News Release
The Zionist Organization of America
Jacob & Libby Goodman ZOA House 4 East 34th St. New York, NY 10016
Phone: 212-481-1500 Fax: 212-481-1515
e-mail: email@zoa.org Web Site: www.zoa.org

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June 25, 2002 Contact: (212-481-1500)
ATTN: News Editor

While Israel is Asked to Do More than Oslo Bush Plan Requires Less Of
Palestinian Arabs Than The Oslo Accords, Yet Offers Them More -- A State

NEW YORK - President Bush's Middle East plan requires the
Palestinian
Arabs to do even less against terrorism than do the Oslo accords, yet offers
them even more rewards than Oslo, by calling for the creation of a
Palestinian
Arab state within three years.

Morton A. Klein, National President of the Zionist Organization of
America (ZOA) said:

"We recognize that President Bush has good intentions in calling for
new Palestinian Arab leadership that will combat terrorism and head the
first
Arab regime to embrace democracy. Unfortunately, his plan requires Israel to
make extremely risky concessions on the ground, yet it does not require the
Palestinian Arabs to surrender their tens of thousands of weapons, extradite
terrorists, outlaw Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and Fatah, and change their
educational system which promotes hatred and violence.

"This plan repeats the mistake of the failed Oslo accords, because
once
again the State Department will be the one determining whether or not the
Palestinian Arabs are combating the terrorist infrastructure--and the State
Department has been whitewashing the Palestinian Arabs' pro-terror
actions--including in the two reports that the State Department issued just
last month.

"President Bush is requiring Israel to do even more than the Oslo
accords required--he demands that Israel halt all construction in the
territories (while Arab construction there continues) and agree to
establishing a Palestinian Arab state--which Oslo did not require. Yet
he did not demand any Palestinian Arab concessions on Jerusalem or the
refugee issue. In fact, President Bush is requiring the Palestinians
Arabs to do even less than the Oslo accords required--he asks only
that they fight 'the terrorist infrastructure' in general, with no specific,
verifiable requirements to surrender weapons, extradite terrorists, or
outlaw
terror groups, as opposed to the Oslo and Wye agreements, which require
surrendering weapons, extraditing terrorists, and outlawing terrorist
groups.
And in exchange, they will receive a sovereign state within three years,
enabling them to station troops and heavy weapons adjacent to Israel's major
cities."

IT'S NOT JUST "THE HATRED OF A FEW": President Bush said that the
problem of terrorism is caused by "the hatred of a few." In fact, polls show
that over 80% of Palestinian Arabs support suicide bombings against Israel.
The
problem of hatred must be addressed through a lengthy, comprehensive process
of
re-education in which Palestinian Arab schools are compelled to use
curricula
that accept peace and coexistence with Israel as a Jewish state. The
hate-filled summer camps and religious sermons by PA clergy must be changed.
A
new constitution or a reorganized PA security system, as President Bush
proposes, is not the solution. (In fact, the CIA and U.S. police have
already
trained the PA security forces, yet those forces continued to engage in
terrorism.) President Bush's plan wrongly ignores the Palestinian Arab
school
systems, which are the incubators of hatred and terrorism.

"NEW" PALESTINIAN ARAB LEADERSHIP?: Although President Bush urged
the
Palestinian Arabs to "elect new leaders," all of the most likely successors
to
Yasir Arafat have openly supported terrorism against Israel, and one of them
has written a book saying the Nazis did not kill six million Jews.

MORAL EQUIVALENCY: President Bush was wrong to suggest moral
equivalency between the two sides, saying "it is untenable for Israelis to
live
in terror and it is untenable for Palestinians to be living in squalor and
occupation." The fact is that Arabs' squalor is not Israel's fault; and the
"occupation" ended in 1997 when Israel completed its withdrawal from the
areas
where 98.5% of Palestinian Arabs reside.

A PALESTINIAN STATE WILL ENDANGER ISRAEL: Whether it is called
"provisional" or not, a Palestinian Arab state will endanger Israel. It will
be
able to import Iraqi and Iranian troops and missiles. And it will be even
more
difficult for Israel to pursue terrorists in the territory of a sovereign
state.

JUDEA & SAMARIA BELONG TO THE JEWISH PEOPLE: The Jews, not the
Arabs,
have the superior legal, historical, and moral claim to Judea, Samaria, and
Gaza. Those areas have been the heartland of the Land of Israel since
biblical
times.

DOUBLE STANDARD ON "SETTLEMENTS": President Bush demanded that
Israel
"stop all settlement activity in the territories" --even though Israeli
construction there is permitted by the Oslo accords and international law.
President Bush did not say a word about Palestinian Arab construction in the
territories, which is proceeding at ten times the rate of Israeli
construction,
and which is also illegal and violates the Oslo accords.

IGNORES WHAT CAUSED 1967 WAR: President Bush said that "the Israeli
occupation began in 1967"--without any reference to the fact that Israel
took
over Judea, Samaria, Gaza, and the Golan Heights in self-defense after
Egypt,
Syria, and Jordan launched a war with the declared aim of annihilating
Israel.

REWARD FOR TERROR: President Bush's offer to facilitate and finance
the creation of a Palestinian Arab state, after 22 months of terrorism in
which
nearly 600 Israeli Jews have been murdered, sends a message to the
terrorists
that their violence pays dividends. All the terrorists have to do is
temporarily scale back their attacks, and they will be given their own
sovereign state. Then they can resume their violence under the protective
cover of sovereign "Palestine."

* * *

The Zionist Organization of America, founded in 1897, is the oldest
pro-Israel organization in the United States. The ZOA works to strengthen
U.S.-Israel relations, educates the American public and Congress about the
dangers that Israel faces, and combats anti-Israel bias in the media and on
college campuses. Its past presidents have included Supreme Court Justice
Louis Brandeis and Rabbi Dr. Abba Hillel Silver.