Oslo Accords were the Worst Strategic Disaster for Israel

Simply put, “Oslo was the worst strategic disaster in Israel’s history “ writes Michael Freund of the Jerusalem Post

The tragedy began when, with reckless disregard for logic, morality or even common sense, then-prime minister Yitzhak Rabin and foreign minister Shimon Peres APPEASED  PLO chairman Yasser Arafat and magnanimously agreed to give him control over parts of the Land of Israel in exchange for an empty promise of peace.

Overnight, the reviled revolutionary, whose resumé included ordering plane hijackings, school massacres and the slaughter of civilians, was granted international legitimacy.

The accords which were ratified by the Israeli Knesset have NEVER been ratified by the Palestinians, so to say they will cancel them is hypocrisy of the highest order. 

The very day Arafat returned home to an ecstatic welcome he travelled in a motorcade with terrorists, something specifically stated in the accords he should not do and nobody said a word. From this act alone, the scene was set for Arafat to constantly thumb  his nose at the international community. No-one was prepared to disrupt the “peace” process.

Consider the following: in the five years after the signing of Oslo, more Israelis were killed by Palestinian terrorists than in the 15 years prior to the signing of the agreement. A total of 279 men, women and children were murdered in the half-decade following the accords, while 254 were killed in the previous 15 years.

In other words, Oslo brought in its wake an unprecedented wave of terrorism the likes of which Israel had never seen. For the sake of “peace,” the Palestinians were allowed to act with impunity.

In effect, Israel gave up large swathes of land, but instead of peace, all it received in return was treachery.

Just as happened in world war 2, with Chamberlain, if Oslo taught us anything, it is that appeasement and territorial concessions are a recipe for disaster.

Suddenly the World Sees the Emperor has no Clothes

There is no question that feathers have been ruffled as the USA starts to call a spade, a spade. The fact that the emperor has no clothes and no one dared to say so is now being discussed openly.

 NATO member nations always would promise, indeed swear, that they would meet their military spending commitments, even as they had no intention at all of doing so. Fine, said the Americans, since World War II it has been the duty of the United States to lead and protect the West. American presidents would lecture NATO nations about their promised obligations and meanwhile expect public nods and private snickers. In the New York and Washington corridor, the gospel was never to question the changing role or funding of NATO but always to utter “NATO is the linchpin of the West.” This is no no longer the case.

The Palestinians always have to remain  “refugees” in a way that similar displaced people who were also forced out of their homeland — Prussians, Jews of the Middle East, or Volga Germans — no longer have refugee status, after more than 70 years. The USA has now accepted reality and quit funding the United Nations relief organization that supposedly attends to “refugees” who in reality are a political tool deemed useful for demonizing Israel around the world. The UNWRA self defined status of a refugee is not acknowledged in any other international agency.

Jerusalem has long been privately accepted as both the historic and natural capital of Israel, (whether it be all Jerusalem or only a part), and it’s now far more open and freer than it was prior to 1967. But we were not supposed to say that given fears of Palestinian anger, or terrorist attacks, or inflaming the Middle East. Trump in his supposedly reckless fashion simply moved the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, and other nations strangely are beginning to follow.  

Even the BDS campaigners are now publicly being acknowledged as campaigning for the destruction of Israel rather than the human rights of the Palestinians.

Palestinian takes the European Parliament by Storm

Palestinian Mudar Zahran takes the 

European Parliament by Storm: 

BDS hurts us, 

We want peace

25 years after Oslo, the US. Pressures Palestinians to give up a Lost War

by Ziva Dahl  September 6, 2018

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/25-years-after-oslo-the-us-pressures-palestinians-to-give-up-a-lost-war-566739

September 13, 2018 marks the 25th anniversary of the first of two Oslo Accords, which the late Charles Krauthammer referred to as “one of the great miscalculations in diplomatic history.”

Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat signed the initial 1993 accord on the White House lawn. A second accord followed in 1995. In exchange for Arafat’s signed pledge to renounce terrorism and other violence, remove the Palestine Liberation Organization’s Covenant statement denying Israel’s right to exist, and to work toward a two-state settlement, Israel would withdraw from areas with dense Palestinian population and allow a Palestinian Authority to govern 95% of its population. 

Oslo represented an act of appeasement by the Jewish state. Sick of war and hungry for peace, Israeli leaders deluded themselves into believing that PLO chairman Arafat had accepted Israel’s existence.

Israel fell for a grand deception. The Palestinians never changed their covenant, continued their terrorist activities, established a kleptocracy and, at Camp David in 2000, rejected a magnanimous Israeli two-state peace plan – an act that President Clinton called a “colossal mistake.” Arafat began a war of terror that killed more than 1,100 Israelis (78% civilians) and wounded 8,000. In 2008, Arafat’s successor, Mahmoud Abbas, refused an offer that was even more generous.

More than a decade after Oslo, Israelis gradually concluded that you can’t make peace with an enemy determined to replace you with a 22nd Arab state. They realized that Oslo was part of the PLO’s “phased plan” to establish political control over territory Israel gave them and use that base to continue the “armed struggle” until it had “liberated” all of Israel from the Jews.

Oslo exacted a painful price, effectively allowing the PLO to transform Judea, Samaria and Gaza into terrorist hotbeds.  The PLO achieved international credibility. They created a propaganda machine to defame and delegitimize Israel, added “occupied Palestine” to the world’s lexicon and won the support of the Left. The PLO radicalized the Palestinians and Israel’s Arab minority, openly glorifying brutality and terrorism with religious zeal.

Palestinian culture views Israeli compromises, peace offers and “painful concessions” as signs of weakness and vulnerability. Oslo made a bad situation worse, strengthening the Palestinians’ resolve to vanquish the Jewish state.

President Trump’s predecessors rewarded the Palestinians for bad behavior and inadvertently fueled their will to fight on. Trump has warned the Palestinians that the US will no longer acquiesce to Palestinian intransigence and that violence will cost them dearly. 

Tump’s administration rejects the Palestinian claim to the right of return to Israel of the five million descendants of the original Palestinian refugees, withholding its $400 million funding to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA), with the goal of shuttering that anti-Israel organization that supports Palestinian irredentism (a political or popular movement that seeks to claim/reclaim and occupy a land that the movement's members consider to be a "lost" territory from their nation's past) and terrorism. 

President Trump previously signed the Taylor Force Act, freezing budgetary aid to the PA until it halts its program to pay for terrorism against Israelis, and recently announced a cut of more than $200 million in aid to the Palestinians.

The Saudis are also applying pressure on the Palestinians. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman suggested that the Palestinians accept Trump’s “proposals” or “shut up.”

Trump is playing hardball. So far he hasn’t fallen into the Oslo trap. He’s attempting to demoralize the Palestinians to destroy their will to fight a lost war. This will take much more time and effort, continued pressure by the US and Israel, and new Palestinian leadership.

Arabs see Iran, not Israel, as enemy, Liberman tells Persian radio

Israel does not object to diplomatic and commercial ties between Syria and Iran, but it will never allow Iran to turn Syria into a forward military base, Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman said Thursday in interview with Radio Farda.

Speaking to Iranian journalist Mehrdad Mirdamadi, Liberman told the Persian language network, which broadcasts to Iran from the Czech Republic, that Israel is not against “economic, diplomatic or other cooperation” between Syria and Iran, but it is completely opposed to Tehran establishing a “military presence and is opposed to its efforts to undermine the stability of the entire Middle East, the stability of our entire region.”

Liberman said that Tehran’s aggression in the region had led Arab nations to realize that Iran’s extremist regime was their enemy and not Israel.

“This may be the first time that moderate Arabs understand that their main enemy is not Israel and Jews and Zionism, but Iran’s radical and extreme regime,” Liberman said.

“This shift in attitude is because of the Iranian regime, and of course this is a step forward,” Liberman added.

The defense minister told Mirdamadi that Israel has no problem with the Iranian people. “Our problem with this regime is its dogma and every day we hear a speech that it seeks to destroy Israel and will never accept our existence.

“Iran’s access to nuclear weapons is the greatest threat to everyone’s stability,” he continued. “Iran’s political ambitions in combination with nuclear weapons will be problematic for everyone.

“Why does a country that has one of the largest oil reserves in the world spend so much on its nuclear program and on developing ballistic missiles?”

Liberman furthermore told Mirdamadi that “Iran invests in terror instead of employment for its young generation… It is a fanatical regime that in Syria alone has spent $13 billion and spends $2 billion every year in financing terrorism throughout the Middle East.”

Palestinian Bandwagon

by Jpost Editorial   Aug 28, 2018

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/palestinian-bandwagon-566003

Israel’s legendary foreign minister Abba Eban is often quoted as having said that: “The Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity” and “The Arabs never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.” This week, yet again, some Israeli Arab MKs joined Palestinian leaders in choosing lawfare over the chance for progress.

The revelation by Israel’s ambassador to the UN, Danny Danon, that members of the Joint Arab List would be joining the Palestinian Authority in a petition to the UN against the recently passed Nation-State Basic Law managed to do something rare in this country’s fractured political environment – unite MKs from Left, Center and Right in condemnation.

The Hadashot News site reported that the Palestinian ambassador to the UN, Riyad Mansour, is trying to advance a resolution next month that likens the legislation to apartheid.

In a message to Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein, Danon said: “In the last two years, we have witnessed strong collaboration between the Arab MKs and the Palestinian delegation to the UN in actions whose sole aim is incitement and defaming Israel and the IDF in UN platforms.”

Knesset Internal Affairs Committee Chairman MK Yoav Kisch (Likud) asked the House Committee to amend the regulations so that more severe penalties could be imposed on parliamentarians who act against Israel in the international arena.

Tourism Minister Yariv Levin (Likud) is quoted as describing the Arab MKs’ behavior as “treason” and called for their diplomatic passports to be revoked.

Opposition leader and former foreign minister Tzipi Livni (Zionist Union), who vehemently condemned the law when it passed last month, nonetheless on Monday in a meeting with ambassadors from nearly a dozen countries, strongly criticized the Joint Arab List MKs. According to Hadashot News, Livni urged the ambassadors not to interfere in Israel’s internal affairs and not to “fall into the trap” set by the members of the Joint Arab List. 

Livni reportedly told the ambassadors that the Israeli Arab MKs and the Palestinian Authority “do not accept the principle that Israel is the state of the Jewish people,” adding, “It is impossible with the same breath to demand two states for two peoples and at the same time not accept that Israel is the state of the Jewish people.”

Joint List MK Aida Twouma-Sliman, who met UN Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs Rosemary DiCarlo in New York last week, insists that the Nation-State Law “is an apartheid law.” However, both she and MK Ahmad Tibi, a former adviser to Yasser Arafat, denied they were involved in a move against the legislation in the UN together with the Palestinians.

The apartheid canard is particularly absurd coming from Israel Arab parliamentarians such as Twouma-Sliman – a feminist activist and former journalist who chairs a Knesset committee – and Tibi, a physician, who is a former Knesset deputy speaker.

The latest controversy follows on the heels of the demonstration in Tel Aviv on August 11 against the Nation-State Law organized by the Higher Arab Monitoring Committee, where Palestinian flags were raised and slogans of “With blood and spirit we will redeem Palestine,” were heard.

Such conduct strengthens the position of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that there was a need for the Nation-State Law. Rather than helping their own community, the Arab leaders are harming it. And by joining the Palestinian Authority’s diplomatic war on Israel, they are distancing the chances of peace.

As Edelstein put it, those MKs who cooperate with the PA against Israel “should ask themselves whether their rightful place is in the Palestinian or Israeli parliament.”

Arab citizens deserve better leadership representing them in the Knesset. They should have MKs who are concerned with promoting their rights and needs rather than devoting their time and efforts, at the Israeli taxpayers’ expense, to the Palestinian cause – which still does not recognize Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state.

When Palestinian Blood Isn’t Equal

https://besacenter.org/perspectives-papers/palestinians-syria-killed/

A recently published report by the Action Group for Palestinians in Syria (AGPS), a human rights group, documented 3,840 cases of Palestinians who have been killed since the onset of the Syrian civil war in 2011 – nearly four times as many as those killed during the six years of the first intifada (December 1987-September 1993). The causes of death ranged from artillery shelling to shootings to torture in the regime’s infamous prisons across the country.

In addition to this report, the Syrian regime released for the first time a list of names that included 548 killed Palestinians. While the regime’s report did not note their causes of death, rights groups agree that those Palestinians died as a result of being tortured, starved, and deprived of adequate medical treatment.

The AGPS also said that 1,682 Palestinians are still missing, their fates unknown. According to some assessments, these Palestinians were either killed at some time during the bloody civil war or – “in the best case” – are still in prison. Therefore, at least 5,522 Palestinians have either been killed or have gone missing since 2011.

Along with those killed or missing, tens of thousands of Palestinians in Syria have lost their homes and employment. The Yarmouk refugee camp, which was home to tens of thousands, was utterly demolished over the course of the war. Before the camp was destroyed, the Assad regime laid siege to it.

Despite these horrors, not one official in the Palestinian Authority publicly condemned the Assad regime.

This is incredible. Where is the outcry from the PA, Arab and global news outlets, rights groups, Palestinian and Arab politicians? Where is their denunciation of Syrian President Bashar Assad’s war crimes against the Palestinians? Why isn’t every single Arab lawmaker in Israel excoriating the Syrian dictator?

When a Hamas or Islamic Jihad terrorist from Gaza is killed by IDF soldiers while trying to plant a roadside bomb or trying to breach the border fence, the Arab and Western worlds are apoplectic. The Arab League issues its familiar condemnation; the consistently hostile Kuwait denounces Israel at the UN and tries to convene the Security Council; Mahmoud Abbas requests international protection for the Palestinians; and all these reactions are covered round the clock by the Arab and Western press.

When Palestinians are killed by other Arabs, evidently no one cares – not in the Arab world, and not even among the Palestinians themselves, whether in the PA or Hamas. Everyone is silent. Palestinian blood in the West Bank and Gaza is far more valuable than Palestinian blood in other parts of the globe.

Palestinians who are killed by IDF fire can be used as a tool, whether by Arab countries or the Western world, to undermine and weaken Israel. Human rights groups in the West and in Israel to invest most of their energies and attention to the Palestinian issue in Israel. The equation is plain to see: When Israel or the Jews can’t be blamed for killing Arabs, it’s not interesting.

Throughout the war in Syria, Abbas’s silence on the plight of the Palestinians there has been deafening. He has never repudiated Assad or Iran for killing Palestinians.