America, be wary of a Palestinian state

By Ambassador (ret.) Yoram Ettinger

Part eight in a 6 minute YouTube video series on US-Israel and the Mideast*

Part 8: http://bit.ly/1nRDOYD ; the entire series: http://bit.ly/1ze66dS

1.  According to the US foreign policy establishment, a Palestinian state would enhance stability, moderation, peace, and democracy. How credible is this assessment? 

2.  Following the 1993 Oslo Accords, the US foreign policy establishment was convinced that Mahmoud Abbas and Arafat would transform themselves from lawlessness to statesmanship. However, they responded with an unprecedented wave of hate-education, incitement and the resulting terrorism, which still persists today.

3.  In 2011, the US foreign policy establishment claimed that the eruption of turbulence on the Arab Street was an Arab Spring, transitioning the Arab World to democracy. Instead, the US has been confronted with an anti-US, anti-human rights, terror-driven and Islamic supremacy-inspired Arab Tsunami.

4.  In 2011, the US foreign policy establishment asserted that the toppling of Gaddafi ushered freedom to Libya. In 2012, four Americans were murdered by Islamic Libyan terrorists and Libya was transformed into the largest platform of anti-US Islamic terror organizations.

5.  In 2012, the US foreign policy establishment abandoned Egyptian President Mubarak and embraced the Muslim Brotherhood, the largest transnational Islamic terror organization, which haunts pro-US Arab regimes.  However, a year later, the Muslim Brotherhood was ousted, by a rare coalition of liberal Egyptians and the military, opposing a Muslim Brotherhood Islamic dictatorship and its support of terrorism.

6.  What would be the nature of a Palestinian state, and its impact on US national security and homeland security?

7.  The nature of the proposed Palestinian state, and its impact on vital US interests, can be gleaned through the Palestinian track record and its reaction to the unprecedented Israeli concessions of 1993 and 2005 (retreating from 40% of Judea & Samaria; offering to retreat to the pre-1967 lines; uprooting all Jews from Gaza). Mahmoud Abbas reacted with unprecedented hate-education, terrorism, glorification of homicide bombers, the systematic violation of commitments, corruption, the oppression of Palestinians and forcing a massive flight of Christians.

8.  Palestinian terrorists fought US forces in Afghanistan and Iraq.  The Palestinian Authority sustains the close PLO ties with anti-US regimes such as the Ayatollahs in Iran, North Korea, Cuba, Venezuela, Osama Bin-Laden, Saddam Hussein, Sudan, Russia and China. A Palestinian state would provide Iran, Russia, China and possibly North Korea naval and land access to the eastern flank of the Mediterranean, at the expense of the US power projection.

9.  A Palestinian state would add one more anti-US vote at the UN.

10.  Palestinian leaders collaborated with Nazi Germany and the ruthless Communist Bloc secret services. Mahmoud Abbas, who has a Ph.D. from the Moscow University, speaks Russian and was trained by the KGB.

11.  Mahmoud Abbas’ PLO was a role-model for skyjacking, suicide bombing and car-bombing, exporting terrorism to India, China, Russia, Afghanistan, Europe, Africa and the USA. The PLO murdered the US Ambassador to Sudan in 1973 and assisted the Islamic Jihad in the 1983 murder of 300 US Marines in Beirut.

12.  Jordanian military commanders caution their Israeli counterparts that “Palestinians violate in the evening that which they sign in the morning,” and that “a Palestinian state would be a death sentence to the pro-US Hashemite regime, transforming Jordan into a platform of terror, haunting the shaky pro-US regimes in the Persian Gulf.” 

13.  The Palestinian treacherous intra-Arab track record: in 1950, 1966 and 1970 Mahmoud Abbas and Arafat fled Egypt, Syria and Jordan due to their involvement in terrorism; in 1975, they tried to topple Lebanon’s central government, triggering a multi-year civil war and Syrian occupation; in 1990 they participated in Saddam Hussein’s rape of Kuwait.

14.  Since 1967, regaining control of the mountain ridges of Judea & Samaria, Israel has dramatically upgraded its posture of deterrence, extending the US strategic hand against rising conventional and non-conventional Islamic threats to the USA, enhancing the national security of pro-US Arab regimes, and sparing the need to deploy additional US troops to the Middle East. A retreat from the dominant mountain ridges of Judea & Samaria would relegate Israel’s stature from a strategic asset to a liability, denying the US the unique benefits of a most effective outpost in the Mideast.  

15. Bearing in mind that leopards don’t change spots, only tactics, the proposed Palestinian state, on the one hand, and US values and national security interests, on the other hand, constitutes a classic oxymoron!