RUTHFULLY YOURS

With Islamist forces waiting to take advantage of any power vacuum, the area would plunge into Somalia-like chaos.Much has been written about the “two state solution” (TSS) or “two states for two peoples” (TSTP) as the path to resolving the conflict between Israel and Arab and Muslim countries and Palestinians, but at the same time there appears to be little understanding of why it consistently fails. It fails because it is focused on territory, Palestinian statehood, rather than ideology – Palestinian nationalism and Palestinianism, the belief that Jews have no right to a state and that Jewish nationalism, Zionism, is anathema and that Jewish history is a fraud.

The idea of separating Israeli Jews and Arab Palestinians into two separate states is logical, but practically it involves other issues which remain obstacles. Supporting Palestinian statehood, therefore, without including a resolution of or reference to other problems prevents a rational, comprehensive approach to finding a realistic solution.The principle behind the TSS/TSTP seems simple: since Arabs don’t want to live under Israeli rule and Israelis don’t want to rule over them, give them a state in all or most of Judea and Samaria (the “West Bank”), the Gaza Strip and eastern Jerusalem.

Jews would be expelled from the Arab Palestinian state and not permitted to live there, but Israeli Arabs would remain in Israel as citizens. A population transfer/ethnic cleansing would occur in only one state.

Granting statehood, however, depends on resolving all other issues which were included in previous “peace plans” and agreements such as the Oslo accords: 1) ending the conflict, ending violence and incitement; 2) ending all claims against Israel, abandoning “the Nakba” (the catastrophe, Israel’s establishment); 3) ending the “Palestinian Right of Return” of refugees and their descendants to Israel; 4) shared status of the Temple Mount and Jewish rights in eastern Jerusalem and the Old City; 5) continued IDF presence in the Jordan Valley and other strategic areas; 6) land swaps to include areas of major settlement; 7) access to all holy sites; and 8) recognizing Israel’s right to exist as the nation-state of the Jewish People and its historical and religious connection to the land of Israel and the Temple Mount.

There is a campaign, which ironically started in the United States, but which has now spread all over the world, to have PayPal, the internet payment processing company, extend its services to Palestine. No matter what happens, this proposal is fraught with landmines.

PayPal offers its services to over 200 countries, in at least 25 currencies. So its scope is pretty much universal, with the exception of a few areas. There ia a rogue’s gallery of countries which are not connected to PayPal, but only a few. Many of those are pretty much totalitarian. The rest are prohibited because of concerns that payments would be either fraudulent or used to fund illegal or terrorist causes.

This reluctance to connect PayPal to Palestine has been a source of major criticism from around the world, especially since PayPal does operate in nearby adjacent Jewish communities. It is preventing a large community of well-educated IT professionals in the contested areas and Gaza from getting employment — especially needed for those stuck on the wrong side of the security fence, where unemployment is rampant.

The American Group, A4VPE (Americans for a Vibrant Palestinian Economy), has been running a major campaign to bring PayPal to the contested areas. In August of 2016, they sent an open letter to the President of PayPal, Mr. Dan Shulman.

We have been told that PayPal is concerned about the compliance investments required to enter the Palestinian market. We believe such costs have been greatly overestimated. The U.S. Treasury Department has spent a great deal of time working with the Palestine Monetary Authority to strengthen safeguards against abuse. PayPal currently operates in over 203 countries including places with major problems of corruption and terrorism like Somalia and Yemen. We are confident that Palestine will prove a much easier place to profitably do business than these and other markets that PayPal has already entered.

In addition to business reasons, there are also ethical reasons for PayPal to enter the Palestinian market. PayPal’s decision to launch its service in Israel for Israeli bank customers means that it inadvertently made its services freely available to Jewish settlers living illegally in the occupied West Bank. Palestinians living in close proximity to those settlers do not, however, have access as PayPal doesn’t work with Palestinian banks and Palestinians are unable to establish Israeli bank accounts. — A4VPE

Technically, there is no reason that PayPal could not be extended to the Palestinian areas, if technology were the only concern as Tech Crunch noted:

PayPal currently does not work for Palestinians in the West Bank or Gaza, but does work for Israelis living in settlements in the West Bank, which are illegal by international law… [H]ow an Internet platform could work in some areas of a country but not in another — where the areas in question are in some cases literally meters apart — is puzzling to say the least. — Tech Crunch (emphasis mine)

What is really driving this Palestinian hatred of Trump and the U.S.? The Palestinians and the Arabs have long been at war with what they regard as U.S. bias in favor of Israel. What they mean is that U.S. support for Israel stands in their way of destroying Israel.

Abbas is not going to tell Trump about the “Day of Rage” because it flies in the face of his repeated claim that Palestinians are ready for peace and are even raising their children in a culture of peace.

Once again, Abbas is playing Americans and other Westerners for fools. His people remain unwilling to recognize Israel’s very right to exist as a state for Jews. And so, Abbas will talk peace and coexistence while his people organize yet another “Day of Rage.”

Mahmoud Abbas and his Palestinian Authority (PA), preparing to welcome U.S. President Donald Trump to Bethlehem, are seeking to create the impression that their sentiments are shared by their people. Yet many Palestinians are less than enthusiastic about the visit.

It is in the best interests of Abbas and the PA to hide the truth that many Palestinians view the U.S. as an Israel-loving enemy.

While the PA president and his aides attempt to bury that inconvenient fact, they are also doing their best to cover up the truth that many Palestinians have been radicalized to a point that they would rather aim a gun or knife at Israelis than aim for peace with them.

The strongest and most vocal protests against Trump’s visit have thus far come from Ramallah, the de facto capital of the Palestinians.

Ramallah is regularly described by Western journalists as a base for moderation and pragmatism. It is in this city that Abbas and the top PA leadership live and work.

In a statement published earlier this week, the National and Islamic Forces in Ramallah and El-Bireh, a coalition of various Palestinian political and terror groups, called for a “Day of Popular Rage” in the West Bank to protest the imminent presidential visit.

In Palestinian-speak, a “Day of Rage” is a call for intensified violence and terrorism directed mainly against Jews.

The term was formally introduced during the First Intifada, which erupted in late 1987, and consisted of stone and petrol-bomb attacks against Israel Defense Force soldiers and Jews residing in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

Similarly, during the Second Intifada, which began in 2000, Days of Rage were associated with suicide bombings, drive-by shootings and other acts of terrorism and assorted crimes perpetrated against Jews living in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, as well as within Israel.

In recent years, Abbas’s Fatah faction and other groups, including Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Marxist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) have used different occasions to urge Palestinians to declare a Day of Rage against Israel.

Generally speaking, such calls come in response to Jewish visits to the Temple Mount — visits that have been taking place since East Jerusalem was liberated from Jordanian occupation in 1967.

The visits were temporarily suspended, however, for security reasons in the first years of the Second Intifada, out of concern for the safety of visitors. It is worth noting that non-Muslims areallowed to tour the Temple Mount, as has been true for the past five decades. The Palestinians, however, are specifically opposed to Jews visiting the site, under the false pretext that Jews are plotting to rebuild their Temple after destroying the Islamic holy sites there. This charge is, of course, another Palestinian blood libel against Jews.

It is bad enough that the blood of American and Israeli victims of Palestinian terror is so cheap; it is outrageous that it is subsidized.

But it is unconscionable that the shedding of American and Israeli blood through Palestinian terror is subsidized with U.S. tax dollars. Yet, unbelievably, the Congressional attempt to rectify this situation through the Taylor Force Act has run into opposition.

If that sounds implausible, consider some context. Under the 1993 Oslo Accords, Israel made stunning concessions to the Palestine Liberation Organization, then led by Yasser Arafat. Israel allowed the PLO to establish the Palestinian Authority, governing the vast majority of Palestinians. In exchange, Israel was to receive peace: the Palestinians committed to permanently abandon the goal of destroying Israel, and to fight terrorism.

The world (including the U.S.) has since showered the PA with billions of aid dollars. But rather than pursue actual peace or build a functioning economy, the PA has invested heavily in systemic demonization of Israel and of Jews. For 24 years, the PA has bombarded its population with anti-Semitic, anti-coexistence, pro-“liberation”, and pro-terror propaganda and incitement. It is everywhere, infecting children’s books and TV programming, schoolrooms, textbooks, summer camps, mosques, broadcasts, and newspapers. Terrorists are heroes and role models. Streets, parks, schools and even soccer tournaments are named in honor of the most murderous of them.

It also infects bank accounts. The most explicit form that the PA’s pro-terror policy takes is payment to terrorists and their families. The PA has codified laws granting regular payments to “anyone incarcerated in [Israel’s] prisons for his participation in the struggle against the occupation.” Under PA law, terrorists are “a fighting sector and an integral part of the fabric of Arab Palestinian society.”

In this so-called “pay-to-slay” system, the PA provides convicted terrorists and their families with substantial salary and health benefits, free tuition, and, for those sentenced to five or more years, a guaranteed government job upon release from prison. Murderers “earn” over $40,000 per year. Longer terror sentences and greater crimes qualify for higher salaries and positions. The families of “martyrs” receive additional large payments and benefits.

These payments amount to over $300 million per year — nearly 10% of the entire PA budget. As it happens, U.S. payments to the Palestinians during the Obama era averaged $400 million per year ($363 million last year). Is there a more obscene use of American tax dollars?

The PA may not know how to increase GDP, but it has been wildly successful at cultivating a rabidly anti-Israel/anti-Jewish population. (Not to mention anti-American: Palestinians danced in the streets on 9/11.) The “peace” that Israel actually received from the peace process has included a never-ending stream of thousands of attempted Palestinian terror attacks against Israeli targets. Since Oslo, Palestinian attacks have killed over 1,600 Israelis, and wounded some 9,000. (As a fraction of the population, that would be the equivalent of approximately 64,000 American dead — equal to suffering a 9/11 attack every year — and 360,000 wounded.)