The Obama administration said the Palestinians’ ascension in U.N. membership status did not violate U.S. law.

William Burns, the deputy secretary of state, in a Jan. 8 determination, said the Palestinians did not break the U.S. law which states that shutting down the Palestinian Liberation Organization office in Washington in the event that the Palestinians declare statehood.

The Palestinians have not “obtained in the U.N. or any specialized agency thereof the same standing as member states or full membership as a state outside an agreement negotiated between Israel and the Palestinians,” Burns said.

In late December, more than half the members of the U.S. House of Representatives called on President Obama to shut down the PLO office in Washington as punishment for its ascension in U.N. status.

“One important way of expressing U.S. disapproval would be to send the message that such actions are not cost-free and that, at a minimum, they result in setbacks to U.S.-Palestinian relations,” said the letter sent Dec. 21, 2012 initiated by the incoming and outgoing leaders of both parties on the House Foreign Affairs Committee. The letter was signed by 239 members, including leaders such as Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.), the majority leader, and Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), the minority whip. “We can do this by closing the PLO office in Washington, D.C. We can also call our Consul-General in Jerusalem home for consultations,” the letter said.

The letter was initiated by Reps. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.), Ed Royce (R-Calif.), respectively the outgoing and incoming chairs, and Reps. Howard Berman (D-Calif.) and Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.), respectively the outgoing and incoming ranking Democrats.

PLO U.S. Ambassador Maen Rashid Areikat

The Palestine Information Office was registered with the Justice Department of the United States as a foreign agent until 1968, when it was closed down. It was reopened in 1989 as the Palestine Affairs Center. The PLO Mission office in Washington D.C was established in 1994, to represent the PLO in the United States.

In July of 2010, the State Dept. upgraded the status of the PLO Mission in the United States to “General Delegation of the PLO.”

Although it did not constitute diplomatic recognition, the upgrade two years ago raised the status of Palestinian representation in the U.S. to the same level as the PLO representation in many European countries and in Canada.

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee has backed the initiatives, while the Reform movement and a number of smaller liberal Jewish groups have opposed them.

JTA content was used in this report.

The truth sometimes hurts; that is why the Palestinian Authority has been working hard to prevent the outside world from hearing about many occurrences that reflect negatively on its leaders or people.

In recent years, the Palestinian Authority leadership, often with the help of the mainstream media in the US and EU, has been successful in its effort to divert all attention only toward Israel.

Following are examples of some of the inconvenient truths that the Palestinian leadership in Judea and Samaria do not want others to know about:

- Over 100 senior PLO and Fatah officials hold Israeli-issued VIP cards that grant them various privileges denied to most Palestinians. Among these privileges is the freedom to enter Israel and travel abroad at any time they wish. This privilege system has existed since the signing of the Oslo Accords between Israel and the PLO in 1993.

- Out of the 600 Christians from the Gaza Strip who arrived in Judea and Samaria in the past two weeks to celebrate Christmas, dozens have asked to move to Israel because they no longer feel comfortable living under the Palestinian Authority and Hamas.

- Dozens of Christian families from east Jerusalem have moved to Jewish neighborhoods in the the city because they too no longer feel comfortable living among Muslims.

- Palestinian Authority security forces in Judea and Samaria continue to summon and arrest political opponents, journalists and bloggers who dare to criticize the Palestinian leadership.

- The Palestinian Authority government, which has been complaining about a severe financial crisis for the past few months, just cancelled outstanding electricity debts for Palestinians in Judea and Samaria. Palestinians pay their bills to the Arab Jerusalem Electric Company, which buys electricity from the Israeli Electric Company; the Palestinians have not been paying their electricity bills and many have been stealing electricity from their Arab company.

- Tens of thousands of Palestinian Authority civil servants in the Gaza Strip receive salaries to stay at home and not work. The practice has been in effect since Hamas seized control over the Gaza Strip in 2007. According to Fatah spokesman Ahmed Assaf, the Palestinian Authority, which is funded mostly by American and European taxpayer money, spends around $120 million each month on the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip.

- Mahmoud Abbas’s ruling Fatah faction has allocated more than one million dollars for celebrations marking the 48th anniversary of the “launching of the revolution” — a reference to the first armed attack carried out by Fatah against Israel.

- Despite the calls for an economic boycott of Israel, more than 40,000 Palestinians have received permits to work in Israel. Moreover, another 15,000 Palestinians continue to work in Jewish settlements in spite of an official ban.

- Top PLO and Fatah officials continue to do their shopping in Israeli-owned businesses both in Judea and Samaria and Israel proper. Last week, for example, a member of the PLO Executive Committee and his family were spotted shopping in Jerusalem’s Malha mall. Of course, the PLO official did not forget to bring along his private driver and maid.

- The wife of a senior PLO official recently spent $20,000 for dental treatment in Tel Aviv at a time when there is no shortage of renowned Palestinian dentists in Ramallah, Bethlehem and Nablus.

These are only some of the inconvenient truths that the Palestinian Authority does not want the outside world to know. Palestinian journalists often avoid reporting about such issues out of concern for their safety or for “ideological” reasons. These journalists have been taught that it is forbidden to hang out the dirty laundry.

Western journalists, donors and decision-makers who deal with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict need to know that there are many truths being completely ignored or hidden from their eyes and ears.

Originally published by the Gatestone Institute.

A bi-partisan majority of congressional members sent a letter to U.S. President Barak Obama late last week.  In the letter, the members insist that the time has come for this U.S. government to hold the Arab Palestinian leadership responsible for their bald refusal to comply with repeated requests from the United States government to refrain from seeking an enhanced status at the United Nations General Assembly, as is required of the Arabs under the Oslo Agreements under which it is bound.

The PLO pledged in the Oslo Agreements that it would take no unilateral actions to change the status of the disputed territories and Gaza.

Congressional leadership that has long been involved in working with Israel and the Arab Palestinians in attempts to resolve the Middle East conflict, such as U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, U.S. Rep. Howard L. Berman (D-CA), Ranking Member of the Committee, U.S. Reps. Edward R. Royce (R-CA) and Eliot L. Engel (D-NY, Chairman-designate and Ranking Member-designate, respectively, of the Committee, along with more than 230 other members of  Congress, signed and sent the letter to the President on Friday, December 21.

The letter informed the President that “we believe the United States must react strongly to the ‘Palestinian’ leadership’s failure to uphold its obligations,” and explained that in order to send a clear message of U.S. disapproval, the Arab leaders must learn that their actions are not “cost-free,” and, “at a minimum, they result in setbacks to U.S.-’Palestinian’ relations.”

Congressional members suggested that the minimal steps the U.S. should take at this time would be to close the PLO office in Washington, D.C. and to call on the U.S. Consul General in Jerusalem – who is, illogically, responsible for relations with the Arab Palestinians but not Jewish or Arab Israelis – back to Washington for consultations.

The congressional letter to President Obama points out the necessity for the U.S. government to ensure that the UNGA vote on November 29 “does not serve as a precedent for elevating the status of the PLO in other UN bodies or international forums.”

Should the PLO attempt to force its hand by seeking membership in those other UN institutions, the congressional members told President Obama that, “we should do everything possible to make sure that does not happen, including by reaffirming our commitment to maintaining and enforcing U.S. laws that require withholding U.S. contributions from any international forum that grants membership to the PLO.”

The PLO envoy in Washington, Maen Aerikat, told the Palestinian News Agency Ma’an, that the congressional letter “is an attempt by Congress to undermine the U.S. administration in any possible role it is planning to play in Palestinian affairs.”

In addition to pointing out that “punitive measures won’t pay off.  If they were effective we would have already changed our mind,” Aerikat railed at Israel, suggesting it was behind the congressional effort.  He said, “It is a political decision, a decision on the part of the Israeli government to escalate things against the Palestinian people at home and here…the U.S. is their other front.”

In a letter circulated to members of Congress by the PLO Envoy on December 14, Aerikat sought to dissuade Congress from responding to the PA provocation.  Aerikat makes several points in his letter, one of which should qualify for the Chutzpah Hall of Fame.  Perhaps he forgot that the action taken by Congress was in response to the decision by his colleagues to spurn dialogue and negotation, and instead to take unilateral action by introducing a one-sided resolution at the U.N.  This is what Aerikat wrote:

Engagement and dialogue is the only way to express the views of Congress.  Biased and one-sided resolutions cannot contribute to an atmosphere that is conducive for a political resolution to the conflict.

Not all Jews supported the congressional effort.  In the interview with Ma’an, Aerikat appreciatively listed both J Street and Americans for Peace Now as organizations that oppose the initiative to punish the Arab Palestinians for violating the Oslo Accords by seeking unilateral changes through the UN vote.  Although not mentioned by the PLO Envoy, the Union for Reform Judaism has also actively lobbied against congressional efforts to shutter the PLO Office.

PA President Mahmoud Abbas phoned Hamas chief Khalid Mashaal on Wednesday to discuss ending the division between their organizations. The call had been prearranged, a Fatah official told Ma’an.

Azzam al-Ahmad said Abbas phoned Mashaal to accelerate implementing national reconciliation. Abbas talked with Mashaal about his first visit to Gaza, and about Hamas’s 25th anniversary celebrations.

Al-Ahmad said he and a member in Fatah’s central committee had met Mashaal on Wednesday, as part a of new efforts to see if a reconciliation deal could finally be implemented.

The Fatah official said he was pleased that Mashaal was able to enter the Gaza Strip after decades away from Palestine, and also happy for Mashaal’s participation in Hamas’s anniversary events. He said the celebrations were aimed to end the division between Gaza and the PA.

Al-Ahmad said it was too soon to say when a meeting in Cairo with all the factions would take place, as Hamas officials were still in Gaza for the anniversary and Egypt is holding a constitutional referendum.

On Thursday Abbas proceeded to criticize Mashaal’s statement that his group will “never recognize the state of Israel.”

“I don’t agree with Khaled Mashaal’s statement on the non-recognition of Israel because we, in fact, recognized it in 1993,” Abbas told a group of reporters in Ankara following his two-day visit, Turkish Weekly reported. “A four-article agreement between [Fatah and Hamas] stipulates a two-state vision. And Mashaal approved of this agreement.”

I agree that this is a little like the joke about the police commissioner who boasts that while there has been an increase in crime incidents in the city, there are millions of citizens who have not committed any crimes in the past quarter — nevertheless, a measure of sanity among the world’s nations must be acknowledged and even praised.

The UN General Assembly today voted 138 to 9, with 41 abstaining, to upgrade the PLO’s observer status to the same level held by the Vatican, that of a “non-member state.”

An email sent out last night by UN Watch notes that although the number of Yes votes may appear large, in fact it amounted to the usual automatic majority for any resolution attacking Israel — and the proposal actually won 28 fewer votes than a pro-Palestinian resolution adopted last week, and fewer than is usually received by such resolutions.

Moreover, as UN Watch also reported — in a Tweet reposted by Canadian Cabinet Minister Rona Ambrose among many others –  the PLO won 38 fewer than the 176 votes the U.N. General Assembly gave to genocidal Sudan when recently electing it to a principal U.N. body that oversees human rights.

Let’s be grateful for small favors. Think of it, there are 50 whole nations out there that are not sure they want Israel to be erased from the map, and 9 of them are actually against the idea at this time!

Although mostly symbolic, the statehood designation, as President Abbas boasted last year in a New York Times op-ed, paves the way for the “internationalization of the conflict as a legal matter,” enabling the PLO to pursue claims against Israel in the International Criminal Court (ICC).

Incidentally, just so you wouldn’t be completely overcome by euphoria, the UN Human Rights Council is planning to release a massive report in early 2013 — by a commission of inquiry modeled after the one that produced the notorious Goldstone Report — which is likely to recommend the ICC prosecution of Israeli officials for “war crimes” in connection with the settlements.

Reported by the Jerusalem Post:

Farouk Kaddoumi, a veteran PLO official, dropped a political bombshell Wednesday with a call for “returning” the West Bank to Jordan. Kaddoumi, who is based in Tunisia, said he supported the idea of a federation or confederation between the West Bank and Jordan. His remarks, which came during an interview with the London-based Al- Quds Al-Arabi newspaper, are the first of their kind to be voiced by a senior PLO figure in decades…He added, nevertheless, that the Palestinians should not drop their demand for a right to return to Israel proper. “We launched our revolution for all of Palestine, and that’s why we need to be very cautious,” Kaddoumi said. “We must safeguard our people’s right to return,” he stressed. “We must insist on the right of return for all refugees, because this is the minimum that we could accept.”

Well, isn’t that an interesting statement.

A confederation has been an Israeli suggestion for decades and now they are finally getting around to discussing it.

But, if the “minimum” is swamping Israel with “refugees”, that seems to be a reverse “Two Banks Has The Jordan” concept – Israel and Jordan disappear.

Visit My Right Word.

Prime Minister Salam Fayyad has not offered his resignation, but has presented instead a plan to the PLO leadership to form a more inclusive factional government, two PLO executive committee members in Ramallah told Ma’an Wednesday.

Ahmad Majdalani told Ma’an that Fayyad suggested forming a government including officials from every faction so as to evenly distribute responsibility before President Mahmoud Abbas returns to the UN in November.

Majdalani said the proposal was not met with applause during the most recent meeting.

Wasel Abu Yousef, another member of the executive committee, said Fayyad did not intend to resign, but “during the last meeting a few days ago there was discussion about forming a government of factions,” which would bring in more of the opposition.

Abu Yousef quoted Fayyad as saying that the Palestinian Authority is under pressure from a financial crisis that required a government of all factions.

Raya press reported Wednesday that Fayyad would discuss his resignation with Abbas soon. The president’s office denied that report.

Fayyad, who was replaced as finance minister in a government reshuffle in May, has indicated he would be willing to step down as premier if the electorate insisted.

Protests in September largely blamed Fayyad, a former economist, for a financial crisis resulting in part from the failure of foreign donor countries to meet pledges on time.

The visit of the Emir of Qatar to the Gaza Strip is certainly an important landmark on the course that the Hamas movement has been advancing since it took over the Strip in June of 2007. Hamas is trying its utmost to establish the independence of the Gaza Strip, vis à vis the PLO, the Palestinian Authority, Israel, Egypt, the Arab world and everyplace else as well.

They are not giving up the ideology of jihad against Israel, but they have temporarily hung it up on the wall, near the trigger finger and the cross-hair, and they busy themselves with building: infrastructures, roads, institutions, the economy, general industry, military industry and military power. All of these we have been considered internal, local matters, and the leaders of the Arab world did not come to give proper respect to the leaders of Hamas.

The first that arrived was the Emir of Qatar, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, the strongest and most influential person in the Arab world, and perhaps even in the whole world. In his pocket are  many billions, and in his hand is the most weighty and dangerous cudgel that exists today in the Arab world: the al-Jazeera channel, which, ever since it was established towards the end of 1996, has continuously incited the Arab masses against the dictators that ruled them, against Israel, against the United States and against the West in general. Al-Jazeera’s agenda overlaps that of the Muslim Brotherhood, and everything it has done over the years was aimed toward promoting the Brotherhood to bring them to power in the Arab states, after the dictators were eliminated.

The first success was in Gaza, where Hamas took over more than five years ago. The second success was Tunisia, where the elimination of President bin Ali in January 2011 allowed the Islamist al-Nahda movement to take over the state. But the high point of al-Jazeera’s success was, and still is, Egypt.

Sheikh Hamad was the one who pushed NATO to get involved in Libya against Qadhaffi, and brought the Libyan Islamists to the corridors of fragile power in the state of the desert tribes overflowing with oil. Sheikh Hamad is behind the Free Syrian Army, which is a group of Islamist militias who are fighting to remove the heretical ‘Alawite regime from Syria and to impose radical Islam upon it.

The visit of Sheikh Hamad in Gaza is a pat on the shoulder to the Hamas people, a shot of legitimacy to their rule, an infusion of 400 million dollars into the budgetary veins and another nail in the coffins of the  PLO and the Palestinian Authority. In the opinion of Sheikh Hamad, King Abbas is dead, long live the new king, Ismail Haniye.

In Israel, they still don’t understand what is happening. The State Department condemns the Qatari Sheikh’s visit in Gaza, because the bleeding hearts of the State Department prefer to close matters with the PLO and Abu Mazen, since they still dream that he will deal with Hamas “without the oversight of the Supreme Court or human rights organizations.” They fell asleep when the Oslo Accords were signed and still have not awakened.

The Office of the Prime Minister, on the other hand, is quiet and does not react. Apparently they understand the true interests of Israel better: To continue the dismantling of the Palestinian Authority into its components, and to continue the split that Sheikh Hamad very much encouraged with his support of Hamas, to the detriment, of course, of the PLO, the PA and Abu Mazen.

If Israel wants to survive, it must say a special prayer of thanks to the King of the world for the visit of Sheikh Hamad to Gaza, and it must continue the process of dismantling that Hamas began – also in Judea and Samaria, by establishing seven separate independent emirates in the seven cities: Jericho, Ramallah, Nablus, Jenin, Tulkarem, Qalqilya and the Arab part of Hebron.

Israel must keep the entirety of the rural expanse in its possession, to ensure that the mountains will not become Hamas Mountains and the hills will not become Hizb’Allah Hills. This is how 90 percent of the Arab residents of Judea and Samaria will be free from Israeli rule and Israel will be relieved of including 90 percent of them within its political system, but Israel will keep in its possession more than 90 percent of the territory.

This is the long-term Israeli interest, and thus will Zion be redeemed.

Originally published at Middle East and Terrorism.