RUTHFULLY YOURS

The failure of the donors — mainly the US and the EU — to demand accountability and transparency from the Palestinian Authority has deprived Palestinians of a significant part of the funds.

It has also encouraged Palestinian leaders to continue pocketing millions of dollars, enriching their private and hidden bank accounts.

The Palestinians, of course, are the primary victims in this story.

A report published this week offers a rare glance into the secret world of the Palestinian Authority (PA), which was established in 1994 in accordance with the Oslo Accords signed between Israel and the PLO.

Headed by Mahmoud Abbas, the PA has since received billions of dollars in aid from the US, EU and several other donor countries.

However, the failure of the donors to demand accountability and transparency from the Palestinian Authority has deprived Palestinians of a significant part of the funds. It has also encouraged Palestinian leaders to continue pocketing millions of dollars, enriching their private and hidden bank accounts.

One would have expected the Western donors to have woken up and noticed that Palestinian leaders are misusing the taxpayer money they send.

One would have expected the Americans and Europeans to come to Abbas and his cronies, bang on the table, and demand that they start using and investing money for the welfare of their people, and not for their friends and family members.

The report, published by the Coalition For Accountability And Integrity (AMAN), established in 2000 by a number of civil society organizations working in the field of democracy, human rights, and good governance, shows that the Western donors have learned nothing from their past mistakes.

The report also shows that the Palestinian Authority remains the same corrupt body it has been since its inception more than twenty years ago.

We departed from Kochav Yair, a quaint, affluent town in central Israel, at precisely 7 a.m. Our destination was the ancient city Jericho, one of civilization’s oldest and the first to be liberated by the Israelites when they crossed the Jordan River some 3,400 years ago. Our guide was former Deputy Chief of Staff of the Israel Defense Forces, Uzi Dayan. Ironically, he also happens to be nephew to the late Moshe Dayan, who as Israel’s Minister of Defense, led the IDF to victory during the 1967 Six-Day War and returned the city of Jericho to its rightful owners.

Dayan’s manner of speaking is authoritative and deliberate, likely a product of his years of service in the military. His spiritual and nationalistic connection to the land is obvious. And his knowledge of its history and geography is impressive. This is a man who wanted to impress upon us the historical and spiritual nexus of Jericho to the Jewish people and the Land of Israel. He succeeded beyond expectation.

Jericho is located in Judea & Samaria near the strategic Jordan Valley, about 70km south of the Israeli city of Bet She’an. We approached the city from the north driving along Route 5, which cuts across part of the breathtaking Samarian landscape and then took a number of smaller roads until reaching Route 90. At Route 90, we traversed southward toward Jericho.

In 1994, The Israeli government handed the city over to the entity known as the Palestinian Authority as part of the calamitous Oslo Accords. The Accords, which were supposed to usher in an era of peace, instead resulted in an orgy of Palestinian terrorism and the dismemberment of parts of ancient Israel.

Judea & Samaria is currently divided into three distinct districts – Areas A, B and C. Area C is currently under full Israeli control and constitutes some 40% of Judea & Samaria. Area B is under PA civilian control and Israeli military control. Area A is under full Palestinian civilian and security control. Together, Area A and B constitute 60% of the landmass of Judea & Samaria.

Howard Kohr, AIPAC’s (American-Israel Public Affairs Committee) CEO created a bit of an uproar among certain Jewish organizations when he stated at the AIPAC conference earlier this month that, “We must work toward that future: two states for two people. One Jewish with secure and defensible borders, and one Palestinian with its own flag and its own future.” It was a reiteration of last year’s call on the U.S. administration to undertake steps that “Could create a climate that encourages the Palestinians to negotiate in pursuit of the goal we desire: a Jewish state of Israel living side by side in peace and security with a demilitarized Palestinian state.”

There is no question that Howard Kohr’s motives are pure and honorable in seeking a secure Israel alongside a peaceful and demilitarized Palestinian state. Unfortunately reality dictates otherwise. At the moment we actually have a need to solve more than a two-state question. We have a third state question and that is the Hamas ruled Gaza Strip. Hamas has vowed to fight until the liberation of all of Palestine and the destruction of Israel. The Los Angeles Times reported (March 1, 2017), “In a shift, the new document (as it relates to the Hamas Covenant-JP), formally endorses the goal of establishing a Palestinian state in Gaza and the West Bank, with Jerusalem as its capital, as part of a ‘national consensus’ among Palestinians (this was during the reconciliation process with Fatah and the Palestinian Authority-JP). While that may be a tacit acknowledgment of Israel’s existence, the revision stops well short of recognizing Israel, and reasserts calls for armed resistance toward a ‘complete liberation of Palestine’ from the river to the sea.”

The attempted assassination of the Palestinian Authority (PA) Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah earlier this month in Gaza, put a stop to the reconciliation efforts between Hamas and the PA, which is dominated by Fatah. Fatah spokesperson and Revolutionary Council member, Osama al-Qawasmi said, “Hamas is fully responsible for this cowardly operation that targeted the homeland, reconciliation, and unity. This cowardly act is outside of our values and national relations, and has repercussions.” It is clear that even if PA President Mahmoud Abbas should return to the negotiating table, and that is doubtful, Hamas will continue its campaign of terror against Israel. Hamas is unwilling to give up control of its arms, its rockets, or its mortars, to the PA.

The purpose here is not to condemn the church for what it believes. These beliefs, however, make it difficult to understand how the leaders of a church can advocate such intimate relations with Muslims, for whom everything Christians believe is pure blasphemy.

In the Qur’an, Jesus is regarded, not as God or the Son of God, but as a prophet inferior to Muhammad. The Qur’an is emphatic in saying that Jesus was not crucified, but that someone else was substituted for him. Therefore, Christ did not die to save mankind; this salvation is reserved only for those who believe in the God of the prophet Muhammad.

No one is suggesting that Palestinian Christians should invite their own deaths by outrightly defying the Muslim majority. It seems inexplicable, however, why these Christians prefer to join with the Islamic resistance rather than to remain silent, accept their supposedly inferior status, and refrain from overt endorsements of what Muslims view as right.

On March 3, Britain’s most senior Catholic cleric, Cardinal Vincent Nichols, called for closer ties with Islam on the grounds that “the two religions have more in common than people think”. What on Earth does this prelate think Muslims believe? After some 1400 years of rivalry and war, some sort of naivety and fuzzy thinking is making Christians the agents of their own destruction.

It is sad but possibly to be expected that many Palestinian Christians – who are constantly under threat but have not been killed or expelled – identify closely with the cause of their Muslim fellows as they engage in often violent “resistance” to Israel and the limited Israeli “occupation” of the West Bank (Judaea and Samaria). Christians may have a long history in Syria and Palestine, but the earliest Christians, including Christ, were, of course, Jews. According to Christianity Today:

The Acts of the Apostles states that the first Christians in Jerusalem were Jews, and historians believe that even after the fall of Jerusalem in A.D. 70, Christianity in the Holy Land kept its Jewish flavor. But the Jewish revolt of Bar-Kokhba in 135 changed all this; Rome showed no mercy to the Jews and obliterated Jerusalem, renaming the city “Aelia Capitolina” and the country of Israel “Palestine.” With this blow, the Christian Jewish community effectively disappeared.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas wants to extend his authority to the Gaza Strip, while Hamas is seeking to take over the West Bank.

Abbas is fortunate to have Israel sitting with him in the West Bank. Otherwise, Hamas would have succeeded in its effort to topple his regime and “transfer” its weapons to the West Bank.

Meanwhile, Abbas will continue to dream of returning to the Gaza Strip, while Hamas will continue to prepare for war against Israel and removing the Palestinian Authority from power.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is living in an illusion if he thinks that his rivals in Hamas would ever agree to lay down their weapons or cede control over the Gaza Strip.

Hamas has no intention of dismantling its military and security apparatus. It also does not have any intention of allowing Abbas’s security forces to be stationed in the Gaza Strip. This refusal is why the “reconciliation” deal that Abbas signed with Hamas in Cairo in October 2017 will never be translated into facts on the ground.

Hamas is prepared to give Abbas anything he wants in the Gaza Strip except for security control. Hamas has no problem allowing Abbas and his government to function as a “civil administration” in the Gaza Strip by providing funds and various services to government institutions there.

If Abbas wants to pay salaries to civil servants in the Gaza Strip, that is fine with Hamas. If he wants to pay for fuel, water and electricity supplies to the Gaza Strip, that is also fine with Hamas.

Security control, however, is the last thing Hamas wants from Abbas. For Hamas, security is a red line not to be crossed.

What is behind Hamas’s fierce opposition to relinquishing security control over the Gaza Strip?

Hamas wants to retain its weapons and security control of the Gaza Strip for two reasons: first, it wants the weapons so that it can continue the “armed struggle” against Israel; second, Hamas knows that the moment it hands over security control of the Gaza Strip to the Palestinian Authority (PA), many of its leaders and members will either be killed or imprisoned by Abbas’s security forces.

Israel’s message to Hezbollah: Don’t get too comfortable

Israel’s undeclared and clandestine war against the Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah erupted again today as IAF planes hit several Hezbollah positions along the Syrian-Lebanese border.

Hezbollah denies that Israel attacked them. The IDF had no comment. But several Arab media outlets are reporting the strike occurred and residents of Baalbek, a strategic Lebanese hamlet on the Syrian border, are saying they saw the planes and heard the explosions.

24 News:

Hezbollah, the Iran-backed Shia group, denied the reports that Israel struck its positions and media outlets associated with the group said that no such strikes occurred.

Israel has not yet commented on the report and is unlikely to do so. According to usual protocol it does not disclose information about airstrikes in foreign countries.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has prioritized the northern border as its greatest current threat, referring both to Hezbollah in Lebanon and Iranian proxies on the Syrian border, which carries the danger of a united front against the Jewish state.

The real story now is no longer about what the foreign correspondents are reporting related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Rather, it is about what they are not reporting.

In its report — which so far appears to have been of less than no interest to both the foreign media and international human rights groups — the Palestinian Independent Commission for Human Rights states that it has received complaints of torture and mistreatment from 46 Palestinians detained by the Palestinian Authority and Hamas during the month of February 2018 alone.

Both Palestinian dictatorships, the Palestinian Authority and Hamas, therefore have nothing to worry about; they can go about their business of torturing and illegally detaining their own people. No one is watching.

What happens when Palestinians make allegations of torture and assaults on their public freedoms? If the finger is being pointed at Israel, the international media falls over itself to bring the story to the broadest possible audience.

The story would not even end there. Human rights organizations and United Nations agencies would blast Israel for “abusing” Palestinian human rights and the Security Council would hold an emergency session to condemn Israel.

The response, however, when Palestinians fall victim to the practices of their own governments — the Palestinian Authority (PA) in the West Bank and Hamas in the Gaza Strip — is a completely different one. That is when silence descends upon the international media community hides behind a blue wall of silence

How can one account for this sinkhole in communications? Simple: when the story is not about alleged atrocities committed by Israel, from the point of view of the Western media outlets it is presumably not a tale worthy of being told.

Israel said it destroyed a Syrian nuclear reactor in 2007, ending its silence over the airstrikes in what it said was a warning for an increasingly bellicose Iran threatening the country’s existence.

Israel in recent months has amplified criticism of Iranian attempts to set up military bases in Syria, warning it would counter any attempts by Tehran and its allies to strengthen their presence on its border.

Tensions escalated in February after Israel’s military said one of its jets was shot down by antiaircraft missiles during strikes on Syrian targets. Those strikes came after Israel said it intercepted an Iranian drone launched from Syria that had infiltrated its airspace.

Russia and Iran are the main backers of the Assad regime in the yearslong Syrian conflict and Tehran has vowed to destroy the Israeli state.

Some Iranian officials also have said Tehran could pull out of the 2015 nuclear deal that limits its enrichment program if the U.S. backs out, as President Donald Trump has threatened.

Iran says its enrichment program is for peaceful purposes, but Israel and other Western powers have long suspected that Tehran sought to develop nuclear weapons.

The acknowledgment of the destruction of the Syrian reactor “sends a clear message: Israel will never allow nuclear weapons to countries like Iran who threaten its existence,” Israel Katz, the country’s intelligence minister, wrote on Twitter.

His comments came after the Israeli military disclosed for the first time details about the 2007 operation, releasing previously classified information, pictures and video of the airstrikes.

“Israel’s policy was and remains consistent—to prevent our enemies from acquiring nuclear weapons,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said late Wednesday.

The Syrian regime couldn’t be reached for comment. It has previously denied that the bombed site was a nuclear reactor. An official at Iran’s United Nations mission in New York didn’t respond to a request for comment.

It was widely thought that the airstrikes in 2007 were carried out by Israel, but its formal disclosure on Wednesday comes as Mr. Trump considers scotching the Iranian nuclear deal in May. Israel is pushing for strict overhauls, including more-robust inspections of Iranian facilities and an indefinite period to restrict Iran’s nuclear program.

Ronen Bergman, a political and military analyst who wrote “Rise and Kill First”—a history of Israel’s intelligence agencies—said Israel was sending a message not just to Iran, but also to the Trump administration. CONTINUE AT SITE