from automatically gaining Israeli residency or citizenship, with temporary and limited exemptions requiring the interior minister to certify that they “identify with Israel” or are otherwise helpful. In the face of severe criticism, then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon affirmed in 2005 that “The State of Israel has every right to maintain and protect its Jewish character, even if that means that this would impact on its citizenship policy.…”

Last [month], Israel’s Supreme Court, by a 6-5 vote, upheld this landmark law, making it permanent. While recognizing the rights of a person to marry, the court denied that this implies a right of residency. As the president-designate of the court, Asher Dan Grunis, wrote in the majority opinion, “Human rights are not a prescription for national suicide.”

This pattern of Palestinian emigration toward Jews goes back almost to 1882, when European Jews began their aliyah (Hebrew for “ascent,” meaning immigration to the land of Israel). In 1939, for example, Winston Churchill noted how Jewish immigration to Palestine had stimulated a like Arab immigration: “So far from being persecuted, the Arabs have crowded into the country and multiplied till their population has increased.” In brief, you didn’t have to be Jewish to benefit from the Zionists’ high standard of living and law-abiding society. One student of this subject, Joan Peters, estimates that a dual Jewish and Arab immigration “of at least equal proportions” took place between 1893 and 1948.…

This pattern of Palestinian migration has continued since Israel’s birth. Anti-Zionist they may be, but economic migrants, political dissidents, homosexuals, informants, and just ordinary folk vote with their feet, preferring the Middle East’s outstandingly modern and liberal state to the Palestinian Authority’s or Hamas’s hellholes.…

The Supreme Court’s decision has momentous long-term implications. As Eli Hazan writes in Israel Hayom, “The court ruled de jure but also de facto that the state of Israel is a Jewish state, and thus settled a years-long debate.” The closing of the back-door “right of return” secures Israel’s Zionist identity and future.

DOCUMENTING PALESTINIAN CRIMINALITY
Isi Leibler
Jerusalem Post, January 31, 2012

We are told, day after day, that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is a genuine moderate committed to achieving a peace settlement with Israel.… Abbas and his chief negotiator, Saeb Erekat, bolster this theme by uttering soothing statements in English, endorsing peace to the gullible international community. Yet they speak with forked tongues because in Arabic, to their own people, they deny Israel’s right to exist and promote vicious hatred against Jews.

They also claim to have reneged violence. But the PA never conceded that terrorism was immoral. They simply concluded that having failed to achieve their objectives by violence, their goals could best be promoted by temporarily suspending terrorism in order to gain Western support. Abbas made it clear that he “had the honor of firing the first shot in 1965” and was only opposed to terrorist attacks “at this time” for tactical reasons and that “in the future things may change.…”

The true objectives of the PA are reflected in the poisonous hatred against Jews and Israel inculcated into their people through the broad range of institutions they control, permeating every level of society—from kindergarten upwards. This can be traced to the very inception of the Oslo Accords. Before that, the relationship between Palestinians and Israelis, while far from ideal, was certainly better than it is now; current polls indicate that 84 percent of Palestinians endorse the murder of Israelis.

In addition to denying Jewish sovereignty, the PA from the outset indulged in the most horrendous demonization, describing Jews as the descendants of apes and pigs, comparing them to Nazis while simultaneously praising Hitler, accusing them of stealing Palestinian body parts, using human blood during Passover, promoting AIDs and many other loathsome blood libels. This defamatory torrent impacts directly on Israel’s diminished standing in the international community.

In response to this, an important book compiled by Itamar Marcus, [founder of Palestinian Media Watch (PMW)], and Nan Jacques Zilberdik titled Deception: Betraying the Peace Process, has just been released. It meticulously documents the poisonous behavior of the Palestinian Authority during 2010 and 2011 throughout the broad range of institutions they control. It will become an important source for pro-Israeli activists and provide irrefutable evidence in response to those denying the criminality pervading Palestinian society.…

The book and the PMW website chronicle obscene examples of incitement, especially in the wake of the release of the terrorists in the [Gilad] Schalit [prisoner] exchange. Chairman Abbas, who publicly embraced these mass murderers, summed up the PA approach when he stated “every prisoner is for us a saint and we must exalt him.” He subsequently appointed Mahmoud Damra, a notorious terrorist, as his advisor. The state-controlled Palestinian media sanctified the murders committed by the released terrorists. Thus Ahlam Tamimi, the woman who orchestrated the suicide bombing at the Jerusalem Sbarro restaurant which killed 22 civilians including seven children, was quoted proudly proclaiming she would do it again; Abbas al-Sayed who perpetrated the Passover suicide attack at the Park Hotel in Netanya which killed 30 Israelis was described by Abbas as a “hero” and “symbol of the Palestinian Authority.”

Only recently, while commemorating the 47th anniversary of Fatah, the Mufti Muhammad Hussein, the PA’s highest religious authority, appointed by Abbas, proclaimed that the killing of Jews was a major Islamic goal required before the Islamic Resurrection.… Just last week PMW reported how official PA TV conveyed “greetings” to Hakim Awad, the barbaric and unrepentant murderer of the Fogel family, which included a four-month-old infant and children aged three and 11 years. His mother was honored on the program and conveyed “greetings to dear Hakim, the apple of my eye, who carried out the operation in Itamar, sentenced to five life sentences.…”

After reading this book, a number of questions come to mind. The US Congress was considering terminating the funding of the PA general budget unless it terminated incitement, glorification of suicide bombers as heroic role models, payment of over $5 million a month for “salaries” to 5,500 terrorists in Israeli prisons, and pensions to the families of terrorists.… Why does [Israeli] Prime Minister Netanyahu so frequently pay lip service to Abbas as a peace partner and, other than very recently, fail to systematically highlight the criminality of the Palestinian leaders?…

And finally, how can President Obama and Western countries justify their repeated vitriolic condemnations of Israeli construction in Jewish suburbs of Jerusalem and yet have so little to say about a society which indoctrinates its children with such a barbaric worldview? How can Secretary of State Hillary Clinton validate her silence over these issues?…

It is surely delusional to view the current Palestinian leadership as peace partners. Such a calculated policy of deception reflected by the disparity between reality and duplicitous statements designed for foreign consumption is not merely an expression of malice. It is a manifestation of a determined policy to poison the people against any possible accommodation with Israel. It provides a devastating response to the question raised in the introduction to the book. Was a genuine peace process ever intended?

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