RUTHFULLY YOURS

The “peace conference” held in Paris on January 15, 2017 was supposed to be a continuation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 2334 (voted on December 23, 2016), and John Kerry’s speech five days later. It was supposed to isolate Israel even further and provide a new step towards the declaration of a “Palestinian State”. It was a total washout. The final declaration, prepared in advance, was not ratified, and the resolution published at the end was so watered down it was meaningless. The United Kingdom’s representatives refused to sign it. US Secretary of State John Kerry chose to remain silent. French President François Hollande delivered a speech full of empty words, praising resolution 2334 and desperately stressing the need to “save the two-state solution”.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described the conference as the “death throes of yesterday’s world”. He may be right.

The Obama years are gone. The Trump years will be different. US President Donald J. Trump stated on March 21, 2016:

“No one should be telling Israel that it must abide by some agreement made by others thousands of miles away… When I become president, the days of treating Israel like a second-class citizen will end on day one… There is no moral equivalency. Israel does not name public squares after terrorists.”

The Republican Party platform adopted on July 12, 2016 went in the same direction, clearly stated an opposition to “any measures intended to impose an agreement or to dictate borders or other terms”, and called for “the immediate termination of all U.S. funding of any entity that attempts to do so”. It added that the Republican Party is “proud to stand with Israel now and always”. It did not refer to the “two-state solution”.

One of Donald Trump’s first decisions was the appointment of David Friedman as US Ambassador to Israel. Friedman has said often that he wanted the US Embassy in Israel to be located in Jerusalem, and regarded the two-state solution as a “dangerous illusion.”

The two-state solution is much worse than a dangerous illusion. It places on the same level a democratic state and a rogue entity that glorifies terrorism and uses its media and schoolbooks to incite hatred and the murder of Jews. The two-state solution does not demand that the Palestinian Authority (PA) change its behavior; it therefore endorses what the PA does.

The two-state solution is also based on falsehood. It claims the rights of a “Palestinian people” that does not exist. In 1977, Zuheir Mohsen, a PLO leader, said bluntly that the Palestinian people were invented for political purposes. More recently, Mahmoud Abbas described Jordanian and Palestinian Arabs as “one people living in two states.”

The two-state solution invokes “Palestinian territories” that also do not exist. There has never been an Arab or Muslim “Palestinian State.” Palestine is a name the Romans gave to Judea in the land of Israel in the Second Century AD, after they crushed a Jewish revolt and were already then trying to negate a Jewish presence. Since then, the region has never enjoyed any autonomy. During the British Mandate (1922-1948), the Arabs never used the word “Palestine” and called the area Balad esh-Sham (province of Damascus). For 19 years (1948-1967), the Gaza Strip was occupied by Egypt, and Judea and Samaria were occupied by Jordan. The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) never said that Egypt and Jordan were “occupying powers,” and never described the Gaza Strip and Judea-Samaria as “Palestinian”.

Israel ceded to international pressure by agreeing to recognize the PLO as an interlocutor and, at the time of the Oslo Accords, entering into a hollow “peace process.” The “two-state solution” became the basis for subsequent negotiations.

The price paid by Israel and the Israeli people quickly became extremely high. After the Oslo Accords, the Palestinian Authority launched a far greater number of bloody attacks against Israel.

Only the construction of the security barrier (2003-5) ended the carnage. About 500 suicide bombings and other assaults took place between 1994 and 2002. More than one thousand Israelis lost their lives. Many more were wounded or maimed.

The PA obstinately refused to recognize Israel as a Jewish state, which means it never recognized Israel. It never gave up demanding the return of “refugees”: 500,000 people who left Israel in 1948, when the Arab countries launched a war of extermination against the Jewish state, most of them with no roots in the Israeli land. They became the only refugees in the world who are denied the right of resettlement. A few thousand are still alive, but most of today’s so-called “Palestinian refugees” were not born on Israeli soil, have never set foot in Israel and know nothing about the country to which they are supposed to want to “return”, despite what Palestinian propaganda told them. They now number more than six million. It is not hard to guess what their “return” would mean.

All peace proposals made by Israeli leaders were rejected by Palestinian leaders, without even a counter-offer.

Anyone who pays attention to the Palestinian media knows why: when speaking Arabic, Palestinian leaders say that “Palestine” will go from the (Jordan) river to the (Mediterranean) sea. Israel does not exist either on Palestinian maps or on the Palestinian Authority logo. The PA is supposedly non-religious, but Palestinian TV teaches jihad to children, and encourage them to “shoot Jews” because it is pleasing to Allah. Palestinian imams at public events explain that the Palestinian “war with the descendants of the apes and pigs [i.e., Jews] is a war of religion and faith,” and add that all “Palestine” is a part of dar al-islam and is to remain “under Islamic dominion forever.” Denial of Jewish history in Jerusalem and in the land of Israel has always been a central component of PA propaganda.

Many Israelis desperately continue to believe that peace with Palestinian Authority is possible. But more than half the Israeli population no longer entertains that illusion.

For decades, many Western leaders have relentlessly demanded more concessions from Israel, and have spoken and acted as if they did not know what the Palestinian Authority really is and what Palestinian leaders really want. They have been accomplices and liars. They behave as if they genuinely want the destruction of Israel and the murder of Israeli Jews. They have Jewish blood on their hands and many skeletons in their closet. They continue to finance Palestinian propaganda, Palestinian terrorists, and international and Palestinian NGOs that support the genocidal Palestinian agenda. They even gave money that was used to reward the murderers of Jews. Some of them seem to long for what Giulio Meotti calls a “new Shoah,” and seem disappointed that it has not yet occurred.

The Obama years were particularly horrendous. In his June 2009 Cairo speech, Barack Obama compared Israel, the only open and truly pluralistic county in the Middle East, to South Africa in the apartheid years and to the American South at the time of slavery. He repeatedly called for Israel’s return to “pre-1967 borders”, but never said that they were not borders, but merely the 1949 armistice lines. He used the term “resistance” to speak about Palestinian terrorism. He described settlements as the main obstacle to peace, thereby endorsing the Palestinian Authority’s desire for the ethnic cleansing of Jews. When he spoke of attacks on Israelis, he never explicitly condemned the attackers and never said they were Palestinians.

In his June 4, 2009, speech in Cairo, Barack Obama compared Israel, the only open and truly pluralistic county in the Middle East, to South Africa in the apartheid years. (Image source: White House)

The European Union and most European countries supported all the positions taken by Barack Obama.

Furious after the results of the January 15 conference, President François Hollande said he had to “send a warning” to the Trump Administration. Fortunately, a warning sent by a failed president in a country where nearly six hundred areas are no-go zones under the control Islamic “enforcers” control does not matter much.

On January 20, 2017, a new era began.

The acceptance of the Palestinian glorification of terrorism, the incitement to hatred and murder of Jews, the acceptance by Western leaders of the falsifications of history on which the Palestinian cause rests may also end.

In the early days of his term, still only in its third week, President Trump decided to halt U.S. funding to UN agencies and other international bodies that grant the Palestinian Authority full membership. He added that any organization “controlled or substantially influenced by any state that sponsors terrorism” will lose US aid. U.S. funding to the PA will certainly be curtailed soon. In a much-discussed statement, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer, said that the construction of new settlements “may not be helpful”, but added immediately that the Trump administration “don’t believe the existence of settlements is an impediment to peace”.

A “Trump effect” could lead to political change in Europe. More and more Europeans are tired of policies of appeasement and submission to Islam. Pro-Jewish and pro-Israel sentiments are rising in most European countries.

Sunni Arab countries still verbally support the Palestinian cause, but the rise of Iran in the Middle East and the stated ambitions of Tehran’s mullahs concern them more. If the United States becomes energy-independent, all oil-producing Muslim countries will also have other concerns than the Palestinian leaders’ demands.

In a recent article describing the “eight great powers of 2017”, Walter Russell Mead and Sean Keeley wrote: “Israel is a rising power with a growing impact on world affairs.” Israel is increasingly unwilling to submissively accept arbitrary decisions and pressures.

The recent solution offered by Daniel Pipes, “Israel wins, Palestinians lose”, could take shape.

The period of “the two-state solution” as the only solution is probably over. The period when the two-state solution could be imposed on Israel from outside also probably belongs to the past.

The failed two-state model could be replaced by alternative solutions requiring the dismantling of Palestinian Authority and its replacement by something infinitely better for Israel and the Arab population of the area.

“Terrorism is successful,” wrote Alan Dershowitz in 2003, ” when the international community gives in to the demands of terrorists.”

The leaders of the Palestinian Authority might learn the hard way that the time when terrorism works is over.

Dr. Guy Millière, a professor at the University of Paris, is the author of 27 books on France and Europe.