Mahmoud Abbas’ Latest Preposterous Demand

When he met with Mahmoud Abbas, Antony Blinken said: “Palestinians and Israelis alike deserve to live with equal measures of freedom, of opportunity, of security, of dignity.” Of the 22 Arab countries, in which ones do ordinary people enjoy the same “measures of freedom, of opportunity, of security, of dignity” as Israeli Arabs do? Is there any evidence that the lack of “freedom,” “opportunity,” “security,” and “dignity” experienced by Palestinians in the PA territories and in Gaza is Israel’s fault? Both Hamas and the PA rule despotically; the leaders oppress their own populations, making sure that anyone who opposes their rule is  expelled, or arrested, or silenced or, as in the case of the PA critic, Nizar Banat, murdered. The mismanagement and corruption that they see all around them fill the ordinary Palestinians with despair; their “dignity” is trampled on not by Israelis, but by those who rule over them and cannot be dislodged. The only Palestinians who are treated well, aside from the grasping rulers, are the 150,000 who are permitted to work in Israel, where their employers provide both “opportunity” in the workplace and a “measure of dignity” in their treatment that they do not receive at home.

Mahmoud Abbas’ demand for the “release of all prisoners under the supervision and sponsorship of the Quartet” is preposterous. Those who have maimed and murdered Israelis are not going to be “released” in order to satisfy Mahmoud Abbas. They will serve out their sentences. And there will be no more of those prisoner swaps where a thousand Palestinians are freed to get back one or two Israelis held hostage by Hamas. Too many of those terrorists, when freed, went right back to killing Israelis. The same mistake will not be repeated. Once burned, twice shy.

Abbas accused the world of double standards when it came to Israel, appearing to allude to the way that the international community has sanctioned Russia for its invasion of Ukraine.

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“The latest incidents in Europe have proven that there are double standards being flagrantly observed around the world,” Abbas said.

Abbas thinks the world has given so much attention to the Ukrainians, and ignored the Palestinians. No one has “ignored” the Palestinians. They are the most cosseted of “refugees,” for they are allowed to pass on that “refugee” status to their descendants – children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and so on, while no other group, among the hundreds of millions of refugees created since the Second World War, has been granted that peculiar privilege.

At the U.N., in the General Assembly, at the UN Security Council at the UN Human Rights Council, the Palestinians receive more favorable attention than any other group, just as Israel receives more criticism than any other state, or any collection of states. The UN Human Rights Council has on its permanent roster Agenda Item 7, which is devoted to how Israel treats the Palestinians, and must be discussed at every session. And just now the U.N. General Assembly has established and funded an open-ended committee to investigate Israeli “war crimes” against the Palestinians.

“In spite of the crimes of the Israeli occupation that have reached a stage of ethnic cleansing and racial discrimination, we don’t find any party that would hold Israel accountable for its actions as it acts as a state above all law,” Abbas said.

What “ethnic cleansing” is that? Have the Israelis expelled any Palestinians from Gaza or the Golan or the West Bank? What about in east Jerusalem, where the P.A. routinely accuses Israel of “judaizing” the area? When Israel took possession of east Jerusalem as a result of the Six-Day War, there were 66,000 Arabs in the area. Now there are 340,000. If Israel is trying to “judaize” east Jerusalem, they are not trying very hard.

“What is happening in Palestine is something that we cannot be silent about,” he said.

What is “happening in Palestine” is this: after decades of being at the center of Arab attention, the Palestinians are being shunted to one side by many of their fellow Arabs, and this they cannot bear. Four Arab states have decided to put their own national interests first, and have joined the Abraham Accords, seeking — and finding – great economic and security benefits from normalizing ties with Israel. Another Arab state, Egypt, has for years found Israel to be a valuable ally in fighting Jihadists and Muslim Brotherhood members in the Sinai. Recently General El-Sissi hosted Prime Minister Bennett and made sure the meeting – which included the UAE Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nayhan – was extensively and approvingly covered in the Egyptian media.

Saudi Arabia also receives intelligence information from Israel on security threats to the Kingdom, especially from the Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen, who keep hurling missiles into Saudi oil facilities, energy plants, and airbases. When King Salman, who is 86 and in poor health, dies, and the present Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Salman — who is known to favor closer relations with Israel — becomes king, it is likely that Saudi Arabia will be the next Arab state to join the Abraham Accords, if Indonesia doesn’t get there first. This prospect has sent Mahmoud Abbas into a frenzy of fury and despair. The Palestinians may still be given a hearing at the U.N., but only because it’s such fun to gang up on the Jewish state. in the Middle East, they are horrified to discover, their stock continues to sink. The “insects of an hour,” they have had their moment in the sun. And now it’s over.

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