4 feb 2020
The US government has begun a campaign to pressure the Palestinian National Authority and President Mahmoud Abbas to accept the “Deal of the Century” launched by US President Donald Trump, in the form of criticism made by his adviser, Jared Kushner, adviser during an interview with CNN.
In the interview, Kushner threatened Palestinian leadership, saying that if the Palestinians are unable to fulfill certain conditions under the plan, Israel should not recognize them as a state.
Kushner also criticized the behavior of the Palestinian Authority, saying that Abbas “has served 16 years instead of four years, and this is not a prosperous democracy.”
Kushner said there were promises of a democratic Palestinian state, but there is something that makes him believe that with this program and the “offering,” there is no one and that this state and order does not exist and that there will be no such state.
“Page 34 of the plan states that the basic condition for recognition of this Palestinian state is that it will enjoy free press, free elections, freedom of religion, stable and transparent financial institutions such as the Western world, and an independent judiciary, and it is clear that this does not currently exist,” he said.
“He also states in the plan that the United States and Israel are the two countries that will rule if the Palestinian state meets these conditions, but I fear that there are currently no Arab countries that meet these criteria,” the US adviser said. Is this not a simple way to tell the Palestinians that you will never have a state?”
The European Union, in a statement, said that it was fully committed to the transatlantic partnership and values all efforts to help find a peaceful resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
“The EU recalls its commitment to a negotiated two-State solution, based on 1967 lines, with equivalent land swaps, as may be agreed between the parties, with the State of Israel and an independent, democratic, contiguous, sovereign and viable State of Palestine, living side by side in peace, security and mutual recognition – as set out in the Council Conclusions of July 2014.”
The statement said that the US initiative, as presented on 28 January, departs from these internationally agreed parameters:
“To build a just and lasting peace, the unresolved final status issues must be decided through direct negotiations between both parties. This includes, notably, the issues related to borders, the status of Jerusalem, security and the refugee question,” it added.
The European Union called on both sides to re-engage and to refrain from any unilateral actions contrary to international law that could exacerbate tensions. We are especially concerned by statements on the prospect of annexation of the Jordan Valley and other parts of the West Bank.
In line with international law and relevant UN Security Council resolutions, the EU does not recognize Israel’s sovereignty over the territories occupied since 1967. Steps towards annexation, if implemented, could not pass unchallenged, PNN reports.
The United States has requested a closed-door U.N. Security Council meeting for Thursday at which Kushner is to present the administration’s new plan, diplomats said, Al Ray further reports.
Kushner has requested a closed-door session on Thursday, during which he can clarify details of the plan and respond to questions from the UNSC’s other 14 members.
PA President Mahmoud Abbas is scheduled to be at the United Nations on February 11, to make his case against the U.S. proposals.
In late 2017, a Palestinian-inspired resolution condemning Washington’s unilateral recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital received 14 votes in the Security Council, but the United States quashed it with its veto.
Kushner is the architect of the plan unveiled by Trump last week, and rejected Saturday by the Arab League and by the Organization of Islamic Cooperation on Monday.
The plan proposed the establishment of a Palestinian capital in Abu Dis, a suburb of Jerusalem.
In a statement, Saturday, Israel’s Ambassador to the United Nations, Danny Danon, said he has launched a campaign to persuade member countries not to support any Palestinian action that is hostile to the US plan.
In the interview, Kushner threatened Palestinian leadership, saying that if the Palestinians are unable to fulfill certain conditions under the plan, Israel should not recognize them as a state.
Kushner also criticized the behavior of the Palestinian Authority, saying that Abbas “has served 16 years instead of four years, and this is not a prosperous democracy.”
Kushner said there were promises of a democratic Palestinian state, but there is something that makes him believe that with this program and the “offering,” there is no one and that this state and order does not exist and that there will be no such state.
“Page 34 of the plan states that the basic condition for recognition of this Palestinian state is that it will enjoy free press, free elections, freedom of religion, stable and transparent financial institutions such as the Western world, and an independent judiciary, and it is clear that this does not currently exist,” he said.
“He also states in the plan that the United States and Israel are the two countries that will rule if the Palestinian state meets these conditions, but I fear that there are currently no Arab countries that meet these criteria,” the US adviser said. Is this not a simple way to tell the Palestinians that you will never have a state?”
The European Union, in a statement, said that it was fully committed to the transatlantic partnership and values all efforts to help find a peaceful resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
“The EU recalls its commitment to a negotiated two-State solution, based on 1967 lines, with equivalent land swaps, as may be agreed between the parties, with the State of Israel and an independent, democratic, contiguous, sovereign and viable State of Palestine, living side by side in peace, security and mutual recognition – as set out in the Council Conclusions of July 2014.”
The statement said that the US initiative, as presented on 28 January, departs from these internationally agreed parameters:
“To build a just and lasting peace, the unresolved final status issues must be decided through direct negotiations between both parties. This includes, notably, the issues related to borders, the status of Jerusalem, security and the refugee question,” it added.
The European Union called on both sides to re-engage and to refrain from any unilateral actions contrary to international law that could exacerbate tensions. We are especially concerned by statements on the prospect of annexation of the Jordan Valley and other parts of the West Bank.
In line with international law and relevant UN Security Council resolutions, the EU does not recognize Israel’s sovereignty over the territories occupied since 1967. Steps towards annexation, if implemented, could not pass unchallenged, PNN reports.
The United States has requested a closed-door U.N. Security Council meeting for Thursday at which Kushner is to present the administration’s new plan, diplomats said, Al Ray further reports.
Kushner has requested a closed-door session on Thursday, during which he can clarify details of the plan and respond to questions from the UNSC’s other 14 members.
PA President Mahmoud Abbas is scheduled to be at the United Nations on February 11, to make his case against the U.S. proposals.
In late 2017, a Palestinian-inspired resolution condemning Washington’s unilateral recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital received 14 votes in the Security Council, but the United States quashed it with its veto.
Kushner is the architect of the plan unveiled by Trump last week, and rejected Saturday by the Arab League and by the Organization of Islamic Cooperation on Monday.
The plan proposed the establishment of a Palestinian capital in Abu Dis, a suburb of Jerusalem.
In a statement, Saturday, Israel’s Ambassador to the United Nations, Danny Danon, said he has launched a campaign to persuade member countries not to support any Palestinian action that is hostile to the US plan.
3 feb 2020
Russia has expressed serious doubts over the viability of the US-devised Mideast plan, known as the so-called “Deal of the Century,” on Israeli-Palestinian conflict, saying it contravenes several UN Security Council’s resolutions on the issue.
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said: “It’s plain enough that some of this plan’s provisions do not fully correspond to the relevant resolutions by the UN Security Council.”
Peskov questioned the plan’s feasibility as it drew a strong negative reaction from the Arab world, saying, “We see the reaction from the Palestinians, we see the reaction of a wide range of Arab states, which have sided with the Palestinians in rejecting the plan. This, obviously, makes one think about its feasibility.”
His comments, made in an interview with the Rossiya-1 channel on Sunday, appear to be the Kremlin’s first official response to the contentious US proposal, PNN reports.
US President Donald Trump unveiled his self-proclaimed “Deal of the Century” during an event at the White House, alongside Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, in Washington, on Tuesday.
All Palestinian groups have unanimously rejected the American president’s highly-provocative initiative that largely meets Israel’s demands in the decades-old conflict while creating a Palestinian state with limited control over its own security and borders.
It enshrines Jerusalem al-Quds as “Israel’s undivided capital” and allows the regime to annex settlements in the occupied West Bank and the Jordan Valley.
The plan also denies the right of return of Palestinian refugees into their homeland, among other controversial terms.
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said: “It’s plain enough that some of this plan’s provisions do not fully correspond to the relevant resolutions by the UN Security Council.”
Peskov questioned the plan’s feasibility as it drew a strong negative reaction from the Arab world, saying, “We see the reaction from the Palestinians, we see the reaction of a wide range of Arab states, which have sided with the Palestinians in rejecting the plan. This, obviously, makes one think about its feasibility.”
His comments, made in an interview with the Rossiya-1 channel on Sunday, appear to be the Kremlin’s first official response to the contentious US proposal, PNN reports.
US President Donald Trump unveiled his self-proclaimed “Deal of the Century” during an event at the White House, alongside Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, in Washington, on Tuesday.
All Palestinian groups have unanimously rejected the American president’s highly-provocative initiative that largely meets Israel’s demands in the decades-old conflict while creating a Palestinian state with limited control over its own security and borders.
It enshrines Jerusalem al-Quds as “Israel’s undivided capital” and allows the regime to annex settlements in the occupied West Bank and the Jordan Valley.
The plan also denies the right of return of Palestinian refugees into their homeland, among other controversial terms.
1 feb 2020
By Joseph Massad for Middle East Eye
Western and Israeli propaganda never tire of telling the world of the age-old Israeli quest for peace, and how much Israel longs to be accepted by Palestinians and the rest of the Arab peoples as a Jewish state – an oasis of European civilisation lodged smack in the middle of the Arab world.
Indeed, the racist wisdom of former Israeli Foreign Minister Abba Eban (born in South Africa as Aubrey Solomon Meir) that Palestinians “never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity” for “peace” was recently reiterated by US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and adviser, Jared Kushner.
Kushner, speaking of Trump’s “deal of the century”, declared on CNN that if Palestinians reject the plan, “they’re going to screw up another opportunity, like they’ve screwed up every other opportunity that they’ve ever had in their existence”.
Kushner, a primary author of the plan, must be forgiven for his lack of originality, as Zionists, who exhausted the colonial lexicon, have run out of racist cliches and are doomed to repeat them ad nauseum.
Taking Every Opportunity
What Eban and Kushner meant when they spoke of opportunities was the opportunity for Palestinians to surrender all their rights to the Zionist Jewish colonisation of their homeland, end their resistance once and for all, and grant legitimacy to the Zionist theft of their country.
The recently released Trump plan [pdf] does not mince words at all on this: “Palestinian leaders must embrace peace by recognizing Israel as the Jewish state, rejecting terrorism in all its forms.”
In contrast, we are told that the peace-loving Zionists have not missed a single opportunity for peace, by which it is meant that they have accepted every opportunity and proposal that granted legitimacy to their ongoing theft of Palestinian lands.
As a matter of fact, not only have the Zionists not missed these opportunities, they have instigated them, proposed them, planned them and executed them.
The Zionist colonisation of Palestine has taken every opportunity since its inception to tell the Palestinian people that Jews are superior to them, that Jewish colonial rights to Palestinian lands are superior to any rights that the indigenous Palestinians think they have, and that the only option available to Palestinians that Zionists would accept is full surrender to Jewish colonisation.
Anything short of this will be condemned by Israel and its European and North American allies, alongside a global campaign to delegitimise any rejection of Israel’s colonial theft of Palestinian land as outright “antisemitism”.
Legitimising Land Theft
Zionists helped write, and then accepted, the Balfour Declaration of 1917, in which the British foreign secretary dismissed the indigenous people of Palestine as irrelevant to the plan to establish a Jewish “national home” in their country.
Zionists also supported the British colonial mandate over Palestine, which sponsored the establishment of the Jewish settler-colony on Palestinian lands.
Indeed, the Zionist leadership accepted every act committed by the British that denationalised tens of thousands of Palestinians (through the Palestine citizenship law of 1925) and transferred “state” lands to Jewish colonists.
When the British Peel Commission proposed taking more than one third of Palestine and giving it to Zionists, calling for the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from the invented “Jewish” part of Palestine, Zionist leader David Ben-Gurion celebrated.
When the United Nations, under US pressure and manipulation, issued its Partition Plan in 1947, granting 55 percent of the land of the Palestinians to Jewish colonists, the Zionists immediately accepted it and proceeded to expel the Palestinian inhabitants.
This readiness to instigate, propose, accept and create opportunities to steal more land, legitimise that theft, and expel more Palestinians continued unabated after 1948.
After the final conquest of the remaining parts of Palestine in 1967 and the expulsion of more Palestinians, Israel sought more opportunities to keep its stolen land – and to keep Palestinians away from it.
Indeed, when former Egyptian president Anwar Sadat ceded Palestinian rights to independence and statehood at Camp David, the Israelis who imposed these conditions readily accepted the deal.
When a defeated Palestine Liberation Organisation offered its surrender at Oslo in 1993, relinquishing the rights of Palestinians to their lands and country, the Israelis who drafted the agreement also readily accepted it.
Sealing All Previous Deals
As for the Trump deal – which the Israelis coauthored, and which hopes to seal all previous deals, calling further for the denationalisation of Palestinian citizens of Israel who live in what is known as the Triangle area inside Israel – the Israelis immediately jumped at this opportunity to rid themselves of more Palestinians.
What the Israelis never accepted, and cannot accept, is the right of Palestinians to their lands, to statehood and to independence – let alone the rights of those whom Israel expelled to return and reclaim the land and property that Israel confiscated, or the Palestinian right to equality, currently denied by a battery of Israeli laws that grant colonial and racial privileges to Jews.
That Israel has never missed any opportunity to deny the Palestinian people their rights, and accepted every opportunity to steal their land, is a fact the Israelis never deny.
That Israel demands that the Palestinians recognise its right to oppress them by granting Israel legitimacy is also a fact that the Palestinians understand well, but have always rejected.
Whereas Palestinians have “missed every opportunity” to recognise the right of their oppressors to oppress them, Israel has never missed a single opportunity to demand that they do so.
Trump’s “Vision to Improve the Lives of the Palestinian and Israeli People” is simply the latest version of this colonial and racist demand.
Joseph Massad is Professor of Modern Arab Politics and Intellectual History at Columbia University in New York. He is the author of many books and academic and journalistic articles. His books include Colonial Effects: The Making of National Identity in Jordan, Desiring Arabs, The Persistence of the Palestinian Question: Essays on Zionism and the Palestinians, and most recently Islam in Liberalism. His books and articles have been translated to a dozen languages.
Western and Israeli propaganda never tire of telling the world of the age-old Israeli quest for peace, and how much Israel longs to be accepted by Palestinians and the rest of the Arab peoples as a Jewish state – an oasis of European civilisation lodged smack in the middle of the Arab world.
Indeed, the racist wisdom of former Israeli Foreign Minister Abba Eban (born in South Africa as Aubrey Solomon Meir) that Palestinians “never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity” for “peace” was recently reiterated by US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and adviser, Jared Kushner.
Kushner, speaking of Trump’s “deal of the century”, declared on CNN that if Palestinians reject the plan, “they’re going to screw up another opportunity, like they’ve screwed up every other opportunity that they’ve ever had in their existence”.
Kushner, a primary author of the plan, must be forgiven for his lack of originality, as Zionists, who exhausted the colonial lexicon, have run out of racist cliches and are doomed to repeat them ad nauseum.
Taking Every Opportunity
What Eban and Kushner meant when they spoke of opportunities was the opportunity for Palestinians to surrender all their rights to the Zionist Jewish colonisation of their homeland, end their resistance once and for all, and grant legitimacy to the Zionist theft of their country.
The recently released Trump plan [pdf] does not mince words at all on this: “Palestinian leaders must embrace peace by recognizing Israel as the Jewish state, rejecting terrorism in all its forms.”
In contrast, we are told that the peace-loving Zionists have not missed a single opportunity for peace, by which it is meant that they have accepted every opportunity and proposal that granted legitimacy to their ongoing theft of Palestinian lands.
As a matter of fact, not only have the Zionists not missed these opportunities, they have instigated them, proposed them, planned them and executed them.
The Zionist colonisation of Palestine has taken every opportunity since its inception to tell the Palestinian people that Jews are superior to them, that Jewish colonial rights to Palestinian lands are superior to any rights that the indigenous Palestinians think they have, and that the only option available to Palestinians that Zionists would accept is full surrender to Jewish colonisation.
Anything short of this will be condemned by Israel and its European and North American allies, alongside a global campaign to delegitimise any rejection of Israel’s colonial theft of Palestinian land as outright “antisemitism”.
Legitimising Land Theft
Zionists helped write, and then accepted, the Balfour Declaration of 1917, in which the British foreign secretary dismissed the indigenous people of Palestine as irrelevant to the plan to establish a Jewish “national home” in their country.
Zionists also supported the British colonial mandate over Palestine, which sponsored the establishment of the Jewish settler-colony on Palestinian lands.
Indeed, the Zionist leadership accepted every act committed by the British that denationalised tens of thousands of Palestinians (through the Palestine citizenship law of 1925) and transferred “state” lands to Jewish colonists.
When the British Peel Commission proposed taking more than one third of Palestine and giving it to Zionists, calling for the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from the invented “Jewish” part of Palestine, Zionist leader David Ben-Gurion celebrated.
When the United Nations, under US pressure and manipulation, issued its Partition Plan in 1947, granting 55 percent of the land of the Palestinians to Jewish colonists, the Zionists immediately accepted it and proceeded to expel the Palestinian inhabitants.
This readiness to instigate, propose, accept and create opportunities to steal more land, legitimise that theft, and expel more Palestinians continued unabated after 1948.
After the final conquest of the remaining parts of Palestine in 1967 and the expulsion of more Palestinians, Israel sought more opportunities to keep its stolen land – and to keep Palestinians away from it.
Indeed, when former Egyptian president Anwar Sadat ceded Palestinian rights to independence and statehood at Camp David, the Israelis who imposed these conditions readily accepted the deal.
When a defeated Palestine Liberation Organisation offered its surrender at Oslo in 1993, relinquishing the rights of Palestinians to their lands and country, the Israelis who drafted the agreement also readily accepted it.
Sealing All Previous Deals
As for the Trump deal – which the Israelis coauthored, and which hopes to seal all previous deals, calling further for the denationalisation of Palestinian citizens of Israel who live in what is known as the Triangle area inside Israel – the Israelis immediately jumped at this opportunity to rid themselves of more Palestinians.
What the Israelis never accepted, and cannot accept, is the right of Palestinians to their lands, to statehood and to independence – let alone the rights of those whom Israel expelled to return and reclaim the land and property that Israel confiscated, or the Palestinian right to equality, currently denied by a battery of Israeli laws that grant colonial and racial privileges to Jews.
That Israel has never missed any opportunity to deny the Palestinian people their rights, and accepted every opportunity to steal their land, is a fact the Israelis never deny.
That Israel demands that the Palestinians recognise its right to oppress them by granting Israel legitimacy is also a fact that the Palestinians understand well, but have always rejected.
Whereas Palestinians have “missed every opportunity” to recognise the right of their oppressors to oppress them, Israel has never missed a single opportunity to demand that they do so.
Trump’s “Vision to Improve the Lives of the Palestinian and Israeli People” is simply the latest version of this colonial and racist demand.
Joseph Massad is Professor of Modern Arab Politics and Intellectual History at Columbia University in New York. He is the author of many books and academic and journalistic articles. His books include Colonial Effects: The Making of National Identity in Jordan, Desiring Arabs, The Persistence of the Palestinian Question: Essays on Zionism and the Palestinians, and most recently Islam in Liberalism. His books and articles have been translated to a dozen languages.
