Federated Palestine Sovereign Entity as a Pathway to Peace
by Jerry Gordon and Rod Bryant (November 2018)
Home from the War, Joseph Pearson
Defeating Denormalization—Shared Palestinian and Israeli Perspectives on a New Path to Peace. The English translation of the Hebrew version underlined what the ‘experiment’ revealed in JCPA seminars—The Israeli Palestinian Path to Economic Prosperity. It was about normalization of relations between Arabs and Israelis using what Diker called a “bottom up” approach. The prospect of realizing the potential of this experiment appears to be in jeopardy given murderous attacks in mid-September in Gush Etzion and in the Barkan Industrial Park in Samaria in early October 2018.
arrested by the IDF.
These murderous Palestinian attacks came shortly following the 25th Anniversary of the failed Oslo Peace Accords signed on September 13, 1993. Diker shared his views that the culture of terrorism, hatred and incentives for these murderous attacks may have prompted recent Trump Administration legislative and executive actions to deny Palestinian Authority funding under the Taylor Force Act. Nevertheless, Diker suggests that these horrific attacks will not stymie the growth of the peace through prosperity model of the Industrial Parks leading to a possible federation of the Palestinian areas in the disputed territories with security provided by Israel and Jordan. Diker says this is recognition of the evident failure of the corrupt Palestinian Authority incentivizing terrorism. This has prompted US National Security Adviser Ambassador John Bolton to say that the PA does not meet the international legal definitions of a state.
What follows is our interview with Dan Diker.
Rod: The reasons why we have invited Dan Diker back are the last three terror attacks that occurred in Judea and Samaria on the West Bank, where Arab and Israelis are working together. These Palestinian terrorist acts threaten the potential of peace through prosperity concept that we talked about a number of weeks ago that is really a noble idea. That idea has been prominently advocated by Dan Diker of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs (JCPA).
Jerry: Yes. Dan Diker is Former General Secretary of the World Jewish Congress. He is head of a JCPA project that is focused on exactly what you are talking about. He has produced a significant book that involved both Israel and Palestinian authors focusing on how to produce peace through prosperity something that we know about here in the United States. The name of the book is called, Defeating Denormalization. It provides case studies of how this has worked in more than sixteen industrial parks established nearly three decades ago by Israel in the dispute territories of the West Bank employing more than thirty thousand individuals both Palestinians and Israelis in firms headed by Israeli and Palestinian entrepreneurs.
Rod: This last murder of two individuals was in the Barkan Industrial Park (R) in Samaria. The interview with Dan Diker should provide useful talking points when people want to be informed about Israel and the Peace Process. We have Dan Diker on as a frequent guest to explain the relevance of possible peace plans of the Trump Administration.
Jerry: Unfortunately, on October 7, 2018, there was a terrorist murder in an industrial park in Samaria in the disputed territories. Two Israelis were killed and the suspect, who was an employee of this manufacturing facility in the Barkan Industrial Park, apparently escaped, launching a manhunt for him by both the Shin Bet and the IDF. It also raises the question of Normalization proposals that Dan Diker, who is with the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, has written about with both Israeli and Palestinian authors called, Defeating Denormalization. Dan, could you provide us with an update on what the reaction has been like?
Rod: Dan, you said that these attacks possibly might disturb the very sensitive and important cooperation between the two peoples: the Israeli people and the Palestinians. Why is this development important and what does this have to do with the research that you have done and released in your book with both Israeli and Palestinian Arab writers?
Jerry: Dan what has been the reaction of the Israeli government and public after you published the Hebrew version of Defeating Denormalization.
Jerry: Dan, this comes at a time when the Trump Administration has significantly cut out the presence of the Palestinian Authority here in the United States and cut back significantly on funding for the PA. Where does your proposal fit in with their version of the Mideast peace plan?
Dan: Jerry that is a very important question that you have raised—one that was actually raised by Sander Gerber who was on your program. He was very much behind the U.S. legislation that passed Congress called the Taylor Force Act which was enacted to cut funding to the Palestinian Authority as long as they continued to pay the terrorists out of the official Western backed PA, annual budget. I think your question is extremely important because what lies behind these attempts by Palestinian terrorists, whether it is directly or indirectly backed by the Palestinian Authority, is a culture of terrorism and hatred towards Jews that you can see very clearly in Arabic publications.
If you go onto the internet and look at the dialogue and discourse going on in the Palestinian areas in school books and the public square your will see denial of any rights to Israel. However, there is also incitement of Palestinians to engage in violence, what they call martyrdom in their culture. The Trump Administration to its credit has said the US government will not tolerate this type of deception. Either the Palestinian Authority wants to be a partner for peace and accepts Western assistance to see whether they can develop the framework to become a viable pre-state country which they tried to do for twenty-five years or they have failed. Because “the pay to slay” type of culture is one that the U.S. Administration will not tolerate. The bottom line is that the current U.S. Administration has decided to prohibit a two-faced deceptive approach of committing terror in the morning and talking peace in the afternoon by the Palestinian Authority. That is why this Administration, under President Trump, has enacted into law Congressional passage of the Taylor Force Act. Lest we forget, Taylor Force was a young West Point graduate who was murdered in the streets of Jaffa by a Palestinian terrorist. The legislation called for cutting hundreds of millions of dollars of the Palestinians annual assistance by the United States government until it stops that policy of “pay to slay”. The Palestinian Authority continues the pay to slay policy and over $300 million dollars a year has been paid to convicted terrorists or to terrorists’ families that have been killed in the line of murdering Israelis. That ties into our discussion because this is the Palestinian Authority government indoctrinating and incentivizing an entire society of young people to murder and terrorize Jews by paying them millions of shekels over the course of their lives if they perpetrate these crimes as so-called Martyrs.
That is exactly what will happen to the 16-year-old Palestinian youth in Gush Etzion who, on September 17, 2018, murdered Ari Fuld by stabbing him in the back. He will receive something like six million shekels, a million and a half dollars, until he reaches seventy-five years of age. He is currently imprisoned by the State of Israel. It is very likely the reward for the Palestinian terrorist who murdered the two Israelis in the Barkan Industrial Park now being hunted by the Israeli Defense Forces. If he is found and captured or killed, either he or his family will receive millions of shekels. This is unacceptable to the current Administration in Washington. It is the first US Administration that has taken a no-tolerance position towards this duplicitous policy by the Palestinian Authority that leads to these types of murders—which leads to the destruction of the peace process.
Jerry: Dan, this Administration has done more than just the enactment of the Taylor Force Act. They have basically closed up the PLO representative’s office in Washington, DC. What kind of a message does that send to people who thought that this process would eventuate in any sort of peace accord?
Jerry: There have been comments from National Security Advisor Ambassador John Bolton that questioned the legitimacy of the Palestinian state. What is the significance of his remarks?
Dan: I think that is true, Rod. One of the major misunderstandings in the international community has been that the Palestinian government is not interested in advancing what America understands as the traditional Democratic rights of its citizens. They are only interested as a non-Democratic terrorist kleptocracy in maintaining as much power and control at the top of the pyramid as they can. This corrupt ongoing policy of abrogation of human rights of Palestinians—never mind of Israelis—has been what has driven Palestinians away from its own leadership and towards much deeper cooperation with Israel.
Dan: Rod, I am always delighted to be on the Beyond the Matrix because you folks think in a very out of the box way. I think it is very important when it comes to the Middle East to be able to think in an out of the box way because that is the only possible means of making sense of the region and trying to forge a new future for a very troubled region.
Rod: That is the reason why we call it Beyond the Matrix. If you were to be able to be in the position to advise this current Administration what would be the priorities? What would you ask them to focus on?
You have so much instability in the Middle East with ISIS still in Eastern and Southern Syria and neighboring Iraq trying to penetrate Jordan. Thus, if you had a triangle of peace anchored by a type of federal security and economic relationship between Jordanians and Palestinians without sacrificing any of Jordan’s vital interests and if you have a financial economic confederation with Israel, you would have two strong anchors and security, one on the East side of the Jordan River, one on the West side with Israel. In the middle, you would have a Palestinian federal state that would be demilitarized and landlocked. The Federal Palestinian entity would not have any natural resources, but certainly would have two strong secure and stable neighbors that can help this new Palestinian federal state grow. Yet it would not create a vacuum that, by many measures, otherwise would be a failed state that could threaten its neighbors through possible infiltration by ISIS, Al Qaeda, Islamic Jihad, Hamas or other Islamic terror groups.
Jerry: Dan where does that place the Trump Administration’s peace plan proposal that has yet to be revealed?
Rod: Let me ask you, what is the remote chance that there could be a negotiation toward a federal sovereign state for the Palestinians in a portion of the Jordanian area?
Rod: That is very good advice. Jerry did you have a final question?
Jerry: What you are describing, Dan, is almost a ‘back to the future solution’ because, prior to OSLO—the twenty-fifth anniversary that occurred recently on September 13th and, in my personal experience before the First Intifada broke out in 1987, the economic status of Palestinians was far better than it is now.
Rod: Dan Diker, thank you so much for coming back to Beyond the Matrix here on Israel News Talk Radio. Shalom.
Listen to the interview with Dan Diker on Israel News Talk Radio—Beyond the Matrix!
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Jerome B Gordon is a Senior Vice President of the New English Review and author of The West Speaks, NER Press 2012. Mr. Gordon is a former US Army intelligence officer who served during the Viet Nam era. He was the co-host and co-producer of weekly The Lisa Benson Show for National Security that aired out of KKNT960 in Phoenix Arizona from 2013 to 2016. He is co-host and co-producer of the Middle East Round Table periodic series on 1330amWEBY, Northwest Florida Talk Radio, Pensacola, Florida.
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