Biden’s “Nine-Miles-Wide Plan” - all carrots, no stick

Biden’s “Nine-Miles-Wide Plan”

What should American Jews do? Turn to all our tried-and-true methods of lobbying and protest. And do it now—while there is still time.

By Stephen M. Flatow

The Biden administration reportedly intends to demand that Israel return to the nine-miles-wide pre-1967 armistice lines. Should we be surprised? How dangerous would that be? And what should American Jews do about it?

According to numerous media reports, an outline of the Biden plan has been prepared by Hady Amr, the deputy assistant secretary for Israeli and Palestinian Affairs. Amr worked on the same issues during the Obama administration. So, it’s hardly surprising that the plan he has drafted reflects the same positions that were taken when Barack Obama was president and Joe Biden was vice president.

The central theme of Biden’s Israeli-Palestinian policy in the short term, according to the Amr memo, will be a series of rewards to be given to the Palestinian Authority, even though the P.A. has done absolutely nothing to merit any of them.

Despite the P.A.’s financial support for terrorists, harboring of fugitive terrorists, constant anti-Jewish incitement and unrelenting anti-American propaganda, the Biden administration intends to “reset the U.S. relationship with the Palestinian people and leadership” by:

·       Sending the P.A. at least $15 million monthly ($180 million annually) as “humanitarian assistance,” starting in “late March or early April.”

·       Soon expanding that P.A. aid package to include “a full range of economic, security and humanitarian assistance,” including funds for the corrupt, pro-terrorist UNRWA agency. By “security” aid, Amr undoubtedly means the pro-terrorist, de facto army that the P.A. calls its “security services.”

·       Resuming diplomatic contacts with P.A. officials by reopening the PLO embassy in Washington, D.C., and using the old (but still functioning) American consulate in Jerusalem as a de facto embassy to the Palestinians.

·       Inviting the United Nations and the Quartet, both of which are militantly pro-Palestinian, to “engage” in the diplomatic process.

·       Resuming “country of origin labeling,” which means declaring that goods made in much of Jerusalem, as well as Judea, Samaria and the Golan Heights, will be forced to carry “Made in Palestine” labels since the Biden administration has decided that all those areas belong to the Palestinian Arabs.

In return, the Biden administration intends to make two laughably inadequate “demands” of the P.A. First, it will seek “to obtain a Palestinian commitment” to stop paying terrorists, which will probably be as genuine and durable as all the previous P.A. commitments to stop aiding terrorists.

Second, Biden will “emphasize to the P.A.” the need for “reductions of arrests of bloggers and dissidents.” What a joke! The P.A. won’t even be expected to stop arresting dissidents; it just has to arrest a few less.

What’s most important, however, is the end goal of the Biden plan. Amr’s draft says that all of the above steps are “a means to advance the prospects of a negotiated two-state solution … based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed land swaps.”

In plain English, that means a sovereign “State of Palestine” in all, or nearly all, of Judea and Samaria, and the Gaza Strip (and part of Jerusalem). The “land swaps” phrase can be disregarded. It’s nonsense; obviously, if Israel and the P.A. ever wanted to “swap land”—which they don’t—they don’t need a plan by U.S. President Joe Biden to do it.

The plan is, put simply, the “Nine-Miles Wide Plan.” It has to be. Because any Palestinian state has to include the third-largest P.A. city, Tulkarm, and the fifth-largest P.A. city, Qalqilya. The P.A. is not going to make those cities part of Israel. So, they will be part of “Palestine.” Tulkarm and Qalqilya are nine miles from the Mediterranean Sea. Israel won’t even be as wide as Washington, D.C.—or the Bronx, N.Y.

One terrifying anecdote from 1967 tells you all you need to know about the dangers of Biden’s “Nine-Miles Wide Plan.” On the eve of the Six-Day War, as hostilities seemed increasingly likely, numerous Israeli mothers residing along the coast kept their children home from school. Why? Because they knew that the country could be sliced in two by a Jordanian tank column in a matter of minutes, and they didn’t want their children to be trapped on the other side. Imagine living with that kind of fear.

What should American Jews do? Turn to all our tried-and-true methods of lobbying and protest. Write letters. Make phone calls. Urge Jewish organizations to speak out. Do it now—while there is still time. Let the Biden administration see that we will not accept its deadly plan.

 Stephen M. Flatow is a vice president of the Religious Zionists of America, an attorney in New Jersey and the father of Alisa Flatow, who was murdered in an Iranian-sponsored Palestinian terrorist attack in 1995. He is the author of “A Father’s Story: My Fight for Justice Against Iranian Terror.”

This column first appeared on JNS.ORG.

 Searching for new ways to fund a terrorist regime.

By Stephen M. Flatow

The United States doesn’t finance schools in Iran or North Korea. So why should it pay for those under the Palestinian Authority, which not only sponsors terrorists but spreads some of the most vicious anti-American propaganda in the world?

(March 15, 2021 / JNS)

Question: How do you get the American government to finance a terrorist regime when U.S. law prevents it from doing so?

 Answer: Twist the meaning of words, claim that the law doesn’t say what it obviously says and pretend the regime doesn’t sponsor terror. In other words, play the usual games.

 Those games are in full swing now in the campaign to put American taxpayers’ dollars into the pockets of the Palestinian Authority.

 Last week, The New York Times published a gigantic feature story about a Palestinian Arab school located in the village of Jaba near Bethlehem that supposedly will be in dire straits unless it starts receiving large amounts of American aid, and fast.

Jaba School, NY Times

The article, by Times correspondent Adam Rasgon, never considers the question of why the P.A. chooses to fund terrorists rather than its own schools. Last year, the P.A. distributed $15 million monthly —monthly!—on salaries for terrorists who are imprisoned in Israel. Just one month of those funds could have built quite a few schools.

Instead, Rasgon’s entire article was based on the premise that America has some kind of obligation to pay for the P.A.’s schools.

 The United States does send humanitarian assistance to various impoverished countries, but not to anti-American, terror-sponsoring regimes. The United States doesn’t finance schools in Iran or North Korea. So why should it pay for schools under the P.A., which not only sponsors terrorists but spreads some of the most vicious anti-American propaganda in the world?

 Moreover, what exactly is being taught in the school that the Times wants American taxpayers to support? P.A. school textbooks are notorious for glorifying terrorism and vilifying Israel and America. Are we supposed to believe that the Jaba school will be the first P.A. school to use a moderate, peace-promoting curriculum?

 One of the main commentators quoted in the Times article was Joel Braunold, who was described as “an expert on U.S. law surrounding foreign aid to the Palestinians.” Braunold made it clear he is troubled that U.S. law, specifically the Taylor Force Act, prohibits sending aid to the P.A. so long as it pays terrorists.

So Braunold plays word games to get around that inconvenient law.

 He asks: “Would funding construction of this school, which is controlled by the Palestinian government, be considered direct support of the Palestinian Authority? It may or may not be. It is up to the Secretary of State to decide.”

 Braunold is obviously hoping that the current Secretary of State, unlike his predecessor, will change the plain meaning of the term “direct support” so that the Taylor Force Act can be discarded, and the U.S. can start sending checks to the P.A.

 Braunold and the Times are not the only ones playing word games in order to get aid to the P.A. Recently, David Makovsky—former right-hand man to ex-Mideast envoy Martin Indyk—has been promoting the idea that the P.A. should dress up its payments-to-terrorists program as “a welfare system” that would pretend to hand out money based on financial need (instead of based on how many Jews the recipient murdered). Makovsky was doing what we call “saying the quiet part out loud”—giving away, in public, what he hopes the P.A. will do in order to perpetrate a farce on American taxpayers.

 One last word about Joel Braunold, the “expert” who was quoted prominently in the article about the school. The Times correspondent, Adam Rasgon, somehow “forgot” to mention that Braunold is the managing director at a left-wing think tank, the S. Daniel Abraham Center for Middle East Peace, which just happens to advocate U.S. funding for the P.A. (Key activists at the center in years past have included J Street leader Jeremy Ben-Ami and Sara Ehrman, one of the founders of Americans for Peace Now.)

 I would welcome a serious and robust public discussion about the question of American aid to the P.A. and the Taylor Force Act. What I don’t like are the dishonest tactics being used by some of those who are promoting the Palestinian cause.

 So, please, don’t tell us that the United States has some kind of obligation to finance P.A. schools. Tell us what’s being taught in those schools if you want us to fund them.

 Don’t tell us that the Secretary of State can arbitrarily change the meaning of U.S. law. He cannot.

 Don’t give the P.A. advice on how to pull the wool over the American public’s eyes so that it can get our money. And don’t pretend that an advocate for Palestinian funding is some kind of neutral “expert.”

 Most of all, stop searching for new ways to get American dollars to a terror-sponsoring regime. Instead, try searching for ways to force the P.A. to change its terrorist ways. That would be a real step towards Middle East peace.

 Stephen M. Flatow is a vice president of the Religious Zionists of America, an attorney in New Jersey and the father of Alisa Flatow, who was murdered in an Iranian-sponsored Palestinian terrorist attack in 1995. He is the author of “A Father’s Story: My Fight for Justice Against Iranian Terror.”