Danger of “Democracy” in Palestine

The tradition of the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah, which falls this year on both Saturday and Sunday, is for Jews to engage in reflection, prayer and in communal religious introspection.

One year ago this week, on the eve of the Rosh Hashanah, this reporter covered an event in Washington during which President George W. Bush exuded a clear, unequivocal appreciation and commitment to Israel. On that same occasion, President Bush called for a democratic state of Palestine to be created alongside Israel as a way to foster peace in the Middle East.

Yet four months later, a parliamentary election supervised by the US government took place in the Palestinian Authority resulting in an overwhelming victory for Hamas, the Islamic Palestinian terrorist group that leads the fight to exterminate Israel.

Ever since, Hamas and the Fateh, the other major party represented in the Palestinian Parliament that is led by Palestinian Authority President Machmud Abbas, have been jockeying for power to determine who will run a Palestinian Arab state in the future.

Neither the Fateh nor Hamas promise any kind of peace or reconciliation with Israel.

Abbas’s constitution for a future Palestinian State, which this reporter obtained from sources in the Vatican, contains no clause whatsoever which would allow for recognition of the Jewish state of Israel.

As an official of the Vatican explained to a US congressional delegation visiting Israel last year, Abbas’s constitution for a future Palestinian state does not allow for any juridical status for Judaism, Christianity or for any religion other than Islam, and the entire area of Palestine would eradicate the state of Israel to remain the legislated borders of any future state of Palestine. In other words, in accordance with the 1974 a.m.endment to the PLO covenant, any area ceded to the Palestinian Arab entity by Israel will be used to stage attacks to “liberate” the rest of Palestine.

That is, of course, what has occurred in Gaza.

After Israel ceded all of Gaza to the Palestinian Authority, forcibly destroying all Israeli Jewish communities there, armed Fateh and Hamas factions in Gaza conducted 930 missile attacks on Israel’s western Negev region, an area that appears in the Abbas’s new Palestinian Authority textbooks as an integral part of the future Palestinian State. This is the case even though the Negev is not part of either Gaza or Judea and Samaria in the west bank.

In other words, President Bush’s vision for a “democratic state of Palestine,” which he repeated this week in his meeting with Abbas at the UN, remains a lethal threat to the state and people of Israel.

Palestinian Arab sovereignty means an armed entity at war with Israel, with one purpose – extermination of the state and people of Israel.

Yet it is now clear that almost all nations of the world support the “democratic vision” for a Palestinian Arab state, including the USA.

Since American democratic principles operate with clear constraints that protect human rights, civil liberties and religious minorities, it must be kept in mind that this is not what Palestinian “democracy” is based on.

This Rosh Hashana, the new Jewish year gives ample time to reflect on recent history and for Jews to remind themselves and the world that Adolf Hitler also came to power as a violent coalition partner in a democratically elected government that nullified human rights, civil liberties and minority rights.

The message of the Jewish new year is that any democracy which operates without constraints cannot be trusted. To understand this is to make for a happier new year.

This article was published in the Evening Bulletin and on Front Page Magazine on September 22nd, 2006