Should People Reconsider Support for the Infrastructure of an Entity at War with the State and People of Israel?

Now and then, people remind me of my passionate advocacy for a Palestinian State more than thirty years ago.

In a position paper delivered at a Weiss’s Farm Retreat in 1978, I spoke of a Palestinian entity that would comprise Palestinian Arabs whom we knew at the time, who would cast of the yoke of the PLO and engage in genuine coexistence with Israel.

The hope then as that a Palestinian leadership would emerge that would emulate Anwar Sadat, and preach the language of peace and reconciliation to the Palestinian people, in the Arabic language, and that we would be able to build a trust in a new grass roots Palestinian leadership.

However, the potential Palestinian leaders whom were dealing with at the time were replaced by a leadership that will not preach peace and reconciliation to their own people

Instead, the nascent Palestinian entity that has emerged has fostered a draconian system on which they plan their future Palestinian State

Selling land to a Jew would be a capital crime in a state of Palestinian

Perusing the new Palestinian school books, the official Palestinian school curriculum, which was supposed to be a harbinger of peace, inculcates the next generation to make war on the Jews.

Most Recently, journalist academic Dr. Arnon Groiss, who translated the new Palestinian school books, made presentations for American congressional staffers in DC and for European diplomats in Brussels which showed how PA textbooks, instead of educating for peace with Israel, promote the violent struggle for liberation against Israel. From these textbooks, Groiss showed that the PA curriculum teaches the following fundamentals:

* Jews are foreigners and have no rights in Palestine. * The Jews have a dubious and even murderous character. * Israel is an illegitimate usurper that occupied Palestine in 1948 and 1967. * Israel is the source of all kinds of evil done to the Palestinians. * Peace with Israel based on reconciliation is not to be sought. * A violent struggle for liberation is encouraged instead. * The exact area to be liberated is never restricted to the West Bank and Gaza alone. * Jihad and martyrdom are glorified, and terrorist activities against Israel are implicitly encouraged. * The West is imperialist, aspires to world hegemony, directs a cultural attack against Islam and supports Israel.

The list of accusations against Israel appearing in new Palestinian Authority schoolbooks includes matters such as:

* Israel contributes to Palestinian social ills and family violence. * Israel causes the increase of drug abuse cases in Palestinian society. * Israel pollutes the Palestinian environment. * Israel usurps Muslim and Christian holy places. * Israel strives to obliterate the Palestinian national identity and heritage.

Meanwhile, the official media of the Palestinian Authority transforms those who murder Jews into their national heroes.

As the same time, Machmud Abbas, designated head of the Palestinian state in formation, earned his Ph.D. on the thesis that 6 million Jews were not really murdered during World War II, and that the Zionists were actually allies of the Nazis. All requests of Abbas to renounce that Ph.D have been rejected

Archbishop Pietro Sambi, the former Papal Nuncio, warned U.S. lawmakers that the new Palestinian Authority’s approved state constitution, funded by USAID, provided no juridical status for any religion other than Islam in the emerging Palestinian Arab entity.

From a judicial point of view, Archbishop Pietro Sambi, who was asked by the PA to evaluate their draft constitution of a future Palestinians State, warned that the Palestinian Authority (PA) had adopted Shariah law along strict Saudi lines which mandated the absolute supremacy of Muslims over non-Muslims as matter of law. Sambi noted that the PA constitution would not grant any juridical status to any religion besides Islam.

In terms of additional mantras of the Palestinian State in formation:

1. The right of Palestinian Arab refugees and their descendants to return to Arab villages lost in 1948 would be protected by a Palestinian state.

2. While 20% of Israel’s citizens are Arabs, not one Jew will be allowed to live in a Palestinian State

3. New Palestinian Authority maps prepared for the Palestinian State depict all of Palestine under Palestinian rule

4. New PA maps of Jerusalem for the Palestinian State once again decimate the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem

5. New PA documents claim all of Jerusalem for a Palestinian State.

6. The right of Jewish access to Jewish holy places is simply not be recognized in a Palestinian State.

7. No system which protects human rights or civil liberties is planned for a Palestinian State

8. Perhaps the unkindest cut of all: When Fatah held its first conference in 20 years, last August in Bethlehem; the Fatah renewed its call for the armed struggle…

In other words, economic help rendered to this Palestinian entity in formation will be used by the Palestinians in the context of their war to liberate all of Palestine.

Ten years ago, in March 2000, a friend of our family, an investor in the Dahania airport in Gaza, took us to see his investment at work in central Gaza. He was proud of his investment.

Yet our friend was taken aback when we asked if that airport might one day be used to launch attacks on the Western Negev.

Our friend could not conceive that this would be possible. After all, Jews had provided Gazans with capital investment.

Our agency then arranged for our family friend to take a tour of UNRWA camps, where all he heard were the war drums to attack the Western Negev – because Palestinian Arabs see that area as “occupied” from 1948. He still could not believe it.

12,000 rocket attacks later, our family friend begins to cope with his mistake in judgment.

The same goes for the Palestinian plan for the city of RAWABI.

Look first and foremost at the strategic position of RAWABI, in relation to Israel’s population centers, and how RAWABI can be used as a forward position from where Fatah forces can launch attacks on areas that Israel “occupied” in 1948.

The time has come to reconsider business relationships with an entity at war with the state and people of Israel.

Israeli President Shimon Peres conceptualized that business arrangements in the “new middle east” would lead the new Palestinian entity to forge a system of peace and reconciliation with Israel.

The time has come to distinguish between short term profits which accrue from such arrangements and the long term goal that the Fatah has not changed: Destruction of the Jewish state and of Zionism, albeit in stages.

The first stage is to entice Jews to engage in economic investment in the Palestinian economy.

The next stage is to continue the armed struggle to “liberate Palestine”, all of Palestine, irrespective of any short term economic gain.

That is consequence of “New Middle East”.