Tag Archives: Donald Trump

Abbas Failed To Capitalize on Trump’s Gift

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Not long after Donald Trump assumed the presidency of the United States, he made overtures to the Palestinians in the hopes of brokering a peace deal. He invited the acting-President of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, to the White House on May 3, 2017. They discussed tackling terrorism and building economic prosperity for Palestinian Arabs and the promise of working together to build a better future for the region.

Shortly thereafter, on May 23rd, President Trump visited Abbas in Bethlehem and reiterated the need to confront terrorism, “Peace can never take root in an environment where violence is tolerated, funded and even rewarded…. The terrorists and extremists, and those who give them aid and comfort, must be driven out from our society forever.  This wicked ideology must be obliterated — and I mean completely obliterated — and innocent life must be protected.”

Just a week later, Trump handed a peculiar gift to Abbas: on June 1 he removed the Abu Nidal Organization (ANO) from the list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations.

ANO was part of the October 1997 initial class of FTO’s along with HAMAS and Hizbullah. ANO carried out roughly 90 hijackings, assassinations and kidnappings of diplomats, and attacks on synagogues during the period 1974-1992 killing about 300 people to earn the FTO designation. The group targeted people viewed as moderates – including Palestinians – who contemplated the ongoing existence of the Jewish State. When Abu Nidal died in 2002, the group went inactive.

Which begs the question of why Trump took a 15-year defunct group off of the FTO list, right after meeting with Abbas.

Terrorist Sabri al-Banna, better known by his nom de guerre, Abu Nidal

Abbas was (and remains) a very unpopular leader among Palestinian Arabs who have wanted him to resign according to each poll taken over the last many years, with 64% holding such opinion at the time of the Abbas-Trump meeting. Abbas polled to come in third in a theoretical three-candidate presidential race at that time!

So Trump threw Abbas a bone to boost his standing among Palestinians, to demonstrate that he could deliver results with the new U.S. President. It was arguably a meaningless gesture as the group was inactive, but it was symbolic in clearing the name of one of the most radical and notorious Palestinian terrorist groups.

In exchange for the Trump pardon of the ANO, Abbas advanced the idea of stopping the pay-to-slay program in which the PA paid the families of terrorists in Israeli jails. The proposal landed with a thud among the Palestinians, with a nearly unanimous 91% of Palestinians standing opposed to messing with the martyr-moolah.

Things then soured at the United Nations.

Abbas met with Trump on September 20, 2017 and voiced optimism regarding the efforts Trump’s team had made with over 20 meetings with Palestinian officials in the first months in office, but he then launched his habitual screed before the United Nations General Assembly with comments about Israeli Jews living in “East Jerusalem” which will “stir religious animosity and may lead to a violent religious conflict,… playing with fire … drag[ing] us into a religious war. This is dangerous, extremely dangerous for you and us,” in a not so subtle threat of a global jihad against Jews.

Abbas further threatened Jews and insulted Trump by declaring at the end of his speech “I salute our glorious martyrs and our courageous prisoners in Israeli jails,” to appease his Arab base. This embrace of terrorism and public challenge of Trump’s demand to stop rewarding terrorism was too much. Less than three months later, Trump recognized Jerusalem as the capital of the Jewish State.

Abbas squandered Trump’s gift of removing an evil jihadist group from the U.S. list of terrorist organizations to gain Palestinian support. Instead, he elected to boost his own jihadi bona fides and stood before the world glorifying Palestinian terrorists who killed Israelis and threatening a global jihad if Jews continued to live in their holiest city of Jerusalem. Trump’s reaction was swift in recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. Abbas’s political self-immolation continues to burn to this day.

Related First One Through articles:

The US Recognizes Israel’s Reality

Paying to Murder Jews: From Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Iran to the Palestinian Authority

When Power Talks the Truth

Abbas’ European Audience for His Rantings

Trump Reverses the Carter and Obama Anti-Israel UN Resolutions

The Nerve of ‘Judaizing’ Neighborhoods

I call BS: You Never Recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s Capital

Considering Carter’s 1978 Letter Claiming Settlements Are Illegal

The Palestinian-American You Never Heard Of: Issam Akel

The Time Factor in the Israeli-Arab Conflict

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Trump Administration Sets Path for Peace Agreement

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The Israeli-Arab conflict has long been viewed as an intractable problem. The gap between what one side is willing to accept and another willing to give is both wide and deep. Even with such reality, governments around the world verbally encourage direct communication between the parties and state their support of an outcome which both Israelis and Palestinians would endorse.

But those parties then do everything to undermine that very concept.

The United Nations and many Arab countries stated that the basis for a peace agreement was two states along the 1949 Armistice Lines with “East Jerusalem” as the capital, echoing the stated position of one side, the Palestinians. The UN and Arab countries pushed laws that made it illegal for Israeli Jews to live in those lands and promoted a boycott movement of any business that operated east of the Green Line. These were not activities designed to promote Palestinian-Israeli dialogue but to hand the Palestinians everything they sought WITHOUT dialogue.

Further, the Palestinian Authority and Israel had signed agreements specifically stating that Israel controlled most of the “West Bank,” an area known as “Area C” in the Oslo Accords. So not only did the global community hinder dialogue between the parties, it ignored and undermined the agreements already signed by them!

The United States under President Donald Trump moved to reorient the two parties and the global community back to the basic principles of having two parties desirous of peace sit and negotiate treaties which would THEN be accepted by the entire world.

Rather than parrot the Arab Peace Initiative of 2002 which gave the Palestinians everything they desired, Trump put forward a plan which Israelis desired. Finally there were two plans made public by third parties which could serve as the starting points for negotiation.

More directly, Trump advanced the Taylor Force Act which precluded handing the Palestinian Authority U.S. money while the PA financed terrorism. Trump also endorsed the Oslo Accords which stated that Area C is Israeli Territory. U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo visited some of those Israeli Territories this week and stated clearly that any product made in those areas should carry the label “Made in Israel,” much the way products made in Puerto Rico and American Samoa are labeled “Made in U.S.A.”

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo at Israeli winery of Psagot stated on Twitter: “Enjoyed lunch at the scenic Psagot Winery today. Unfortunately, Psagot and other businesses have been targeted by pernicious EU labeling efforts that facilitate the boycott of Israeli companies. The U.S. stands with Israel and will not tolerate any form of delegitimization.”

For too long the world gave Palestinians a pass for terrorism and the impression that they will get everything they desire now without negotiating and signing agreements with Israel. The Trump Administration has taken several important actions to refocus the parties towards a roadmap for an enduring peace.

Related First One Through articles:

Enduring Peace versus Peace Now

Names and Narrative: It is Called ‘Area C’

The EU’s Choice of Labels: “Made in West Bank” and “Anti-Semite”

Schrodinger’s Cat and Oslo’s Egg

Israel was never a British Colony; Judea and Samaria are not Israeli Colonies

The Palestinian Maps of 1995, 1997 and 2005

First One Through video:

The 1967 “Borders” (music by The Kinks)

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Trump Secures Lowest Tally of Israeli Deaths From Palestinian Terrorism

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Israel has a long history battling armies and terrorists since the Jewish State declared its independence in 1948. Since September 2000, a total of 1,383 people have been killed by terrorists and many times that number have been wounded.

Yasser Arafat launched the Second Intifada in September 2000 after he was disappointed with only getting 98% of his stated desires from the peace process with Israel. Terrorist attacks became daily occurrences and the death toll and carnage was horrific. In just the last few months of 2000, some 43 people were killed in Palestinian attacks. The toll increased in the following years with 208, 464, 210 and 143 murdered during the years 2001 through 2004, respectively. The reduced number of deaths in the latter years was a direct result of Israel constructing a security barrier to stem the flow of Palestinian killers from areas which Israel had handed to Palestinian Authority rule between 1995 and 2000. The barrier proved critical in saving Israeli lives in the following years.

Palestinian terrorists kill 15 civilians including 7 children and a pregnant woman at a Sbarro pizza store in Jerusalem on August 9, 2001

From 2005 through 2008, a total of 134 people were killed in terrorist attacks, a four year total which was less than 2004 alone. The numbers would continue to improve during the two Obama terms, with 55 fatalities in the 2009 to 2013 period, but escalating to 79 deaths in the second term, with a spike from the stabbing and car ramming intifadas after the peace process under U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry completely failed.

The last four years have been the safest ever.

U.S. President Donald Trump’s strong support for Israel translated into the lowest Israeli death toll from Palestinian terrorism (47 murdered), despite the various dire warnings of the region going up in flames because of the U.S.’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, the move of its embassy to the city and various other pro-Israel initiatives. Year-to-date, two people have been killed by Palestinian terrorists, the lowest one year total ever. The two-year and three-year totals (14 and 28, 2019-2020 and 2018-2020, respectively) are also records for the fewest Israeli deaths from terrorism.

Four-Year PeriodFatalities from Terrorism
2001-20041,025 (Second Intifada)
2005-2008134 (Security Wall built)
2009-201255 (Palestinians hopeful in Obama’s squeeze of Israel)
2013-201679 (Failure of Obama peace initiative; Stabbing Intifada)
2017-202047 (Trump Administration’s pro-Israel agenda)
Trump administration yields most peaceful period for Israel in decades

President Trump helped make Israel strong which helped make Israel safe. It is a formula worthy of repeating.

Related First One Through articles:

The Real “Symbol of the Conflict” is Neta Sorek

The Recognition Catch Up

Trump Reverses the Carter and Obama Anti-Israel UN Resolutions

Trump’s Take on Obama’s “Evil Ideology”

The Peace Proposal Monologues

President Herod

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The Progressive New World Order Flips The Holocaust From Anti-Semitism To Woke Fodder

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Jews are becoming victims again, this time of progressives who see the ashes of Jews as merely fuel for woke causes.

Consider the United Nations Secretary General who was awarded the Theodor Herzl Prize on November 9, 2020 on the anniversary of the pogroms by the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (Nazis) in Germany and Austria in 1938, a night known as ‘Kristallnacht.’ Antonio Guterres said the following at the event:

“This ceremony coincides with the anniversary of Kristallnacht.  In remembering that night when so much was broken – synagogues, shops, faith itself – I want to sound a note of hope for repair.  It is within our power to emerge from the pandemic with stronger communities, and more cohesive societies, by addressing the inequalities and injustices that have been exposed so starkly.”

Guterres strung together a thought process that started with the killing of Jews and destruction of their property… to today’s pandemic, a virus which attacks everyone… to “inequalities and injustices,” a phrase used by progressives – particularly in the United States – about the need to address income and wealth disparities and the killings of Blacks by police. Guterres did not mention the British White Paper which was initiated on the very same day as Kristallnacht which limited the entry of Jews into Palestine at the request of Palestinian Arabs, directly contrary to the League of Nations (pre-cursor to the UN which he heads) mandate given to the British to facilitate the entry of Jews. That paper enabled the killing of tens of thousands of Jews. Guterres similarly did not mention the many wars Israel has waged for its survival WHILE HE WAS RECEIVING THE THEORDOR HERZL AWARD, named for the founder of modern Zionism. Yet somehow, the head of the UN connected the Holocaust to the current plight of Black Americans.

Guterres wasn’t alone at using the slaughter of Jews as a progressive prop.

CNN anchor Christiane Amanpour decided to talk about Kristallnacht not as an assault on Jews, but on “truth,” one she said President-elect Joe Biden would seek to rectify after President Donald Trump’s four years of lies:

“This week, 82 years ago, Kristallnacht happened. It was the Nazis warning shot across the bow of our human civilization that led to a genocide against a whole identity and in that tower of burning books, it led to an attack on facts, knowledge, history and truth. After four years of a modern day assault on those same values by Donald Trump, the Biden-Harris team promises a return to norms.”

CNN’s Christiane Amanpour comparing the actions of Donald Trump to the Kristallnacht

Amanpour’s rendition of the Holocaust was sanitized of Jewish victims. She decided to cast the most pro-Jewish State president in history, the one who created the Office of the Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism, and with a Jewish daughter and Jewish grandchildren as a modern incarnation of Adolf Hitler.

Amanpour has a history of bashing Jews. On January 17, 2019, she claimed that U.S. Congress are slaves to the puppet-masters of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. She essentially complimented Rep. Ilhan Omar for calling out the noxious situation.

This is the post-factual media and political world we live in.

Modern-day, post-factual Austria pretends that it was a victim of Nazi Germany and not a willing abettor to crimes against humanity. The slaughter of Jews is recast as a loss to Austria of the cultural and scientific contributions that Jews could have made. We are similarly watching the modern-day, post-factual progressive movement attempt to characterize all anti-Semitism as alt-right (no such thing as Muslim or Black anti-Semitism) and to ignore Jew-hatred in its entirety in a head-long embrace of Victims of Preference, which cannot be Jews as long as Israel exists.

Related First One Through articles:

The Left Wing’s Accelerating Assault on the Holocaust

New York Times Recharacterizes Hamas as a Right-Wing Terrorist Group

Too Many and Too Few Charges of ‘Nazi’

For The NY Times, Antisemitism Exists Because the Alt-Right is Racist and Israel is Racist

Murdered Jews as Political Fodder at Election Season in America and Always in Israel

The Highbrow Anti-Semite

WHY The Progressive Assault on Israel

The Building’s Auschwitz Tattoo

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Too Many and Too Few Charges of ‘Nazi’

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Over the past several years, people on the political left-of-center chose to label those right-of-center as ‘Nazis.’ Actual Nazis, not just ‘depolrables‘ the way Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton had called them.

Current Democratic President-elect Joe Biden said that President Donald Trump was “sort of like Goebbels,” referring to Adolf Hitler’s propaganda machine’s mastermind. The left-wing media leveled accusations that Trump welcomed Nazis into the Republican Party. There were slurs by lower level Democratic politicians about Republican rivals in local elections that they were Nazis. And so many American citizens – including employees at Google tasked with fact-checking – condemned conservative commentators such as Ben Shapiro (who is an Orthodox Jew), as modern Nazis.

All of this slander despite Trump having an Orthodox Jewish daughter, creating a new position in the State Department to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism, and being the most pro-Israel president in American history.

Meanwhile, these same leftists simultaneously refuse to call out as Nazis the most anti-Semitic people committed to killing Jews and to destroying the Jewish State.

Palestinian Arabs voted the terrorist group Hamas to a majority of Parliament with the most anti-Semitic foundational charter ever written. The bile in its charter and daily calls to murder Israeli Jews are readily available to see, yet the left-wing media writes that Palestinians are “resorting to violence.” On the rare occasion that the left-wing media labels Hamas as a terrorist group, it calls it a “right-wing” one, even though it is nothing of the sort but a devoutly Muslim one.

Cover page of the Philadelphia Daily News in December 2015 essentially calling President-elect Trump a Nazi “fuhrer” for a “Muslim ban,” a fake media charge

We are now at a pivotal time when the Democrats who besmirched those to the right of them as Nazis are about to assume control of the White House. This Biden/Harris ticket said it will reverse many pro-Israel positions taken by the Trump administration. Kamala Harris said the new administration “will take immediate steps to restore economic and humanitarian assistance to the Palestinian people, address the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Gaza, reopen the US consulate in East Jerusalem and work to reopen the PLO mission in Washington.” [note that the US consulate was in WESTERN Jerusalem, not East Jerusalem]. The new administration said it is eager to re-enter the JCPOA which gave Iran, the leading state sponsor of terrorism which has threatened to destroy Israel, a legal pathway to nuclear weapons.

These are all plain and terrifying facts.

If this country truly wants to unify and overcome hate, this administration, the media and every American must finally stop besmirching people with whom they disagree as ‘Nazis’ and simultaneously condemn and punish the terrorists and genocidal maniacs hell-bent on killing Jews and destroying the Jewish State.

Related First One Through articles:

Extreme and Mainstream. Germany 1933; West Bank & Gaza Today

New York Times Recharacterizes Hamas as a Right-Wing Terrorist Group

I See Dead People

Examining Ilhan Omar’s Point About Muslim Antisemitism

A Country Divided

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NY Times Tries Hard to Paint Obama/Biden as Pacifists and Trump as Mercenary

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It must be especially galling to the left-wing media that an outlandish person like Donald Trump could forge peace deals in the Middle East while its patron saints in the Obama administration could not.

Consider the deliberate twisting of facts in The New York Times on September 24, 2020 about U.S. arm sales to Saudi Arabia. In a “News Analysis” section called “A Fraying Rationale for U.S. Aid to the Saudis in Yemen,” the Times wrote that

“Mr. Trump decided in early 2017 to restart arms sales to the Gulf Arab nations that President Barack Obama had halted in late 2016.”

The sheer audacity of this line in the Times is outrageous.

Obama’s term ENDED in “late 2016.” From 2009 to 2015, the Obama administration sold more weapons to foreign countries than any administration in U.S. history – particularly to Saudi Arabia. Obama’s penchant for arms sales was so egregious that even liberal media firms like Vice were appalled, writing an article as Obama left office in January 2017, “Obama’s Administration Sold More Weapons Than Any Other Since World War II.” The sub-header to the article was “Many were sold to the Middle East, especially Saudi Arabia.” The article noted that “Under Obama the overall sales, pending delivery of equipment and specialised training for troops, to Saudi Arabia alone has ballooned to $115 billion.” At the time of the article, the war Saudis were participating in in Yemen was well under way with “over 10,000 killed, 2.2 million displaced and nearly half a million children on the brink of famine from the ensuing crisis.”

While the Times was factually accurate that in Obama’s final month of his presidency he halted the sale of precision-guided munitions, it was only of that particular weaponry and only after eight years of selling the Saudis over $100 billion in arms!

New York Times article written to paint Obama and Biden as pacifists and Trump as a mercenary on September 24, 2020, coupling a picture of destruction in Yemen with one of Trump with the Saudis sitting comfortably in the White House striking deals.

The Times article stated that “current and former administration officials, as well as former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., the Democratic presidential nominee, say American involvement [in selling Saudi’s weapons] must end.” That’s quite a bit of “malarkey” as Biden would say, having been second in command in an administration that sold $115 billion in arms to the Saudis.

The Times added that “the State Department, starting in the Obama administration, sent a senior level official, Larry Lewis, on frequent trips to Saudi Arabia to advise on civilian harm,” making the Democrats appear worried about the death to civilians, but “the next year Trump administration officials pushed him [Lewis] out of the agency,” making Team Trump appear callous.

The attack on Trump continued to cast him as a simple arms merchant and uncaring of the damage done by the weapons: “Mr. Trump has offered a more transactional rationale [for selling arms to the Saudis]: that the United States should continue to sell weapons for the money. “They have nothing but money. Nothing but cash, and they pay us now.“”

The foreign policy failures of the Obama administration in the Middle East were plentiful, ranging from giving Iran, the world’s leading state sponsor of terror, a legal pathway to nuclear weapons; selling more weapons to Arab countries that any administration in history as a counter-balance the blessing of a nuclear-emboldened Iran; watching the arms sales be used to pound Yemen, the poorest country in the world, into sand; watching the plane-loads of cash sent to Iran get funneled into terrorist groups; failing miserably in negotiating between Israel and the Palestinians leading to Gaza wars in 2012 and 2014 and the stabbing intifada of 2015, to name but a few.

While U.S. voters don’t rank foreign affairs high on their priority list, The Times doesn’t want to take a chance.

During this particularly contentious election, The Times is actively recasting Obama and Biden as pacifists and Trump as a cold mercenary when in fact it was the Obama administration which enabled death and destruction in the Middle East and Trump who forged peace agreements in the region.

Related First One Through articles:

Half Standards: Gun Control and the Iranian Nuclear Weapons Deal

Some Global Supporters of the P5+1 Iran Deal

The Gap between Fairness and Safety: WMDs in Iraq and Iran

The Arab Spring Blooms in the UAE

The United States Should NOT be a Neutral Mediator in the Arab-Israel Conflict

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Schrodinger’s Cat and Oslo’s Egg

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Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger developed a thought experiment in 1935 in which he tried to explain a situation of a cat existing in a dual state – both dead and alive – as a way of explaining quantum mechanics. In the experiment, a cat in a sealed box may or may not have been exposed to a poison and killed. Only when the box is lifted, is the cat revealed to be one of the two states. The example demonstrates the divide between reality inside the box which is only known to the cat and the two possible outcomes considered by the blind observer.

The situation of the Israeli-Arab Conflict can be viewed in such a manner, particularly regarding the Oslo Accords of 1993 and 1995.

Since the League of Nations (the precursor to the United Nations) supported the re-establishment of the Jewish homeland one hundred years ago, the Arab world fought to destroy it. From riots to wars to terrorist attacks, the surrounding Arab countries and Arab residents in Palestine took upon themselves a jihad to annihilate the Jewish State.

The Oslo Accords seemed to reverse that course. On its face, the Palestinians appeared willing to lay down their arms and accept the existence of Israel subject to a variety of terms. Israel signed the agreement and handed the newly created Palestinian Authority several cities to govern. Over the next five years, despite numerous terrorist attacks, the Israelis continued to try to forge a deal together with the assistance of the United States.

Details of the negotiations were kept under wraps, much like Schrodinger’s cat. The world was hopeful that the Israelis and Palestinian Arabs would be able to conclude a lasting peace agreement. To the outside observers, there was the open reality of Arabs killing Jews and a Hamas charter which completely rejected Israel’s existence but the active involvement of the Clinton administration made people hopeful that peace would emerge at the end of the five year interim agreement in September 2000.

However, Yasser Arafat was unhappy to not get every item he desired in the negotiations and launched the deadly Second Intifada, killing and maiming thousands of civilians. President Bill Clinton told Arafat that he missed the best peace deal the Palestinians would ever see and bemoaned “I’m a colossal failure, and you made me one.”

Arafat smashed the covered Israeli dove egg before it was hatched.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, U.S. President Bill Clinton and PLO Chairman Yasir Arafat at Camp David, July 2000

The Arab League tried to put Humpty Dumpty together again and save the Palestinians from the scorn of the world. It put forth the Arab Peace Initiative (API) in 2002 which basically repeated the Palestinians demands, with the promise of the full recognition of Israel by the Arab and Muslim world. While Israel rejected those specific parameters, it began to take steps to give the Palestinians additional land once it secured assurances from the U.S. George W Bush administration in 2004 that it would not have to adhere to exact terms of the API.

U.S. President Barack Obama pivoted and put significant pressure on Israel towards the API once he took office in 2009. Under Secretary of State John Kerry, Israelis and the Palestinian Authority (PA) worked under secrecy through the Spring 2014 to try to arrive at a final settlement. The world waited to see if the Second Intifada and Gaza Wars of 2008 and 2012 were going to be shadows of the past, and the imagined Obama magic would render Humpty Dumpty viable again.

But it was not to be. The PA signed a unity government with the terrorist group Hamas and Israel refused to hand over the last batch of prisoners as part of “good faith” measures as Kerry had inserted murderers on the list. Within weeks, the situation rapidly devolved into an intense war in Gaza. This time, the Obama administration blamed the failure on Israel, and ultimately allowed a United Nations resolution to pass in the waning days of its administration labeling the West Bank as “Palestinian territory” which Israel illegally occupies.

Humpty Dumpty has now observed to be shattered and dead for the second time. The only change in 2014 from 2000 was the charge of the U.S. administration as to the cause for the failure, which fanned the flames of antisemitism throughout Europe during the 2014 war with Hamas.

The Trump administration recognized the results of the various failed peace initiatives and laid out a new road map to coexistence which more closely resembled the desires of America’s ally, Israel, rather than the API which parroted Palestinian demands. The Palestinians have refused to engage with the administration and no secret talks are enabling the imagination to ponder whether the possibility of peace is alive or dead.

Today, there is no Oslo egg in Schrodinger’s box waiting to be hatched, but a single reality for everyone to recognize.

Related First One Through articles:

Trump Reverses the Carter and Obama Anti-Israel UN Resolutions

The US Recognizes Israel’s Reality

The Shrapnel of Intent

Enduring Peace versus Peace Now

The Peace Proposal Monologues

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The Best Palestinian Response to the Trump Initiative is Welcoming Jews to Palestine

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US President Donald Trump put forward a new Middle East Framework called “Peace to Prosperity” (P2P). It was the first Middle East framework offered since the Arab Peace Initiative in 2002 (API). The API was, not surprisingly, heavily biased towards the Palestinian Arabs’ demands and not Israeli security. It did not advance peace but rather ushered wars from Gaza in 2008, 2012 and 2014, a war from Lebanon in 2006 and a “stabbing intifada” from the West Bank in 2015.

Unlike the API, Trump’s P2P plan was focused on Israel’s security (and Palestinians’ prosperity), and the Palestinian Authority considered it a non-starter before they even saw it. The acting-President of the PA Mahmoud Abbas has refused to even entertain discussing it.

That is a mistake.

The underlying issue of Israel’s security manifests itself in the plan in a few ways, most notably, that all Palestinian border crossings must be managed by Israel and that a future State of Palestine must be demilitarized. If the PA were to refuse to accept those two principles, there is indeed nothing to discuss regarding any of the other key items for Palestinians such as land, refugees and Jerusalem.

However, if Abbas accedes to those two Israeli security points, he will likely be able to gain much on the other issues that matter to him and to the Palestinians.

Consider the land.

The P2P plan has Israel assuming sections of the West Bank including the entirety of the Jordan Valley. It leaves the Palestinian territory as a patchwork of parcels, with the towns in which Jews reside being annexed by Israel dotted, in between.

However, the Palestinians might be able to obtain almost the entirety of the West Bank if it grants Palestinian citizenship to all of the inhabitants of the Jewish towns. This action would be much like the Jewish State’s in 1948 when it granted Israeli citizenship to all of the Arabs. The Jews would make up a much smaller percentage of Palestine than Arabs’ in Israel today.

As the border would be controlled by Israel, only a sliver of land between Palestine and Jordan would be required to be Israeli instead of the whole Jordan Valley, much like the plan assumes Israel having a thin sliver of land buffering Palestinian territory in the Negev and Egypt. The net result would be the Palestinians gaining almost the entirety of the West Bank other than a sliver along the Jordan River.

The willingness to accept Jewish citizens into Palestine might also open a window for Israel to accept many Arab refugees into Israel, rather than just giving them compensation as mapped under the P2P plan. A new Arab spirit of coexistence might stimulate Israel to take as many as 50,000 Arab refugees per year for a number of years, with the balance receiving compensation and settling in a new Palestinian State.

The capital of a Palestinian State could also become more dynamic, with Jewish neighborhoods in Jerusalem becoming parts of a Palestinian capital.

In short, Palestinians can gain a lot on all of their key negotiating points by working off of the Trump peace initiative if they endorse coexistence and welcome Jews into a new state. In contrast, the current path of continued demonization of Israel and the denial of Jewish history and rights will only further cement the stagnation for Palestinians in regards to both peace and prosperity.

Palestinians should call the Israeli bluff, and see if hundreds of thousands of Jews are willing to live as a minority in Palestine. If the Israelis balk, then the BDS movement will likely advance globally. However, if the Israelis endorse the principle, Israel will be blocked from annexing any land (pro-Arab), while United Nations Resolution 2334 will be deemed moot and the global BDS movement will come to an end (pro-Israel).

Related First One Through articles:

The Palestinian’s Three Denials

The Peace Proposal Monologues

Taking it Straight to the People: Obama and Kushner

The Cancer in the Arab-Israeli Conflict

Is Trump Seeing Mid-East Countries to Combat Religious Extremism, or Visiting Religious Sites to Promote Coexistence?

Palestinian Arabs De-Registering from UNRWA

Israel was never a British Colony; Judea and Samaria are not Israeli Colonies

Palestineism is Toxic Racism

The Parameters of Palestinian Dignity

Considering Carter’s 1978 Letter Claiming Settlements Are Illegal

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American Leaders Always Planned on Israel Absorbing Much of the West Bank

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The liberal press is counting on people’s terrible memory and fondness for their cherished presidents Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama to convey a false history of the Middle East. It boldly lies that American politicians have always viewed the contours of Israel to be roughly along the 1949 Armistice Lines, commonly referred to as the Green Line and that Israel would uproot its’ civilian population in the West Bank much as it did in Gaza. Consider The New York Times’ article “What’s in a Peace Plan: Settlements and a Goal of a Palestinian State” on January 30, 2020. The article was full of distortions including: “The United States has long voiced support for the creation of a Palestinian state with only slight adjustments to the Israeli boundaries that existed before the Arab-Israeli war of 1967, when Israel wrested the West Bank from Jordan, and Gaza from Egypt.”
The New York Times January 30, 2020 Page A8
That is total nonsense, meant to make Donald Trump’s plan look like a complete break with the past (a past which must be noted never produced a peace deal). To describe reality, read the letter that President George W Bush wrote to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon on April 14, 2004, after Sharon announced that he was going to withdraw all Israelis from Gaza: “In light of new realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli populations centers, it is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949, and all previous efforts to negotiate a two-state solution have reached the same conclusion. It is realistic to expect that any final status agreement will only be achieved on the basis of mutually agreed changes that reflect these realities.” That is the essence of the Trump plan – reflecting the reality of over half a million Israelis living in communities in the West Bank. This position of Israel incorporating Israeli population centers in the West Bank was reflected in the Democratic party as well, until Obama pivoted away from Israel towards the Muslim world in the hope of creating a “new beginning.” Look at the 2008 Democratic platform’s point on Israel: “All understand that it is unrealistic to expect the outcome of final status negotiations to be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949.” The Democrats-of-old also agreed with the Trump initiative recommendation that Jerusalem remain a unified city and the capital of Israel. The 2008 Democrats stated: “Jerusalem is and will remain the capital of Israel. The parties have agreed that Jerusalem is a matter for final status negotiations. It should remain an undivided city accessible to people of all faiths.” But the current contenders for the president from the Democratic Party (other than Mike Bloomberg) have run from Israel and the notion that Jerusalem should remain the unified capital of Israel. They are the one’s who have turned on long-standing American policy, not Trump. But the liberal media will lie, distort history and tell you #AlternativeFacts like “Israel wrested the West Bank from Jordan” without adding that Jordan attacked Israel in 1967 and Israel took the territory – which Jordan had illegally annexed in 1950 – in a defensive war. The Times article likewise wrote that “[p]revious American proposals spoke of uprooting tens of thousands of Israelis from the settlements to return those areas to Palestinians.” As seen above, that’s a lie. Further, there could be no “return… to Palestinians” as the Israelis would have had to return the land to Jordanians who illegally occupied the land, not Palestinians who never controlled the area. Do not be swayed by the #FakeNews that the Trump peace plan is a radical change of American policy. It just appears that way after eight years of Obama distancing himself from Israel and the current anti-Zionist edge infecting the left-wing media and politicians. Before Obama, Israel truly was a bipartisan cause in which the contours of the Trump peace plan would have been endorsed by all.
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The Peace Proposal Monologues

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The Trump administration put forward a new Middle East Peace Plan as the latest installment of a series of frameworks over the years to try to find an enduring peace between the Israelis and Palestinians. Like every proposal before it, it was declared dead on arrival.

WASHINGTON, DC – JANUARY 28: U.S. President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu participate in a joint statement in the East Room of the White House on January 28, 2020 in Washington, DC. The news conference was held to announce the Trump administration’s plan to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Sarah Silbiger/Getty Images/AFP

The Israelis had made numerous direct overtures for peace through the years, from its founding in 1948, post the 1967 war and in 2008, when Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert presented a plan that met nearly every desire of the Palestinian Authority. But in the end, the Arabs rejected every Israeli effort to find peace.

So third parties took a stab at putting forward their versions of a workable peace. The last serious attempt was advanced by the Arab League in 2002, known as the Arab Peace Initiative (API) which was advanced by Saudi Arabia. The API, not surprisingly, was heavily biased towards the Palestinian Arabs. The Obama Administration worked off of the API in trying to strike a peace agreement, and secured small adjustments from the Arab League to make it more palatable for Israel to accept, such as the notion of including “comparable and mutual agreed minor swap of the land” in 2013.

But the plan did not meet Israel’s basic security needs, and no peace agreement was advanced, particularly after Hamas’ 2014 war against Israel and the Palestinian Authority fomenting the “stabbing intifada” in 2015.

President Trump, in concert with his pro-Israel advisers including Jared Kushner and Jason Greenblatt, realized that a new paradigm needed to be advanced.

Trump’s team spent years developing a new framework based on a long-term vision for the region, rather than simply trying to get Israel to accept the API which would have left it very vulnerable in a tumultuous region. This new initiative recognized several inherent flaws of the Obama-approved API, including lies which had become mainstreamed, or as US founding father Thomas Paine once said “A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom.”

  • “East Jerusalem.” There is no place called East Jerusalem any more than there is a place called East Berlin. That name existed for only 18 years of the city’s 4,000 year history and was an artifice of war that ended in 1967.
  • “Occupied East Jerusalem.” Jerusalem was NEVER slated to be under Arab control in international agreements including the San Remo Agreement, the Mandate of Palestine or the 1947 United Nations Partition Plan. To call it “occupied Palestinian territory” is a complete lie.
  • Refugees. Refugees are people who left a COUNTRY, not a mandate territory or a specific town. To extend the farce of calling for a return of “refugees” when the mandate was later advocated to be split for two peoples is against the very nature of the goal. To continue the charade for several generations entrenches resentment and has long been an obstacle to peaceful coexistence.
  • “Inalienable rights.” The United Nations has pushed forward the notion that Palestinian Arabs have “inalienable rights” of sovereignty. That would make them the only people with such rights – do Hispanic people who lived in New York City in the 1970’s have inalienable rights to their own country? People only have inalienable rights to self-determination.

Beyond the outright lies which have permeated discourse in the Arab-Israel conflict, there has been a denial of facts:

  • Return of “territories.” Israel has already complied with UN resolutions to return territories won in the 1967 War: it returned the Sinai to Egypt and handed Gaza to the Palestinians, the first time Palestinians ever had self-rule of a territory.
  • War from Palestinian territories. Since the Palestinians have ruled Gaza, they launched thousands of rockets into Israeli civilian neighborhoods.
  • Inability to Compromise. The two Palestinians factions have not even been able to negotiate between themselves, so how realistic can it be that they will ever agree to peace with Israel.
  • Rights. Only under Israel has there been freedom of access and freedom to worship for all religions, as opposed to the Arabs from 1949 to 1967 which barred Jews from the Old City of Jerusalem and Hebron.
  • Growth. The Arab population in the West Bank has grown significantly more than the Arab populations in all of the neighboring countries from 1967 until now, demonstrating the positive and stable environment of Israel for all of its inhabitants.

The Trump peace plan takes reality into account as it seriously addresses the security risks of the region. It is a constructive document to counter-balance the flawed Arab Peace Initiative of 2002, and will hopefully enable the parties to chart a course towards an enduring peace.

Like Eve Ensler’s “The Vagina Monologues” play which included a series of skits meant to address violence against women, the Middle East Peace Monologues now has a new installment to address the violence against and isolation of Israel. The question is whether this latest addition will break the impasse to become a dialogue.

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