Ex-ambassador sees no gain with Palestinian state

By Amy Kaufman

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“If you examine the track record of the PLO, there should be no illusion about its impact on the welfare of Israel and on the national security interests of the U.S.,” said Yoram Ettinger, former Israeli ambassador and embassy liaison to the U.S. Congress, who spoke Sept. 6 at the Mittleman Jewish Community Center, the guest of two conservative pro-Israel groups.
   
Ettinger said he expects “Gaza to host the Iranians” and queried, “Why would the U.S. support a pro-Iranian government?”
   
A Palestinian state would “doom the Hashemite and Persian Gulf moderate regimes, promote radical regimes and exacerbate global terrorism,” said Ettinger. He said he also fears it would “provide a Mediterranean platform to Iran, Russia and China, and intensify the oppression of Palestinian Christians.”

   
Ettinger said Islamic terrorism increases in relation to the degree of Palestinian autonomy.
   
“There has always been a correlation between Palestinian sovereignty and their level of violence. … There is unprecedented, unparalleled violence in Gaza because that is how they leverage their independence,” he said.
   
Ettinger pointed out that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas was trained by the KGB and is an architect of hate education, which, beginning in grammar school, denies the Holocaust and Israel’s existence, glorifies homicide bombers and circulates “‘Protocols of the Elders of Zion,’ the book that spearheaded Soviet anti-Semitism and is a best seller in Arab countries.”
   
“Once Abu Mazen (Abbas) and Arafat were reinstituted after Oslo, the first thing they did was reinstate hate education,” said Ettinger.
   
Denying that the two-state solution would resolve the Palestinian issue, Ettinger stated that issue has never been the crux of the Arab-Israeli conflict.
   
Tracing the history of the Arab-Israeli wars, he showed they were “not triggered by the Palestinian issue” but were waged by Arabs without concern for the Palestinians. He said Arab countries view the Palestinians as “subversive” and support the Palestinian cause “only with rhetoric, not with blood.”
   
Ettinger is a member of the American-Israel Demographic Research Group, which has challenged the widely accepted statistics of the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics.
   
For example, he said the PCBS records include some 400,000 Palestinians living overseas who have been away for more than a year, and more than 200,000 card-carrying Israeli Arabs, who are doubly counted as Palestinians by PCBS and as Israeli Arabs by Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics.
   
The PCBS statistics inflate the number of Arabs in Judea and Samaria by 70 percent, according to AIDRG.
   
Ettinger refutes the “demographic fatalism” that has “scared Israel’s policy makers into sweeping geographic concessions” based on fear of the anticipated growth of the Arab population.
   
Calling the Israeli government “dysfunctional,” Ettinger said Israel must “face up to the track record of the PA.”
   
“Life was much more beautiful in Israel before Oslo, when you didn’t have security guards on buses, trains and movie theaters, didn’t have suicide bombers, didn’t have to hide behind walls and go back to the destructive mentality of Holocaust—when Jews hid and did not attack,” he said.
   
“I’m optimistic because the people (of Israel are) much stronger and smarter than the politicians in Israel,” Ettinger said. “Day by day we realize the PA is not a partner for peace. … Land for peace means let’s reward terror by awarding land to the belligerent party.”
   
About 150 attended the event co-sponsored by Christians United For Israel and the Portland chapter of Americans for a Safe Israel.
   
CUFI, founded by evangelical leader John Hagee, is recognized as one of the most powerful lobbying groups for Israel in the United States.
   
Inez Weissman, chair of the Portland chapter of AFSI, voiced her gratitude for Christian support, saying lives might have been saved during the Holocaust “if we had touched the hearts of evangelical Christians.”
   
“Anti-Jewishness is on the rise again,” she said. “But today we are blessed. Fifty million evangelical Christians stand firmly with us in support of Israel. They respect us as Jews and love the state of Israel as the Holy Land.”