ANALYSIS: Abbas Finally Hammered Last Nail in Coffin of the Peace Process
The Israeli-Palestinian peace process seem doomed after PA leader Mahmoud Abbas’ antisemitic rant in Berlin. What happened, and what’s it say about Palestinian relations with the Jewish state?
Has old age caused Mahmoud Abbas to drop his diplomatic guard and expose his Palestinian Authority for what it really is?Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas visited Germany on Tuesday and drew there the ire of the Israeli government and the public in Israel, as well as some pundits in Germany, after he claimed that Israel carried out a Holocaust on Palestinian Arabs 50 times.
Abbas made the comment in response to a question about how he viewed the murder of 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics, exactly 50 years ago.
The monstrous lie, as Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid called Abbas’s claim, elicited no immediate response from German Chancellor Olaf Scholz.
Scholz was blamed for this by some German journalists, who said that “Scholz didn’t look good here” and that he should have walked away after Abbas made his comment.
The German Chancellor first gave the impression he wanted to respond to Abbas’s outrageous claim, but then apparently decided to remain ‘diplomatic’ and thus remained silent.
Scholz later gave an explanation in a Twitter message to the newspaper BILD and said he found Abbas’s comments “disgusting,” and that “for Germans any relativization of the Holocaust was neither tolerable nor acceptable.”
Incidentally, Abbas did not answer the question about the 1972 terror attack on Israeli athletes in Munich carried out by Palestinian terrorists of the Black September movement, and instead began to vehemently criticize Israel. Israel is said to have inflicted “50 massacres” on the Palestinian population, “50 massacres and 50 times the Holocaust.”
Abbas’ antisemitic past
Abbas the terrorist (pictured in 1985) planned plane hijackings and the the Munich Massacre
On Wednesday, Abbas appeared to be walking back his claim about the Holocaust on the Palestinian population, but made no further attempt to apologize.
The aging Palestinian leader issued a statement via the WAFA news agency in which he stated that “the Holocaust was the most horrific crime in the modern history of mankind.” Abbas explained that his intention had not been to deny the Holocaust, but then went on to accuse Israel again of “massacres and atrocities” that according to him still continue.
It wasn’t the first time the Palestinian leader made outrageous remarks about the Holocaust, or Shoah in Hebrew, which means disaster.
In 2018, Abbas said that the Holocaust was not caused by antisemitism, but by the Jews themselves, who had provoked the genocide because of their social stance in the countries where they were living.
The Jews were said to have elicited the hatred of the Germans by their greed in financial transactions, according to the Palestinian leader.
In this case, too, he later appeared to backtrack after a storm of international protests, and the statement on Wednesday was very similar to the one he issued after his comments in 2018.
The same Abbas obtained his doctorate in 1982 from a university in the former Soviet Union with a thesis titled: “The connections between Nazism and Zionism between the years 1933 and 1945”
In the thesis, Abbas attempted to prove that the Jews had collaborated with Nazis in order to establish the State of Israel, and denied that six million Jews had been murdered by Hitler regime, claiming that the real number was instead just 896,000.
In 1984 Abbas, furthermore, published a book based on this thesis in which he repeated these lies and false claims.
Prime Minister Lapid furious
Prime Minister Yair Lapid, himself a second-generation Holocaust victim, issued a sharp-worded statement after Abbas’s remarks about the 50 Holocausts allegedly carried out by Israel.
Lapid called Abbas’ claims a “monstrous lie” and a “moral disgrace.”
“History will never forgive him,” Lapid wrote on Twitter, adding that the Nazis murdered “six million Jews, among them one-and-a-half a million children.”
Earlier this year, ex-Prime Minister Naftali Bennett had explained that he and Lapid jointly decided not to meet with Abbas because of his Holocaust denials and distortions, as well as his refusal to stop the ongoing payments of the salaries of Palestinian terrorists imprisoned in Israeli prisons.
Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz, who met with Abbas a number of times on his own initiative, also distanced himself from the Palestinian leader, calling Abbas’s comments “disgraceful, false and an attempt to distort and rewrite history.”
Palestinian praise
Meanwhile, Palestinian officials, especially those of Abbas’ own Fatah faction, praised the Palestinian Authority leader.
Fatah posted a photo of Abbas on Facebook with the caption:
“Mr President, you are strong! Continue with Allah’s blessing and be reassured, we are proud of you and we are all behind you.”
Other Fatah officials claimed that Abbas’s comments were intended to draw the world’s attention back to “the suffering of the Palestinian people, who deserve an apology for the atrocities committed against them.”
PLO officials, meanwhile, continued to claim that Abbas had spoken the truth and that his words “represented the position of the Palestinian people.”
The apartheid lie
During the press conference in Berlin with Scholz, Abbas again accused Israel of implementing apartheid policies against the local Arab population.
This time the comment apparently offended Scholz, and he promptly responded by rejecting Abbas’ claim.
The German leader said his government had different views on Israel’s politics, and then clarified that he will not use the term “apartheid” because he believes it is incorrect to use this term to describe the situation.
New attempt to be recognized as a state
Scholz later told reporters that despite Germany’s support for the so-called ‘two-state solution,’ he doesn’t think now is the right time to change the situation.
It could be that Scholz’s comments about a Palestinian state were related to the PA’s new attempt to gain United Nations recognition for a Palestinian state.
The Palestinian Authority again plans to apply for full membership of the organization in an effort to save the two-state solution from extinction, according to Palestinian observers.
Riyad Mansour, the PA ambassador to the UN, said in an interview with The Times of Israel that applying for full membership at the UN as a recognized state was meant to pressure Israel.
Mansour said there is a large majority in the UN General Assembly that would vote for recognition of the PA as a full-fledged UN member.
The PA ambassador seems to have conveniently forgotten that only a consensus vote in the UN Security Council, not the General Assembly, can recognize a new state. And it is all but certain that the United States would veto any such vote.
The PA also unsuccessfully attempted to gain full membership at the UN during the administration of former-President Barack Obama, who despite being in favour of the ‘two-state-solution’ used his veto to thwart the plot to solve the conflict with Israel without further negotiations.
No new negotiations
What has now become absolutely clear after the Abbas scandal in Germany is that there will be no new negotiations on the Israeli side with the current Palestinian leadership.
Denying the Holocaust or misusing this unprecedented genocide of six million Jews in a smear campaign against Israel is a clear red line for the Israeli public and leadership.
The already-low level of trust in Abbas and his Palestinian Authority among the Israeli public has finally been reduced to zero, according to commentators in Israel.
One of them is Arab affairs expert Dr. Mordechai Kedar of Bar Ilan University, who during an interview this week said due to Abbas’ advanced age, he has trouble keeping his real views on the conflict with Israel to himself.
Kedar, who speaks fluently Arabic, said that Abbas always has engaged in double-speak to uphold his image of a moderate in the Western world.
Now that the Palestinian leader exposed himself as a classic antisemite, the Palestinian Authority must be dismantled, according to Kedar.
Instead of a central government, emirates should be formed in the areas currently administered by the PA, and local clans should govern these areas, Kedar said.
The Middle East expert added that other countries in the region that have a tribal society but are governed by a central government have turned out to be failed states.
Examples are Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya and Yemen, and the Palestinian Authority is no different, according to Kedar.
1 comment:
You can't make peace with people whose stated goal is the death of your people and the destruction of your country. There is no room there for compromise.
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