[Dr. Aaron Lerner - IMRA: This is an extremely disturbing development. We
have Secretary of State Kerry misrepresenting historical truths on order to
cover for his failure to convince the Palestinians to compromise on their
hard line.

If Mr. Kerry is willing to distort reality on this point there is no telling
what other distortions of reality he will try to palm off on us in his dash
towards his place in history.

To be clear - and as explained by senior Palestinian officials: if Israel
wants to be recognized as a Jewish State then it is per UN General Assembly
Resolution 181 of 1947 - with Israel withdrawing to the borders set in 181.
Forget the Green Line. We are talking about an Israeli withdrawal from the
entire JERUSALEM area (internationally administered "Corpus Separatum" of
Jerusalem), parts of the Negev (including Beersheva) and much of the north (from
Acre and north, also the area around Nazareth, etc.) :

If Kerry's team didn't know this then they are idiots.

They aren't idiots.

This is worse than a bunch of idiots.

Because there is only one alternative left if Mr. Kerry and his team aren't
idiots.

And it is a lot worse.

Because an idiot can be educated...]


Arafat and the Jewish State: Setting the Record Straight
Amb. Alan Baker, March 17, 2014
Jerusalem Issue Briefs Vol. 14, No. 6
http://jcpa.org/article/arafat-jewish-state-setting-record-straight/

- On March 13, 2014, Secretary of State John Kerry told Congress that he
views Israel’s principled requirement of recognition as the nation state of
the Jewish People “as a mistake.” He added that the late Palestinian leader
Yasser Arafat “confirmed that he agreed it [Israel] would be a Jewish state”
in 1988 and in 2004.
- However, the truth is just the opposite: the U.S. administration at the
time did not believe that Arafat’s words satisfied their goal of his
recognizing Israel’s right to exist. Moreover, Arafat’s 1988 statement does
not come close to meeting the requirement for the Palestinians to recognize
Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish People.
- In the last quarter of 1988, an intense effort was undertaken to
facilitate the opening of a diplomatic dialogue between the PLO and the U.S.
Previously, all U.S. administrations had strictly adhered to U.S.
commitments, originally given by Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, that
required the PLO to recognize Israel, accept UN Security Council Resolution
242, and renounce terrorism as prerequisites for any dialogue between the
parties.
- Arafat did not issue a clear declaration recognizing Israel as a Jewish
state, but only summarized the language of UN General Assembly Resolution
181. The U.S. government concluded that Arafat’s statement did not meet
Washington’s demand that the PLO unequivocally recognize the State of
Israel, and thus no dialogue was launched between the U.S. and the PLO at
that time.
- It was, in fact, current Israeli peace negotiator Justice Minister Tzipi
Livni who insisted that “declared references must be made to Israel’s right
to exist as a Jewish state” in Israel’s official response to the 30 April
2003 U.S. and Quartet-sponsored “Roadmap to a Permanent Two-State Solution
to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.”

Introduction

In his appearance before the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on
Foreign Affairs on March 13, 2014, Secretary of State John Kerry, convener,
main proponent, and mediator of the Israeli-Palestinian negotiating process,
found it necessary to make a surprisingly one-sided comment and prejudgment
on one of the central and most delicate issues on the negotiating table –
Israel’s basic and principled requirement of recognition of Israel as the
nation state of the Jewish People.

Kerry opined that he views Israel’s position “as a mistake,” considering
that the “Jewish State” issue was “sufficiently addressed by UN General
Assembly Resolution 181 of 1947, which recommended the establishment of
independent Arab and Jewish states in Palestine.”1 He said there are “more
than 30–40 mentions of a ‘Jewish state’” in the resolution, and added that
the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat “confirmed that he agreed it
[Israel] would be a Jewish state” in 1988 and in 2004.

It would appear that once again, as with previous one-sided and
pre-judgmental statements, Secretary Kerry has either been ill-advised or is
deliberately engaged in an effort to neutralize the “Jewish State” issue in
the current negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians. He is doing so
by attempting to determine that the question of Palestinian support for a
Jewish state was already resolved by PLO leader Yasser Arafat in 1988, and
is therefore redundant and unnecessary.

In so doing, Secretary Kerry even cited a questionable quotation by Yasser
Arafat himself from 7 December 1988 – in which the PLO Chairman says that
“the PNC has accepted two states: a Palestine state and Jewish state –
between brackets ‘Israel’” (sic).

However, despite the willingness of Kerry and others to view this as
retroactive evidence of Palestinian acceptance of Israel as a Jewish state,
the truth is just the opposite: the U.S. administration that then labored to
persuade Arafat to meet the initial goal of recognizing Israel’s right to
exist did not believe Arafat’s words at that time satisfied even this lesser
demand.

The 1988 statement of Yasser Arafat relied upon by Kerry does not come close
to meeting the bar of the current requirement – of Israel, the United
States, the United Kingdom, Germany and many others within the international
community – for the Palestinians to recognize Israel as the nation-state of
the Jewish People.

The Historical Record

In the last quarter of 1988, an intense effort was undertaken by then
Swedish Foreign Minister Sten Anderson to facilitate the opening of a
diplomatic dialogue between the PLO and the United States. Previously, all
U.S. administrations had strictly adhered to U.S. commitments, originally
given by Secretary of State Henry Kissinger to Israeli Foreign Minister
Yigal Allon, that required the PLO to recognize Israel, accept UN Security
Council Resolution 242, and renounce terrorism as prerequisites for any
dialogue between the parties. Anderson’s efforts were one of the factors
behind Arafat’s decision to issue a Palestinian declaration of independence
at the Palestinian National Council (PNC) meeting in Algiers on 15 November
1988.

Significantly, Arafat did not issue a clear declaration recognizing Israel
as a Jewish state, but only summarized the language of UN General Assembly
Resolution 181, which he employed simply to provide a legal basis for the
Palestinian state. The U.S. government concluded that Arafat’s statement did
not meet Washington’s demand that the PLO unequivocally recognize the State
of Israel, and thus no dialogue was launched between the United States and
the PLO at that time.

A further, widely publicized meeting was arranged in Stockholm by Swedish
Foreign Minister Anderson with selected U.S. Jewish leaders, at which Arafat
issued another statement, intended to gain American consent to open an
official dialogue.

This was rejected yet again by the United States, and at a special UN
General Assembly session convened to address the Palestinian issue Arafat
failed yet again to utter the language required by the U.S. Only after
inordinate pressure exerted on him did he then begrudgingly issue a
statement approximating what the U.S. had sought. Even the descriptive
characterization of Resolution 181 was not repeated in the final version
issued by Arafat.

The significance of this historical account is that the PNC declaration of
independence and Arafat’s account of its substance in Stockholm did not
satisfy the requirements of the United States at that time for opening a
diplomatic dialogue.

Secretary Kerry’s attempt to represent these events as proof that the
Palestinian leadership has already recognized Israel as the Jewish state is
a clear distortion of the historical record.

In fact, what Arafat appears to have said in the clip is completely false.
The Palestinian National Council has not accepted the Jewish state. It would
be incorrect to infer otherwise.

The opposite is in fact the case. The “Palestinian National Charter,” the
founding document of the “moderate” Fatah organization, as ratified by the
Sixth General Assembly of the Fatah Movement in Bethlehem in August 2009,
which elected Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to head the
organization, approved a plan that included the principle of “absolute
irrevocable opposition to recognition of Israel as a ‘Jewish state,’ to
protect the rights of refugees and the rights of our people [Israeli Arabs]
beyond the Green Line.”2

In numerous statements over the past weeks, and true to the mandate of the
Palestinian National Charter, Palestinian leaders and spokesmen have been
repeating ad nauseam their principled refusal to agree to acknowledge Israel’s
character as the nation state of the Jewish People. This is not a mere
political whim, but represents a strategic Palestinian position aimed at
preventing, by such recognition, any future attempt to deny a potential
future mass-influx of Palestinians into the State of Israel in apparent
realization of a perceived “right of return.”

In fact, with a view to addressing this very issue, in Israel’s official
response to the 30 April 2003 U.S. and Quartet-sponsored “Performance-Based
Roadmap to a Permanent Two-State Solution to the Israeli-Palestinian
Conflict,” Israel insisted on stating specifically that “In connection to
both the introductory statements and the final settlement, declared
references must be made to Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state and to
the waiver of any right of return for Palestinian refugees to the State of
Israel.”3

It was, in fact, Israeli Justice Minister Tzipi Livni, presently Secretary
Kerry’s and Mahmoud Abbas’ negotiating partner, who then drafted and
insisted on inserting this proviso into Israel’s response. Secretary Kerry
might consider consulting with Minister Tzipi Livni before he issues any
further statements on this issue.

* * *

Notes

1.
http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/ForeignPolicy/Peace/Guide/Pages/UN%20General%20Assembly%20Resolution%20181.aspx

2. http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=7715

3. http://www.knesset.gov.il/process/docs/roadmap_response_eng.htm
=====================


About Amb. Alan Baker

Amb. Alan Baker, Director of the Institute for Contemporary Affairs at the
Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, participated in the negotiation and
drafting of the Oslo Accords with the Palestinians, as well as agreements
and peace treaties with Egypt, Jordan, and Lebanon. He served as legal
adviser and deputy director-general of Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs
and as Israel's ambassador to Canada.