by Dr. Mordechai Kedar
Abu Mazen understands that without the Jerusalem and refugee cards, the Palestinian house of cards will collapse, and all the Palestinian plans to destroy Israeli will end in failure.
This week, Mahmoud Abbas, leader of the Palestine Liberation
Organization and head of the Palestinian Authority, made a speech expressing tremendous anger against U.S. President Donald Trump, including the harshest curse
that an Arab can utter: “May your house be destroyed”. This is a curse not
only on a person’s abode but on the person himself, as well as the members of
his family - that they should be thrown into the street to live in abject poverty,
subject to the contempt and degradation of all. Only those with an understanding of Middle Eastern culture
can grasp the severity of this curse.
What was it that caused Abu Mazen to burn his bridges with
the U.S. president by making such a speech, which could result in cutting off key
American support from UNRWA and the American president taking even more
negative positions toward the “Palestinian issue”.
To be able to answer this question we must first understand the
essence of the “Palestinian issue”. This issue is actually nothing but a house
of cards that has been very skillfully built over the past seventy years owing
to several factors: the Arab League, Yasser Arafat, a few Israelis as well as
journalists and politicians from abroad. Within this house of cards are a few
especially important ones:
The “liberation of Palestine”, as an overriding goal, but
its territorial component has never been clear whether it includes the
destruction of Israel or the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside
Israel.
“The refugee problem”, which was created during the War of
Independence in 1948, and was maintained during the past seventy years by UNRWA
as well as funding by the U.S. and other sources. Throughout the years, the
various governments of Israel have favored short-term benefits, continuing to
fund the problem in order to avoid the situation where millions of hungry
refugees, whose brothers had callously abandoned them to refugee camps, would begin
marching in our direction, and by dint of the “right of return”, destroy the
State of Israel.
The idea that “Jerusalem is the capital of Palestine”
developed after the Six Day War and gained strength after the signing of the
Oslo Accords in September 1992. Arafat repeated it as a mantra, and the response
by senior Israeli figures – such as Simon Peres, Yossi Beilin, Alon Leia, etc.
– was absolutely nothing. “They say this for internal consumption”, they told
us. “A million martyrs are marching on Jerusalem!!!” shouted Arafat, morning
and night, and they told us it’s okay, it’s just their dream – they’re not
serious.
Other countries, led by Europe, took part in building this
Palestinian house of cards, funding it with billions of dollars over the years,
in an attempt at making it a strong, real building, ignoring the truth and
reality. They supported the establishment of a “peace-loving Palestinian state
alongside Israel” but ignored the fact that the ideology of the PLO was to
destroy the Jewish State of Israel. And indeed, the PLO’s logo shows it as the
entire area of Palestine – from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River.
The world perpetuated the “Palestinian refugee problem”
despite the fact that in all other countries of the world there was no longer
even a single refugee from the 1040s. Even Germany, which had absorbed and
rehabilitated the refugees from Sudetenland that had been expelled from
Czechoslovakia, did not demand the Arab world to behave as Germany did in
absorbing and rehabilitating the “Palestinian refugees”, despite the fact that
their problem was created as a result of the Arab military invasion into the
State of Israel on the day after it declared its independence. Europe held
Germany responsible for creating the problem of refugees from Sudetenland and
expected her to solve it, but Europe did not hold the Arab states responsible
for the Palestinian refugee problem. This is how the Palestinian refugee problem
was created and how it became such an important bargaining chip in the
negotiations between Israel and her neighbors. It had become such a sticking
point that within the framework of the Taba Talks in 2001, Ehud Barak agreed to
a “symbolic return” of tens of thousands of refugees, but he was the only one
who agreed to it.
The world did not recognize Jerusalem as the capital of
Israel, which made Jerusalem another bargaining chip in “peace negotiations”
the entire purpose of which – for the
Arabs – was to minimize and weaken Israel so that the Jews, having lost
hope in having a viable state, would leave to go back to the countries from
which they came.
Trump and the House of Cards
And then came Trump, a businessman who was used to dealing
with buildings - not houses of cards but real buildings; those that were meant
to remain standing for generations. He understood that the Palestinian house
was a house of cards that managed to remain standing only because of collaboration
by the world, led by Europe, but also including liberal American groups, Arab
countries and a few bleeding heart Israelis. Trump understood the hollowness of
the Palestinian ideological structure and decided to remove two key cards from
it: the Jerusalem card and the refugee card.
Ever since Trump recognized Jerusalem as the capital of
Israel the Palestinians – both the PLO and Hamas – have been engaged in
frenzied activity, public disturbances and political activism in the
international halls of power, since they understood that having Jerusalem as
the capital of Israel is a sort of “insurance policy” for the Jewish state.
Jerusalem for the Jews is a true issue, anchored in history and the Jewish
religion, while for the Arabs and the Muslims it is nothing more than “fake
news”. But Jerusalem is still a theoretical matter because it is not as of now,
the capital of Palestine. So its removal from the Palestinian house of cards is
not what caused Abu Mazen to burn his bridges with the U.S.
But then, Trump also removed the refugee problem from the
house of cards by announcing that he intends to stop funding, supporting and
perpetuating it. This is a thousand times worse than the Jerusalem issue, since
this is something real that has been operating for seventy years and to date,
many billions of dollars have been poured into it. UNRWA maintains a huge
mechanism of salaried employees, schools and a support system, and if the
Americans stop funding it, UNRWA’s ability to continue breathing life into the
“refugee problem” might end, since without support, the refugees would scatter
and be absorbed into the neighboring areas that they came from, to the Arab countries
as well as outside of it. If the “refugee problem” is eliminated, the danger
that these refugees present to Israel would disappear.
The elimination of the refugee problem is something that Abu
Mazen cannot ignore, for several reasons: first, Abbas himself is a refugee,
having been born in Safed in 1935, and his entire personal legitimacy as a
Palestinian leader is based on this fact. Second, the refugees have become
addicted to living at the expense of external monetary support, so cutting
their funds would obligate them to start working like any other people. Third,
refugees who don’t receive foreign support will solve their problem
independently: some would emigrate to other places, some would be absorbed
where they currently live, thus causing the refugee problem, which the Palestinians
and Arabs have managed to maintain, thanks to a lot of European and American
money over seventy years, to disappear.
Abu Mazen understands that without the Jerusalem and refugee
cards, the Palestinian house of cards will collapse, and all the Palestinian
plans to destroy Israeli will end in failure. The sense that he has lost his
way makes him lose his mind and his judgment, which have always characterized
his activities, and he has returned to the very depths of Arab culture with his
curse on Trump “may your house be destroyed”. What he means by this curse is that
Trump’s house will be destroyed, his family will be thrown into the street and
he and the members of his family will live in poverty as homeless people,
humiliated among the passersby. There is no expression in the lexicon of Middle
East culture worse than the sense of disappointment and despair that Abu Mazen
feels, seeing his Palestinian house of cards collapse in front of his eyes, as
Trump pulls out these two cards, Jerusalem and the refugees.
Abu Mazen’s speech to the PLO expressed this in extremely
strong terms. He sees the Palestinian project in mortal danger, with, on one
side, the State of Israel standing strong and gloriously rebuilt, a lively
democracy with a strong economy and resolute society, and on the Palestinian
side, cultural, ideological, political and personal divisiveness between the
PLO and Hamas, paralyzing all political activity. He sees that his society is
divided into clans and families that have never abandoned their traditional
loyalties to the family; he sees that Palestinian society has never adopted the
ethos of a Palestinian nationality and that the ideological house cannot
survive without the Jerusalem and refugee cards.
Abu Mazen sees that even the Arab world does not stand
behind him. On the contrary, the Iranian matter impels the Arab countries
toward Israel, and the Arab countries are overwhelmed with so many internal
problems that the Palestinian problem has become a nuisance for them. His
speech this week, his “swan song”, clearly signified the collapse, death and
burial of the “Palestinian issue” into the abyss, and now is the time to find
another solution for it, outside the box, such as the “Emirates solution”, the
only positive socio-political model that works successfully in the Middle East.
Dr. Mordechai Kedar
Source: https://tinyurl.com/ycquj4pj
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