If Arafat could recognize Israel as a Jewish State, why can’t Palestinians now?
Yasser, that’s a Jewish State
Whether the Palestinians will recognize Israel as a Jewish State is a hot issue in the current negotiations, with Mahmoud Abbas, the Arab League and the Fatah Party saying not now, no way, never ever.
As I’ve noted before, historically there is no controversy that Israel is the Jewish State. That’s what the U.N. General Assembly called it in the 1947 partition plan, what Harry Truman called it in recognizing Israel, and what Palestinian negotiatiors — including Yasser Arafat — called it in private.
Now a public statement to that effect from Arafat himself has surfaced via The Tablet:
One of the key points of contention in the current Israeli-Palestinian peace talks is whether the Palestinians will agree to recognize Israel as a Jewish state. This Israeli claim, which originated on the Israeli left at the height of the Second Intifada and has been part of the negotiations ever since, has been a major sticking point for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who has thus far categorically rejected it.
But newly-rediscovered footage of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat may upend his successor’s argument that Israel’s demand is an unprecedented one that no Palestinian leader could accept. In the video, apparently of a 1988 press conference in Sweden, Arafat clearly states–in English–that “the PNC [Palestinian National Council] had accepted two states, a Palestine state and Jewish state–between brackets ‘Israel.’” Watch it below:
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This is just another indication of how the Palestinians have hardened their position over the years, and since Obama-Kerry practically begged them to be flexible.
(Featured image: YairRosenberg / YouTube video)
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Because Arafat wasn’t a religious fanatic and was capable of accepting the right of Jews to exist. Hamas, Abbas, Fatah and the other terrorists are fanatics and incapable of allowing anyone not muslim to live.
Arafat was lying. Sheesh. It ain’t hard to figure that one out.
Arafat was content to take apart Israel step by step. If accepting a Jewish state was a step in the direction of Israel’s destruction (and it was), then Arafat was for it.
Would it make a difference if they said they recognized Israel as a Jewish state? They’re just liars. They’d still want to push it into the ocean or blow it up, and they’d still have the tacit support of the elites to do so.
Have you heard of taqqiyah, Wm? Arafat did, and that’s why he said what he did. Was the intifada about the recognition of a Jewish state or was it about the destruction of a Jewish state? What about the endless homicide bomb attacks and the murders?
We Americans have trouble looking our enemy in the eye and calling his name; Muslims don’t. Arafat merely officially named the enemy that was to be destroyed under the guise of “recognizing” Israel.
Given Arafat’s failure to validate any peace agreement he’d signed by living up to its terms, anybody would conclude that the there is an unbroken line between Arafat and Abbas. The only difference is that Abbas has dispensed with the taqqiyah because he’s got a Muslim friend in the White House.
So, everything has remained the same; nothing has hardened.
Agreed. It seems unlikely to be a convincing argument that Arafat, on a single public occasion, recognized Israel’s right to exist–disregarding prior, contemporary, and subsequent statements to the contrary. I suspect, as perhaps many others do as well, that his private correspondence and conversations within the PLO and to Abbas sang an all together different tune.
In fact he made subsequent public statements in Arabic rejecting the idea of recognizing a Jewish state in Palestine, the very thing he is said to have done.
But there is still a difference: today, Palestinian leaders could not even suggest this in English to American audiences, else they would be dead by sundown. Decades of European enmity and Arab use of energy pressure on others have emboldened the Palestinians, who live in the same sorry and deprived state they did 40 years ago because of their own will, to believe they do not have to make peace because they can still expel the Jews.
Naturally, there is almost no situation which could not by the injection of involvement of Obama or Kerry be made even worse.
Sorry, I added the second comment before I read yours.
Indeed. Arafat was noted for saying one thing in Arabic and the exact opposite in English. Then, when MEMRI caught him out, he would claim poor translation or some other idiocy, and the West let him get away with it. In English, he “recognized” Israel as a Jewish state. In Arabic, he was all about the destruction of Israel. The old, nasty-looking, murdering sod knew how to keep the West on a string.
A quote from Article 22 of the PLO Charter:
“….the liberation of Palestine will destroy the Zionist and imperialist presence and will contribute to the establishment of peace in the Middle East…”
One from Article 9:
“Armed struggle is the only way to liberate Palestine. Thus it is the overall strategy, not merely a tactical phase.”
This is what the ‘Peace Process’ is really about. Judenrein.
In one of the “peace agreements” celebrated along the way, perhaps the one in Ohio, Palestinians agreed to remove those phrases from their Charter. They never did.