Palestinian Leader Renews Vow to Destroy Israel

By Nicole Jansezian

Article originally published here.

The Palestinian party that the West considers moderate reaffirmed its commitment to a violent struggle against Israel and called for the removal of all Jews from Jerusalem.

It also refused to renew the peace process until all Palestinian prisoners are released form Israeli jails - language that paves the path for another round of violence in the region.

Reiterating its theme of armed struggle, the Fatah platform states: “We believe that all forms of resistance are a legitimate right of the peoples of territories in the face of occupation.”

“The struggle stems from the Palestinian people’s right to oppose the occupation and the settlements, the expulsion and the racist discrimination – and this right is a right guaranteed by international law,” the official wording reads.

In a one-man race, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas was re-elected as head of Fatah for another five-year term.

“Although we have chosen peace we reserve the right to return to armed resistance,” Abbas said, setting the tone of the assembly in his keynote address.

The Fatah General Assembly's approval of the radical language could lead to another violent Palestinian uprising against Israel, said Avi Dichter, Israel’s former internal security chief. “Fatah’s statements clear the way to what may eventually be the third intifada,” he said. “Once you say that the fight will go on by all means necessary, anyone in their right mind understands that spells an armed conflict.”

The Palestinian party, which the Obama administration and other Western nations cited as a peace partner for Israel, held its first general assembly in more than 20 years with about 2,260 delegates in the West Bank town of Bethlehem. Israel allowed participants from Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, and the United States to travel to the West Bank while Hamas, the ruling party in Gaza, prevented Fatah members there from leaving the strip.

The assembly, which was scantly reported in mainstream media outlets, ended late last week with militant statements and even a call from one member for the party to forge a strategic alliance with Iran. Fatah ratified a political platform that includes the Palestinians’ right “to resist occupation in all forms;” the continuation of the armed struggle until all Palestinian refugees are repatriated inside Israel; refusal to recognize Israel as a Jewish state; and a call for Palestinian sovereignty over Jerusalem, according to the Arabic language Al Quds newspaper.

“Fatah will continue to sacrifice victims until Jerusalem will be returned [to the Palestinians], clean of settlements and settlers,” language used to refer to Israelis, the platform states. “Fatah is still a liberation movement, and since we have not yet achieved our goals, we have popular resistance,” said Fatah Central Committee member At-Tayyib Abdul-Rahim.

In another step backward for peace, the party endorsed the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades as Fatah’s official armed wing despite previous agreements with Israel and the U.S. to dismantle the faction.

“The Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades are the jewel in Fatah's crown,” said Fahmi Al-Za'arir, a Fatah spokesman. “We must strengthen their status . . . [and] maintain them in a state of alert.”

Tom Gross, an expert on Middle East affairs, said that, instead of proving itself the “responsible Palestinian party that could form an independent Palestinian state that would live in peace with Israel, the extremely hard-line pronouncements and resolutions Fatah adopted during the past week show that it still has not made the transition from a guerrilla movement in exile bent on destroying Israel to a political party charged with establishing Palestinian self-rule.”

The Bethlehem rhetoric ostensibly buries the chance for peace in the near future. Israeli leaders were frustrated with Fatah’s resolutions to support an armed struggle.

“If its program is to be believed, Fatah is just as extremist as Hamas, and that’s worrying because it damages the prospects of reaching a compromise with the leadership of the Palestinian Authority,” said Israel’s Information Minister Yuli Edelstein. “We must not act as if we haven’t heard. We must emerge from the circle of illusions that these are moderates who want peace.”

Caroline Glick, a right-wing columnist for The Jerusalem Post, had harsh language for the West, particularly the White House.

“A central pillar of the Obama administration’s Middle East policy paradigm was shattered at the Fatah conference in Bethlehem — but don't expect the White House to notice,” she writes in her column Friday. “Fatah was supposed to be the poster child for moderate terrorists . . . It was supposed to be the group that proved the central contention of the Obama White House's strategy for dealing with terror, namely, that all terrorists want is to be appeased.”

“But over the past week in Bethlehem, Fatah's leaders said they will not be appeased,” Glick writes. “They remain an implacable terror group devoted to the physical annihilation of Israel."

Rep. Hoyer: Obama Israel Stance Misperceived

By Nicole Jansezian

Aug. 14, 2009

Article originally printed here.

JERUSALEM - House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said President Barack Obama’s forceful stance on stopping construction in Israeli neighborhoods and settlements has been “blown out of proportion” and misperceived both by Israelis and American supporters of the Jewish state.

“The Obama administration shares ... strong, unwavering support of Israel as a Jewish state,” Hoyer told Newsmax. “The settlements has become such a focus, but there are more important issues. The settlement issue has been blown out of proportion and is not what he is articulating.”

While a GOP delegation to Israel last week criticized the president’s policies on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and Iranian nuclear weapons, a group of 29 Democrats this week sought to reaffirm “that the relationship between the U.S. and Israel remains as strong as ever,” Hoyer said during a news conference in Jerusalem on Thursday. Obama has been pressuring Israel to freeze all settlement construction, including “natural growth” in existing settlements.

But Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said while he will not approve the building of new settlements, he will allow construction in existing ones. Hoyer defended the White House, saying that U.S policy hasn’t actually changed since the implementation of the Roadmap. But Hoyer’s own position that Jewish building in East Jerusalem is acceptable is at odds with the State Department.

The State Department last month summoned Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Michael Oren to press Israel to stop construction by an American Jewish millionaire in East Jerusalem, according to Israeli media reports. In the midst of dubious directives coming from the White House that have set relations between Jerusalem and Washington on edge, this summer saw the largest delegation of U.S. congressmen ever to visit the Holy Land.

Last week, 25 Republicans, led by Minority Whip Eric Cantor, took the same tour and met with the same leaders as their Democratic peers. Both trips were sponsored by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the largest pro-Israel lobbyist in Washington. Earlier in the week, the Democrats met with Israel’s Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman who said the chance for peace in the near future had been obliterated by the political situation in Palestinian territories.

“The current situation in which no one authority represents all of the Palestinians, in which there is ‘Hamastan’ in Gaza and ‘Fatahland’ in Judea and Samaria ... buries any possibility to reach a comprehensive settlement with the Palestinians in the next few years,” he said. “The uncompromising, extremist positions of the Palestinians concerning Jerusalem, the right of return (of refugees) and the Jewish settlements create an unbridgeable gap between us.” Hoyer on Thursday blamed the Palestinians for stalled peace talks with Israel.

“The largest thing impeding negotiations at this time is the unwillingness of (Palestinian President Mahmoud) Abbas to sit down now,” Hoyer said. “He had no preconditions with (former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud) Olmert.” The delegation met with Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad who denounced terrorism and said Israel has a right to exist, but did not specify whether he supported Israel as a Jewish state, a requirement laid out by Netanyahu.

Fayyad has been touted by the West as a moderate Palestinian official untainted by corruption, however, he is unpopular among Palestinians. At the news conference, Hoyer was presented with a report on Palestinian school books, some of which teach jihad and martyrdom, and was handed a map issued this week by the Palestinian Authority Tourism Ministry that labels the land stretching from the Jordan to the Mediterranean Sea as Palestine with no mention of Israel.

“If we teach our children hate we cannot be surprised that they grow up to hate,” he said. “The teaching of hate and prejudice is unacceptable any place in the world and particularly here.” In response to reporters’ questions concerning reports that the United Nations in the Gaza Strip is subject to the whims of Hamas, Gene Green, D-Texas, said he was going to make sure the UN does not “continue to prop up a terrorist organization like Hamas.”

© 2009 Newsmax. All rights reserved.

In Israel, GOP's Cantor Slams Obama's Iran Policy

By Nicole Jansezian

Aug. 6, 2009

Article originally printed here.

JERUSALEM - Republican congressmen visiting Israel criticized the Obama administration’s handling of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, a disproportionate emphasis on stopping construction in Israeli settlements and its lack of vigilance in preventing Iran from gaining nuclear weapons.

“We’re concerned with what the White House is signaling of late,” Eric Cantor, R-Va, told reporters on the fifth day of the visit. The minority whip in the House of Representatives emphasized the “existential threat that Iran poses” to the region and to the United States. Cantor said he was troubled by an unbalanced emphasis of the American administration on freezing Jewish settlement construction rather than attempting to extract meaningful commitments from the Palestinians and Arab states.

Cantor led a delegation of 25 Republican congressmen and women on the weeklong trip, sponsored by the American Israel Education Foundation, an organization affiliated with the influential pro-Israel lobby AIPAC, American Israel Public Affairs Committee. Next week, some 30 Democrats from Congress will make a similar visit to the region.

The delegation stressed their own unmitigated support for Israel and the danger of any acquisition by Iran of nuclear weapons, an issue strongly echoed by Israeli leaders.

“I don’t believe the president of the United States fully comprehends this threat of Iran (acquiring) nuclear weapons and the threat to the stability of this region,” said Rep. Mike Coffman of Colorado. Coffman, who has stated in the past that radical Islamic elements are the cause for destabilizing the Middle East, said President Barack Obama’s approach to Middle East peace “is in error in a very big way.” “Many outside the State of Israel see the Arab-Israeli conflict as a centerpiece to the Muslim conflict of the West - that is absolutely wrong,” he said after the news conference. “The broader conflict has nothing to do with Israel.”

The congressional delegation met with Israeli leaders as well as with Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, who they said wavered when pressed to recognize Israel as a Jewish state, one of Israel’s stipulations for a peace agreement. The delegation also expressed outrage that Palestinians named streets in the West Bank and Gaza after terrorists. “If there is an unwillingness on the part of so-called moderate Palestinians ... it makes it very difficult” to reach a peace agreement, Cantor said. Cantor also referred to a 2004 letter by former President George W. Bush to former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in which the U.S. condones growth and permanence in major settlement blocs. The Obama camp has said it is not bound to “understandings,” including this letter, between the Israeli governments and prior administrations.

“The Bush letter indicates we could never see Israel turn back to 1967 lines,” said Cantor, who supports the letter. “Those communities (the settlements) will never be separated from Israel.” Meanwhile, the Israeli daily newspaper Haaretz reported today that American Middle East envoy George Mitchell has asked Israel for a one-year freeze on West Bank settlement construction in order to elicit concessions from Arab countries. Israel has already agreed to suspend building in settlements for six months. The congressmen’s tour has involved meetings with Israeli and Palestinian officials, briefings and visits to settlements and Sderot, the city on the Gaza border bombarded in the last eight years by Palestinians rocket attacks.

© 2009 Newsmax. All rights reserved.