- POINT 1: The Oslo Accords were a ploy to legitimize and deepen the Occupation
- COUNTERPOINT: The Oslo Accords were designed specifically to end the "Occupation".
- Supporting Evidence: The Oslo Peace Process was to end the "occupation," not prolong or repackage it. Only the most cynical hard-liner could describe it that way. It was a compromise solution designed to gradually establish Palestinian self-rule in the Territories. Israel gave Palestinians arms to develop police forces. By 1997 Israel had pulled out of the major Palestinian population centers in the West Bank and 98% of Palestinians lived under some form of Palestinian Authority control. [1]
- Supporting Evidence: The Oslo Peace Process was to end the "occupation," not prolong or repackage it. Only the most cynical hard-liner could describe it that way. It was a compromise solution designed to gradually establish Palestinian self-rule in the Territories. Israel gave Palestinians arms to develop police forces. By 1997 Israel had pulled out of the major Palestinian population centers in the West Bank and 98% of Palestinians lived under some form of Palestinian Authority control. [1]
- COUNTERPOINT: Representatives of the Palestinian Authority have admitted that they viewed the Oslo Accords as a ploy to destroy Israel.
- Supporting Evidence: "the ultimate goal is the liberation of all historic Palestine from the river to the sea. Oslo had to be viewed as a Trojan horse... We are asking all the Palestinian forces and factions to look at the Oslo Agreement and at other agreements as 'temporary' procedures, or phased goals, this means that we are ambushing the Israelis and cheating them." - Faisal Husseini, PA representative for Jerusalem affairs, member of Arafat's Cabinet, and noted 'moderate', in Egyptian Daily "Al-Arabi" June 21, 2001 [2]
- Supporting Evidence: "The Oslo agreement, or any other agreement, is just a temporary procedure, or just a step towards something bigger […] [Palestine], according to the higher strategy, [is] 'from the river to the sea.' Palestine in its entirety is an Arab land, the land of the Arab nation." - Faisal Husseini, PA representative for Jerusalem affairs, member of Arafat's Cabinet, and noted 'moderate', in Egyptian Daily "Al-Arabi" June 21, 2001 [3]
- Supporting Evidence: "We of the PLO will now concentrate all our efforts on splitting Israel psychologically into two camps… [The PLO plans] to eliminate the State of Israel and establish a purely Palestinian State. We will make life unbearable for the Jews by psychological warfare and population explosion; Jews won't want to live among us Arabs." - Yasser Arafat, Palestinian Authority Chairman, Stockholm [4]
- Supporting Evidence: "Whether they return to negotiations or not, and whether they fulfill the agreements or not, the political plan is a temporary agreement, and the conflict remains eternal, will not be locked, and the agreements being talked about are regarding the current balance of power. As to the struggle, it will continue. It may pause at times, but in the final analysis, Palestine is ours from the [Mediterranean] Sea to the [Jordan] River." - Abdullah Al-Hourani, chairman of the Palestinian National Council Political Committee, in "Al-Hayat Al-Jadida", April 14, 2000 [5]
- Supporting Evidence: "The Palestinian people accepted the Oslo agreements as a first step and not as a permanent settlement, based on the premise that the war and struggle in the land is more efficient than a struggle from a distant land," - Abd El Aziz Shahian, Palestinian Authority Minister of Supplies, in "Al Ayyam", May 30, 2000 [6]
- Question: You claim that the Oslo accords were a ploy to deepen the occupation, while in fact, members of the Palestinian Authority admitted that it was a ploy to destroy Israel. What would you say about the words of Faisal Husseini, a member of Arafat's cabinet, and PA minister for Jerusalem affairs, from 2001: "the ultimate goal is the liberation of all historic Palestine from the river to the sea. Oslo had to be viewed as a Trojan horse... We are asking all the Palestinian forces and factions to look at the Oslo Agreement and at other agreements as 'temporary' procedures, or phased goals, this means that we are ambushing the Israelis and cheating them." What do you say to this?
- Supporting Evidence: "the ultimate goal is the liberation of all historic Palestine from the river to the sea. Oslo had to be viewed as a Trojan horse... We are asking all the Palestinian forces and factions to look at the Oslo Agreement and at other agreements as 'temporary' procedures, or phased goals, this means that we are ambushing the Israelis and cheating them." - Faisal Husseini, PA representative for Jerusalem affairs, member of Arafat's Cabinet, and noted 'moderate', in Egyptian Daily "Al-Arabi" June 21, 2001 [2]
- COUNTERPOINT: Israel saw the Oslo accords as the political means to end the "Occupation". We know this because Prime Minister Barak offered to cede the Gaza Strip, West Bank, and much of Jerusalem to the Palestinian Authority at Camp David and Taba.
- Supporting Evidence: Israel offered generous concessions at Camp David and Taba in 2000 and 2001. Israel offered the Palestinians a state on 100% of Gaza and a contiguous 95% of the West Bank with land swaps for the remaining 5%, Jerusalem as a shared capital, Palestinian sovereignty over most of the Temple Mount and many Jewish towns in the West Bank dismantled. No more occupation. No Bantustans. No colonization. Arafat refused without offering a counter-proposal, according to US negotiators. [7]
- Supporting Evidence: According to Dennis Ross, "Both Barak and Clinton were prepared to do what was necessary to reach agreement [with the Palestinians]. Both were up to the challenge. Neither shied away from the risks inherent in confronting history and mythology. Can one say the same about Arafat? Unfortunately, not - and his behavior at Camp David and afterward cannot be explained only by his suspicions that a trap was being set for him." [8]
- Supporting Evidence: Israel offered generous concessions at Camp David and Taba in 2000 and 2001. Israel offered the Palestinians a state on 100% of Gaza and a contiguous 95% of the West Bank with land swaps for the remaining 5%, Jerusalem as a shared capital, Palestinian sovereignty over most of the Temple Mount and many Jewish towns in the West Bank dismantled. No more occupation. No Bantustans. No colonization. Arafat refused without offering a counter-proposal, according to US negotiators. [7]
- COUNTERPOINT: The Oslo Accords were designed specifically to end the "Occupation".
- POINT 2: The Oslo Peace Process-"a willfully deceptive rubric" was designed to pacify the Palestinians and colonize more Palestinian land.
- COUNTERPOINT: The speaker that invokes this claim is surely a rejectionist with maximalist demands, since all people know that Oslo would have culminated with a Palestinian state occupying 97% of the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and eastern Jerusalem.(http://www.memri.org/bin/opener.cgi?Page=archives&ID=SP40102)
- Supporting Evidence: Though the great majority of Palestinians and Israelis welcomed Oslo and the hope it brought to end violence and bring peace, Said tries to make "pacification" a dirty word and denounces the wishes and hopes of the very people he claims to represent.
- Supporting Evidence: "[Hamas, you] rejected Clinton's proposal, which gave your people 96-97% of the West Bank, citing the religious ruling that you rejected it because it was an American-Jewish conspiracy against the Palestinian people...[This is] irrational, nihilist behavior." - Al-'Afif Al-Akhdhar in Al Hayat, July 14, 2002. [9]
- Supporting Evidence: Though the great majority of Palestinians and Israelis welcomed Oslo and the hope it brought to end violence and bring peace, Said tries to make "pacification" a dirty word and denounces the wishes and hopes of the very people he claims to represent.
- COUNTERPOINT: Israel did not demand Palestinian disarmament (pacification) in the Oslo Accords.
- Supporting Evidence: Israel sponsored and gave arms to 30,000 Palestinians who were to act as the PA's police force. Unfortunately, the PA violated the understanding, creating a police force of over 40,000 and arming a variety of other security organizations. (*) These armed forces have not kept order, have not controlled terrorists, and in many instances have participated in attacks against Jews, as they did during the lynching of two Israeli soldiers who had been taken to the Ramallah police station and were then delivered to a mob on Oct. 12, 2000. (**) [10]
- Supporting Evidence: Israel sponsored and gave arms to 30,000 Palestinians who were to act as the PA's police force. Unfortunately, the PA violated the understanding, creating a police force of over 40,000 and arming a variety of other security organizations. (*) These armed forces have not kept order, have not controlled terrorists, and in many instances have participated in attacks against Jews, as they did during the lynching of two Israeli soldiers who had been taken to the Ramallah police station and were then delivered to a mob on Oct. 12, 2000. (**) [10]
- COUNTERPOINT: The speaker that invokes this claim is surely a rejectionist with maximalist demands, since all people know that Oslo would have culminated with a Palestinian state occupying 97% of the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and eastern Jerusalem.(http://www.memri.org/bin/opener.cgi?Page=archives&ID=SP40102)
- POINT 3: The PLO made enormous concessions when it agreed to recognize Israel
- COUNTERPOINT: The claim that the Palestinians have accepted Israel is simply untrue. Although the Oslo accords required the PLO to revise the Palestinian National Covenant so that it no longer calls for the destruction of Israel, it has never done so.
- Supporting Evidence: Palestinian National Charter, Article 19: "The establishment of Israel is fundamentally null and void." Article 15: "[We call for] the liquidation of the Zionist presence in Palestine." Article 9: "Armed Struggle is the only way to liberate Palestine." [11]
- Supporting Evidence: "We have no intention of changing or nullifying the Covenant, rather, we will adhere to it until our last breath since it embodies the essence of our demands." - Tayseer Qaba, deputy chairman of the Palestine National Council, September 19, 1995. [12]
- Supporting Evidence: "The text of the Palestinian National Covenant remains as it was and no changes whatsoever were made to it." - Fatah, Research and Thought Department, "The Palestinian National Covenant: Between Renewal and Being Frozen," Fatah Publication #8, April 1996. [13]
- Supporting Evidence: "The PLO Covenant continues to exist, because the PNC was never convened to ratify the changes that were proposed in the past, particularly because no legal committee was appointed to draft the necessary change." - Salim Za'anoun, Chairman of the Palestinian National Council, February 2, 2001.
- Supporting Evidence: "The Palestinians refused to make even symbolic gestures of conciliation. It did not revoke the Palestinian National Charter, which calls for the dismantling of 'the Zionist entity' though it had pledged to do so in 1990's." - Benny Morris [14]
- Supporting Evidence: "Arafat has been like Lucy with the football, treating the rest of the world as Charlie Brown. He and the PNC keep telling everyone they've changed the charter, without actually changing it." - James Woolsey, Former CIA Director. [15]
- Supporting Evidence: Palestinian National Charter, Article 19: "The establishment of Israel is fundamentally null and void." Article 15: "[We call for] the liquidation of the Zionist presence in Palestine." Article 9: "Armed Struggle is the only way to liberate Palestine." [11]
- COUNTERPOINT: The claim that the Palestinians have accepted Israel is simply untrue. If they had accepted the existence of Israel, Arafat would have accepted the offer at Camp David.
- Supporting Evidence: If that were the case, they would have accepted Israel's proposal to end the conflict in 2000 with the creation of a viable Palestinian state. According to U.S. envoy Dennis Ross, who was present at the meeting, the offer would have ended the conflict by giving the Palestinians all of Gaza, a contiguous 95% of the West Bank and 2% land compensation from within Israel. [16]
- Supporting Evidence: If that were the case, they would have accepted Israel's proposal to end the conflict in 2000 with the creation of a viable Palestinian state. According to U.S. envoy Dennis Ross, who was present at the meeting, the offer would have ended the conflict by giving the Palestinians all of Gaza, a contiguous 95% of the West Bank and 2% land compensation from within Israel. [16]
- COUNTERPOINT: The claim that the Palestinians have accepted Israel is simply untrue. Palestinians would relinquish the "right of return" if their intentions were to accept Israel's existence. The right of return would create a de facto Arab state where Israel stands.
- Supporting Evidence: "If refugees return to Israel, Israel will cease to exist." - Egyptian President Nasser, September 1, 1961
- Supporting Evidence: "Any discussion aimed at a solution of the Palestine problem which will not be based on ensuring the refugees' right to annihilate Israel will be regarded as a desecration of the Arab people and an act of treason" (Beirut al Massa, July 15, 1957). Resolution of the 1957 Refugee Conference at Homs, Syria. [17]
- Supporting Evidence: "If refugees return to Israel, Israel will cease to exist." - Egyptian President Nasser, September 1, 1961
- COUNTERPOINT: The claim that the Palestinians have accepted Israel is simply untrue. Palestinian Public opinion polls consistently show that the vast majority of Palestinians believe they should be fighting for the obliteration of Israel.
- Supporting Evidence: In a 2002 Poll taken at Najah University in Nablus, "87% of Palestinians surveyed were in favor of continuing terror attacks," and, "87.5% were in favor of 'liberating all of Palestine'." [18]
- Supporting Evidence: In a random sample of 1199 Palestinians conducted by JMCC Public Opinion Polls in September of 2002, 64.3% of Palestinians supported suicide bombings against civilians and 43% of Palestinians believed the goal of the current Intifada should be the elimination of Israel. [19]
- Supporting Evidence: In a 2002 Poll taken at Najah University in Nablus, "87% of Palestinians surveyed were in favor of continuing terror attacks," and, "87.5% were in favor of 'liberating all of Palestine'." [18]
- COUNTERPOINT: The claim that the Palestinians have accepted Israel is simply untrue. Although the Oslo accords required the PLO to revise the Palestinian National Covenant so that it no longer calls for the destruction of Israel, it has never done so.
- POINT 4: The PLO made enormous concessions by being willing to concede 78% of historic Palestine.
- COUNTERPOINT: 78% of 'Historic Palestine' is Jordan. All of Israel, including the West Bank and Gaza comprise only 22% of the Palestinian Mandate. Palestinians will technically get 22% of Historic Palestine if it is able to eliminate Israel.
- Supporting Evidence: "The field in which the Jewish National Home was to be established was understood, at the time of the Balfour Declaration, to be the whole of historic Palestine, including Transjordan." Peel Commission Report [20]
- Supporting Evidence: "In terms of territory, Transjordan represented a full four-fifths of the original Mandatory Palestine… [the British hoped] the Arabs would now wave their claim to the remaining fifth." Historian Benny Morris [21]
- Question: Your claim that the West bank and Gaza comprise 22% of historic Palestine is completely false. Present day Israel (not including the Golan Heights) comprises 22% of the Palestinian mandate. The remainder is present-day Jordan - also technically a Palestinian Arab State. When Palestinians say they are willing to accept a state on 22% of "Historic Palestine" they must mean they are willing to accept a state on all of current-day Israel.
- Question: You say that the PLO made enormous concessions by conceding 78% of 'historic Palestine' during Oslo. What you do not make clear is that Jordan (a majority-Palestinian state) comprises 78% of 'historic Palestine' while all of Israel - not just the West Bank and Gaza - comprises 22% of the Palestinian Mandate. The West Bank and Gaza comprise far more than 22% of modern-day Israel. How do you expect Israelis to respond when you say that the PLO's major concession was accepting that they could only erase Israel from the map and not Jordan?
- Supporting Evidence: "The field in which the Jewish National Home was to be established was understood, at the time of the Balfour Declaration, to be the whole of historic Palestine, including Transjordan." Peel Commission Report [20]
- COUNTERPOINT: 78% of 'Historic Palestine' is Jordan. All of Israel, including the West Bank and Gaza comprise only 22% of the Palestinian Mandate. Palestinians will technically get 22% of Historic Palestine if it is able to eliminate Israel.
- POINT 5: Israel "sabotaged" the Oslo Peace Process.
- COUNTERPOINT: The PA, not Israel, sabotaged the Oslo Peace Process. Israel prepared its people for conciliation and peace; the PA prepared its people for war. There is a strain of rejection of Israel's right to exist, of compromising with a Jewish state, among Palestinians that sabotaged Oslo and has repeatedly sabotaged other efforts at compromise and peace.
- COUNTERPOINT: Palestinian rejectionism and extremism sabotaged the Oslo Peace Process.
- Supporting Evidence: An Arab Tunisian columnist castigated Hamas for the theological rejectionism that led to terrorism and the undoing of Oslo. " In 1996, you timed your suicide attacks to coincide with Israeli elections...to cut off the peace process....[and you] killed the peace dynamic. The sick Palestinian people and its leaders are still paying for this mistake. ...." - Al-Afif Al-Akhdar, in Al-Hayat, July 21, 2002. [23]
- Supporting Evidence: quot;We must face the fact that we are dealing here with a rigid state of mind (rejectionism and anti-Semitism) and that the failure of the Oslo peace process has not been so much the result of this or that negotiator's tactics or timing... It goes much deeper. The genocidal strain in this kind of fundamentalist rejectionism is older than the settlements, older than the state of Israel. It reflects the spirit of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem who...fled to Berlin... begging Himmler to let him handle his version of the final solution in Palestine against the Jewish settlers." - Britain's Lord Weidenfeld to the House of Lords, July 13, 2001. [24]
- Supporting Evidence: "I have come away from my examination of the history of the (Palestinian-Israeli) conflict with a sense of the instinctive rejectionism that runs like a dark thread through Palestinian history." - Benny Morris, "The Rejection" in The New Republic, April 11, 2003. [25]
- Supporting Evidence: An Arab Tunisian columnist castigated Hamas for the theological rejectionism that led to terrorism and the undoing of Oslo. " In 1996, you timed your suicide attacks to coincide with Israeli elections...to cut off the peace process....[and you] killed the peace dynamic. The sick Palestinian people and its leaders are still paying for this mistake. ...." - Al-Afif Al-Akhdar, in Al-Hayat, July 21, 2002. [23]
- COUNTERPOINT: Israel fulfilled its obligations in the Oslo Peace Process - preparing its people for peace. From school curricula to pop culture and music, the vision of peace and friendship gained enormous popularity, especially after the death of prime minister Rabin martyred the cause of peace and reconciliation in Israeli society. Though many Israelis were uncomfortable with Barak's offers at Camp David, this optimism was not shattered until the outbreak of the Intifada in September 2000.
- Supporting Evidence: In Israeli textbooks, "Islam, the Arab culture and the Arabs' contribution to In Israeli textbooks, "Islam, the Arab culture and the Arabs' contribution to human civilization are presented in a positive light. No book calls for violence or war. Many books express the yearning for peace between Israel and the Arab countries," according to the Center for Monitoring the Impact of Peace in 2001. [26]
- Supporting Evidence: In Israeli textbooks, "Islam, the Arab culture and the Arabs' contribution to In Israeli textbooks, "Islam, the Arab culture and the Arabs' contribution to human civilization are presented in a positive light. No book calls for violence or war. Many books express the yearning for peace between Israel and the Arab countries," according to the Center for Monitoring the Impact of Peace in 2001. [26]
- COUNTERPOINT: The Palestinian Authority did not fulfill its responsibilities under the Oslo accords.
- Supporting Evidence: The PA armed its populace, developed a corrupt government that violated human rights, and began a campaign of hate against Jews and Israel that swept into public life through school curricula, the media and the mosques, all of which prevented any hope for Oslo to succeed and laid the groundwork for the Intifada of 2000.
- Supporting Evidence: The Palestinians refused to make even symbolic gestures of conciliation. It did not revoke the Palestinian National Charter, which calls for the dismantling of "the Zionist entity" though it had pledged to do so in 1990's. [27]
- Supporting Evidence: In PA authorized textbooks, "There is no attempt to encourage reconciliation with Israel. Israel is presented exclusively as inhumane and greedy... The struggle for the liberation of Palestine is presented mainly as a military one... The Feda'I and Shahid [martyr] are praised as the spearhead of this struggle... Jihad continues to be glorified and martyrs praised, with special attention given to the martyrs of Palestine." - The Center for Monitoring the Impact of Peace in 2001. [28]
- Supporting Evidence: : In a Palestinian poll, researchers found that Palestinians did not even want to change their textbooks to teach their children that Israel should be recognized. "[O]nly 6% would support adopting school curriculum that recognizes Israel and teaches children not to demand return of all Palestine to Palestinians" PSR Survey Research Unit, Public Opinion Poll #3, December 19-24 2001 [29]
- Supporting Evidence: The PA armed its populace, developed a corrupt government that violated human rights, and began a campaign of hate against Jews and Israel that swept into public life through school curricula, the media and the mosques, all of which prevented any hope for Oslo to succeed and laid the groundwork for the Intifada of 2000.
- COUNTERPOINT: The PA has refused to wage a comprehensive campaign against terror groups and their infrastructure:
- Supporting Evidence: The Wye agreement requires the PA to "take all measures necessary in order to prevent acts of terrorism" and to wage a "comprehensive... continuous and constant" campaign against the "terrorists, the terror support structure, and the environment conducive to the support of terror." The PA must also submit a security work plan detailing the measures they intend to take against terror organizations.Section II Wye River Memorandum, October 23 1998 [30]
- Supporting Evidence: "There are no provisions for dismembering Hamas or the Islamic resistance or their offices... or any of the things Israel considered the infrastructure of terrorism." Nabil Shaath, PA Minister and senior Palestinian negotiator. (The Jerusalem Times, a Palestinian weekly newspaper, December 18, 1998.) [31]
- Supporting Evidence: The Wye agreement requires the PA to "take all measures necessary in order to prevent acts of terrorism" and to wage a "comprehensive... continuous and constant" campaign against the "terrorists, the terror support structure, and the environment conducive to the support of terror." The PA must also submit a security work plan detailing the measures they intend to take against terror organizations.Section II Wye River Memorandum, October 23 1998 [30]
- COUNTERPOINT: The PA violated its obligation to prevent anti-Israel incitement and hostile propaganda.
- Supporting Evidence: The Wye agreement requires the PA to "act systematically against all expressions or threats of violence or terror… and to prevent incitement." [32]
- Supporting Evidence: "We must confront them, we must confront them, we must confront them. We must confront them in every sense of the word." - Yasser Arafat in a speech to the Palestinian legislative council. (Palestinian Television. August 9, 1997)
- Supporting Evidence: "It is important that we organize our homes and our movement so that we can more and more and more endure the coming battle, which we shall initiate. We must say these things because great battles lie before us, and it will now be more difficult than in the past... let us each commit one to another and let us commit ourselves before Allah and the Palestinian people that we shall lead the coming battle as we have led previous battles… We are marching together with the blessing of Allah, my brothers, we are marching together to Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Jerusalem." Arafat in a speech to his Fatah movement in Gaza. (Palestinian Television. August 5, 1997. Al-Hayat Al-Jadeeda. August 6, 1997. Reported in Al-Hayat Al-Jadeeda. August 6, 1997.) [33]
- Supporting Evidence: "The agreements will not liberate the land. Every centimeter requires a struggle, and the land requires blood... We must continue the struggle for which the martyrs fell..." - Saher Habash, Fatah Central Committee member, speaking on behalf of Chairman Arafat. January 24, 1999. (Official PA newspaper, Al-Hayat Al-Jadeeda, January 25, 1999) [34]
- Supporting Evidence: "War! War! Continue the struggle!" - Yasser Arafat, in a speech at the Dehaishe refugee camp near Bethlehem, 22 October 1996 (Arutz-7 Radio, 23 October 1996) [35]
- Supporting Evidence: "The struggle will continue until all of Palestine is liberated." - Yasser Arafat, PLO Chairman (Voice of Palestine, 11 November 1995) [36]
- Supporting Evidence: "No one can complain about what Hamas and Jihad are doing. I say that it is the right of every Palestinian to struggle so long as there is a single Israeli soldier in the land of Palestine." - Farouk Qaddumi, head of the P.L.O.'s Political Department (Al-Musawar, 30 September 1994) [37]
- Supporting Evidence: "Our enemy is a lowly enemy. The Palestinian people know there is a state that was established through coercion and it must be destroyed. This is the Palestinian way." - Farouk Qaddumi, head of the P.L.O.'s Political Department. (Reuters, 10 August 1994) [38]
- Supporting Evidence: "Negotiations have achieved nothing up until now. As a consequence, we must be ready in every way to confront all possibilities. You must understand what I mean by this." - Arafat in an October 10 speech before the Palestinian Council. (Near East Report, Oct. 21, 1996.)
- Supporting Evidence: "They will fight for Allah, and they will kill and be killed, and this is a solemn oath... Our blood is cheap compared with the cause which has brought us together and which at moments separated us, but shortly we will meet again in heaven... Palestine is our land and Jerusalem is our capital" - Arafat to Palestinian security forces in Gaza on September 24. (Maariv, Oct. 4, 1996). [39]
- Supporting Evidence: "The struggle will continue until all of Palestine is liberated." - Arafat in a radio address (Voice of Palestine, Nov. 11, 1995.)
- Supporting Evidence: "Jerusalem is under occupation and the Moslems of the world should liberate it by jihad and put it under Islamic and Arabic authority. The jihad is not just a war jihad - we are talking about all means to get back Jerusalem." - Sheikh Ikram Sabri, PA Mufti. (Al-Sharq al-Awsat, Apr. 7, 1995) [40]
- Supporting Evidence: "We are all on our way to die as heroes on the road to Jerusalem, the capital of the state of Palestine." - Arafat in a speech in Gaza. (Jerusalem Post, Jan. 30, 1995)
- Supporting Evidence: "We are all seekers of martyrdom... I say to the martyrs who died, to the martyrs who are still alive, we hold to the oath, we hold to the commitment to continue the revolution." - Arafat in a speech on the 30th anniversary of Fatah's founding. (Palestinian TV, Jan. 1, 1995)
- Supporting Evidence: "We sanctify the weapons found in the possession of the national factions which are directed against the occupation.... If there are those who oppose the agreement with Israel, the gates are open to them to intensify the armed struggle." - Jibril Rajoub in a lecture at Bethlehem University. (Yediot Aharonot, May 27, 1994)
- Supporting Evidence: "The jihad will continue... You have to understand our main battle is Jerusalem... You have to come and to fight a jihad to liberate Jerusalem, your precious shrine... No, it is not their capital. It is our capital." Arafat at a mosque in Johannesburg, South Africa on May 10, 1994. (Israel Radio, May 17, 1994; Jerusalem Post, May 18, 1994)
- Supporting Evidence: "Everything you see and hear today is for tactical and strategic reasons. We have not given up the rifle. We still have armed gangs the areas and if we do not get our state we will take them out of the closet and fight again." - Faisal Husseini, PA representative for Jerusalem affairs, member of Arafat's Cabinet, in a speech at Bir Zeit University on November 22. (Maariv, Nov. 24, 1993)
- Supporting Evidence: "There is no people or land named Israel. Israel is our patriarch Yaaqoub, peace be upon him, and the children of Israel are the sons of Yaaqoub… We are the children of Israel…. These people are the children of the Zionist entity, they are the children of the colonialist entity, they are nothing more than thieves. They came and took land which does not belong to them. Therefore, the normalization of relations with them is impossible…. even if Palestine remains occupied for hundreds of years… These Zionists are not fit to establish a nation or to have their own language or even their own religion. They are nothing more than a hodgepodge." - Safi Naz Kassam, Al-Hayat Al-Jadeeda, official PA newspaper. September 1 1997 [41]
- Supporting Evidence: "the Jews are the seed of Satan and the devils.... The Jews do not believe in God...They have distorted the faith and exchanged the gift of God for heresy, rebellion and prostitution, and distorted the Torah...." (religious program broadcast on official Palestinian Authority television, November 3, 1998.)
- Supporting Evidence: "Corruption is part of the nature of the Jews. So much so that it is only on rare occasions that one finds corruption in which Jews were not behind it… Their intense love of money and accumulating wealth is well known and they do not care what method is used to achieve it. They are likely to use the lowliest and most convenient methods to achieve their objectives.... If one studies their history, it becomes apparent that the Jews were subjected to losses and expulsion as a result of their wickedness and their despicable acts. All this occurred after their true nature and their responsibility for destroying the world was revealed... Since this is their mode of behavior, they have focused their efforts on developing their plotting mentality, as they believe the secret of their survival lies in their control over the economies of the countries which opened their gates before them." - Al-Hayat Al-Jadeeda, Official PA newspaper. November 7, 1998.
- Supporting Evidence: The Wye agreement requires the PA to "act systematically against all expressions or threats of violence or terror… and to prevent incitement." [32]
- COUNTERPOINT: The PA is violating its obligation to reduce the size of the Palestinian Police
- Supporting Evidence: "This is no problem. We will get around it by reallocating policemen such that one who serves in one location can serve in another. We will get around it by adopting a policy of transferring policemen." - Ghazi Jabali, PA Police Chief Ghazi. ( Al-Quds. Nov. 4, 1998) [42]
- Supporting Evidence: "With regard to lowering the number of Palestinian policemen, Dahlan indicated that the Palestinians do not intend to lower their number. He said, "We have no problem providing one list of policemen and a second list of policemen who do administrative work" - Muhammad Dahlan, PA Preventive Security chief in Gaza. (Al-Ayyam, Oct. 26, 1998) [43]
- Supporting Evidence: "This is no problem. We will get around it by reallocating policemen such that one who serves in one location can serve in another. We will get around it by adopting a policy of transferring policemen." - Ghazi Jabali, PA Police Chief Ghazi. ( Al-Quds. Nov. 4, 1998) [42]
- COUNTERPOINT: The PA is violating its obligation to confiscate illegal weapons
- Supporting Evidence: "Any illegal arms will be confiscated by the Palestinian Police." (Oslo II, Annex I, Article II)
- Supporting Evidence: "On the issue of confiscating illegal weapons, Dahlan stated there is no agreement on lowering the number of weapons in the PA's possession." - Muhammad Dahlan, PA Preventive Security chief in Gaza. (Al-Ayyam. Oct. 26, 1998) [44]
- Supporting Evidence: "There is a law for licensing weapons. Every respectable person submits a request and we give it to him The weapons license is granted to businessmen, dignitaries, politicians and wanted fugitives" - Ghazi Jabali, PA Police Chief Ghazi. (PA TV. Oct. 30, 1998)
- Supporting Evidence: "Any illegal arms will be confiscated by the Palestinian Police." (Oslo II, Annex I, Article II)
- COUNTERPOINT: The PA is violating its obligation to arrest terrorists.
- Supporting Evidence: "The Palestinian Police will arrest and prosecute individuals who are suspected of perpetrating acts of violence and terror." (Oslo II, Annex I, Article II)
- Supporting Evidence: "The Palestinians will not listen to the Israeli security forces' instructions regarding who to arrest." - Nabil Sha'ath, PA Minister. (Voice of Israel in Arabic. Nov. 5, 1998)
- Supporting Evidence: "I can not arrest a Palestinian citizen who killed an Israeli and at the same time give the Israeli the right to commit terrorist acts against Palestinians my primary security mission is to protect Palestinian security and defend Palestinian citizens." - Muhammad Dahlan, PA Preventive Security chief in Gaza. (Al-Ayyam. Oct. 26, 1998)
- Supporting Evidence: "The Palestinian Police will arrest and prosecute individuals who are suspected of perpetrating acts of violence and terror." (Oslo II, Annex I, Article II)
- COUNTERPOINT: Palestinians have raided or destroyed Christian and Jewish holy sites in violation of specific commitments to protect their sanctity.
- Supporting Evidence: According to Annex III, Appendix I, Article 32 of the Oslo 2 accord which was signed on September 28, 1995:
2. Both sides shall respect and protect the listed below religious rights of Jews, Christians, Moslems and Samaritans:
a. protection of the Holy Sites;
b. free access to the Holy Sites; and
c. freedom of worship and practice."In addition to this general obligation, the Oslo 2 accord (Article V of Annex I) also spells out specific arrangements concerning particular sites such as the Tomb of Joseph in Nablus, the Shalom al Yisrael Synagogue in Jericho, and the Tomb of Rachel near Bethlehem. These arrangements are designed to ensure free access to the sites and their protection.
[45]
- Supporting Evidence: Abraham's Oak Russian Monastery - located in the Palestinian-controlled part of Hebron.The monastery belongs to the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia. On July 5, 1997, Palestinian policemen arrived at the monastery and ordered the monks and nuns to vacate the premises. When they refused, the Palestinian policemen broke down the doors and began to curse and beat them. One nun was assaulted by both male and female Palestinian policemen, who punched her in the stomach and pounded her head against a wall. The Abbess of the monastery was physically dragged along the floor as her head hit the stones, and she had to be hospitalized. One of the monks was handcuffed, thrown to the ground and stomped upon by Palestinian policemen. The PA officers physically removed all of the monks and nuns, and took over the site. [46]
- Supporting Evidence: Tomb of Rachel - The Tomb, located on the outskirts of Bethlehem, is the burial site of the Biblical matriarch Rachel and is under Israeli control. During the September 1996 riots, the PA orchestrated riots near the Tomb in which a Palestinian mob assaulted the site and hurled rocks and firebombs at it, causing damage to the outer part of the structure. Palestinian policemen on the scene shot and wounded Israeli soldiers guarding the Tomb. [47]
- Supporting Evidence: Tomb of Joseph - Located in Nablus, the Tomb is the burial site of the Biblical figure Joseph. During the September 1996 riots, a Palestinian mob led by Palestinian policemen assaulted the Tomb. Palestinian security agents opened fire on Israeli troops at the site, killing 6 Israeli soldiers. After the Israeli forces temporarily withdrew, the Palestinian mob entered the site and set fire to it. They burned the Jewish prayer books, Bibles and religious articles inside the structure and caused extensive damage. Palestinian forces took Joseph's tomb again in October of 2000, completely destroying the Jewish shrine and Yeshiva. The PA converted the site into a mosque. [48]
- Supporting Evidence: According to Annex III, Appendix I, Article 32 of the Oslo 2 accord which was signed on September 28, 1995:
- COUNTERPOINT: The PA, not Israel, sabotaged the Oslo Peace Process. Israel prepared its people for conciliation and peace; the PA prepared its people for war. There is a strain of rejection of Israel's right to exist, of compromising with a Jewish state, among Palestinians that sabotaged Oslo and has repeatedly sabotaged other efforts at compromise and peace.
- POINT 6: The Palestinians did not reject the Camp David proposal or the Taba Agreements. At Taba, they were close to agreement but the Israeli elections were pending and Barak withdrew the negotiating team and that was where things ended.
- COUNTERPOINT: According to American and Israeli negotiators, Arafat and the Palestinians never accepted the Camp David proposals or ever made a counter-offer. They walked away. Their answer came when they unleashed the Intifada in Sept. 2000. At Taba, Palestinian negotiators raised extreme and inflexible demands and the two sides did not come closer. The PA's support of the violent Intifada was in and of itself a negation of the principle of negotiation.
- COUNTERPOINT: Yasser Arafat rejected the proposals put forth by the Clinton Administration.
- Supporting Evidence: "He said yes, and then he added reservations that basically meant he rejected every single one of the things he was supposed to give… He was supposed to give, on Jerusalem, the idea that there would be for the Israelis sovereignty over the Western Wall, which would cover the areas that are of religious significance to Israel. He rejected that… He rejected the idea on the refugees. He said we need a whole new formula, as if what we had presented was non-existent… He rejected the basic ideas on security. He wouldn't even countenance the idea that the Israelis would be able to operate in Palestinian airspace… You know when you fly into Israel today you go to Ben Gurion. You fly in over the West Bank because you can't -- there's no space through otherwise. He rejected that… So every single one of the ideas that was asked of him he rejected." - Dennis Ross, Former US Envoy to the Middle East, April 21 2002 [49]
- Supporting Evidence: "He said yes, and then he added reservations that basically meant he rejected every single one of the things he was supposed to give… He was supposed to give, on Jerusalem, the idea that there would be for the Israelis sovereignty over the Western Wall, which would cover the areas that are of religious significance to Israel. He rejected that… He rejected the idea on the refugees. He said we need a whole new formula, as if what we had presented was non-existent… He rejected the basic ideas on security. He wouldn't even countenance the idea that the Israelis would be able to operate in Palestinian airspace… You know when you fly into Israel today you go to Ben Gurion. You fly in over the West Bank because you can't -- there's no space through otherwise. He rejected that… So every single one of the ideas that was asked of him he rejected." - Dennis Ross, Former US Envoy to the Middle East, April 21 2002 [49]
- COUNTERPOINT: According to American and Israeli negotiators, Arafat and the Palestinians never accepted the Camp David proposals or ever made a counter-offer. They walked away. Their answer came when they unleashed the Intifada in Sept. 2000. At Taba, Palestinian negotiators raised extreme and inflexible demands and the two sides did not come closer. The PA's support of the violent Intifada was in and of itself a negation of the principle of negotiation.
- POINT 7: Yasser Arafat was willing to broker a peace accord at Camp David.
- COUNTERPOINT: President Clinton and US Envoy Dennis Ross have both noted that Yasser Arafat showed no movement from his maximalist demands during the September 2000 Camp David Accords.
- Supporting Evidence: "'A summit's purpose,' Clinton said, 'is to have discussions that are based on sincere intentions and you, the Palestinians, did not come to this summit with sincere intentions.'" - Shlomo Ben-Ami, Israel's Chief Negotiator in Camp David, Ma'ariv, April 6, 2001. [50]
- Supporting Evidence: "Both Barak and Clinton were prepared to do what was necessary to reach agreement. [...] Can one say the same about Arafat? Unfortunately, not-and his behavior at Camp David and afterward cannot be explained only by his suspicions that a trap was being set for him." - Dennis Ross, US Envoy to the Middle East. [51]
- Supporting Evidence: "The Israelis moved more from the position they had. [...] I would be making a mistake not to praise Barak because I think he took a big risk. And I think it sparked, already, in Israel a real debate, which is moving Israeli public opinion toward the conditions that will make peace. So I thought that was important, and I think it deserves to be acknowledged." - President, William J. Clinton [52]
- Supporting Evidence: "Fundamentally I do not believe he [Yasser Arafat] can end the conflict… For him to end the conflict is to end himself."- Dennis Ross, Former US Envoy to the Middle East. [53]
- Question: Observers and participants of the 2000 Camp David summit all assert that Yasser Arafat never even offered a counter-proposal to Israeli Prime Minister Barak's proposals. In fact he even rejected every offer for joint sovereignty on the Temple Mount, claiming that it had no significance to Jews. Ms. Ashrawi, this is the most holy place in the Jewish religion. US Mediator, Dennis Ross even states, "[Prime Minister Barak] was prepared to make decisions; Arafat was not. I believe he is capable of launching the process, but he is not capable of concluding it." How does this indicate that Arafat was ready for compromise with Israel? [54]
- Supporting Evidence: "'A summit's purpose,' Clinton said, 'is to have discussions that are based on sincere intentions and you, the Palestinians, did not come to this summit with sincere intentions.'" - Shlomo Ben-Ami, Israel's Chief Negotiator in Camp David, Ma'ariv, April 6, 2001. [50]
- COUNTERPOINT: Even Arab spokesmen condemn Arafat for refusing Clinton and Barak's offer at Camp David.
- Supporting Evidence: Prince Bandar of Saudi Arabia, who was an intermediary in the negotiations, called Arafat's refusal to accept the Camp David offer "a crime against Palestinians, in fact against the whole region." (New Yorker interview March 24, 2003)
- Supporting Evidence: "[Hamas, you] rejected Clinton's proposal, which gave your people 96-97% of the West Bank, citing the religious ruling that you rejected it because it was an American-Jewish conspiracy against the Palestinian people...[This is] irrational, nihilist behavior." - Al-'Afif Al-Akhdhar in Al Hayat, July 14, 2002. [55]
- Supporting Evidence: In the Lebanese daily Al-Nahar, editor Jubran Tuweini wrote, "[T]he worst enemy of the Palestinian cause is the Palestinians, who have endorsed a policy of refusal and fundamentalist extremism as a way of behavior. How many times have they already served Israel with their deeds? How many times has the behavior of these groups already saved Ariel Sharon and his government?" December 24 2003 [56]
- Supporting Evidence: On the liberal Arab website Elaph, Egyptian columnist Sami Buheiri wrote: "[T]he rabble majority of the Arab and Palestinian street today….refuse to accept any kind of a peace agreement with Israel... It is they who applaud the bus and restaurant bombings in order to destroy any spark of hope for peace... They are Arab nationalists who have failed completely in all their wars with Israel and in all attempts to achieve peace with Israel, because they were not serious, and they were not men - neither in fighting nor in peacemaking..." [57]
- Supporting Evidence: "Prince Hassan bin Talal, uncle of Jordan's King Abdullah and a former heir to the throne of the Hashemite kingdom, has told an Italian newspaper that he sees Prime Minister Ariel Sharon as a pragmatic man, who wants security for his people, but is unable to find a partner on the Palestinian side with whom to conduct negotiations."Ha'aretz, December 29 2003 [58]
- Supporting Evidence: Prince Bandar of Saudi Arabia, who was an intermediary in the negotiations, called Arafat's refusal to accept the Camp David offer "a crime against Palestinians, in fact against the whole region." (New Yorker interview March 24, 2003)
- COUNTERPOINT: Yasser Arafat rejected the proposals put forth by the Clinton Administration.
- Supporting Evidence: "He said yes, and then he added reservations that basically meant he rejected every single one of the things he was supposed to give… He was supposed to give, on Jerusalem, the idea that there would be for the Israelis sovereignty over the Western Wall, which would cover the areas that are of religious significance to Israel. He rejected that… He rejected the idea on the refugees. He said we need a whole new formula, as if what we had presented was non-existent… He rejected the basic ideas on security. He wouldn't even countenance the idea that the Israelis would be able to operate in Palestinian airspace… You know when you fly into Israel today you go to Ben Gurion. You fly in over the West Bank because you can't -- there's no space through otherwise. He rejected that… So every single one of the ideas that was asked of him he rejected." - Dennis Ross, Former US Envoy to the Middle East. [59]
- Supporting Evidence: "He said yes, and then he added reservations that basically meant he rejected every single one of the things he was supposed to give… He was supposed to give, on Jerusalem, the idea that there would be for the Israelis sovereignty over the Western Wall, which would cover the areas that are of religious significance to Israel. He rejected that… He rejected the idea on the refugees. He said we need a whole new formula, as if what we had presented was non-existent… He rejected the basic ideas on security. He wouldn't even countenance the idea that the Israelis would be able to operate in Palestinian airspace… You know when you fly into Israel today you go to Ben Gurion. You fly in over the West Bank because you can't -- there's no space through otherwise. He rejected that… So every single one of the ideas that was asked of him he rejected." - Dennis Ross, Former US Envoy to the Middle East. [59]
- COUNTERPOINT: President Clinton and US Envoy Dennis Ross have both noted that Yasser Arafat showed no movement from his maximalist demands during the September 2000 Camp David Accords.
- POINT 8: Barak's 'generous offers' consisted of a Palestinian state fragmented into Bantustans.
- COUNTERPOINT: Barak offered the Palestinians a state on a contiguous 97% of the West Bank and Gaza strip during negotiations in Taba. Yasser Arafat refused this and turned to violence. No Bantustans. No occupation. No violence. This was refused.
- Supporting Evidence: "There would be a net 97 percent of the [West Bank] territory that would go to the Palestinians… the Arab neighborhoods of East Jerusalem would become the capitol of the Palestinian state… There would be a right of return for the refugees to their own state, not to Israel, but there would also be a fund of $30 billion internationally that would be put together for either compensation or to cover repatriation, resettlement, rehabilitation costs." - Dennis Ross, Former US Envoy to the Middle East. [60]
- Supporting Evidence: "Those who say there were cantons, completely untrue. It was contiguous." - Dennis Ross, Former US Envoy to the Middle East. [61]
- Supporting Evidence: "There would be a net 97 percent of the [West Bank] territory that would go to the Palestinians… the Arab neighborhoods of East Jerusalem would become the capitol of the Palestinian state… There would be a right of return for the refugees to their own state, not to Israel, but there would also be a fund of $30 billion internationally that would be put together for either compensation or to cover repatriation, resettlement, rehabilitation costs." - Dennis Ross, Former US Envoy to the Middle East. [60]
- COUNTERPOINT: Barak offered the Palestinians a state on a contiguous 97% of the West Bank and Gaza strip during negotiations in Taba. Yasser Arafat refused this and turned to violence. No Bantustans. No occupation. No violence. This was refused.
- POINT 9: The Oslo process and Camp David summit culminated in a deal no Palestinian leader could accept.
- COUNTERPOINT: The Oslo Process would have yielded Palestinians almost every one of their demands, except destroying Israel. Arafat and the Palestinian Authority drew much criticism for their rejection of Clinton's offer, so they devised fictitious accounts of what they were offered.
- Supporting Evidence: The Oslo Process, culminating in the Taba talks - not the Camp David talks - did offer the Palestinians a viable state with territory on 100% of the Gaza Strip and a contiguous 95% of the West Bank with land swaps for some of the remaining 5%. There were no cantons, and Jerusalem served as a shared capital with Palestinian sovereignty on most of the Temple Mount (see above). Dennis Ross tells us that none of this was written down because the Clinton Administration did not want it to serve as a floor for future negotiations. The maps circulated by the Palestinian Authority represented only a phase in the negotiations. Yasser Arafat himself did not offer any counter proposals to it. [62]
- Supporting Evidence: The Oslo Process, culminating in the Taba talks - not the Camp David talks - did offer the Palestinians a viable state with territory on 100% of the Gaza Strip and a contiguous 95% of the West Bank with land swaps for some of the remaining 5%. There were no cantons, and Jerusalem served as a shared capital with Palestinian sovereignty on most of the Temple Mount (see above). Dennis Ross tells us that none of this was written down because the Clinton Administration did not want it to serve as a floor for future negotiations. The maps circulated by the Palestinian Authority represented only a phase in the negotiations. Yasser Arafat himself did not offer any counter proposals to it. [62]
- COUNTERPOINT: Yasser Arafat was engaged in negotiations. If he didn't like the proposal he was offered he was allowed to make a counterproposal. He refused and left Camp David. He then fulfilled his promise to resume armed conflict when he felt negotiations had reached their logical conclusion.
- Supporting Evidence: "Violence is near and the Palestinian people are willing to sacrifice even 5000 casualties." - Freih Abu Middein, PA Justice Minister, Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Aug. 24, 2000. [63]
- Supporting Evidence: "We decided to begin liberating our homeland step after step. It is now impossible for the peace process to halt. For if it does, all of the acts of violence will return to Israel. ...we honor the peace treaties and non-violence, so long as the agreements are fulfilled step-by-step. [But] if and when Israel says 'enough,' namely, 'we will not discuss Jerusalem, we will not return refugees, we will not dismantle settlements, we will not withdraw to the borders,' in that case it is saying that we will return to violence. But this time it will be with 30,000 armed Palestinian soldiers and in a land with elements of freedom… I'm the first one to call for it if we get to a deadlock, we shall return to the fighting and the struggle as we have fought for forty years more; it is not beyond our possibility." - Nabil Sha'ath, PA Minister of Planning and International Cooperation, Nablus, 1996 [64]
- Supporting Evidence: "We will continue our struggle until... our flag [waves] on the walls, mosques, and churches of Jerusalem, the capital of our independent state, whether some people are happy about it or not. He who doesn't like it may drink the water of the Dead Sea ...the 'Fatah' movement is ready to fight... if anyone tries to diminish our legitimate rights and our right to declare a state." - Yasser Arafat, Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, March 20, 1999 [65]
- Supporting Evidence: "Violence is near and the Palestinian people are willing to sacrifice even 5000 casualties." - Freih Abu Middein, PA Justice Minister, Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Aug. 24, 2000. [63]
- COUNTERPOINT: As a Palestinian leader, Arafat might not have been able to accept any settlement that did not allow him to destroy Israel. Throughout the Peace Process he primed his constituency for total victory - for the destruction of Israel. Maybe he couldn't return to them with less.
- Supporting Evidence: "Any discussion aimed at a solution of the Palestine problem which will not be based on ensuring the refugees' right to annihilate Israel will be regarded as a desecration of the Arab people and an act of treason" (Beirut al Massa, July 15, 1957). Resolution of the 1957 Refugee Conference at Homs, Syria.
- Supporting Evidence: "the ultimate goal is the liberation of all historic Palestine from the river to the sea. Oslo had to be viewed as a Trojan horse... We are asking all the Palestinian forces and factions to look at the Oslo Agreement and at other agreements as 'temporary' procedures, or phased goals, this means that we are ambushing the Israelis and cheating them." - Faisal Husseini, PA representative for Jerusalem affairs, member of Arafat's Cabinet, and noted 'moderate', in Egyptian Daily "Al-Arabi" June 21, 2001 [66]
- Supporting Evidence: "The Oslo agreement, or any other agreement, is just a temporary procedure, or just a step towards something bigger […] [Palestine], according to the higher strategy, [is] 'from the river to the sea.' Palestine in its entirety is an Arab land, the land of the Arab nation." - Faisal Husseini, PA representative for Jerusalem affairs, member of Arafat's Cabinet, and noted 'moderate', in Egyptian Daily "Al-Arabi" June 21, 2001 [67]
- Supporting Evidence: "We of the PLO will now concentrate all our efforts on splitting Israel psychologically into two camps… [The PLO plans] to eliminate the State of Israel and establish a purely Palestinian State. We will make life unbearable for the Jews by psychological warfare and population explosion; Jews won't want to live among us Arabs." - Yasser Arafat, Palestinian Authority Chairman, Private Speech in Stockholm, January 30, 1996 [68]
- Supporting Evidence: "Any discussion aimed at a solution of the Palestine problem which will not be based on ensuring the refugees' right to annihilate Israel will be regarded as a desecration of the Arab people and an act of treason" (Beirut al Massa, July 15, 1957). Resolution of the 1957 Refugee Conference at Homs, Syria.
- COUNTERPOINT: Arafat's aids and advisors urged him to accept the deal Clinton proposed. Apparently it seemed like a good enough deal to them.
- COUNTERPOINT: The Oslo Process would have yielded Palestinians almost every one of their demands, except destroying Israel. Arafat and the Palestinian Authority drew much criticism for their rejection of Clinton's offer, so they devised fictitious accounts of what they were offered.
- POINT 10: Israelis don't want peace because even during the peace process they have been taking Palestinian Land and demolishing Palestinian homes.
- COUNTERPOINT: No honest person can claim that Israel does not want peace after the U.S. brokered offer made by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak to Yasser Arafat.
- COUNTERPOINT: Israeli Public Opinion Polls consistently show that Israelis want peace and are willing to abandon the West Bank, Gaza and most of the settlements to achieve it. That this has not happened is only a testament to the Israeli public's rational fear of withdrawing unilaterally, without any guarantees of security and in the midst of a terrorist war.
- Supporting Evidence: If, "The Terror stops and Arafat does not rule the Palestinian Authority any more," 64% of Israelis would support the establishment of a Palestinian state, 61% would support the evacuation of settlements in Gaza, and 55% would support the evacuation of settlements in Judea and Samaria (the West Bank). Ma'ariv poll, December 6, 2002. [70]
- Supporting Evidence: If, "The Terror stops and Arafat does not rule the Palestinian Authority any more," 64% of Israelis would support the establishment of a Palestinian state, 61% would support the evacuation of settlements in Gaza, and 55% would support the evacuation of settlements in Judea and Samaria (the West Bank). Ma'ariv poll, December 6, 2002. [70]
- COUNTERPOINT: Israelis were deeply committed to the peace process and developed a culture of peace when Oslo began. The Palestinians did not.
- Supporting Evidence: From school curriculums to pop culture and music, the peace movement gained enormous popularity in Israel following the signing of Oslo and subsequent peace offers, up to the 2000 Taba offer of all of Gaza and a contiguous West Bank as a Palestinian state. In contrast, the Palestinian Authority used the time after Oslo to accumulate illegal arms and prepare the Palestinian people for war, resulting in the unprecedented wave of terrorism since 2000. [71]
- Supporting Evidence: In Israeli textbooks, "Islam, the Arab culture and the Arabs' contribution to human civilization are presented in a positive light. No book calls for violence or war. Many books express the yearning for peace between Israel and the Arab countries," according to the Center for Monitoring the Impact of Peace in 2001. [72]
- Supporting Evidence: In PA authorized textbooks, "There is no attempt to encourage reconciliation with Israel. Israel is presented exclusively as inhumane and greedy...The struggle for the liberation of Palestine is presented mainly as a military one. ...the Feda'I and Shahid are praised as the spearhead of this struggle....Jihad continues to be glorified and martyrs praised, with special attention given to the martyrs of Palestine," according to the Center for Monitoring the Impact of Peace in 2001. [73]
- Supporting Evidence: "We are teaching the children that suicide bombs make Israeli people frightened and we are allowed to do it… We teach them that after a person becomes a suicide bomber he reaches the highest level of paradise." - Palestinian "Paradise Camp" counselor speaking to BBC interviewer. [74]
- Supporting Evidence: From school curriculums to pop culture and music, the peace movement gained enormous popularity in Israel following the signing of Oslo and subsequent peace offers, up to the 2000 Taba offer of all of Gaza and a contiguous West Bank as a Palestinian state. In contrast, the Palestinian Authority used the time after Oslo to accumulate illegal arms and prepare the Palestinian people for war, resulting in the unprecedented wave of terrorism since 2000. [71]
- COUNTERPOINT: No honest person can claim that Israel does not want peace after the U.S. brokered offer made by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak to Yasser Arafat.
- POINT 11: The Palestinians are peaceful and want peace.
- COUNTERPOINT: A great number of Palestinians believe the goal of the current Intifada should be the elimination of Israel, and a vast majority support using suicide bombing and terrorism against civilians as the means to achieve that goal.
- Supporting Evidence: In a 2002 Poll taken at Najah University in Nablus, "87% of Palestinians surveyed were in favor of continuing terror attacks," and, "87.5% were in favor of 'liberating all of Palestine'." [75]
- Supporting Evidence: In a random sample of 1199 Palestinians conducted by JMCC Public Opinion Polls in September of 2002, 64.3% of Palestinians supported suicide bombings against civilians and 43% of Palestinians believed the goal of the current Intifada should be the elimination of Israel. [76]
- Supporting Evidence: In a 2002 Poll taken at Najah University in Nablus, "87% of Palestinians surveyed were in favor of continuing terror attacks," and, "87.5% were in favor of 'liberating all of Palestine'." [75]
- COUNTERPOINT: A great number of Palestinians believe the goal of the current Intifada should be the elimination of Israel, and a vast majority support using suicide bombing and terrorism against civilians as the means to achieve that goal.
- POINT 12: The "Road Map to Peace" was weighted in favor of Israel.
- COUNTERPOINT: The "Road Map" was not weighted in favor of Israel. The Israeli government published 100 reservations about the Road Map , but accepted it anyway - proving once again the sacrifices Israel would be willing to make for peace.
- Question: You claim that the Quartet's "Road Map to Peace" is weighted in favor of Israel when, in fact, the Sharon government initially raised 100 objections to it. Many supporters of Israel denounce the roadmap as a plan weighted in favor of the Palestinians. Despite your criticisms and Israeli's criticisms, the Israeli government and the Palestinian Authority have both agreed to work within the framework of the Roadmap in order to finally bring peace to their war torn land. Isn't it more productive to assist the Palestinians and Israelis as they seek peace under this international framework than to condemn the endeavor entirely? [77]
- Question: You claim that the Quartet's "Road Map to Peace" is weighted in favor of Israel when, in fact, the Sharon government initially raised 100 objections to it. Many supporters of Israel denounce the roadmap as a plan weighted in favor of the Palestinians. Despite your criticisms and Israeli's criticisms, the Israeli government and the Palestinian Authority have both agreed to work within the framework of the Roadmap in order to finally bring peace to their war torn land. Isn't it more productive to assist the Palestinians and Israelis as they seek peace under this international framework than to condemn the endeavor entirely? [77]
- COUNTERPOINT: Though Palestinians raised no objections to the Road Map, the PA subsequently demanded Israel make concessions, like releasing prisoners, which were based not on the Road Map, but on Mahmoud Abbas' truce agreement with the terrorist Palestinian groups. It is absurd that the PA refuses to meet any of its responsibilities under the roadmap, makes additional demands of Israel, and then claims that the process is biased against them.
- Supporting Evidence: "In a sign of how fragile the road map to Middle East peace will be, today Palestinian protestors in Gaza and Israelis in Jerusalem drew battle lines over an issue that does not even figure in the US-backed peace plan: the release of thousands of Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails." Jim Maceda, NBC Nightly News, July 6 2003 [78]
- Supporting Evidence: The Chicago Tribune had to publish a correction when one of its reporters mistakenly wrote that the prisoner release was part of the Road Map, "A story in the main news section Saturday about the Middle East incorrectly stated that Israel is obliged under the peace process to release prisoners. It is not." "Corrections", Chicago Tribune July 9 2003
- Supporting Evidence: "In a sign of how fragile the road map to Middle East peace will be, today Palestinian protestors in Gaza and Israelis in Jerusalem drew battle lines over an issue that does not even figure in the US-backed peace plan: the release of thousands of Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails." Jim Maceda, NBC Nightly News, July 6 2003 [78]
- COUNTERPOINT: Arab leaders have endorsed the Road Map.
- Supporting Evidence: "There is a plan, the Road Map, that addresses the needs of both Palestinians and Israelis. To the Israelis, this plan offers collective security guarantees by all Arabs, a peace treaty, and normal relations with Arab states and an end to the conflict. To the Palestinians, it offers an end to the occupation, a viable state and the promise to live as a free and prosperous people." - King Abdullah II, June 4, 2003. [79]
- Supporting Evidence: "There is a plan, the Road Map, that addresses the needs of both Palestinians and Israelis. To the Israelis, this plan offers collective security guarantees by all Arabs, a peace treaty, and normal relations with Arab states and an end to the conflict. To the Palestinians, it offers an end to the occupation, a viable state and the promise to live as a free and prosperous people." - King Abdullah II, June 4, 2003. [79]
- COUNTERPOINT: The "Road Map" was not weighted in favor of Israel. The Israeli government published 100 reservations about the Road Map , but accepted it anyway - proving once again the sacrifices Israel would be willing to make for peace.
- POINT 13: "Now they [the Palestinians] say they've recognized Israel's right to exist. Why don't Israelis do the same?"
- COUNTERPOINT: The claim that the Palestinians have accepted Israel is simply untrue. Although the Oslo accords required the PLO to revise the Palestinian National Covenant so that it no longer calls for the destruction of Israel, it has never done so.
- Supporting Evidence: Palestinian National Charter, Article 19: "The establishment of Israel is fundamentally null and void." Article 15: "[We call for] the liquidation of the Zionist presence in Palestine." Article 9: "Armed Struggle is the only way to liberate Palestine." [80]
- Supporting Evidence: "We have no intention of changing or nullifying the Covenant, rather, we will adhere to it until our last breath since it embodies the essence of our demands." - Tayseer Qaba, deputy chairman of the Palestine National Council, September 19, 1995. [81]
- Supporting Evidence: "The text of the Palestinian National Covenant remains as it was and no changes whatsoever were made to it." - Fatah, Research and Thought Department, "The Palestinian National Covenant: Between Renewal and Being Frozen," Fatah Publication #8, April 1996. [82]
- Supporting Evidence: "The PLO Covenant continues to exist, because the PNC was never convened to ratify the changes that were proposed in the past, particularly because no legal committee was appointed to draft the necessary change." - Salim Za'anoun, Chairman of the Palestinian national Council, February 2, 2001. [83]
- Supporting Evidence: "The Palestinians refused to make even symbolic gestures of conciliation. It did not revoke the Palestinian National Charter, which calls for the dismantling of 'the Zionist entity' though it had pledged to do so in 1990's." - Benny Morris [84]
- Supporting Evidence: "Arafat has been like Lucy with the football, treating the rest of the world as Charlie Brown. He and the PNC keep telling everyone they've changed the charter, without actually changing it." - James Woolsey, Former CIA Director. [85]
- Supporting Evidence: Palestinian National Charter, Article 19: "The establishment of Israel is fundamentally null and void." Article 15: "[We call for] the liquidation of the Zionist presence in Palestine." Article 9: "Armed Struggle is the only way to liberate Palestine." [80]
- COUNTERPOINT: The claim that the Palestinians have accepted Israel is simply untrue. If they had accepted the existence of Israel, Arafat would have accepted the offer at Camp David.
- Supporting Evidence: If that were the case, they would have accepted Clinton's proposal to end the conflict in 2000 with the creation of a viable Palestinian state. According to U.S. envoy Dennis Ross, who was present at the meeting, the offer would have ended the conflict by giving the Palestinians all of Gaza, a contiguous 95% of the West Bank and 2% land compensation from within Israel. [86]
- Supporting Evidence: If that were the case, they would have accepted Clinton's proposal to end the conflict in 2000 with the creation of a viable Palestinian state. According to U.S. envoy Dennis Ross, who was present at the meeting, the offer would have ended the conflict by giving the Palestinians all of Gaza, a contiguous 95% of the West Bank and 2% land compensation from within Israel. [86]
- COUNTERPOINT: The claim that the Palestinians have accepted Israel is simply untrue. Palestinians would relinquish the "right of return" if their intentions were to accept Israel's existence. The right of return would create a de facto Arab state where Israel stands.
- Supporting Evidence: "If refugees return to Israel, Israel will cease to exist." - Egyptian President Nasser, September 1, 1961
- Supporting Evidence: "Any discussion aimed at a solution of the Palestine problem which will not be based on ensuring the refugees' right to annihilate Israel will be regarded as a desecration of the Arab people and an act of treason" (Beirut al Massa, July 15, 1957). Resolution of the 1957 Refugee Conference at Homs, Syria.
- Supporting Evidence: "If refugees return to Israel, Israel will cease to exist." - Egyptian President Nasser, September 1, 1961
- COUNTERPOINT: The claim that the Palestinians have accepted Israel is simply untrue. Palestinian Public opinion polls consistently show that the vast majority of Palestinians believe they should be fighting for the obliteration of Israel.
- Supporting Evidence: In a 2002 Poll taken at Najah University in Nablus, "87% of Palestinians surveyed were in favor of continuing terror attacks," and, "87.5% were in favor of 'liberating all of Palestine'." [87]
- Supporting Evidence: In a random sample of 1199 Palestinians conducted by JMCC Public Opinion Polls in September of 2002, 64.3% of Palestinians supported suicide bombings against civilians and 43% of Palestinians believed the goal of the current Intifada should be the elimination of Israel. [88]
- Supporting Evidence: In a 2002 Poll taken at Najah University in Nablus, "87% of Palestinians surveyed were in favor of continuing terror attacks," and, "87.5% were in favor of 'liberating all of Palestine'." [87]
- COUNTERPOINT: Israeli Public Opinion Polls consistently show that Israelis want peace and are willing to give up the West Bank, Gaza and most of the settlements to achieve it. That this has not happened is only a testament to the Israeli public's rational fear of withdrawing unilaterally, without any guarantees of security and in the midst of a terrorist war.
- Supporting Evidence: If, "The Terror stops and Arafat does not rule the Palestinian Authority any more," 64% of Israelis would support the establishment of a Palestinian state, 61% would support the evacuation of settlements in Gaza, and 55% would support the evacuation of settlements in Judea and Samaria (the West Bank). Ma'ariv poll, December 6, 2002. [89]
- Supporting Evidence: If, "The Terror stops and Arafat does not rule the Palestinian Authority any more," 64% of Israelis would support the establishment of a Palestinian state, 61% would support the evacuation of settlements in Gaza, and 55% would support the evacuation of settlements in Judea and Samaria (the West Bank). Ma'ariv poll, December 6, 2002. [89]
- COUNTERPOINT: Israelis were deeply committed to the peace process and developed a culture of peace when Oslo began. The Palestinians did not.
- Supporting Evidence: From school curriculums to pop culture and music, the peace movement gained enormous popularity in Israel following the signing of Oslo and subsequent peace offers, up to the 2000 Taba offer of all of Gaza and a contiguous West Bank as a Palestinian state. In contrast, the Palestinian Authority used the time after Oslo to accumulate illegal arms and prepare the Palestinian people for war, resulting in the unprecedented wave of terrorism since 2000. [90]
- Supporting Evidence: In Israeli textbooks, "Islam, the Arab culture and the Arabs' contribution to human civilization are presented in a positive light. No book calls for violence or war. Many books express the yearning for peace between Israel and the Arab countries," according to the Center for Monitoring the Impact of Peace in 2001. [91]
- Supporting Evidence: In PA authorized textbooks, "There is no attempt to encourage reconciliation with Israel. Israel is presented exclusively as inhumane and greedy...The struggle for the liberation of Palestine is presented mainly as a military one. ...the Feda'I and Shahid are praised as the spearhead of this struggle....Jihad continues to be glorified and martyrs praised, with special attention given to the martyrs of Palestine," according to the Center for Monitoring the Impact of Peace in 2001. [92]
- Supporting Evidence: "We are teaching the children that suicide bombs make Israeli people frightened and we are allowed to do it… We teach them that after a person becomes a suicide bomber he reaches the highest level of paradise." - Palestinian "Paradise Camp" counselor speaking to BBC interviewer. [93]
- Supporting Evidence: From school curriculums to pop culture and music, the peace movement gained enormous popularity in Israel following the signing of Oslo and subsequent peace offers, up to the 2000 Taba offer of all of Gaza and a contiguous West Bank as a Palestinian state. In contrast, the Palestinian Authority used the time after Oslo to accumulate illegal arms and prepare the Palestinian people for war, resulting in the unprecedented wave of terrorism since 2000. [90]
- COUNTERPOINT: Since the British Mandatory period, Zionist and Israeli leaders accepted compromise proposals that envisioned the Palestinians and the Jews dividing the land between them. Arab leaders consistently rejected them and demanded the obliteration of Israel.
- Supporting Evidence: Israel accepted Britain's Peel Commission partition plan in 1937 that would have set up a small Jewish state alongside a larger Palestinian state. The Arabs rejected it.
- Supporting Evidence: Israel accepted the United Nations Partition Plan in 1947 (Resolution 181) that would have divided Palestine into a Jewish state alongside a Palestinian state. The Arabs rejected it.
- Supporting Evidence: Israel tried to set up Palestinian self-government and autonomy in the Territories between 1967 and 1969 after the 1967 War. The Arabs rejected it. [94]
- Supporting Evidence: Israel offered the Palestinians autonomy in the Camp David Accords of 1979 as part of its peace plan with Egypt in the "Attached Letters" to the agreement, March 26, 1979. [95]
- Supporting Evidence: Israel offered the Palestinians a proto-state with the Oslo Accords in 1993. By 1996, Israel had deployed from all major Palestinian population centers and 98% of Palestinians were self-governing under the Palestinian Authority. [96]
- Supporting Evidence: Israel accepted President Clinton's plan to establish a Palestinian state on 97% of the West Bank and Gaza with a shared capital in 2001; And again, the Arabs rejected it. [97]
- Supporting Evidence: "The mania for armed struggle….is the cause for [us] missing …historical opportunities since 1937 to 2000, with…pristine excuses such as 'we have the right[s] on our side…" Al-'Aff Al-Akhdar, Tunisian columnist, 2002 [98]
- Supporting Evidence: Israel accepted Britain's Peel Commission partition plan in 1937 that would have set up a small Jewish state alongside a larger Palestinian state. The Arabs rejected it.
- COUNTERPOINT: When an Arab country was willing to reach out its hand in peace, Israel has been willing to relinquish captured land and dismantle settlements in the interests of peace.
- Supporting Evidence: Israel made peace with Egypt in 1979 and returned the whole Sinai, 91% of the land it had captured during the 1967 War. [99]
- Supporting Evidence: Israel had discovered oil in the Sinai and set up the industrial infrastructure to extract it. It turned this heavy industrial infrastructure over to Egypt. [100]
- Supporting Evidence: Israel dismantled its settlements in the Sinai over the protest of many of the Jewish residents. The Israeli government offered a huge sum of money to the residents to induce them to leave. Ariel Sharon finally was sent to dismantle the community of Yamit whose residents had built a corner of the Sinai into "a green and prosperous agricultural adjunct of Israel" and who were especially resistant. Historian Howard Sachar [101]
- Supporting Evidence: When Jordan was willing to make peace in 1994, Israel made peace and returned disputed land in the fertile Jordan River Valley.
- Supporting Evidence: Israel made peace with Egypt in 1979 and returned the whole Sinai, 91% of the land it had captured during the 1967 War. [99]
- COUNTERPOINT: Most recently, Israel proved its willingness to help create a Palestinian state in 2000 when Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Barak accepted the proposals at Camp David, Taba, and Washington. Unfortunately, then, as now, the Palestinians rejected the proposal, demanded a formula that would destroy Israel, and returned to violence.
- COUNTERPOINT: The claim that the Palestinians have accepted Israel is simply untrue. Although the Oslo accords required the PLO to revise the Palestinian National Covenant so that it no longer calls for the destruction of Israel, it has never done so.
- POINT 14: "Had this process [Camp David] been successful, history would have witnessed not only the expulsion of the Palestinians from their homeland in 1948 but the eradication of the refugees, as well as of the Palestinian minority in Israel, and maybe even Palestine, from our collective memory."
- COUNTERPOINT: This position inverts reality. Had the Palestinians accepted the Camp David offer, they would not be forgotten in the collective memory or in contemporary reality. They would have established themselves as a people with a state named Palestine in 100% of Gaza, 97% of the West Bank, and with East Jerusalem as its capital. Refugee status would have been eradicated once the people in refugee camps could go "home" to the new state of Palestine. The Palestinian leadership rejected this offer.
- Supporting Evidence: According to U.S. envoy Dennis Ross, who was present at the meeting, the offer would have ended the conflict by giving the Palestinians all of Gaza, a contiguous 95% of the West Bank and 2% land compensation from within Israel. [103]
- Supporting Evidence: "There would be a net 97 percent of the territory that would go to the Palestinians… the Arab neighborhoods of East Jerusalem would become the capitol of the Palestinian state… There would be a right of return for the refugees to their own state, not to Israel, but there would also be a fund of $30 billion internationally that would be put together for either compensation or to cover repatriation, resettlement, rehabilitation costs." - Dennis Ross, Former US Envoy to the Middle East. [104]
- Supporting Evidence: "[Hamas, you] rejected Clinton's proposal, which gave your people 96-97% of the West Bank, citing the religious ruling that you rejected it because it was an American-Jewish conspiracy against the Palestinian people...[This is] irrational, nihilist behavior." - Al-'Afif Al-Akhdhar in Al Hayat, July 14, 2002. [105]
- Supporting Evidence: Palestinians don't have a state because they have had "an all or nothing policy," unlike the Zionists. "The Zionists never demanded the impossible….Our leadership….enabled the Zionists to succeed at every opportunity…by rejecting every proposal for compromise, rejecting proposals to give it a state on most of the land of Palestine…" Tawfiz Abu Bakr, Palestinian columnist, 2003 [106]
- Supporting Evidence: "The mania for armed struggle….is the cause for [us] missing …historical opportunities since 1937 to 2000, with…pristine excuses such as 'we have the right[s] on our side…" Al-'Aff Al-Akhdar, Tunisian columnist, 2002 [107]
- Supporting Evidence: According to U.S. envoy Dennis Ross, who was present at the meeting, the offer would have ended the conflict by giving the Palestinians all of Gaza, a contiguous 95% of the West Bank and 2% land compensation from within Israel. [103]
- COUNTERPOINT: This position inverts reality. Had the Palestinians accepted the Camp David offer, they would not be forgotten in the collective memory or in contemporary reality. They would have established themselves as a people with a state named Palestine in 100% of Gaza, 97% of the West Bank, and with East Jerusalem as its capital. Refugee status would have been eradicated once the people in refugee camps could go "home" to the new state of Palestine. The Palestinian leadership rejected this offer.
- POINT 15: Oslo sought to establish an apartheid regime, limiting Palestinian Sovereignty to conditions similar to South Africa style Bantustans.
- COUNTERPOINT: This claim willfully distorts reality. Oslo set up a step-by-step process by which the Territories would gradually come under PA control as certain conditions were met. This accusation is based on the early phases of Oslo, not its long-range goals. Oslo culminated in the Camp David and Taba offers which did not even remotely resemble Bantustans, but instead offered the Palestinians 97% of the Territories, a capital in Eastern Jerusalem and a right of return of Palestinians to their newly created state. The Palestinian leadership rejected this offer.
- Supporting Evidence: The Oslo Peace Process was to end the "occupation." It was a compromise solution designed to gradually establish Palestinian self-rule in the Territories. Israel gave Palestinians arms to develop police forces. [108]
- Supporting Evidence: Israel offered the Palestinians a proto-state with the Oslo Accords in 1993. By 1997 Israel had pulled out of the major Palestinian population centers in the West Bank and 96% of Palestinians lived under some form of Palestinian Authority control. [109]
- Supporting Evidence: Israel accepted President Clinton's plan to establish a Palestinian state on 97% of the West Bank and Gaza with a shared capital in 2001; And again, the Arabs rejected it. [110]
- Supporting Evidence: The Oslo Peace Process was to end the "occupation." It was a compromise solution designed to gradually establish Palestinian self-rule in the Territories. Israel gave Palestinians arms to develop police forces. [108]
- COUNTERPOINT: This claim willfully distorts reality. Oslo set up a step-by-step process by which the Territories would gradually come under PA control as certain conditions were met. This accusation is based on the early phases of Oslo, not its long-range goals. Oslo culminated in the Camp David and Taba offers which did not even remotely resemble Bantustans, but instead offered the Palestinians 97% of the Territories, a capital in Eastern Jerusalem and a right of return of Palestinians to their newly created state. The Palestinian leadership rejected this offer.
- POINT 16: Israel's demands for security show that the Oslo Peace Process adopted the security of the occupier as its priority, while willfully ignoring and violating the security and rights of the occupied. They called for an end to "incitement" and "docility" from our oppressed people. In short, security as defined by the Israelis meant repression and human rights violations.
- COUNTERPOINT: This charge exposes why the peace process did not work. Palestinians continually justify their refusal to hold up their end of the bargain. The whole logic of the peace process was that Israel would relinquish control of the Territories and its rights to most of them if it could be assured that Palestinians were no longer belligerents intent on destroying its state and murdering its citizens. In short, it was based on the formula of land for peace.
- Supporting Evidence: Israel was in control of the Territories because Arab states had launched an unremitting war to destroy the Jewish state ever since its creation in 1948. Jordan had attacked Israel from the Territories in the 1967 War-and lost, leaving Israel in control. No nation can be expected to yield territory unless it is assured that enmity and threats to its existence have ended.
- Supporting Evidence: "The PLO recognizes the right of the State of Israel to exist in peace and security….The PLO renounces the use of terrorism and other acts of violence and will assume responsibility over all PLO elements and personnel in order to assure their compliance, prevent violations and discipline violators." Yasser Arafat Letter of Recognition to Israel, the basis of the Oslo Accords. September 9 1993 [111]
- Supporting Evidence: The PA is to "take all measures necessary in order to prevent acts of terrorism" and to wage a "comprehensive... continuous and constant" campaign against the "terrorists, the terror support structure, and the environment conducive to the support of terror." The PA must also submit a security work plan detailing the measures they intend to take against terror organizations. Wye River Memorandum 1998 [112]
- Supporting Evidence: "The Palestinian side will issue a decree prohibiting all forms of incitement to violence and terror, and establishing mechanisms for acting systematically against all expressions or threats of violence or terror." Wye River Memorandum 1998 [113]
- Supporting Evidence: Israel was in control of the Territories because Arab states had launched an unremitting war to destroy the Jewish state ever since its creation in 1948. Jordan had attacked Israel from the Territories in the 1967 War-and lost, leaving Israel in control. No nation can be expected to yield territory unless it is assured that enmity and threats to its existence have ended.
- COUNTERPOINT: The Oslo Peace Process did not give priority to Israel's concerns about security. The Oslo Accords set up mutual obligations for the Palestinians and Israel and they had equal importance: Israel was to withdraw gradually from the Territories so that the Palestinians would have independence. The Palestinians were to dismantle terrorists and end incitement.
- COUNTERPOINT: The charge that arresting mass murderers, prohibiting incitement to murder and preventing violence is a violation of human rights is preposterous. It is an effort to trivialize Israel's brutally real experience with ongoing terrorism and it denies Israelis the fundamental human right-the right to live.
- Supporting Evidence: Since the Oslo Accords were signed, Israel has faced mounting terrorism. Between 1993 and the start of the Oslo War, terrorists killed 256 Israelis. "Proportionately to its population, this number would represent the equivalent loss for the United States of about 49,000 citizens." Professor Joel Fishman
- Supporting Evidence: "The Israeli government also gave the Palestinians a free ride from 1993-2000, during the seven-year Oslo process, by downplaying terrorist attacks and the two-faced message of the Palestinian leadership, which presented a message of peace in English and a message of war in Arabic. To keep the Oslo process from collapsing, both Israeli and US leaders decided in 1993 to ignore the PA's daily radio and TV calls for a renewed war against Israel." Interview with David Bedein, Director of the Israel Resource News Agency. 2002
- Supporting Evidence: In the first three months of 2002, Palestinian terrorists launched 119 successful terrorist attacks, the equivalent of 1.3 a day. In March alone, 17 suicide bombers detonated themselves among innocent civilians. More Israelis were killed and severely wounded in these three months than in the whole of 2003: 177 were killed; 956 were wounded.
- Supporting Evidence: Between 9/29/00 and 4/14/04, 924 Israelis have been killed, over 70% of them civilians, including children, the elderly and women. 4452 civilians have been injured, some so seriously that they are permanently crippled. Children have become orphans; parents have lost their children when they go or return from school.
- Supporting Evidence: Since the Oslo Accords were signed, Israel has faced mounting terrorism. Between 1993 and the start of the Oslo War, terrorists killed 256 Israelis. "Proportionately to its population, this number would represent the equivalent loss for the United States of about 49,000 citizens." Professor Joel Fishman
- COUNTERPOINT: The charge that arresting murders and prohibiting incitement to murder is a violation of human rights is a way to protect and hide the real motives of extremists and of the Palestinian Authority-the destruction of Israel.
- Supporting Evidence: "You understand that we plan to eliminate the state of Israel and establish a purely Palestinian State. We will make life unbearable for Jews by psychological warfare and population explosion; the Jews will not want to live among us Arabs! I have no use for Jews. They are and remain Jews." - Yassir Arafat, speech to Arab diplomats in the Spiegel Salon at the Grand Hotel in Stockholm, Sweden, Jan 30, 1996.
- Supporting Evidence: Hamas' founding covenant calls for jihad to "obliterate Israel" and to "raise the banner of Allah over every inch of Palestine" (Hamas Covenant Preamble, and Article 11) Islamic Jihad has said "The war will continue until Israel ceases to exist and the last Jew is eliminated from the world". (Islamic Jihad announcement, March 1992)
- Supporting Evidence: "The Oslo Accords were a Trojan horse; the strategic goal is the liberation of Palestine from the [Jordan] River to the [Mediterranean] Sea." - Faisal Husseini, PA Administrator for Jerusalem Affairs, July 2001.
- Supporting Evidence: In a random sample of 1199 Palestinians conducted by JMCC Public Opinion Polls in September of 2002, 64.3% of Palestinians supported suicide bombings against civilians and 43% of Palestinians believed the goal of the current Intifada should be the elimination of Israel.
- Supporting Evidence: In a 2002 Poll taken at Najah University in Nablus, "87% of Palestinians surveyed were in favor of continuing terror attacks," and, "87.5% were in favor of 'liberating all of Palestine'."
- Supporting Evidence: "The genocidal strain in this kind of fundamentalist rejectionism is older than the settlements, older than the state of Israel. It reflects the spirit of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem who...fled to Berlin....begging Himmler to let him handle his version of the final solution in Palestine against the Jewish settlers." - Britain's Lord Weidenfeld to the House of Lords, July 13, 2001.
- Supporting Evidence: "You understand that we plan to eliminate the state of Israel and establish a purely Palestinian State. We will make life unbearable for Jews by psychological warfare and population explosion; the Jews will not want to live among us Arabs! I have no use for Jews. They are and remain Jews." - Yassir Arafat, speech to Arab diplomats in the Spiegel Salon at the Grand Hotel in Stockholm, Sweden, Jan 30, 1996.
- COUNTERPOINT: This charge exposes why the peace process did not work. Palestinians continually justify their refusal to hold up their end of the bargain. The whole logic of the peace process was that Israel would relinquish control of the Territories and its rights to most of them if it could be assured that Palestinians were no longer belligerents intent on destroying its state and murdering its citizens. In short, it was based on the formula of land for peace.
- POINT 17: The US sponsored Road Map aims at suppressing the human and national rights of the Palestinian people.
- COUNTERPOINT: The Road Map does just the opposite. It seeks to fulfill the Palestinian people's human and national rights. ts principal goal is to fulfill Palestinian national aspirations through the establishment of a Palestinian state as even Arab leaders acknowledged.
- COUNTERPOINT: Anyone who claims that the Road Map abrogates Palestinian national rights in effect means that Palestinians have not relinquished their maximalist claims or their claims on Israeli territory.In effect, they call for suppressing the human and national rights of the Jewish state. They are not calling for compromise and peace, but rather are issuing a battle cry to continue the war that Arab leaders launched in 1948. This is a direct violation of all the commitments the PLO has made since the Oslo Accords of 1993 and a recipe for continued violence.
- COUNTERPOINT: This claim, in effect, demands that Israel negotiate its own demise. No people or nation will ever negotiate their destruction. Indeed, the UN Charter assures member states that they have the right to protect their own sovereignty and borders.
- Supporting Evidence: "The sovereignty of states is a fundamental principle in international relations and is enshrined in the UN Charter by Article 2(7). Sovereignty gives states the legal right to manage their internal affairs free from outside interference and prevents powerful states intervening in weaker states… Preservation of sovereignty has been held up as an important component of a rules-based framework for international relations. " CSS Strategic Briefing Papers, June 2000 [114]
- Supporting Evidence: The UN Charter underscores the need to respect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of each member state."All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations." UN Charter Article 2 (4) [115]
- Question: Would the Palestinians negotiate with ultra-nationalist Israeli settlers?
- Supporting Evidence: "The sovereignty of states is a fundamental principle in international relations and is enshrined in the UN Charter by Article 2(7). Sovereignty gives states the legal right to manage their internal affairs free from outside interference and prevents powerful states intervening in weaker states… Preservation of sovereignty has been held up as an important component of a rules-based framework for international relations. " CSS Strategic Briefing Papers, June 2000 [114]
- COUNTERPOINT: The Road Map does just the opposite. It seeks to fulfill the Palestinian people's human and national rights. ts principal goal is to fulfill Palestinian national aspirations through the establishment of a Palestinian state as even Arab leaders acknowledged.
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