THE "REAL" TWO-STATE SOLUTION

Hudson New York
How to Build a Palestinian State

The words and deeds of many Palestinian officials, whether they are from Fatah or Hamas, do not seem to be bringing the Palestinians closer to fulfilling their aspiration of creating a modern and democratic state next to Israel.
In this regard, the Palestinian Authority leaders in the West Bank are continuing to act [and speak] in a way that only radicalizes Palestinians and demonizes Israel and the Jewish people.
Preparing for statehood is not only about building infrastructure and institutions; it is also about educating the people about the importance of living in peace with your neighbors and respecting their right to live insecurity.
Almost every day, the Palestinian Authority, which is dominated by the secular Fatah faction, provides the world with evidence that it is not leading its constituents toward the path of moderation and co-existence. And this is without mentioning what Hamas is saying and doing.
If the Palestinians were serious about building their own state, they should not wait for Israel or any other country to present it to them as a gift.
Had the Palestinian Authority invested perhaps half of the money that went into Yasser Arafat’s secret bank accounts or to support the shopping sprees of his wife in Paris, it is highly likely that the Palestinians would by now have had their own state.
Had the Palestinian leadership built schools, hospitals, universities and housing projects instead of building a casino, there is no doubt that the Palestinians would have had their state several years ago.
Had the Palestinian Authority invested some of the billions of dollars for the welfare of its people, combating poverty and unemployment, it is certain that the Palestinians would not have resorted to violence in September 2000. That is because when the Palestinians launched the second intifada, many people had nothing to lose.
So has the Palestinian Authority since learned from its mistakes?
No.
While it is true that the economic situation in the West Bank has improved in the past two years, largely thanks to the fact that the international donors have finally begun holding Palestinian leaders accountable and are pressing harder for transparency, the messages coming out of the Palestinian leadership are not encouraging.
In the past week alone, the “moderate” Palestinian leadership of President Mahmoud Abbas took two decisions that will only have a negative impact on the future of the “peace process.”
First, Abbas’s representatives dismantled a Palestinian teenager musical band for performing in front of Holocaust survivors in the Israeli city of Holon. An Israeli-Arab woman who was in charge of the ban has been told by Abbas’s lieutenants that her life would be in danger if she ever showed her face again in Jenin. Fatah activists later sealed her apartment and confiscated all the musical equipment, accusing her of “exploiting” the children for a “political event” - the Holocaust.
In the second case, Abbas’s Chief Islamic Judge, Tayseer Tamimi, issued another fatwa [religious decree] that imposes the death sentence on any Palestinian who sells his lands to Jews.
And then there is Mohammed Dahlan, one of Fatah’s senior operatives who is closely associated with Abbas, who went on Palestine TV to proudly declare that his faction has never recognized Israel’s right to exist.
He also boasted that as a former security commander he and Fatah had killed more suspected Palestinian “collaborators” with Israel than Hamas.
Dahlan, who has long been hailed by US Administration officials as a “moderate” leader and a staunch supporter of the peace process, even went as far as urging Hamas not to succumb to pressure to accept Israel’s right to exist.
The Palestinian leadership in the West Bank has also been fighting “normalization” with Israel by boycotting Israeli products and banning Palestinian teenagers from participating in joint Jewish-Arab events aimed at promoting tolerance and coexistence.
It is no wonder then that public opinion polls continue to show that Hamas’s popularity is on the rise and that a majority of Palestinians support suicide bombings.
Over the past few weeks, numerous Palestinian spokesmen have been warning against the “dangers” of having a right-wing government in Israel. According to these spokesmen, the rise of Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman to power is an indication of the Israeli public’s shift to the right and the beginning of the end of the “peace process.”
The Palestinian officials say they are particularly worried about Netanyahu’s refusal to accept the two-state solution.
But were these folks expecting? That Netanyahu and Lieberman would give them more than what former prime ministers Ehud Olmert, Ehud Barak, Shimon Peres, Ariel Sharon and Yitzhak Rabin had either given the Palestinians or offered to give them?
There is absolutely no reason why Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanhayu should be worried about American and European pressure on him to accept the two-state solution.
Even if Netanyahu accepted the two-state solution tomorrow, he will quickly discover that the Palestinian Authority in particular and the Palestinians in general are the least prepared for establishing an independent and normal state alongside Israel.
Netanyahu and Lieberman can sit relaxed. Even if they offered the Palestinians a state, they will discover that there is no credible partner, neither in Ramallah nor in the Gaza Strip, to deal with.
Finally, the failure of the Hamas-Fatah “reconciliation” talks means that the world will have to live with the fact that the two-state solution has already been realized. In the end, the Palestinians got two states - a mini-Islamic republic in the Gaza Strip and an incompetent, powerless and unreliable entity in parts of the West Bank.

—“It’s not too late to bomb Auschwitz”

IT'S NOT TOO LATE TO BOMB AUSHWITZ

Nidra Poller—“It’s not too late to bomb Auschwitz”

January 21st, 2008 by Andrew Bostom

“It’s not too late to bomb Auschwitz” was published in Hebrew translation in Makor Rishon on January 18th. It is my great privilege to reproduce it here, in English, with the author’s permission.

Paris, January 16, 2008

Nidra Poller

President George W. Bush at Yad Vashem, his eyes flooded with tears, turned to ask Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice why the Americans did not bomb Auschwitz. The day before, in Ramallah, he fired hopes for what has come to be known as peace between Israel and a Palestinian state living side by side along slightly modified—or mollified– 1967 borders…elsewhere known as “Auschwitz” borders.

The irony is clanging, but not everyone hears the same bells. Jerusalem Post readers engaged in Talmudic disputation. The American president is tooling up for a new Shoah by helping the Palestinians get a state that will be a toehold for the destruction of Israel. Versus: How dare we—you– deny Palestinian aspirations and flout international law; Israel must end the occupation, whatever the risk.

Just do the right thing.Readers of the French daily Libération, consumed by Bush-hatred, slap the American President up ‘side the head. Hmph! Tears for the long ago victims of the Nazis but what about the hundreds of thousands of victims in Afghanistan and Iraq? What about the Palestinians? Bush is the world’s worst criminal. We’re tired of hearing about the Shoah. (A little more than a year ago, then MFA Philippe Douste-Blazy, on an official visit in Great Britain, expressed surprise that so few British Jews died in the Nazi death camps. Apparently he had forgotten—or never knew—that England, unlike France, had not collaborated and was not occupied.)

Condoleeza Rice, the historian, has switched into I Have a Dream mode for Palestinian statehood. I was present at the American Task Force for Palestine gala dinner in Washington D.C. in 2006 when she made her first “I have a dream” speech. ATFP president Dr. Ziad Asali is a very close friend of Rice. His task force is the picture of moderation. Palestinian-Americans in suits and ties working for dialogue, peaceful coexistence and, of course—it’s understandable—an end to the occupation.

Why didn’t we bomb Auschwitz? It’s not too late. And it will do a world of good. The problem is… the landscape has changed. The old landmarks are gone. The railroad tracks have been replaced by a road map. Yesterday’s brown shirts are today’s moderates, sitting around a table on which the Jewish state is spread-eagled, tortured, and invited to make (more) painful concessions.

The Munich famous for appeasement has spread: it’s the UN. Its heart beats in Durban where the knives are sharpened. The Nuremberg laws have morphed into international opinion. The Nazis begged for a crumb of lebensraum? The jihadis are sobbing in anguish over the Israel-Palestine conflict.

A Palestinian state is not the solution, it’s the final solution. “Palestinian state” is the code word for “kill the Jews.” No one is antisemitic; they just hold international opinions. Auschwitz/Oswiecim isn’t confined to Poland. It’s everywhere. We are alive and well in Auschwitz.

The problem is how to bomb Auschwitz without inflicting massive collateral damage. I will be described as an extremist if not a whacko for stating these simple truths that can be backed up with heaps of evidence, concrete details, stone hard facts.
Reasonable people say “We all know what the solution will look like: a Palestinian state living side by side with Israel, Jerusalem as its capital, right of return and/or compensation to refugees …” There is not one shred of rational argument to support that assertion. It does not describe a compromise let alone a viable arrangement; it is a bowdlerized version of maximalist “Palestinian” demands.

Why invent an imaginary bargaining position for a disguised movement when reality stands clearly before our eyes? Real people have been revealing genuine goals by concrete acts…for decades (if not centuries). The Auschwitz we didn’t bomb was partially hidden from view. The Einsatzgruppen killing sprees were not broadcast on prime time news; blurry snapshots circulated in confidential circles, the rare escapees were too zonked to be believable. Today’s Auschwitz is hidden behind measured phrases, catchy slogans, international conferences.

Back then our wealth was wrenched from our hands, extracted from our teeth, pulled out from under us. Today it is collected in taxes and self-righteously donated to shore up the” moderates” who are stocking the weapons to exterminate us. And the mass murders, visible for all to see, are disguised as isolated incidents committed by a minority of extremists inspired nonetheless by legitimate national aspirations.

We shouldn’t fight back, we mustn’t fence them out…it’s not good for the peace process. Why? Because “peace process” is another code word for “kill the Jews.”

How did we get from Auschwitz to Auschwitz in one easy go? The lesson of the Shoah was not “never again” it was “never again count on others to save us from the evil Jew-killers.” Not because others are wimps or closet antisemites.

The tears of President Bush are sincere, and so is his question. He asked Condoleeza Rice why we didn’t bomb Auschwitz. We have to push in front of her and reply. She thinks Palestinians are a replay of blacks in Birmingham Alabama. Allevai! But they aren’t. And they aren’t a replay of Nazis. They are something new to be dealt with.

Those who stood by and allowed the Shoah to run its course—they didn’t bomb Auschwitz—abrogated for themselves the right to prescribe for the future. And the Shoah begot the United Nations Organization, and the UN…After mass murder, mass appeasement. Monumentalized appeasement. Crowned in the olive branch. Draped in sanctimonious white paint. Feeding the hand that feeds it, feeding the sword and staying the outstretched hand by which we try to defend ourselves. It’s not called appeasement it’s called peace.

“I am against the war in Iraq” is the badge of honor, and millions of those badges make the barbed wire enclosure of the new Auschwitz. This week, the French president and the American president are traveling, separately but not coincidentally, to a variety of “moderate” and immoderately wealthy Arab-Muslim nations. The presidents are selling warplanes, fried chicken, or nuclear power plants; begging for cheaper oil; promising to protect the sheikdoms against a nuclear-crazed Iran. (France will have a military base in Abu Dabi.) Or asking them to protect us?

In Israel the leaders of the free world vow they’ll never let us down. Then they shake hands with duplicitous sheiks, thanking them in advance for their cooperation.
Did they look under the keffieh head-covering to see what kind of jihad-ideas are brewing? Or did they bow their heads and pay the jizya with utter humility?

The shock of watching our leaders kowtow and make absurd declarations about peaceful relations between three great religions. Is Jerusalem being led like a lamb to the slaughter, hacked to pieces and sacrificed on the heathen altar of peace? Who would dare declare, by the light of those glinting swords, that there will be no Palestinian state in any foreseeable future?

Why didn’t we bomb Auschwitz? We weren’t wimps or closet antisemites, it’s just that at the time, under the circumstances, all things considered it didn’t seem reasonable. That’s the point.

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