Do Israelis Purposefully Mislead Bush About Abbas’s “Referendum”

Two weeks ago, I was present when a major official of the Israeli Foreign Ministry briefed his guests with what he described as the “optomistic” report that Abbas was proposing a new peace initiative, known as the “prisoner’s document”.

The diplomat told his enthusiastic audience that there is, indeed, “reason for hope”.

And this past week, the JTA, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, which described itself as “the news service for the Jewish people”, which works closely with the Israeli Foreign Ministry, reported on June 6th that “Mahmoud Abbas announced he would call for a Palestinian referendum on a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict”.

Furthermore, that same JTA news item also reports that the referendum “calls for a Palestinian state in the West Bank, Gaza and eastern Jerusalem, the areas Israel captured in the 1967 Six-Day War”

On the same day, June 6th, the Israeli government’s Voice of Israel English News Wire interviewed a left wing professor, Menachem Klein, also on June 6th, who declared that the document for the referendum carries an “implicit recognition of Israel”.

However, the text of the referendum proposed by Abbas, based on the so- called “Document of the Prisoners” – (Arab terrorists convicted of first degree murder) does not make any of these statements…That prisoners document listed below, is readily available in English from official and unofficial Palestinian sources:

http://www.jmcc.org/documents/prisoners.htm

In that document, there is no mention whatsoever of a “two state solution to the Israeli Palestinian conflict”… The document makes no mention of “eastern” Jerusalem. The document refers, instead, to all of Jerusalem.

Meanwhile, the document for Abbas’s referendum premises the establishment of a Palestinian state on “all territories occupied in 1967” on the “right of return for the refugees”.

In other words, the document for Abbas’s referendum resorts to the traditional PLO demand for all lands settled by Israel after 1948.

Instead recognition of Israel and a contiguous Palestinian State, the document is only “based on the UN Charter and the international law and international legitimacy”.

Yet the positive spin that Israeli official sources have placed on the referendum and the “prisoner’s document” has resulted in the statement of White House press spokesman, Mr. Tony Snow, who gave an official statement, also on June 6th, in which he swallows the misrepresentation of Abbas’s referendum, hook, line and sinker, as indicated in the way in which he answered the question: “Anything on the referendum that Abbas is proposing to hold?”

MR. SNOW: ” Well, once again, Prime Minister Abbas has demonstrated that he’s somebody who wants to work toward a two-state solution. And that was one of the things, as you know, that came up in the conversation with Prime Minister Olmert earlier with the President. Prime Minister Olmert said that he was going to be holding talks at some point with the Prime Minister, and we’re just going to have to wait and see what happens — whether he’s able to have a referendum and what happens.”

But I think it’s important for Palestinians to wrestle with the issue of whether they want to have a two state solution”

See: www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/06/20060606.html.

And on June 6th, after US envoy Mr. David Welsh concluded his meetings with the Israeli goverment and with Abbas with a recommendation that Abbas be encouraged to conduct the “referendum” on the basis of the prisoners document, which Welsh incorrectly described providing recognition for a two state solution.

While the official Israel Foreign Ministry spokesman described the prisoners document as being “problematic”, it would seem that other top Israeli officials may have taken it upon themselves to promote the plan, thereby misleading the Bush Administration.

As if George W. Bush does not have enough crises of credibility on his plate at the moment?

The US administration may wish to be very careful about Israeli officials who promote Abbas.

After all, these were the same Israelis who promoted Arafat as a “peace partner”.