President Obama will meet in Washington Thursday (May 28) with Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas [1], and will travel to Egypt next week to deliver a major speech to the Muslim world [2] following a stop-off in Riyadh to meet with Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah [3].
The 74-year-old Abbas, a protégé of former PA President Yasser Arafat, succeeded Arafat after his death in 2004. Abbas loosely controls the West Bank, while Iran-backed Hamas controls Gaza. [4] In June 2007, when Hamas seized control of Gaza in a bloody coup against Abbas’s Fatah faction, 161 Palestinians were killed and at least 700 wounded. [5] Abbas’s four-year term ended in January but he argues that he has governing authority until new elections are held in January 2010. [6]
The U.S., Israel and other Western countries actively support Abbas’s more moderate Fatah movement against Iran-backed Hamas. U.S. lawmakers are considering a $900 million aid package to the PA, $200 million of which would go to Abbas’s government. [7]
Newly elected Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has also pledged to work with Abbas’s government in the West Bank, and has proposed a “triple track†towards peace including political, security and economic tracks. On the economic track, Netanyahu today (May 27) convened a governmental committee to explore economic projects intended to improve the quality of life for Palestinian residents of the West Bank. [8]
Since Obama’s inauguration Jan. 20, terrorists in Gaza have fired more than 200 [9] rockets, mortars and missiles at Israel – and a total of more than 6,700 [10] since Israel handed all of Gaza over to the Palestinians four years ago in hopes of paving the way for an independent Palestinian state living side by side in peace next to Israel. Since the start of 2009, Israel has been hit by a total of 685 rockets and mortars. [11]
On May 19, a rocket launched by terrorists in Gaza hit a home in Sderot [12] - the southern Israeli city that has born the brunt of Gaza’s terrorist attacks. The attacks have killed 10 civilians, wounded more than 780 and traumatized thousands of others. [13] The only remaining Israeli in Gaza is Staff Sgt. Gilad Shalit who was abducted from Israel on June 25, 2006 by Hamas in a bloody cross-border raid in which the terrorists killed two Israel Defense Force soldiers and wounded four others. [14]
Iran-backed Hamas—and even the Palestinian Authority—continue to promote a culture of hate that permeates Palestinian culture, particularly in Palestinian schools, Gaza’s Hamas-ruled Palestinian government and Palestinian media. For example:
• On May 5, the Palestinian newspaper Al-Ayyam reported that the PA named its new computer center after Dalal Mughrabi, a female terrorist who in 1978 killed 37 civilians—including 12 children—in a bus hijacking in Israel. American photographer Gail Rubin was among those killed in the attack. [15]
• In Palestinian classrooms, schoolchildren are taught that Israelis are the enemy and Palestinian TV regularly airs programs geared towards children that encourage them to kill Israelis and thus achieve martyrdom. [16]
• Hamas’s own charter calls for killing Jews. It states, “The time will not come until Muslims will fight the Jews (and kill them); until the Jews hide behind rocks and trees, which will cry: O Muslim! There is a Jew hiding behind me, come on and kill him!†[17] “The indoctrination campaign must involve ulama, educators, teachers and information and media experts, as well as all intellectuals, especially the young people and the sheikhs of Islamic movements. It is [also] necessary to introduce essential changes in the curricula, in order to eliminate the influences of the intellectual invasion which were inflicted upon them by the Orientalists and the missionaries.†[18]
• Just last month, Abbas rejected the idea of a Jewish State and recently met with Palestinian youth leaders where he held up a framed map of Palestine – clearly labeled in English - that covered all of Israel. “I say this clearly: I do not accept the Jewish State, call it what you will," Abbas said during the meeting in Ramallah. The photo of Abbas holding the map appeared on the front pages of both Palestinian Authority daily newspapers. [19]
• On May 7, the Palestinian government’s ambassador to Lebanon, Abbas Zaki, said on ANB TV, "With the two-state solution, in my opinion, Israel will collapse, because if they get out of Jerusalem, what will become of all the talk about the Promised Land and the Chosen People? What will become of all the sacrifices they made - just to be told to leave? They consider Jerusalem to have a spiritual status. The Jews consider Judea and Samaria to be their historic dream. If the Jews leave those places, the Zionist idea will begin to collapse. It will regress of its own accord. Then we will move forward." [20]
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak was scheduled to come to Washington May 26 but on May 20 canceled his visit due to the death of his 12-year-old grandson. [21] Obama is scheduled to deliver a speech directed at the Muslim world on June 4. [22]
On May 18, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu traveled to Washington to meet with President Obama and vowed to move forward on the peace process.
“I share with you very much the desire to move the peace process forward,†Netanyahu said at the White House following a more than three-hour meeting with Obama. “And I want to start peace negotiations with the Palestinians immediately. I would like to broaden the circle of peace to include others in the Arab world…I want to make it clear that we don’t want to govern the Palestinians. We want to live in peace with them.†[23]
In 2003, Israel agreed to implement the Roadmap to Peace, [24] a performance-based document that provides a framework for a two-state solution and calls for an end to Palestinian violence and terrorism - including requiring all Palestinian institutions to end incitement against Israel. [25] Despite the Palestinians' failure to end incitement, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman and Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon both have agreed to honor the Roadmap. [26]
