Did the US force Israel to cede strategic territory to Iran?

And is this is a paradox?

By Fransisco Gil-White, THE MANAGEMENT OF REALITY  27 March 2024

• Iran publicly announces that it means to destroy Israel.
• US bosses—presenting as protectors of Israel—claim to oppose that.
• But US bosses have pushed for a PLO/Fatah State on strategic Israeli land.
• Is that consistent with protecting Israel?
• Not if PLO/Fatah (the ‘Palestinian Authority’) and Iran have a special relationship…

Let’s begin with a metaphor: there you are in your own home, and Bill—your best friend—comes along and brings your enemy (who means to kill you) inside your home.

Paradox!

To adapt and survive, you need a model of reality that will dissipate the paradox.

Accept, first, that you can never truly know another’s intentions. To call Bill your ‘best friend’ is to express a hypothesis—even if you never call it that—of Bill’s intentions.

Now consider the three obvious candidate possibilities to dissipate the paradox. Bill brought your mortal enemy into your home…

• Option A: …because he is indeed your best friend, but a naïve fool who thought that you and your enemy could talk it over.
• Option B: …because he is indeed your best friend, and a genius who got your enemy to talk peace;
• Option C: …because he was only pretending to be your best friend, and is trying to kill you.

With this metaphor in hand, let us now consider Israeli reality.

The current mess in Israel began when PLO/Fatah—a terrorist group that specialized in killing Israeli civilians but now claimed to want peace—was brought into Israel in 1993-94 to govern the Arabs in the territories of Judea & Samaria (‘West Bank’) and Gaza, with a view to creating a PLO/Fatah State (a ‘Palestinian State’) in those territories. This was called the ‘Oslo Peace Process’ to honor the last stretch of the negotiations, which happened in the Norwegian capital.

How did all this come to pass?

First, there was strong bullying from US President George Bush Sr., a Republican, who leaned very hard on the Israelis.1 Then Bill Clinton, a Democrat, kept the pressure up and—flashing his inimitable puckered smile—got the agreement signed on the White House lawn. Totally bipartisan. Ever since, US bosses from both parties have pushed strongly to move forward the Oslo Process and give PLO/Fatah ever more power inside Israel.

These US bosses pose in public as Israel’s best friends.

Paradox: Israel’s best friends brought practiced murderers of Israelis into the Jewish State.

Now, how to dissipate this paradox and produce a better model of the world?

I don’t like Option A, the naïve fool scenario.

I’ll tell you why. It was a Pentagon-affiliated think tank, RAND, that first recommended (in 1989) to give Judea, Samaria, and Gaza to PLO/Fatah,2 even though an earlier study—from the same Pentagon—had already concluded, following the Six Day War of 1967, that Israel would not survive if those territories ever fell into enemy hands.3

Can US bosses be so addled that, knowing these territories to be strategic, they still believed it would be good for Israel if the PLO/Fatah terrorists got them? Did it never occur to them that PLO/Fatah might lie about wanting peace to get those territories? Incompetence on this level produces a new paradox: world power is in the hands of pathological bumblers.

I discard Option A.

Option B is at the other extreme, for it argues that US bosses are anything but incompetent: they are geniuses and saints, almost supernaturally skilled at peace-building and soft strategy. This scenario must be argued as follows:

“Yes, true, PLO/Fatah was murdering innocent Israeli civilians. And, true, Judea, Samaria, and Gaza are militarily strategic. But US bosses—negotiating geniuses—got PLO/Fatah to talk peace. And that’s pure strategic genius because the pending matter of a PLO/Fatah State is all that still impedes a lasting and general peace between Israel and the Muslim world. Such a lasting and general peace would make Israel truly secure. So US bosses—as always—have been trying to protect Israel. The benefits of a lasting and general peace are so large that the risks in the Oslo Process are entirely worth it.”

One does hear something very much like that. Option B is the ‘official narrative,’ let us say. But can it withstand scrutiny?

Well, consider that the staunchest enemies of Israel—Iran, and its proxies Hamas and Hezbollah—have always publicly announced that their primary interest is in the genocidal destruction of the Jewish State, whether or not PLO/Fatah is given its own State.4

So let us then describe in strategic terms what has happened:

The Iranian bosses, who call for the extermination of the Israelis, and who have proxy terrorist armies stationed on Israel’s southern and northern borders (Hamas and Hezbollah), will not be appeased by the creation of a PLO/Fatah State. That PLO/Fatah State will therefore not bring a lasting and general peace. Yet, despite this, US bosses have insisted that Israel cede militarily strategic territory to murderers of Israelis who now (sometimes) claim to have abandoned terrorism.

A description in strategic terms, as above, is useful because it makes evident that if US bosses are well intentioned and hence honestly believe that the Oslo Process protects Israel, as Option B requires, then we are really back again at Option A: US bosses are pathologically incompetent (which, as stated, only creates a new paradox).

I don’t mean to press my luck just yet: I accept that all weaknesses so far identified in Option A and Option B may not be sufficient to kill anyone’s preexisting preference for either. But such weaknesses do at least make room on the table for Option C. So let’s consider it.

Option C does not assume that the most powerful people in the world are pathologically incompetent; it assumes—to the contrary—that they are Machiavellian geniuses. Ask yourself: Might Machiavellian geniuses become the most powerful people in the world? Sure—no paradox there. And that’s a strong beginning.

Of course, Option C raises questions. Such as: Why would US bosses wish to destroy Israel? A complete model must answer such questions (and mine will). But a model that generates questions in need of answers is an entirely different thing from a model with a built-in paradox that challenges our common sense.

And yet partisans of Option C will be swimming against a strong prejudice anyway. So it would be nice if we had a result, akin to what experimental scientists sometimes obtain with randomized control trials, that would allow us decisively to rule out both Option A and Option B.

What we need is a dramatic fact, as I call it.

DRAMATIC FACT = one that the hypothesis under consideration requires to be impossible.

The hypothesis under consideration—necessary for both Option A and Option B—says that US bosses are well-intentioned and mean to protect Israel. If something—a dramatic fact—has happened already which is required to be impossible under any ‘good intentions’ hypothesis, then only Option C—the Machiavellian hypothesis—will remain standing.

What would such a dramatic fact look like?

Well, suppose it could be documented that PLO/Fatah and genocidal Iran have always been tightly allied with a joint plan to have PLO/Fatah pretend to talk peace in order to get strategic territory from which to destroy Israel. And suppose it were clear, also, that US bosses—who made sure that PLO/Fatah got strategic territory inside the Jewish State—have always known about this plan. If this could be established, we would have a dramatic fact—one that is simply impossible under any ‘good-intentions’ hypothesis.

Below I will document all of the following:

1. PLO/Fatah created Khomeini’s jihadi Iran.
2. There was later a media and academic blackout on this, and that was crucial to making the Oslo Process possible.
3. Meanwhile, PLO/Fatah and Iran pretended to be estranged, but they were in fact still allied, as always.
4. The pretense was dropped in the Second Intifada.
5. The show of ‘estrangement’ was then renewed, but I’ll show you it’s a phony.
6. Everything has gone according to plan for PLO/Fatah and Iran, a plan that US bosses always understood.

PLO/Fatah created jihadi Iran

“Palestinian sources said that Mr. Arafat’s group had sent arms to the [Iranian] revolutionary forces in the last four months and had trained Iranian guerillas since the early 1970s.”5

Arafat himself was coy:

“Bantering and grinning, the guerrilla leader declined to furnish details about support the PLO had given to various Iranian guerrilla organizations.”6

I’ll come back to this, but make a note of it: This was all reported on Page A1—which is to say the front page—of the New York Times.

Yasser Arafat and Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini celebrating the Iranian Revolution in Teheran

Canada’s Globe and Mail reported that Khomeini’s regime would honor its debts to PLO/Fatah:

“Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat said yesterday that Iranian guerrillas would fight alongside Palestinian forces against Israel.

… Mr. Arafat, the first prominent visitor to Iran since the revolution, said the Palestinian and Iranian aims were identical. ‘We will continue our efforts until the time when we defeat imperialism and Zionism,’ he said.

A close aide of Ayatollah Khomaini, Deputy Premier Ibrahim Yazdi, also attended the inauguration of the PLO office and referred to the identity of the two causes and the large number of Palestinian sacrifices in the PLO’s struggle against Israel.

… The son of Ayatollah Khomaini, Seyyed Ahmad Khomaini, a Moslem clergyman who also spoke at the inauguration of the new PLO office, pledged Iran would continue its revolutionary struggle until all Islamic countries had been set free.

The bearded, black-turbaned Seyyed Khomaini said: ‘We will continue our struggle until we free all Islamic countries and hoist the Palestinian flag together with ours.’ ”7

PLO/Fatah was very powerful in Iran. The New York Times reported in November of 1980 that “The P.L.O. currently enjoys close ties with some of the Iranian revolutionary leaders who rose to power with the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.” This included Defense Minister Mustafa Chamran and Abu Sharif, leader of the Revolutionary Guards. Wrote the Times:

“Like Yasir Arafat both Abu Sharif and Mustafa Chamran are fervent advocates of exporting Iran’s Islamic revolution to the rest of the Middle East—in particular, to the conservative states of the Arab [sic] Gulf. ”8 (my emphasis)

Yasser Arafat receiving the former Israeli embassy in Teheran (1979)

The Times also explained that PLO/Fatah had played a role in creating a) the Revolutionary Guards (for it trained Abu Sharif), and b) the new Iranian secret police, SAVAMA (because Sharif and Chamran “relied heavily on their P.L.O. contacts” in setting it up). The Times added:

“The current head of the P.L.O. network in Iran is Hani al-Hassan, alias Abu Hassan, a Jordanian citizen who belongs to Arafat’s inner circle of advisers. Before he was sent to Teheran, Abu Hassan served as deputy chief of Fatah’s security department. He enjoys a remarkable entree to Khomeini and other key members of the Iranian regime—so much so that one Western diplomat suggests that the P.L.O. envoy should be counted as one of the most influential men in Teheran.”9 (my emphasis)

If that were not enough, Arafat bestrode the world stage as the negotiator on the Iranian side for the release of the Americans held hostage in the US Embassy in Teheran. And his intervention, by the way, was at the request of—… drum roll …—the US government.10

Let us now summarize this picture:

1. PLO/Fatah played a key role in the creation of the Iranian Islamist terror state.
   1. It armed and trained Khomeini’s troops for his revolution.
   2. It helped create the all-important Revolutionary Guards.
   3. It helped create the Iranian secret service SAVAMA.
   4. It acted for a while like it was the Iranian foreign ministry.
2. The idea of spreading Iranian Islamist terror everywhere was closely associated with “the PLO’s struggle against Israel,” which Iran pledged itself to assist
3. And PLO/Fatah pledged itself to help export the Iranian Islamist Revolution.

Iran and PLO/Fatah: besties.

This article continues below, but in case you are interested, we have a short documentary on all this:

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