Surprising Proposal Would Have Jews
Living In Future Palestinian State
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has secretly proposed a new plan whereby Jews living in the West Bank would remain in their communities after the territory becomes part of a Palestinian state, this column has learned.
Officials in both Israel and the Palestinian Authority have confirmed the plan to this reporter, marking the first time an Israeli leader has ever put on the table in a serious way a proposal involving Jewish West Bank residents remaining in a Palestinian state.
Conventional negotiations have always assumed an Israeli evacuation of its communities inside any territory taken over by the PA.
Middle East officials said the plan is being seriously considered by the Obama administration, while the PA has been less than enthusiastic. PA sources said they held a meeting over the plan.
It is unclear how the Jewish residents of the West Bank will react to such a plan that would seemingly place their security in the hands of the PA whose militia members have carried out scores of attacks targeting those very Jewish communities.
PA President Mahmoud Abbas has been on record multiple times speaking against Jews living in a Palestinian state.
Netanyahu on Sunday alluded to new proposals in peace negotiations.
“What is required is creative, novel thinking in order to resolve these complex issues,” Netanyahu said.
PA Minister Honors
Family Of Suicide Bomber
Just days before it attended President Obama’s summit in Washington this week, the Palestinian Authority honored the families of the perpetrators of notorious terrorist attacks targeting Israeli civilians.
The PA’s minister for prisoners’ affairs, Issa Karake, last week awarded his government’s “Shield of Resoluteness and Giving” to a mother, Um Yousuf Abu Hamid, whose four sons are serving life sentences in Israeli jails for carrying out terrorist attacks in which Jewish civilians were murdered.
Karake upheld the Abu Hamid family as a “model of willpower and of the struggle for the independence of Palestine,” according to the PA’s Al-Hayat al-Jadida newspaper as translated by Palestinian Media Watch.
He called the mother a “central partner in the struggle, by virtue of what she has given and continues to give.”
“It is she who gave birth to the fighters, and she deserves that we bow to her in salute and in honor,” Karake was quoted as saying.
Karake, the PA’s minister, also visited the family of Palestinian suicide terrorist Ayyat Al-Akhras, who in 2002 entered a Jerusalem supermarket and detonated a bomb murdering two Israelis and killing herself, becoming one of the youngest suicide bombers at age 18.
That attack received worldwide media attention due to Ayat’s age and gender and the fact that one of the victims was also a teenage girl, 17-year-old Rachel Levy.
Koran-Burning Pastor Receives Death Threats
The controversial pastor planning to hold a Koran-burning ceremony on Sept. 11 says he has received over 100 death threats.
Terry Jones, leader of the Dove World Outreach Center in Gainesville, Fla., also admitted his plan could put Americans in danger.
Jones spoke with this columnist in a radio interview Sunday on New York’s WABC Radio.
Asked whether he believes his event would put Americans in danger of Muslim retaliation, Jones replied, “Yes, of course that is possible. That is definitely not what we want. We realized whenever we did this, it could cause some sort of retaliation.”
Jones said he received over 100 death threats, some of which were “pretty graphic.”
“We received letters, e-mails, phone calls saying they were going go kill us, when they were going to kill us, how they were going to kill us,” he said.
One threat, Jones said, warned that “three people were on their way here, they were armed with explosives and automatic weapons and they were going to blow up the church.”
“They were going to burn me alive,” Jones added.
About 3,000 members of a hard-line Islamic group marched to the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta, waving banners and posting Jones’s Quran-burning plan.
Last week, the city of Gainesville denied a burn permit to Jones’s Dove center. Gene Prince, the interim chief of Gainesville Fire Rescue, told the Gainesville Sun that under the city’s fire prevention ordinance an open burning of books is not allowed. The church will be fined if it forges ahead with its plan, Prince said.
Jones said his church will still attempt to destroy Korans on Sept. 11.
“If they put it out, then we will have an alternative plan, and we will burn the Korans in an incinerator,” he said.
U.S. May Support Unilateral
Declaration Of Palestinian Statehood
If Israel and the Palestinian Authority fail to reach an agreement within the next year, the Obama administration may support a United Nations resolution that would unilaterally recognize a Palestinian state, senior PA officials told this column.
Despite widespread assumptions that the U.S. would veto any such UN Security Council resolution, PA officials said the Obama administration did not threaten to veto their conceptual unilateral resolution.
“The U.S. has a history of never before vetoing any UN move to create a new state,” a PA negotiator pointed out.
Aaron Klein is Jerusalem bureau chief and senior reporter for Internet giant WorldNetDaily.com. He is also host of an investigative radio program on New York’s 770-WABC Radio, the largest talk radio station in the U.S., every Sunday between 2-4 p.m.
Advertisement