‘ ISRAEL’S RIGHT TO EXIST AS A JEWISH STATE’
21. Oct, 2010
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By Hasan Abu Nimah
Who pushed who to the Sea?
In 1993, the PLO recognised Israel’s “right to exist in peace and security” as part of the Oslo Accords that established the Palestinian Authority (PA) and that were supposed to lead to the creation of a Palestinian state. Now Israel is demanding that Palestinians additionally recognise Israel as the “nation state of the Jewish people” as a condition for extending a largely fictitious moratorium on settlement construction in the occupied West Bank for a mere 60 days.
De facto PA leader Mahmoud Abbas has lately been responding to questions regarding the issue, saying that it is Israel’s business alone to choose the name it desires for itself. He further said that Israel could go to the United Nations and ask formally for a name change.
Last week, one of his chief advisers, Yasser Abed Rabbo, told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz that the PA would consider accepting Israel’s condition if Israel accepted the pre-1967 armistice line as the final borders for the envisaged Palestinian state. Both hints were seen as introductory moves towards a new PA concession recognising Israel as the state for the Jewish people, in the hope that the 60-day freeze extension would restart the stalled direct negotiations, desperately needed by Abbas and his Ramallah authority.
Any such recognition by the PA would be catastrophic to Palestinian rights. Since it was created, Israel has been referred to as a “Jewish state”, in the mere sense that that it has a manufactured Jewish majority within the pre-1967 borders as a result of the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in 1948. It is also “Jewish” in the sense that it discriminates in favour of Jews in the economic, social and political life, has an army that is in effect a Jewish army, and allows Jews from anywhere in the world to settle on the land of expelled Palestinians, while denying the true owners of that land the right to return home.
These very discriminatory policies and practices lie at the heart of the conflict created by the Zionist project. To ask the Palestinians to recognise and accept them is to ask them to accept defeat and adopt Zionism.
Israel – and its supporters, including the US administration – offer a very twisted logic to justify its demand. It claims that it will be the state of the Jewish people and the Palestinian state will be the state for the Palestinians.
But if Palestinians recognise an Israeli “right” to oppress and discriminate against them, the next logical step will be for Israel to “enforce” its “right” to be a “Jewish state” by getting rid of Palestinians from within its borders, which is in fact precisely what Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman proposed in his recent “population exchange” speech at the United Nations.
He was referring to the 1.5 million Palestinian citizens of Israel who make up 20 per cent of the population within the pre-1967 borders. These Palestinians, who have steadfastly remained on their land, face increasing campaigns of incitement and persecution by Israel, which views them as a hostile alien presence, spoiling its dream of Jewish purity.
Accepting the Israeli demand would open the door for another wave of ethnic cleansing by Israel, but this time with Palestinian consent. This can never be allowed to happen.
The loud wave of Palestinian protests in response to Abed Rabbo’s steep descent into new humiliating political lows has forced the PA to deny his statement. But no denial was ever made of Abbas’ statements to Jewish organisations in the United States or in his recent press statement with the president of Finland, affirming that Israel can define itself any way it wants.
Israel, of course, wants to secure Palestinians’ acquiescence to its usurpation of their land and rights, and hopes to squeeze this endorsement from weak Palestinian leaders such as Abbas. But even if Abbas resists, Israel still hopes to gain. By pressing this demand now, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wants to embarrass the PA into either submitting to a new humiliating condition, or – if the PA refuses – shouldering the responsibility of yet one more collapse of the continuously collapsing pea?e talks.
Apparently Abbas has for a while been seriously contemplating acceptance. He did offer very serious concessions before and probably one more for him is not going to make a big difference. Neither would anyone exclude the possibility of Abbas’ full knowledge of the consequences. In addition to placing Palestinian citizens of Israel in immediate danger of ethnic cleansing, any acceptance of the Israeli demand would also annul the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to the homes and lands from which Israel now excludes them under the racist pretext that they are not Jews.
Neither Abbas nor any of his advisers have the right to concede Palestinian rights this way. Abbas has no legitimacy, not only because his legal term as PA president expired long ago, but also because he has decisively broken with the Palestinian national consensus. His constituency today is not the Palestinian people, but the self-appointed peace process industry operators including the Quartet (the UN, the US, Russia and the EU), the Arab League and to a certain extent the Israelis.
Palestinian support for Abbas has been steadily dwindling, narrowing the circle around him to a bunch of beneficiaries and political parasites who greedily feed on foreign money, offered generously as the price for submission.
Yet even if Abbas were, despite all this, to surrender to the Israeli demand, no one should be under the illusion that Israel would be satisfied or that this would be the key to Israel fulfilling its obligations.
We can already anticipate the next Israeli demand: now that the Palestinians have recognised Israel as the state of the Jewish people, they must recognise that the land itself belongs only to the Jewish people.
In that case, Israel would be doing the Palestinians a favour to tolerate their continued presence on any part of Palestine, even in the so-called Palestinian state if it is ever established.
Abbas’ constant bets on the Israelis and Americans have failed a thousand times. He cannot keep rushing from one failure to another. He should live up to his repeated threats to step down. He should apologise to the Palestinian people for the time, the rights, the sacrifices and opportunities he has squandered over the years of his miserable and disastrous leadership. This would be the greatest service he could now do for his people.
Source: The Jordan Times
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Is the Arab world beginning to awaken? Is it beginning to realise that what was once referred with disdain as the ‘Rejection Front”: Libyan supported Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PLFP) led by the late Dr George Habash (a Christian) and Syrian supported as-Sa’iqa to name two of the more powerful during the 1970’s and 80’s. And more recently Iranian/Syrian supported Hezbollah and Iranian/Syrian supported Hamas had it right all along and the moderates such as FATAH and the PLO were wrong?
In a word, yes.
The rejectionists knew that Israel has neither the intention nor the desire to make peace with the Arabs who they looked down upon with great disdain, disrespect and a pathological hate for it is the Palestinians who get in the way of Israel’s fairy tale of ‘a country with no people looking for a people with no country’. They rejected to make any concessions because it has become abundantly clear that Israel do not want peace they want the land.
This final pre-condition for a resumption of “peace” talks of a no pre-condition resumption of peace talks has to be the end.
If the usurper of the Presidency of the Palestinians finds a way around this totally unacceptable pre-condition he will prove himself a traitor of such a magnitude as to be unimaginable.
He will have disenfranchised every single Muslim and Christian Israeli and there is no doubt that if he utters those words either straight out or cushioned in weasel words he is a dead man.
Let us first get rid of a fallacy there is no such people as Jews. There are Israelis of the Jewish faith just as there are Americans of the Jewish faith but there are no such people as Jews. To be a Jew is simply referring to the religious belief of a person.
Another fallacy, no one can recognize Israel as Israel has not defined itself. It has internationally recognized boarders but Israel itself doesn’t recognize those boarders so what exactly is there to recognize about Israel. Are the Arabs expected tomorrow to accept Eretz Israel?
Eretz Israel describes a large territory, “from the brook of Egypt to the Euphrates”, comprising all of modern-day Israel, the Palestinian Territories, and Lebanon, as well as large parts of Syria, Jordan, and Egypt. The proportion of current Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey included in this territory is debatable (Wikipedia) is that what the Israelis are after? Is that why they will not define their boarders?
Palestine’s time will come it may take five years or five hundred years but its time will come. The Palestinians are a brave and courageous people who have been cursed with the worst, greediest, most selfish and most immoral leaders anywhere in the world and soon they will be no more whether by natural cause or assassination one by one, they will die.
Palestine fear not, there are many hundreds of millions if not billions of ordinary people who support you, believe in your cause and will not rest until you receive the justice you so richly deserve.
[Reply]
pete Reply:
October 22nd, 2010 at 9:19 pm
You said it very well Mr. Lababedi,Israel does not want peace.They want all the land they can steal, which they seem to be succeeding with the help of the cowards in our own government. American politicians do not dare say anything negative about the Nazi,s of the middle east[Israel]. why, because they would never be able to work again in any kind of government job.They would be lucky to land a job as towel boy in a whorehouse. Our news commentators get fired on the spot if they say anything against Israel. I’m getting old but somewhere in the back of my addled mind I believe one of our inalienable right was freedom of speech. I don,t recall a postscript saying unless you talk about Israel. As far as Israel,s right to exist, if you really look at the facts of the past ,technically they don,t have a right to exist. They are living on other people,s land that was given to them illegally by some British lt. colonel. The fact remains they are there & could probably live in peace if they would stealing peoples land &throwing them out of they,re homes. Its not hard to see why we in the United States is hated in most of the world today. We have become a nation of bully,s & the capon,s we elect aren’t going to change.I believe Pres. Obama wanted to change many thing but then he found out that the president today is only a figurehead that must do Israel,s bidding or else. I think we all know what i mean by ‘or else’ anyway great comment Mr. Lababedi
[Reply]
Ask UK,USA,FRANCE to declare as a Christian state.Ask Jordon,Egypt to recognize Israel as Jewish state.Show your map,Israel.
If PA recognizes the demand–it will be the greatest disaster for the Palestinians of all time.They will be ousted form the land of origin, who are at present residing in Israel.There will be no communication between Gaza and West Bank–ultimately split into two state.The Zionist atrocity will never end ,they will occupy more land of Palestine to reshape Israeli map(there is no map of Israel as such).
Israel will never keep words.They will be more powerful then,and will show damn to everybody.The whole world will be a silent spectator at that time.Death siren of civilization and mankind will be blown by the Israel.
So,wake up-wake up,act now against Zionist Israel.
Thanks to Mr.Hasan Abu Nimah.
May ALLAH bless all the human being on earth.
[Reply]
Israel is the illegitimate child of the West, born on the soils of the Arab heartland. The West has abandoned it to be on their own Continent or the Continent of America since it would always embarrass them.
This filthy child is expanding its fangs in the Arab lands and occupying more and more of the Arab lands on the basis of its military and the nuclear power capabilities.
Iran is the true answer to this Zionist regime as Iran has the force and the resolve to thwart the designs of the Zionist and it is the only Muslim country that has given open challenge to the Zionist State for a confrontation of ‘do unto death’.
Let’s see Israel die. The West has just censored a well meaning desire of the Arabs and Muslim countries. West should now ensure that as they are exposed so is their crocodile tears for the Palestinians.
[Reply]