By Nazir Majli, AAWSAT
Saturday, 20 October, 2018
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. Reuters file photo
In a remarkable development, US President Donald Trump sent a personal envoy to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas with a message described as “positive,” suggesting that he return to negotiations with his Middle East staff.
The envoy, US Jewish businessman Ronald Lauder, told Abbas the deal “promises to surprise you for the best.”
At the same time, the president’s Special Representative, Jason Greenblatt, advised Hamas to change its political positions.
Israeli sources revealed that Trump sent Lauder, who is also the President of World Jewish Congress and a former close associate of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, to Ramallah to meet with the president’s advisers without the knowledge of the Israeli authorities.
Lauder met with the chief Palestinian negotiator, Secretary General of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s (PLO) Executive Committee Saeb Erekat, and the head of the intelligence service of the Authority, Majid Faraj.
The source described the message conveyed by the Special Envoy to the Palestinian officials close to Abbas as “surprising” and focused on trying to persuade the president, through his advisers, to work with the Trump administration and told him he would be positively surprised by the US administration’s yet to be unveiled peace plan.
In September, Trump said that he would announce “the details of the deal over the next three months.”
Hebrew newspaper “Israel Hayom” disclosed that the US president seeks to announce his plan for the settlement of the Palestinian issue, known in media as the “Deal of the Century,” in January, and that the Israeli PM is trying to prevent that from happening.
Meanwhile, Special Representative Greenblatt advised Hamas to change its political positions.
Addressing the head of Hamas in the Gaza Strip, Yahya al-Sinwar, Greenblatt said Hamas “needs to embrace change, to embrace the values Mr. Sinwar professes to revere: democracy, pluralism, cooperation, human rights, and freedom.”
In an article published in the Israeli daily The Jerusalem Post, Greenblatt noted that such values do not exist in Gaza.
“How is Hamas helping its youth realize their vast potential? Peace will give the youth an opportunity to develop their talents, which Mr. Sinwar rightly points out are stifled by the situation in Gaza,” continued Greenblatt.
He indicated that if Hamas no longer wants to be regarded as an “armed terrorist organization, we and others around the world have made it clear what Hamas’ next steps must be: renounce violence, recognize Israel, and accept previous agreements.”
He told Hamas to show the world it actually cares for the Palestinians and allow the Palestinian Authority to return so that all Palestinians can be united under one leadership.
“Commit to peace and the improvement of Palestinian lives,” he stressed.
The Special Representative concluded his article by saying: “If Hamas genuinely wants change and peace with its neighbors, the peace plan that the Trump Administration is developing will offer a path to a change that will be the most significant gift Mr. Sinwar could ever give to his children and the children that he and Hamas claim to care for.”
TWO STATE PROPOSAL IS A DELUSION
Of course this plan will not be implemented, but, even if it were, it would not lead to peace because the sacred doctrines of Islam prohibit Jewish sovereignty over Moslems and required Moslems to make war on the Jews. There is also the Islamic doctrine of waqf which says that, once any territory has been conquered by Moslems, that territory must remain Islamic forever. That includes Spain and Sicily, by the way. Any Moslem leader who agrees to make peace with the Jews would have to flagrantly violate the commands of his god and his prophet to make war on the Jews and either subjugate them to Islam law or to kill them.
A Palestinian state would be a corrupt-Fatah-Hamas-Iranian proxy terror state.
From what I can make out AAWSAT is a more or less official press spokesman for the Saudi government. Many of its articles read like official Saudi government press releases. On the other hand, its coverage of Israel and the Israeli-Hamas conflict is surprisingly fair and balanced. The Saudi government is not willing to publicly back Israel, but clearly MBS and King Salman have no wish to see it destroyed, either. And they don’t want Hamas to remain in power in Gaza, since Hamas backs all of Saudia’s enemies. Hard to know if AAWSAT’s reporting of the Lauder “mission” to Abbas is accurate, or whether or not Lauder was acting as Trump’s emissary. But it could be true, despite Trump’s denial.
We must remember that Trump is not likely to stay in office for very long. The “deep state” and the media are making a full court press to drive him from office. If the Democrats win the mid-term Congressional elections, which now seems almost certain, they will probably be able to accomplish this via a hostile report from Mueller and an impeachment vote in the House. We must also bear in mind that Trump refuses to exercise, that he is 71, overweight, and doesn’t look too healthy. There are also a lot of people who wish to assassinate him. Finally, I don’t think he really wants to complete his term as President. It is probably hurting his business in a big way, despite the press’s phoney claims to the contrary. It is placing his daughter and son-in-law in grave jeopardy as the prosecutors gun for Jared Kushner. His wife is known to hate being First Lady, and I think that he is desperate to save his marriage. He doesn’t want to be a “three-time loser” in his private life. She believes that life in the White House is bad for their young son. And I suspect that Trump agrees with her. I believe that he would like nothing better than to retire as President, attend to his business, and go back to being a talk show host and Fox News commentator. But if he were openly to retire for personal reasons, his many supporters would be deeply disillusioned and angry. So he will probably allow an impeachment vote to go forward in the House, then resign rather than face trial. That way, his many supporters will blame his enemies (and rightly so) for his resignation.
IN ANY CASE, ISRAELIS SHOULD NOT RELY ON TRUMP TO RESCUE THEM. HE DOES NOT HAVE THE POWER TO DO THIS, AND PROBABLY NOT THE WILL. HE LOVES ISRAEL AND IS PRO-JEWISH. BUT HE HAS OTHER PRIORITIES.
None of this is really anything new. Trump has always tended to favor the two-state solution, but only if the Palestinian leaders give genuine evidence that they have renounced violence, ended subsidies to terrorists and terrorist attacks, and committed themselves unequivocally to peace with Israel. The problem is that there is no possibility that they will ever genuinely do this, because it would conflict with their deeply entrenched ideological convictions, which center on hatred of Israel and Jews. I don’t know whether or not Trump realizes this. Obviously, his cutoff of funds to the “State of Palestine” is an attempt to pressure Abbas to accept his (Trump’s) peace plan. Will it succeed? I don’t think so, although it is possible that Abbas & Co. will nominally and fomally agree to the plan, but insincerely and with no intention of implementing it.
“If Hamas genuinely wants change and peace with it’s neighbours”….This is the beginning of the last paragraph of the above useless article, and the only part that makes any sense…
It makes sense because we the rest of the common-sensible world, which includes the Israelis, KNOW that Hamas does NOT want “change and peace” with it’s neighbours…..unless it’s the change from life to death of all the available Jews.
So after all the Blaahh…. it is now out in the open, and not unexpected, that the US emissaries, know basically nothing of what has really been going on between Arab YESHA terrorists and Jews. They don’t seem to have the services of a genuine Arab specalist in the Arab mentality and culture-if you can call it that.
They are still thinking like Americans…and I suppose who can blame them..
If true, it was pretty nasty to send Lauder, who also knows little or nothing about Arabs, to Ramallah without the Israelis knowing. This was rumoured several days ago and strongly denied. Why do they pile one lie on top of another if, a few days later, they are going to admit the truth……??
Habit….? Then why should we believe anything they say at all without their thumb print seal at the bottom..
Another definition of insanity. Dealing with murderous terrorists as if the were normal peaceful people.