RUTHFULLY YOURS

WASHINGTON — President Trump lauded Mahmoud Abbas for fighting terrorism during the Palestinian Authority president’s visit to the White House today, noting “there’s such hatred” among Abbas’ people “but hopefully there won’t be such hatred for very long.”

Trump said it was “a great honor” to welcome Abbas before the two began a brief Oval Office meeting. He did not respond to questions from the press pool about whether he is still considering moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem.

During joint remarks afterward in the Roosevelt Room, with Abbas standing before an American flag and Trump in front of a Palestinian flag, Trump said he wants “to support [Abbas] in being the Palestinian leader who signs his name to the final and most important peace agreement that brings safety, stability, prosperity to both peoples and to the region.”

“And I will do whatever is necessary to facilitate the agreement, to mediate, to arbitrate, anything they’d like to do,” he said. “But I would love to be a mediator, or an arbitrator, or a facilitator, and we will get this done.”

“…I know President Abbas has spoken out against ISIS and other terrorist groups. And we must continue to build our partnership with the Palestinian Security Forces to counter and defeat terrorism.”

Trump said he and Abbas would also discuss “my administration’s effort to help unlock the potential of the Palestinian people through new economic opportunities.”

“I look forward to welcoming him back as a great mark of progress and ultimately toward the signing of a document with the Israelis and with Israel toward peace,” he added. “We want to create peace between Israel and the Palestinians. We will get it done.”

Abbas said he looked forward to working with Trump on a peace plan “based on the vision of the two state, a Palestinian state, with its capital of East Jerusalem that lives in peace and stability with the state of Israel based on the borders of 1967.”

He added that ISIS, which is active in Gaza, has “nothing to do with our noble religion.”

“We believe that we are capable and able to bring about success to our efforts, because, Mr. President, you have the determination and you have the desire to see it become to fruition and to become successful. And we, Mr. President, inshallah, God willing, we are coming into a new opportunity, a new horizon… Mr. President, it’s about time for Israel to end its occupation of our people and of our land after 50 years.”

Abbas assured Trump that Palestinians “are raising our youth, our children, our grandchildren on a culture of peace.”

“Mr. President, I believe that we are capable under your leadership and your stewardship, your courageous stewardship and your wisdom, we are — and as well as your great negotiating ability — I believe with the grace of God and will all of your effort, we believe that we can become — we can be partners — true partners,” Abbas said.

“We’ll start a process which hopefully will lead to peace,” Trump said. “Over the course of my lifetime, I’ve always heard that perhaps the toughest deal to make is the deal between the Israelis and the Palestinians. Let’s see if we can prove them wrong, OK?”

“OK,” Abbas replied.

After their statements, Trump and Abbas sat down for a steak and halibut lunch with cabinet members.

“It’s a great honor to have President Abbas with us,” Trump said before they ate. “We are having lunch together. We will be discussing details of what has proven to be a very difficult situation between Israel and the Palestinians. Let’s see if we can find the solution. It’s something that I think is, frankly, maybe not as difficult as people have thought over the years. We need two willing parties. We believe Israel is willing. We believe you’re willing. And if you are willing, we are going to make a deal.”

He then invited Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to add his thoughts. “I think it’s a historic opportunity because there are a number of positive conditions in place, and I know under your leadership that we hope good things will happen,” Tillerson replied. CONTINUE AT SITE

The impending visit of Mahmoud Abbas to Washington on Wednesday coupled with moves on Capitol Hill to cut off funding to the Palestinian Authority (PA) as a result of Palestinian terrorism makes this a good time to focus on Palestinian governance.Once the Trump administration does, it will find Palestinian governance has not gone well — despite or perhaps even because of the billions in foreign aid, including American money, pumped into the PA. For example:

The authority’s 2016 budget shows estimated expenditures of $4.25 billion but revenues of only $2 billion. That includes more than $1 billion in contributions from the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), the European Union and the United States. In perspective, the gross domestic product (GDP) of the territory under supervision of Mr. Abbas‘ PA (the West Bank and Gaza Strip, population estimated at more than 4 million) is about $12.1 billion; Vermont’s GDP (population approximately 625,000) is $29 billion. The PA was established in 1994 as a result of the Oslo Accords. The international community — led by the United States — provided funds to the nascent administration to help it create self-government for the vast majority of the Palestinian Arabs.

The authority also was to conduct negotiations with Israel over “final status issues,” namely Jerusalem, refugees, settlements, security and borders. The job was to be completed by 1999.

Oslo did not mandate an independent Palestinian state, but rather “recognize[s] [Israeli and Palestinian] mutual legitimate and political rights.” That could be independence or nonsovereign self-rule. It also stated that “negotiations on the permanent status will lead to the implementation of Security Council resolutions 242 (1967) and 338 (1973)” under which Israel is entitled to “secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force,” among other things.

In 2000, 2001 and 2006-08, the United States and Israel offered Palestinian leadership statehood directly. The first two offers were made regardless of the so-called “second intifada” — the Palestinian terror war against Israel — that killed 1,137 Israelis and wounded 8,341 from 2000 to 2005. (The U.S. equivalent would be 45,480 dead, 333,640 injured — a factor of 40.)

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said of the negotiations that started just after relative calm was restored, “From the end of 2006 until the end of 2008, I think I met with [Mahmoud Abbas] more often than any Israeli leader has ever met any Arab leader. I met him more than 35 times. They were intense, serious negotiations.”

Mr. Olmert’s offer included 97 percent of the West Bank, resettlement of some — by no means all — Palestinian refugees, territorial exchanges, and rights in Jerusalem. Mr. Abbas verified as much in a 2009 interview and confirmed that he declined the offer.

Discussion of the Arab/Israeli situation is often unilluminating because so much of it is based on groundless assumptions and stubborn fictions. Perhaps the most pervasive one today afflicting the international political class is the notion that Palestinian Arabs primarily desire a state of their own, living peacefully alongside Israel.

Some recent examples:

December 2016, then-Secretary of State John Kerry: “polls of Israelis and Palestinians show there is still strong support for the two-state solution.”
July 2016, the Middle East Quartet (US, EU, UN and Russia): “the majority of people on both sides . . . express their support for the goal of two states living side by side in peace and security.”
December 2014, then-Vice-President Joe Biden: “a two-state solution … the vast majority of Israelis and Palestinians, they think that it is the right way to go.”
May 2014, then-envoy for Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, Martin Indyk: “Consistently over the last decade, polling on both sides reveals majority support for the two-state solution.”

Go back a decade, and one can easily produce essentially identical quotations from President George W. Bush, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, and so on.

However, the idea that Palestinians prioritize peace, statehood and prosperity flies in the face of reality. Consistent polling of Palestinians tells a diametrically opposite story.

For example, a June 2016 joint poll conducted by the Israel Democracy Institute and the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PSR) found that 58% of West Bank Palestinians oppose a Palestinian state involving mutual recognition between Israel and the envisaged Palestinian state and an end of claims.

For another, the June 2015 Palestine Center for Public Opinion poll found that, for the near term (the next five years), 49% of Palestinians support “reclaiming all of historic Palestine from the river to the sea,” while only 22% favored “a two-state solution” as the “main Palestinian national goal.”

Indeed, Daniel Polisar of Jerusalem’s Shalem College, in a recent examination of literally hundreds of Palestinian surveys, established that majorities of Palestinians reject Palestinian statehood alongside Israel by an average of more than 3 to 1.

It takes only a moment’s checking of the Palestinian scene to see that the idea of peaceful statehood and acceptance of Israel that would be its prerequisite has yet to emerge.

In the past month, official Palestinian Authority (PA) TV joined the family of a jailed Palestinian terrorist, As’ad Zo’rob, who murdered an Israeli who had given him a ride, lauding him as a “heroic prisoner” and a source of “pride for …. all of Palestine.”

President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority (PA) is scheduled to call this week on President Trump. Meanwhile, the U.S. Congress is considering the Taylor Force Act, which would require Abbas to either dismantle his government’s system of rewards for terrorists or forfeit American financial aid. The proposed law is controversial largely because the PA presents a confusing picture of itself.

To much of the world, the PA represents hope for a consensual resolution of the Palestinian–Israeli conflict. Created by the 1993 Oslo peace accords, it is widely recognized as the Palestinians’ representative body. Its leader was popularly elected. President Obama and other leaders have described the PA as moderate, committed to peace, and opposed to anti-Israeli violence. What seems to confirm its reputation for moderation is its rivalry with Hamas, the extremist Islamist group that the U.S. government rightly designates as terrorists. The PA’s security forces cooperate with the Israeli Defense Forces against Hamas.

All of that is on the one hand. On the other, the PA is a nightmare of bad leadership.

It is anti-democratic. Its officials are notoriously corrupt. It’s a source of torrential anti-Israeli and anti-Jewish propaganda. Though it helps Israel fight those terrorists who oppose both Israel and the PA, it actively foments anti-Israel terrorism in its own domain through its formal legislative and bureaucratic system of professional and cash benefits for Palestinians who commit knifings, axe-murders, shootings, and car-rammings.

Abbas was elected to a four-year presidential term in 2005. Popular dissatisfaction with the PA’s pervasive corruption put his reelection in doubt, so no new elections were scheduled. He simply remains in power.

Abbas says that he supports peace, but the Israeli government offered him a generous deal in 2008. The Israelis had just handed all of Gaza over to the PA. They offered him virtually all the West Bank, with unprecedented concessions on Jerusalem. He nevertheless scorned the deal.

Abbas and his PA colleagues are bound and determined to perpetuate the conflict with Israel. Their personal interests require it. If the conflict ended, they would lose foreign aid, which makes their lucrative corruption possible. They would stop receiving invitations to the White House and other gratifying diplomatic attention. They would cease to be the leaders of a longstanding and proudly uncompromising national struggle, forfeiting their self-respect and prestige, especially in the Arab and Muslim worlds. For them, peace would be hell.

But peace could enormously benefit the Palestinian people. It could open a path to greater freedom and prosperity for them and save their children from the fatal lure of “martyrdom.” Those interests, alas, don’t influence PA policy.

The PA pays lump sums and lifetime salaries to terrorists and their families. The size of the payments correlates to the number of their victims and the severity of the harm inflicted on them.

As Abbas heads for Washington, U.S. officials should understand that at the heart of the Palestinian–Israeli problem is the conflict of interests between Palestinian leaders and their own people. That’s the context in which Congress should consider the Taylor Force Act.

Of all that’s wrong with the way the PA operates, nothing is more harmful than the elaborate apparatus it has created to push its people to become terrorists. It’s known as “pay for slay.” The PA has created two (two!) ministries specifically for this purpose, with combined budgets exceeding $330 million in 2016. The PA pays lump sums and lifetime salaries to terrorists and their families. The size of the payments correlates to the number of their victims and the severity of the harm inflicted on them. The payments dwarf the average monthly salaries of ordinary working inhabitants of the West Bank.