Deadly Delusional

"When protesters chant, 'From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free' it is not, as some suggest, an aspirational cry echoing the hopes of Palestinians for freedom from Israeli occupation; it is -- according to this poll -- the clear expression of the genocidal intent of most Palestinians [three out of four people], who want to obliterate Israel from the map."

"Prime Minister Justin Trudeau believes [that] Israel's war against Hamas will make it harder to get to a two-state solution. He might want to run his views past ordinary Palestinians, who, according to [this] recent poll, appear committed to a Middle East where Israel doesn't exist at all."

Michael Higgins, journalist, National Post

A Palestinian demonstration in Nablus in support of prisoners held in Israeli prisons, November 14, 2023 (WAFA)

A poll, conducted by the Arab World for Research and Development, which is a research organization based in the West Bank -- recognized by the United Nations -- in a November 14 survey, asked Palestinians in both the West Bank and the Gaza Strip (obviously during a period with Israel's military responding to the Hamas 'provocation' of October 7 when its operatives invaded Israel to spend a horrendous day of mass butcher, rape and abduction) what type of state they would want to establish.

 

The choice was for one state for two disparate groups of people representing Arabs or Jews (i.e. Palestinians or Israelis), to which 5.4 percent responded in support. The choice of a two-state solution saw support by 17.2 percent. Then came the most popular of all the given 'solutions', the enthusiastic 74.7 percent popularity, a "Palestinian state from the river to the sea". This kind of response was not necessarily a total surprise. Previous such polls garnered similar responses.

Peace, on the terms that the West envisages, with two peaceful states side-by-side, each respecting the autonomy of the other, with a healthy trade between them and prospects of prosperity for both, seems far from the minds of the very people involved; Palestinians themselves. The survey results made it quite clear that a large majority of Palestinians are in support of terrorist groups like Hamas and Islamic Jihad. And by extension, supportive of the savage attacks of October 7 that saw 1,200 Israelis butchered.

Indeed, Palestinians saw comfort in the pro-Palestinian demonstrations taking place around the world; 78.2 percent were hopeful of the future of humanity, given the extent of those demonstrations, despite their belief that the West hates Muslims. Researchers interviewed 668 people, evenly split between men and women. The respondents included farmers, tradespeople, professionals like doctors and engineers, along with students and housewives. Of the group. the median age was 31, reflective of Palestinians as a 'young' demographic.

The question "How much do you support the military operation carried out by the Palestinian resistance led by Hamas on October 7th?" saw strong support of 59.3 percent, another 15.7 percent supporting it somewhat, for a combined total of 75 percent approving the slaughter of men, women and children. As for how Palestinians view the Qassam Brigades, the Hamas military wing that presumably carried out the deadly raid,79.1 percent of Gazans held a positive view of the group.

In the West Bank, however, that approval rating increased to 95.4 percent. Close to 60 percent of Gazans held a positive regard for Hamas, but in the West Bank, the approval rated 87.7 percent. The terrorist organization Islamic Jihad saw support of 71.9 percent of Gazans and over 90 percent of respondents in the West Bank, while the Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade was positively viewed by close to 70 percent of Gazans and over 80 percent of West Bank respondents.

According to Justin Trudeau, a man who cannot deplore the prevalence of antisemitism in Canada without mourning the presence of Islamophobia, Israel's 'war on Hamas' will see the "pathway toward a secure, viable, independent Jewish state alongside a secure, viable independent Palestinian state" more difficult to achieve. An accomplishment indeed were it to occur, given the reality of one of those presumptive states supporting the destruction of the other.

When asked whether "your conviction in the possibility" of achieving peace with Israel or coexistence between Palestinians and Israel had increased or decreased, close to 90 percent responded it had decreased in both instances. Coexistence does appear under these circumstances, unlikely to occur without the inconvenient occasional daily disruptions of violent attacks by Palestinians against Jewish Israelis. 

When asked for a response to the question why it is that the United States and the West support Israel, answers included: 

• the Israeli lobby (91.5 percent);
• hatred of Muslims and Islam (89.5 percent); and
• political and economic interests in the region (96.3 percent).

Another question revealed that a large proportion of the Palestinian population will never 'forgive' Israel, with almost 96 percent cleaving to that sentiment (though the puzzle is forgive Israel for what? its existence?). And those who will never 'forget' what Israel 'did', garnered 93 percent. (What Israel DID? Does that mean having the bloody nerve to protect itself from deadly assaults?) The absolute capper: the number of Palestinians who feel pride after October 7: 94.3 percent.

 

Almost 80 percent of Palestinians are increasingly committed to a Palestinian state, than ever before. And from the responses to this poll it seems obvious enough that their dream of statehood can only come to fruition with the destruction of Israel. Their reliance on terrorist groups to deliver that prize to them sums up the chances of Israel achieving peace anytime soon -- if ever -- with a society and culture addicted to hate and violence. 

 

Palestinians shout slogans during a protest in the West Bank city of Hebron on Nov. 17. Photo by HAZEM BADER/AFP

"While support for terror organizations is high, 87.3% of the Palestinians believe that the Palestinian Authority plays a negative role. Only 23.2% believe that Fatah plays a positive role. When asked who should govern the Gaza Strip and the areas in Judea and Samaria that are under the control of the PA, only 8.4% supported the PA. In comparison, 85.8% supported Hamas continuing to play a role in the Palestinian government – 13.6% supported a Hamas-only government, while 72.2% supported a “national unity” government – i.e., a government comprised of Fatah and Hamas."

Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs

Israel, Palestinian Authority -- Partners for Peace

"It is the responsibility of everyone to take steps to calm tensions rather than inflame them."

"[Friday's rampage] was more than an attack on individuals. It was also an attack on the universal act of practising one's faith. We condemn it in the strongest terms."

"And we condemn all those who celebrate these and any other acts of terrorism that take innocent lives, no matter who the victim is or what they believe."

"Calls for vengeance against more innocent victims are not the answer."

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Jerusalem

Security forces at the scene of a deadly terror shooting attack in Neve Yaakov, Jerusalem, January 27, 2023 (Olivier Fitoussi/Flash90)

 

It is not yet another intifada,but the rise in lethal violence against Jews by Palestinians rivals that of the worst times in the past when it was open season on Israeli Jewish civilians and the staggering death toll wrought havoc in an already overheated part of the Middle East. Since that time, a separation 'fence' was built leaving the Palestinian Territories on one side, Israel on the other to ensure the former easy access to Israel was closed. Now, border check-points help to protect the lives of Israeli citizens.

The two major Palestinian groups, the PLO/Fatah and Hamas in  he West Bank and Gaza Strip have quite a number of smaller terrorist groups springing up now and again to commit atrocities that make Hamas and Fatah proud enough to issue effusive congratulations and hand out sweets, while fireworks in celebration of more Jewish-Israeli deaths succeeded in bloody confrontations. There were celebratory fireworks as per usual for the latest synagogue attack killing Jews.

The wild gun attack outside a synagogue at a time when Israel was on high alert following a succession of IDF sweeps of the West Bank's Jenin, a swarming hive of wannabe young Palestinian terrorists and ensuing shoot-outs where Palestinians groomed from an early age to pledge themselves to martyrdom attacks seeking the glory of a large kill of Jews was recognized by Israeli authorities as a spur to further violence.

Just as Israel is forced by the level of hatred and violence to protect its citizens with the presence of security and the IDF, it is also pressed into action to forestall incipient deadly attacks preparing to be launched, in an effort to preempt the deaths of innocent people. When intelligence warns of impending attacks there is no option for a security force but to act in opposition to the plans of terrorist entities. 

The Palestinian Authority makes a great show to the international community of portraying itself as a responsible partner-for-peace, while in reality, it incites Palestinians to engage in violence against Jews using any method available, from guns and knives to motor vehicles. Palestinian youth taught from childhood forward to value the opportunity to become a martyr, their lives in exchange for the deaths of as many people their deadly methods can dispatch.

A police vehicle is seen outside the Ateret Avraham synagogue after a deadly terror shooting in Jerusalem's Neve Yaakov neighborhood, January 27, 2023. (Ronaldo Schemidt/AFP)

 

When a harvest of seven people killed and many wounded took place when a young Palestinian, inspired by Palestinian Islamic Jihad's murderous exploits took place, a day later a 13-year-old indulged his passion for martyrdom and death-dealing by shooting another two Israelis. The synagogue attack was timed to coincide with the Sabbath and with the International Holocaust Remembrance Day, symbols of joy at the memory of genocide.

"As I said to the prime minister (Benjamin Netanyahu), anything that would move us away from that vision (Israel's destruction) is, in our judgement, detrimental to Israel's long-term security and long-term identity as a Jewish and democratic state", said Antony Blnken to the press. But the United States does not live with constant lethal attacks against its citizens from an outside source. The deadly mass murders that take place on American soil are internal matters, and no U.S. administration has been able to solve that.

Israel, however, is expected to tolerate these constant attacks and to get on with making concessions to the Palestinian Authority, to persuade its president, Mahmoud Abbas, to return to the bargaining table, a man who oversees school curricula and media geared toward patterning children, teaching them that Jews are their enemy and their obligation is to commit violence against them. A PA that insists nothing will stop it from paying handsome sums of money to the families of Palestinian martyrs, celebrating murders as acts of courage.

Security and rescue forces at the scene of a deadly terror shooting attack in Neve Yaakov, Jerusalem, January 27, 2023. (Olivier Fitoussi/Flash90)

Surrendering Afghanistan : Taliban Central 'Improving Security'

The abandonment of Afghanistan will long be remembered by countries around the world as they weigh their choices between the US and authoritarian regimes. Already Saudi Arabia has recognized that Biden will not protect them from Iran, with his administration rushing headlong to rejoin the catastrophic nuclear deal and withdrawing support to the Kingdom in its fight against Iranian proxies in Yemen. Fearful for their future, the Saudis know they cannot stand alone against Iran and have opened talks with Tehran, a move that could only harm US interests in the region.

Richard Kemp, Gatestone Institute

Jihadists everywhere would be encouraged and empowered by a perceived US defeat at the hands of the Taliban, which was being trumpeted by Al Qaida within days of Biden's withdrawal announcement. Pictured: Security personnel and local residents gather on May 1, 2021 at the site of a car bombing where, in the attack the previous day, at least 24 people were killed and 110 wounded, in Logar province, Afghanistan. (Photo by AFP via Getty Images)

"It is like we are on an island. I can't drive more than four kilometres in any direction without hitting a Taliban checkpoint."

"We used to drive out to the villages to every district and talk to the people. Now that we cannot speak to the people, how can we know what their problems are?"

"Day by day the government [-controlled] area is getting smaller and smaller."

Mahmad Yusef Ayobi, head, Kunduz Province provincial council

 

"[All the highways out of Kabul] were unsecured, so we have posted our mujahedeen [Taliban fighters] to ensure security day and night."

"We are not restricting common people but are keeping watch of the movements of the enemies [the government of Afghanistan] and their military." 

Zabiullah Mujahid, spokesman, Taliban

Taliban soldiers on the outskirts of Kabul, Afghanistan, 1999. Amir Shah/AP Images

Under former President Trump's administration, talks with the Taliban were initiated. Ostensibly to persuade the Islamist fundamentalists to agree to reconciliation with the government of Afghanistan, democratically elected to represent the will of the people, anxious not to return to the era of viciously restrictive Taliban rule, to reach an agreement for peace and co-existence. All the while Americans were negotiating with the Taliban, there were violent, deadly attacks against Afghan government positions as well as American and NATO mission sites and allied troops.

 

No one can have been under any illusions that the Taliban had any agenda other than to defeat and destroy the elected government and to replace it with their own freedom-stifling rule. Where under the Taliban previous rule strict Sharia prevailed; no music, no dancing, no women permitted in public, men whipped for shaving, women beaten for not wearing complete body-and-face coverings. Death meted out to those who defied Sharia law. No school for girls, no work for women who had to be squestered within four walls. Women could be medically treated only in hospitals for women. Female surgeons in the operating room to wear burqas.

Farmers encouraged to grow opium poppies for Taliban profit. Boys and girls both sexually maltreated. Male teens surrendered for Taliban fighter training. Democracy once again relegated to oblivion. Return of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. Afghanistan's police force and its military, trained over the past decade and more by NATO affiliate nations that entered Afghanistan led by the United States in 2002 

proved to be less than stellar students. Not quite committed to their jobs of protecting their country. Too many unauthorized stealth absences from duty, an unwillingness to face their obligations.

 

U.S. Black Hawk military helicopters fly over the city of Kabul, Afghanistan, on April 19. (Rahmat Gul/The Associated Press)

 

Taliban leadership refused to speak directly with representatives of the Afghanistan government leadership, considering them loyal to the U.S., appointed by the United States to act as the U.S. saw fit and for whom the Taliban had no love. They would speak directly to them, they insisted, on the final departure of all foreign troops from the soil of Afghanistan. The Taliban which now controls a larger proportion of the country since its ouster in 2003, shields al Qaeda and ISIS, both groups firmly established near the border with Pakistan.

There is, at this juncture, less confidence among the government of Afghanistan leaders than there is among the leadership of the Taliban that they will prevail. There will be conflict on the final departure of U.S. troops in September, bloodshed is inevitable. In the meantime, the Taliban consolidate and secure their positions installing new checkpoints on abandoned Afghan government troop security checkpoints. Abandoned because of a lack of manpower with the withdrawal of U.S. troops.

Afghan towns and cities are increasingly isolated, straining the Afghan government's capacity to function in the face of dozens of temporary Taliban checkpoints along main highways leading to and from the Afghan capital. The country's main north-south highway is checkered with Taliban checkpoints. Traffic cannot proceed without being stopped, the outposts along the major highways interrupt military resupply routes and the provision of government services.

The Taliban power plays encroaching on critical roads emphasize the undiminished group despite two decades of war, in preparation for a military showdown once foreign military support for Afghan security and support of the government is completed. A year earlier the head of Kunduz's provincial council, Mahmad Yusef Ayobi would ordinarily drive eight hours south from Kunduz to Kabul for meetings. That is no longer possible. Government officials now make that trip by air.

 

An Afghan National Army soldier holds a machine gun at a checkpoint on the outskirts of Kabul, Afghanistan, on April 21. (Mohammad Ismail/Reuters)

 

Armed convoys with heavy security are required should such trips be considered driving along highways. The situation of government securing and maintaining highway control has deteriorated in lock-step with the withdrawal of U.S. forces. Leaving Afghan forces stretched thin; Afghan police and soldiers unable to secure territory, moving instead inward to protect population centres, leaving large provincial rural territory unguarded, along with the roads leading to and from them.

At the same time the opportunity presented itself for the Taliban to launch a series of military offensives, encircling government-held territory throughout the country while U.S. negotiators scrambled to arrange a peace agreement between the Afghan government and the Taliban-government-in-waiting in the hopes of preventing more violence, all without progress toward that ideal. "Highways are important for us, and we have taken serious measures to suppress the enemy on them completely", bravely stated the Afghan Interior Ministry.

 

Afghan National Army soldiers search men at a road checkpoint on the outskirts of Kabul, Afghanistan, on April 28, 2021. (Wakil Kohsar/AFP/Getty Images)

 

After the U.S.-led invasion to oust al-Qaeda and the Taliban protecting them, the United States invested $3 billion repairing the country's highways, recognizing them as key to security and economic stability. They now represent the most dangerous parts of the country for ordinary Afghans. "It's all Taliban country now", Muhamadi, a 24-year-old taxi driver, states from his perspective of shuttling passengers daily between Kunduz and Kabul for the past three years.

Nafi Pashton, 32, explained that the Afghan troops stationed at a few bases remaining along the southern highway will not leave their fortifications, fearful of Taliban attacks. They wave down taxis to have provisions passed along to the next government outpost, a few kilometres away on the highway. "They give me food, oil, meat. It happens a lot." Taliban fighters sometimes stop him to confiscate the supplies, while at other times he is able to deliver the goods to government forces.

"Like a kettle of vultures, Pakistan, Iran, China and Russia will all be circling the Afghan carcass following US withdrawal. Iran, which has long provided weapons, funding and safe haven to the Taliban, has been building its influence with them in recent months. Russia has also helped fund and arm the Taliban — sometimes in collaboration with Iran — to kill Afghan, US and NATO forces in order to challenge the US and increase its own influence in the country. China too has been cooperating with the Taliban, both to hunt down and kill Uighur Muslim leaders and in its hunger for natural resources. It also sees influence in Afghanistan as a means to confront New Delhi. Beijing knows that India, as a US ally and democracy, is the only regional power that could play a genuinely constructive role in a future Afghanistan. Xi is not willing to see that happen."

"Pakistan, in cahoots with China, is also determined to keep India out of Afghanistan. Its Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate created the Taliban and today remains by far the greatest external backer of its campaign against Afghan and international forces. Islamabad sees the country as vital strategic depth in a future conflict with India and intends to hold sway over a future Taliban regime in Kabul. But it might have to pay a severe price it did not anticipate as it recklessly fuelled the conflict: a flood of Afghan refugees fleeing the Taliban onslaught. They would join the vast number already there, which Islamabad struggles to support. By the end of 2001, 4 million Afghan refugees were in Pakistan, with 1.4 million still there today. This will not be a problem for Pakistan alone; Iran, Turkey and Europe may also face a huge additional influx. Even before Biden's withdrawal, Afghans are already the second largest migrant population in the world."

Richard Kemp, Gatestone Institute

U.S. military helicopters are seen landing at a base in Bagram, Afghanistan, on Thursday. The U.S. is estimated to have spent more than $2 trillion in Afghanistan in the past two decades. (Wakil Kohsar/AFP/Getty Images)

 

Indigestible Piecemeal Desserts

"This is the state they will give us. It's like a Swiss cheese, really."
"Who among you [United Nations countries] will accept a similar state and similar conditions?"
"The U.S. cannot be the sole mediator. The situation could implode at any moment. ... We need hope."
"Please do not take this hope away from us."
"It is an Israeli-American pre-emptive plan in order to put an end to the question of Palestine."
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas

"This is not Swiss cheese. This is the best plan that exists for the middle East -- for the Middle East -- and for the State of Israel and for the Palestinians, too."
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas attends a U.N. Security Council meeting at United Nations headquarters in New York on Feb. 11. Johannes Eisele/AFP via Getty Images

It was actually Mahmoud Abbas who was the architect of the Trump Peace Plan. He may be bleating now about the unfairness of it all, but it is his steering of the PA away from direct negotiations with Israel over a peace settlement that would be satisfactory for both parties that led to this final 'preemptive' design to put an end to the deliberate procrastination in the hopes that Israel would disappear under the weight of world pressure, under threat by combined armies of the Middle East who would, he hoped, finally rid the geography of the presence of Israel.

Mahmoud Abbas's reward for his patient miracle-waiting, for his diligence in producing school curricula and television programs demonizing Jews and preparing Palestinian children to embrace a future of martyrdom so romanticized that young Palestinians find it appealing to violently attack Jews even when the result may be their own deaths, since they have been convinced that this is their destiny; they have it on the highest authority, those who govern them, trusted Palestinian leaders.

Suddenly the last of the offers that former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert bargained for in 2008, guaranteeing the Palestinians all that they insisted upon in an exchange for peace looks appealing to Abbas. The offer that he spurned at the time is the very one he insists now he would contemplate in good faith and reconsider. But too many years have passed to recall that offer. An offer where Israel was prepared to make sacrifices to achieve peace, and the PA adamantly refused to surrender any of their demands to achieve that peace.

Speaking of peace it's a good idea to examine what precisely that would be. A cessation of violence stimulated and fomented by the Palestinian leadership upon Israel and Israeli citizens. The implied threat of Abbas's plea to the United Nations of 'the situation imploding at any moment' recalls intifadas and endless 'days of rage', along with speaking of Jewish feet defiling the Temple Mount, and incitements to Palestinians to 'resist the occupation', supported by the PA's dedication to viewing the murder of Jews as heroic, paying the murderers for their service to the 'cause'.

The cause is the elimination of the State of Israel. The purpose of the Trump Peace Plan is the elimination of all the violence by presenting a fait accompli; after all, 70 years of attempts at mollifying the victimhood status of the Palestinians by dedicating a unique UN refugee support system through UNRWA and extending refugee status beyond the original 700,000 to their succeeding generations has accomplished nothing but dependence and rage. If Abbas now regards the map of the emerging new 'Palestine' as 'Swiss cheese", so be it, he designed it and will learn to live with it.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas speaks at the United Nations in New York. AP

Israel genuinely seeks peace. It prefers conditions to prevail where there is no need for it to be seen as an 'occupying force', which has occurred for the very simple reason of defence from the malicious threats and the very real violence continually perpetrated by Palestinians upon Israelis. Both the Fatah and the Hamas charters, where the West Bank and Gaza are administered by each, state as their goal the elimination through destruction of the State of Israel, freeing up the land on which it stands for Fatah and Hamas to battle one another to the death.

They may do so, just as Syrian dictator Bashar al Assad is doing, just as Libyans are doing, just as the Lebanese are experiencing, as well as Yemen, and Iraq, as long as Israel is left to its own prosperous and life-loving agenda to continue to provide a haven for the world's Jews from an international community that isn't very engaged in respecting Israel's right to self-determination absent constant criticism from corrupt, human-rights-destroying regimes like those that sit on the UN Human Rights Council as a reproach to decent nations.

If Mahmoud Abbas felt compelled to ask United Nations members who among them would accept a piecemeal state, Benjamin Netanyahu is entitled to ask, as has been done with little response countless times before, who among them would enjoy contemplating being surrounded by hostile states, some of which have made no secret of their intention to destroy his country? And the very group the world expects Israel to negotiate for peace with, continues to nurse the intention to overwhelm the state they refuse to recognize as Jewish, with the return of tens of millions of Palestinian 'refugees'.

Where Israel is expected by Palestinian Arab leaders to welcome more than the two million Palestinian Israelis already living an equality existence in the Jewish State, when the reality is that no Jews could live in a Palestinian state which has expressly stated their presence would never be tolerated, and reality demonstrates that should any Jew accidentally wander into a Palestinian enclave his/her life would be immediately forfeit. Quite the partner for peace.

The Palestinian/Israeli Peace Plan to End all Peace Plans

“We’ve informed the Israeli side … that there will be no relations at all with them and the United States including security ties."
"Trump asked that I speak to him by phone but I said ‘no’, and that he wants to send me a letter … but I refused it." 
"I will not have it recorded in my history that I sold Jerusalem."
Palestinian Authority Leader, President Mahmoud Abbas

Mahmoud Abbas attends the Arab League’s foreign ministers meeting in Cairo. Photograph: Mohamed Elbendary/EPA

"How can this be a capital?"
"Jerusalem has the Aqsa mosque, the churches, business, places to work. What do we have here, in our little town?"
Ahmed Bader, Abu Dis, West Bank

"Jerusalem is the old walled city. The rest is not Jerusalem."
"We mean by Jerusalem -- and I think everybody around the world means -- the holy sites."
"If you know these areas, you know they're just making a joke of you and your national aspiration."
"These areas are not a symbol for anybody."
Nazmi Jubeh, historian, Birzeit University Museum, West Bank

As far as the Palestinian Authority is concerned the Old City of Jerusalem which is the site of the ancient Temple of Solomon -- where the ruins of the Western Wall (Wailing Wall) mark its presence in antiquity, representing the most holy site in Judaism -- is Palestinian. Ancient Judea, the home of Jews since time immemorial is but a figment of the warped imagination of Jews, and the State of Israel is a farce perpetrated upon Palestinians to deprive them of their heritage.

Deprivation of heritage is something that Muslims know a whole lot about. Witness the many ancient buildings dedicated as churches and synagogues that have been razed and in their ruins have arisen mosques. Those venerable churches known to history as great monuments of Christian presence and symbolism venerated for their antiquity and the role they played in representing Christianity down the ages have not been immune to a reversal of fortunes as mosques.

The Western Wall

The ruined Temple of Solomon -- in its second ancient configuration following on the destruction of the first (586 B.C.) -- was never recognized by Muslim invaders as a site holy to a Jewish god even though the Koran speaks kindly of the Abrahamic religions; Judaism which begat Christianity and which the Prophet Mohammad (a trader/merchant) took inspiration from through Judaic tradition and scripture to fashion Islam upon, co-opting Biblical figures from Father Abraham, the Israelite prophets to Jesus, to dignify and grant heavenly authorization to his claims for Allah's final prescription for humanity.

Just as Islam began with a self-entitling appropriation of Judaic precepts, laws and authoritative figures so it took to itself the sacred-to-Judaism tombs of the ancestors, the sites of religious eminence, building over and taking possession of all that it felt legitimized its claim of god's final word to mankind. Nothing has diminished Islamic zest for claiming that everything that ever happened of any significance in the world was initiated by Islam, its presence from the 7th Century forward notwithstanding.



So Jerusalem, once the shining city on the hill of Judaism, is the coveted treasure not of Jewish heritage, but of Palestinian aspiration where it plans to declare itself a nation, with its capital the Old City of Jerusalem. Jewish claims to the city, a febrile fiction according to the Palestinians, and supported by the Organization of Islamic Cooperation and the Arab League, though not once does the Koran mention Jerusalem, while historical texts, period and Judaic scripture are replete with constant references.

"(420) Now the number of those that were carried captive during this whole war was collected to be ninety-seven thousand [Jews], as was the number of those that perished during the whole siege eleven hundred thousand, (421) the greater part of whom were indeed of the same nation [with the citizens of Jerusalem], but not belonging to the city itself; for they were come up from all the country to the feast of unleavened bread [Passover], and were on a sudden shut up by an army, which, at the very first, occasioned so great a traitness among them that there came a pestilential destruction upon them, and soon afterward such a famine, as destroyed them more suddenly."
The Works of Josephus, Roman-Jewish historian : Roman Sack of Jerusalem, 70 CE

In a town on the West Bank abutting the outskirts of Jerusalem, sits an uncompleted Palestinian parliament building on a ridge in the West Bank. This is where the Trump Peace Plan proposes that a nascent Palestinian state locate its capital, not within, but nudging Jerusalem. As a proposed nation next door to an existing nation, the capitals would not be far apart, but only one has the historical and heritage right to claim Jerusalem as its capital.

The parliamentary building whose construction began in the mid 1990s resulted from Palestinian sovereignty plans. From the building could be sighted the revered Al Aqsa Mosque in the Old City of Jerusalem, some four kilometers' distance. Repeated intifadas and incitements to Palestinians from birth to adulthood to 'resist the occupation' and become martyrs for 'Palestine' led to the erection of a separating wall to keep Israelis safe as possible from violent death at the hands of these martyrs whose exploits in delivering death to Jews are upheld as righteous celebrants of jihad.

Armed Palestinians take part in a rally organized in Ain el-Helweh, Lebanon’s largest Palestinian refugee camp, near the southern coastal city of Sidon, to protest against the US peace plan, on January 31, 2020. (Mahmoud Zayyat/AFP)

Arabs and Muslims will not countenance the presence of Jews on what the Jews regard as the Temple Mount where the Temple of Solomon once stood, to pray. Palestinians speak of Jewish feet on the area they refer to as the Noble Sanctuary -- where they believe Mohammad ascended to heaven on a horse -- as defiling the site; Muslims may pray there, at the third most-sacred site in Islam, yet should Jews attempt to pray at their foremost holy site, riots ensue and accusations of intentions to debase Islam and threaten Muslims' sanctuary lead to violence.

The Trump Peace Plan recognizes Israel's historical claims to Jerusalem. It does not propose that Israel co-opt the Temple Mount. It does leave the way open for negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians on the details that could lead to peace. Nothing, however, pacifies and satisfies the Palestinian Authority, even at those times in the past when other Israeli negotiators and Prime Ministers have acceded to all the Palestinian demands -- only to have them conclude that meeting their declared demands are insufficient.

Members of the Israeli security forces stand guard at one of the entrances leading to the Temple Mount as Palestinians head to the site to take part in the Friday prayers, on January 31, 2020. (Emmanuel Dunand/AFP)

Clearly the only measures that will satisfy their demands is for Israel to no longer be present. It is illustrated clearly enough when the Palestinian Authority produces maps absent of the Israeli presence, only an area that is assigned completely to the Palestinians. The proposed site for a Palestinian capital, Abu Dis, has neighbourhoods technically in East Jerusalem, with the security barrier separating those neighbourhoods from the rest of East Jerusalem, securing Israeli citizens' safety.

In one of those neighbourhoods stands the Shuafat refugee camp, a slum where even the Palestinian police may not venture, much less Israeli police, ridden as it is with the presence of violent gangs. In another of its areas, Kufr Aqab, domestic construction is of questionable reliability even though it remains within the municipality of Jerusalem. Al-Quds University is located within Abu Dis, opened in the 1980s, where 120,000 Palestinians live beyond the barrier. Their residency cards enable them to work and travel within Israel.

Muslim men attend Friday prayers on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem’s Old City on January 31, 2020. (Ahmad Gharabli/AFP)

"It's chaos here. At night, we're ruled by the gangsters. What kind of capital is that?", asks a contemptuous resident, 30-year-old Muhammad Inbawi, who lives in the Shuafat camp. The Palestinian Authority is responsible for the infrastructure, the civil rights and law and order in the West Bank, although its security forces act together with Israeli security forces by mutual agreement. The fact that some of the West Bank towns and villages are rife with violence reflects the corruption within the Palestinian Authority for siphoning off funding given it by the EU and related sources which it uses to pay annuities to the families of 'martyrs'.

As for Gaza, it lacks sewage treatment facilities, allowing 1200 million liters of raw sewage to flow from Gaza daily into the Mediterranean where the current takes it up the coast to clog Israel's Ashkelon desalination plant. Gaza's aquifer is in a parlous state where 97 percent is no longer fit for human use. People fill jerrycans with water from small desalination plants operated by private vendors and international organizations. Unhealthy drinking water is cited as the cause of a quarter of the diseases Gazans suffer.

Hamas, which rules Gaza, uses funding from the international community not for the purpose for which it is meant, to improve the lives of Gaza's Palestinian population, which would include reliable electricity, potable water, waste sewage disposal, and the building of homes. Hamas, however, focuses on issues far more important to them; building underground tunnels into Israel, acquiring munitions to stockpile for future conflict, taking possession of rockets to be fired into Israel, inciting Gazans to weekly challenge Israel's borders hoping to infiltrate and make up for the killing opportunities that the security wall has deterred.

As for facilities in the West Bank, to ease the lives of Palestinians living there, in hot summer months Bethlehem residents are able to access municipal water only episodically, while Jewish settlements are connected to the Israeli water grid through a network operating 24/7. Palestinian villages in the West Bank are often without sewage treatment facilities where their raw sewage goes into cesspits that allow liquid to seep into the groundwater and where sewage in the greater Hebron area where over 300,000 people live, flows via the Hebron Stream to the Israeli town of Beersheba.

Uncivil, deprived, desperate, the Palestinians deserve better, but their leadership remains focused on destroying Israel's presence, neglecting their responsibilities to the people they purport to govern, whose best interests they claim to represent. As a test of readiness for nationhood, they're found miserably wanting. They view themselves as victims, through the prism of a victimhood culture supported by the United Nations deeming them through UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East) as the world's first and only perpetual 'refugees' generation after generation.

A Palestinian carries a ladder past a fire by the Israeli security barrier in the West Bank village of Bilin near Ramallah on January 31, 2020, during clashes with Israeli security forces over the US-brokered proposal for a settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. (Abbas Momani/AFP)

Restoring Israeli Heritage Lands to Israel

"Today, I announce my intention, after the establishment of a new government, to apply Israeli sovereignty to the Jordan Valley and the northern Dead Sea."
"I believe we have a unique one-off opportunity to do something for which there is wide consensus to finally create secure, permanent borders for the state of Israel."
"We haven't had such an opportunity since the Six-Day War [in 1967] and I doubt we will have another opportunity in the next fifty years."
"I want to act on it immediately. Therefore I wanted to already bring it to the Knesset last week, [but] the attorney general said to me ‘you can’t because it is a transitional government'."
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced his plan, ahead of an election, on television on Tuesday   AFP

"The plan to apply sovereignty is not something that we thought about just recently. It was planned for months. But there were legal issues with doing anything before the elections. The attorney general said it cannot be done now due to legal constraints."
"The Americans were fully informed about what was going to be done. We knew what their response would be to the prime minister’s announcement. Everything was done in coordination."
Senior Israeli Government Official 

The Palestinian Authority can hardly claim that Israel failed to give it ample opportunity to assume a sovereign state of their own alongside that of Israel's. In the past when the PA and Israel dispatched delegates to bargain for peace which would lead to a two-state solution, there was hard bargaining, with Israel prepared to make sacrificial compromises and the Palestinians firmly sticking to their unaltered demands for 'right of return' and a capital in East Jerusalem.

Both are non-negotiable for Israel, since 'right of return' would result in an population imbalance; the original 700,000 Palestinians who fled when Israel was declared an official sanctioned state, and the 800,000 Jews who were exiled from the Arab countries they had lived in for hundreds to thousands of years, their properties confiscated, refugees who were absorbed by Israel, living alongside close to two million Palestinians currently who are citizens of Israel.

The original 700,000 have swelled through a high birth rate over generations to an estimated six million living in a global diaspora. Permitting them to return to Israel as 'returnees' would upset the population of a Jewish state turning it into a majority Arab state, at the very time when in the Arab states of the Middle East, no Jews are permitted to live. And nor would Jews be permitted to live in a sovereign Palestinian state were one ever to emerge out of the morass of rejections. That was made abundantly clear.

For rejection of peace offers and the formalization of a sovereign Palestinian state has been rejected time and again by the Palestinian Authority, even at times when all of their demands were being met. Their agenda has become crystal clear; the oft-phrased 'From Jordan to the Sea!' as code for the destruction of Israel, and Palestinian Arabs claiming the entire region that the United Nations offered as a Partition Plan, is the only solution to the impasse between the two that Palestinian authorities would ever assent to.

Now that Mr. Netanyahu has made it official, that Israel intends to annex the West Bank settlements and part of the Jordan Valley, all historically part of Judaic heritage, the outrage is palpable and threats are renewed. Fatah and Hamas have never made a secret of their plans to destroy Israel; a reality that Israel's critics in the European Union and elsewhere prefer to ignore; it is not they, after all, whose populations face constant threats of rocket bombardment, stabbings and shootings of civilians.

The fertile strip of land along the Jordan border comprises close to 30 percent of the West Bank, a sparsely populated geography where an estimated 65,000 Palestinians and 11,000 Jewish settlers live an uneasy co-existence. Israel has offered in the past to carve out an area within its own borders largely inhabited by Palestinians in exchange for a like amount of land where stand Israeli settlements, but that too was an offer discarded out of hand by the Palestinians.



That strip of the Jordan Valley was designated under the 1993 Oslo peace accords as "Area C"; under full Israeli control. The Jordan Valley is viewed as an important security buffer for Israel with the Arab world. Should a peace agreement with the Palestinians have succeeded, Israel would have had to maintain an element of military control for obvious reasons, even though the threat of future combined Arab armies converging on Israel as was done in the past appears remote.

This is not the first time that a similar interest was expressed of annexing parts of the West Bank. This time, however, there are detailed plans that are presented, to take the Lower Jordan Valley. "Diplomatic conditions have ripened", stated Mr. Netanyahu, for such a move to be announced. And those conditions of which he alludes have nothing whatever to do with discussions with the Palestinian Authority, but rather with the U.S. administration in Washington.

"[If Prime Minister Netanyahu proceeded with those plans] he will have buried any chance for peace for the next one hundred years. Israelis and the international community most stop this insanity", commented senior Palestinian official Saeb Erekat, as though what other response would be anticipated from this source in view of the fact that as an elite representative of the Palestinians this man never went out of his way to facilitate a peace agreement for that is not part of the official plan of the PA.

Rocket strikes from Gaza into Israel merit returns by the IDF to Gaza

As for the other senior official to comment publicly, representing the Palestine Liberation Organization, Hanan Ashrawi, with no affection for the presence of a Jewish state where she believes there should be none; her interpretation was that the Israeli leader was set to impose a "greater Israel on all of historical Palestine and [carry[ out an ethnic cleansing agenda". Historical Palestine was Jewish, never Arab, and as far as an ethnic cleansing agenda, it is the PA, not Israel that excludes Jews from Arab territory while Arabs have a secure place as citizens in Israel.

The penchant to turn things completely in reverse is a typically Arab conceit, but this never appears to have troubled Arab Palestinians. "All bets are off. Dangerous aggression. Perpetual conflict", she wrote on her Twitter account. As though the situation on the ground was ever anything other than perpetual conflict, the dangerous aggression emanating from violent Palestinians on whom no bets could ever be taken that the PA would fail to reward them handsomely for killing Jews.

Negotiating With An Atrocity-Loving Barbarian Brigade

"In the last ten days we've killed over one thousand Taliban."
"If you're the Taliban, conditions have been worsening -- and they're about to get worse."
"No one should underestimate President Trump's commitment to achieving those military goals [he's set out to accomplish]."
U.S.Secretary of State Mike Pompeo

"[The move to walk away from 'peace' talks with the Taliban] will harm America more than anyone else."
"It will damage its reputation, unmask its anti-peace policy to the world even more, increase its loss of life and treasure, and present its political interactions as erratic."
Taliban response

What!? The Trump administration erratic? That statement of actual fact may represent the sole true statement ever uttered by a Taliban spokesperson. The greater reality is that the vicious Islamist entity that is the jihadist fundamentalist Taliban never entertained an iota of an intention to bargain for peace. Their bargain was to persuade the United States that its instinct expressed by U.S. President Donald Trump to evacuate American troops from Afghanistan is a safe and sane aspiration intended to end 18 years of struggle to help Afghanistan become a stable, functioning state capable of fending off the Taliban.

Donald Trump's off-again, on-again, vacillating and uncertain determination of the route to take was led by a seasoned warrior against extremism in his role as national security adviser, steering Trump away from trusting the Taliban. John Bolton held no illusions about the Taliban, just as he knows with intimate certainty the true measure of Islamist duplicity, hatred, threats and violence and that the way to counter that threat is to break its lethal hold on conscripting new recruits into the ideology of death deliverance.

That President Trump called off the negotiations with the Taliban, citing their continued and ongoing  and latest bombing attacks against civilian targets (and just incidentally killing an American solider) to spread fear and intimidation to aid their ambitions of conquest, would have been due to John Bolton's urging. It has been this man who has expressed unease and rejection of his president's conciliatory attitude toward formidable enemy forces of brutal ideological-religious campaigns for supremacy.

An Army carry team moves a transfer case containing the remains of Sgt. 1st Class Elis Barreto Ortiz, 34, from Morovis, Puerto Rico, Saturday, Sept. 7, 2019, at Dover Air Force Base, Del. According to the Department of Defense, Ortiz was killed in action Sept. 5, when a vehicle-borne improvised explosive device detonated near his vehicle in Kabul, Afghanistan. Ortiz was supporting Operation Freedom's Sentinel. (AP Photo/Cliff Owen)

The Taliban's immediate goal was to have NATO and American troops withdrawn to give them a clear field of operation, without the presence of a military competent enough to restrain their intentions of once again installing themselves through violent militant action to regain control of the country. The Taliban insistence that it would negotiate with the U.S. emissary Afghan-born Zalmay Khalilzad, and not the government of Afghan President Ashraf Ghani speaks to its commitment.

American envoy Zalmay Khalilzad, the lead negotiator in Doha with the Taliban, had already announced the finalized deal "in principle", which would lead to American troops being withdrawn. It was at that juncture that the president invited the Taliban and the Afghan government to attend a meeting at Camp David, hoping to seal the deal and produce a triumphant announcement, somewhat like, one might assume, producing a photograph similar to that of then-president Clinton, standing by with an avuncular smile as then Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and the PLO's Chairman Yasser Arafat shook hands. Resolving precisely nothing.

Resolute Support (RS) forces guard at the site of a car bomb explosion in Kabul, Afghanistan, Thursday, Sept. 5, 2019. The Afghan government says at least 10 civilians are dead and another 42 wounded after a Taliban suicide car bombing rocked the Afghan capital near a neighborhood housing the U.S. Embassy and the NATO Resolute Support mission. (AP Photo/Rahmat Gul)

Prosperity Through Peace?

"Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas shared some interesting news with England's Prince William during a meeting in Ramallah on June 27. He informed the royal visitor that the Palestinians are 'serious about reaching peace with Israel.' Abbas also said that the Palestinians were 'committed to combating terrorism'."
"What makes this news interesting is that as Abbas was speaking to Prince William in his Ramallah headquarters, known as the Mukata, the Palestinian government issued a statement praising Palestinian terrorists imprisoned by Israel. The Ramallah-based government also vowed to continue paying salaries to Palestinians convicted of murdering and injuring Jews, defying Israeli and American demands to stop the payments."
"It seems that Abbas and Israel have different views on how terrorism should be combated. Abbas seems to think that paying salaries to convicted terrorists and their families is a good first step in that direction."
"Palestinian prisoners are our national icons and symbols of defending freedom and dignity and confronting oppression and subjugation."
Bassam Tawil, Gatestone Institute, International Policy Council 

Prince William, Duke of Cambridge meets Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas during an official visit to in Ramallah, on June 27, 2018. (Photo by Joe Giddens - Pool/Getty Images)

"The world has moved forward while you have been left behind. Don't allow your grandfather's conflict to determine your children's future."
"We will release our peace plan and the Palestinian people will actually like it because it will lead to new opportunities for them to have a much better life."
Jared Kushner, White House senior adviser to the Middle East

In this Thursday, June 21, 2018 photo, Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, center, meets with US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner, second left, and Mideast envoy Jason Greenblatt on the latest stop in a regional tour to discuss a blueprint for an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal, in Cairo, Egypt. (MENA via AP)

Special U.S. envoy Jared Kushner had an interview published in the leading Palestinian newspaper Al Quds in which he emphasized that the peace process could move ahead as soon as the Palestinian Authority decided to declare that the war with Israel is finished. The Palestinian issues that they place at the core of any negotiations; the return of refugees, a sovereign state that would include East Jerusalem and ending Jewish West Bank settlements should be regarded as negotiating "talking points"; negotiable in other words, not demands.

For one thing the UNHCR unique recognition of Palestinian 'refugees' as representing not only the original Palestinians who fled the geography but all their descendants (original: an estimated 700,000; including later generations: five million-plus) a 'return' that would obviously swamp Israel with an Arab/Muslim population equal to the Jewish presence, minus the one and three-quarter million Arabs who have Israeli citizenship, comprising over 21 percent of the population. 'Return' would spell the end of the Jewish state -- which is the actual goal.

It's one of those "not gonna happen" issues, imperilling Israel's survival. What Kushner speaks of is hopes of a new day dawning, when the younger generation of Palestinians finally understand the check-mate situation that solves nothing which the Palestinian Authority has engineered in long-term aspiration of having Israel disappear. This is the proposed rational against the imposed embittered emotions of anti-Zionism. The hope may be there that young Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza will tire of the 'resistance' shtick that gets them nowhere and begin to seriously look at a more promising future.

One that, with a peace agreement, Muslims will finally achieve some of their goals, presumably the more modest ones of sovereignty, recognition, an end to conflict and the beginning of prosperity and pride. An opportunity as Kushner states "to leapfrog into the next industrial age" through participation in the ecosystem of "Silicon Valley of the Middle East, Israel". It makes eminently good sense to imagine that young, opportunistic Palestinians would want to take that chance and reap the future.

But to do so, frays the fabric of heritage and culture, defying the imposed PA strictures against 'normalization' with the 'Zionist enemy'.

It would mean the youthful generation separating their interests from their elders, and in the process rejecting the national narrative of 'occupation', 'resistance', and 'martyrdom'. These are the values, after all, that they've grown up with, from cradle to grave as it were. In the cradle and beyond the lullabies whisper hints of martyrdom and the glory and fame achieved by the time the cradle gives way to 'resistance', when martyrdom merits a street named after the heroic action that led to Jewish lives surrendered to vengeance, rage and victimhood.

As ever, the Government of Israel makes overtures, invites cooperation, offers opportunities. Palestinians may regard Jews as oppressors and occupiers as is drummed into their consciousness but they are also more than willing to take employment in Israel and a recent announcement of 7,500 work permits issued to West Bank residents to counter the 20 percent unemployment rate speaks volumes. By no means is this considered a risky security threat since an estimated 100,000 West Bank Palestinians work in Israel as it is, with few untoward incidents arising.

Palestinians' lives are engraved with hardships. International investments in the Palestinian economy never did eventuate in the wake of the second intifada signalling to the international investors that their trust in a serene social environment securing their investments was unsound. The endemic corruption of Palestinian authorities and the bureaucracy is understood and deplored by Palestinians. Amid fears of accusations of collaboration, even Israeli entrepreneurs willing to invest in the West Bank came to nought.

The question is whether practical discourse and determination can prevail over emotional passion of blame, victimhood and rage, to attempt the Trump administration's "peace through prosperity" plan. Where once the Palestinian leaders could count on support from the governments of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan and the Gulf States, that support has been reduced to statements and nothing more in an atmosphere where majority Sunni states fear the consequences of a rampaging Shiite Iran threatening stability in its conquest bid.

That Elusive Israeli-Palestinian Peace Agreement

"This past weekend it emerged that last year the British government funnelled £20 million to Palestinian schools. A review by the Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education (IMPACT-se) found that these revenues go towards funding a curriculum which omits teaching peace, promotes the use of violence -- specifically jihad -- and encourages martyrdom. An analysis of the textbooks used in Palestinian schools funded by the UK government -- using UK taxpayers' money -- found that these textbooks, which come from the Palestinian Authority (PA), 'exerts pressure over young Palestinians to acts of violence'."
"Elsewhere, the study found that social studies books included images of children in their school rooms with an empty desk fitted with a sign reading "martyr". Repeatedly the textbooks refer to the "Occupation", to "Zionist Occupation", "Zionists" and much more, all of which perpetuates the notion that Israelis are "invaders" and "oppressors". In other words, these textbooks are clearly and consistently intended to indoctrinate a new generation of Palestinian children to hatred of their neighbours. Any government genuinely interested in promoting peace would withdraw funding from any entity -- wherever in the world it was -- which taught violence as such a core part of its curriculum."
"The IMPACT-se investigation revealed, however, that "radicalization is pervasive across this new curriculum." And not just pervasive, but pervasive "to a greater extent than before." The study found that in textbooks which pretend to be teaching "equal rights'", girls are encouraged to sacrifice their lives. A textbook aimed at 5^th grade children (that is, children aged 10) teaches that "drinking the cup of bitterness with glory is much sweeter than a pleasant long life accompanied by humiliation." Another textbook urges that "Giving one's life, sacrifice, fight, jihad and struggle are the most important meanings of life."
Douglas Murray, The Gatestone Institute

Pictured: A screenshot from the Sunday Times article exposing the British government's funding of a Palestinian curriculum which promotes the use of violence -- specifically jihad -- and encourages martyrdom.

Britain appears to be oblivious to what its funding is enabling. Education is of universal vital importance. Imparting to vulnerable, questing minds the fundamentals of social, cultural and enlightened civil behaviour along with the fundamentals of numeracy, literacy, science, geography and art is the basis upon which young minds should thrive and mature. And this, obviously, is what Great Britain feels its funding of Palestinian textbooks achieves. But it seems that Britain is as oblivious to the reality pertaining in the Middle East as it is within its own bailiwick.

Interestingly enough, a 2016 study by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the international body which investigates and weighs the success or lack of in development of advanced nations, discovered that England ranks dead last in literacy in the developed world. The very same study found that Britain came in second-to-last in numeracy in the developed world. A breath-gasping reality. Examining up the chain of education, it was found that even among British university graduates one in ten held literacy/numeracy skills in the "low" classification.

In the last few days much has been made in the news media of Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's having stated during an interview: "I believe the Palestinians and the Israelis have the right to have their own land. But we have to have a peace agreement to assure the stability for everyone and to have normal relations". This statement was viewed as a great breakthrough, progress. The 'normal relations' he referred to would be the recognition, finally, of Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states of the legitimacy of the existence of the State of Israel.

But those normal relations could only occur with a peaceful settlement between Israel and the Palestinians. The preconditions to Israel's acceptance in the Middle East and the recognition of the justness of a Jewish state re-established within its heritage geography entirely contingent on Israel making peace with the Palestinians. Which rather ignores the fact that Israel has attempted time over time, to do just that and has for its troubles, been rebuffed time and again.

So Prince Mohammed and his father, King Salman both appear to agree it's time to recognize Israel's right of existence. There is equivocation, however concerning 'religious concerns' relating to the Al- Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem and the 'right of return' of Palestinians. The third most sacred site for Muslims, the Noble Sanctuary which Judaism refers to as the Temple Mount where Solomon's two Temples once stood, vastly predating the existence of the mosque represents the most sacred site in Judaism.

Arabs are discomfited at a state meant to be a haven for Jews. Yet Saudi Arabia is diligent about excluding all but Saudis to citizenship in their bailiwick. Nor would they be receptive to discussing the origins of Saudi Arabia when the Saudis wrested territory from the indigenous Hashemites, sending them into exile (where Britain mollified them by giving them TransJordan, land meant to be returned to the Jews returning to Zion), nor to discuss the issue that Medina was wrested from ancient Jewish tribes indigenous to that area.

Seriously, who is Israel expected to negotiate with to arrive at a peace settlement with the Palestinians? Hamas, misgoverning Gaza, zealously conniving to destroy Israel, or Fatah with the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, continually inciting Palestinians there to 'resist' normalcy (living in peace with Israel) and commit to 'resistance against the occupation'; there purely in defence against ongoing Palestinian suicide attacks against Israeli Jews. Both Hamas and Fatah design school curricula meant to infest young minds with hatred.

With whom should Israel negotiate for peace? As for the European Union forever sitting in judgement of Israel and finding its responses to ongoing violence against its citizens 'disproportionate', and Britain's leading role in relations between the Palestinians and Israel, they represent enablers to Palestinian violence and slander and the narrative of victimhood and in support of the Palestinian 'refugee' classification of the United Nations that views them as pathetic dependants incapable of fending for themselves under the heel of a militant oppressor.