by David M. Weinberg
For more than a decade,
we were told that Mahmoud Abbas was the most reasonable Palestinian
leader Israelis could hope for; that he was Israel's best partner for
peace; that he was the moderate with whom a grand compromise deal could
be reached. Israelis wanted to believe this so much.
But then came the Abbas
who walked away from Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's outrageously generous
territorial offer in 2008, and the Abbas who refused peace talks with
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu even after the latter froze settlement
construction.
Then there was the
"PaliLeaks" opportunity (secret diplomatic documents about the
Israeli-Palestinian negotiating process) to ready the Palestinian public
for compromise with Israel. But Abbas ran away from that gateway too,
vigorously denying the hints of compromise with Israel on refugees,
Jerusalem or borders that were in the leaked documents.
Ever since then, Abbas
has become an aggressive and deceitful Palestinian irredentist -- the
farthest thing from a peace partner. He has used every international
forum to spew extremist vitriol against Israel and seek the
criminalization of Israel. When he speaks to Palestinians, he
legitimizes terrorism against Israel and glorifies terrorists. He has
cozied up to Hamas and Iran and he explicitly rejects compromise on the
key issues that would have to be the at the core of any peace agreement
with Israel.
Let's review Abbas' appalling U.N. record.
In his 2011 speech at
the United Nations General Assembly, Abbas called Yasser Arafat a man of
peace. He spoke of Israel as a "brutal," "aggressive," "racist,"
"apartheid," "horrific" and "colonial" military occupier. He accused
Israel of a "multi-pronged policy of ethnic cleansing" and of "targeting
Palestinian civilians by assassinations, air strikes and artillery
shelling."
He suggested that
Israel's demand for recognition as a Jewish state would "transform the
raging conflict in our inflamed region into a religious conflict and a
threat to the future of a million and a half Christian and Muslim
Palestinians, citizens of Israel." He spoke of Christian and Muslim
historical connections to the Holy Land -- and only theirs. And, in his
most revealing remarks, he spoke of 63 years of Israeli occupation,
implying a threat to the sovereignty of pre-1967 Israel.
Abbas hewed resolutely
to maximalist Palestinian goals, including refugee demands, which are
the Palestinian recipe for dismantling Israel in the long term. He
demanded a state on all of the pre-1967 territories, with only "possible
minor and mutually agreed upon land swaps of equal size and value."
(Note the phraseology: "possible" and "minor").
In fall 2012, Abbas
sought to turn the established framework for peace upside-down; to get
his statehood "declared" by the international community without having
to compromise with Israel; to claim the end result of the peace process
without having to engage in any process.
He addressed the U.N.
General Assembly and urged the international community to "compel the
government of Israel to respect the Geneva Conventions" and "impose a
solution" on Israel. Abbas then accused Israel of numerous crimes,
including ethnic cleansing, terrorism, racism, inciting religious
conflict, apartheid, house demolitions, dispossession, imprisoning
"soldiers of freedom," settlement colonization and more.
In 2013, Abbas told the
U.N. General Assembly that Israel is preparing a new "nakba"
(catastrophe) for the Palestinians. He demanded that the U.N. invoke
"the full and complete implementation of international law" to penalize
Israel's presence "as an occupying power in all of the occupied
Palestinian territory." And he threatened to indict Israel in the
International Criminal Court.
Abbas subsequently
swore to "never" recognize Israel as the national state of the Jewish
people, "never" forgo the so-called right of return to Israel of
Palestinian refugees, "never" accept Israeli security control of Jordan
Valley and other key air and ground security assets, "never" allow Jews
to live in Judea, and "never" accept Israeli sovereignty in any part of
the Old City of Jerusalem.
In September this year,
Abbas stood before the U.N. General Assembly and accused Israel of
waging a "war of genocide" in the Gaza Strip: "Israel's jets and tanks
brutally assassinated lives and devastated the homes, schools and dreams
of thousands of Palestinian children, women and men and in reality
destroying the remaining hopes for peace."
He asserted that
Palestinians faced a future in a "most abhorrent form of apartheid"
under Israeli rule. He said that instead of rectifying "the historic
injustice" of the 1948 "Nakba" (again, note the reference to 1948, not
1967), Israel had committed "absolute war crimes" and "state terror." He
went on to rant about "racist and armed gangs of settlers who persist
with their crimes against the Palestinian people, the land, mosques,
churches, properties and olive trees," and talked about a "culture of
racism, incitement and hatred" in Israel.
Even Justice Minister
Tzipi Livni was forced to call this a "horrible" speech, and the State
Department spokesman admitted that the speech was "unhelpful" and worthy
of "concern."
(Yet note: U.S.
President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry did not rush to
publicly reprimand Abbas, as they have notoriously done repeatedly with
Netanyahu over much lesser offenses).
More recently, Abbas has taken to explicitly exhorting and inciting to Palestinian violence against Israel in Jerusalem.
"We must prevent the
settlers from entering the Noble Sanctuary in any way. This is our
Al-Aqsa and our church. They have no right to enter and desecrate them.
We must confront them and defend our holy sites," Abbas fulminated on
Oct. 17.
Note the dark,
incendiary, inciting references to "settlers" who "desecrate" the Temple
Mount and must be prevented from entering the area "in any way."
Taking the cure from
Abbas, the Palestinian Authority Foreign Ministry spread flammable lies
about Israeli "plans to destroy" the Al-Aqsa Mosque. Its spokesman told
the official PA daily newspaper Al-Hayat Al-Jadida that "the Israeli
government has been carrying out a plan to Judaize Al-Aqsa mosque (that
is, the Temple Mount plaza), and the rate of escalation and repression
against Al-Aqsa is increasing. ... [Israel is moving toward] dividing it
geographically and according to time, destroying it and building what
is referred to as 'the Temple' in its place. ... Ongoing calls have been
made by the extreme Right to enlist a large number of settlers to
assault Al-Aqsa mosque in order to perform their Talmudic rituals in
it."
"Talmudic rituals" is rank and derisive PA parlance for Jewish prayer at the holiest site on earth to the Jewish people.
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A direct line runs from
such vociferation to the attempted assassination of Jewish activist
Yehuda Glick last week. Abbas' intemperate rhetoric essentially paved
the way towards the attack. It gave a Palestinian Authority presidential
imprimatur to the attempts to turn the Temple Mount into the hottest
battleground between Israel and the Arab world.
And sure enough, Abbas
wrote a Nov. 1 "letter of encouragement and support" to the family of
Moatez Hijazi, the Palestinian terrorist who tried to assassinate Glick
and who was shot dead while resisting arrest by Israeli troops. Abbas
called Hejazi a "shahid" (martyr) and said that "he rose to heaven while
defending our people's rights and holy places." Abbas described
Hijazi's death as "an abominable crime" carried out by "terror gangs of
the Israeli occupation army." He had nothing condemnatory to say about
the terror attack on Glick.
So how far can Abbas go
in opposing real negotiation and compromise, encouraging violence,
venerating terrorists, and pushing the criminalization of Israel
internationally -- while still being considered a paragon of peace by
the Israeli Left and the Obama administration? What will it take for
them to move beyond Abbas and consider other options?
This is an important
question because of a critical historical precedent: Israel suffered
similarly with Yasser Arafat during the Oslo process. Then too, the Left
and the Clinton administration become so attached to the Palestinian
leader and the concept of negotiations with him that they ignored his
support for terror and his stoking of hatred for Israelis and Jews.
When critics of the
Oslo process brought up evidence of Arafat's actions they were dismissed
as enemies of peace. Any attention paid to Arafat's "flaws" was
considered to be a distraction from the need to concentrate on advancing
peace negotiations.
The same pathetic process is
repeating itself with Abbas. His extremism is being ignored, his
obstructionism is being overlooked and his critics are being dangerously
disregarded.
David M. Weinberg
Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=10495
Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.
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