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In this mailing:
- Bassam Tawil: The Ongoing Drama of
Palestinian Lies
- Peter Huessy: U.S.: Strategic
Objectives in the Middle East
by
Bassam Tawil • June 22, 2017 at 5:00 am
- The current policy of
the PA leadership is to avoid alienating the Trump administration
by continuing to pretend that Abbas and his cronies are serious
about achieving peace with Israel. This is why Abbas's
representatives are careful not to criticize Trump or his envoys.
- When Israel does not
comply with their list of demands, the Palestinians will accuse it
of "destroying" the peace process. Worse still, the
Palestinians will use this charge as an excuse to redouble their
terror against Israelis. The Palestinian claim, as always, will be
that they are being forced to resort to terrorism in light of the
failure of yet another US-sponsored peace process.
- No doubt, Abbas cannot
find it within himself to clarify to the American envoys that he
lacks a mandate from his people to make any step toward peace with
Israel. Abbas knows, even if the American representatives do not,
that any move in that direction would end his career, and very
possibly his life. Abbas also does not wish to go down in
Palestinian history as the treacherous leader who "sold out
to the Jews." Moreover, someone can come along later and say,
quite correctly, that as Abbas has exceeded his legitimate term in
office, any deal he makes is illegal and illegitimate.
Jared Kushner (left), Senior Advisor
to U.S. President Donald Trump, meets with Palestinian Authority
President Mahmoud Abbas on June 21, 2017 in Ramallah. (Photo by Thaer
Ghanaim/PPO via Getty Images)
US envoys Jason Greenblatt and Jared Kushner, who met
this week in Jerusalem and Ramallah with Israeli and Palestinian
Authority (PA) officials to discuss reviving the peace process, have discovered
what previous US Middle East envoys learned in the past two decades --
that the PA has not, cannot, and will not change.
During their meeting in Ramallah with PA President
Mahmoud Abbas, the two US emissaries were told that the Palestinians
will not accept anything less than an independent state along on the
pre-1967 lines with East Jerusalem as its capital.
Abbas also made it clear that he has no intention to
make concessions on the "right of return" for Palestinian
"refugees." This means he wants a Palestinian state next to
Israel while flooding Israel with millions of Palestinian
"refugees" and turning it, too, into another Palestinian
state.
by
Peter Huessy • June 22, 2017 at 4:00 am
- The new "test"
of our alliance will be whether the assembled nations will join in
removing the hateful parts of such a doctrine from their
communities.
- What still has to be
considered is the U.S. approach to stopping Iran from filling the
vacuum created by ridding the region of the Islamic State (ISIS),
as well as Iran's push for extending its path straight through to
the Mediterranean.
Secretary of Defense James Mattis.
(Dept. of Defense/Brigitte N. Brantley)
The tectonic plates in the Middle East have shifted
markedly with President Trump's trip to Saudi Arabia and Israel, and
his announced new regional policy.
The trip represented the beginning of a major but
necessary shift in US security policy.
For much of the last nearly half-century, American
Middle East policy has been centered on the "peace process"
and how to bring Israel and the Palestinians to agreement on a
"two-state" solution for two peoples -- a phrase that
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas refuses to say.
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