The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) has declared support and understanding for Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman’s call for Israel to sever ties with the Mahmoud Abbas’ Palestinian Authority (PA), saying that unless and until the PA fulfills its signed obligations under the Oslo agreements to arrests terrorists, outlaw terrorist groups and end the incitement to hatred and murder within the PA-controlled, media, mosques, schools and youth camps, such action is necessary. In light of the recent Fatah-controlled PA unity government agreement with Hamas, a terrorist organization that calls it is Charter for the destruction of Israel and the murder of Jews, PA rescission of this agreement is also a prerequisite for maintaining ties with the PA.
Mr. Lieberman told reporters this week that he would ask the ‘forum of eight’ – a subgroup of ministers within the Cabinet – to end Israel’s relations with the PA, following the PA’s attempt to prosecute IDF officers at the International Criminal Court at The Hague. He said, “No Finance Ministry officials, not the Water Authority and no Foreign Ministry officials [will maintain ties] …You cannot have security coordination [with Israel] while you are also trying IDF soldiers at The Hague.” Mr. Lieberman also said that PA officials, despite claims of intending merely “non-violent action,” are instead preparing to flood checkpoints with tens of thousands of PA Arabs who might then force their way past IDF soldiers and into Israel’s major cities. “The Palestinian Authority is getting ready for bloodshed on a scale we haven’t seen … The more they speak about non-violent action, the more they are preparing for bloodshed.”
Mr. Lieberman also said that the PA is making preparations to carry out wholesale bloodshed in September and also plans to ask the United Nations to officially recognize it as an independent country and to grant it membership status within the international body (Chana Ya’ar, ‘Lieberman Warns PA Ready for ‘Bloodshed’ in September,’ Israel National News, August 8, 2011). This contravenes its signed commitments under the Oslo agreement to renounce terrorism and violence and the incitement that feeds it and to resolve all issues with Israel through negotiations The PA’s Abbas also stated explicitly in a New York Times op-ed in May that, following a UN declaration of Palestinian statehood, “Palestine’s admission to the United Nations would pave the way for the internationalization of the conflict as a legal matter, not only a political one. It would also pave the way for us to pursue claims against Israel at the United Nations, human rights treaty bodies and the International Court of Justice.”
ZOA National President Morton A. Klein said, “The ZOA has repeatedly urged the Israeli and U.S. governments to cut ties to the PA until it arrest terrorists, outlaw terrorist groups and end the incitement to hatred and murder in the PA-controlled media, mosques, schools and youth camps that fuels terrorism. The anti-peace, pro-terror words and deeds of the PA that have motivated us to make this call are too numerous to name, but it is sufficient here to point to events in the PA just in recent weeks, including the ‘Palestine in the Eyes of the Children of Martyrs (Shahids) Summer Camp,’ – in which the participating children were divided into groups named after Palestinian terrorists Yasser Arafat, Salah Khalaf, Abu Ali Mustapha and Dalal Mughrabi. The camp, incidentally, was held upon the auspices of PA prime minister Salaam Fayyad, often falsely described as a “moderate” and peace-maker.
“For these reasons, we have sympathy with Minister Lieberman’s call for cutting ties. Such action by Israel is amply justified by the PA’s record over the nearly eighteen years since it signed the Oslo agreement.”