by Melanie Phillips
Fears that the Biden administration’s bear-hug of embattled Israel is the prelude to eating it alive were dramatically enhanced this week.
On Wednesday, US State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said that the administration was “actively pursuing the establishment of an independent Palestinian state with real security guarantees for Israel”.
He was confirming a report on the Hebrew-language news site Walla that Secretary of State Antony Blinken had ordered officials to examine the possibility of American and international recognition of a “state of Palestine” the day after the war in Gaza.
A senior US official told the site that elements within the Biden administration are recommending a move towards recognising a Palestinian state as a first step in a renewed peace process and not as the result of negotiations between the parties.
These “elements within the Biden administration” appear to be in lockstep with the British government. Two days before the report, at a reception in London, Britain’s Foreign Secretary Lord Cameron stunned observers by declaring that the British government was considering formal recognition of a “state of Palestine,” including at the UN.
“This could be one of the things that will help make this process irreversible,” he said.
It’s been clear from the start of the war in Gaza that both Britain and America are seizing on the turmoil to advance their obsession with a “two-state solution”. However, it’s one thing to press for movement towards a Palestine state. Unilaterally recognising it crosses a red line.
Official recognition of a “Palestine” that doesn’t exist is part of the strategy of diplomatic warfare against Israel promoted by those who want to see the Jewish state destroyed.
Conceptually ridiculous, since it involves recognising a “state” that has no physical form and no boundaries, it would remove at a stroke the necessity for the Palestinian Arabs to agree to live in peace alongside Israel. Instead, it would incentivizse still further their rejection of Israel’s right to exist.
How exactly would such a state be demilitarised? Who would ensure that it had no access to weaponry that could threaten Israeli civilians? What exactly does the US mean by “real security guarantees” for Israel?
Is it suggesting these would be enforced by the Hamas-collaborating United Nations, perhaps? “Real security guarantees” like UN resolution 1701 in 2006? The one that called for the area between the Israel-Lebanon border and the Litani River to be cleared of all armed forces other than the Lebanese army and UN peacekeepers? The area where Hezbollah has sited 150,000 missiles, which it may unleash upon Israel any moment now, and from where it is launching daily attacks?
UK Foreign Secretary Lord Cameron meets Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas
Until now, Britain and America have rightfully opposed unilateral recognition of a Palestinian state as an act of malicious aggression against Israel. Now they are proposing to join in.
And what a time to announce this, when Israel is in the throes of a war for its existence after the worst slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust. While the IDF is making painful progress towards dismantling Hamas, Britain and America have now given the terror outfit an enormous incentive to keep fighting.
Other remarks by Cameron were equally preposterous. He said that recognising a “state of Palestine” would pressure Israel, which he blamed for the absence of such a state. The last 30 years, he asserted, have been a story of Israel’s failure to provide security to its citizens by preventing a “state of Palestine”.
This denies reality. The Palestinian Arabs have repeatedly been offered a state of their own, either by Israel or with its agreement, but have always turned it down and resorted instead to terrorism and war.
The reason Israel has no security is because the United Kingdom, the United States and the European Union have mischaracterised the war of extermination against Israel as a conflict over territory. They have accordingly pressured Israel to make endless concessions that undermined its security.
They have also continued to fund the Palestinian Authority despite the genocidal agenda against Israel and Jews that it shares with Hamas, and with which it indoctrinates the Palestinian Arabs with murderous hatred of the kind that erupted in the October 7 pogrom.
Piously, Cameron also intoned that Israel would need to see all hostages released, with a guarantee that Hamas can no longer launch attacks on Israel and with Hamas’s leadership gone from Gaza.
Such a guarantee depends upon the destruction of Hamas as a military force. Yet Britain and the US are actively undermining this by their constant pressure on Israel to step up supplies of humanitarian aid to Gaza, some 66 per cent of which —according to Israeli Security Agency director Ronen Bar — is being stolen by Hamas for its own use.
Both America and Britain have provided military aid to Israel. The resupply of weaponry from the United States is critical. The United Kingdom is sending an aircraft carrier to the region to replace the American one that is leaving. Both Britain and America spoke out against the vile South African “genocide” case at the International Court of Justice.
Yet in their obsession with the “two-state solution” as the path to peace in the Middle East, both Washington and London display quite staggering political blindness and stupidity.
They propose to declare the existence of a Palestine state that the Palestinians have always refused to accept. They treat Hamas and a Palestinian state as if they are unrelated to each other. Get rid of Hamas and presto, a Palestinian state will end this hundred-year war.
But Hamas are Palestinians. They were joined in their atrocities on October 7 by hundreds of “ordinary” Palestinians from Gaza. The PA’s governing party, Fatah, supported the pogrom. A Palestinian state would be a Hamastan on steroids and potentially run as such by Iran or Qatar.
In The New York Times Thomas Friedman, who is used as a conduit for the Biden administration’s anti-Israel trial balloons, wrote that the proposed recognition of “Palestine” signals an awareness that the United States “will never have the global legitimacy, the NATO allies and the Arab and Muslim allies it needs to take on Iran in a more aggressive manner unless we stop letting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hold our policy hostage”.
This venomous distortion breathtakingly blames Netanyahu for fighting to defend Israel against genocidal Iran. Yet it was the appeasement of Iran by the Obama and Biden administrations that led to the October 7 pogrom, the unleashing of Iranian war across the region and now three deaths and dozens of casualties among Americans.
To imply that the Iranian regime which screams “Death to America!” and aims to Islamise the world is only waging this war because of the absence of a Palestinian state is as unhinged as it is disgusting.
The Biden administration is riddled with vicious haters of Israel holding key Middle East policy positions. And, of course, Britain is the original cause of this conflict, having torn up its commitment under the Palestine Mandate to settle the Jews throughout Palestine and offering part of it to their Arab attackers instead — the original “two-state solution”.
In the 1930s, Britain’s response to Palestinian Arab pogroms against Palestinian Jews was to reward the Arabs with a proposed state of their own.
In 2024, Britain’s response to a Palestinian Arab pogrom against Israeli Jews is to reward the Arabs with a proposed state of their own.
The supercilious Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton resembles nothing so much as a British Colonial Office pooh-bah, busy selling the pass in Mandatory Palestine while looking down his nose at the uppity Jews.
While Israel is forced to sacrifice the flower of its youth as it fights for its life, its so-called allies are placing the west itself in increasing peril as they threaten to hang the Jewish state out to dry once again to conceal their own malevolent ineptitude.
And what a time to announce this, when Israel is in the throes of a war for its existence after the worst slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust. While the IDF is making painful progress towards dismantling Hamas, Britain and America have now given the terror outfit an enormous incentive to keep fighting.
Other remarks by Cameron were equally preposterous. He said that recognising a “state of Palestine” would pressure Israel, which he blamed for the absence of such a state. The last 30 years, he asserted, have been a story of Israel’s failure to provide security to its citizens by preventing a “state of Palestine”.
This denies reality. The Palestinian Arabs have repeatedly been offered a state of their own, either by Israel or with its agreement, but have always turned it down and resorted instead to terrorism and war.
The reason Israel has no security is because the United Kingdom, the United States and the European Union have mischaracterised the war of extermination against Israel as a conflict over territory. They have accordingly pressured Israel to make endless concessions that undermined its security.
They have also continued to fund the Palestinian Authority despite the genocidal agenda against Israel and Jews that it shares with Hamas, and with which it indoctrinates the Palestinian Arabs with murderous hatred of the kind that erupted in the October 7 pogrom.
Piously, Cameron also intoned that Israel would need to see all hostages released, with a guarantee that Hamas can no longer launch attacks on Israel and with Hamas’s leadership gone from Gaza.
Such a guarantee depends upon the destruction of Hamas as a military force. Yet Britain and the US are actively undermining this by their constant pressure on Israel to step up supplies of humanitarian aid to Gaza, some 66 per cent of which —according to Israeli Security Agency director Ronen Bar — is being stolen by Hamas for its own use.
Both America and Britain have provided military aid to Israel. The resupply of weaponry from the United States is critical. The United Kingdom is sending an aircraft carrier to the region to replace the American one that is leaving. Both Britain and America spoke out against the vile South African “genocide” case at the International Court of Justice.
Yet in their obsession with the “two-state solution” as the path to peace in the Middle East, both Washington and London display quite staggering political blindness and stupidity.
They propose to declare the existence of a Palestine state that the Palestinians have always refused to accept. They treat Hamas and a Palestinian state as if they are unrelated to each other. Get rid of Hamas and presto, a Palestinian state will end this hundred-year war.
But Hamas are Palestinians. They were joined in their atrocities on October 7 by hundreds of “ordinary” Palestinians from Gaza. The PA’s governing party, Fatah, supported the pogrom. A Palestinian state would be a Hamastan on steroids and potentially run as such by Iran or Qatar.
In The New York Times Thomas Friedman, who is used as a conduit for the Biden administration’s anti-Israel trial balloons, wrote that the proposed recognition of “Palestine” signals an awareness that the United States “will never have the global legitimacy, the NATO allies and the Arab and Muslim allies it needs to take on Iran in a more aggressive manner unless we stop letting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hold our policy hostage”.
This venomous distortion breathtakingly blames Netanyahu for fighting to defend Israel against genocidal Iran. Yet it was the appeasement of Iran by the Obama and Biden administrations that led to the October 7 pogrom, the unleashing of Iranian war across the region and now three deaths and dozens of casualties among Americans.
To imply that the Iranian regime which screams “Death to America!” and aims to Islamise the world is only waging this war because of the absence of a Palestinian state is as unhinged as it is disgusting.
The Biden administration is riddled with vicious haters of Israel holding key Middle East policy positions. And, of course, Britain is the original cause of this conflict, having torn up its commitment under the Palestine Mandate to settle the Jews throughout Palestine and offering part of it to their Arab attackers instead — the original “two-state solution”.
In the 1930s, Britain’s response to Palestinian Arab pogroms against Palestinian Jews was to reward the Arabs with a proposed state of their own.
In 2024, Britain’s response to a Palestinian Arab pogrom against Israeli Jews is to reward the Arabs with a proposed state of their own.
The supercilious Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton resembles nothing so much as a British Colonial Office pooh-bah, busy selling the pass in Mandatory Palestine while looking down his nose at the uppity Jews.
While Israel is forced to sacrifice the flower of its youth as it fights for its life, its so-called allies are placing the west itself in increasing peril as they threaten to hang the Jewish state out to dry once again to conceal their own malevolent ineptitude.
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