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A new day may be finally dawning in the seemingly endless conflict between Israel and the
Palestinian-Arab people in Samaria and Judea – an area now commonly referred to as the West Bank. The reason for
this statement are the recent actions of America’s president, Donald Trump. President Trump has declared the obvious,
that Jerusalem is the capital of the State of Israel and he has ordered the American embassy, now in Tel Aviv, to
move to Jerusalem. With this and other actions, the American president has put an end to the futile efforts of past
administrations to browbeat Israel into offering more and more concessions to the terrorist leadership in
Samaria-Judea in the vain hope that these concessions would somehow cause the leopard (the Palestinian-Arab
leadership) to change its spots. To all but the blind, it had long been obvious that the leadership of the
Palestinian-Arabs was playing the liberal elite of the western world for fools and had no attention of reaching a
peace agreement with Israel. The PLO and PLA leadership in Samaria-Judea has always had the destruction of Israel
as its ultimate objective.
It’s now approaching 7 decades and more than 3 generations since the State of Israel was
created. In that span of time, the militancy and hatred of the Palestinian-Arab leaders and their adherents has
only intensified. The dream of a 2-state solution has become a nightmare of murder and terror and it has finally
dawned on some that there is no hope of the current Palestinian-Arab leadership moderating its fundamental goal of
destroying Israel. Even now in 2018, these Arab hard-liners are still fighting the war of 1948. If peace is ever to
come, it will be when the current and tyrannical Palestinian-Arab leadership is removed.
For the past 50 years, Palestinian-Arab leaders have repeatedly lied to the world, to
their adversaries, to those who would help them, to their fellow Arabs, to their co-religionists and even to their
own people over whom they exercise dictatorial control. Sadly, the blindly optimistic “peace-now” do-gooders of
the world have bought in to these lies and deceits. PA president for life, Mahmoud Abbas, is a poster boy for such
lying and deceit. He says one thing to the westerners and exactly the opposite to his Arab audience. He will
profess to be seeking peace to the western dupes he addresses while inciting his “Arab Street” to still more
violence. What is most bizarre is the fact the so many supposedly intelligent people have accepted these blatant
untruths and fabrications as facts. Now, at last, the light of truth and reality may finally begin to shine in
and, maybe, this light will trigger a revolt that will end the terror and bloodshed that has accompanied all the
lies.
Ever since the bleeding heart dupes around the globe gave the terrorist, Yasser Arafat,
access to the world stage in the Middle East, the Palestinian-Arab leadership has been treating the rest of the
world like marionettes in a puppet show. Arafat’s successor, Mahmoud Abbas, has continued to pull the marionettes’
strings for years and, up until now, the willing puppets of the world have been dutifully dancing to Abbas’
music.
The British promise - the Balfour Declaration - led to the creation of a Mandate for
Palestine – not the imaginary “Palestinian state” conjured up by the Palestinian-Arab leadership and which the
useful idiots of the world have accepted as legitimate. This mandate by the League of Nations after World War I
tasked Great Britain with facilitating the creation of a Jewish national home. That’s why hard line
Palestinian-Arabs who rejected any idea of sharing the land a century ago regard this declaration as the start of
all their troubles.
But, the real blame for the plight of the Palestinian-Arabs belongs to their own
leadership. The Palestinian-Arab leadership has rejected every offer of partition since the 1930s, and they have
refused every offer by Israel of their own state in almost all of the Samaria-Judea and Gaza, along with a share
of Jerusalem. Instead of negotiating with Israel to establish a viable “Palestinian” state, the Palestinian-Arab
leadership has been seeking intervention by the UN and international courts to delegitimize Israel and to de-facto
grant them statehood while ignoring the security needs of the Jews. They refuse to engage in direct negotiations
with Israel for the simple undeniable fact that doing so would require them to make peace and end the conflict
for all time. This would negate their goal of destroying Israel.
For many years now, those intent on pressuring Israel into making more territorial
concessions to the Palestinians have tried to claim that the likes of Abbas truly want peace. But every peace
negotiation or Israeli gesture, such as Ariel Sharon’s withdrawal of every soldier, settler, and settlement
from Gaza in 2005, or Netanyahu’s suspension of “settlement” expansion in 2014, hasn’t budged the Palestinian-Arab
leadership one inch from the same intransigent position they’ve held since they rejected Balfour, the Mandate,
and the 1947 UN partition plan.
With Trumps’ action, maybe the tide will finally be turning against Abbas and the
Palestinian-Arab leadership. There are now signs of discontent with Abbas from Arab nations. This discontent may
spread to the Palestinian-Arabs who have been held hostage to the extremist position of their leaders and who
suffer the most from the decades-long lack of any progress in reaching a final peace agreement with Israel. It’s
the average Palestinian-Arab in Samaria-Judea who has been the victim of the failed Palestinian-Arab policy –
economically, politically, and socially. Perhaps now, the Palestinian-Arab street will realize that their
leadership has been following a failed policy at their expense and perhaps they will now rise up and throw out
these leaders, who have failed to gain them statehood and have mired them in economic misery. They may now come
to realize that the longer they wait the more they are likely to lose. The peace-loving, moderate Palestinian-Arab
may finally realize that, to date, they have been rendered irrelevant by their fanatic leaders. Real peace-loving,
moderate Palestinian-Arabs may finally open their eyes to the fact that they have been rendered irrelevant by
their silence. Maybe now, they will no longer remain silent.
Palestinian-Arabs in Samaria-Judea suffer from an extremely weak economy, caused in large
part by the obstinate resistance of their leaders to cooperate with their only hope for salvation – Israel.
Unemployment in Samaria-Judea is extremely high with many of those employed there being public employees
or are employed by UNRWA, The U.N. agency for the perpetual support of so-called Arab "refugees" - 70 years
after Israel was attacked for declaring its independence and Arabs that fled the new nation became refufgees.
UNRWA has been supporting these "refugees' and two more generations of their descendants ever since - the only
such case in the history of the world.
While Palestinian-Arab leaders call for statehood, the fact is that their economy is
so bad, they can’t even pay salaries in the public sector. West Bank products are noncompetitive in world markets.
The only realistic solution is cooperation with Israel and this cooperation will only come about when the
Palestinian-Arab “street’ rises up and gets rid of the obstacle to this happening – their current despotic
leadership. Israel is the one country that can actually help the ordinary Palestinian-Arabs in Samaria-Judea to
achieve economic independence. Each act of obstruction and terrorism, encouraged and perpetrated by the
Palestinian-Arab leadership, has simply prevented any chance for work, trade, and mutually beneficial cooperation.
Palestinian-Arab terrorism has been totally self-destructive.
For example: Israel produces a lot of farm goods – both for domestic consumption and for
export. Consequently, there is considerable demand for farm laborers. At one time, much of this agricultural labor
was supplied by Palestinian-Arab workers, many from Samaria-Judea. But, with the advent of Palestinian-Arab terror
attacks against Israel’s civilian population, the use of potentially hostile Palestinian-Arabs was essentially
stopped. In their place, foreign farm workers have been brought to Israel. Work that could be going to
Palestinian-Arabs to help them establish a viable economy in Samaria-Judea is, instead, going to imported foreign
guest workers.
And agriculture is not the only area where Palestinian-Arabs are losing out on
opportunities to earn a living in Israel. In 2015, the Israeli government “approved plans to permit roughly
20,000 Chinese guest workers to come to Israel and work in construction” (Ref. 1)
In 2014, about 28,000 of Israel’s construction workers were Palestinian-Arabs.[1]
Today that number is closer to zero.
Can current events now enable the common Palestinian-Arab to understand that his/her
freedom, dignity, and right to eventually become a member of the international community may be at hand? Under
the yoke of their Palestinian-Arab taskmasters they have suffered considerably, and they will continue to suffer
if they do not rise up to remove their oppressors and terrorist leaders. Waiting to do so only makes their
situation worse.
All past attempts at “reviving” the Palestinian-Israeli "peace process" have proven
fruitless. There never has been and, in reality, there never will be any real peace deal between Abbas
and Israel. Israel and the West only get threats from Abbas about withdrawing from the so-called peace process
if his demands aren't met. Israeli concessions result in no real peace, only mortar and rocket attacks, murders of
Israeli civilians and calls for still more concessions from Israel and insistence that the U.S. pressure Israel
into making more concessions with no real reciprocation on the part of the Palestinians-Arab leadership.
Honest people may now be coming to their senses and realizing this. So too must the Palestinian-Arab people.
They must be made to realize that they have gained nothing in the past 5 decades under their dictatorial
leadership and are now even losing support from other Arab and Western nations. The longer they delay in coming to
terms with Israel, the more they will lose. The newly-stated American position on Jerusalem stands as hard evidence
of this fact.
Additional evidence that the Palestinian-Arabs will only lose more the longer they delay
came when Israel’s Knesset passed “Legislation {that} requires special two-thirds plenum support to approve
relinquishing any portion of the city {of Jerusalem} to a foreign power under any future
peace deal.” (Ref. 2)
Another message showing that the Palestinian-Arab leadership has been a 50-year failure
concerns Jewish settlements in Samaria-Judea. In the vain hope of restarting peace negotiations with Mahmoud Abbas,
Israel had frozen “settlement expansion” for some ten months under the foolish prodding of then President Barack
Obama and his then Secretary of State John Kerry. The Israeli concessions to U.S. pressure came to naught as the
result of Abbas' intransigence. With Obama gone and Donald Trump in office, Israel has now approved a new wave of
settlement construction in Samaria-Judea. The action signaled that the Israeli government was more willing to
disregard international condemnation and was no longer constrained by the naively mistaken Obama-Kerry policies
and henceforth would proceed with a more realistic attitude toward the Palestinian-Arabs of
Samaria-Judea.[3]
Palestinian-Arabs should take note of the diminishing support of Arab nations for their
stale and now-tiresome cause. Arab nation response to the Trump announcement on Jerusalem has been tepid at best.
The New York Times pointed out that the Arab world is not exploding with rage, and in fact, cited an on-the-record
Egyptian expert as saying that Trump’s move may be "transformational." The al-Sisi administration is using influential
Egyptian talk shows to sway public acceptance of the announcement of the move of the American embassy, (and now
other counties’ as well) to Jerusalem. Preoccupied by concerns about their own stability, Arab leaders have
signaled that — while they may not like the decision — they "will find a way to work with it" and "with a White
House that is prepared to break with what had been taboos in American foreign policy." Now that the taboo
has been broken and Jerusalem is "off the table" in President Trump’s words, real discussions can proceed on
issues where a deal may still be possible. For five decades, since Israel recaptured East Jerusalem, while repelling
an invasion, the so-called "peace process" has accomplished nothing other than gainfully employing squads of
diplomats, occupying luxury hotel rooms and squandering megabucks on aid to the Palestinians (much of which has
been used to finance terror and fatten the bank accounts of Palestinian "leaders").
[4]
Some fifty years ago, under Jordanian control, Jewish settlements in Samaria-Judea did not
exist. By stalling, delaying, and refusing to negotiate in good faith, the Palestinian-Arab leadership has allowed
400,000 or more Jews to establish some 125 flourishing communities in Judea and Samaria.
[5] The chances that Israel will now or in the future dismantle all these communities
and dispossess 400,000 of its people are slim to none. While the Palestinian-Arab leadership and their sycophants
think that further waiting will improve their hopes for a Jew-free “Palestinian Nation”, they are insane.
It ain’t going to happen! More stalling only guarantees more Jews and more “settlements” in
Samaria and Judea.
The time may be at hand when the moderate segment of the Palestinian-Arab people come to
the realization that a continuation of the strident policies of their belligerent and uncompromising leaders will
only cause continuing harm to their aspirations. On top of the recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital,
“US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley announced that President Donald Trump will not support funding for the
Palestinians’ primary UN agency unless the Palestinians return to negotiations.
“At a press conference at the United Nations (UN) . . . , Nikki Haley fielded questions
about the fate of US funding for the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), the primary UN agency responsible for
funneling aid to the Palestinians.
“. . in light of the Palestinians’ threat to ‘unleash all the weapons we have in the UN,’
{Haley said} ‘[President Trump] doesn’t want to give any additional funding, or stop funding, until the
Palestinians agree to come back to the negotiation table, and what we saw with the [UN Jerusalem] resolution
was not helpful to the situation.’
- - -
“Haley stressed that the US seeks the resumption of the peace process, stressing, ‘The
Palestinians now have to show the world they want to come to the table. As of now, they’re not coming to the table,
but they ask for aid. We’re not giving the aid, we’re going to make sure they come to the table and we want to
move forward with the peace process.’ “ (Ref. 6)
Haley's comments have been followed by the news on Israel’s Channel 10 News
and the American Axios news site that, “The US froze a $125 million grant to the
United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), the UN agency for Palestinian refugees. . . US Ambassador to the
UN Nikki Haley announced earlier . . . that the Trump administration will halt aid to the Palestinians unless
they agree to come to the negotiating table and participate in peace talks with the Israelis.”
(Ref. 7)
Will the Palestinian-Arabs finally get the message and, more importantly, will they do
anything about it? History does not indicate a favorable answer to this question. “The Palestinians have an old
and nasty habit of placing themselves on the wrong side of history . . . Every time the Palestinians make the wrong choice, they
end up paying a heavy price. Yet, they do not seem to learn from their mistakes.”
(Ref. 8) In the end, it is up to the Palestinian-Arab people, those civilians
living in Samaria-Judea who are ruled by the PLO, the PLA and Fatah, to once and for all throw out the bums who
have brought them nothing but poverty, death, and misery.
The time has now arrived for the Palestinian-Arab Street to stop trying to place the blame
for all their woes on Israel and the Jews. The Palestinian-Arab people and Israel are both victims of the criminals
whose only goal is the destruction of the State of Israel and the continued subjugation of the Palestinian-Arab
people under their brutal thumb. The tyrants who rule over the ordinary Palestinian-Arabs care little about the
people. In fact, they glory in their death and suffering. They use their misery to gain sympathy from the useful
idiots around the world who buy into their propaganda.
Maybe the Palestinian-Arab street will recall that after Israel occupied and controlled
Samaria-Judea immediately following the 1967 6-Day War, the economically backward West Bank and Gaza underwent
exceptional growth. The Israeli occupation “not only quintupled the Arab standard of living but created many
beneficial social changes, better health and education and especially a phenomenal rise in the status of women,
children and the lowliest workers." (Ref. 9)
“This remarkable growth rate began to decline, however, with the ascendancy of the PLO
after the 1993 Oslo Accords. No wonder some Arabs in the ‘West Bank’ implore Israel not to establish a Palestinian
state!” (Ref. 10)
The longer Palestinian-Arabs wait to rid themselves of the evil leaders who have ruled over them for the past 50 years, the more they will ultimately lose and the more they will continue to suffer. The longer they wait, the less they will ultimately receive in terms of territory. Israeli “settlements” will proliferate and become permanent instead of negotiable. Their only hope is to rise up and get rid of their terrorist masters and to then reach an accommodation with Israel, which is the one nation in the region that stands to benefit from the emergence of the Palestinian-Arabs from under the yoke of their own Palestinian-Arab oppressors. Both Israel and the Palestinian-Arab people stand to gain much from peaceful cooperation. Does the ordinary Palestinian-Arab have the intelligence to realize this and do they have the will to get rid of the main obstacle to a brighter future for themselves and their children? For Palestinian-Arab people who want to live in peace and tranquility, there is but one realistic solution - to rise up and get rid of those who are really keeping them and their children from leading a peaceful and productive life. They can then make peace with Israel and obtain the benefits of being a trusted and friendly neighbor. They are the ones who can end the bloodshed once and for all. It is up to the ordinary Palestinian-Arabs to stop being victimized! This is time to avoid missing the opportunity to seize an opportunity. Palestinian-Arabs, Carpe Diem!
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References:
- Gov't OKs permits for 20,000 Chinese workers, Niv Elis, The Jerusalem Post,
20 September 2015.
- In late-night vote, Knesset passes law to hinder East Jerusalem withdrawal, TOI staff,
The Times of Israel,
2 January 2018.
- Emboldened by Trump, Israel Approves a Wave of West Bank Settlement Expansion,
Isabel Kershner,
The New York Times, 24 January 2017.
- How the NYT awkwardly and indirectly acknowledges Trump’s Jerusalem embassy might be ‘transformational’,
Thomas Lifson, American Thinker, 7 January 2018.
- The Incoherent Arguments of Israel-Haters, Bruce Thornton, The Jewish Press,
Page 6, 25 July 2014.
- US threatens to cut funds to Palestinians unless negotiations resume, Ebin Sandler,
World Israel News,
2 January 2018.
- US freezes $125 million grant to Palestinian ‘refugees’, World Israel News,
6 January 2018.
- Opinion: Palestinians always on the wrong side, Bassam Tawil, World Israel News,
3 January 2018.
- How to inflame the conflict, Daniel Doron,
Magazine section of the English Edition of the Jerusalem Post,
Page 14, 26 February 2010.
- The ‘Poor, Innocent Palestinians, Prof. Paul Eidelberg, The Jewish Press,
Page M40, 2 July 2010.
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