The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) has criticized President Barack Obama’s address to the United Nations General Assembly, in which he argued falsely that the creation of a Palestinian state under the auspices of Mahmoud Abbas’ Palestinian Authority (PA) is “central” to Israel’s security and that developments in the Middle East, which is in the midst of violence, instability and turbulence not seen in decades, and would make the time “ripe” to work to bring about an Israeli/Palestinian peace treaty and the creation of a PA-led Palestinian state. 

ZOA National Chairman of the Board Dr. Michael Goldblatt said, “The ZOA repudiates both propositions. Under prevailing conditions, a Palestinian state would:

• Be a dangerous, terrorist, anti-Semitic, racist state would encompass perilous Israeli withdrawals, including from the strategically vital Jordan Valley; 
• Require the uprooting and expulsion of over 500,000 Jews from their lawful homes in Judea and Samaria, given Mahmoud Abbas/Palestinian Authority (PA) insistence on a Jew-free state; 
• Entail drastic deterioration in Israeli security, including bringing within rocket and rifle range of Palestinian terrorists Jerusalem, Ben Gurion Airport and most of Israel’s major population centers; 
• Would eventually trigger a full-scale war; and, 
• Given the impossibility of demilitarizing such a state, even if its demilitarization were a clause in a hypothetical signed peace treaty, result in a terror-state on Israel’s longest and most vulnerable border. 

“Furthermore, the idea that the time is “ripe” for international efforts to bring about an Israeli/Palestinian peace and a Palestinian state is absurd on its face. As we detail below, Palestinians don’t accept Israel as Jewish state, support murderous violence, including suicide terrorism, against Israelis; do not accept the idea of a permanent peace with Israel; glorify terrorists and incite their society and especially children to hate and fight Israel.

“If a Palestinian Arab state was to be established next door to the U.S. in the near-certainty that it would be a corrupt, terror-promoting state which would also be beggar state, dependent on an infusion of billions of dollars, would Americans agree to this? Of course not –– yet that is the idea that President Obama is trying to foist on Israel. Under these conditions, anyone with a shred of realism and concern for Israel’s well-being should oppose his call for a Palestinian state.”

“Whatever else it is, the idea that a Palestinian state is “central” to Israeli peace and security is a mirage and an absurdity. (A detailed ZOA analysis of the decisive objections to creating a Palestinian state under prevailing conditions can be read here).”

Below are excerpts from President Obama’s remarks, followed by the ZOA’s analysis and commentary:

• “Friends of Israel, including the United States, must recognize that Israel’s security as a Jewish and democratic state depends upon the realization of a Palestinian state” [ZOA: President Obama did not explain how setting up an irredentist, terrorism-promoting Palestinian state, whose leaders explicitly refuse to accept Israel as a Jewish state and demand that their state be Jew-free, could conceivably be in the Israeli interest. As to specifics, creating a Palestinian state would require Israel handing over to Palestinian control not only eastern Jerusalem, with its holiest Jewish sites, but also all of Judea and Samaria, where over 500,000 Israeli Jews live, including the strategically vital Jordan Valley. Once established, a Palestinian state would, at the very least, result in cross-border raids becoming routine along what would become Israel’s longest border. To do this runs contrary to all logic and prudence. We should be dismantling terrorist states, not establishing them. Most likely, such a state would prepare for long-term warfare with Israel, nurture terrorist movements behind a wall of sovereign immunity and create the sort of destabilization that would lead to full-scale war, to the detriment of Israelis and Palestinians alike. 

• “In the near term, America’s diplomatic efforts will focus on two particular issues:  Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons, and the Arab-Israeli conflict.  While these issues are not the cause of all the region’s problems, they have been a major source of instability for far too long, and resolving them can help serve as a foundation for a broader peace” [ZOA: As the ZOA outlined recently, the Israeli/Palestinian negotiations are far from being the central or even a primary component of the Middle East’s problems, now or in the past. In fact, it is totally unrelated and irrelevant to the present violence and conflict in Syria, Egypt, Libya, Iraq and Yemen. If Israel didn’t exist, the same problems between and within Arab countries would still exist. Obtaining an Israeli/Palestinian peace agreement, even if one could, would not solve other regional problems, which are rooted in the region’s ideological and religious pathologies. The alleged Israeli/Palestinian ‘peace process’ has become an obsessive fetish which squanders American resources, credibility and standing. Why should the U.S. talk up a bogus peace process that it is not going to deliver? Why should it accept the blame for the inevitable failure?]

• “The world is more stable than it was five years ago” [ZOA: The Middle East is currently experiencing its worst bout of turbulence and bloodshed in decades. At present, the Syrian regime of Bashar Assad has killed approximately 100,000 people in a war with Sunni Islamist rebels, who have also slaughtered tens of thousands. Massive instability and brutal violence is afflicting Egypt. Yemen has been wracked by internal conflict and thousands have been killed. Libya has become a jungle of jihadist warriors since the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi’s dictatorship.  Thousands of Christians have been murdered and many dozens of churches destroyed in Egypt, Syria and elsewhere. In Iraq, over 5,000 people have been slaughtered in virtually daily suicide bombings just this year. The July 2013 death toll in Iraq, a country that has slipped increasingly into the Iranian orbit since U.S forces were totally withdrawn, was nearly 1,000 dead –– more than in any other month since President Obama assumed office in January 2009. Given these undeniable and demonstrable facts, it is sheer nonsense for President Obama to assert that, on his watch, the Middle East is experiencing, or drawing into, a period of stability greater than that which prevailed when he assumed office. The diametric opposite is the case].

“I believe there’s a growing recognition within Israel that the occupation of the West Bank is tearing at the democratic fabric of the Jewish state … I had the opportunity to meet with young Palestinians in Ramallah whose ambition and incredible potential are matched by the pain they feel in having no firm place in the community of nations. They are understandably cynical that real progress will ever be made, and they’re frustrated by their families enduring the daily indignity of occupation. But they, too, recognize that two states is the only real path to peace — because just as the Palestinian people must not be displaced, the state of Israel is here to stay. So the time is now ripe for the entire international community to get behind the pursuit of peace” [ZOA: The idea that Israelis currently favor creating a Palestinian state, or believe that doing so would bring peace with the Palestinians is false. No less false is the notion that Palestinians seek merely statehood alongside Israel or that “the time is now ripe” for peace-making. Successive Israeli polls in recent years have shown that Israelis do not favor further concessions to the PA, nor do they believe such concessions, or even a peace treaty with the PA, would produce peace with the Palestinians. Palestinians violently oppose Israel’s existence as a Jewish state. Numerous Palestinian polls over the years –– including one in recent weeks by Pew Research –– show majority Palestinian support for suicide terrorism against Israelis. Fatah, co-founded by arch-terrorist Yasser Arafat and current PA president Mahmoud Abbas, is a terrorist movement whose unchanged Constitution calls for the “demolition” of Israel; the use of terrorism as an indispensable part in the strategy to obtain that goal; condemns Zionism as racist; calls on countries to prevent Jews from moving to Israel; and opposes any political solution whatsoever. Fatah’s armed wing, the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, is on the U.S. list of terrorist organization. PA media, mosques, school curricula and official speeches produce vast amounts of incitement to hatred and murder, glorification of terrorists and terrorism and rejection of Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state. PA salaried clerics have incited mass-murder by declaring that “Jews are a virus resembling AIDS” and labeling Jews as “the enemies of Allah and of His Messenger … Enemies of humanity in general … The Prophet says: ‘You shall fight the Jews and kill them’…” If a Palestinian Arab state were to be established next door to the U.S. in the near-certainty that it would be a corrupt, terror-promoting state which would also be beggar state, dependent on an infusion of billions of dollars, would Americans agree to this? Of course not –– yet that is the idea that President Obama is trying to foist on Israel.]