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December 2012/Tevet 5773
PA at the UN
Tell Our Advertisers “I Saw It in The Jewish Voice and Opinion”
continued from page 10
when the PA went back on its word to conduct negotiations with Israel after Mr. Netanyahu imposed a 10-month freeze on building homes for Jews in Judea and Samaria, the Obama administration lost its appetite for a renewed US engagement in the region. Many say no matter what Mr. Obama’s role, Mr. Netanyahu’s decision to eschew sanctions and ignore the UN vote is the right policy because the UN vote has no real significance. Lip Service Jonathan Tobin, editor of Commentary magazine, saw the overwhelming vote in the GA as “merely a way for the inter-
national community to pay lip service to the plight of the Palestinians.” Addressing Israelis about the vote in the UN, Mr. Netanyahu advised against getting upset because, he said, the entire exercise was essentially “meaningless.” “The decision by the General Assembly to raise the PA delegation’s status to a non-member observer state will not advance the establishment of a Palestinian state. I suggest that we not be impressed with the applause at the General Assembly. It doesn’t matter how many hands are raised against us, we have no intention of compromising on Israel’s security,” he said.
Jewish Rights For those concerned about the rights of the Jewish people, Mr. Netanyahu said he had “a simple message for those gathered in the General Assembly: No decision by the UN can break the 4,000-year-old bond between the people of Israel and the land of Israel.” Stressing that he would not allow an Iranian base to be established in Judea and Samaria, only two miles from Jerusalem, Mr. Netanyahu said Israel is prepared to live in peace with a Palestinian state, “but for peace to endure, Israel’s security must be protected. He stressed that while Israel wants peace, it cannot be achieved without negotiations. At the UN, PA President Mahmoud Abbas made clear that, as far as he was concerned, Israel and the PA had nothing to negotiate. Palestinians, he said, would accept “no less than the independence of the State of Palestine, with East Jerusalem as its capital, on all the Palestinian territory occupied in 1967.” This land, the Palestinians have said, must be relinquished to them judenrein. No Jews would be permitted to reside in any of the land given to form a Palestinian state. Refugees At the UN, Mr. Abbas demanded “a solution for the refugee issue,” which the Palestinians define as their “right of return.” For the Palestinians, this means the right of all Arabs who fled Israel in 1948 and 1967, and their millions of descendants, to flood back, not into a Palestinian state, but, rather, to Israel proper, where they would demographically change the nature of the country, ending its character as a Jewish state. For a few hours at the beginning of November, it appeared Mr. Abbas had changed the terms of his demand for repatriation of Palestinian refugees. He told Israel television that he had accepted the fact that he cannot return to his pre1948 home in Safed. “Palestine for me is 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital. I am a refugee, but I am living in Ramallah. I believe that the West Bank and Gaza is Palestine, and the other part is Israel. I want to see Safed. It is my right to see it, but not to live there,” he said.