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The Omega Letter Intelligence Digest
Vol: 40 Issue: 19 - Wednesday, January 19, 2005--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Arafat 'Peace' Option
A read through this morning's headlines from Israel might lead one to believe that the post-Arafat Palestinian Authority is actually trying to take steps towards peaceful co-existence with Israel.
There is the usual propaganda, like the Palestinian Media Center's embarrassingly dishonest, "Sharon Foils Abbas’ Efforts to Secure Ceasefire".
But evidently, many mainstream news organizations prefer Palestinian propaganda to actual fact, because it is clear that PA 'news' story formed the bulk of the 'background research' relied upon by the mainstream's editorial departments.
First, to the myth: Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas is actively seeking a cease-fire with Israel. In return, the Israelis unreasonably cut off all ties with Abbas only one day after his election and announced unrestricted warfare against Palestinian terrorism.
"As the PLO was calling on Israel to refrain from using “pretexts to obstruct dialogue and negotiation” and urging a Palestinian stop to “all military actions,” the Israeli Prime Minister gave his occupying troops a free reign against the Palestinian people, in a move that pundits say would foil the newly-elected Palestinian President’s efforts to secure a “mutual ceasefire”," claims the PMC lead paragraph.
According to Reuters, "Palestinians Deploy Forces to Halt Attacks" while UPI notes; "Abbas To Curb Rockets Against Israel." The always-unbiased ABC News headline fetes Abbas with the headline, "Palestinians Vow Action Against Militants" as if, 'vowing' were the same as fulfilling and that terrorists are really 'militants'.
One of my favorites this morning was carried by the Kansas City Star, reading, "Attack Complicates Push For Cease-Fire". I like this one because it is so fair and balanced it blames no one. Except a lone suicide bomber who evidently derailed Abba's heroic effort to bring 'peace'.
On Sunday, the PLO Executive Committee endorsed Abu Mazen's call for a 'hudna' (which most Western media translated as a 'cease-fire'). Following the meeting, the PLO published a statement saying;
"The (PLO executive) committee calls for halting all military operations that cause harm to our national interests and provide Israel with an excuse to disrupt stability on the Palestinian arena."
Assessment:
The PLO statement was carefully crafted -- look closely and you'll see the late, unlamented Yasser Arafat's fingerprints all over it.
The statement calls for the halting of only those 'military' operations that cause harm to the PA's national interests. Implicit in the statement is a 'green light' for terror attacks that advance the PA's interest. Who decides?
Who cares? The statement is meaningless on its face, and deliberately so. In addition, the PLO isn't calling for a 'cease-fire', they are calling for a 'hudna' which means something entirely different.
A 'hudna' has a distinct meaning to Islamic fundamentalists, a more profound understanding of the word's meaning, which isn't 'cease-fire', but rather, a 'temporary truce.'
The prophet Mohammad struck a legendary, ten-year hudna with the Quraysh tribe that controlled Mecca in the seventh century. Over the following two years, Mohammad rearmed and took advantage of a minor Quraysh infraction to break the 'hudna' and launch the full conquest of Mecca, the holiest city in Islam.
A 'hudna' -- as it is understood by radical Islam -- is made for strategic tactical reasons rather than for the purposes of seeking an ultimate peace.
In 1994, Yasser Arafat infamously invoked Mohammad's hudna in 1994 to describe his own Oslo commitments "on the road to Jerusalem," the implication was clear.
As Mideast expert Daniel Pipes explained, Arafat was asserting to his Islamic brethren that he will, "when his circumstances change for the better, take advantage of some technicality to tear up existing accords and launch a military assault on Israel."
And, six years later, Arafat's hudna came to an end with the launch of the current Oslo War against Israel. Hamas understands the concept of hudna; Hamas agreed to no less than ten 'hudnas' in the past ten years, and after every single one returned freshly armed for terror.
As IDF Major-General Amos Gilad said on Monday, "For us as a nation, it is forbidden to interest ourselves in this hudna, which is a threat to any kind of peace."
Echoing Gilad's words is the road map itself, which calls for the PA to "arrest, disrupt, and restrain" terror leaders — not granting an opportunity for replenishing their strength.
Given the religious, historical and diplomatic facts regarding the actual meaning of hudna, it would disturbing to see the media nearly everywhere translate the term to English as "truce" -- were the anti-Israel bias not so profoundly obvious.
The mainstream media was impressed with Abbas' conscription of the al-Aqsa Martyr's Brigade into the Palestinian security services. They reason that, by co-opting terror groups into the PA's official security apparatus, the al-Aqsa terrorists will become subordinate to Mahmoud Abbas' government.
(What they don't get is that there is no difference between the terrorists and the Palestinian Authority apart from the PA's perceived 'plausible deniability').
Former security minister Mohammed Dahlan, who is widely expected to play a major security role in the new PA cabinet, said Sunday that Abbas has no intention to disarm Palestinian groups involved in the fighting with Israel.
Dahlan said Abbas's pledge to end lawlessness had been misunderstood. "He was not referring to the weapons that are in the hands of the Palestinian resistance," he told the Saudi daily Okaz.
"These weapons constitute only 10 percent of the problem. The remaining weapons, which are responsible for lawlessness, come from arms dealers and smugglers."
He said the PA would not use force to disarm any Palestinian group because it prefers to engage in a dialogue with all factions to "reorganize the weapons of the resistance," an evident reference to Palestinian terror groups being absorbed into the PA.
What is astonishing about this is the willingness of the so-called 'Quartet for Peace' to overlook the fact they are supporting a regime that is being constructed out of active terrorist groups who repeatedly have refused to renounce terrorism as a legitimate form of political expression.
Instead, they are simply pretending that, once absorbed into the Palestinian Authority, they will turn over a new leaf and become as law-abiding as the rest of the Palestinian Authority. To accomplish that, they have to pretend that the Palestinian Authority itself has any track record as a 'law-abiding' government.
That is why, suddenly, the mainstream media and the Western governments have 'discovered' that it was Yasser Arafat who was the obstacle to peace all the time.
Because if it isn't Yasser Arafat, then it is the Palestinian Authority who doesn't want peace. And if they accept THAT, then they admit they are really negotiating with a terrorist group.
Kinda hard to make sense out of, isn't it? But somehow, the UN, EU, Russia and the US State Department seem to be able to find ample hope for peace in the alleged 'efforts' by Mahmoud Abbas' new government.
The reason is because the conflict is spiritual, and therefore, beyond the scope of governments or the secular media to understand. To them, this is a secular turf war, and, if they can get each party to agree where the turf boundaries are, the war will end.
What they cannot understand is that neither side CAN agree. Jerusalem and Israel were, at one time, under Islamic control -- part of Dar al Islam, or, the Zone of Islam. To Islam, Dar al Islam is permanent and perpetual.
Anyplace not under Islamic conquest is part of the Dar al Haram, or Zone of War. Once a place has been conquered by Islam, it remains part of the Zone of Islam, temporarily in the hands of the infidels, but no longer included in the Dar al Haram.
In the Middle East, time is irrelevant. When al-Qaeda bombed the commuter trains in Madrid, they claimed it was revenge for the loss of Andalusia. 'Andalusia' -- or 'Islamic Spain' became part of the Zone of Islam with its conquest in 711 AD. It remained under Islamic rule until the fall of the Kingdom of Granada, the last Islamic Kingdom in Spain, in 1492.
The passage of 513 years means nothing -- Andalusia will one day, Islam teaches, again be under Islamic rule. In the meantime, warring against Andalusia's illegitimate rulers remains an Islamic obligation.
Jerusalem came under Islamic rule in the year 638. In 691, the al-Aqsa Mosque was constructed over the Jewish Holy of Holies on Temple Mount. Jerusalem, and its environs, remained under Islamic rule until the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in 1917.
If Islamic anger continues to smolder over the loss of Andalusia 513 years ago, the loss of Jerusalem in 1917 was only yesterday. Islam will never countenance any peace deal that doesn't restore Israel and Jerusalem to Islamic control. Consequently, Islam can not recognize Israel's right to exist in any part of the Holy Land.
To do so would be to deny the basic tenets of the Islamic faith. It would be an admission that Islam is a false religion. Conversely, Israel can never permit Jerusalem to return to Islamic rule. To do so would be to deny the promises of Scripture concerning their God-given right to the Land of Promise.
It would be a denial of their own Scriptures and their faith and would mean the end of Judaism as a legitimate faith. Not the mention the end of the Jewish State and condemn Israel's Jews to exile once more.
The Arab-Israeli conflict is supernatural, and therefore, can only be solved by supernatural means. The Bible says that, with supernatural aid from Satan, the antichrist will negotiate what appears to be a genuine peace agreement (to a world in which a 'hudna' agreement appears to be a genuine 'cease-fire') but that the agreement will only last for three and a half years.
Without SOME kind of agreement, it is hard to imagine Israel will be able to survive indefinitely. Syria is purchasing new, long-range missiles that can reach anywhere in Israel. Syria's biological and chemical arsenal is one of the largest in the Middle East.
Together with Iran, both continue to supply, equip, train and harbor Hezbollah terrorists in Lebanon, reserved against the day when the Arabs are ready to provoke a new full-scale Arab-Israeli war.
Iran will be, according to most intelligence estimates, a nuclear power within two years, unless by some miracle or military intervention, it's nuclear programs can be brought to a screeching halt. There are few who doubt Tehran would not use nuclear weapons against Israel as soon as it could manufacture the chance.
In short, some kind of peace deal MUST come to be in the near future, if Israel is to survive. And, unless either Israel or Islam is prepared to concede to the superiority of the other's religion, no peace deal, however negotiated or imposed, can possibly survive for long.
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