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Palestinians pull out of planned talks due to apartment building

March 11, 2010

In no surprise to anyone, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas announced that he’s not going to enter into U.S.-mediated peace negotiations with Israel. His stated reason is to protest recently announced plans for 1,600 new homes in Jerusalem, which complicated a visit by U.S. Vice President Joe Biden.

News reports have been labeling the building plans as Jewish encroachment on “East Jerusalem,” but, in actuality, the expansion is planned in Ramat Shlomo, a primarily ultra-Orthodox neighborhood in the city’s north.

Ramat Shlomo (also known as “Shuafat,” the name of a nearby Arab neighborhood) sits across a deep, forested valley from the old Jewish neighborhood Sanhedria (which gets its name from the fact that it holds tombs of members of the Sanhedrin, the “Men of the Great Assembly” who presided over ancient Israel after the destruction of the Temples) and the newer neighborhood of Ramat Eshkol. Ramat Shlomo is one of the few neighborhoods in Jerusalem that isn’t land-locked by other development. It was named for the late modern scholar and Jewish leader Rabbi Shlomo Auerbach.

According to the Jerusalem Post, residents of the area are confused by the dust-up. Said one:

“[Former Jerusalem Mayor] Teddy Kollek…would be turning over in his grave right now if he knew that this was even being debated….If we can’t build here, then tell me, please, where can we build?”

Eli Diskin, a Ramat Shlomo resident, said that 1,600 new housing units “wouldn’t even be enough” to deal with the overflowing population of the neighborhood. “Each family averages between seven and eight members, and frankly, there is nowhere left for people to live. If someone gets married, if they have more kids, where are they supposed to go? They have to leave the neighborhood.”

“I don’t think it even needs to be explained,” Diskin added.

His sentiments were echoed by every other Ramat Shlomo resident on Wednesday.

“If this is not an inseparable part of Jerusalem, than what is?” asked Pini Gamliel.

Mendy Hechtman said American diplomats should come and see the neighborhood for themselves. “Once you get here, you can easily see that this is simply another neighborhood in Jerusalem, but the media makes it seem like this is some kind of far-removed settlement.”

However much building there might be perceived by Israelis as nothing more than a building project not worthy of notice by anyone but those looking for affordable housing, the building plans drew a swift condemnation from visiting Vice President Biden and Prime Minister Netanyahu later apologized to him for the “unfortunate timing” of the announcement.

But it was enough to scuttle chances for talks.

“The Palestinian side is not ready to negotiate under the present circumstances,” said Arab League chief Amr Moussa, following an emergency meeting of Arab delegates in Cairo. “The talks have already stopped.”

Abbas and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu had agreed to enter into “proximity” talks on Monday as Washington’s Middle East envoy George Mitchell promised to help steer the floundering peace process. Most Israelis don’t see any point in talks.

Waqf, PA leadership attempt to rewrite biblical history

March 8, 2010

We told you before about the ongoing (low-burn) violence and media circus surrounding the Jewish state’s adding two major tourist and spiritual pilgrimage spots to a list of sites of “Jewish cultural heritage.”

Well, on Friday, worshipers at the Western Wall were stoned by rioters on top of the Temple Mount and 15 Israeli policemen and dozens of the rioters were injured in the resulting scuffles. (Don’t Islamic leaders mind their followers using the high ground of what is ostensibly a holy site to attempt to maim worshipers below?)

So let’s go over this again: Israel added two spots to a list that designates sites of historical and cultural relevance. And this caused Palestinians to riot? (Continuing the long tradition of the Palestinian Authority using violence or threats of it where other governments use diplomacy.) And countries ranging from Jordan, Egypt, and other Arab league states, to–predictably– the UN felt the need to condemn the list-making (while not condemning the violence fomented by the PA). And, of course, the U.S. hasn’t retracted the State Department’s comments on the matter, which were that the Israeli list was “provocative and unhelpful.”

So what are these sites anyway?

What exactly are these sites? One is Rachel’s Tomb, which sits on the edge of Bethelehem close to Jerusalem. The second is the Cave of the Patriarchs, which sits in the middle of Hebron. Just how “provocative” is it to add these to the list of sites of Jewish cultural import?

Rachel’s Tomb is identified in Genesis 35:19-20: “So Rachel died and was buried on the way to Ephrath (that is, Bethlehem). Over her tomb Jacob set up a pillar, and to this day that pillar marks Rachel’s tomb.” As the Bible relates, the site has been holy to Jews for thousands of years — more than a thousand years before Islam even came into existence! (And holy to Christians hundreds of years before…)

The case of the Cave of the Patriarchs is even more ironic: Genesis 23 records how Abraham insists on purchasing a burial cave near his home in Kiryat Arba (next to modern-day Hebron) from Ephron the Hittite, even when Ephron offers it to him as a gift:

Then Abraham rose from beside his dead wife and spoke to the Hittites. He said, “I am an alien and a stranger among you. Sell me some property for a burial site here so I can bury my dead.” (Genesis 23:3-4)

The Hittites offer him “the choicest of our tombs,” but Abraham asks them to “intercede with Ephron son of Zohar on my behalf so he will sell me the cave of Machpelah, which belongs to him and is at the end of his field. Ask him to sell it to me for the full price as a burial site among you.”

Ephron offers to give Abraham the cave for free: “No, my lord,” he said. “Listen to me; I give you the field, and I give you the cave that is in it. I give it to you in the presence of my people. Bury your dead.” (Genesis 23:11-12)

A recorded real estate transaction

But Abraham insists on paying for it:

Again Abraham bowed down before the people of the land and he said to Ephron in their hearing, “Listen to me, if you will. I will pay the price of the field. Accept it from me so I can bury my dead there.”

Ephron answered Abraham, “Listen to me, my lord; the land is worth four hundred shekels of silver, but what is that between me and you? Bury your dead.”

Abraham agreed to Ephron’s terms and weighed out for him the price he had named in the hearing of the Hittites: four hundred shekels of silver, according to the weight current among the merchants.

So Ephron’s field in Machpelah near Mamre—both the field and the cave in it, and all the trees within the borders of the field—was deeded to Abraham as his property in the presence of all the Hittites who had come to the gate of the city. Afterward Abraham buried his wife Sarah in the cave in the field of Machpelah near Mamre (which is at Hebron) in the land of Canaan. So the field and the cave in it were deeded to Abraham by the Hittites as a burial site. (Genesis 23:12-20)

The Jewish Sages comment that part of the reason that Abraham was so eager to pay for the burial cave was so that no one could ever dispute that fact that the Jewish people owned it. (The only other sites so recorded are the Tomb of Joseph, which is near the Biblical Shechem, now present-day Nablus, and the site of the Holy Temple, the Temple Mount – both of which Palestinians claim as being of dubious import to the Jewish people.)

Commentator Michael Freund says it best:

Sites such as Rachel’s Tomb and the Cave of the Patriarchs are part of the national and religious patrimony of the Jewish people, and we do not need anyone’s permission to renovate and maintain them. Our reverence for these sites and attachment to them predates Muhammad and precedes Jesus, and no one has the right to lecture us about where and how we choose to serve God.

In fact, this entire episode provides a revealing glimpse of just how transparently hypocritical our critics have become. After all, it was nearly 15 years ago, in the September 1995 Oslo II Accords, that the Palestinians themselves recognized Israel’s attachment to Rachel’s Tomb. In Article V, Annex I to the agreement, the Palestinians agreed that “the present situation and existing practices in the tomb shall be preserved,” meaning that they clearly consented to Israeli control and use of the site, which has never been anything other than a place of Jewish worship.

So for chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat to say last week that Israel’s move amounts to a “unilateral decision to make Palestinian sites in Hebron and Bethlehem part of Israel” is not only absurd, it is patently false.

And since the accords were signed on the White House lawn in front of the world, and were formally witnessed by representatives of both the US administration and the European Union, one would expect them to see right through the Palestinians’ shenanigans.

Worse yet, by playing along with the feigned outrage of the Palestinian leadership, the international community is merely giving credence to their boorish denial of the Jewish essence of these sites.

You don’t have to be a Biblical scholar or a learned archeologist to recognize the long-standing and incontestably Jewish nature of Rachel’s Tomb and the Cave of the Patriarchs. Arguing otherwise is akin to asserting that the earth is flat, Elvis is still alive and the moon is made of cheese, and that is how the Palestinian claims should be viewed.

Is it offensive to call Jesus’ birthplace a Christian site?

Can the world imagine a case in which Israel would list the Church of the Manger (Jesus’ birthplace) in Bethlehem and Jesus’ family home in Nazareth as sites of historical importance to Christians — and the Palestinians would protest?

Unfortunately, I think we can. But that doesn’t make it any more crazy.

UK’s Guardian gives an amen to indignation over “heritage sites” violence and historical revisionism

March 6, 2010

London’s Guardian rails against the attempt to blot out Jewish history via the fracas over the “Jewish historical sites”:

Palestinian protests against the restoration of Jewish heritage sites are part of a campaign of delegitimization against Israel. The inclusion in Israel’s heritage restoration project of two of the most sacred Jewish sites, the Cave of the Patriarchs and Rachel’s Tomb, has sparked riots and led supposedly moderate Palestinian leaders to burst forth with disturbingly inflammatory rhetoric, with the U.S. State Department and the UN secretary general both reprimanding Israel for the decision as well.

This latest uproar is another example of the general Palestinian unwillingness to accept and acknowledge the deep-seated historical roots of the Jewish people in the region. The Cave of the Patriarchs is mentioned in the Bible and has been a focus of Jewish pilgrimage for more than 3,000 years as the burial place of the people’s three forefathers. The refurbishment of two shrines central to Jewish history in no way threatens Palestinian political ambitions. What it does do is present an obstacle to those who wish to erase Jewish history in the region.

Arab IDF soldier stabbed to death near Biblical city of Shechem, terrorist serves in Palestinian police force

February 10, 2010

A Palestinian terrorist ambushed an IDF soldier sitting in traffic at an intersection in the West Bank near Nablus, the Biblical city of Shechem.

The soldier murdered was First-Sgt. Muhammad Ihab Khatib, 26, from the village of Marar in northern Israel. Khatib, a non-commissioned logistics officer, was waiting in traffic in his jeep when the assailtant, identified as Mahmoud Hattib, leaned into Khatib’s open window and stabbed him in the chest. Khatib attempted to drive away from his attacker, but his jeep overturned, the Jerusalem Post reported.

Khatib was evacuated to Beilinson Hospital but could not survive the knife wounds.

Khatib is an example of how many Arab Israelis–most notably from the Druze and Beduin communities–serve with valor and distinction in the IDF, sometimes making the ultimate sacrifice for their country.

Khatib’s family is now absorbing another sacrifice: Several years ago, one of his uncles was killed in action and, during the 2006 Second Lebanon War, an aunt was killed when a Hezbullah-fired Katyusha rocket fired hit her house.

While Khatib fought for his life, security officials pursued his killer, Hattib. He was arrested after being run over and lightly hurt by a security officer from the nearby settlement of Rehelim. Defense officials have determined that Hattib worked alone. They also identified him as a member of the Palestinian Authority police force.

How’s that for a partner in peace?

SFI sends our condolences to the Khatib family, and prays that the Source of Comfort will send them peace. May Khatib’s memory be forever a blessing.

U.S. envoy arrives in Israel as Obama tells Time magazine that Mid-East peace “just really hard”

January 22, 2010

U.S. envoy to the Middle East George Mitchell arrived in Israel yesterday for a round of meetings with Israeli and Palestinian officials in an attempt to get the two sides to restart peace talks.

The Palestinians have said they will not return to talks without a building freeze in settlements, which the Netanyahu administration imposed–amid much controversy–in November. The Palestinians have said that the ban is insufficient since it does not halt building in Jerusalem, the BBC reports:

Last week Mr Mitchell raised the possibility of the US cutting some financial support for Israel if peace talks did not progress, angering Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Since he came to office in 2009, President Barack Obama has tried to get Israeli-Palestinian peace talks moving, but with little success. Attempts to bring both parties to the table last September were unsuccessful.

Meanwhile, in an interview with Time magazine, President Barack Obama said that his administration’s Mideast policy had fallen short of expectations:

“This is just really hard … and if we had anticipated some of these political problems on both sides earlier, we might not have raised expectations as high,” Obama said, referring to internal political constraints affecting both the Israelis and Palestinians.

Still, the president remains optimistic his administration can bring peace.

“Moving forward, though, we are going to continue to work with both parties to recognize what I think is ultimately their deep-seated interest in a two-state solution in which Israel is secure and Palestinians have sovereignty and can start focusing on developing their economy and improving the lives of their children and grandchildren.”

Report: U.S. envoy readying plan that will create Palestinian state in all of West Bank

A report in Friday’s London-based Arabic newspaper al-Hayat says U.S. envoy to the Middle East George Mitchell is readying a new five-point plan for the resumption of peace negotiations during his latest visit to Israel, Arutz Sheva reports.

According to the proposal, the U.S. will pressure Israel to retreat to the armistice line with Jordan that existed between 1949 and 1967, making way for a new Palestinian state in all lands captured during the Six-Day War:

Mitchell, who served as a United States Senator and until recently as director of the influential Council on Foreign Relations in New York, has reportedly been coordinating efforts with Arab governments in the region to push Israel into surrendering Judea, Samaria and most of Jerusalem. Such concessions, according to most diplomats, would carry expectations from the international community that Israel forcibly expel hundreds of thousands of Jewish residents from their homes in Israel’s heartland after forty years of renewed residence there.

One important feature of the new Mitchell plan is that the status of Jerusalem would be negotiated separately from Judea and Samaria. Israel’s capital has become a contentious issue in recent months. Although Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu complied with Washington’s demands that he ban all Jewish construction in Judea and Samaria, the premier has thus far refused to extend the discriminatory freeze to Jewish building in Jerusalem. The Fatah-controlled PA has used this refusal as a pretext to avoid negotiations and Mitchell’s decision to separate Jerusalem in his new plan is seen by many as an attempt to temporarily side-step major points of contention in order to advance Washington’s regional agenda, which the new plan shows will include Jerusalem’s eventual division.

PA would not do well on a game show

January 9, 2010

What was that TV game show that Monty Hall hosted? Where contestants got to choose “Door Number 1″ OR “Door Number 2.” No one ever got to say, “Monty, I’ll take both doors!” Or, after finding out that there was a goat and a spokesmodel in a “Heidi” costume behind the door they picked, no one got to say, “Monty! I don’t want the goat — I want ‘Door Number 2′ now!”

Wouldn’t have worked on TV, but apparently it works in the Middle East “peace process.”

“We want to resume the talks from the point where they ended in December 2008,” Chief Palestinian Authority negotiator Saeb Erekat announced recently,which means that he wants the new Israeli government’s opening offer to include everything the PA rejected from previous Israeli government (which was, er, voted out of office).

“We have every right to talk about a Palestinian state within the June 4, 1967 borders, including Jerusalem,” Erekat avowed.

Um, not really. The Palestinians could have had a state many times over, if they’d decided to accept Israeli peace offers. Instead, they usually decided to attack and kill a bunch of Jews, and eventually would be pushed even further back by the IDF. Israel is the only country that is expected to offer ever greater concession after concession in response to the most violent of rejections:

  • In 1937, the Peel Commission proposed the partition of Palestine and the creation of an Arab state.
  • In 1939, the British White Paper proposed the creation of an Arab state alone, but the Arabs rejected the plan.
  • In 1947, the UN would have created an even larger Arab state as part of its partition plan. Israel accepted the plan; Arab states attacked when Israel declared independence.
  • The 1979 Egypt-Israel peace negotiations offered the Palestinians autonomy, which would almost certainly have led to full independence.
  • The Oslo process that began in 1993 was leading toward the creation of a Palestinian state before the Palestinian-sponsored terror scuttled the agreements.
  • In 2000, Prime Minister Ehud Barak offered to create a Palestinian state, but Yasser Arafat rejected the deal.
  • In addition, from 1948 to 1967, Israel did not control the West Bank. The Palestinians could have demanded an independent state from the Jordanians.

US envoy threatens Israel with sanctions

US Envoy George Mitchell's official portrait from the U.S. Senate

Echoing threats last unfurled during the administration of George Bush, Sr.–generally considered recent history’s low-point in U.S.-Israel relations–U.S. Middle East envoy George Mitchell warned that Israel could face sanctions if the Jewish State doesn’t push forward peace talks toward establishing a Palestinian state, Yediot Aharonot reports.

Ahead of his visit to the region, the former senator told PBS that American law allows the U.S. to stop aid to Israel by freezing loan guarantees, leverage used by U.S. officials during the term of George Bush Sr. Israeli-American relations were strained during the period, during which former Secretary of State James Baker, when told that advisors worried that American Jews would be troubled by the administration’s pressure on Israel,  famously responded, “[Expletive] the Jews. They don’t vote for us anyway.”

Mitchell leaves for an international trip this week, addressing the Quartet nations in Brussels before heading to Israel, Lebanon and Syria later in the month.

The heroine of Palestine’s heroines? Really?

January 4, 2010

Murderess-Hero Dalal Mughrabi

Who someone admires is revealing. After all, what parent wouldn’t breathe a sigh of relief knowing that his daughter’s heroine was Hillary Clinton or Sarah Palin (depending on one’s political preferences), rather than the all-too-common Paris Hilton or Kardashian sisters? So, too, do a society’s heroes reveal much about where its priorities and values lay.

Hence the tragedy of the veneration of Dalal Mughrabi, one of the more twisted proto-feminists in history’s annals. Mughrabi was the leader of what became known as “the Coastal Road Massacre,” a 1978 terrorist attack in which 38 civilians–among them 13 children–were murdered.

Mughrabi, then around 20, headed a group of 12 terrorists who floated on rubber dinghies from Lebanon and landed on Israeli beaches early on the Sabbath morning of March 11, 1978. The group’s ultimate intentions, according to news reports at the time, was to get to Tel Aviv, where they’d take tourists and foreign ambassadors hostage in order to force the release of Palestinian prisoners being held by Israel.

The charred remains of the bus in which dozens were immolated stands at a memorial in Holon, Israel.

Things didn’t go quite as planned: They murdered an American on the beach, hijacked a cab (killing its passengers), and hijacked two buses driving on Highway 2, the main road that runs along the coast between Tel Aviv and Haifa. News reports described Ms. Mughrabi’s work:

The bus continued driving south on the Coastal Road (Highway 2) while the terrorists fired and threw grenades at passing cars, shot passengers and dumped at least one body out of the bus. At one point, they hijacked another bus and forced the passengers from the first bus to board it. An explosion caused either by an exploding fuel tank or a grenade set the bus on fire, killing 38 civilians, 13 of them children. 71 Israelis were wounded.

The passengers had been burned alive. Mughrabi and several of the other captors were killed.

Rather than a cautionary tale of what happens to extremists, Mughrabi has been venerated as “a living legend and a wonderful example for all women” by the Palestinian Authority’s Al-Hayat Al-Jadeeda newspaper. In 2008, Al Jazeera TV aired a program extolling her just prior to the return of her body to Lebanon as a part of the prisoner exchange for the bodies of fallen Israeli soldiers Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev.

Girls’ schools in Hebron and Gaza are named after her, as are children’s summer camps, and a computer training program. (Imagine sending your child to “Lizzie Borden Elementary School.”)

The murderer-as-role-model phenomenon, alas, isn’t an isolated incident, and it’s not stopping — even as the Palestinian Authority heaps more demands and pre-conditions on “peace” negotiations with Israel.

The invaluable Palestinian Media Watch reports:

This week Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas once again honored the memory of the terrorist Dalal Mughrabi – this time by sponsoring a ceremony celebrating the 50th anniversary of her birth. Mughrabi led the worst terror attack in Israel’s history in 1978, when she and other terrorists hijacked a bus and killed 37 civilians. Present at the ceremony were Palestinian dignitaries and a children’s marching band. Earlier this year, Abbas sponsored a computer center named after Mughrabi.

The PA further glorified Mughrabi on the date of her birth when the Governor of Ramallah announced the naming of the “Dalal Mughrabi Square”.

An article by Fatah spokesman Jamal Nazal in the official PA daily defined the terrorist Mughrabi as “the heroine of Palestine’s heroines.”

As we said above, who a person–or  a society–admires reveals a great deal about it. In this case, what it reveals is revolting, and very, very sad.

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