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.”

 

The ‘pressure-Israel’ machine kicks into high gear

By Stephen M. Flatow

For several weeks now, various editors, journalists and pundits have been busily manufacturing a mini-crisis, presumably in order to provoke tension between the American and Israeli governments.

The critics of Israel are so predictable, it’s almost funny.

Over the past two weeks, as if on cue, The New York Times published an op-ed urging steps to facilitate the creation of a Palestinian state; the RAND Corporation released a new study pushing for the creation of a Palestinian state; and the news media manufactured a mini-crisis between President Joe Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in order to put more pressure on Israel to—you guessed it—agree to the creation of a Palestinian state.

I say “as if on cue” and not “on cue” because there’s no evidence that any of this is the product of some kind of coordination or conspiracy. Rather, it’s just the same old alignment of pundits, partisans and self-appointed experts who champion Palestinian statehood and see the Biden administration as a vehicle to accomplish that goal.

This latest wave of pro-Palestinian pressure began on Feb. 10 with the RAND Corporation’s release of a new study, “Alternatives in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.”

RAND held meetings with 33 “focus groups,” consisting of a grand total of 270 Arabs and Jews in Israel and abroad, and then concluded from those discussions that creating a Palestinian state is “the most politically viable alternative” of the possible “solutions” to the Arab-Israeli conflict. 

Obviously, a bunch of “focus groups” don’t have any magical insight for solving a conflict that has raged for more than a century. But when you wrap a “study” in the prestigious name of a prominent and well-heeled institution such as the RAND Corporation, you get media attention, which in turn influences public opinion and maybe even political leaders. 

Two days after RAND’s announcement, the Times devoted a large portion of its op-ed page to an essay by Bernard Avishai and Sam Bahour calling on Israel to facilitate various economic steps that would lay the groundwork for the creation of a Palestinian state. Their plan includes “dividing sovereignty in Jerusalem,” by the way. 

Bahour is an American-Palestinian Arab businessman who lives in Ramallah, so it’s almost comical when he and his co-author complain about Palestinians wanting to be “free from military occupation,” as they put it. Bahour should look out his window. He won’t see any Israeli soldiers or Israeli military governor; they left in 1995. Bahour has been living under Palestinian military occupation—the Palestinian Authority, not Israeli military occupation—for the past 26 years. 

His co-author, Bernard Avishai, has penned The Tragedy of Zionism. According to CAMERA, Avishai’s writings about Israel are “hate-filled,” “full of malice” and “drip with loathing of Israel.” Of course, his identification line in the Times op-ed did not mention anything about him viewing Israel as a tragedy; Avishai is just “an American-Israeli professor and writer.” 

The same day that the Bahour-Avishai op-ed appeared, the White House, responding to media inquiries, publicly denied that Biden was “snubbing” Netanyahu by not including him among the first phone calls that the newly elected president made during his first month in office. But evidently, that denial meant nothing to The Los Angeles Times, which five days later ran this headline: “Biden’s Snub of Netanyahu Sets the Tone for More Evenhanded U.S.-Israel Relationship.” 

For several weeks now, various editors, journalists and pundits have been busily manufacturing a mini-crisis over the non-snub, presumably in order to provoke tension between the American and Israeli governments. The critics don’t want the new U.S. administration getting too friendly with the Israelis. They want Biden to be pressuring Israel for that Palestinian state. 

One of those quoted in the various news articles about the non-snub was Aaron Miller, a longtime State Department Arabist who worked hard to get several previous administrations to support Palestinian demands. He seems anxious to push Biden down a similar path. 

In an op-ed on CNN.com last week, Miller trotted out an 11-year-old incident to remind everyone of a previous time Biden got mad at Israel—from which Miller no doubt derives encouragement that maybe Biden can be turned against the Israelis again. 

According to Miller, Biden “was deeply embarrassed by Israel’s 2010 announcement of major expansion of housing units in East Jerusalem.” Almost everything in that sentence is inaccurate. It wasn’t “Israel’s announcement”; it was a routine publication, by the office of Jerusalem’s mayor, of an administrative step. It wasn’t a “major expansion of housing units”; it was a routine approval in the bureaucratic process leading to the eventual construction of housing units. And it wasn’t in “East Jerusalem.” It was in the neighborhood of Ramat Shlomo in northern Jerusalem. 

I’ll give Miller the benefit of the doubt and assume that he is simply ignorant of the geography—which, I admit, is pretty surprising for somebody who was one of the U.S. State Department’s Arab-Israeli “experts” for more than two decades. 

But the alternative would be worse. The alternative explanation would be that Miller knows full well it’s not in “East Jerusalem,” yet he deliberately used that term in order to make it seem as if the apartments were built in Arab territory. 

Whether the result of ignorance, self-interest or old-fashioned bias, the self-proclaimed experts are cranking up their pressure-Israel propaganda machine into high gear. Friends of Israel need to respond—and quickly.

 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 and others by the author may be read at jns.org.

Biden urges democracy abroad, but will it apply to Palestinians?

Biden urges democracy abroad, but will it apply to Palestinians? 

His strong words about human rights were welcome. Now we’ll see if he means them when it comes to one of the main offenders.

My latest column on jns.org.

In a stirring speech last week, U.S. President Joe Biden spoke eloquently of America’s commitment to fostering democracy and civil rights around the world. I wonder if any leaders of the Palestinian Authority were listening.

P.A. leaders have been practically giddy over the results of America’s presidential election. And with good reason, it seemed. Spokespeople for the Biden administration are already vowing to resume its financial aid and restore various other aspects of U.S.-P.A. relations.

But Biden’s Feb. 4 remarks at the U.S. State Department articulated principles which—if the new president and his administration are serious—will create a serious problem in relations between the United States and the Palestinian Arabs.

Former Pres. Obama, Biden and Abbas
Official White House Photo 2009

The problem is that America reveres democracy, while the P.A.  practices authoritarianism. For decades, successive U.S. administrations have shied away from confronting this issue. But Biden said that under his leadership, America will “meet this new moment of advancing authoritarianism.” It’s about time.

He identified “America’s most cherished democratic values” as these five principles: “defending freedom, championing opportunity, upholding universal rights, respecting the rule of law and treating every person with dignity.”

The president didn’t just praise those concepts as admirable. He called them “our inexhaustible strength” and “the grounding wire of our global policy—our global power.”

If Biden really meant what he said, then the P.A. is going to either completely transform itself or face a major clash with the Biden administration.

The P.A. does not “defend freedom.” It jails its critics. Just ask Hussam Khader, a member of the Palestinian Legislative Council. He was recently jailed for the “crime” of remarking on Facebook that P.A. dictator Mahmoud Abbas was wrong to call striking Palestinian physicians “despicable.”

The P.A. does not “champion opportunity.” According to Human Rights Watch, opportunity exists only for favored groups. The P.A.’s laws “discriminate against women,” the P.A. has “no comprehensive domestic violence law to prevent abuse and protect survivors,” and the LGBT group “Al-Qaws for Sexual and Gender Diversity” has been banned.

The P.A. does not “uphold universal rights.” Surely, the right of a legislator to express her opinion is a universal right. Yet P.A. council member Najat Abu Baker spent 17 days hiding in the parliament building when the police demanded that she surrender herself to be charged with the crime of publicly criticizing Abbas for not paying teachers adequately.

The P.A. does not “respect the rule of law.” Well, to be precise—it only respects the draconian laws that it decrees. Like the outrageous “Cyber Crime Law” of 2017, mandating prison sentences and fines for anyone who establishes a website that, in the P.A.’s view, could “undermine the safety of the state or its internal or external security.”

The P.A. does not “treat every person with dignity.” According to Amnesty International, “torture and other ill-treatment of detainees” is “committed with impunity” by the P.A. police.

 In his remarks last week, Biden cited two foreign governments whose behavior his administration repudiates: Burma (Myanmar) and Russia. He demanded the “restoration of democracy” in Burma and the “immediate release” of jailed Russian dissident Alexei Navalny.

Abbas must have cringed when he heard those words. After all, he is now in the 16th year of his four-term as chairman of the P.A. Burma’s rulers have a long way to go before they approach Abbas’s record. And as for poor Alexei Navalny—well, there are plenty like him rotting in P.A. prisons.

Biden’s strong words about democracy and human rights were welcome. Now we’ll see if he means them when it comes to one of the main offenders.

 

The above column and others may be found here.

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.”

Joe Biden returns to immoral equivalency

 My column- 

Biden returns to immoral equivalency

Halting incitement and stopping policies that incentivize terrorism are not “good ideas” or “confidence-building measures.” They are the P.A.’s signed, sworn obligations.

 It took less than a week for the Biden administration to return to the Obama-Biden policy of moral equivalency, or what I prefer to call immoral equivalency—the policy of viewing Israel and the Palestinian Authority, and their respective actions, as being on the same moral plane.

On Jan. 26—just six days after the inauguration—U.S. President Joe Biden’s acting representative at the United Nations, Deputy Ambassador Richard Mills, announced that the administration supports creating a Palestinian state. In practical terms, that means making Israel nine miles wide again, as it was before 1967.

In order to facilitate that goal, Mills said, the United States is “urging” Israel and the Palestinian Authority “to avoid unilateral steps” that would make the creation of a Palestinian state “more difficult.” Those steps include “settlement activity,” “demolitions,” “incitement to violence” and “providing compensation for individuals imprisoned for acts of terrorism.”

Thus, the Biden administration is putting two Israeli actions that are legal, peaceful and permitted by the Oslo Accords in the same category as two P.A. policies that are illegal, violent and prohibited by the Oslo Accords. That’s outrageous.

There is nothing in the Oslo Accords that prevents the creation of Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria. It happens that since 1992 (prior to Oslo), the consistent policy of successive Israeli governments has been to refrain from authorizing the establishment of new communities there. But that’s a matter of choice, not an Oslo obligation.

There is also nothing in the Oslo agreements that prohibits construction within existing Jewish communities in the territories, which is probably what the Biden administration means by the term “settlement activity.” Building apartments, or anything else, there is legal and peaceful. It does not deprive Arabs of their homes. It does not interfere with the possibility of peace. All it does is continue normal life in those communities.

And there is nothing in the Oslo Accords that prevents Israel from continuing its longstanding policy—fully authorized by Israel’s left-leaning High Court—of dismantling the homes of terrorists.

By contrast, what Mills called “incitement to violence” and paying “compensation” to imprisoned terrorists—that is, incentivizing terrorism—are prohibited by the many anti-terrorism provisions in the Oslo Accords.

I’ll cite just a few. These come from the September 1995 agreement known as Oslo II.

• Article XV, paragraph 1 says that the P.A. must “prevent acts of terrorism” and “take legal measures against offenders.” Obviously, inciting and incentivizing acts of terrorism violates that provision, and also violate these similar provisions:
• Annex 1, Article II, Paragraph 1(b): “The Palestinian police will act systematically against all expressions of violence and terror.”
• Annex 1, Article II, Paragraph 2: The P.A. must “immediately and effectively respond to the occurrence of anticipated occurrence of an act of terrorism, violence or incitement and shall take all necessary measures to prevent such an occurrence.”
• Annex 1, Article II, Paragraph 3(b): The P.A. must “actively prevent incitement to violence.”
• Annex 1, Article II, Paragraph 1(c): The P.A. must “apprehend, investigate and prosecute perpetrators and all other persons directly or indirectly involved in acts of terrorism, violence and incitement.”

There are more passages like these, but you get the idea.

Halting incitement and stopping policies that incentivize terrorism are not “good ideas” or “confidence-building measures.” They are the P.A.’s signed, sworn obligations. The Biden administration cannot just hope that the P.A. fulfills them; it has to insist that they do. Because otherwise, no treaty or agreement ever signed by the P.A. will ever have any value.

And that goes to the heart of the problem with the Biden administration’s emerging policy towards Israel and the P.A.: It appears to be based on ideology, not behavior. Biden’s Mideast advisers are shaping an approach based on ideological predilections—what they believe an ideal peace settlement would look like, what they believe would be appropriate borders, what they believe is fair or reasonable. It’s all based on belief—not on how the P.A. has actually behaved since the signing of the Oslo accords in 1993.

A realistic Mideast policy would look to what happened between 1993 and 2020 in order to gauge expectations for the years ahead. See what the P.A. has done in order to understand what it is likely to do in the future. See whether it has fulfilled its Oslo obligations before asking Israel to make more concessions in exchange for more promises.

That would be a sensible U.S. policy. Right now, the Biden administration is moving in exactly the opposite direction.

Stephen M. Flatow

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 may be read on JNS.ORG.

#Israel #moralequivalency #Osloaccords #PalestinianAuthority #violence # terror