Mahmoud Abbas justifies Palestinian terror in his UN General Assembly speech By Lt. Col. (ret.) Jonathan D. Halevi
Abbas only used the phrase "state of Israel" once while calling Israel "the occupying state" five times, including two uses of the phrase "settlement occupation state" and two uses of "racist occupying state." He used the word occupation (or "settlement occupation" or "racist occupation") an additional 23 times, usually as a synonym for "state of Israel." Abbas portrayed Israel as the apex of human evil and as the wellspring of terror, incitement, hatred, and the Islamic radicalism that is sweeping the Middle East and the world at large. Abbas accused Israel of a "new war of genocide perpetrated against the Palestinian people… the third war waged by the racist occupying state in five years," and of planning another nakba (mass expulsion of Palestinians). He made no mention at all of terror attacks and the firing of thousands of rockets from Gaza at Israeli cities, strategic facilities, and its international airport. Abbas denied any Israeli right to self-defense and justified the warfare and terror attacks of Hamas and the other Palestinian terror organizations, declaring that "the Palestinian people hold steadfast to their legitimate right to defend themselves against the Israeli war machine and to their legitimate right to resist this colonial, racist Israeli occupation." "War Crimes" and "Racism" Abbas demanded that Israel pay the full price for its "war crimes" while directing no such demand at the Palestinian terror organizations (including Fatah, which he heads) for firing rockets at Israeli civilian communities. "Yet," he said, "we believe – and hope – that no one is trying to aid the occupation this time in its impunity or its attempts to evade accountability for its crimes." Abbas also accused Israel of systematically derailing any possibility of peace with a long list of measures including settlement building, land confiscation, home destructions, massacres and mass arrests, forceful expulsion of Palestinians from their West Bank homes, tightening the "unjust" blockade on Gaza, trying to change the nature of Jerusalem with an emphasis on the Al-Aqsa Mosque, and "criminal" activity of "racist and armed gangs of settlers." Israel, in Abbas' words, is cultivating "a culture of racism, incitement and hatred [as] glaringly manifested in the despicable, appalling crime committed months ago by fascist settlers, who abducted the young Jerusalemite boy Mohammed Abu Khdeir, burnt him alive and killed him. We hope that this will remind you of something in history." In that last sentence Abbas hinted at the Holocaust. Abbas completely ignored the wall-to-wall condemnation of the murder in Israel along with the capture and arraignment of the suspects. This stands in stark contrast to the Palestinian Authority's systematic failure to arrest or charge the perpetrators of terror attacks against Jews, while glorifying Palestinian terrorists and granting them lifelong economic security. Praise for Terror and "Political Prisoners" Praise for terror is a constant motif in Abbas's speeches, and in his latest UN speech he again referred to all Palestinian terrorists whom Israel has prosecuted for murder or attempted murder as "political prisoners," and declared that the Palestinian Authority demands their immediate release. Indeed, Abbas does not view Palestinian terror attacks on Israelis – from stabbings to suicide bombings – as war crimes but as part of a legitimate struggle that comports with international law. As he put it:
Abbas was thereby referring to the first Fatah terror attack on Israel, an attempted bombing of the national water carrier, on January 1, 1965. Thus, he justified all aspects of the armed struggle that Palestinian terror organizations have been waging ever since. Abbas attributed terror and the roots of terror to Israel, which, he says, was established in 1948 by expelling innocent and peaceful Palestinians from their homes. Apart from the gross distortion of history and the obfuscation of Palestinian and Arab terror, Abbas pinned the blame for the phenomenon of Islamic terror, as recently manifested by the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, on Israel. As he declared:
After denying both the existence of Palestinian terror and the Israeli right to self-defense, Abbas said that "Palestine refuses to have the right to freedom of her people…remain hostage to Israel's security conditions." Not only does Abbas fail to recognize Israel's security needs, he also claims that it is the Palestinians "who are subjected to the terrorism by the racist occupying Power and its settlers" and who "are actually the ones who need immediate international protection…." In the speech Abbas also presented his vision for peace:
Abbas' vision of peace does not indicate any real intention to reach a historic compromise with Israel on dividing the land into two states that would live peacefully side by side. He called for a political agreement via negotiations, but stipulated the results of the negotiations as a precondition for holding them. Moreover, Abbas lauded the Palestinian Authority's formation of a unity government with Hamas and the other Palestinian terror organizations, even though it does not signal that the terror organizations have accepted the diplomatic route but, instead, that Abbas has gone in their direction. Hamas wields complete control of Gaza and in recent months also tried to overthrow Abbas' regime in the West Bank, a plan the Israeli security services managed to foil. Hamas' military power and popularity in the Palestinian street, including the West Bank, constitutes veto power over any political settlement based on recognizing Israel and/or a political compromise of any kind.
Abbas wants the world to think he is taking a constructive political position. In actuality, he is merely reiterating the "just peace" formula and rejecting the Israeli "peace through compromise" formula. ["A just and agreed upon solution to the plight of the Palestine refugees on the basis of resolution 194."] The "just peace" formula means uncompromising insistence on what the Palestinians call the "right of return" of the Palestinian refugees and generations of their descendants to Israel itself. That, in turn, means forcing Israel to take in five to seven million Palestinians while ejecting millions of Jews from their communities so that the Palestinians can move in. In other words, the "just peace" formula is a prescription for putting an end to the state of Israel, and forms the ideological basis of the Palestinian unity agreement that Fatah has forged with Hamas and the other Palestinian terror organizations. Lt. Col. (ret.) Jonathan D. Halevi is a senior researcher of the Middle East and radical Islam at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. He is a co-founder of the Orient Research Group Ltd.
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