"Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas reminded us once again last Saturday why he and his Palestinian demi-government may need be sidelined for sake of peace in the region: because he and the so-called 'Authority' in the West Bank are corrupt, ossified and obstructionist in every way.
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At the UN, he has called Israel at various times brutal, aggressive, racist, apartheid, horrific and colonial, and accused it of numerous crimes, including ethnic cleansing and genocide. Then he calls (repeatedly) on the international community to unilaterally recognize Palestinian statehood and to 'compel' Israeli withdrawals – without the Palestinians having to compromise at all with Israel.
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Since 2015, Abbas has added to this fanatical portfolio a campaign of whole-scale denial of Jewish national rights in the Holy Land. He has proposed repeated UNESCO and other international resolutions that explicitly dismiss Jewish history in Jerusalem and Zion.
And he continues to rant dangerously about non-existent Israeli 'aggression and provocations against holy al-Aqsa Mosque and Christian sanctuaries in Jerusalem' – another way, again, of inciting Palestinian violence against Israel.
So it's no wonder that the emerging American peace initiative seeks to bypass Abbas and his PLO rejectionists, and perhaps to initiate a long process in which Palestinians act to replace their past-sell-date rulers – effectively, dictators focused on their own survival in power – with more reasonable leaders.
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TO THIS END, the Trump administration's hard-nosed approach to the Palestinians, including its cut-off of aid to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), is useful. As Dr. Einat Wilf and Adi Schwartz write in their important new book, The War of Return, everlasting Palestinian refugee-dom and self-imposed victimhood has been fostered and coddled for too long.
UNRWA is a root problem. It perpetuates the Palestinian dream of return to homes in Jaffa and Haifa, ultimately destroying the Jewish state. 'When 70% of people who live in Gaza believe that they are refugees, and are stamped by the UN as such, you cannot fault them for thinking that their 'right' of return is internationally sanctioned,' Wilf explains. 'This is continuation of war against Israel. PA officials pay lip service to a two-state solution, but in reality are convinced that masses of refugees will return.
'The world literally has no problem telling the Jews that they won't have it all. Why not tell the Palestinians? Why continue to fund a UN agency with more than a billion dollars every year, feeding the delusion of return?..."