Leesa Ashton discusses the two state solution:
A couple of days ago, Mahmoud Abbas as the current chairman for the Palestinian Authority presented a case for gaining Palestinian Statehood at the UN. There seems to be a ground swell of support for the Palestinian case of late and equally strong anti-Israel sentiment going around. Is there a strong case of global amnesia infecting the world at the moment?
It was in 1974 when the UN formally recognized the PLO as a legitimate voice for the people of the Palestinian Authority, even though it had a long history of terrorist activity and links to many terrorist organisations such as Hamas. The modern state of Israel has a fairly short history, it doesn’t take much research to see the openly proclaimed agenda of the PLO and the surrounding Arab nations for the total destruction of the ‘Zionist Entity’ known as Israel (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel) and in 1967 those surrounding Arab nation attempted to do just that in the six day war.
Let’s look at the facts; Israel is the only democracy in the region, it has an elected head of state, it has freedom of religion and freedom of speech, it has a rule of law; the Arabs living in Israel enjoy full citizenship. Do we really believe this will be the case if the Palestinian Authority is granted full statehood? All the surrounding Arab nations are Muslim states with varying degrees of religious law, where religious persecution is normal, any Muslim in these countries daring to convert to any other religion or even criticising Islam in any way can be tried for apostasy and given the death penalty. Churches are regularly burnt to the ground and Christians and people from other non-Islamic faiths are imprisoned. Israel is the only Jewish state in the world and it is surrounded by Arab and Muslim countries, most of which do not recognize Israel’s right to exist, in fact 5 of the 7 world’s state sponsored terrorist are either Arab or Iranian.
Can we now really trust the PLO to turn its back on all the previous rhetoric and actions against Israel and live peacefully side-by-side? Do we expect a Palestinian State to be a democracy and promote equal citizen rights to all its people? Do we trust Mahmoud Abbas, who has previously stated that the holocaust was exaggerated and that gas chambers were never used, to lead this new nation into peace and reconciliation with his long term enemy? (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahmoud_Abbas).
Had the Palestinians agreed to the UN recommendation partitioning Palestine into Jewish and Arab states, a Palestinian state would have been a reality in May, 1948, but they only wanted to drive Israel into the sea, and continued to pursue that agenda for many, many years, through wars, violence and terrorism. Australia has always supported Israel’s right to exist and condemned the anti-Semitic sentiments and violence from their Arab neighbours, suddenly are we going to put our trust in the same people who have supported and encouraged terrorism against Israel and believe they have changed? I hope Australia shows more sense than to support this. I hope the UN takes a good look at history before it jumps head first into this idea. It is my belief that if the Palestinian Authority is given Statehood, it won’t take them long to begin pursuing their long stated agenda of eliminating Israel, at least they will try.
Leesa Ashton is a stay at home mum, and occasional writer.
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