T. Belman. This article holds that Abbas and the Arab countries really want true peace with Israel based on the API. The truth is otherwise. If they want peace with Israel, why not compromise your demands just as Israel is being asked to do. The Arabs want to weaken Israel though they need Israel to defend them.
Mahmoud Abbas to meet U.S. President Donald Trump in Washington Wednesday • Abbas expected to argue that Israeli economic gestures are no alternative to talks on two-state solution • U.S. official warns: The president is not super patient.
Associated Press and Israel Hayom Staff
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas at the Arab League summit in Jordan, in March | Photo credit: AP
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’ relief at being invited to the White House is now clouded by concerns he might have to say no to U.S. President Donald Trump in their first meeting Wednesday.
Palestinians fear Trump will ask Abbas to halt stipends for families of Palestinians killed or jailed in the context of the conflict with Israel, and a senior U.S. official said Tuesday that such a request was raised in preparatory talks with Palestinian officials. Israel considers such payments a reward for terrorists, but stopping them seems untenable to Abbas, especially at a time of broad Palestinian support for a mass hunger strike of prisoners held by Israel.
The importance of the meeting lies with the fact that a solid relationship with the U.S. forms the core of Abbas’ strategy of setting up a Palestinian state in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem. The 82-year-old leader has stuck to this approach despite repeated failures of U.S.-led negotiations with Israel and growing doubts that a partition remains possible.
Trump ignored the Palestinians early in his presidency, while appearing to side with Israel on key issues. Being shunned by the U.S. would undercut Abbas’ remaining political legitimacy just as polls show two-thirds of Palestinians want him to resign. Abbas has been in power since 2005, and new elections were blocked partly because of a rivalry with the Hamas terrorist group.
Trump seems eager to broker an Israeli-Palestinian deal — and some hold out hope that his freewheeling style might succeed where more orthodox diplomacy has failed.
On Tuesday, National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster told an Israel Independence Day celebration in Washington that Trump “does not have time to debate over doctrine” and was instead seeking to challenge failed policies of the past with a businessman’s results-oriented approach.
“The president is not a super-patient man,” McMaster said. “Some people have described him as disruptive. They’re right. And this is good — good because we can no longer afford to invest in policies that do not advance the interests and values of the United States and our allies.”
Abbas aides say he will try to win Trump’s support for an Arab League peace plan offering Israel normalization with the Arab and Muslim world if it allows a Palestinian state along the 1967 lines. The plan was reaffirmed in March at an Arab summit and would block efforts by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to seek normalization with some Arab countries ahead of a Palestinian deal.
Abbas will also argue that Israeli economic gestures toward the Palestinians, recently encouraged by the U.S., are no alternative to negotiations on a two-state solution.
Wide gaps between Abbas and Netanyahu on the framework of a future deal have prevented serious negotiations since 2009. If pressed, Abbas might reluctantly agree to a one-off meeting with Netanyahu, Palestinian officials suggest.
Prospects for renewed talks are sketchy, though. The Trump administration previously tried to win a commitment from Netanyahu to curb settlement building on lands sought for a Palestinian state. Netanyahu reportedly agreed only to a vague slowdown.
A White House official said that while the existence of settlements is not an impediment to peace, “further unrestrained settlement activity” does not help advance peace. The administration believes a solution cannot be imposed on the two sides, said the official.
Israel has pressed demands that Abbas halt monthly stipends for the families of thousands of Palestinians killed or jailed as part of the conflict, including those who killed or wounded Israelis.
“How can you speak about peace with Israel while you finance murderers who shed the blood of innocent Israelis at every opportunity?” Netanyahu asked in a speech this week.
The U.S. official said Tuesday that the issue came up in talks with senior Palestinian officials, with the administration asking that the payments be halted. He said the issue will be a focus during Abbas’ visit.
Earlier Tuesday, three Republican senators urged a halt to such payments in a letter that reflected widespread opinion on the Hill.
Palestinians see the stipends as welfare payments to “victims of the occupation.” While they are split on whether violence is effective or acceptable, Palestinians overwhelmingly view anyone killed in conflict with Israel, including attackers, as freedom fighters rather than terrorists.
Abbas adviser Nabil Shaath said the Palestinian leader cannot budge on the issue.
Still, the issue of whether Abbas can even commit to anything on behalf of the Palestinian people as a whole remains unclear.
Hamas’ violent takeover of Gaza in 2006 led to the formation of rival Palestinian governments, and a decade and several failed reconciliation attempts later, Abbas has been stepping up financial pressure in recent weeks, slashing wage and aid payments to Gaza. With this tough new approach, Abbas can tell Trump that he has leverage and is ready to use it against Hamas.
Hamas routinely portrays Abbas’ efforts to reach statehood through U.S.-brokered negotiations with Israel as a waste of time. Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum said this week that Abbas markets an illusion and lacks legitimacy to represent the Palestinian people.
@ Birdalone:
That might be a good thing.
“Jewish Obama holdover is responsible for Trump shift toward PA
“Diplomatic sources say expert U.S. National Security Council official Yael Lempert is pushing the pro-PA line.”
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/227667
or not:
???
Abbas is going by the book, as usual. These pundits and analysts just don’t get it. The Pal leadership has been consistently doctrinaire in their strategy and tactics. It’s not like the Soviet Union or Apartheid South Africa in their last days. There are no moderates. They’ve never been “recalcitrant.” Never were:
http://www.afsi.org/pamphlets/SadatsStrategy_Eidelberg%5B1%5D.pdf
Yael Lempert replaced on NSC by Col. Kris A. Bauman, reported by Haaretz (so far today)
http://www.haaretz.com/us-news/.premium-1.787191
“The strategy has three interrelated objectives, the achievement of
which depends very largely on the oratorical ability of the dictator to:
“…3) Alienate the enemy from his friends or allies (by raising the
spectre of war and economic catastrophe)….”
“…The strategy has already
been anticipated. Moscow’s public posture must be critical of Egypt; it
must cooperate with Sadat in fostering the myth of an Egyptian-Soviet
rift, thereby encouraging the United States to believe that it can replace
the Soviet Union as Egypt’s major arms supplier. Only then will
Washington have sufficient incentive to pressure Israel into surrendering
the territories now in question.
Thus, while the Soviet Union was condemning the 1975 Sinai
Agreement, accusing Sadat of betraying the Arab cause, the Israeli
Communist Party, with four members in the Knesset, and with almost
slavish obedience to Moscow, announced, at a time when confirmation
of the Agreement was still in doubt, that it would add its 4 votes to those of
the Government’s supporters in order to insure that the Agreement
would be implemented!
…It is in this light that we are to understand Moscow’s denunciation of
the Sadat “peace initiative” and the results of the Camp David Summit.
The stratagem was baldly revealed by Lufti aI-Khuli in Al-Ahram, on
February 11, 1976:
‘U.S.-Israeli coordination is no longer “total”… In view of this,
Egypt has decided that the political response to the new reality
requires that Egyptian-Soviet coordination should also stop being “total” and be confined only to the general outlines.
Otherwise, the Israeli-U.S. contradictions would not continue
and there would be again an Arab-Soviet front facing an
Israeli-U.S. front. Egypt welcomes a certain degree of
coordination with the Soviets provided that the Soviet reaction
does not exceed the limits of Egypt’s visualization of the effect
on mutual coordination between Tel Aviv and Washington.'”
and
“…East, pursues the policy of “peace in our time.” Sadat’s diplomacy has
enabled the United States, with better grace, to embark upon a policy of
weakening Israel to the point where her ability to defend herself will be
undermined. The United States is seeking to reduce the temptation of the
Soviet Union to intervene directly against Israel (rather than through her
Arab clients) for fear that this might push the United States into a
confrontation with Soviet power. Thus an obvious factor propelling the
United States into pressuring Israel into asymmetrical agreements with
undemocratic and in the long run politically unreliable Arab regimes is
the growing disparity of military power in favor of the Soviet Union. This
has led to a United States policy of appeasement of larger powers at the
expense of smaller powers, even when the price, as in the case of Taiwan,
is termination of a treaty of defense with an ally. (The United States is
now in the ludicrous position of being bound by treaty obligations for an
additional year to a country whose existence it no longer recognizes!)
But equally, perhaps even more important, has been the shift in
perception to which Sadat’s clever tactics have contributed substantially.
Arab demands are seen as legitimate and Israel’s effort to preserve her
viability as a state is seen as “inflexibility.”
The parallel between the fate of Czechoslovakia at Munich and the
treatment of Israel by the West is often drawn but generally without clear
explanation of why it is appropriate. It therefore seems worthwhile to
devote some attention to the events at Munich…”
from “Sadat’s Strategy’, Prof. Paul Eidelberg (1979)
http://www.afsi.org/pamphlets/SadatsStrategy_Eidelberg%5B1%5D.pdf
—
The Soviet Union isn’t around anymore but it’s always gonna be something. Isis, Iran, the Sunni Arab States, Russia, the EU, the UN, Men from Mars. Israel just has to stand up and tell everybody to take their marbles and go home. She doesn’t have to say God is on her side. He is, I mean how many miracles do you need ’48, ’67, ’73, the discovery of the Leviathan and other gas fields. But, she doesn’t have to say that.
“…And then, between Passover and Shavuot, the Hanukkah miracle occurred. It didn’t take long before the supposedly mighty enemy was rendered speechless and lost its nerve. Even the Soviet Ambassador to the UN, Nikolai Fedorenko, suddenly changed his tone. Instead of worrying about whether Nasser would finally curb his appetite for power, world leaders began looking for ways to make amends to Israeli Premier Levi Eshkol.
‘It was as though a theater director, unfamiliar with his cast, suddenly switched the parts of his actors: those who had stubbornly opposed us now asked for mercy, as their former protectors now distanced themselves from them. Overnight, the mood at the UN Security Council seemed unrecognizable…”
Read more: http://forward.com/opinion/israel/370557/revealed-after-50-years-what-elie-wiesel-wrote-about-the-six-day-war/
@ wooly mammoth:
Thousands of people would disagree with you.
Israpundit has an excellent reputation and many loyal followers.
Trump is making a big mistake.
:
Two hucksters trying to sell a used car to one another, and ready to sign their contract with a pen that contains disappearing ink.
“…At constant fertility, Israel will have more young people by the end of this century than either Turkey or Iran, and more than Germany, Italy or Spain…”
“..That is why it is in America’s interest to keep Israel as an ally. Israel is not only the strongest power in the region; in a generation or two it will be the only power in the region, the last man standing among ruined neighbors. The demographic time bomb in the region is not the Palestinian Arabs on the West Bank, as the Israeli peace party wrongly believed, but rather Israel itself…”
“…Paradoxically, this makes Israel’s present position dangerous, for its enemies understand that they have a very brief window in which to encircle the Jewish superpower. The collapse of Egypt and possibly that of Syria shortens this window. Nothing short of American support for a unilateral declaration of a Palestinian state on the 1949 armistice lines followed by economic sanctions against Israel, though, is likely to make a difference, and this seems unlikely…“
“UN:Israel youth population growth outstrips Turkey and Iran”
http://www.icjs-online.org/indarch.php?article=3173
“I was in our village for the summer vacation when Hitler marched forth from Munich to Berlin, to wipe out the consequences of Germany’s defeat in World War I and rebuild his country. I gathered my friends and told them we ought to follow Hitler’s example… Anwar el-Sadat Autobiography (1978)
(1) Chapter 1: THE MODEL FOR CONQUEST
The preponderance of evidence indicates that Anwar el-Sadat, the President of Egypt, is engaged in a plan to destroy the state of Israel, and that he has patterned his method after the Nazi model of conquest. The model is a war-and-peace strategy synchronized to facilitate the eventual destruction of the enemy. It is suitable for use by dictators against democracies, that is, against regimes based on the primacy of public opinion—what Hitler called “the mightiest factor of our time.” Sadat, who taught himself German while imprisoned by the British during World War II for his pro-Nazi activities, has studied Hitler’s diplomatic tactics and methods of psychological warfare. He is applying them with cunning and effectiveness in his war against Israel.
The strategy has three interrelated objectives, the achievement of which depends very largely on the oratorical ability of the dictator to:
1) Shift the responsibility for war onto the enemy (while posing as the apostle of peace).
2) Divide and demoralize the enemy (by courting opposition party leaders and peace movements in the enemy’s country).
3) Alienate the enemy from his friends or allies (by raising the spectre of war and economic catastrophe).
These three objectives may be pursued simultaneously by means of semantic subversion, and most effectively by using the language of democracy against democracy. For example, Hitler, a tyrant, appealed to the democratic principle of self-determination to undermine Czechoslovakia’s control of the Sudetenland without which the country could not defend itself. In the same way, Sadat, the head of a military dictatorship, constantly appeals to the principle of self-determination to undermine Israel’s claim to the West Bank—really Judea and Samaria— without which Israel’s heartland would be reduced to a 9 to 14 mile strip, rendering the country defenseless.*
It should be noted, however, that these appeals to self-determination are made doubly effective (and deceptive) by various threats of war. Thus, during the Nuremberg Rally of September 5-12, 1938—this was the month of Munich—Goering was assigned the role of saber-rattler. In his speech of September 10 he viciously attacked Czechoslovakia and left little doubt that Germany was prepared to go to war to solve the Sudeten German problem. Hitler’s speech of September 12, though tough and insistent on Sudeten self-determination, was moderate by comparison. Today, in the Arab-Israeli conflict, Goering’s role is being played primarily by Syrian dictator Hafez al-Assad. With militants like Assad helping him, Sadat can raise the spectre of war without appearing bellicose himself. It nonetheless remains clear that he holds the war option and will use it unless Israel accepts the principle of self-determination for Arabs on the West Bank. Given, therefore, the strong emotional appeal which this democratic principle has both in Israel and in the United States, Sadat’s veiled threat to go to war on behalf of this principle has enabled him to achieve, to no small extent, each of the three objectives of the Nazi “peace strategy.”
This strategy exploits not only the language but the media of democracy. It is not mere vanity that moves autocrats like Sadat to grant frequent interviews to American television and other news media. The media provide the most effective means of manipulating democratic public opinion by the systematic use of propaganda. Sadat, whose ambition as a youth was to be an actor, is a master at dissembling. His mentor was Hitler, whose ability to deceive democracies needs no documentation. The text? Mein Kampf—required reading at Egypt’s Military Academy. Mein Kampf serves a double purpose at the Egyptian war college. It reinforces Islamic hatred of Jews while teaching students fundamental principles of psychological warfare to be used against the Jewish state of Israel. Needless to say, the same principles can be (and are) used against Israel’s ally, the United States…
[*Note the double deception. Sadat’s Egypt is no more based on self-determination than Hitler’s Germany. And were the Arabs in Judea and Samaria to exercise self-determination, not only would they live under a form of government that denies the freedoms which make self-determination a continuously operating principle of political life, but that government would be committed to the destruction of Israel, the only country in the Middle East where such freedoms are enjoyed in all their fullness.
Here it should be noted that self-determination requires, among other things, freedom of speech and press, the equivalent of a multi-party system, and periodic elections whereby the people can change the men responsible for the formulation and execution of public policy.
What is sometimes called “national self-determination” is not necessarily consistent with self-determination as just defined. Dogmatic application of the former would permit every distinct ethnic, racial, and religious group to form a sovereign state, the consequence of which would be unmitigated anarchy. Consider, in this connection, the French in Quebec, the Protestants in Northern Ireland, the Scots, the Welsh, the Flemings in Belgium, the Basques and Catalans in- Spain, the Laps in Sweden, and of course the American Indians to mention only a few Western examples.] … it’s a short book. Essential reading. In PDF form below courtesy of Americans for a Safe Israel. You can also buy it on Amazon.
Sadat’s Strategy (1979) – Americans For A Safe Israel
http://www.afsi.org/pamphlets/SadatsStrategy_Eidelberg%5B1%5D.pdf
“Paul Eidelberg is Director of the Institute for Statesmanship in Jerusalem and visiting ….. Sadat’s plan to bring about Israel’s downfall did not begin with his…”
http://www.afsi.org/pamphlets/SadatsStrategy_Eidelberg%5B1%5D.pdf
-Article 3 of the1974 phased plan:
“The Liberation Organization will struggle against any proposal for a Palestinian entity the price of which is recognition, peace, secure frontiers, renunciation of national rights and the deprival of our people of their right to return and their right to self-determination on the soil of their homeland.”
—
“The plan in brief:
Through the “armed struggle” (i.e., terrorism), to establish an “independent combatant national authority” over any territory that is “liberated” from Israeli rule. (Article 2)
To continue the struggle against Israel, using the territory of the national authority as a base of operations. (Article 4)
To provoke an all-out war in which Israel’s Arab neighbors destroy it entirely (“liberate all Palestinian territory”). (Article 8)”
http://www.iris.org.il/plophase.htm
—
“PLO’s phased plan to destroy Israel is alive and well
From Palestinian Media Watch”:
http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2014/01/plos-phased-plan-to-destroy-israel-is.html
“LAND FOR PEACE, AGAIN”
Published: 03/08/2002 at 1:00 AM
“Land for peace.” It’s the mantra of Middle East diplomacy. We’ve heard it before, and we’re hearing it again. This time from Saudi Arabia.
Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2002/03/13060/#DVHPmXRgz4leYp8q.99
http://www.wnd.com/2002/03/13060/