Here is the story from Israel Hayom:
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas plans to run his administration to the ground to prevent Israeli from pursuing its plan to apply sovereignty to large parts of Judea and Samaria and the Jordan Valley, a senior Palestinian official told The New York Times on Monday.
According to the report, Abbas plans to slash the wages of tens of thousands of functionaries and police officers, as well as the $105 million in monthly aid it sends to the Gaza Strip.
And why must Abbas “slash the wages” of tens of thousands of people working for the P.A., and end the $105 million monthly aid it sends to the Gaza Strip? Because Abbas himself has brought the P.A. to financial ruin. It is he who has mismanaged the economy. It is he and his corrupt cronies who have been helping themselves to vast sums from the aid sent to help the Palestinian Arabs. And it is Abbas who now refuses to accept any of the $190 million a month that Israel collects in taxes for the P.A. and tries – after deducting for the amount he pays terrorists and their families in his Pay-For-Slay program — to transfer the rest to the P.A. Abbas is outraged by that Israeli policy, believing the terrorist murderers to be splendid fellows, “martyrs” if they die, with streets and squares named after them. They need to be amply provided for, if alive and imprisoned, and if dead, their families receive the sums they would have received. And that’s why Israel deducted those Pay-for-Slay amounts but was prepared to transfer the rest of the tax money to the P.A. Now it seems that in order to express his displeasure over the planned extension of Israeli sovereignty to the Jordan Valley and to the Israeli “settlements” (really, cities and towns) in Judea and Samaria (a/k/a “the West Bank”), Abbas is now refusing to take any of that tax money. That’ll show Israel.
Of course, Mahmoud Abbas himself needn’t worry. He and his two grasping sons Tarek and Nasser have amassed a fortune of more than $400 million. His cronies – Hanan Ashrawi, Saeb Erekat, and others – have also managed to become multi-millionaires, despite their modest salaries. They all live in villas in the “Diplomatic Compound” in Ramallah, well-shielded from prying eyes of ordinary folk; Abbas lives in a $13 million presidential palace, and has a $50 million private plane to fly him hither and yon. Of course he feels bad about all those West Bank Arabs whose salaries are now being cut, or who will now lose their jobs in the financial ruin his mismanagement and corruption have brought about And it’s too bad – he feels their pain! — that the Gazan Arabs will now be out more than $1.26 billion a year. But that’s not Mahmoud Abbas’s concern. He’s got bigger things to think about. He’s threatening to bring the whole Palestinian Authority house crashing down so that, he thinks, Israel will have to step in and assume the responsibilities of rule for the West Bank. But Israel likely has other ideas.
In addition, any Israeli citizens or Arab residents of Jerusalem arrested in the West Bank will be tried in Palestinian courts instead of being handed over to the Israel Police, the report noted.
He is threatening all cooperation with Israel, which includes handing over to Israel those Palestinians wanted for crimes by the Israeli police. From now on, he appears to be saying, anyone arrested in the West Bank by the P.A. will be tried in Palestinian courts. What kind of justice will be done, what kind of punishments for terror attacks on Israelis, do you think those Palestinian courts will hand out?
These provocative steps seek to prevent Israel from pushing ahead with the controversial annexation move. The sovereignty move has been endorsed by the Trump administration as part of its “deal of the century” but has met fierce objection from the Palestinians.
These steps will not prevent Israel from going ahead with extending its sovereignty (which we are wrong to call “annexation”) to territories that were always meant, according to the Mandate for Palestine, to be included in the Jewish National Home which would eventually become the Jewish State. The Jordan Valley is indispensable for Israel’s security. It is not only Israel’s military, but members of the American military, too, who have concluded this. In 1967, a delegation was sent by the Joint Chiefs to Israel at President Johnson’s direction, to study which territories won in the Six-Day War Israel would need to hold onto for defensive reasons. They reported that Israel would have to retain — at the top of the list — the Jordan Valley and the Golan Heights.
As for the “settlements” in the “West Bank,” the 500,000 Israeli Jews who now live in these cities and towns are there by right and not, as so many believe, as beneficiaries of a “military occupation.” To understand this one must read, and thoroughly understand, the Balfour Declaration, the Treaty of San Remo and – above all — the Mandate for Palestine, especially the Preamble and Articles 4 and 6. The Mandate for Palestine was created in order to facilitate Jewish immigration into the Mandate’s territory and to “encourage close settlement by Jews on the land.” Which land? The land as shown on the Mandate maps, where the Jewish state was meant to extend from Mt. Hermon in the north to the Red Sea in the south, and from the Jordan River in the east, to the Mediterranean in the west. In fact, the territory to the east of the Jordan River “out to the desert” was also supposed to have been included in the Mandate’s intended territory, but it was removed from the Mandate lands, in order that the British might present it as a consolation prize to the Hashemite Emir Abdullah (whose brother Feisal had been made King of Iraq) as the Emirate of Transjordan.
The Six-Day War did not create Israel’s legal claim to the “West Bank,” but made it possible for Israel to enforce its preexisting claim. Jews settled on land to which they knew they had a legal, historic, and moral claim, and now had a possibility of enforcing that claim. They won the West Bank in a war of self-defense. Now that the Jewish population of the area has reached a half-million, the current government is ready to extend its full sovereignty to those settlements and also to the Jordan Valley that controls the invasion route from the east. Israel has an independent claim, in addition to that based on the Palestine Mandate, to much of the West Bank. This is U.N. Resolution 242, which allows Israel to retain territory won in the Six-Day War that it requires if it is to have, in the exact words of the resolution, “secure [i.e. defensible] and recognized boundaries.”
The European Union and United Nations have warned Israel against making any unilateral moves, saying annexation would doom the already moribund Israeli-Palestinian peace process.
Ever since Israel’s independence was proclaimed on May 14, 1948, the Israelis have been trying to make peace with their Arab neighbors. They offered to make the 1949 armistice lines, bad as they were, into permanent borders, but the Arabs turned them down. They have had to fight three major wars of survival (1948-1949, 1967, 1973) against Arab states, and several smaller wars against three terror groups, the PLO, Hamas, and Hezbollah. If the “peace process” is “moribund,” that is entirely the fault of the Palestinians, who have refused to negotiate ever since 2008, when Ehud Olmert offered practically the entire West Bank, as well as shared control of Jerusalem’s Old City, to Mahmoud Abbas. Abbas rejected the offer and walked out. The so-called “peace process” is “moribund” because the Palestinians have steadfastly refused to negotiate ever since. In any case, the only sure way for Israel to survive is not to put its trust in any peace treaty with the Palestinians. but rather, in the power of deterrence. Why can’t Israel put its faith in treaties? Here’s why. In 628 A.D., Muhammad made an agreement with the Meccans that was to have lasted for ten years After 18 months, Muhammad, feeling that his forces were now strong enough to defeat the enemy, broke the treaty and attacked the Meccans. That has been the model of Muslim treaty-making with non-Muslims ever since.
Those who now prate about how the extension of Israel’s sovereignty to parts of the West Bank will damage the “peace process” fail to realize that there is no “peace process,” but if there were, it would not lead to a real peace that can be kept. What will keep the peace between Arabs and Israelis is Israel’s military strength; it must be sufficient to deter all would-be aggressors. That is a matter not only of weaponry, and of the training and elan of IDF soldiers, but also of control of territory. If Israel were to lose control of the Jordan Valley, for example, it would be wide open to an invasion force from the East. If the Jewish state were squeezed back into the pre-1967 lines, that is the 1949 armistice lines, Israel would be nine miles wide at its narrowest; an invader could slice the country in two within hours. Israel needs both a minimum of strategic depth, and control of the Judean heights.
Israelis now understand, as they did not previously, that they are facing a classic Jihad. Waging violent Jihad is part of Islam; it will never disappear. We have been using the wrong lexicon when we constantly refer to a “solution” — one-state or two-state — to this Arab war on Israel. The Jihad is not a “problem susceptible of a “solution.” The Muslim Arab war on Israel is, rather, a “situation” to be permanently managed. And the way to “manage” it is through deterrence, meaning that Israel must remain militarily more powerful than its possible enemies, and overwhelmingly, obviously so. In order for deterrence to work, Israel must retain control of some of the West Bank — to all of which it has a legal right, but to only 30% of which it intends to exercise that right, by extending its sovereignty, as set out in the carefully-crafted Deal of the Century.
Buraq says
It’s called “Cutting off your nose to spite your face”. Clown!
Templer says
Mahamde abbas tackeing thackein the piss mor Muslim bullshit need locking up he clearly a nut job
gravenimage says
Mahmoud Abbas Threatens – Ruat Caelum! – to Let the P.A. Collapse (Part 1)
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Please don’t throw me in that brier patch!