WAR IS PEACE: Did the US force Israel to cede strategic territory to Iran?
WAR IS PEACE: Did the US force Israel to cede strategic territory to Iran?
And is this is a paradox?
Iran publicly announces that it means to destroy Israel.
US bosses—presenting as protectors of Israel—claim to oppose that.
But US bosses have pushed for a PLO/Fatah State on strategic Israeli land.
Is that consistent with protecting Israel?
Not if PLO/Fatah (the ‘Palestinian Authority’) and Iran have a special relationship…
Let’s begin with a metaphor: there you are in your own home, and Bill—your best friend—comes along and brings your enemy (who means to kill you) inside your home.
Paradox!
To adapt and survive, you need a model of reality that will dissipate the paradox.
Accept, first, that you can never truly know another’s intentions. To call Bill your ‘best friend’ is to express a hypothesis—even if you never call it that—of Bill’s intentions.
Now consider the three obvious candidate possibilities to dissipate the paradox. Bill brought your mortal enemy into your home…
Option A: …because he is indeed your best friend, but a naïve fool who thought that you and your enemy could talk it over.
Option B: …because he is indeed your best friend, and a genius who got your enemy to talk peace;
Option C: …because he was only pretending to be your best friend, and is trying to kill you.
With this metaphor in hand, let us now consider Israeli reality.
The current mess in Israel began when PLO/Fatah—a terrorist group that specialized in killing Israeli civilians but now claimed to want peace—was brought into Israel in 1993-94 to govern the Arabs in the territories of Judea & Samaria (‘West Bank’) and Gaza, with a view to creating a PLO/Fatah State (a ‘Palestinian State’) in those territories. This was called the ‘Oslo Peace Process’ to honor the last stretch of the negotiations, which happened in the Norwegian capital.
How did all this come to pass?
First, there was strong bullying from US President George Bush Sr., a Republican, who leaned very hard on the Israelis.1 Then Bill Clinton, a Democrat, kept the pressure up and—flashing his inimitable puckered smile—got the agreement signed on the White House lawn. Totally bipartisan. Ever since, US bosses from both parties have pushed strongly to move forward the Oslo Process and give PLO/Fatah ever more power inside Israel.
These US bosses pose in public as Israel’s best friends.
PARADOX
↓↓↓
Israel’s best friends brought practiced murderers of Jews into the Jewish State.
Now, how to dissipate this paradox and produce a better model of the world?
I don’t like Option A, the naïve fool scenario.
I’ll tell you why. It was a Pentagon-affiliated think tank, RAND, that first recommended (in 1989) to give Judea, Samaria, and Gaza to PLO/Fatah,2 even though an earlier study—from the same Pentagon—had already concluded, following the Six Day War of 1967, that Israel would not survive if those territories ever fell into enemy hands.3
Can US bosses be so addled that, knowing these territories to be strategic, they still believed it would be good for Israel if the PLO/Fatah terrorists got them? Did it never occur to them that PLO/Fatah might lie about wanting peace to get those territories? Incompetence on this level produces a new paradox: world power is in the hands of pathological bumblers.
I discard Option A.
Option B is at the other extreme, for it argues that US bosses are anything but incompetent: they are geniuses and saints, almost supernaturally skilled at peace-building and soft strategy. This scenario must be argued as follows:
“Yes, true, PLO/Fatah was murdering innocent Israeli civilians. And, true, Judea, Samaria, and Gaza are militarily strategic. But US bosses—negotiating geniuses—got PLO/Fatah to talk peace. And that’s pure strategic genius because the pending matter of a PLO/Fatah State is all that still impedes a lasting and general peace between Israel and the Muslim world. Such a lasting and general peace would make Israel truly secure. So US bosses—as always—have been trying to protect Israel. The benefits of a lasting and general peace are so large that the risks in the Oslo Process are entirely worth it.”
One does hear something very much like that. Option B is the ‘official narrative,’ let us say. But can it withstand scrutiny?
Well, consider that the staunchest enemies of Israel—Iran, and its proxies Hamas and Hezbollah—have always publicly announced that their primary interest is in the genocidal destruction of the Jewish State, whether or not PLO/Fatah is given its own State.4
So let us then describe in strategic terms what has happened:
The Iranian bosses, who call for the extermination of the Israelis, and who have proxy terrorist armies stationed on Israel’s southern and northern borders (Hamas and Hezbollah), will not be appeased by the creation of a PLO/Fatah State. That PLO/Fatah State will therefore not bring a lasting and general peace. Yet, despite this, US bosses have insisted that Israel cede militarily strategic territory to murderers of Israelis who now (sometimes) claim to have abandoned terrorism.
A description in strategic terms, as above, is useful because it makes evident that if US bosses are well intentioned and hence honestly believe that the Oslo Process protects Israel, as Option B requires, then we are really back again at Option A: US bosses are pathologically incompetent (which, as stated, only creates a new paradox).
I don’t mean to press my luck just yet: I accept that all weaknesses so far identified in Option A and Option B may not be sufficient to kill anyone’s preexisting preference for either. But such weaknesses do at least make room on the table for Option C. So let’s consider it.
Option C does not assume that the most powerful people in the world are pathologically incompetent; it assumes—to the contrary—that they are Machiavellian geniuses. Ask yourself: Might Machiavellian geniuses become the most powerful people in the world? Sure—no paradox there. And that’s a strong beginning.
Of course, Option C raises questions. Such as: Why would Machiavellian US bosses wish to destroy Israel? A complete model must answer such questions (and mine will). But a model that generates questions in need of answers is an entirely different thing from a model with a built-in paradox that challenges our common sense.
And yet partisans of Option C will be swimming against a strong prejudice anyway. So it would be nice if we had a result, akin to what experimental scientists sometimes obtain with randomized control trials, that would allow us decisively to rule out both Option A and Option B.
What we need is a dramatic fact, as I call it.
DRAMATIC FACT = one that the hypothesis under consideration requires to be impossible.
The hypothesis under consideration—necessary for both Option A and Option B—says that US bosses are well-intentioned and mean to protect Israel. If something—a dramatic fact—has happened already which is required to be impossible under any ‘good intentions’ hypothesis, then only Option C—the Machiavellian hypothesis—will remain standing.
What would such a dramatic fact look like?
Well, suppose it could be documented that PLO/Fatah and genocidal Iran have always been tightly allied with a joint plan to have PLO/Fatah pretend to talk peace in order to get strategic territory from which to destroy Israel. And suppose it were clear, also, that US bosses—who made sure that PLO/Fatah got strategic territory inside the Jewish State—have always known about this plan. If this could be established, we would have a dramatic fact—one that is simply impossible under any ‘good-intentions’ hypothesis.
Below I will document all of the following:
PLO/Fatah created Khomeini’s jihadi Iran.
There was later a media and academic blackout on this, and that was crucial to making the Oslo Process possible.
Meanwhile, PLO/Fatah and Iran pretended to be estranged, but they were in fact still allied, as always.
The pretense was dropped in the Second Intifada.
The show of ‘estrangement’ was then renewed, but I’ll show you it’s a phony.
Everything has gone according to plan for PLO/Fatah and Iran, a plan that US bosses always understood.
PLO/Fatah created jihadi Iran
In 1979, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, a ferocious Islamist terrorist, deposed the shah and installed himself as Supreme Leader of the new Iranian Islamic Republic. Just two weeks after that, Yasser Arafat and his entourage accepted Khomeini’s invitation to celebrate with him the jihadi revolution in Teheran. Khomeini sent them an airplane. The New York Times explained:
“Palestinian sources said that Mr. Arafat’s group had sent arms to the [Iranian] revolutionary forces in the last four months and had trained Iranian guerillas since the early 1970s.”5
Arafat himself was coy:
“Bantering and grinning, the guerrilla leader declined to furnish details about support the PLO had given to various Iranian guerrilla organizations.”6
I’ll come back to this, but make a note of it: This was all reported on Page A1—which is to say the front page—of the New York Times.
Canada’s Globe and Mail reported that Khomeini’s regime would honor its debts to PLO/Fatah:
“Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat said yesterday that Iranian guerrillas would fight alongside Palestinian forces against Israel.
... Mr. Arafat, the first prominent visitor to Iran since the revolution, said the Palestinian and Iranian aims were identical. ‘We will continue our efforts until the time when we defeat imperialism and Zionism,’ he said.
A close aide of Ayatollah Khomaini, Deputy Premier Ibrahim Yazdi, also attended the inauguration of the PLO office and referred to the identity of the two causes and the large number of Palestinian sacrifices in the PLO’s struggle against Israel.
... The son of Ayatollah Khomaini, Seyyed Ahmad Khomaini, a Moslem clergyman who also spoke at the inauguration of the new PLO office, pledged Iran would continue its revolutionary struggle until all Islamic countries had been set free.
The bearded, black-turbanned Seyyed Khomaini said: ‘We will continue our struggle until we free all Islamic countries and hoist the Palestinian flag together with ours.’ ”7
PLO/Fatah was very powerful in Iran. The New York Times reported in November of 1980 that “The P.L.O. currently enjoys close ties with some of the Iranian revolutionary leaders who rose to power with the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.” This included Defense Minister Mustafa Chamran and Abu Sharif, leader of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), or the Revolutionary Guards for short. Wrote the Times:
“Like Yasir Arafat both Abu Sharif and Mustafa Chamran are fervent advocates of exporting Iran’s Islamic revolution to the rest of the Middle East—in particular, to the conservative states of the Arab [sic] Gulf. ”8 (my emphasis)
The Times also explained that PLO/Fatah had played a role in creating a) the Revolutionary Guards (for it trained Abu Sharif), and b) the new Iranian secret police, SAVAMA (because Sharif and Chamran “relied heavily on their P.L.O. contacts” in setting it up). The Times added:
“The current head of the P.L.O. network in Iran is Hani al-Hassan, alias Abu Hassan, a Jordanian citizen who belongs to Arafat’s inner circle of advisers. Before he was sent to Teheran, Abu Hassan served as deputy chief of Fatah’s security department. He enjoys a remarkable entree to Khomeini and other key members of the Iranian regime—so much so that one Western diplomat suggests that the P.L.O. envoy should be counted as one of the most influential men in Teheran.”9 (my emphasis)
If that were not enough, Arafat bestrode the world stage as the negotiator on the Iranian side for the release of the Americans held hostage in the US Embassy in Teheran. And his intervention, by the way, was at the request of—... drum roll ...—the US government.10
Let us now summarize this picture:
PLO/Fatah played a key role in the creation of the Iranian Islamist terror state.
It armed and trained Khomeini’s troops for his revolution.
It helped create the all-important Revolutionary Guards.
It helped create the Iranian secret service SAVAMA.
It acted for a while like it was the Iranian foreign ministry.
The idea of spreading Iranian Islamist terror everywhere was closely associated with “the PLO’s struggle against Israel,” which Iran pledged itself to assist
And PLO/Fatah pledged itself to help export the Iranian Islamist Revolution.
Iran and PLO/Fatah are best friends.
Short documentary on the special relationship binding PLO/Fatah and Iran:
[ ↓↓ article continues below the video ↓↓]
The media and academic blackout
Just a few years after the Iranian Revolution, there was a blackout on this. It was almost impossible for me to find any mention of the PLO/Fatah relationship with Iran in the major newspapers after the year 1983. University scholars also dropped it.
That’s all it takes to erase a major historical event, apparently. Which is deeply interesting to those of us studying the management of reality. I have commented on this phenomenon here:
Also interesting is the speed of forgetting, which is breathtaking. Just a few years after the blackout began, PLO/Fatah could already be reinvented for Israelis as the ‘partner for peace,’ because nobody reminded them of what, not a decade before, had been on PAGE A1 of the New York Times. And they couldn’t remember.
They never got their memory back. When I traveled to Israel some years ago to speak to an audience of professional Israeli patriots—all of them focused on the Iranian danger—on the subject of the relationship between PLO/Fatah and Iran, they were all shocked to learn that PLO/Fatah had created Khomeini’s Iran!
Now, such media and academic blackouts are consistent with a particularly scary version of the Machiavellian model presented by Option C. Keep that in mind as I review more evidence below.
PLO/Fatah’s alignment during the Iran-Iraq war
When the Iran-Iraq War broke out soon after the Iranian Revolution, the Sunni Muslim bosses in the Near East supported Iraq and were angered by PLO/Fatah’s strong alliance with the Iranian Shiites. Yet, PLO/Fatah remained close to Iran.
In reply, Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf states cracked down on their Palestinian populations. “The reason,” reported the Globe and Mail, “is that the authorities are suspicious of Palestinian ties to the militant Shiite Moslems in Iran, who have vowed to export their Islamic revolution.” And they worried that, acting in concert with Iran, Palestinians might radicalize their large Shiite minorities. Consistent with that fear, “Palestinian opinion,” the Globe and Mail observed, “while reflecting the PLO’s reluctance to choose sides in a war between its two allies, appears much more pro-Iranian than that of conservative Gulf governments” (my emphasis).11
That was October 1980.
In December, even though PLO/Fatah was entirely dependent on the Arab states for everything, when these states got together to plan a long-term strategy for PLO/Fatah’s fight against Israel, PLO decided that, in order to avoid conflict with Iran, it wouldn’t show.12
That’s a strong alliance.
Then comes ‘estrangement’
As late as mid-March 1981, Arafat was still meeting with Iraqi Shiites allied with Iran, as reported by Tehran’s news service.13 But soon after, the PLO was forced to take a more pro-Arab position. And then, as the Iran-Iraq war was winding down with the 1988 cease-fire, the groundwork for the Oslo Process began to be laid, and that required suddenly representing the terrorist PLO/Fatah as a moderate organization that wanted peace.
Machiavellianism requires hypocrisy. And effective hypocrisy requires careful attention to political grammar: the set of culturally specific rules that determine what political actors can and cannot say in public. At this juncture, PLO/Fatah’s claim to pursue peace would have been entirely discredited with Western and—most importantly—Jewish audiences if it had identified itself publicly as an ally of Iran, ruining any prospect for the Oslo Process.
So Iran—by grammar—just had to accuse Arafat publicly of betraying the Muslim cause; and Arafat—by grammar—was equally constrained to pronounce himself in public against Iranian terrorism.
Thus, in February 1996, for example, Arafat claimed that two Palestinians working for Iran had tried to assassinate him.14 The following month, when a bomb exploded in Tel Aviv, the Egyptian news agency MENA reported that Arafat was blaming the Iranians:
“Nabil Abu Rudaynah, adviser to Palestinian President Yasir Arafat, ...accused foreign, non-Palestinian, elements in the region of being behind these terrorist incidents to wreck the peace process. He specifically accused Iran...”15
Not to be outdone,
“[Iranian Supreme Leader Ali] Khamenei used a Friday sermon on October 30, 1998 to utter statements that were once unimaginable, calling Arafat ‘a traitor and a fool.’ ”16
Of course, the same evidence could in principle be consistent with honest estrangement. But certain important details are far more consistent with the Machiavellian hypothesis.
For example, this: “Despite the now open hostility on the part of Khamenei, [Salah] Al-Zawawi,” the PLO ambassador in Teheran, “was not expelled from Tehran… [and] remained in Tehran for some considerable time before his next visit home.” And Al-Zawawi continued to enjoy the status of Moghaddam al-Safara, which translates, “roughly, [as] the First Ambassador, … [with] a more prominent role at official ceremonies and gatherings [in Iran] than most of his counterparts.”17
Under the Machiavellian model, this makes sense: Khamenei needed Al-Zawawi close by to coordinate with PLO/Fatah.
And consistent with the scariest Machiavellian model, Big Media and establishment academia have cooperated with this, regularly trotting out the story of the supposed ‘estrangement’ between PLO/Fatah and Iran whenever the two are mentioned in the same breath.18
Renewed love
Also consistent with the Machiavellian model is that, in the Arab press, which ordinary folk in the West do not consume, everything was represented very differently. For example, the Palestinian daily Al Quds was reporting in 1997 that a top PLO/Fatah leader had come back from Iran with a renewed relationship. This was right between Arafat allegedly getting almost assassinated by Iran (1996) and Khamenei calling Arafat a “traitor” (1998).19
But this eventually did work itself right into the Western media’s narrative, which was representing freshly elected Iranian president Mohammed Khatami as an Iranian Gorbachev pushing liberal reforms: the very opposite, supposedly, of Supreme Leader Khamenei. And Arafat was already ‘making peace’ with Israel, no? Under the guise of this presumed evolving ‘moderation’ in Iran, an open friendship between PLO/Fatah and Iran —now congenial to the narrative—could resume.
For those paying attention, the mask of PLO/Fatah’s supposed estrangement from Iran was entirely removed with the explosion of the Second Intifada, a hair-raising series of terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians. The Second Intifada was Fatah’s war, and behind Fatah was… Iran (with ‘liberal’ Khatami giving it full support).
On the first point, even the mainstream Western media, so often a cheerleader for Arafat, recognized that most of the violence was due to the activities of Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, a Fatah terrorist group. Here is the Times of London, in April 2002:
“A new group directly linked to Yasser Arafat’s Fatah movement through its Tanzim military wing, the [Al Aqsa Martyrs] brigades are behind the majority of recent shootings and suicide attacks against Israelis.”20
And here is The Australian, in September of 2003:
“Israeli officials said documents captured last year in a massive military raid on the West Bank [Judea & Samaria] after a series of suicide bombings inside Israel showed the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, which carried out many of the attacks, was an arm of Fatah, Arafat’s political organisation. They also said the documents proved the Palestinian Authority’s [i.e. PLO/Fatah’s] intelligence apparatus, also headed by Arafat, was involved in planning terror activity.
Israeli officials said the documents showed Arafat had personally authorised fund transfers for such activity. ‘Arafat views terrorism as a legitimate tool for obtaining the Palestinian national goal,’ said one official.”21
And the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades was being run… from Iran.
“Israel believes that much of the Fatah-affiliated armed faction, calling itself the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, has now come under Iran’s sway, especially in the West Bank [Judea & Samaria].
Scores of Palestinian attacks, accounting for roughly a third of the 98 Israelis killed so far this year, are believed to have been orchestrated by the Lebanese Hizbollah movement.”22
Hizbollah (or Hezbollah, or Hizb’allah, or Hizbullah), recall, is a creation of the IRGC, the Iranian Revolutionary Guards.
Tellingly, Arafat never denied any of this, though he tried to give it a different spin: he claimed to be upset and accused Iran of trying to “infiltrate Fatah.”23 But if he was upset that Iran was infiltrating Fatah’s Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, then why had “Arafat personally authorised fund transfers for such activity,” that is, for the Brigades’ terrorist attacks (see above)?
And it wasn’t just the Brigades. Iran was generally involved with PLO/Fatah’s ‘Second Intifada.’ Here is the Christian Science Monitor, writing in January 2002 under the headline: “Palestinian ties to Iran, Hizbullah look firmer”:
“...[T]he once-frosty relationship between Iran and Arafat appears to have thawed since the outbreak of the [second] intifada in September 2000. Iran, which opposes Israel’s very existence, is a staunch backer of the intifada, opening its hospitals to wounded Palestinians, training fighters, and rallying support for the uprising.
In April last year, Tehran hosted a conference for 34 Arab and Islamic countries and organizations. All the hard-line Palestinian groups were there as well as Hizbullah. But also attending was a representative of the Palestinian Authority, Salim Al Zeenoun, who admitted that the Oslo Accords had turned out to be a ‘sandcastle of illusion.’
Two months later, Arafat sent a telegram to Iranian President Mohammed Khatami to congratulate him on his re-election.
‘We look to all the people of the Islamic world, foremost among them the Muslim Iranian people and their faithful leadership, to support, aid, and assist [Palestine],’ Arafat said. He also asked Iran to ‘work fast to end this bloody and savage war which the Israeli government has been waging for eight solid months.’
Israel says that the military alliance between Iran and Arafat and the scheme to smuggle a shipload of [Iranian] weapons to the Palestinian Authority [the famous Karine-A incident] was born at around this time.”24
Mahmoud Abbas was Iran’s candidate
As Arafat approached his last days, the mainstream Western media launched a saturation campaign to prepare the public to accept Mahmoud Abbas as his replacement by going quite out of their way to laud Mahmoud Abbas as a supposed arch moderate opposed to Arafat’s terror.
Abbas and Arafat had a little theater going to support this media narrative. For example, in September 2003, as reported in The Australian:
“Palestinian prime minister Mahmoud Abbas resigned last month after Arafat refused to hand over control of the security forces Abbas said he needed to make Hamas and Islamic Jihad halt their suicide bombings.”25
So the narrative became, yes, Arafat is organizing terrorism, but just wait: when Mother Teresa Mahmoud Abbas takes over there will be peace.
Only one problem with this narrative. The Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades—the most violent Palestinian terrorists, and the ones most involved in the Second Intifada that Iran was sponsoring—in fact preferred Mahmoud Abbas to their own Tanzim boss Marwan Barghouti as a replacement for Arafat when the latter died.26
Why would the Brigades, at the time the deadliest Palestinian terrorists, agitate in favor of Abbas, the arch-moderate? It’s a paradox. To dissipate it, just assume that Abbas is not an arch-moderate.
It’s a show—Iran’s show, because the Brigades belong to Iran, like the rest of Fatah. Abbas was Iran’s candidate.
But are PLO/Fatah and Iran still allied today?
Of course.
In 2015 PLO/Fatah and Iran announced they had signed a deal for “all-out cooperation.”27 This was not reported in the major Western media.
What you do hear in the West is about how the ‘Palestinian Authority’—meaning Fatah—is supposedly worried about growing Iranian influence in Judea & Samaria (‘West Bank’).
For example, in June 2023, Fatah officials complained out loud to the media that Islamic Jihad, which is sponsored by Iran, had been buying weapons and recruiting people in Judea & Samaria. As reported in one newspaper:
“According to the [Fatah] source, the Palestinian Authority has noticed that there is increased cooperation between PIJ [Palestinian Islamic Jihad] gunmen and members of al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, the armed wing of the ruling Fatah faction headed by PA President Mahmoud Abbas.
The PA security forces fear that scores of Fatah gunmen belonging to the Aqsa Martyrs Brigades are currently on the payroll of Iran—through its Palestinian proxy PIJ, the source added.
‘Iran is already here, in the West Bank,’ a Palestinian official in Ramallah claimed. ‘The Iranians want their Palestinian agents to extend their control from the Gaza Strip to the West Bank.’ ”28
Same story as before. Mahmoud Abbas, like Yasser Arafat before him, claims that Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, the most important Fatah terrorist group, has been infiltrated by Iran (with whom Fatah is supposedly not allied). This representation allows the ‘Palestinian Authority’—which is to say Fatah—to deny responsibility when its own Fatah terrorists carry out attacks.
This ruse wouldn’t work if Western media and academia didn’t cooperate with it. Western journalists and professors could blow it up entirely merely by pointing out the following:
if the ‘Palestinian Authority’ is allied with Iran, then Judea & Samaria belong to Iran; and
if leaders of the ‘Palestinian Authority’ are not allied with Iran, yet are powerless—as they themselves claim—to stop Iran from taking over their own organization, then Judea & Samaria belong to Iran.
Either way, Judea & Samaria belong to Iran.
This exposes the Oslo Process as a farce: Israel ceded strategic Israeli territory to its deadliest enemy.
But of course, Western media and academia never point this out. They have cooperated fully with Fatah’s narrative.
The Plan of Phases
Has all of this been going according to plan?
Let’s rewind back for a moment to the immediate aftermath of the Iranian Revolution, when Arafat and Abbas traveled to Teheran to celebrate with Khomeini. It was reported that:
“Mr. Arafat, the first prominent visitor to Iran since the revolution, said the Palestinian and Iranian aims were identical.”29
Identical. Iran has always called for the genocidal destruction of Israel.
A few days later, it was reported that:
“Mr. Arafat received a pledge from Ayatollah Khomeini that the Iranians would ‘turn to the issue of victory over Israel’ after Iran had consolidated its strength...”30
So, PLO/Fatah and Iran were planning to join forces to destroy Israel in a joyous genocide.
But how?
As everybody was keenly aware—not least the Arab reporters in Teheran—Israel had defeated several combined attacks by its Arab Muslim neighbors. So, they asked, what’s the plan?
The 1974 Plan of Phases, replied mastermind Mahmoud Abbas.31
And what’s that? Historian Kenneth Levin explains:
“according to [the ‘Plan of Phases’] the Palestine Liberation Organization [PLO/Fatah] would acquire whatever territory it could by negotiations, then use that land as a base for pursuing its ultimate goal of Israel’s annihilation.”32
PLO/Fatah would falsely talk ‘peace’ to get a piece of territory, then use it as a platform to annihilate Israel.
The Oslo Process, then, is the implementation of Mahmoud Abbas’s Plan of Phases. That’s why it’s his signature on the Oslo Agreement. And that’s why they call him the “architect” of Oslo.33
Did US bosses always understand the Plan of Phases?
Of course.
Ordinary folk in the West may not read the Arabic press, but the CIA does, because:
reading and cataloguing what is reported in the various media is the most important intelligence-gathering activity for any intelligence agency;
the CIA was closely monitoring events in the Iranian Islamic Revolution; and
in the immediate aftermath of that revolution, Mahmoud Abbas explained the Plan of Phases strategy in public to Arab reporters in Teheran.
Moreover, a report of that Teheran exchange between Abbas and the Arab reporters was later published in Al Sharq al Awsat, a London Arabic daily, and was then republished in Al Quds.34 The CIA cannot have missed that because:
the CIA takes a strong interest in the conflict between Israelis and Arab Palestinians;
Fatah is the officially recognized voice of the Arab Palestinians;
Al Quds, a pro-Fatah publication,35 is the most important Palestinian daily.
If one lonely academic (me) knows about this, then it follows that US bosses had to be quite aware, from the beginning, of the relationship between PLO/Fatah and Iran. When they pushed for the Oslo ‘Peace’ Process, they knew they were giving strategic Israeli territory to Iran.
Conclusion
We have our dramatic fact: US bosses knowingly created a phony ‘peace-building’ diplomatic process in order to give strategic territory of the Jewish state to the genocidal monsters who wish to murder all Jews, and they called that the ‘peace process.’
WAR IS PEACE.
This is all impossible under any ‘good intentions’ hypothesis.
We are left, therefore, with Option C: US bosses are Machiavellian geniuses who wish to destroy Israel in genocide.
The next step is to test the model. Does it agree with other evidence? I think it does. For example, it agrees nicely with the following investigations:
On 6 December 2001, US Ambassador to Israel Daniel C. Kurtzer gave a talk at the BESA Center, Bar Ilan University, entitled ‘The American Role in the Oslo Process.’ The US ambassador began, remarkably, by denying that the US had played a role in the Oslo process:
“In dissecting the American role in Oslo, I think the title of my talk should be ‘The American Perspective on Oslo,’ since the Oslo process took place largely outside the direct purview of the United States.”(a)
In fact, the Oslo process could not have happened without the October 1991 Madrid talks, and the US all but forced the Israelis to go to Madrid, as I review below.
On April 19, 1991, The Independent wrote this:
“FATIH JABAR [an Arab whom they interviewed] had some advice for James Baker, the US Secretary of State, who flew to Israel last night to continue his peace-making efforts. ‘Stop financial aid to Israel for six months, and order the Israelis to pull out from the occupied territories,’ he urged, sipping coffee in the cool lounge of his home in this quiet village south-west of Nablus. ‘They'll have no choice but to comply.’
...While [Israeli Prime Minister] Mr [Yitzhak] Shamir continues to indicate support for a regional conference, there is no hint of a new willingness on his part to make meaningful concessions at the negotiating table. If Mr Baker is to shift the Israeli prime minister, it seems he might have to take Mr Jabar’s advice and hit Mr Shamir in the pocket, conceivably by withholding the $10bn (pounds 5.6bn) in housing loan guarantees Israel needs to build homes for Soviet immigrants. For if there is one issue that concerns the prime minister as much as his commitment to the retention of the territories, it is the absorption of Soviet Jews. Only if this process is threatened, might he consider what is, for him, almost the unthinkable - an eventual pullout from parts of the occupied territories.”(b)
And take Jabar’s advice they did! The Independent was prophetic. This is what the Times of London wrote only a few days later:
“...American officials, including William Brown, the ambassador to Israel, and Senator Robert Dole, have warned Israel that it will not receive a sympathetic hearing in Washington if it does not co-operate with the administration's peace plans for the region following the Gulf war.”(c)
Specifically, the US threat against Israel became the following:
“The message to the Shamir government is clear enough: Unless the Israelis agree to a freeze on settlement activity in the occupied territories before and during the [‘peace’] conference, there will be no U.S. loan guarantees to help finance the resettlement of Russian immigrants. Implicit in the warning are two further threats: If Israel remains obdurate, hold the conference without it and let the political chips fall where they may; and further down the line, diminish or cut off the annual U.S. grants and loans to the Jewish state. Whether one thinks the Bush-Baker preconditions are justified or not, and given a visible decline in pro-Israel sentiment in Congress and the country, it is obvious...that the president can make the loan guarantee warning stick.”(d)
In other words, the American message to the Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Shamir was: go to Madrid and negotiate, or else no money for resettlement of Russian immigrants, and no further grants or loans to the Jewish state: we will choke you off. Moreover, if you don't go, said the US to Shamir, we will hold the conference anyway, and “let the political chips fall where they may.” The US had threatened to decide the future of Israel without Israel—the way Hitler and Britain had decided the future of Czechoslovakia without representatives of that country—“if Israel remain[ed] obdurate.”
There can be no question on this point: the US was passionately interested in making the Madrid talks happen, and flexed all of its diplomatic muscle.
Some American observers simply could not understand why this was going on. Here is Charles Krauthammer scratching his head on the pages of the Washington Post:
“It is a rule in the Middle East: Israel wins every war, and the great powers step in to save the Arabs from the consequences of defeat. Regardless of whose side you think justice is on, one thing is indisputable: The result of such rescues is more war. The losers are given the chance to continue the fight.
In 1956, for example, Israel won the Sinai from Egypt. Eisenhower forced Israel to give it back. Ten years later Egypt broke the agreement under which Sinai had been returned, blockaded Israel and started the Six-Day War. In the 1982 Lebanon war, Yasser Arafat and the PLO were cornered in Beirut. The U.S. and other Western countries intervened to save them. Saved, they later returned to Lebanon to fight another day.
The Palestinians have just lost another war, and the United States is preparing another rescue. The Palestinian intifada, the uprising against Israel, is dead. The Palestinians, exhausted and defeated, are demoralized, having nothing to show for three years of strikes and stone throwing. Worse, in a replay of the Arab uprising of 1936-1939, the intifada has turned most monstrously on itself. Far more Palestinians are dying at the hands of brother Palestinians than at the hands of Israelis.
‘Everyone remains terrified when he hears a knock on his door at night,’ writes the Palestinian newspaper Al Fajr. ‘This fear multiplies when he discovers that the knocker is not a[n Israeli] soldier but rather a masked [Palestinian] man, swathed completely in black from head to toe, armed with an ax or a sword, who requests that his host, or his son or daughter, come out ‘for only five or ten minutes!’ The next day, we hear on Israeli radio or television that a bound and disfigured body with signs of torture and stab wounds has been discovered.’This is how the uprising ends. Moreover, the Palestinians have not just lost the intifada. They managed to lose a second war this year, the gulf war, their proxy war against Israel and the West. They staked their political and diplomatic capital on Saddam and lost again.
In the normal course of events, a people having undone themselves yet again with their extremism, having so exhausted the patience of their friends and sponsors, having maneuvered themselves into political marginality, would have to make their own peace overtures to their enemies or fade away.
Instead, James Baker and the U.S. administration come riding in to rescue the cause at its weakest, to keep the grievance alive and to advance its demands in an international forum. Shouting ‘land for peace,’ they single-handedly revive a cause for which, as the Palestinians will tell you, no Arab state—not Saudi Arabia, not Jordan, certainly not Syria—really cares. And they demand that Israel, the only organic American ally in the region (meaning a country that no coup could ever shake from its friendship with the United States), gamble its existence at a conference at which that slogan is to be the centerpiece.
Why? In part, as a reward—‘linkage’—for the Arabs who allowed us to go to war to save them from Saddam. This reasoning is even crazier than it sounds because the Saudis and gulf Arabs, after the Palestinians lined up with Saddam, have lost all enthusiasm for the Palestinian cause.”(e)
I doubt Krauthammer can be right that the Arab states were utterly reluctant to push for a PLO state, given that the idea of a PLO state was theirs long before the PLO itself signed on. However, it is significant that Krauthammer got the distinct impression that the Arab states didn’t want a PLO state more badly than the US did!
The upshot of US Secretary of State James Baker’s strong-arming of the Israelis—with economic threats—was to force them to accept a ‘peace’ process in Madrid.
“The Madrid Invitation, inviting Israel, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and the Palestinians to an opening conference jointly sponsored by the US and the Soviet Union on October 30, 1991, represented the result of US Secretary of State James Baker’s shuttle diplomacy in the eight months following the Gulf War. The Madrid peace conference was a watershed event. For the first time, Israel entered into direct, face-to-face negotiations with Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and the Palestinians. In order to make this possible, since Israel would not negotiate with the terrorist PLO, the Palestinians were represented by individuals from the West Bank and Gaza who were not associated with the PLO. This was a sham, as everyone knew, and PLO figures were in the hotels guiding the Palestinian delegation throughout the proceedings.
...Madrid was also the catalyst for the 1993 series of non-public talks in Norway between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs that launched what became known as the Oslo peace process. Once the Oslo process began, the Madrid structure of talks faded away.”(f)
In other words, the Madrid talks, to which the US practically forced Israel to go, were the engine that set in motion the Oslo ‘Peace’ Process, the purpose of which was to bring PLO/Fatah—a defeated organization—out of exile in Tunis and into Judea & Samaria (the ‘West Bank’) and Gaza, where it would become the government over the Arabs, in preparation for getting a PLO/Fata State courtesy of the United States. From this position, PLO/Fatah was able once again—and better than ever, in fact—to kill innocent Israeli civilians.
SOURCES IN THIS FOOTNOTE:
(a) American Embassy Tel Aviv - Press Section; U.S. Ambassador to Israel Daniel C. Kurtzer; "The American Role in the Oslo Process"; BESA Center, Bar Ilan University; December 6, 2001
https://web.archive.org/web/20020606043631/http://www.usembassy-israel.org.il/publish/mission/amb/120601.html
(b) The Independent (London), April 19, 1991, Friday, FOREIGN NEWS PAGE; Page 12 , 667 words, Baker visit angers Israeli settlers, From DAVID HOROVITZ in Kifl Harith, West Bank.
(c) The Times, May 14, 1991, Tuesday, Overseas news, 302 words, Shamir faces US cash squeeze, From Richard Beeston in Jerusalem
(d) A PRECARIOUS PEACE CONFERENCE THOUGH THE HARD WORK IS FINISHED, MIDEAST TALKS; COULD FALL APART AT ANY MOMENT, St. Louis Post-Dispatch (Missouri), October 3, 1991, THURSDAY, FIVE STAR Edition, EDITORIAL; Pg. 3C, 915 words, Victor T. Le Vine.
(e) The Washington Post, August 2, 1991, Friday, Final Edition, EDITORIAL; PAGE A25, 923 words, Road to Nowhere, Charles Krauthammer
(f) ‘ISRAEL 1991 TO PRESENT; MADRID 1991’; Palestine Facts.
https://web.archive.org/web/20021018093526/http://palestinefacts.org/pf_1991to_now_madrid_desc.php
In 1989 the Washington Times published an article with the following headline:
‘RAND STUDY URGES BIRTH OF WEST BANK STATE’ (a)
This was in reference to a RAND study authored by Graham Fuller, “senior Middle East analyst for the CIA during the Reagan administration.”
What is RAND? To get a sense for that, consider that Donald Rumsfeld, who was Secretary of Defense in the Gerald Ford administration, and then again in George Bush Jr.’s administration, was chairman of RAND from 1981 to 1986. Simultaneously, during the years 1983-84, Rumsfeld was Ronald Reagan’s special envoy to the Middle East. Fuller’s RAND study was requested by then Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney.
Does all that make sense? Yes.
RAND was created as an autonomous division of Douglas Aircraft Company and “structured from the start to have access high in the Air Force chain of command.” Hatched in 1946, the idea behind ‘Project RAND’ was “to fund a autonomous division within Douglas Aircraft that would function as quasi-independently from both Douglas and the Air Force, but would be devoted to researching Air Force concerns.” As explained by General Curtis LeMay, “ ‘[w]e didn’t have any of the tools … [s]o the gimmick was to contract with a nonprofit organization to accomplish the task, and pay their bills, and let them go out in the open market and hire the talent they needed at the going rate.”(b)
In other words, RAND pretends to be somewhat autonomous, but it’s the Pentagon.
This is Graham Fuller’s RAND ‘study’:
Fuller, G.E. (1989). The West Bank of Israel: Point of no Return? Santa Monica: RAND Corporation.
https://www.hirhome.com/israel/RAND-Graham-Fuller-RAND-West-Bank-point-of-no-return.pdf
SOURCES IN THIS FOOTNOTE:
(a) ‘Rand study urges birth of West Bank state’; Washinton Times; November 8, 1989; Wednesday, Final Edition; Section: Part A; WORLD; Pg. A7; Byline: James M. Dorsey
http://emperors-clothes.com/gilwhite/fuller.htm
(b) Amadae, S. M. (2003). Rationalizing Capitalist Democracy: The Cold War Origin of Rational Choice Liberalism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. (pp32-33)
"Memorandum for the Secretary of Defense"; Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 13, No. 2. (Winter, 1984), pp. 122-126.
http://www.hirhome.com/israel/pentagon.pdf
MOR has an entire piece on the goals of Hamas, as explained in the Hamas constitution:
As for Iranian leaders, they have with great consistency been calling for Israel’s destruction over the years, ever since Ayatollah Khomeini insisted that “[Israel] should vanish from the page of time.” Their intent is clearly genocidal. Here follow three more recent examples, and then a link to a source that lists many more incitements by Iranian leaders.
EXAMPLE 1
“the Iranian President [called] for Israel to be ‘wiped off the map’...”
This is a reference to a statement made by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, at the time President of Iran.
SOURCE: BLAIR CONSIDERS UN SANCTIONS AS HE SPEAKS OF 'REVULSION' AT IRANIAN PRESIDENT'S SPEECH, The Independent (London), October 28, 2005, Friday, Final Edition; NEWS; Pg. 5, 745 words, BY ANNE PENKETH AND COLIN BROWN
EXAMPLE 2:
“One of Iran’s most influential ruling cleric [sic] called Friday on the Muslim states to use nuclear weapon against Israel, assuring them that while such an attack would annihilate Israel, it would cost them ‘damages only’.
‘If a day comes when the world of Islam is duly equipped with the arms Israel has in possession, the strategy of colonialism would face a stalemate because application of an atomic bomb would not leave any thing in Israel but the same thing would just produce damages in the Muslim world,’ Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani told the crowd at the traditional Friday prayers in Tehran.
Analysts said not only Mr. Hashemi-Rafsanjani’s speech was the strongest against Israel, but also this is the first time that a prominent leader of the Islamic Republic openly suggests the use of nuclear weapon against the Jewish State.”
I point out that Hashemi Rafsanjani is not merely “one of Iran’s most influential ruling cleric[s],” but the very father of the Iranian nuclear program.
SOURCE: “RAFSANJANI SAYS MUSLIMS SHOULD USE NUCLEAR WEAPON AGAINST ISRAEL”; Iran Press Service; 14 December 2001
EXAMPLE 3
“Israel… has no cure but to be annihilated.”
This is a message that Iranian ‘supreme leader’ (it’s an official title) Ayatollah Ali Khamenei sent on his Twitter account in November 2014.
SOURCE: “IRAN’S KHAMENEI: NO CURE FOR BARBARIC ISRAEL BUT ANNIHILATION; Slate; 9 November 2014; by Daniel Politi
http://tinyurl.com/q55ddns
THE LONG LIST
If you have the stomach for it, and would like to consult a longer list of documented incitements to genocide against the Israeli Jews, you may do so in the following sources:
http://jcpa.org/article/20-threats-iranian-leaders-made-in-2013/
http://jcpa.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/IransIntent2012b.pdf
On 15 February 1979, the New York Times reported:
“The PLO announced today that its chairman, Yasser Arafat, had accepted an invitation to visit Teheran soon. It also said that followers of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini had seized the former Israeli diplomatic mission in Teheran, and the PLO had accepted an offer to turn it into a Palestinian embassy.
Wafa, the Palestinian press service, reported that the Ayatollah’s forces had contacted Mr. Arafat by telephone yesterday and proclaimed their solidarity and gave their thanks.
Palestinian sources said that Mr. Arafat’s group had sent arms to the revolutionary forces in the last four months and had trained Iranian guerillas since the early 1970s.”
SOURCE: P.L.O. Is Cool to Dayan Remarks; Statements Given Prominence; By MARVINE HOWE Special to The New York Times. New York Times (1857-Current file). New York, N.Y.: Feb 15, 1979. p. A12 (1 page)
On 12 February 1979, the New York Times reported:
“An exultant Yasir Arafat, leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization, proclaimed here today that the Iranian revolution had ‘turned upside down’ the balance of forces in the Middle East.
‘Today Iran, tomorrow Palestine,’ he said.
Mr. Arafat received a pledge from Ayatollah Khomeini that the Iranians would ‘turn to the issue of victory over Israel’ after Iran had consolidated its strength, the Teheran radio reported.
…Bantering and grinning, the guerrilla leader declined to furnish details about support the PLO had given to various Iranian guerrilla organizations, saying:
‘It is enough that we are here, and no matter how much we have helped we cannot offer as much back as the Iranian people have offered us. It is enough for us to be among the Iranian people.
Asked whether the Palestinian movement felt ‘stronger’ since the Iranian uprising, he said:
‘Definitely. It has changed completely the whole strategy and policy in this area. It has been turned upside down.’ ”
SOURCE: Arafat, in Iran, Reports Khomeini Pledges Aid for Victory Over Israel; Visit a Sign of Iran's Sharp Turn; ARAFAT, IN TEHERAN, PRAISES THE VICTORS; By JAMES M. MARKHAM Special to The New York Times. New York Times (1857-Current file). New York, N.Y.: Feb 19, 1979. p. A1 (2 pages)
“Four more generals executed; PLO, Iran will fight Israel, Arafat says”; The Globe and Mail. Toronto, Ont.: Feb 20, 1979. p. P.10
On 2 November 1980 the New York Times reported:
“The P.L.O. currently enjoys close ties with some of the Iranian revolutionary leaders who rose to power with the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. One of the most intriguing delegates at the Fatah conference in Damascus at the end of May, for example, was Arbas-Agha Zahani whose nom de guerre is Abu Sharif. He was then the head of the Ayatollah's Revolutionary Guards, or Pasdaran Enghelab, a post he resigned in a power play in June that was designed to weaken the position of the relatively ''moderate'' President Abolhassan Bani-Sadr. (Abu Sharif was subsequently reappointed deputy chief of the Pasdaran Enghelab.) Abu Sharif rose to a position of influence thanks to the patronage of the present Iranian Defense Minister, Mustafa Chamran. Like Yasir Arafat, both Abu Sharif and Mustafa Chamran are fervent advocates of exporting Iran’s Islamic revolution to the rest of the Middle East - in particular, to the conservative states of the Arab Gulf.
Abu Sharif's links with Arafat, Abu Jihad and other key figures in the P.L.O. leadership date back to the early 1970’s, when he attended a guerrilla training course at a Fatah camp in Lebanon. After the downfall of the Shah, Abu Sharif and Mustafa Chamran relied heavily on their P.L.O. contacts for help in setting up a new secret police to replace the Sha's notoriouus Savak. A special P.L.O. unit, whose members had received intelligence training in the Soviet Union, was dispatched to Teheran to assist in rooting out ‘counterrevolutionaries.’ Abu Sharif repaid his personal debt to the P.L.O. by successfully lobbying -- with the backing of, among others, one of the Ayatollah's grandsons -- for a big Iranian contribution to the Palestinian war chest and for the dispatch of more than 200 Iranian ‘volunteers’ to fight with the P.L.O. in southern Lebanon
The current head of the P.L.O. network in Iran is Hani al-Hassan, alias Abu Hassan, a Jordanian citizen who belongs to Arafat's inner circle of advisers. Before he was sent to Teheran, Abu Hassan served as deputy chief of Fatah’s security department. He enjoys a remarkable entree to Khomeini and other key members of the Iranian regime -- so much so that one Western diplomat suggests that the P.L.O. envoy should be counted as one of the most influential men in Teheran.” [emphasis added]
SOURCE: “TERROR: A SOVIET EXPORT”; New York Times. (Late Edition (East Coast)). New York, N.Y.: Nov 2, 1980. pg. A.42; by Robert Moss
Ibid.
“Grand Theater: The US, The PLO, and the Ayatollah Khomeini: Why did the US government, in 1979, delegate to the PLO the task of negotiating the safety of American hostages at the US embassy in Tehran?”; Historical and Investigative Research; 10 December 2005; by Francisco Gil-White
http://www.hirhome.com/iraniraq/plo-iran.htm
On 23 October 1980, the Globe and Mail wrote:
“MANAMA BAHREIN -- MANAMA, Bahrein (AP) - Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf states have tightened restrictions on an estimated 400,000 Palestinians since the outbreak of the Iran-Iraq war, diplomatic sources say.
A ban on political gatherings by Palestinians has been imposed and strict visa requirements are being rigidly enforced. The reason is that the authorities are suspicious of Palestinian ties to the militant Shiite Moslems in Iran, who have vowed to export their Islamic revolution.
Other sources said that Yasser Arafat, head of the Lebanon-based Palestine Liberation Organization, has reassured Persian Gulf governments that his guerrilla movement would never upset the stability of the oil- rich area and ordered his representatives in Gulf capitals to remain neutral in the Iran-Iraq conflict. ‘The PLO has been treading a delicate path of neutrality between Iraq and Iran and that has not been easy,’ one Arab diplomat said. ‘Iraq, and all other Arab powers, insist that the PLO must put its political cards on the table and declare its unchangeable commitment to the Arab cause against that of the (non-Arab) Persians.’ At the same time, Iranian leaders are reported to have asked the Palestinians to support Iran in return for their support of the guerrilla movement.
Palestinian opinion, while reflecting the PLO’s reluctance to choose sides in a war between its two allies, appears much more pro-Iranian than that of conservative Gulf governments.” [emphasis added]
SOURCE: ‘Gulf states tighten hold on Palestinians’; The Globe and Mail. Toronto, Ont.: Oct 23, 1980. p. P.14
On 14 December 1980 the Washington Post wrote:
“Dependent on fellow Arab governments for virtually everything—physical protection, diplomatic backing, arms, money—Arafat has had to watch helplessly as the Persian Gulf war split his benefactors into antagonistic blocs with the PLO caught uncomfortably in the middle.
More damaging was the way the PLO’s much advertised independence crumbled under the arm-twisting pressures of the two camps. When the showdown came before last month’s divided Arab summit meeting, Arafat and the PLO were forced by Syrian President Hafez Assad, leader of the pro-Iran axis, to join a boycott of a summit whose aim was to organize a long-term strategy for the Palestinians’ crusade against Israel.”
SOURCE: ‘War, Arab Feuding Leave Arafat, PLO in Disarray; Gulf War and Arab Feuding Leave Arafat and PLO in Disarray’; The Washington Post, December 14, 1980, Sunday, Final Edition, First Section; A1, 1487 words, By Loren Jenkins, Washington Post Foreign Service
‘Arafat’s Meeting with Iraqi Da’wah Party Delegation’; BBC Summary of World Broadcasts, March 3, 1981, Tuesday, Part 4 The Middle East and Africa; A. THE MIDDLE EAST; ME/6663/A/8; , 395 words.
“ ‘SABOTAGE’ ATTEMPT; Two pro-Iran Palestinians reported arrested for plotting to kill Arafat”; BBC Summary of World Broadcasts, February 21, 1996, Wednesday, Part 4 The Middle East; THE MIDDLE EAST; ISRAELI-PALESTINIAN AFFAIRS; EE/D2541/ME, 79 words
“PALESTINIAN REACTION; Arafat's adviser accuses Iran of sheltering terrorism”; BBC Summary of World Broadcasts, March 5, 1996, Tuesday, Part 4 The Middle East; THE MIDDLE EAST; AFTERMATH OF TEL AVIV BOMBING; EE/D2553/ME, 326 words
‘Palestine's Ambassador to Tehran Steps Down After 40 Strange Years’; IranWire; 10 January 2022; by Faramarz Davar.
https://iranwire.com/en/politics/71080/
Ibid.
Here is an example:
‘How Iran Abandoned the PLO in Favor of Hamas’; Middle East Forum; 8 January 2024; by Reza Parchizadeh.
https://www.meforum.org/65428/how-iran-abandoned-fatah-in-favor-of-hamas
Notice how, to build his tale of estrangement between PLO/Fatah and Iran—which according to this author continues to this day!—the author skips entirely over the Iranian collaboration with PLO/Fatah during the Second Intifada (just to mention one prominent distortion). Remarkable.
On 12 June 1997, the BBC wrote:
“Bethlehem: Brig-Gen Abu Khalid al-Lahham, who recently returned from Iran, said that Hojjat ol-Eslam Mohammad Khatami is considered a close friend of Palestine and the Palestinian people, as well as a personal friend of President Yasir Arafat. Moreover, he called him the Iranian Napoleon and described him as Iran's saviour.
In an exclusive interview, Lahham said... the new Iranian leadership will strive to refute its image of exporting revolution and interfering in the internal affairs of other people.
On the internal level, the new leadership will engage in building a free economy and will allow freedom of thought and faith and the formation of political parties.
Lahham, who arrived in Iran 10 days before the elections on an assignment by President Yasir Arafat, added that the new leadership will support the Palestinian people with all their leaders and inclinations, including the peace process, but it will fight to defend its role and presence as a major Middle Eastern state. The Palestinian people will be able to ask for Iran's support.”
SOURCE: ‘Arafat adviser visits Iran, brings message of support for Palestinians’; BBC Summary of World Broadcasts, June 12, 1997, Thursday, Part 4 The Middle East; THE MIDDLE EAST; ISRAEL; ME/D2943/MED, 428 words
“A bitter taste for vengeance”; Sunday Times (London), April 7, 2002, Sunday, Features, 2938 words, Marie Colvin in Ramallah
“Arch-terrorist or hero of peace: Arafat's enduring image”; The Australian, September 25, 2003 Thursday All-round Country Edition, WORLD-TYPE- FEATURE-BIOG- YASSER ARAFAT; Pg. 8, 1079 words, Abraham Rabinovich
On 15 October 2004 The Telegraph wrote:
“Israel believes that much of the Fatah-affiliated armed faction, calling itself the Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, has now come under Iran's sway, especially in the West Bank.
Scores of Palestinian attacks, accounting for roughly a third of the 98 Israelis killed so far this year, are believed to have been orchestrated by the Lebanese Hizbollah movement.
The Shia group pioneered the use of suicide bombings in the 1980s, kidnapped westerners and successfully drove the Israeli army out of south Lebanon in 2000. Hizbollah is now a political party in Lebanon.
‘Hizbollah is a finger of Iran's hand,’ the senior Israeli security source said. ‘In the past year we can see increasing Iranian influence in Palestinian attacks on Israel.
‘The same people sometimes receive money both from Arafat's headquarters and from Hizbollah. If the attack succeeds in causing fatalities, they get a bonus from Hizbollah.’
Another security source said Hizbollah rewards Palestinian cells to the tune of $5,000 ( pounds 2,900) for each Israeli killed.
Israel regards Teheran as its mortal enemy, and has every interest in presenting Iran as a dangerous state sponsor of international terrorism. But on the issue of penetrating Fatah, Israel is in unusual agreement with Palestinian leaders.
Yasser Arafat, the Palestinian ‘president’ who has been confined to his Ramallah headquarters for more than three years, said this week that Hizbollah was trying to infiltrate Fatah.
He said Iran was financing radical Islamist groups, and denounced Iran's spiritual leader, Ali Khamenei.
He said: ‘Khamenei is working against us. He is giving money to all these fanatical groups. Khamenei is a troublemaker.’ ”
SOURCE: “Iran ‘in control of terrorism in Israel’; Hizbollah, described as a ‘finger of Teheran's hand,’ is said to be paying $5,000 for every Israeli killed.” Anton La Guardia reports from Tel Aviv; THE DAILY TELEGRAPH(LONDON), October 15, 2004, Friday, 803 words, by Anton La Guardia
Ibid.
“Palestinian ties to Iran, Hizbullah look firmer”; Christian Science Monitor (Boston, MA), January 18, 2002, Friday, WORLD; Pg. 08, 1353 words, Nicholas Blanford Special to The Christian Science Monitor
“Arch-terrorist or hero of peace: Arafat's enduring image”; The Australian, September 25, 2003 Thursday All-round Country Edition, WORLD-TYPE- FEATURE-BIOG- YASSER ARAFAT; Pg. 8, 1079 words, Abraham Rabinovich
On 27 November 2004, the Associated Press wrote:
“. . .in the Balata refugee camp near the West Bank city of Nablus, about 1,000 Palestinians -- including scores of armed, masked militants affiliated with Fatah -- demonstrated for the continuation of the uprising.
The demonstrators also declared their support for Mahmoud Abbas, the new head of the Palestinian Liberation Organization and Fatah’s candidate in Jan. 9 presidential elections.”(a)
The Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade branch of Fatah was passionate, taking Abbas’s side vociferously when it seemed like Marwan Barghouti, another Fatah leader, might seek the post, as reported on 1 December 2004 by the Associated Press :
“Abbas already has been nominated as Fatah’s presidential candidate, so Barghouti must run as an independent. But as a leading Fatah member, he would likely undermine Abbas’ prospects… Zakaria Zubeidi, the 29-year-old West Bank leader of the Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, a violent group linked to Fatah, said he would back Abbas. ‘Barghouti. . .should resign from Fatah,’ he told The Associated Press.”(b)
SOURCES IN THIS FOOTNOTE:
(a) Associated Press Online, November 27, 2004 Saturday, INTERNATIONAL NEWS, 991 words, Palestinian Security Unit to Be Disbanded, IBRAHIM BARZAK; Associated Press Writer, GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip.
(b) SOURCE: Barghouti Seeking Palestinian Presidency, Associated Press Online, December 1, 2004 Wednesday, INTERNATIONAL NEWS, 836 words, MOHAMMED DARAGHMEH; Associated Press Writer, RAMALLAH, West Bank
PLO figure: Iran, Palestine in deal for all-out cooperation”; IRNA; 11 August 2015.
http://www.irna.ir/en/News/81716001/
‘‘Iran is already in the West Bank,’ Palestinian Authority official says’; Jerusalem Post; 26 June 2023; By Khaled Abu Toameh.
https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/iran-news/article-747769
“Four more generals executed; PLO, Iran will fight Israel, Arafat says”; The Globe and Mail. Toronto, Ont.: Feb 20, 1979. p. P.10
Arafat, in Iran, Reports Khomeini Pledges Aid for Victory Over Israel; Visit a Sign of Iran's Sharp Turn; ARAFAT, IN TEHERAN, PRAISES THE VICTORS; By JAMES M. MARKHAM Special to The New York Times. New York Times (1857-Current file). New York, N.Y.: Feb 19, 1979. p. A1 (2 pages)
The following page has a brief analysis of the main thrust of the Plan of Phases that is worth reading:
https://iris.org.il/plophase.htm
For even more context, consult footnote 34.
Levin, K. 2005. The Oslo syndrome: Delusions of a people under siege. Hanover, NH: Smith and Kraus. (p.ix)
It is Abbas who signed the Oslo Accords:
“Mr Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen), the PLO moderate who initialed last week’s draft Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement in Norway” (a)
And that’s because Abbas is the architect of Oslo/Plan of Phases:
“Oslo could, perhaps, have worked. But its architect, the arch-moderate Abu Mazen, warned from the outset that it would lead ‘either to a Palestine state or the liquidation of the Palestine cause.’ ” (b)
SOURCES IN THIS FOOTNOTE:
(a) Peres joins direct talks with PLO, Financial Times (London,England), September 4, 1993, Saturday, Pg. 3, 448 words, By JULIAN OZANNE and MARK NICHOLSON, JERUSALEM, CAIRO.
(b) THE AXE IS SHARPENED FOR ARAFAT; He once carried the hopes of his people. Now Yasser Arafat faces their bitterness as the peace process stalls and allegations of corruption, incompetence and even collaboration dog him. In the first of three articles, DAVID HIRST looks atthe slow collapse of the latest Palestinian dream of freedom., The Guardian (London), April 15, 1995, THE GUARDIAN FEATURES PAGE; Pg. 21, 3747 words, David Hirst
In July of 1999, MEMRI (Middle East Media Research Institute), which provides the invaluable service of translating into English much of what is published in the Arab press, translated an interesting article published in the same month in the Arab press:
“In an article in the London-based Arabic daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat, reprinted in the Palestinian daily Al-Quds on July 4, 1999, the journalist Saleh Qallab discusses the importance of the polarization of Israeli society—which was evident in the last general elections. The author’s analysis focuses on the political thought of PLO Executive Committee Secretary General, Mahmoud Abbas, aka ‘Abu Mazen,’ who was the first to claim that the fragmentation of Israeli society is relevant to the Arab strategy in the peace process.
...Qallab recalls that Abu Mazen was the first to attribute importance to the fragmentation of Israeli society—20 years ago:
‘Abu Mazen lectured at length on this issue in Tehran to a group of Palestinian and Arab journalists, accompanying Palestinian President Arafat, when he went to congratulate Khomeini for the triumph of the Iranian revolution. It was in February 1979, a week after Khomeini's return from exile in France.’ ”
In fact Khomeini, whom Abbas had installed in power, was committed to the violent destruction of Israel, and committed to doing this with PLO/Fatah. So Abbas’s ‘peace’ strategy was a ruse to gain a strategic advantage in the final, necessarily violent conflict.
“Qallab states that Abu Mazen is a pioneer of the realistic school, which, in his opinion, included former Egyptian President Anwar Sadat,
‘who claimed that the conflict with Israel by old methods and means is futile, and therefore, new approaches must be tried. Before signing the Camp David Accord and after as well, Sadat repeated this view via Dr. Usama Al-Baz, who told some PLO leaders, including Yasser Arafat, Abu Iyad, and Khaled Al-Hassan, that it was necessary to bring the Israelis down from their tanks to the ground and cause them a sense of security and peace, to allow their social maladies to appear and to prevent their unification in the face of an [external] danger.
…All the conflicts within Israeli society were so [sharply] exposed only after the beginning of the peace process... There is no doubt that the war [with Israel] was essential and that it might be essential [again] in the future. However, since the current stage is the stage of peace, this process must be exhausted...
...All that is required from us is to bring the Israelis to the absolute conviction that we Arabs really want peace, because such conviction will deepen the dispute in Israeli society and bring the Israelis down from their tanks and out of their fortresses.
...This mission is not easy, because the Israeli right knows the truth...’ ”
SOURCE: “Arab Peace Strategy and the Fragmentation of Israeli Society”; MEMRI; July 21, 1999; No.40.
http://memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page=archives&Area=sd&ID=SP4099
‘Pro-Fatah Al-Quds newspaper enters Gaza’; Alray (Palestinian Media Agency); 7 May 2014.
https://alray.ps/en/index.php?act=post&id=4264
Franklin Roosevelt, whose mother tongue was German, refused to allow German Jews to find refuge in the United States, refused to bomb the gas chambers at Auschwitz and his State Dept was and is still dominated by anti-Zionists. Through the 1948 and Suez wars the USA embargoed arms sales to Israel. After his presidency Jimmy Carter revealed his hatred of Israel and the Jews. The entire “Two State Solution” is a self-evident farce.