Just in time for Easter, another resurrection was recently proposed by Martin Indyk, twice US ambassador to Israel, in the journal Foreign Affairs:
"[The] allegedly dead two-state solution...resurrected by U.S. President Joe Biden and his top national security officials...is the only way to create lasting peace among the Israelis, the Palestinians, and the Arab countries of the Middle East".
"And how an unimaginable war could bring about the only imaginable peace".
Curiously, like President Joe Biden and his top national security officials, the ambassador ignores a crucial element: radical Islam does not tolerate the existence of a sovereign non-Islamic entity (such as Israel) on land that once was conquered by Muslims (dar al-Islam, "abode of Islam"). As most Palestinians have been creditably straightforward about, there is no place for an Israeli state.
Palestinian Islamists and the Islamic Republic of Iran are engaged in a jihadist-religious-nationalist-military-territorial-diplomatic conflict with Israel's Jews, however much the West may refuse to see it.
They fight against the Jews to prove that the Koran's "divine promise" to the Jews is still unborn, and that Jews should leave Israel and return from where they came.
"O my people, enter the Holy Land which God has prescribed for you, and turn not back in your traces, to turn about losers." (Quran 5:21)
"And We bequeathed upon the people that were abased all the east and the west of the land We had blessed; and perfectly was fulfilled the most fair word of thy Lord upon the Children of Israel, for that they endured patiently; and We destroyed utterly the works of Pharaoh and his people, and what they had been building." (Quran 7:137).
"And We said to the Children of Israel after him, 'Dwell in the land; and when the promise of the world to come comes to pass, We shall bring you a rabble.'" (Quran 17:104).
Land for peace, and billions of dollars, will not change Islam.
The fight against the Jews starts with verses such as:
"Fight those who believe not in God and the Last Day... -- those who have been given the Book -- until they pay the tribute out of hand and have been humbled." (Quran 9: 29).
Jews, especially those who live in Israel, do not pay the jizya tribute and are not humbled.
On September 28, 2011, the UN Security Council examined the application of "Palestine". One of the criteria is that only "peace loving states, willing to accept obligations of the Charter, who are able and willing to carry out these obligations", can be admitted. Today, this criterion is still not fulfilled, to say the least.
Unfortunately, "Palestine" has not exactly shown itself to be a "peace-loving nation", and the Palestinians are not a "people". As PLO executive committee member Zuheir Mohsen stated in a 1977 interview with the Dutch newspaper Trouw:
"The Palestinian people does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct 'Palestinian people' to oppose Zionism.
"For tactical reasons, Jordan, which is a sovereign state with defined borders, cannot raise claims to Haifa and Jaffa, while as a Palestinian, I can undoubtedly demand Haifa, Jaffa, Beer-Sheva and Jerusalem. However, the moment we reclaim our right to all of Palestine, we will not wait even a minute to unite Palestine and Jordan."
The Palestinians are Arabs. Their leaders seek to destroy the Jewish State. They would have hard time renouncing their aim of displacing Israel, of changing an education of hatred, and accepting the obligations contained in the Charter of the United Nations. They would be called traitors, and that is a death sentence as it was for Egyptian President Anwar Sadat who, in 1979, signed a peace agreement with Israel
Can the US and European states recognize "Palestine" as a peace-loving "state" while its government, the Palestinian Authority, continues to finance terrorism by paying salaries to imprisoned terrorists and their families, with US funds in violation of the Taylor Force Act, which in the US, became the "law of the land"?
"Palestine" is not able to be a "peace loving" entity. The stated desire to amend the PLO Charter has proven nothing but a charade. The "new" charter, never ratified, continues to mandate the "liberation of all of Palestine".
According to the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs:
"There are those who would have you believe that the Charter was amended in April 1996 (when it was actually referred to a committee from which it never reemerged) and again in 1998 when Arafat wrote to President Clinton that the Executive Committee had excised the offending articles. But if the Charter had actually been amended in 1996, why was Arafat writing to the President in 1998?"
The original charter, still dispositive in the original Arabic, states:
- "Palestine, with the boundaries it had during the British Mandate, is an indivisible territorial unit." (Article 2).
- "The Palestinian Arab people possess the legal right to their homeland...after achieving the liberation of their country... entirely..." (Article 3).
- "Armed struggle is the only way to liberate Palestine." (Article 9)
- "Commando action constitutes the nucleus of the Palestinian popular liberation war." (Article 10).
How does this show that the Palestinian Authority is capable of living in peace with the Jewish State?
Since the Oslo Accord of 1993, which supposedly disavowed terrorism, until now, terrorist attacks, officially promoted, have been taking place in Israel on an almost daily basis. On Palestinian Authority TV, on February 14, 2005, PA President Mahmoud Abbas called for the release of all Palestinian prisoners. He stated that they did what "we, the Palestinian Authority, ordered them to do.... He [the prisoner] will tell me that I ordered him to do what he did and I am responsible for him".
On Al-Arabiya television, then Fatah and PA official Mohammed Dahlan stated on June 16, 2007:
"Forty percent of the Martyrs in this Intifada belonged to the Palestinian Security Forces... and Hamas destroyed the Palestinian Authority which served to defend half of the Hamas leaders and its military wing...".
To "revitalize" the Palestinian Authority, US President Joe Biden and his advisers are expected to force the Fatah, the PLO and officials of the Palestinian Authority to relinquish their power and be replaced by so-called "technocrats." Palestinian "technocrats," however, have also been educated to hate and fight Jews. Tangible land for intangible peace and billions of dollars will not change them -- just buy them bigger weapons. Only re-education can hope to do that, if it would work, as it did with denazification and in post-World War II Japan. Dollars will not buy the hearts of those who follow the Islamist way.
What might work is if Palestinians feel that the world around them is rushing ahead, but that they, instead, have mistakenly insisted on being left behind: now, the train is pulling out of the station, they had better jump aboard fast.
Unfortunately, no Biden "revitalization" through "technocrats" can work. As the journalist Daniel Greenfield explains:
"What is a 'technocratic government'? It's a front for the terrorists and composed of nonprofit executives, academics, economists and others who have experience dealing with the international community and extracting foreign aid from them.
"Hamas will not officially be part of the puppet regime, but will control the puppets....
"That's what the Biden administration and the EU want to hear, but while Qatar is helping assemble a new 'technocratic' front for the terrorists, the Moscow summit made it clear that the real agenda of the new government would be terror against Israel and the U.S....
"The Palestinian Authority is trying to make it work by providing two sets of mutually contradictory assurances. Western diplomats are being told that the PA can unify the 'Palestinian' people around a state and an end to the conflict. Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other fellow terror groups are being assured that the PA remains absolutely committed to waging a war to destroy Israel.
"The 'technocratic government' will provide the Biden administration and other governments with the plausible deniability needed to go on funding terrorists.
"The Moscow summit revealed that a technocratic government will not end terrorism; it will disguise it, and it will not end the conflict, it will escalate it."
How can Israeli Jews trust Palestinian leaders who have blood on their hands, who pay people to murder Jews -- "Pay for Slay" is essentially a jobs program -- and a population of men, women, children, and even "technocrats," who have been educated for years to murder Israelis, to die as martyrs, and bring their families to Paradise?
How can Israelis believe again that some "peace agreement" will bring peace?
Muslim jurists doctrinally consider it uncomplicated to conclude a peace treaty with the enemy:
"By their very nature, treaties must be of a temporary duration, for in Muslim legal theory the normal relations between Muslim and non-Muslim territories are war and not peace... The holy war cannot possibly be suspended for more than ten years". If this was unfeasible, the truce could be renewed for another ten years." (Majid Khadduri, War and Peace in the Law of Islam, John Hopkins Press, Baltimore, 1955, p. 220).
In 1994, then Palestinian President Yasser Arafat referred to the Islamic Prophet Muhammad and to the Treaty of Hudaybiyya, signed in 628 CE between Muhammad and the ruling Quraish tribe of Mecca. The treaty was to be in force for a period of ten years. Less than two years later, after the balance of power in the area changed, Mohammad gathered an army, attacked the Quraish, and conquered Mecca.
Arafat, stated on April 18, 1998, on the Egyptian television station Orbit:
"I suggest we maintain quiet. We respect the agreements the way that Muhammad... respected the agreements which he signed..."
How can Israeli Jews believe that the recognition of a Palestinian state by the United States and other countries, such as France, Spain, Ireland, Slovenia, Great Britain and so on, will bring peace? These countries have no means of enforcing any commitments undertaken by "Palestine" in a potential peace treaty, and even less will to do so.
How can anyone believe that giving more power, even short of sovereignty, to a "revitalized" Palestinian Authority, will not lead to more war? Israel will still have to protect its security, both during and after any transition, so the cries of "occupation" will persist. Let us remember that these cries of "occupation" came into even wider use after Israel completely withdrew from the Gaza Strip in 2005, with not one Jew left in sight.
Recognition of "Palestine" as a state, even if it were supposedly "demilitarized," would enable it to enter into military alliances and "defense agreements" with whomever they chose -- China, Russia, Iran, all of them? Why would such a state not be used as a base, as in the PLO's 1974 "Ten Point Plan" of phases, from which to try to take "the rest"? Why would such a state not open the gates of its undefined territory to all the so-called diaspora of 14 million "Palestinians," Muslims and others who would like to join the fight against Israel?
Equally alarmingly, the US has reportedly asked Qatar, Hamas's main patron since 2007, to operate a supposedly temporary pier in Gaza, currently being planned, to deliver supposedly "humanitarian aid." Apart from evidence that Hamas is stealing the humanitarian aid, and either hoarding (here and here) it or selling it to Gazans on the black market at prices few can afford, one has to ask: What else will come in with the humanitarian aid? With Qatar in charge, "demilitarization" will likely last less than a week.
Those who want to recognize or impose a Palestinian state, knowingly or unconsciously, aim at Israel's destruction.
Peace will come when the Jews, the Americans and the Europeans support those fighting to preserve civilization, not to preserve terrorism.
Michel Calvo was born in Tunis, Tunisia. An expert in international law, he was a member of the International Court of Arbitration representing Israel. He is the author of The Middle East and World War III: Why No Peace? with a preface by Col. Richard Kemp, CBE.
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