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100 years after Balfour, why is there no State of Palestine?

100 years since Balfour, , 70 years since partition. Why is there no State of Palestine?

There is no State of Palestine because after the fall of the Ottoman Empire, when the League of Nations used the Mandate system to facilitate the creation of Nation States, the Arabs living in the British Mandate of Palestine didn’t want one.

There is no State of Palestine because in the 1920’s and 1930’s, when the Jewish people began to prepare for their own state, the Arabs chose to violently resist Jewish immigration rather than work towards the creation of their own state. There were massacres of ancient Jewish communities.

There is no State of Palestine because in 1937, when the British proposed one be created, the Arabs rejected it. This led to more violence, including a massacre of Jews in Tiberius

There is no State of Palestine because in 1947, when the United Nations suggested one be created, the Arabs rejected it. This led to civil war.

There is no State of Palestine because in 1948, when Israel declared independence, rather than doing the same, the Arabs chose to fight to destroy Israel. The Arabs lost. 6000+ Israelis lost their lives

There is no State of Palestine because between 1949 and 1967, when every inch of the West Bank and Gaza strip were in Arab hands, the Arabs chose not to create one. Choosing instead to focus on destroying Israel.

There is no State of Palestine because when peace was discussed directly between the Jews and Arabs, Islamic terrorists responded by murdering Israelis. Hundreds of Jews were murdered during the peace process.

There is no State of Palestine because the Arabs walked away from the negotiating table in 2000. Choosing instead to start the second intifada. Over 1000 Israelis were murdered

There is no State of Palestine because when Israel withdrew from Gaza and dismantled settlements, Hamas took control and launched rocket attacks. 1000’s of rockets have been fired at Israel.

There is no State of Palestine because in 2008, when Olmert, the Israeli PM, offered one to the Palestinian President, the Palestinians rejected it.

There is no State of Palestine because the Arabs are currently split into warring factions. The same type of divisions as we see exploding elsewhere in the Middle East.

There is no State of Palestine because too many Arabs (not all) simply do not accept, still will not accept, peaceful existence with Israel.

There is no State of Palestine because too many people, are invested in the conflict. This is especially true of the thousands of NGO’s who in a perverse symbiosis report on a conflict that would probably not exist without them.

100 years after Balfour, the UN are still kicking Israel as if somehow the Jewish State holds the key to the end of the conflict. You will not solve this conflict until you are honest about the cause.

For decades the two-state solution has been repeatedly floated as the preferred goal of peace between Israel and the Arabs (‘Palestinians’). Yet it has never been realized. Accusations have been tossed around by various voices laying blame on both sides for the failure of the two-state solution to be implemented.

In light of the recent summit between Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Trump, it would appear the longstanding positon of the U.S. supporting the two-state solution is fizzling out. In my opinion, this is long overdue.

Simply put, the so-called ‘Palestinians’ don’t deserve a state.

The concept of a two-state solution has already been attempted with the 1947 UN partition of two states, one Arab, one Jewish. It failed. Why? The Arab nations rejected and ignored the resolution, attacking the fledgling Jewish state one day after it declared independence in 1948. Six decades and seven wars later (three with Hamas) what has changed?

A dramatic shift took place in 1967, when Yasser Arafat decided the Arabs who were displaced from the 1948 and 1967 wars deserved to have their own unique identity. So he renamed them “Palestinians.” For the record, before 1967 the term “Palestinians” referred to Jews. Walid Shoebat, an Arab who was living in Jericho during the ’67 war, said “On June 4 I went to sleep as an Arab. The next day, without moving anywhere I am suddenly called a “Palestinian.”

Arafat’s campaign included more than just an identity change for these newly renamed Palestinians. He demanded an independent state, and laid claim to the entire area west of the Jordan River which Israel captured during the 1967 war. As far as Arafat was concerned all this land was ‘Palestinian land.’ In 1964 he founded the PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization) with a specific goal of liberating “Palestine,” which included every inch of land of Israel.

International law affirms any land captured during a defensive war belongs to the victor, which was Israel.

The strong reactions elicited by Wednesday’s joint press conference held by U.S. President Donald ‎Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are warranted, but mostly for the wrong ‎reason.‎

One commentator after another has been highlighting and debating about the supposedly major ‎about-face in American foreign policy vis-a-vis the Palestinian-Israeli conflict that was being announced ‎from the podium.‎

‎”So I’m looking at two-state and one-state, and I like the one that both parties like,” Trump said, ‎alongside a beaming Netanyahu. “I’m very happy with the one that both parties like. I can live with ‎either one. I thought for a while the two-state looked like it may be the easier of the two. But ‎honestly, if Bibi [Prime Minister Netanyahu] and if the Palestinians — if Israel and the Palestinians are ‎happy, I’m happy with the one they like the best.”‎

As soon as the two leaders left the stage, pundits and politicians in America, Israel and the Palestinian ‎Authority began weighing in frantically on the significance of that statement, reporting on it as though ‎Trump had declared the United States was no longer supporting a key pillar of its Mideast policy.‎

Well, everyone can and should relax, because nothing whatsoever has changed on the ground. ‎Whichever way one slices it, the reality remains the same: The Palestinian leadership is not seeking ‎statehood alongside Israel, but resistance against Jewish statehood. PA President Mahmoud Abbas ‎and his henchmen in Ramallah, as well as the Hamas rulers in Gaza – with a particularly bloodthirsty ‎new chief there who has said his organization should emulate the Iran-backed Lebanese terrorist ‎group Hezbollah – make no bones about demanding that any territory they claim to be their own be ‎void of all Jews.‎

Nor did Trump disavow the two-state solution; he simply said that it is up to the Israelis and ‎Palestinians to decide how to proceed. In other words, he was completely repudiating former ‎President Barack Obama’s strong-arm approach. More importantly, he was doing so while proudly ‎showing appreciation — and even affection — for Netanyahu.‎

And herein lies the seismic shift that is causing such a stir. ‎

For the past eight years, the White House and State Department have operated on the basis of an ‎ideologically dim view of Western greatness and power. Obama made no secret of this in Europe, prior ‎to his inauguration, where he stated outright that no countries are better than others. Shortly after ‎taking the reins, he began to court the radical elements of the Muslim-Arab world, abandoning the ‎moderates in order to appease their jailers. And his very first phone call was to Abbas.‎

A US senate confirmation hearing on Thursday for the nominee for ambassador to Israel was unusual both in terms of length and scope, but given the numbers, the nomination appears poised to advance to the full Senate. http://www.jewishpress.com/news/breaking-news/proposed-us-amb-to-israel-grilled-by-senate-foreign-relations-comm/2017/02/17/

David M. Friedman, President Donald J. Trump’s longtime friend and a Jewish bankruptcy lawyer hailing from Long Island, was on the hot seat before the US Senate Foreign Relations committee. During the nearly three hours long hearing Friedman was interrupted four times by protesters screaming out – some unfurling Palestinian flags – slogans such as “war criminal” and “Palestinian rights.” Senators themselves repeatedly reprimanded Friedman for his use of “intemperate language” in articles written while he was a private citizen.

Friedman comported himself with dignity, rarely getting flustered; he responded to each question fully, if occasionally surprisingly. He made clear that, as U.S. Ambassador to Israel, he will represent President Trump’s policies and positions on the issues and not his own; and that he will proudly welcome all Americans, of every political view, when they visit Israel.

There is one more Republican on the committee than there are Democrats, and the vote is likely to be correspondingly close.

Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD), the ranking Democrat, is Jewish and considered a strong pro-Israel Democrat. Cardin was welcoming, but quickly launched into a rough upbraiding of the nominee on three grounds: his harsh verbal attacks on Democrats, including Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY), President Barack Obama and former secretary of state and Senator Hillary Clinton; his perceived lack of support for the Two State Solution; and his apparent support for “settlements.”

Friedman responded, as he did repeatedly to the queries of the other senators who raised the same issues, explaining that he was previously speaking and writing initially as a private citizen and later in the heat of an election campaign, where strong rhetoric is customary.

But Friedman was forced, on several occasions, to not only apologize for his comments but to recant them. He attempted to balance between rejecting views he does hold, and explaining his language in a way the powerful senators were willing to accept. Senators Cory Booker (D-NJ) and Tom Udall (D-NM) were particularly pointed on this issue, and “no” votes are likely assured from each of them.

Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) appeared satisfied with Friedman’s credentials and contrition – though some in the media falsely criticized Menendez for appearing to accuse Friedman of dual loyalty.

What is commonly called the “Palestinian-Israeli conflict” is, in fact, the “Arab-Israel conflict.”

Jordan illegally annexed the West Bank in 1950, and from that time Palestinian nationalism has been deadly for the Kingdom.

“I call on the Palestinian people to elect new leaders, leaders not compromised by terror… to build a practicing democracy, based on tolerance and liberty. If the Palestinian people actively pursue these goals, America and the world will actively support their efforts…. A Palestinian state will never be created by terror — it will be built through reform. And reform must be more than cosmetic change, or veiled attempts to preserve the status quo.” — President George W. Bush, 2002.

“There’s no way a deal can be made if they’re not ready to acknowledge a very, very great and important country.” — President Donald J. Trump, 2017.

The burden, then, is on the Arab states and the Palestinians.

The optics, certainly, were fine. It was good to see an American president and an Israeli prime minister standing together on the podium with what appeared to be genuine good will. Most important, and promising for the future, perhaps, was how they dealt with the “two state solution” mantra. There was, for the first time in years, nuance in both the American and the Israeli position toward what has become a slogan without meaning.

In 1948, the US State Department’s conventional “wisdom” contended that the reestablishment of a Jewish state would damage US interests, since the Jewish state would be aligned with the USSR, undermine US-Arab relations, intensify regional instability, and would be militarily devastated by its Arab neighbors, thus causing a second Jewish Holocaust in less than ten years.

However, conventional “wisdom” was trounced on the rocks of Middle East reality, as it was when: the State Department appeased Egyptian President Nasser (1950s); facilitated the toppling of the Shah of Iran by the Ayatollas (1977-78); embraced Saddam Hussein, and inadvertently encouraged his August 1989 invasion of Kuwait; proclaimed Arafat as a messenger of peace (1993); welcomed the Arab Tsunami as the Arab Spring, a transition toward democracy (2011); supported the anti-US Muslim Brotherhood offensive against the pro-US Egyptian President Mubarak, and turned a cold shoulder toward the pro-US President al-Sisi (2011-2017); toppled the Kaddafi regime, thus transforming Libya into a major platform of Islamic terrorism (2011), etc.

In 2017, conventional “wisdom” maintains that the Palestinian issue is the crux of the Arab-Israeli conflict, a core cause of Middle East turbulence and a crown-jewel of Arab policy-making. It assumes that the US can reset the Middle East by applying its own values of common-sense, peace and democracy. Moreover, conventional “wisdom” contends that the proposed Palestinian state constitutes an integral part of the Israel-Arab peace process, reducing regional instability, and therefore advances US national security interests.

But, a reality-check of the proposed Palestinian state and its impact upon US national security, drastically contradicts conventional “wisdom,” when assessed against the backdrop of the 14-centuries-old volcanic actuality of the Middle East, the Jordan-Palestinian inherent clash of a zero-sum-game, the systematic track record of the Arab walk – not talk – toward the Palestinians, and the track record of the Palestinians since the 1920s.

For instance, all attempts to introduce democracy and peace to the Arab Middle East have been defeated by deeply-rooted intra-Arab violent intolerance, fragmentation, instability, unpredictability and the tenuous nature of all Arab regimes, policies and agreements, irrespective of Israel and the Palestinian issue. Hence, the failure of all US and international initiatives to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict and the Palestinian issue, which exposes the unbridgeable gap between Western and Arab state of minds, further radicalizing Arab expectations and actions, and undermines US interests.

Furthermore, while the US – rightly so – invests billions of dollars to bolster Jordan’s Hashemite regime, a Palestinian state would intensify a lethal threat to the highly vulnerable, pro-US Hashemite regime. It would trigger destabilizing ripple effects into pro-US Saudi Arabia and all other pro-US Arab Gulf states, providing a robust tailwind to Islamic terrorism. Potentially, it could advance the Ayatollahs’ goal of dominating the Persian Gulf, the Arabian Peninsula, much of the Indian Ocean and the military and energy critical waterways of Hurmuz and Bab el-Mandeb. It could produce an Iran-controlled bloc from Iran, through Iraq and Jordan to 10 miles from the Mediterranean.