RUTHFULLY YOURS

On Thursday, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas finally got the chance to address the U.N. General Assembly as the representative of an observer state. Having been provided an actual seat at the event was not the only reason that Abbas was pleased, however.

Over the past few weeks, the PA leader has been despondent watching international attention to his cause eclipsed by Syrian carnage and Iranian overtures. So, when U.S. President Barack Obama catapulted Palestinian statehood back to center stage in his speech on Tuesday — by placing it on a par of importance with a diplomatic solution to Iran’s nuclear program — Abbas’ sigh of relief was so deafening that it drowned out the calls for a third intifada emanating from Ramallah.

According to the Gatestone Institute’s Khaled Abu Toameh, it is not only extremist groups such as Hamas that have been beating the war drums; the Palestinian Authority itself is part of the orchestra. “While some PA officials have come out in public in support of escalating ‘popular resistance’ against Israel,” writes Abu Toameh, “others have been telling Palestinians that ‘extremist Jewish gangs are storming and contaminating the Aqsa mosque’ — a reference to routine visits by Jews to the Temple Mount. These are the kind of statements that prompt young Palestinians to take to the streets and throw stones and petrol bombs at Jewish settlers and IDF soldiers.”

Nevertheless, Abbas told the General Assembly, “… As we have repeatedly affirmed, and as we have proven in practice, the State of Palestine, which abides by the United Nations Charter, by international humanitarian law and by the resolutions of international legitimacy, will exercise its role and uphold its responsibilities in the international system in a positive and constructive manner, and in a way that reinforces peace. …”

That Abbas is useless at everything other than lying through his teeth is a given by now; the unemployed and otherwise disgruntled residents of the PA would be the first to say so. This is why their president’s subsequent assertion that “we shall respect all of our commitments” would have caused the rest of us to alternate between yawning and laughing, if innocent lives weren’t at stake. After all, killing Jews is the only commitment that Palestinian leaders have ever honored, especially while engaged in “negotiating peace.”

But I will give Abbas credit for one key admission, which he reiterated several times at the U.N.: He considers Israel’s establishment in 1948 to be the real “nakba” (catastrophe). Talking about the 1967 borders is simply a ruse for Western and internal Israeli consumption. And liberals continue to consume it, no matter how stale or rotten it grows — which may be why Abbas felt sufficiently emboldened to sprinkle a spice of truth to his dish.

The “goal of peace,” he said, “is embodied in redressing the historic, unprecedented injustice that has befallen the Palestinian people in al-Nakba of 1948. … The overwhelming majority of the Palestinian people were born in Palestine and in exile after the 1948 Nakba. But after the passage of 65 years, they are still its direct victims. … I am personally one of the victims of al-Nakba, among the hundreds of thousands of my people uprooted in 1948 from our beautiful world and thrown into exile. … Our people have walked the path of armed revolution and rose from the ashes of al-Nakba and collected the shards of its soul and its identity to present its cause to the world and consecrate the recognition of its rights. … My own hope is to see the day where a just peace reigns so that the generation of al-Nakba can pass on to its children and grandchildren the flag of an independent State of Palestine.”

Abbas hopes that the next time he addresses the General Assembly, “Palestine” will have more than mere observer status. This might explain his insistence on a nine-month deadline for a final treaty, with no “interim or transitional” agreements that could become “eternalized.”

What this spells for Israel — as it has since 1948 — is not peace, but bloodshed.

Ruthie Blum is the author of “To Hell in a Handbasket: Carter, Obama, and the ‘Arab Spring.'”