Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) National President Morton A. Klein and ZOA Director of Research and Special Projects Liz Berney, Esq. released the following statement:
ZOA strongly praises Israel’s longest-serving prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu for clearly opposing the creation of a Palestinian Arab (terrorist dictatorship ) state yesterday. PM Netanyahu stated and repeated during a Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee meeting: “We need to eliminate their [Palestinian Authority Arabs’] aspirations for a state.”
ZOA is pleased that PM Netanyahu reaffirmed his many past statements opposing a Palestinian Arab state, which would surely be a terrorist dictatorship, despite the Biden administration’s wrongful, illegal, dangerous pressures to create this Iran/Hamas state along Israel’s longest border. The Biden administration needs to be disabused of its harmful, violence-inducing, even naive aspirations to create a Palestinian Arab state on Israel’s lawful, historic, Balfour declaration-given, League of Nations-given, UN-given, G-d-given lands in Judea/Samaria and Jerusalem. (See, e.g., ZOA: Israel’s Legal Right to the Land of Israel.)
PM Netanyahu’s past statements include:
- In a famous 2002 speech to the Likud Central Committee, Netanyahu correctly explained that a Palestinian Arab state would never keep a demilitarization agreement; would make alliances with foreign powers; would import weapons; would shoot down Israeli planes; and would result in Israel being blamed and stopped if Israel attempted to enforce demilitarization. If Israel agreed to a Palestinian Arab state, “We will thus have created with our own hands a threat to our very existence.”
- In 2015, Netanyahu promised that he will not allow a Palestinian Arab state, and said: “Whoever moves to establish a Palestinian state or intends to withdraw from territory is simply yielding territory for radical Islamic terrorist attacks against Israel.”
- In July 2017, Netanyahu’s Likud Party (Israel’s largest political party) formally voted to oppose forming a Palestinian Arab state.
- In March 2018, Netanyahu stated in The New York Times that a Palestinian state “doesn’t work. . . . When we leave land, Arab terror organizations take over. Immediately.”
Indeed, a Palestinian Arab state in Judea/Samaria would be a hotbed of Fatah, Hamas, Palestine Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah and other Iranian-proxy terrorists, and would threaten Israel’s continuing existence and endanger the lives of nine million Israelis. Such a state would be even worse than Gaza – and would be a launching pad for overwhelming rocket and other terror attacks against all of Israel.
We had a stark reminder of the dangers of such a state just yesterday, when Palestinian Arab terrorists in Abbas’ Fatah-controlled Jenin launched two rockets towards Israel. (Jenin is a Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) stronghold in an area of Samaria governed by Abbas’ Fatah/Palestinian Authority (PA).) The rockets failed to reach their Jewish targets and instead landed in Palestinian Authority areas, but the terrorists vowed to launch bigger rockets against Israelis next time. Further, last month, Israeli security broke up a Palestinian Islamic Jihad terror cell in Jenin, directed by PIJ leaders in Gaza, that was manufacturing rockets to launch at Jewish population centers in Israel from the strategic vantage point of the hills of Judea/Samaria.
Palestinian Arabs do not want a state in order to live side-by-side with the Jewish state in peace. Rather, they refuse to give up their goal of seizing, overrunning and annihilating, destroying all of the Jewish State of Israel and murdering its Jewish inhabitants. This is why the Palestinian Arabs rejected, without a counter-offer, every single generous offer and proposal to give them a state (at least eight proposals in the last 80 years and four proposals in the last 20 years), and instead launched wars and Intifadas (terror wars against the Jewish State).
For instance, former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told ZOA President Morton Klein that PA dictator Mahmoud Abbas turned down Olmert’s 2008 extraordinary offer of 97% of Judea/Samaria, 3% of Israel proper, one-half of Jerusalem and billions of dollars in aid, because Mahmoud Abbas told Olmert he won’t sign an agreement that (1) requires the Palestinian Arabs to recognize Israel as a Jewish State; (2) requires the Palestinian Authority to limit the number of Palestinian Arabs allowed to move into Israel to 150,000 and end their claim of “right of return” which would overrun Israel with millions of Arabs, thus destroying Israel as a Jewish state; and (3) requires the Palestinian regime to agree to end all further claims which obviously is what any peace deal must include.
Likewise, the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PSR) poll this month found that only 28% of Palestinian Arabs support a two-state solution while 70% of Palestinian Arabs oppose it; 53% of Palestinian Arabs favor armed struggle against Israel, plus another 22% favor “popular resistance” (usually also meaning violence); only 21% favor negotiations with Israel; 66% believe that Israel will not reach her 100th birthday; 71% support terrorist attacks against Israeli Jews, and that 51% believe that they will “regain Palestine” (even though a Palestinian Arab state never existed).
PM Netanyahu is thus absolutely correct that we must eliminate the aspiration for and not even consider establishing a Palestinian Arab state and dictatorship that threatens to annihilate Israel and murder its Jewish citizens.