Between the Lines: More of Mahmoud's Mendacity

The Thursday, February 28 Jerusalem Post contained a totally factual article by Khaled Abu Toameh entitled "Abbas Reiterates opposition to E1 plan to British delegation." The article may be viewed in full on the Jerusalem Post website at <http://www.jpost.com/DiplomacyAndPolitics/Article.aspx?id=304749>. Mahmoud was at his mendacious best.

Here are some excerpts, along with some comments.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas reiterated his opposition on Wednesday to Israel’s plan to build in the area known as E1 between Jerusalem and Ma’aleh Adumim.
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Abbas’s remarks came during a meeting he held in his office in Ramallah with Nigel Kim Darroch, the National Security Adviser for the British government.
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Abbas told the British diplomats that the E1 plan would divide the West Bank into two parts and prevent geographical continuity between Palestinian territories.

Comment: One can be fairly certain Abbas is familiar enough with the geography of Judea and Samaria (the "West Bank") to know this is absolutely false. While it might require some Palestinian Arabs to alter their routes when traveling between portions of Judea and Samaria, their detours would actually be far less than the distance I have to detour to avoid Palestinian Authority controlled areas when traveling between Netanya and Jerusalem.

Abbas said that the plan would also isolate east Jerusalem from its “Palestinian surroundings.”

Comment: More nonsense.

Reiterating his commitment to the two-state solution, Abbas said that the PA remained committed to a just and comprehensive peace with Israel.

Comment: Abbas has a rather strange way of acting on that alleged commitment, given that he has assiduously avoided negotiations with Israel since ignoring an incredibly one-sided (in the PA's favor) offer way back in 2008 from the Israeli government that would have given the Palestinian Arabs the equivalent of all the disputed territory.

Abbas complained that the continued imprisonment of Palestinians and settlement construction “jeopardized efforts to break the current statement (sic) in the peace process.”

Comment: One litmus test Abbas repeatedly fails: Insisting on the release of terrorists is not the position of someone interested in living in peace. Insisting on making Judea and Samaria judenrein is also not the position of someone living in peace; rather it is the position of someone who wants to create a state that is worse than an apartheid state.

The stalemate in the so-called peace process is almost totally Abbas' doing. Efforts by third parties, or even Israel, to break the stalemate will continue to be useless unless and until Abbas makes the fundamental decision to work for, rather than against, peace.

Meanwhile, Abbas Zaki, a senior Fatah official, called on Palestinians to take to the streets in the thousands to block highways used by settlers in the West Bank.

Comment: Hardly a clarion call for peaceful coexistence.

Zaki said that the Palestinians can no longer remain idle as “our sons are being executed in Israeli prisons.”

Comment: No Palestinian Arabs have ever been executed in Israeli prisons. The only prisoner ever executed by Israel since its reestablishment was Adolf Eichmann. But why should Zaki be any less mendacious than Abbas?

He said, however, that Fatah was opposed to an armed struggle against Israel at this stage because of the divisions among the Palestinians and the preoccupation of the Arab countries with the Arab Spring.

Comment: In other words, it's not that Fatah has anything against murdering innocent Israelis. Indeed, the Palestinian Authority repeatedly lionizes brutal murderers and Article 19 of the Fatah Charter insists "Armed struggle is a strategy and not a tactic, and the Palestinian Arab People's armed revolution is a decisive factor in the liberation fight and in uprooting the Zionist existence, and this struggle will not cease unless the Zionist state is demolished and Palestine is completely liberated."

It's just that, at this moment, there are tactical reasons for not using too much violence - especially since it can count on its cohorts to keep trying to kill Israelis while maintaining implausible deniability.

In fact, even Fatah can continue "armed struggle" without anyone paying attention. Just the other day, it was Fatah which launched a missile from Gaza which landed in Ashkelon. And Fatah, like the PA and PLO, is led by none other than the mendacious Mahmoud Abbas.

It doesn't take much reading between the lines, even of this one, relatively short article, to understand there's virtually no chance of an Arab-Israeli peace until there's a sea change in the mindset of the leadership of the Palestinian Arabs.