Obama should criticize Abbas’s anti-peace, anti-Israel speech

The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) has denounced Palestinian Authority (PA) president Mahmoud Abbas’ speech to the United Nations General Assembly as yet more lies and deceit from the PA leader, serving a vicious, anti-peace, anti-Israel platform. This speech proves conclusively that Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinians have no interest in peace with the Jewish state of Israel and desires to continue the Arab war against Israel. The ZOA has also called upon President Barack Obama to condemn this vicious, anti-peace speech. It is deeply troubling that President Obama has increased the amount of US financial aid to the Palestinian Authority – now approaching $1B of US taxpayer funds per year.  The ZOA strongly urges the Obama Administration to reconsider to at least reduce this level of funding to the PA.   

In his address to the General Assembly, Mahmoud Abbas said:

·         “A year ago, at this same time, distinguished leaders in this hall addressed the stalled peace efforts in our region. Everyone had high hopes for a new round of final status negotiations … But the negotiations broke down just weeks after their launch. After this, we did not give up and did not cease our efforts for initiatives and contacts … But all of these sincere efforts and endeavors undertaken by international parties were repeatedly wrecked by the positions of the Israeli government, which quickly dashed the hopes raised by the launch of negotiations last September” [ZOA: As usual, Abbas deceitfully blames Israel for the failure of talks, which he refused to join for almost the entire term of President Barack Obama’s presidency thus far. Abbas made no concession, did not reciprocate Israel’s unprecedented freeze on Jewish construction in Judea and Samaria. Instead, he introduced a new condition – a total freeze on all Jewish construction in Judea, Samaria and eastern Jerusalem before – before being willing to negotiate, something he and the PA had never insisted upon before and which formed no requirement under the Oslo agreements].

·         “The core issue here is that the Israeli government refuses to commit to terms of reference for the negotiations that are based on international law and United Nations resolutions, and that it frantically continues to intensify building of settlements on the territory of the State of Palestine. Settlement activities embody the core of the policy of colonial military occupation of the land of the Palestinian people and all of the brutality of aggression and racial discrimination against our people that this policy entails. This policy, which constitutes a breach of international humanitarian law and United Nations resolutions, is the primary cause for the failure of the peace process” [ZOA: Abbas again retails falsehoods regarding the alleged illegality of Jews living in Judea, Samaria and eastern Jerusalem bodies. Under both international law and the terms of past Oslo agreements, Israel is entirely within its rights to have its citizens live and build in these territories. Judea and Samaria are unallocated territory under international law and no Arab state has had legal sovereignty over it. The right of Jews to live there is affirmed in numerous international documents from the 1920 San Remo Conference onwards and was never extinguished by any subsequent, legally binding international agreement. Judea and Samaria were illegally occupied by an aggressor, Jordan, in 1948. Jordan’s annexation of these territories was never recognized by the UN or internationally, except by Britain and Pakistan. Israel in turn conquered these territories from Jordan in a war of self-defense and in which Jordan had attacked Israel. In 1988, Jordan itself renounced its baseless claim to these territories. No illegality attaches to Jews living and building homes and communities in Judea and Samaria. Moreover, under the Oslo II agreement, it was specifically stated in Chapter 3, Article 17 that the Jewish communities of Judea, Samaria and Gaza would remain under Israeli jurisdiction, pending a final peace agreement. In other words, the PA itself has signed a legally binding agreement that explicitly accepts the existence of Jewish communities under Israeli control].

·         “The occupying Power also continues to refuse permits for our people to build in Occupied East Jerusalem, at the same time that it intensifies its decades-long campaign of demolition and confiscation of homes, displacing Palestinian owners and residents under a multi-pronged policy of ethnic cleansing aimed at pushing them away from their ancestral homeland …. The occupying Power also continues to undertake excavations that threaten our holy places, and its military checkpoints prevent our citizens from getting access to their mosques and churches”  [ZOA: Another falsehood – authorized and unauthorized Arab building continues apace in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria. No Arab communities have been uprooted by Jewish construction.  Israeli archeological excavations – which have found new stunning evidence of Jewish history and confirmation of the biblical record – have been carried out with stringent care by world-class archeologists. Conversely, Palestinians have engaged in deliberate vandalism in destroying Jewish sites excavated beneath Jerusalem’sTemple Mount, which is under the control of the Muslim waqf – further evidence, if such were needed, that the PA cannot be entrusted with the holy sites of the city].

·         “The PLO and the Palestinian people adhere to the renouncement of violence and rejection and condemning of terrorism in all its forms, especially State terrorism, and adhere to all agreements signed between the Palestine Liberation Organization and Israel” [ZOA: The PA has repeatedly signed documents renouncing violence but have never honored them. Abbas’ latest declaration to this effect is worthless. Terrorists are not arrested, terrorist groups are not outlawed. On the contrary, the PA has signed a unity government agreement with Hamas, which calls in its Charter for the destruction of Israel and the murder of Jews. Incitement to hatred and murder in the PA-controlled media, mosques, schools and youth camps remains routine, as does the glorification of Jew-killing terrorists. In any event, Abbas’ statement is deceitful because he and most of the Arab world do not regard the deliberate murder and maiming of Jews as terrorism, so his declaration has no meaning. His reference to state terrorism – which is how the PA describes all Israeli actions to defend Israel’s citizens – means only that he is condemning Israeli military action, but not Palestinian terrorism].

·         “I come before you today from the Holy Land, the land of Palestine, the land of divine messages, ascension of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) and the birthplace of Jesus Christ (peace be upon him), to speak on behalf of the Palestinian people in the homeland and in the Diaspora, to say, after 63 years of suffering of the ongoing Nakba: Enough. It is time for the Palestinian people to gain their freedom and independence.” [ZOA: Significantly, before an international audience, in a speech purporting to be speak of peace, Abbas carefully avoided mentioning Moses or David, or Solomon’s Temple, or the biblical Jewish kingdoms, or any other aspect of the millennia-long Jewish connection to Jerusalem and the land of Israel. This is all of a piece with a long history of Palestinian denial of Jewish history and connection to Jerusalem and the land of Israel, a land called the Promised Land because it was promised to the Jewish people by G-d in the Bible].

·         “I would like to inform you that, before delivering this statement, I submitted, in my capacity as the President of the State of Palestine and Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization, to H.E. Mr. Ban Ki-moon, Secretary-General of the United Nations, an application for the admission of Palestine on the basis of the 4 June 1967 borders, with Al-Quds Al-Sharif as its capital, as a full member of the United Nations.” [ZOA: Significantly, after referring to ‘Jerusalem’ in his speech, Abbas ends by calling this city by its Arabic name, Al-Quds Al-Sharif. Palestinians for years have attempted to have Arabic names replace the accepted Jewish names for a number of places, Al-Quds for Jerusalem, Haram Ash-Sharif for Temple Mount, and so on. This is but a further example of the PA working gradually over time to supplant Israel].

·         “The Question Palestine is intricately linked with the United Nations via the resolutions adopted by its various organs and agencies and via the essential and lauded role of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East – UNRWA – which embodies the international responsibility towards the plight of Palestine refugees, who are the victims of Al-Nakba (Catastrophe) that occurred in 1948”  [ZOA: The international responsibility to Palestinians refugees of the 1948-49 war and their millions of descendants is to resettle and rehabilitate them, not maintain in them camps for generations as UNRWA has disgracefully done, contrary to the practice of dealing with all other refugee problems around the globe. Abbas praise for this system shows the absolute lack of humanitarian consideration underlying the Palestinian insistence of maintaining refugees and their descendants in camps]