Israel Matzav

Israel plans to release 'Israeli Arab' terrorists

Caroline Glick reports that Israel is planning to release 'Israeli Arab' terrorists as part of the next terrorist release to bring the 'Palestinians' to the 'negotiating table.'

On Sunday, Issa Karaka, the Palestinian Authority’s minister for jailed terrorists, announced that in the next round of terrorist releases, Israel will release not only Palestinian terrorist murderers, but Israeli Arabs who murdered Israeli Jews in terrorist attacks.

As late as last week, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu was said to have completely rejected the Palestinian demand. But in response to Karaka’s statement, Netanyahu’s spokesman said only that the release of Israeli Arab terrorists would be subject to the approval of the government. In other words, Karaka was probably telling the truth.

What's changed? Caroline blames US Secretary of State John FN Kerry.

Kerry is the Palestinians’ ace in the hole. He used the US’s limitless leverage on Israel to coerce Israel into agreeing to pay for the privilege of speaking to Palestinian negotiators who reject our country’s right to exist and extol as heroes the terrorist scum who murder us.

For the pleasure of their company, Kerry forced Israel to agree up-front to release scores of Palestinian terrorist murderers. And he did so in bad faith.

According to a high-ranking government official, Israel told Kerry it would release 82 murderers, none of whom are Israelis. And he agreed. But then, during a joint appearance with Kerry, PLO chief Mahmoud Abbas announced that Israel had agreed to release 104 terrorists, including Israeli citizens. Rather than correct him, Kerry went along, and so locked Israel into a concession it had never made.

And now, with Kerry’s support, Karaka said that if Israel refuses to release Israeli Arab murderers in the next round of releases, the PLO will abandon the talks. The EU has already announced that it will blame Israel for any PLO walkout.

But what's almost worse is the motivation behind the 'Palestinian' desire to free 'Israeli Arabs' - with which Kerry is playing along.

For sovereignty to mean anything, a national government needs to have the capacity to enforce its laws without prejudice on all of its citizens. If this does not occur, over time, members of the group toward which national authorities fail to apply the law will feel less loyal, less attached and less obligated to that authority and, if there is a competing authority filling the vacuum, that authority will come to enjoy more loyalty, attachment and obligation from the spurned or immune citizens of the weakened national authority.

The PLO’s demand that Israel release terrorists who hold Israeli citizenship, (or in the case of Jerusalem residents, permanent residency), is a clear bid to weaken Israel’s sovereignty over Jerusalem, and over the Galilee and the Negev. More generally it is an attempt to undermine Israel’s right to assert its sovereign authority over non-Jews.

By the PLO’s calculations, if Israel’s right to assert its sovereignty over its non-Jewish citizens and residents is sufficiently discredited, then over time, the PLO can destroy Israeli democracy and undo Israel’s national rights and sovereignty.

Pinchas Inbari agrees:

The question, though, is whether the ratification of the 1967 border would entail the end of the dispute. Hopefully, the answer would be yes, with the United States putting its full weight behind the finality of the agreement.²⁰ Yet we cannot ignore certain Palestinian positions which, if they do not change, are likely to generate crises even after an agreement is reached. For example, in an article posted prominently on Fatah’s website, the author discussed – uncharacteristically – the issue of the Jewish refugees. Zionism, according to this author, deliberately sowed terror in Iraq so as to frighten the Jews there and, eventually, settle them in Palestinian areas that were emptied of their residents, who then became refugees. Thus, the right of return is actually the right to return to lands that the United Nations allocated to the Arab state in the partition plan.²¹

What this means is that, from the Palestinians’ standpoint, the negotiations being held today are about the results of the 1967 war. The Palestinian state to be established along the 1967 lines is not intended to absorb the refugees from the 1948 lands; their proper place will be within the partition-plan borders. After “closing the file” on the 1967 borders, then, the “refugee file” will be opened, and the Palestinians will demand their return to the Arab state postulated by the partition plan. In other words, the real, intended border is not one along the 1967 lines, but the one of 1947.

An internal, strategic document formulated in the office of Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat, and posted on Palestinian websites in 2013,²²  states that the aim of the talks is not to reach an agreement but, rather, to create an alibi for imposing a solution on Israel. According to this document, the Palestinians agreed to enter the talks only after receiving a written commitment from Kerry to support the Palestinian position on the 1967 lines, and after publication of the European Union’s statement that Israel is to be penalized for the settlements – meaning Europe’s recognition of the 1967 lines is to be imposed on Israel. It turns out, then, that the Palestinian strategy is not to reach an agreement with Israel but, instead, to create breaches in its relations with the United States, after already fostering Israel’s dispute with Europe.
Moreover, there have been repeated signs that the Palestinian leadership has claims to Israeli territory within the 1967 lines. In 1999, when Yasser Arafat tried to revive Palestinian territorial demands on the basis of the Partition Map that appears in UN General Assembly Resolution 181, the PLO Observer, Nasser al-Kidwa, wrote an official letter to Secretary-General Kofi Anan in which he stated:

Israel must still explain to the international community the measures it took illegally to extend its laws and regulations to the territory it occupied in the war of 1948, beyond the territory allocated to the Jewish state in Resolution 181 (II).²³

The PLO at the time was planning to replace the Oslo Accords with Resolution 181 and thereby extend Palestinian territorial claims. This was explained by the Palestinian minister Nabil Sha’ath, who said that it was his hope that the Palestinians would also seek to obtain land in Western Jerusalem and not just in Eastern Jerusalem.

This claim is being sustained to this day. PLO Executive Committee member Hanan Ashrawi told Radio Palestine on January 8, 2014, that on the Jerusalem issue the Palestinians will also raise the matter of Palestinian properties in Western Jerusalem inside the 1967 lines. Palestinian sources have told this author that the files on Palestinian properties in Western Jerusalem were already prepared at Orient House by the late Feisal Husseini.

Abu Ala, who served as the speaker of the Palestinian Legislative Assembly and as a key Palestinian negotiator, stated in al-Hayat al-Judida on December 21, 1998: “It shall be emphasized that the [Palestinian] state has internationally recognized borders set in the [1947] partition resolution.”²⁴

Palestinian reliance on UN General Assembly Resolution 181 continued under Mahmoud Abbas. In September 2011, Abbas spoke at the UN General Assembly and explained that he was applying for UN membership “on the basis of the 1967 borders.” But in the formal Palestinian submission to the UN, in which the Palestinian Authority sought membership, there is no reference whatsoever to the 1967 lines but only to Resolution 181 from 1947. There is a second reference to the 1988 Declaration of Independence that also was based on Resolution 181.²⁵ Thus, there is considerable, cumulative evidence that the Palestinian leadership is maintaining claims to Israeli territory within the 1967 lines.

I'm not sure that the Americans believe this is the end of the 'Palestinian' claims either - Kerry and Obama would be happy to see the 'Palestinians' claim more....

Several years ago, Professor Steven Plaut wrote a parody of what would happen the day after an Israeli agreement with the 'Palestinians.' That parody rings true.

The morning after the Palestine Independence Celebrations, the message arrived in the Israeli parliament, brought in by special messenger.

The newly formed government of Palestine had only a small number of issues it would like to discuss with Israel. It proposed that peaceful relations be officially consummated, as soon as Israel turned over the Galilee and the Negev to Palestine. Israeli cabinet ministers were nonplussed. We thought we had settled all outstanding territorial issues by giving the Palestinians everything, they protested. The spokesman for the Palestine War Ministry explained: the Galilee was obviously part of the Arab homeland. It was filled with many Arabs and in many areas had an Arab population majority. Israel was holding 100% of the Galilee territory, and Palestine none at all, and surely that was unfair. As for the Negev, it too has large areas with Arab majorities, but is in fact needed so that Palestine can settle the many Palestinian refugees from around the world in lands and new homes.

Israel’s government preferred not to give offense and sour the new relations, and so offered to take the proposal under consideration.

Within weeks, endorsements of the Palestinian proposal were coming from a variety of sources. The Arab League endorsed it. The EU approved a French proposal that the Galilee and Negev be transferred to Palestine in stages over 3 years. Within Israel, many voices were heard in favor of the proposal. Large rallies were held in the universities. The Israeli press endorsed the idea almost in full unison, with only some regional weeklies from the north and south dissenting. Israeli film producers began turning out documentaries on the sufferings of Galilee and Negev Arabs under Israeli rule.

Sociologists from around the world produced studies showing that these Arabs were victims of horrible discrimination and that Israel is characterized by institutional racism. Israeli poets and novelists wrote passionate appeals for support of the Galilee and Negev ‘Others’.

When Israel’s cabinet rejected the proposal, the pressures mounted. A Galilee and Negev Liberation Organization was founded and immediately granted recognition by the UN General Assembly. It established consulate facilities in 143 countries. Weeks later, the infiltrations began. Squads of terrorists infiltrated the borders between Palestine and Israel, and suicide bombers produced a carnage of 75 murdered Jews a day.

The border fences that Ariel Sharon had constructed were reinforced, but to no avail. The US State Department proposed that Israel defuse the situation by considering compromise on the matters of the Galilee and Negev.

Read the whole thing.  It's long past time to end this madness.

Labels: Barack Hussein Obama, Israel is a Jewish state, Israel's right to exist, John Kerry, Negev, Palestinian state RIGHT NOW syndrome

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 6:40 PM