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Why the Palestinians Refuse to Recognize Israel as a Jewish State
by Ali Salim
February 3, 2014 at 5:00 am
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The core of the problem is that
Palestinian recognition of Israel as the state of the Jewish People would not
only end the dream of the return to Palestine, but also of the destruction of
Israel currently being implemented through the incitement and terrorist
campaign waged by the Palestinian People in their institutions, mosques,
schools, terrorist organizations and foreign propaganda centers. Their
strategic intention is to perpetuate the conflict, not end it.
The real reason Mahmoud Abbas wants
control of the bridges and crossings, and refuses to leave them in Israeli
hands, is to duplicate the terrorism of the Gaza Strip -- to smuggle in arms
and establish terrorist squads. Crossings left in Israel's hands would mean
greater security for Jordan as well.
The world watches while the Palestinian Authority is actively promoting a
campaign for an academic boycott and economic sanctions to be imposed on
Israel, evidently backed by veiled threats from U.S. Secretary of State John
Kerry.First, every Muslim knows that the Jews in Israel are the descendants of the ancient Hebrew nation known as the Israelites, we also recognize the fact that the Jews have been connected to the blessed land of Palestine for thousands of years, even before the Romans conquered Judea and changed its name to Palestina, as attested to by history. The ties of the Jews to the Holy Land have been documented by all the sacred books, including the Holy Qur'an. Now, while the Jews are determined that the Palestinians recognize the State of Israel as the national homeland of the Jewish People, the Palestinian Authority [PA] unfortunately rejects this demand. High-ranking PA figures claim that the Jews do not have religious or historical claims to the Holy Land. The Jews took the land by force, they say, and therefore want to reinforce their tenuous link to it by having the Palestinians recognize the State of Israel as the Jewish national state. The real reason for their refusal to recognize Israel as a Jewish country, however, is that the rais [chief], President Mahmoud Abbas, the man who claims to be the leader of the Palestinian people, has never abandoned the demand for the return of the Palestinians to "Palestine," that is, the entire State of Israel, so that it might be destroyed. The Palestinian rais also interferes personally in the affairs of the sovereign State of Israel, especially in matters concerning Israeli Arabs. As part of the negotiations brokered by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, Abbas demanded the release of Palestinian terrorist operatives holding Israeli citizenship. He claimed he refused to recognize the State of Israel as a Jewish state because he felt responsible for the rights of the 20% of Israeli citizens who were Palestinian Arabs. He uses that claim, however, to hide his true intentions. If Mahmoud Abbas really wanted to found a Palestinian state bordering on the State of Israel, he would have been only too happy to accept the suggestion made by Israel's Foreign Minister, Avigdor Lieberman, and rushed to absorb Israel's Arab citizens along with their lands and assets as part of the exchange of territories and population demanded by the peace agreement. In that way he could have increased the size of Palestine, liberated the Israeli Arabs from the Israeli regime that Palestinians call "the rule of occupation and apartheid," and brought more territory and citizens to his new country. The truth, however, is that what President Mahmoud Abbas is really planning to establish is a Palestinian state between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, by flooding the State of Israel with Muslim Palestinians as part of the so-called "return" of the Palestinian refugees. He does not want an Israel next door to the Palestinian state, and therefore refuses to recognize it as the national homeland of the Jews. In reality, the Jews of Israel do not need recognition from the Palestinians; the Palestinian people itself is new, having been created only recently, and barely meets international criteria for the definition of "a people." Very few Palestinians have been there for many generations. Most of them are from various isolated families, tribes and groups with no common history. Either they came with invading armies, or were imported as cheap labor by the Turks and British, or wanted to profit from the economic advances made by the Jews who had returned to rebuild their homeland. Others fled to Palestine from neighboring Arab countries because they were involved in blood feuds and feared for their lives. The random collection of people who arrived from around the Arab-Muslim world and gathered in the Land of Israel, especially during the past two centuries, was ruled by different occupiers, primarily the Ottoman Turks. The population was divided and riven by disagreement, and came to look upon itself as a national group only at the beginning of the 20th century. The Jews have had a common identity for nearly three thousand years. Unlike the Jews, the Palestinians are not documented in the Holy Qur'an or the Old and New Testaments. There is no documentation of their presence in Palestine, in the history books of the ancient or modern world or in books written by travelers who came from overseas over the centuries, such as Mark Twain's Innocents Abroad. The Jews in Israel have a number of reasons for demanding their country be recognized as their national homeland. For the Jews, Palestinian recognition of the State of Israel as the national homeland of the Jews means the end of the conflict. They want to be sure that a Palestinian state bordering on Israel is the Palestinians' final demand and that they accept the fact of Israel's existence. They want to be sure the Palestinians will not try to use force or subterfuge to change the Jewish majority in Israel. They want to be sure no attempt will be made to force Israel to accept the return of the grandchildren and great grandchildren of Palestinian refugees who have already been settled in the neighboring countries and should remain there with their Arab brothers even after the regimes have stabilized in the wake of the Arab Spring. The end of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict basically means mutual recognition. The Palestinians, on the other hand, find it difficult to recognize Israel as the state of the Jewish nation in Palestine. They claim that the demand was never made of the Egyptians or Jordanians before they made peace (treaties with those two countries dealt mainly with territory). As far as they are concerned, as soon as the Palestinians recognize Israel as a Jewish state, their claims and the demand for all of the land of Palestine, from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea will no longer be considered legitimate. The Palestinians demand a state for themselves, and also demand to settle their citizens in Israel, the neighboring Jewish state. This hypocrisy increases exponentially when the Palestinians claim Israel is a country of discrimination, occupation, apartheid and oppression. If this is so, why do they insist so strongly on the "right of return" and not rush to welcome their refugees with open arms into the newly liberated state of Palestine? The core of the problem is that Palestinian recognition of Israel as the state of the Jewish People would not only end the dream of the return to Palestine, but also of the destruction of Israel currently being implemented through the incitement and terrorist campaign waged by the Palestinians in their institutions, mosques, schools, terrorist organizations and foreign propaganda centers -- one facet of the myth being constructed of the existence of the "Palestinian People." Recognition would also give Israel Islamic legitimacy. Since the Nakba in 1948, the "expulsion" from Palestine, the Palestinians have been constructing their legacy. Their strategic intention is to perpetuate the conflict, not end it. That is also the strategic intention of the Israeli Arabs, who insist on preserving their "national Palestinian identity" while living in Jewish Israel, enjoying the rights and privileges of people in a democratic society, and at the same time hoping for its destruction, and sometimes actively participating in terrorist activity against it. The real reason Mahmoud Abbas wants control of the Jordan River bridges and crossings, and refuses to leave them in Israeli hands, is that the Palestinians in the West Bank want to duplicate the terrorism of the Gaza Strip -- smuggle in arms and establish terrorist squads as they did during the 1970s. They want to pave the way for waves of mujahideen to flood the West Bank and blow up Israeli civilians along the country's eastern border in the vain hope that Israel will finally be destroyed and a Palestinian state will be established "from the River to the Sea." Crossings left in Israel's hands would incidentally mean not only greater security for Israel, but for Jordan as well.
I worry that the Palestinians are irresponsible and gambling with their fate and with their children's future. Instead of recognizing Israel as the Jewish state as part of a package deal of mutual recognition leading to a life a peace, they are trying to force the world unilaterally to recognize a Palestinian state. The danger is that when the Israelis realize that the Palestinians manipulators do not have any real intention of forging a peace agreement, Israel will withdraw from territories it does not want to rule, as it did in the Gaza Strip. The Palestinians will receive far less from Israel than they could have achieved through dialogue, and will spend the rest of their days living as bad neighbors in a state of hopeless, eternal conflict. A boycott of Israeli universities -- with laboratories responsible for so many Nobel Prizes and the creation of such stunning advances for the good of all humanity -- will not reduce Israeli academic excellence. The people who will suffer the most again are the thousands of Palestinian breadwinners who currently work in Israel's factories and fields, both in Israel itself and in the West Bank -- yet another example of the West's duplicitous crocodile tears in pretending to care about the Palestinians but in reality, not a jot. The resulting joblessness can only breed even greater unrest, moving both parties farther away from peace -- a strategy doubtless backed by many of these bogus-moralists in Europe from the outset. If I were an Israeli, I would insist on Palestinian recognition of the State of Israel as the homeland of the Jewish People. This Palestinian recognition would make it accepted as a religious duty for the entire Islamic nation to make peace with Israel, and make it possible for an independent, flourishing Palestinian state to be established on Israel's eastern border. U.S. Security "Assurances" and the End of UN Resolution 242
by Shoshana Bryen
February 3, 2014 at 4:00 am
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Secretary John Kerry took Israel's
primary requirement -- "secure and recognized boundaries free from
threats or acts of force" (the language of UN Resolution 242) -- off the
negotiating table.
Under Kerry's new formulation,
Israel's sovereign legitimacy and secure boundaries do not have to be
recognized by the Arab states, the Palestinians or anyone else; just
determined, accepted and guaranteed by the United States -- and for how long
is not clear… until about the time the U.S decides it wants to end another
war "responsibly."
Secretary of State John Kerry and special envoy Martin Indyk have been
meeting and talking with groups of American Jews in an effort to
"sell" the interim deal Mr. Kerry plans to put on the table for
Israel and the Palestinians. With Mr. Kerry acting as the "bad cop"
and Mr. Indyk as the "good," they want the Americans to press the
democratically elected government of Israel to accept the deal even if the
Netanyahu government doesn't find it secure and responsible to do so. This is
in keeping with the apparent belief in the administration that American Jews
are both responsible
for Israeli policy decisions and subject to them, but it is a poor way to
approach American citizens and a very poor way to understand the independence
of the government of Israel, which answers to its citizens.And here is why they are doing it. Secretary Kerry took Israel's primary requirement -- "secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force" (the language of UN Resolution 242) -- off the negotiating table.
But Mr. Kerry told his Jewish audience at the White House, "One of the lynchpins of the current peace process is the separation of Israel's security assurances from the general negotiations," He told them security assurances would be guaranteed in a "separate agreement" with the U.S. In that sentence, he eviscerated possibly the last remaining fundamental promise of the international community to the State of Israel. Under Kerry's new formulation, Israel's sovereign legitimacy and secure boundaries do not have to be recognized by the Arab states, the Palestinians or anyone else; just determined, accepted and guaranteed by the United States. And for how long is unclear. Palestinian leaders have indicated that they might be amenable to international forces for two or three years, but then they want everyone out. That should be just about the time the U.S. decides it wants to end another war "responsibly." The Israeli government vociferously objects to the notion of international troops filling in the security gap that would be created if Israel withdraws from vital territory in the face of continuing hostility from the newly independent State of Palestine as well as from the Arab states. That is not an objection American Jews should try to paper over, because the consequence of failure will accrue to Israelis, not to American Jews. Secretary Kerry also told his Jewish audience he "fears for Israel's future if a deal isn't reached." His fears are nothing to sneeze at -- they distinctly resemble threats, and he has been waving them around at least since last summer, when, before a meeting with Israel's President, he pronounced Israel's prosperity an impediment to peace. "I think there is an opportunity [for peace], but for many reasons it's not on the tips of everyone's tongue. People in Israel aren't waking up every day and wondering if tomorrow there will be peace because there is a sense of security and a sense of accomplishment and of prosperity." It is appalling, to say the least, to have an American Secretary of State suggest Jews value prosperity over a peaceful future for their children. He followed up in November with two not-very-veiled threats. First, "If we do not find a way to peace, there will be an increasing isolation of Israel, there will be an increasing campaign of delegitimization of Israel that's been taking place on an international basis." Second, "The alternative to getting back to the [peace] talks is the potential of chaos," Kerry said. "Does Israel want a "third intifada?" Israel was, at that moment, actually facing a spike in Palestinian violence. To Israeli political commentator Alon Ben David, suggesting that Palestinian violence would be a price Israel would have to pay for rejecting the American position was more than a mistake. "This isn't an intifada yet (but)...there is an atmosphere that appears to be encouraging these incidents." Minister of Strategic Security Yuval Steinitz echoed Ben David's concern this weekend. "The things ... Kerry said are hurtful, they are unfair and they are intolerable. Israel cannot be expected to negotiate with a gun to its head when we are discussing the matters which are most critical to our national interests." In neither case did it seem to occur to Mr. Kerry that the better position for the United States would be to stand firmly by its friend and ally, Israel, rejecting both violence and boycott. No, Mr. Kerry has simply warned Israel that it will suffer severe consequences for its failure to do as the U.S. determines best, regardless of the behavior of those who wish it ill, plan to do it ill and are prepared to follow through. No wonder he needed former Ambassador to Israel Martin Indyk to cheer up the Jews. Indyk is said to have been upbeat in a telephone meeting (it was "off the record," but at least four participants spoke to reporters), with Israel getting "75-80% of Israeli settlers inside Israel; recognition as 'the nation state of the Jewish people,' compensation for Jewish refugees from Arab land while the Palestinian refugees also get 'compensation.'" There was no apparent mention of a "right of return." It is difficult to square Indyk's 75-80% with expressed Palestinian anger over houses being built in the largest town and villages of the "settlement blocs" that will apparently, according to Indyk, remain in Israel. PLO Executive Committee member Hanan Ashrawi said, "Israel is destroying chances of peace... There is no possibility of peace with such actions and plans." It is also hard to square the 75-80% with Kerry's formulation of a Palestinian State in the 1967 borders with "agreed upon land swaps." And there appears to be no way to square Indyk's formulation of the "nation state of the Jewish people" with Abbas's public refusal to contemplate that. Indyk slid over the difficulties by noting that the parties could accept the American document "with reservations" without killing the deal. So while the U.S. may have included clauses American Jews appreciate, the Palestinians are free to reject Jewish nationalism, settlers, and borders. And, of course, that pesky UN Resolution requiring "secure and recognized boundaries." Secretary Kerry the "bad cop" and Ambassador Indyk the "good cop" are threatening, cajoling and playing all the angles in an effort to create American Jewish leverage to replace the policies of the government of Israel with the policies of the Obama Administration.
Related Topics: Israel
| Shoshana Bryen
The Central African Republic and Islam's Push South
by Lawrence
A. Franklin
February 3, 2014 at 3:00 am
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friends to like this.
Bands of Muslim Seleka extremists
still roam the empty streets and abandoned dwellings of Bangui, the capital
of the C.A.R., hunting down and killing Christians who were not able to flee.
Christians, enraged by Muslim atrocities, are in turn killing many Muslims.
This scenario plays into the hands of extremist Islamists who want "holy
war" in the C.A.R.
Just as in the past, it was not faith
alone that fuelled hostility between the Muslim north Sudan and the Christian
south, but gold; and now oil.
Catholic bishops…whose faithful have
been persecuted, murdered and driven from their homeland, are left to hope
that ultimately the blood of Christian martyrs will demand more resolute
action from the Vatican.
When Muslim Seleka rebels of the Central African Republic's [C.A.R.] swept
south to seize the capital city, Bangui, and ousted the Christian President
Francois Bozize in March, 2013,[1]
the event received sparse attention in Western media. What the media still
seems unwilling to see is that the Seleka onslaught is unwittingly serving a
wider offensive by Muslim extremists to expand the realm of Islam into the
African continent's sub-Saharan interior.Bangui, the capital of a country the size of Texas, has become a ghost town. Almost all of its citizens occupy a nearby airport protected by French troops. Bands of Muslim extremists still roam the empty streets and abandoned dwellings hunting down and killing Christians who were not able to flee. Moreover, small groups of Christians have returned to a few neighborhoods of Bangui to take revenge on isolated Muslim Seleka rebels, who having been cut off from their comrades and were discovered hiding in the ruins of the capital city.
While the C.A.R., a majority Christian country in which Muslims make up only about 15% of the population, is among the poorest states in Africa, the country is replete with diamonds and other precious metals that make it an attractive prize for many of the country's political cliques and neighboring states. Bozize was, in fact, overthrown by his chief rival, the Muslim Michel Djotodia. To guarantee his success, Djotodia made an alliance with a fearsome force of Muslim extremists. Yet, he soon lost control of his Seleka allies, who then proceeded to perpetrate a mass slaughter of Christians, hacking even babies to death. It was not until ethnic Ubangi Christians had organized their own self-defense "anti-balaka" (anti-sword) units that France sent hundreds of Legionnaires to fill the vacuum left by the disintegrating armed forces of the Central African Republic. Since then, although French, South African, and Chadian forces have restored an uneven and tenuous peace, the sectarian bloodletting after the Seleka seizure of power has driven at least a quarter of a million refugees, both Christian and Muslim, from their homes. While Djotodia was forced to resign on January 10, 2014 by regional leaders at a peace conference hosted by Chad, there is no guarantee that the Seleka extremists will end their raping, pillaging, and murder of Christians once peacekeeping troops depart the C.A.R., although troops from France, Chad, Cameroon, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo remain there in an effort to halt the bloodshed and restore some semblance of stability. The one bright spot amidst the bloodbath is the joint effort by the Catholic Archbishop of Bangui, Dieudonné Nzapalainga, and the Grand Mufti of Islam in the C.A.R., Oumar Kobine Layama, to end the sectarian violence. Islamization and Christian Resistance in Sub-Saharan AfricaThe seizure of power by the Muslim Seleka, when examined within its historical context, underscores the continued vibrancy of the universal competition in Africa between evangelizing Christianity and militant Islam. Initially, the lightning-fast conquest of the Middle East and North Africa by Arab-Islamic armies in the first decades of Islam was slowed, in part, by topography. Where Saharan and Sahelian sand and brush gave way to Savannah and rainforest, the advance of the all-conquering, camel-mounted, nomadic Arab warriors came to a halt. Moreover, the majority of these sedentary, agricultural, sub-Saharan peoples had been already Christianized. Others were still comfortable with their ancestral religions.The black African ethnic groups of the Congo (Kinshasa), Southern Sudan, and Central Africa resisted pressures to abandon their faith. Moreover; their resistance was aided as early as the 15th century by the political and spiritual support of the Vatican[2]. Further, many of these peoples were also negatively inclined towards Islam: Muslim slave traders from northern Sudan frequently preyed upon Congolese and Ubangi (Central African) Christians. [3] The recent appearance on the world stage of Mali as a theater of the Muslim advance is also evidence of a resurgence of that land's historical role in the Islamic proselytizing process. The medieval, metropolitan Malian Muslim mini-states acted as intermediaries between Arabia and points south. The Sharif [Mayor] of Mecca, for instance, dispatched Muslim scholars and imams [preachers] to Mali with orders to build mosques and advance the faith in Africa. [4] Mali-based mullahs also served as intermediaries between Arabia and the peoples of West Africa, notably in Ghana and the Ivory Coast. Moreover, Muslim merchants from the Saharan region linked up with their counterparts in the Malian city of Djenne. Together, they employed the Dyula people as guides to penetrate the rain forests of central Africa.[5] African acolytes of Islam also were commissioned by at least one Baghdad-based, Abbasid Caliph to carry the faith southward into the African interior. Yet the pressures of conquest and conversion were only the most obvious dimensions of efforts to Islamize sub-Saharan Africa. More subtle lines of influence included the arrival of Muslim merchants in sub-Saharan African townships along the Guinean coast of West Africa. Initially, these traders served as carriers of Islam rather than proselytizers of the Muslim faith. Teachers, preachers, and settlers would arrive later, after pockets of Muslim immigrants had set down roots. Even in the interior, enterprising Muslim merchants found ways to establish new sub-Sahelian trade routes, bartering their wares for central African agricultural produce, including cotton, tobacco, and nuts. However, once these networks had been firmly established, Islamization set in. Islam became the bond of empire where Arab merchant and Muslim mullah worked together to first convert the elites and later the peasants to the faith of Muhammad.[6] Those who embraced Islam were connected to the global network of Muslim scholarship and rewarded with access to Muslim charitable and educational foundations. Many Central African young men were brought to the Islamic cultural capital of the continent, Timbuktu. Others were granted scholarships to attend the most prestigious Muslim academic center of al-Azhar in Cairo, Egypt.[7] Occasionally, non-religious events helped reinvigorate efforts to convert native peoples to Islam. After the discovery of a route south along the White Nile, for example, the Egyptian ruler Mohammad Ali energized Muslim forces to wage Jihad to incorporate southern Sudan into the already Islamized northern half of the region -- a contest that is still being waged in the Sudan today.[8] Just as in the past, it was not faith alone that fueled the hostility between the Muslim north Sudan and the Christian south, but gold. Of course, the struggle today also is over oil revenues. South Sudan has the oil. Sudan has the port to export the oil. This renewed impetus to extend Islam into the African interior also spurred a new emphasis on completely Islamizing the value systems of the majority Muslim societies of West and East Africa. This restored enthusiasm was impeded, however, by two major factors. First was the rapid colonization of the African continent by European imperial rivals. Second was the reality that the Vatican-led medieval Christianization of central and southern Africa developed sound foundations.[9] The religious struggle for the continent continues, and the competition for converts and the war for spiritual hegemony are brutally apparent in many African countries. The divide is most keenly felt in those states that are most evenly split between Islam and Christianity.[10] Pope Francis has already placed evangelization at the top of his list to renew the face of the Catholic Church. He has made it clear in his sermons and in a recently released 85-page "Exhortation" that he expects the clergy to serve his primary goal of propagation of the faith. They must do this not by preaching alone, but by Catholic action in the service of the poor and oppressed.[11] His African bishops will presumably aggressively press the preaching of the Gospels. They will do so despite fierce opposition by Muslim extremists. The blood of Catholic and other Christian martyrs in Africa already flows freely. As evidence of the Pope's commitment to the propagation of the faith in Africa, he has just named new cardinals to the African countries of Burkina Faso and the Ivory Coast[12] The emphasis Francis has placed on evangelization, particularly among the impoverished peoples of the Third World, is likely to bring the Catholic Church into a bruising encounter with Islam's own proselytizing efforts. Certainly, jihadi extremists will view the Pope's call for evangelization as a direct challenge. The Pope's reiteration of the Vatican's long-standing demand for the Muslim world's acceptance of the principle of reciprocity -- equal religious rights and freedom of conscience -- is encouraging. He writes, "I ask and I humbly entreat those countries to grant Christians freedom to worship and to practice their faith, in light of the freedom which followers of Islam enjoy in Western countries."[13] However, his condemnation of Muslim acts of intolerance is more ambiguous. In the Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium, he seems firmly to condemn the excesses of Muslim fundamentalism. He writes that we are "faced with disconcerting instances of violent fundamentalism." [14] He warns, however, in the same sentence that, "we must avoid condemnatory generalizations."[15] He then overcompensates by stating that in an "authentic Islam and a proper reading of the Koran, one will see no justification for violence in Islam." This ambiguity, deliberate or not, appears to indicate that Pope Francis is not ready forcefully to take on Islamic extremism. Catholic bishops, however, in the countries of the Middle East, Africa and Southeast Asia, whose faithful have been persecuted, murdered, and driven from their homelands, are left to hope that ultimately the blood of Christian martyrs will demand more resolute action from the Vatican.
Related Topics: Lawrence
A. Franklin
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