While different in style, the “moderate” PA leader Mahmoud Abbas is actually following in the footsteps of his predecessor, the late Palestinian arch-terrorist Yasser Arafat.
By Daniel Krygier
September 2019 marks 26 years since the failed Oslo Peace Accords between Israel and PLO, signed in 1993. Yet with aging Palestinian Authority (PA) leader Mahmoud Abbas’s increasing incitement against Israel and Jews, genuine peace seems more distant than ever.
Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas recently delivered a militant speech at the Jalazone “refugee camp” outside Ramallah. “We shall enter Jerusalem – millions of fighters….Our martyrs are the most sacred thing we have,” he declared.
Abbas also repeated the popular lies that Jerusalem belongs to the Arabs and that the local Arabs are descendants from the extinct Canaanites. Once again, Abbas referred to Jews as “strangers” in their ancestral Jewish homeland.
The reason this matters is that Israeli and Western liberals still consider Abbas a “moderate.” Many Jewish and non-Jewish “peace activists” tend to ignore Abbas’s anti-Semitic incitement in Arabic as “irrelevant” and meant for internal Arabic consumption. Instead, they prefer referring to Abbas’s “peaceful” statements in English.
While different in style, Abbas is in reality following in the footsteps of his predecessor, the late PLO terrorist leader Yasser Arafat. Like Abbas today, Arafat incited against Israel and Jews in Arabic while talking “peace” in English. However, what matters is what leaders tell their own people in their own language, in this case Arabic.
It is Abbas’s false “peace” statements in English that are irrelevant. They are detached from reality and only meant for consumption by gullible Westerners and used as a political weapon to put pressure on Israel. Western and Israeli “peace activists” have long argued that Abbas is the best “peace partner” that Jerusalem can expect. They argue that whoever replaces Abbas will be less willing to make peace with Israel. However, how do you make peace with someone that wants you to die? Western leftists provide no answer. In reality, “moderate” Abbas is more Hamas in a Western suit than Egypt’s Sadat or India’s Gandhi.
Despite ample proof that Abbas opposes genuine peace with Israel, he is still hailed by liberals as a “man of peace.” Israeli and Western leftists continue blaming Israel and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for the absence of peace. It is conveniently ignored that Abbas and his predecessor Arafat have systematically rejected genuine peace with Israel. Several Israeli governments have repeatedly shown flexibility concerning borders. Former Israeli Prime Ministers Ehud Barak and Ehud Olmert even offered Arab-populated parts of Jerusalem to the regime in Ramallah. Both Arafat and Abbas said no.
The reason is simple: They oppose the existence of a Jewish nation-state within any borders. Instead, they seek to transform Israel into an Arab state by demanding that the Jewish state be flooded with millions of foreign Arab “refugees.”
Border disputes are as old as human history. However, as long as Arab radicals like Abbas reject Israel’s very existence within any borders, prospects for peace are non-existent.
As far as Western liberals are concerned, it is business as usual. German Chancellor Angela Merkel recently hosted Mahmud Abbas in Berlin. Like most European leaders, Merkel continues to call for a “two-state solution” to the Arab-Israeli conflict. By hosting the anti-Semitic Holocaust denier Abbas, Merkel and other European leaders are pushing any prospects for genuine peace into an even further distant future.