The "Moderate" Mahmoud Abbas

I saw this a few weeks ago from the Middle East Media Research Institute and had to write about it. Some absolutely priceless statements are in there from Mahmoud Abbas. You know Abbas, right? He's the secular "moderate" peace-lover who is the Great Hope for ending the Arab/Israeli Conflict. Never mind the fact that Abbas was Arafat's number 2 guy in the PLO for roughly 40 years while they were conducting more terrorist attacks than Hamas could ever dream of. Never mind that the reason we call Abbas "Dr." is that he wrote a Ph.D thesis arguing: (i) that the Zionists collaborated with the Nazis; and (ii) that the number of Jews murdered in the Holocaust was purposefully inflated to further Zionist aims.

Isn't that so cute and moderate? Don't you just want to pinch his cheek? And oh yeah, he probably personally financed the 1972 Munich Olympics Massacre.

But back to the MEMRI article. See, the big difference between the PLO and Hamas is that the PLO recognized (say it with me now) "Israel's Right to Exist." This is the big thing preventing the US from dealing with Hamas -- they won't say those magic words. So yeah, the PLO will recognize the right of us Jews to live in Israel while Hamas won't. Um, not so much, according to a briefing our Peace Prince gave to a Jordanian newspaper at the end of February:

"Abbas stressed that he is opposed to the so-called 'Jewish state,' saying, We already rejected such a proposal at the Annapolis summit, last November in the U.S. [In fact,] the summit almost broke up over this issue. We were asked at the time [to agree] that the summit's concluding statement should refer to the Jewish state – but we categorically objected to this..."

Read that again so it fully sinks in. They will not recognize Israel as a Jewish state. Of course, this is not very surprising since PA negotiator Saeb Erekat said basically the same thing several weeks ago (with just as little coverage from the media). In January 2001, Faisal Husseini, another "moderate" the Israelis thought they could deal with, told an Egyptian newspaper that the Oslo Accords were a "Trojan Horse" and that the ultimate strategic goal remained the same: all the land from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. The goals of the PLO are what they always have been: declare a "Palestinian State" in Judea, Samaria and Gaza, and deluge Israel proper with millions of Arabs through the so-called "Right of Return" to take over the country demographically and ultimately unite the whole area as "Palestine" with a large Arab majority ruling over the Dhimmi Jews just like old times.

Abbas even has a nice "moderate" attitude when it comes to lobbing missiles at helpless civilians. They're not bad because killing civilians is bad. No, they're bad because they provide a "pretext" for Israel to hit back (note to Radical Islamists: terrorism often does make civilized people want to hit back).

In fairness to Abbas, it's perfectly rational and understandable for him not to be satisfied with a nice cuddly little state next to Israel. His family isn't from the "Occupied Territories." He was born in Safed, from where his family fled the fighting in 1948. So giving back the territory conquered in 1967 doesn't settle the issue for him at all. Nor does it settle the issue for the PLO, most of whom come not from Judea, Samaria or Gaza, but from families who also fled Israel proper from 1947-49.

Under the Palestinian Narrative, which Mahmoud Abbas wholly subscribes to, their land was stolen out from under them by foreign,imperialist, colonialist (insert further pedantic-sounding pejoratives here) Jews, they want it ALL back, and they're willing to fight for it for as long as it takes. Just read the PLO Covenant.

So why this "Palestinian State" business? Why this Trojan Horse? Well, during the Cold War, the PLO was heavily allied with the Soviets, and the Soviets taught them to say things the West wanted to hear. No more driving the Jews into the sea and destroying Israel. Now it's all about the Palestinian National Liberation Movement, about vindicating universally recognized human rights under (drum roll please) International Law (don't worry, we're not going there with this note). So in 1974, the Palestinian National Council passed what is known as the "Phased Plan." Basically, the PLO would take any portion of "Paleistine" it was offered and declare a provisional state. But the endgame remains the same -- use the "Palestinian State" as a launching point to take over the rest of the land.

THAT is the "moderate" philosophy of Mahmoud Abbas. And that's why the so-called "Two State Solution" is no less fictional than Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory.