UN Ignores PLO Central Council Praise for Intifada

The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) central council decided on March 5th to end the Palestinians’ security cooperation with Israel, which had been established under the 1993 Oslo autonomy accords between the PLO and Israel that had set up the Palestinian Authority.

The cessation of cooperation will go into effect upon Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s approval. After condemning what it called the “Judaizing of Jerusalem,” the PLO central council also congratulated “our people who take part in the heroic intifada” in Jerusalem. Hamas, with whom President Abbas is striving to form a unity government, praised the PLO central council’s actions. Within 24 hours of the PLO central council’s raising of the intifada banner, a Palestinian terrorist plowed his vehicle into a group of people waiting for a train in east Jerusalem, injuring five female Israeli soldiers. The Palestinian then reportedly got out of his car and stabbed a pedestrian, before a guard was able to shoot him and stop even more carnage. Wasil Abu Youssef, a member of the PLO central council, said the council’s action was in response to Israel’s withholding of tax revenues allegedly owed to the Palestinians, amounting to approximately $127 million per month. He added that the council will “also take further steps in reconciliation with Palestinian faction Hamas.”

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A statement issued by the Spokesperson of the United Nations Secretary General hours after the attack on March 6th made no mention of the attack itself or the expression of support by the PLO central council, which preceded the attack, of the Jerusalem intifada. The UN statement expressed concern about the PLO central council’s move to suspend all forms of security coordination with Israel, while also calling on “Israel to resume the transfer of tax revenues legally due to the Palestinian Authority.” As usual, the United Nations is blind to the incitement to violence engaged in regularly by Palestinian leaders, including Abbas himself. The Palestinian authorities would not use the tax revenues they are demanding that Israel turn over to them for peaceful purposes such as paying the Palestinians’ delinquent electricity bills. To the contrary, as the PLO central council said itself, the council wants to allocate monies to fund more intifada violence. In its statement, the PLO central council declared that in order to “strengthen the steadfastness of Jerusalem and its heroic intifada, the Central Council calls upon all the political and national authorities in the city to allocate the funds necessary to reinforce the steadfastness of our people and defend the holy places and the city's Arab identity..." The UN Secretary General spokesman reiterated on March 6th the familiar refrain calling for “a negotiated final peace agreement that will end the Israeli occupation and realize the creation of a viable Palestinian state, living in peace and security alongside Israel.” The United Nations, like the Obama administration and Western Europe, naively believes that the Palestinian leaders are truly interested in a permanent two state solution that would recognize the right of the Jewish state to exist, and its people to live, in true peace and security. The PLO central council said precisely the opposite in its most recent statement, which the UN Secretary General spokesman chose to ignore completely in his own statement. The PLO central council said it rejected “out of hand” the “notion of the Jewish state and the notion of a temporary Palestinian state.” Coupled with its insistence on a guarantee of “the refugees' right of return,” the PLO central council is essentially adopting the Hamas position that any agreement to a two state solution would be only a temporary step on the way to a complete liquidation of the Jewish state. As Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahar once put it so concisely: “Israel is a temporary phenomenon and it will have to go.” Leaders of Abbas’s Fatah faction have said that Fatah shares the same goal as Hamas, which one such leader described as “one Palestine from the [Jordan] River to the [Mediterranean] Sea.” Ironically, on the same day that the PLO central council decided to end its security coordination with Israel and called for allocation of funds to strengthen “the heroic intifada,” Israel said it would ease restrictions on Gaza vegetable exports for the first time since Hamas took over Gaza in 2007. The pattern is all too familiar. Israel makes a peaceful gesture. The Palestinians respond with unconditional demands and more violence. And the United Nations as always gives the Palestinians the benefit of the doubt.