The account that follows has taken on greater significance since December 7th when President Donald Trump announced that he will fulfill the 1995 recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of the State of Israel, and take steps to move the American embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. International law is being thrown at President Trump and the State of Israel like murderous rocks in the hands of shababs. The peace process is a chorus line of porcelain dolls, too beautiful to touch, endangered by the heavy-handed president and the stubborn Jewish state. A pure white curtain is drawn over Middle East realities and the wailing of the professional mourners breaks the hearts of the world’s media. This brutal unilateral decision is tearing apart the pristine calm of the Middle East. And the 2-state solution in divine perfection floats down from the heavens, escorted by Palestinian angels. Everyone, or at least all the good souls in this wide world, knows the shape and the lines of this perfect state. It was almost ready to land. And now it’s all spoiled.
This is the assumption that underlies the weeping, wailing, and scolding. The righteous indignation. The peace process has been betrayed. The holier than thou international community had set forth the rules and the stepping stone and the destination. How dare this upstart president barge into the head of the line, pluck the gem of Jerusalem, and hand it to Israel?
Take the time to read this detailed account of a Colloquium held in Paris on November 27th. Palestinians and their supporters, speaking to an audience they assumed to be 100% sympathetic, made no secret of their intentions and ultimate objectives: to turn the Oslo process upside down. First, the creation of a sovereign Palestinian state. Then, the negotiations. These were not marginal extremists. Elias Sanbar is the Palestinian ambassador to UNESCO. Hala Abu-Hasira is “first counselor” of the Palestinian mission to France. Invited to take part in a debate on a French TV station yesterday, she smugly declared that Jerusalem, according to international law, is a corpus separatum. That was in 1947!