The Israeli Presidential Conference that Stephen Hawking is boycotting because of the “occupation” of supposed Palestinian land has drawn in the past none other than several senior Palestinian Authority officials, including one who two weeks ago said he would like to drop a nuclear bomb in Israel.

Thanks to a bit of Internet homework by Times of Israel reporters, it appears that former Palestinian Authority minister and negotiator Ziyad Abu Zayyad spoke at all three of the prior presidential conferences that have been held since 2008.

Another former speaker was former teenage terrorist Jibril Rajoub, who as an adult terrorist was head of Yasser Arafat’s “preventive security.” He also heads the central committee of Fatah, the party of Mahmoud “peace Process” Abbas, and last week he said he wished he had a nuclear weapon to destroy Israel.

So why didn’t Rajoub boycott the conference?

Because it is a lot easier to undermine Israel from within than staging a useless boycott, which is a total fake since a true boycott would mean no generic drugs from Teva Pharmaceuticals, the world’s largest generic drugs manufacturer. Everyone who has read about Hawking’s boycott probably already knows that Teva is working on a drug that could cure the brilliant physicist of the motor neuron disease that has afflicted the 71-year-old Hawking for the past 50 years.

The boycott would also include Intel chips, but who needs them? Besides the rest of the world, Hawking needs them, and probably more than anyone else. He communicates through a computer-based communications system that runs on a chip made by Intel.

And who designed the chip? Intel’s Israeli team. Intel’s factory operations in Kiryat Gat, north of Be’er Sheva, are among the largest in the world.

A handful or more of other Palestinian Authority political leaders and academics have spoken at the presidential conferences, one of President Shimon Peres’s pet projects to bring Israeli and Palestinian Authority leaders together, based on the still-to-be proven maxim that if they talk forever, someone will listen.

Of course, no one can listen if everyone boycotts.

Enter Hawking. His hearing from his left is exceptional, but he apparently filters out anything else, whether on the right or even in the center.

That is why his boycott of the  conference is one of the best things that has every happened to Israel’s “hasbara” program of trying to explain itself to the rest of the world, a policy whose main accomplishment is that it keeps a lot of people from being unemployed.

It is current history that Cambridge University stated that Hawking is boycotting the conference because of Israel’s awful policy of not letting the world dictate what is good for Israel, because who knows more about the Middle East than Westerners?

It is current history that Cambridge backtracked and said he was not attending the conference because of his poor health.

And then Hawking said, no, that’s not so. “I really am boycotting Israel,” he said, explaining that the international leftists [Read: anti-Israel], convinced him it was the right – or left – thing to do.

So Cambridge struck out.

And now comes the report that blows another hole in the Black Lie of the international community’s effort to drive Israel back to the “Auschwitz Lines” of 1949-1967, as former Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations Abba Ebban called the old borders.

The anti-Israel, or pro-Palestinian Authority effort, if you prefer, is talking to itself.

It camouflages its built-in hatred of Israel with a bleeding heart sympathy for the poor Palestinians.

Their do-good effort to break their boredom in life is to boycott Israel. But a funny thing happened on the way to Hawking’s boycott of the presidential conference. Palestinian Authority officials love to speak there. Why boycott an opportunity to stand on a soapbox and deliver a rant against the people that gave you the soapbox.

Only in Israel

One would think that someone like Jabril Rajoub – the former adviser to Yasser Arafat, the former 16-year-old terrorists, the head of the council of PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas’s own Fatah party, the man who two weeks ago said he really wished he had a nuclear bomb so he could destroy Israel today – would not stoop so low as to accept an invitation by the President of Israel to speak at the conference.

Justice Minister Tzipi Livni, who is Prime Minister Netanyahu’s de facto “peace process minister,” is in Washington for talks with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, who is fresh from winning a supposed “concession” from the Arab League for the American-sponsored peace process.

Kerry has come up with a proposal to adopt most of the Saudi 2002 Peace Initiative, which is virtually everything that Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas has demanded.

Kerry’s mission is to make a deal. Getting Israel and the Palestinian Authority to agree on the final status of an independent Arab country under the aegis of the Palestinian Authority would be a glorious triumph for Kerry, possibly the stepping stone to the White House in  2016.

To get there, he is taking the course of least resistance, meaning the Israeli government.

Enter his real peace partner, Tzipi Livni.

Prime Minister Netanyahu holds the portfolio of Foreign Minister until there is a court decision on whether Avigdor Lieberman is guilty of fraud or can return to his former post. In the meantime, Netanyahu hurriedly bought Livni’s tiny party of six Knesset Members into the government by granting her the responsibility for handling the American effort for Palestinian Authority peace talks, one of Livni’s pet hobbies.

She and Kerry have the same goal, a deal at any cost with the prize of international admiration.

He came away from a meeting with the Arab League last week and tried to sell Israel a bill of goods of the Great Concession: The Arab supposedly are prepared to amend the Saudi 2002 Peace Initiative and back “land swaps,” meaning Israel would have their approval for sovereignty over a small amount of the land that was restored to the country in the Six-Day War in 1967.

In return, Israel would fork over an equal amount of land that has been part of the country since 1948.

Qatari Prime Minister Sheik al-Thani, whose kingdom has been unusually aggressive in handing out fat checks to Hamas and is pouring money into Arab areas of Jerusalem as well as the Palestinian Authority, led the Arab League delegation.

He agreed that perhaps – maybe if this and maybe if that, and if Israel behaves – the League could agree to “minor” land swaps.

For Kerry, this was a big concession. He “broke” the back of the Arabs and all that is left for him to do is tell Israel it is the best thing for the country since felafel.

“The Arab League delegation affirmed … the two-state solution on the basis of the 4th of June 1967 line, with the (possibility) of comparable and mutual agreed minor swap of the land,” he declared.

Of course, no one has any idea of what “minor” land swaps could mean, but you can rest your bottom dinar it does not mean that Israel would retain Gush Etzion. Maaleh Adumim? Maybe. Maybe not.

Perhaps the Jerusalem neighborhoods of Ramot, French Hill, Pisgat Ze’ev and Talpiot, among others? Could be.

And Gilo? Probably not.

It does not matter now. The most important thing for Kerry and Livni, his one-woman Israeli government fan club, is to talk it up. It does not matter to them that Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal already has rejected the idea. But they can take of him later and drop Hamas from the list of outlawed terrorist organizations, make it a legal terrorist group, and everything will be just fine.

Livni said the Qatari prime minister’s grand concession of possibly, just maybe, agreeing to a  minor land swap was “very positive news.”

And what would land would Israel give up in this “minor” swap. Most likely, enough land to link Gaza with Judea and Samaria.

Of course there is one not so minor point that Kerry has forgotten. Actually, he has not forgotten because the State Dept. does not know any better.

What Israeli Arab in his right mind would give up all the benefits and security he gets from the Israeli government and become subjects of the Palestinian Authority in order to help Kerry’s political career?

On Sunday, Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas issued a decree giving his cabinet two months to come up with regulations to issue identity documents bearing the State of Palestine logo.

The decree covers passports, identity cards, population records, vehicle and driving licenses, postage stamps, official papers and embassies.

Abbas reminds me of the cliché new business owner who starts by ordering stationary and business cards. I say, make your first sale, then go to Kinko’s.

That’s what State Dept. Spokesperson Victoria Nuland was thinking, I’ll bet, when she was asked on Monday to comment on Abbas’s renaming the Authority the “State of Palestine.”

“You can’t create a state by rhetoric and with labels and names,” she said. “You can only create a state in this context through bilateral negotiations.”

Nuland added that “our policy on continuing to call it the Palestinian Authority until such time that there is a negotiated agreement for a state with borders will not change.”

Phew… That’s gotta’ be a load off our mind. But the questions persisted:

“So you don’t really take a position on the decision to start calling themselves the State of Palestine?”

The spokesperson dutifully repeated her previous answer, more or less. It doesn’t matter what they name themselves, they could call it the Galactic Empire of Palestine, they’d still have to stop at an Israeli checkpoint and present their papers.

Indeed, Ynet reported that Abbas is not rushing to change passports and ID cards which the Palestinians need to pass through Israeli crossings.

“At the end of the day, the Palestinian Authority won’t cause trouble for its people,” Abbas’ spokeswoman Nour Odeh, told Ynet.

But PLO spokesman Ahmad Assaf sounded extremely militant on Tuesday morning, declaring: “The Palestinian leadership couldn’t care less about Israel’s objections to planned State of Palestine passports and other identity documents.”

“Since when does the occupier allow the occupied to attain liberation and self determination?” Assaf challenged. “If we had waited for Israeli approval, we would still have been living in the time before the PA (government was established), because Israel doesn’t want any Palestinians to live in this land and this is a fact.”

And vice versa…

Prime Minister Netanyahu’s office said Abbas’s decree was “devoid of any political meaning and creates no practical impact on the ground. A Palestinian state will only be created as part of a peace agreement with Israel.”