The Palestinian decision to apply for full United Nations membership at the Security Council, announced Friday by President Mahmoud Abbas, was the most viable of the only options possible: surrender, return to violence or appeal to the international community, a senior Palestinian official said Saturday.

I think this sentiment has been grossly misinterpreted in the media. We all understand what a “return to violence” would mean. It would mean another intifada. The last one failed to achieve anything at all for the Palestinians. Intifada is not going to lead to a state.

“Appeal to the international community” obviously means bringing to the United Nations demands that could not be achieved through violence.

The real question is what “surrender” means. I think that many people who support the creation of a Palestinian state believe wrongly that this means give in, not have a state, and continue to be occupied forever. Thus, their gut reaction is to say, “No, we don’t want you to surrender!” However, I do not believe this is what “surrender” means at all.

What is meant by “surrender” is giving up the goal of winning the war of 1948, of eventually eliminating the Jewish state. By not asking the proper question which is “Surrender what exactly?” the supporters of a two-states for two-peoples solution end up preventing exactly that. Instead of telling the Palestinians “Yes, we want you to surrender and to make peace with a Jewish state that will continue to exist for generations to come,” they say, “No, we don’t want you to surrender; fight for your right to self determination.” They say this naive to the fact that the goal is neither statehood nor peace, but a step forward on a path designed to eliminate the Jewish state.

I know there are plenty of supporters of the Palestinians who would advocate for the elimination of the Jewish state. I do not make this argument for their benefit. I write this for those who believe in a two state solution and who wish to help the Palestinians achieve statehood. They need to hear the words, “Yes, you need to surrender. Yes, you need to make peace with the Jewish state.” Nothing other than those words will make a difference.

The Palestinians insist on pre-conditions for negotiations to resume. Since those conditions are not acceptable to Israel, it won’t accede to them. Right now, this is the primary reason why there are no talks. However, if there were talks, they would go nowhere because of something else. The Palestinians insist that new negotiations begin where prior negotiations stopped. This is what is being ignored.

I have written about the fact that there is no “status quo” in the peace process. There is in fact constant change. Some of that change has been massive. How can negotiations proceed as if no changes have occurred? This is an absurdity, yet you need not look far to find people arguing this point of view, that negotiations should begin where they left off, among them Meretz USA.

So, let’s say for a moment that you were applying for a job. You got to the point of negotiating salary and benefits when you decided that they weren’t good enough for you and you storm out cursing. You then protest the business even going so far as to spray paint hateful slogans on its walls, something for which you were suspected but not caught. A couple of years later, you decide you wish to apply for that job again and now there is a new manager in place who is less fond of you than the first. In the interim, you have been arrested several times for financial related crimes and the manager went ahead and filled the position to which you are applying. Should negotiations begin where they once left off? Of course not.

How about this one? You agreed to sell me 100 oz. of gold at $300 an ounce a few years back. I thought I could do better. Gold is now over $1800 per oz. I now want you to start off by offering it to me at $300 per oz. like you did before. Make sense? Of course not.

Negotiations should never begin where they left off. They should always begin with the reality of the moment. How is it that anyone expects Israel to happily accept what was a risk in 2000, when events since have proven that the hopeful assumptions at the time were woefully incorrect? The Palestinian Authority could not prevent Hamas from taking over in Gaza, could not prevent thousands of rockets from being launched from there, could not prevent Hamas from winning the only free election to take place in the past decade and refuses to acknowledge that Israel is a state for the Jews. The United Nations refuses to defend Israel from attacks from Lebanon, allowing Hizballah to arm itself to the teeth, attack Israel in 2006, and rearm. The United Nations also condemned Israel acts of self defense in Operation Cast Lead in Gaza and to an extent in the Mavi Marmara incident as well. How can Israel rely on it to stand up to breaches of any peace agreement? Israel is to pretend that nothing has changed and negotiate from the point of past refusals when what was refused is beyond what could be offered today?

That the Palestinian negotiating position has worsened since 2000 is not to simply be disregarded. That it should not be able to expect what it was once offered because of its actions over the past decade should be obvious. Yet, it is not. That problem is not only the cause of previous failures in the peace process but will be the cause of future ones until it is remedied.

Four speeches. Lots of argument and conflict.

The President seemingly said what he did on Thursday in the hope of preparing the stage to go to European leaders and the Palestinians hoping to head off an attempt by the Palestinians to bring a vote for statehood to the UN General Assembly. Some of you may question this motive. I do not. I do think that is exactly what President Obama was trying to do. The Congress of the United States is even working on legislation in which the President is urged to act against such a move.

There was an understanding, I believe based upon the counsel of Samantha Power, one of the President’s advisors, that the Palestinians could invoke UNGA Resolution 377 to go around a Security Council veto by the US.

United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) resolution 377, the “Uniting for Peace” resolution, states that, in cases where the United Nations Security Council fails to act in order to maintain international peace and security, owing to disagreement between its five permanent members, the matter shall be addressed immediately by the General Assembly, using the mechanism of the Emergency Special Session.

Evidently, however, this is not true because, according to a J Post article published yesterday, in order for a vote to recognize statehood to take place at all, it needs to go through the Security Council first which means that absolutely nothing has changed. A US Security Council veto will prevent a vote from being taken. It is not the case that a vote is taken and then approved by the Security Council. There will be no vote if the US vetoes it. Thus, there was and is no need for the US to lobby European governments or for the US to convince the Palestinian leadership not to pursue it. This is a dead issue unless the sole purpose of US lobbying efforts are to get other nations to side with the US veto so that the US in not alone in vetoing the effort.

This is the real purpose of President Obama’s efforts in recent weeks. There is little or no chance that the Administration did not know about the rules in the UN. It is much more likely that the Obama administration was using the confusion about the possibility of the Palestinians utilizing UNGA 337 to pressure Israel to make concessions in order to promote negotiations so that other nations would be more willing to preemptively join the US in declaring opposition to a unilateral declaration of PA statehood in the UN. Now, that the cat is out of the bag, the entire argument is revealed to be a house of cards.

We are now back to where we were and where we were is that the Palestinians both need to negotiate in order to achieve the realization of a state and lack any bargaining chips in those negotiations other than violence or its absence. Because attacking security barriers is by definition an act of hostility, those who claim that “non-violence” may succeed are incorrect. Marching against borders is an act of violence even if done without weaponry or physical conflict. I wrote about this only a couple of weeks ago.

But what is more important now is that the situation is exactly as I wrote about in November, one in which the Palestinians lack any leverage in the negotiations. In fact, they have even less leverage now than they did then and that is saying a whole lot. If you haven’t read my article on Palestinian Leverage from November, you really should. It is all you really need to know about what is going on in the peace process.

Meanwhile, Rafah opened today. More on that to come.

The reality is that in any new policy, the President has three options:

1. Throw Israel under the bus and force it to make concessions in order to appease the Arab street while enabling the Palestinian side to avoid making even minor concessions and enabling the Palestinians to strengthen their demands for unreasonable future concessions.
2. Throw the Palestinians under the bus and demand that either Fatah reject working with Hamas or that Hamas publicly renounce armed struggle against Israel and actively combat it. The US would threaten to cut off aid to the PA.
3. Throw both sides under the bus, proposing a solution that is impossible for either side to support publicly for certain, but possibly in private as well, and which will have no impact on the ground (because neither side will be able to accommodate it). This will allow the President to appear to be boldly offering a new solution.

There is no “Win-Win” solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. There are “lose-lose” scenarios and some of them are pretty drastic. More than likely, the President will offer a “lose-lose” scenario, throwing both sides under the bus, that will upset Israel more than the Palestinians in the hope that Israel will opt to take it rather than facing a “lose-win” scenario. A problem arises however in that the Palestinians may believe that if they hold out, they will eventually get their own “win-lose” option anyway.

For any solution proposed by the United States to have any impact, it has to be made abundantly clear by the administration that it will support an Israeli biased solution if whatever is proposed is not accepted by the Palestinians. There must be a credible threat that the Palestinian side could get worse than what is offered and little hope that it could get better if that option is not chosen. Meanwhile, no one should be holding their breath that whatever is proposed will lead to a final peace agreement anytime soon.

In Cairo, in June of 2009, President Obama linked the Palestinian quest for freedom to the American civil rights movement. “Palestinians must abandon violence,” he said. “Resistance through violence and killing is wrong and it does not succeed.” He was right. So why is it that now — when finally, Montgomery has come to Nabi Saleh — he chooses to remain silent?

This is an appeal to Obama specifically presenting the Palestinian cause as a civil rights movement. The obvious answer to Perry is that it is not a civil rights movement, but rather an attempt to use non-violence to achieve the military objectives that violence failed to achieve, namely the acquisition of lands. In other words, the only rights in question are rights to land.

Land issues should be solved in negotiations, not through violence or through non-violence. Non-violence is a tactic, not a goal. If the goals are the acquisition of territory or the elimination of the Jewish state, non-violence is in fact simply another tactic used to achieve these military goals. One can be a non-violent hater, a non-violent Jew hater, a non-violent advocate for the elimination of the Jewish state through non-violent means, a non-violent advocate for the expulsion of the Jews from the land.

We may argue about whether or not certain border fences should be where they are and whether certain lands will be Israel’s or part of a future Palestinian state, but the use of non-violence to achieve those goals rather than negotiations is only qualitatively different from using violence. In effect, one can execute a non-violent attack and attempts to harm Israelis by harming Israeli security are exactly such an attack. This is why non-violent protests that attempt to do harm to Israel’s security are met with a response as if Israel were under attack. They are attacks.

The only question that need be asked if one is wondering whether or not an action qualifies as an attack is “Does it affect the other side harmfully?” Attempts to dismantle security barriers that prevent harm from coming to residents on the other side are such attempts.

Addendum from Meryl: Mark Perry is lying about the protests being nonviolent.

A border guard was blinded by a “protester”. There were also broken leg, broken arm, injuries, injuries, and more injuries during the weekly Bilin “protests.” And here is a picture of the stones used to injure the soldiers.

A Palestinian policeman opened fire Sunday at a group of Israelis who had come to pray at a Jewish holy site in the West Bank without authorization, killing one and wounding four, the Israeli military said.

The shooting threatened to inflame tensions in the West Bank, where Jewish settlers and Palestinians live in uneasy proximity and where settlers have responded to attacks in the past with violent reprisals.

Israeli police identified the dead man as Ben-Yosef Livnat, a Jerusalem resident in his mid-20s. Ben-Yosef was a nephew of Limor Livnat, a prominent hardline Cabinet minister from the ruling Likud Party.

Limor Livnat, who attended the funeral, told reporters that her nephew was killed by a “terrorist disguised as a Palestinian policeman.”

What the AP does not tell you is that the Israelis were driving back to their homes when the Palestinian police fired on their car—at a checkpoint.

Oh, and there’s also this headline:

     Israeli killed, 4 wounded in West Bank

Really? An Israeli was killed? Who killed him? Because in the lead, the AP tells me it was the Palestinian police. Why isn’t the headline “Palestinian policeman kills 1, wounds 4 in West Bank”? It’s just like the headlines where the AP tells us that rockets kill Israelis, but not that they’re fired by Palestinians.

And why was an Israeli killed at Joseph’s Tomb?

Palestinian officials notified the Israeli military that the Israelis “were shot by a Palestinian policeman who, after identifying suspicious movements, fired in their direction,” the Israeli military said.

“Suspicious movements”? Doubtless, the Jews dared to pray at a shrine that is holy to both Jews and Muslims. Note that the emphasis is going to be on the fact that Jews went to the tomb without coordinating the visit, not that they were murdered by a Palestinian police officer. Also note that unlike the deaths of Palestinians, murders of Israelis by Palestinians barely manage a blip on the world media scene.

Palestinians are saying the police fired several warning shots at the car, then into it when it refused to stop. The investigation is ongoing. Watch for the celebrations from the Palestinian side. And no apology. After the shooting, Palestinians once again mobbed Joseph’s Tomb and desecrated it—because it is sacred to Jews. These are the people that the world wants Israel to give control over the Temple Mount. And people wonder why Israel refuses.

Lesson learned, for now: Hamas has stopped firing rockets. And the U.S. will be helping Israel fund more Iron Dome systems. But it’s only just the latest round in the long war.

They were open? Who knew? Wait a minute, I thought the Gaza crossings were all closed and the evil Israelis were totally isolating the Gazans. (This, despite the fact that the Egyptian border is totally controlled by, duh, Egypt.) Well, they’re still closed due to the rocket attacks. And yet, no howls from the Free Gaza flotilla fools. Go figure.

Stay tuned: The IDF is closing in on the Fogel family murderers.

The man in the glass booth: You can see the Eichmann trial—all of it—on YouTube. Watch the man lie through his teeth as he insists he was not the architect of the Holocaust. Really, I can’t believe they hanged him. They should have set him to the same conditions as the concentration camp inhabitants.

The next step in the 1949 borders: The Palestinians are about to submit a report that proves they are capable of governing themselves. The plan to force Israel to accept all the Palestinian requirements without having the Palestinians actually negotiate a peace moves forward.

This section of the report refers to the 26 countries where we have some of the most serious wide-ranging human rights concerns. When deciding on which countries to include, we also considered whether the country had been the target of a high level of UK engagement on human rights in 2010, and whether it would be likely to effect positive change in the wider region if its human rights record improved.

And here is the list of the 26 worst violators of human rights that the U.K. feels fit to chastise. One of these things is not like the other. See if you can figure out which country among all of these is the one with a democratic system, the rule of law, a court system that consistently stops the armed forces and police from violating detainee human rights, and where there is full recourse to claims of human rights violations.

Afghanistan, Belarus, Burma, Chad, China, Colombia, Cuba, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Democratic Republic of Congo, Eritrea, Iran, Iraq, Israel and the OPTs, Libya, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Syria, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Vietnam, Yemen, Zimbabwe

But that doesn’t matter to the U.K. Because in the Brits’ eyes, Israel is side-by-side with Syria and North Korea in the violation of human rights.

Here’s an example of the priorities of the U.K.’s human rights team. Note the order in which the U.K. puts human rights violations that concern them in Israel.

Conflict
The ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the occupation of Palestinian territory, remain the chief source of human rights violations. This includes settlements and settler violence; demolitions and evictions; the Israeli separation barrier; movement and access restrictions; rocket and missile fire; hostage-taking; and the current situation in Gaza.

“The current situation in Gaza”? Does that mean the U.K. is concerned about the lack of human rights, democracy, and women’s rights in Gaza?

Nope.

The situation in Gaza continued to cause concern and was high on William Hague’s agenda during his visit to Israel and the OPTs in November. While we welcomed the Israeli announcement on 20 June to ease restrictions on access, we have pressed Israel for swift implementation of these measures. The move from a list of permitted items to a list of banned and dual-use items,which resulted in an increase in the variety and volume of goods entering Gaza, was welcome, as was Israel’s December statement that it would allow some exports. However, the approvals process for dual-use items used in UN reconstruction projects is slow and the economy in Gaza remains stagnant. It is important that these measures are now fully implemented so that there can be real change on the ground. We are working closely with the UN, the Office of the Quartet Representative and the EU to coordinate the international community’s continued involvement in seeking to relieve the situation in Gaza.

When we finally do get to the rocket attacks on civilians, this is all there is:

According to the Israeli Defence Force, during 2010, 248 rockets and mortars had been fired at Israel. The Israeli Defence Force notes that 2010 saw the lowest number of rocket attacks since 2002. However, this is small comfort to those at the receiving end and we continue to condemn all rocket attacks. Such acts of terrorism are indiscriminate and target civilian populations. We were concerned that towards the end of 2010 rocket attacks began to increase. We call for a halt to all such attacks, urge Israel to exercise restraint in its response, and call on all parties to respect the ceasefire that brought to an end the 2009 conflict in Gaza.

There is a section devoted to Hamas’ frequent human rights violations against its own people, but it is miniscule, and it comes at the very end. Three of the six paragraphs devoted to the crimes of the Hamas government include William Hague’s call for Gilad Shalit’s release he issued on the fourth anniversary of Shalit’s capture. As for the PA, every time the U.K. documented Fatah’s transgressions against its own people, it was followed by how the U.K. sponsored “leadership” training to stop the PA from beating people who disagree with it. Good show, chaps! Now, when they beat their own people, they’ll know that it’s wrong.

According to the U.K. Foreign Office , rocket fire aimed at Israeli cities and towns is of small import when compared to the detention of three Hamas legislators in Jerusalem. Or the rights of Bedouins to build towns illegally. Or the separation barrier. Or the stubbed toes of the everyday Gazan who isn’t getting his food, water, and electricity gratis from Israel. My, what a balanced report on human rights violations. Israel, alongside 25 actual human rights violators, given equal billing, on the most spurious of charges.

Demonization? Check. Double Standards? Check. Delegitimization? Check. It’s Natan Sharansky’s 3D Test of Anti-Semitism. The British Foreign Office? Fail.

Pilots on an Alaska Airlines flight from Mexico City to Los Angeles locked down the cockpit and alerted authorities Sunday when a flight crew grew alarmed at the behavior of three men who turned out to be conducting an elaborate orthodox Jewish prayer ritual, officials said.

This isn’t the first time flight crews have freaked out over Jews praying. You know, the airlines really ought to brief their people on this ritual, because Orthodox Jews will continue to fly on American airlines, and they will continue to pray during those flights.

Hope the movie tanks, Mel: Jodie Foster says that Mel Gibson is the most-loved man in Hollywood. Yeah, I’m thinking not so much after his anti-Semitic rants about Jews, but then, Foster is the actor who so desperately wants to play Leni Riefenstahl, better known as Hitler’s propagandist, in a biopic she’s been shopping around for years. So what’s a little Jew-hate between friends, eh?

No, really, this time we mean it! The reason I don’t care at all about Hamas and Fatah reuniting is that they won’t. Abbas won’t visit Gaza, because he doesn’t want to be assassinated. It’s just words. Even the AP realizes it:

Bringing Hamas back into the Palestinian Authority could jeopardize the hundreds of millions of dollars in annual American and European aid the government depends on. That aid was withheld in the past when Hamas was part of the government because it refused to recognize Israel, renounce its violent campaign against the Jewish state or accept previous peace accords. There is no sign Hamas would be willing to do any of those things now, and violence continues.

Shyeah. Best friends. Any minute now. Sure. Uh-huh.

Fatah spokesman Ahmad Assaf said Israel was taking advantage of Friday night’s murder of five members of the Fogel family to “launch an incitement campaign against Palestinian President Abu Mazen (Mahmoud Abbas) and the Palestinian Authority in general.”

But something didn’t take. When HRW puts out a statement excoriating the attack, and Netanyahu seemed to successfully call the PA out on their namby-pamby “we abhor violence” line, Mahmoud Abbas took an unprecedented step: He went on Israeli radio and condemned the attack. Why? I think because Israel took an unprecented step: Pictures of the grisly murder scene were released. (I’m sorry, I’m not linking to them here. I don’t want to see them.) I think, however, the release of the pictures were greatly effective. Of course, Abbas is lying about Palestinian incitement. He always lies, except when speaking in Arabic to an Arab audience about “retaking” Palestinian lands.

And the AP, as always, spins.

Israel has long contended that Palestinian textbooks and official media preach hatred toward Israel and that the killers of Israelis are often glorified.

On Sunday, a group of activists from Abbas’ Fatah movement dedicated a square in the West Bank city of Ramallah after Dalal Mughrabi, a female militant who carried out a 1978 bus attack that killed 37 Israelis. Aides to Abbas said they tried to stop the ceremony and the move was not officially sanctioned.

Still, Israel has not produced evidence that incitement contributed to the killings.

Even when presenting evidence of incitement, the AP bends over backwards trying to prove that it isn’t incitement. Or at least, if it is, it’s not the PA’s fault. Or at least, if it is, Israel can’t prove that incitement is the reason that family was massacred. Way to spin, AP!

Something is different this time, though. Abbas never, ever, attacked his own people like that before. I wonder if something is going on behind the scenes at State. Or if he’s finally noticing that there are a lot of Republican politicians who want to cut the PA purse strings.

Regardless, two parents and three children are dead—including a four-month-old baby. The brave, brave mujahadeen managed to kill them all in their sleep. This time, even the PA can’t spin the attack as justified. It’s a baby step forward.