Iran is once again working to ensure there will be no peace in the Middle East, particularly between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.
Specifically, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei claimed there would never be peace between the two parties, and that “al-Quds” will always be the “capital of Palestine.”
Speaking Monday at a meeting of the Hajj organization, Iran’s 78-year-old leader said the Trump administration peace plan for the Middle East is a “plot” to take Jerusalem from “Palestine” and ensure “Zionist control” over the capital, the Mehr news outlet reported.
However, he said, the “deal of the century” will never be achieved “thanks to the Almighty.” The “Palestinian cause will not be forgotten,” he promised the gathering.
“The Palestinian people will confront this conspiracy and the Islamic peoples will be supportive on the Palestinian people.
“Of course, some Islamic governments have no faith in Islam,” Khamenei went on, adding that “foolishness, ignorance and worldly ambitions have taken on the role of the American fedayeen (Arabic for terrorists.)
“But by God’s Will the Islamic nation and the Palestinian people will triumph over their enemies,” Khamenei assured his audience.
“They will see that day when the false Zionist entity will be uprooted from the land of Palestine.”
Iran is a strong and generous supporter of Hamas and its ally, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terror group — both in Gaza — as well as Hezbollah in Lebanon.
It is believed that Tehran has been deeply involved in funding the massive violence by thousands of Gazans each week at the border with Israel — and which is used as cover by Hamas and PIJ operatives while they try to infiltrate Israeli territory to carry out attacks — as well as the increasing arson attacks that so far have destroyed nearly 8,000 acres of forest, park and farmland in southern Israel.
On Tuesday, two arson balloons flown by Hamas into Israel landed in schoolyards and set fire to the grounds while children were playing nearby.
The escalating violence, and the latest round of hundreds of rocket, missile and mortar shells fired at Israel this past weekend make it clear that Hamas is again doing its best to drag its civilians inexorably back into the spiral of war.
Nevertheless, despite repeated failures over the years, the jury’s still out on the possibility of future peace between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, including Gaza.
There is no question about Jerusalem, which will always remain the eternal capital of the Jewish State, once known as Judah and the Kingdoms of Israel.
But “Palestine” also has an ancient history, even though contrary to the belief of Arabs misled by their leaders, it has nothing whatsoever to do with Jerusalem.
The word “Palestine” first was referred to by the Greeks in 12 BCE, to describe the southern coastal region between what is now Tel Aviv-Yafo (Jaffa) and Gaza. The Greeks called it the Land of Philistia, or the Land of the Philistines.
It was then mentioned by Herodotus in Ancient Greece in 5 BCE who wrote of a “district of Syria, called Palaistinê” between Phoenicia and Egypt in The Histories” — long before our Arab neighbors ever arrived to join us in populating the region.
It appeared again when the Roman Emperor Hadrian bestowed the moniker on the Land of Israel in 135 CE, referring to the region where the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah were located.
And of course, let’s not forget the British, who retained the Roman nomenclature when referring to the territory as “Mandate Palestine.” In fact, much of Israel’s first generation of leaders originally held passports that read: “Palestine” — including the late Prime Minister David Ben Gurion, and the late Prime Minister Golda Meir, who speaks with some ascerbity in her autobiography about the attempt by Arabs to hijack the term.
Jerusalem has been the eternal capital of the Jewish nation for more than 3,000 years, towards which every Jew around the world has turned and prayed three times a day, every single day, for millennia, thousands of years before a Palestinian Authority, or even a so-called “Palestine” was ever dreamed into existence.
For an Iranian leader and his wealthy proxies to mislead poverty-stricken followers into believing that someday, somehow, there will be no Israel — that all of the Land of Israel will magically be transformed into their fantasized “Palestine” — is nothing more than a cruel, deliberate move to manipulate Gazans into waging another doomed war that is guaranteed to end with Gaza certain to suffer again for years.