David Singer: Burying the PLO and Resurrecting Jordan in the West Bank

Here's the latest article by Sydney lawyer and international affairs analyst David Singer.

He writes:

President Trump’s “deal of the century” – aimed at ending 100 years of conflict between Jews and Arabs over the territory once called “Palestine” – continues to flounder in the face of

· The PLO’s outright rejection of Trump’s deal – even before its details have been published

· Jordan’s continuing refusal to agree to negotiate with Israel when the deal is released

Jordan comprises 78 per cent of former Palestine and is the only sovereign Arab state to have ever occupied (albeit illegally) the West Bank – 4 per cent of former Palestine - between 1948 and 1967. Former Israeli Prime Minister – Ariel Sharon – proposed his own deal in 1992.

Sharon warned against granting autonomy to West Bank Arabs – something that occurred in 1993 after Oslo Accord I was signed and 95 per cent of the West Bank Arabs came under PLO administrative control:

“We must face a simple fact. Autonomy will inevitably lead to Palestinian statehood. The self-governing Authority will enjoy international recognition and command universal attention. Every self-respecting state will open a mission there.

Journalists will coo over keffiyeh-wrapped PLO murderers glowing with a romantic halo. The chairman of the Authority will sit in his office adorned with a wall to wall picture of another chairman, arch-murderer Yasser Arafat. And there will be a PLO flag in the front of the building.”

27 years later, autonomy has not translated into statehood – due to the PLO’s racist policy of refusing to accept the right of Jews to live in the West Bank – the ancient biblical, historic and legally-designated heartland of the Jewish people.

Sharon posited instead:

“… The true solution is to recognize that Jordan is the Palestinian state. Only with Jordan should we discuss the future of the Arab inhabitants of Judea and Samaria, all of whom are Jordanian citizens. And it is with Jordan that we should discuss granting this kind of citizenship to Gaza residents.

We must also talk about how they will vote for and get elected to the Palestinian parliament in Amman, how they will pay taxes, and how they will be able to use Haifa and Ashkelon harbors and reciprocally, how we can use Akaba.

And we should talk of a common market in the Middle East, and about water projects and the mutual development of the Dead Sea resources and of a common front against Arab terrorism. Whether King Hussein or anyone else heads the Palestinian State, Jordan, is their decision."

Sharon continued:

“What I suggested in the past and I suggest again, is that there be autonomic regions without territorial contiguity. Their local police will act strictly within these regions. Non-Jews, after all, have no problem traveling on roads under Jewish control: the problem exists only for Jews under non-Jewish control.

Israeli sovereignty will then begin in all the zones in which Jews are settled. This will affect contiguity of Jewish areas from the Mediterranean to the Jordan River in Judea and Samaria, and from the Sea to the Western Negev in the Gaza district.

Thus all Jewish communities will be under Israeli sovereignty, while most of the Arab population will live in autonomous districts.” 

Trump’s US$28 billion economic plan for the West Bank and Gaza has been rejected by the PLO and received with little enthusiasm by Jordan.

Jewish ethics provides sage advice to Trump to present his political plan without further delay – irrespective of how the PLO and Jordan might receive it:

“It is not your responsibility to finish the work, but you are not free to desist from it either.”

Will Trump’s proposals – like Sharon’s – also bury the PLO and resurrect Jordan in the West Bank?


Author’s note: The cartoon — commissioned exclusively for this article — is by Yaakov Kirschen aka “Dry Bones” — one of Israel’s foremost political and social commentators — whose cartoons have graced the columns of Israeli and international media publications for decades. His cartoons can be viewed at Drybonesblog

David Singer: Why Di Natale Must Shred Rhiannon's Misleading Pamphlet

In the following article, entitled  "Palestine – Rhiannon Propaganda Pamphlet Threatens Greens' Political Integrity", Sydney lawyer and international affairs analyst David Singer continues to focus his attention on anti-Israel propaganda  (example at left) propounded by the incorrigible Greens Senator Lee Rhiannon. 

Writes David Singer:

Australian Greens Leader Senator Richard Di Natale needs immediately to shred a misleading and deceptive pro-Palestinian pamphlet authorised and printed by Greens Senator Lee Rhiannon.

The pamphlet contains two statements purportedly made by Israel’s Moshe Dayan in 1969 and Ariel Sharon in 1973.

Dayan is quoted as saying:

“We came to a region of land that was inhabited by Arabs and we set up a Jewish State … Jewish villages were built in the place of Arab villages” 

Dayan actually said:

“We came to a region that was inhabited by Arabs, and we set up a Jewish state. In many places, we purchased the land from Arabs and set up Jewish villages where there had once been Arab villages.” 

Dayan’s statement refutes the canard repeated in Palestinian text books and media that 

“the Zionist gangs stole Palestine”

Why Rhiannon deleted Dayan’s highly significant remarks remains unexplained.

The authenticity of Sharon’s supposed statement is shrouded in uncertainty. Michael Shaik writing in the Green Left Weekly claimed the statement was made by a British journalist boasting at Israel’s National Press Club.

Max Blumenthal writes it was made in a private chat with Winston Churchill’s grandson in 1973. On 18 July 2002 George Hishmeh  – an Arab-American journalist based in Washington  – elucidated: 

"Winston S. Churchill III, grandson of the famed British prime minister, recalled last October [11 October 2001 – Ed] at the National Press Club here a telling encounter he had had in 1973 with the hawkish Ariel Sharon, now the Israeli prime minister, about Zionist objectives. “What is to become of the Palestinians?” Churchill asked. “We’ll make a pastrami sandwich of them,” Sharon said. Churchill responded, “What?” “Yes, we’ll insert a strip of Jewish settlements in between the Palestinians, and then another strip of Jewish settlements right across the West Bank, so that in 25 years’ time, neither the United Nations nor the United States, nobody, will be able to tear it apart.”

Hishmeh identified as his source Geoffrey Aronson:

“who is recognized in the US as the preeminent American expert on the Israeli settlement movement, loves to relate this significant exchange as he did in an interview with The [Lebanon – Ed] Daily Star on two different occasions.”

Churchill recounting a 1973 private discussion in such precise detail at the Washington National Press Club twenty eight years later – is highly suspect.

Churchill never made any mention of this conversation with Sharon in his published speech at the Press Club – although he could have recalled the conversation as an aside or in some discussion with Aronson or others afterwards.

Churchill’s bombshell revelation seems to have gone unnoticed as this contemporaneous report indicates.

No other reports have been found.

I have been unable to listen to or download a copy of a tape that apparently exists and could possibly shed some light on what Churchill said.

Please help me retrieve it if you can.

Whether that tape surfaces or not, a question mark must hang over the accuracy of Sharon’s previously unpublished 1973 private remarks – only disclosed by Churchill in 2001.

Sharon and Churchill are not alive to confirm or deny what was said – yet the terms of this private conversation are quoted with unerring accuracy and entrenched as gospel in Rhiannon’s pamphlet.

Rhiannon’s continuing use of Sharon’s “statement” – compounded by her excluding part of Dayan’s statement  –  raises questions as to the propriety of the Greens using this pamphlet to garner votes in the upcoming July Federal elections.

Shredding these pamphlets has become an urgent priority.

The Greens' political integrity requires its support for the Palestinian Arabs be based on solid grounds – not shaky foundations.

David Singer: Netanyahu Goes For Gold In Shoot-Off With Obama

Here is the latest article by Sydney lawyer and international affairs analyst David Singer.

He writes:

Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu's appointment of former United Nations ambassador Dore Gold [pictured] to head up Israel's Foreign Ministry ensures that Israel will be confronting President Obama as he continues attempting to deviate from the commitments made to Israel by his predecessor President Bush in a letter dated 14 April 2004 to former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon (Bush Commitments).


The Bush Commitments acknowledged the risks involved in Israel unilaterally disengaging from Gaza and evacuating the 8000 Jews who had established twenty-one settlements there over the preceding 35 years whilst additionally agreeing to remove another four settlements in Judea and Samaria (the West Bank).


President Bush assured Israel of the following:

1. the United States remained committed to President Bush's vision and to its implementation as described in the Roadmap.

2. The United States would do its utmost to prevent any attempt by anyone to impose any other plan.

3. Palestinians would have to undertake a comprehensive and fundamental political reform that included a strong parliamentary democracy and an empowered prime minister.

4. The United States reiterated its steadfast commitment to Israel's security, including secure, defensible borders, and to preserve and strengthen Israel's capability to deter and defend itself, by itself, against any threat or possible combination of threats.

5. The United States was strongly committed to Israel's security and well-being as a Jewish state.

6. It seemed clear that an agreed, just, fair, and realistic framework for a solution to the Palestinian refugee issue as part of any final status agreement would need to be found through the establishment of a Palestinian state, and the settling of Palestinian refugees there, rather than in Israel.

7. As part of a final peace settlement, Israel must have secure and recognized borders, which should emerge from negotiations between the parties in accordance with UNSC Resolutions 242 and 338.

8. In light of new realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli populations centers, it would be unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations would be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949, and all previous efforts to negotiate a two-state solution have reached the same conclusion. It was realistic to expect that any final status agreement would only be achieved on the basis of mutually agreed changes that reflect these realities.

President Obama has attempted to subvert the Bush Commitments by proposing Israel withdraw from part of the West Bank and cede part of its own sovereign territory to the Palestine Liberation Organisation in exchange for the area of the West Bank to be retained by Israel – as announced by President Obama in May 2011:

"... the United States believes that negotiations should result in two states, with permanent Palestinian borders with Israel, Jordan, and Egypt, and permanent Israeli borders with Palestine. The borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps - so that secure and recognized borders are established for both states."

President Obama seems to have given up on the strong parliamentary democracy demanded by President Bush being established in the West Bank and Gaza - having failed to back up a recent
call by another former American President - Jimmy Carter - for such elections to be held in the West Bank and Gaza - which would be the first held there since 2005.


Until such a democracy is established America should not expect any negotiations with the Palestine Liberation Organisation to lead to anywhere but the dustbin of history.


Dore Gold well appreciates the significance of these Bush Commitments and the obligation of Obama to remain bound by them - stating in debriefing.org on 9 June 2009 -

"For example, it still needs to be clarified whether the Obama administration feels bound by the April 14, 2004, Bush letter to Sharon on defensible borders and settlement blocs, which was subsequently ratified by large bipartisan majorities in both the U.S. Senate (95:3) and the House of Representatives (407:9) on June 23-24, 2004. Disturbingly, on June 1, 2009, the State Department spokesman, Robert Wood, refused to answer repeated questions about whether the Obama administration viewed itself as legally bound by the Bush letter. It would be better to obtain earlier clarification of that point, rather than having both countries expend their energies over an issue that may not be the real underlying source of their dispute."

Writing in Jewish Current Issues on 3 June 2009 Rick Richman noted that the State Department had refused to confirm the Bush Commitments on twenty-one occasions during the previous week.


Richman then asserted:

"Since Israel met its obligations under the disengagement deal, the U.S. can no more rescind its agreement and commitment than it can restore the lost world of Gush Katif, or the lost security of southern Israel, or the lives that thousands of rockets traumatized, or the property that was destroyed.

Israel ended up having to fight a war in Gaza because of the disengagement. The least the United States can do is meet its own obligations."

Michael Oren – former Israeli Ambassador in Washington and now a newly elected member of Israel's governing coalition – called for the resuscitation of these Bush Commitments during his election campaign in January.


The Obama administration needs to clear the air and remove any doubts or concerns that it is trying to surreptitiously vary the Bush Commitments.


Let the shoot-off with the reluctant and recalcitrant Obama administration begin.

Why Ariel Sharon's Ghost Haunts Barack Obama: David Singer explains

Here, entitled "Palestine: Sharon’s Ghost Returns To Haunt Obama," is the latest article by Sydney lawyer and international affairs analyst David Singer.

He writes:

Michael Oren – one of seven members of the recently formed Kulanu party elected to Israel’s new Parliament – seems destined to play a pivotal role in torpedoing President Obama’s proposals for a two-state solution aimed at resolving the 100 years old Arab-Jewish conflict.

Agreement has reportedly been reached between Israel’s Prime Minister elect Benjamin Netanyahu and Kulanu chairman Moshe Kahlon for Kahlon to be appointed Finance Minister. Fellow Kulanu members  Yoav Galant and Eli Alalouf will serve respectively as Housing Minister and Environmental Protection Minister.

Still unannounced is the replacement for Tzipi Livni – who headed the Israeli team in peace talks with the PLO – but who now seems destined to enter into Opposition. These peace talks have remained in a state of suspended animation since April 2014 – despite intensive American efforts to have them resumed.

President Obama’s proposals – first enunciated in 2011 – were re-stated as recently as July 2014 by White House Coordinator for the Middle East, North Africa, and the Gulf Region Philip Gordon at the Ha'aretz Israel Conference for Peace:

“A lasting peace will involve two states for two peoples: Israel as a Jewish state and the homeland for the Jewish people, and the state of Palestine as the homeland for the Palestinian people, each state enjoying self-determination, mutual recognition, and peace. While the core issues of the conflict must be negotiated, the basis of those negotiations is clear: a viable Palestine, a secure Israel.

Negotiations should therefore result in two states, with permanent Palestinian borders with Israel, Jordan, and Egypt, and permanent Israeli borders with Palestine. The borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps, so that secure and recognized borders are established for both states. Any peace agreement will require robust security provisions that safeguard Israel’s security. And the Palestinian people must have the right to govern themselves, and reach their full potential, in an independent, sovereign and contiguous state.” 

The idea that Israel should be required to make mutually agreed land swaps for territory it retains in Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) was never stipulated or mentioned in the letter given by President Bush to Israel’s then Prime Minister Ariel Sharon on 14 April 2004 – whose terms were overwhelmingly endorsed by the House of Representatives 407:9 on 23 June 2004 and the Senate 95:3 the next day. (“American Written Commitments”)

Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert had declared at the Annapolis International Conference convened by President Bush on 27 November 2007 that any resumed negotiations: 

“will be based on previous agreements between us, UN Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338, the Roadmap and the April 14th 2004 letter of President Bush to the Prime Minister of Israel.” 

Michael Oren – Kulanu’s diplomatic voice and former Israeli Ambassador to Washington between 2009 and 2013 – recently called for these 2004 American Written Commitments to be resuscitated:

“A decade ago, in April 2004, then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon received a letter from American president George Bush, Jr. recognizing Israel's right to build in long-standing Jewish neighborhoods in Jerusalem like Talpiyot-East and Ramot. Furthermore, Israel was now allowed to build in settlement blocs crucial for Israel's security, and in which some 80 per cent of Israelis who live in Judea and Samaria reside […] According to the Bush-Sharon letter, these areas will remain within Israel's borders in any arrangement arrived at with the Palestinians […] it's time to revive the Bush-Sharon letter and act according to it.” 

Obama is going to find it impossible to impose his land swap proposals – if Oren has any say.

Sharon’s ghost has tantalisingly returned to haunt Obama.

Sharon's Legacy Haunts Obama And Kerry, Argues David Singer

Here's the latest article by Sydney lawyer and international affairs analyst David Singer.  It's entitled
"Palestine: Sharon's Legacy Haunts Obama And Kerry".

Writes David Singer:

'President Obama and his Secretary of State John Kerry have a lot on their minds as they grapple with conflicts and political issues involving countries like Syria, Iran, Iraq, Sudan and Afghanistan
 – which no doubt must be causing massive overloading of their respective memory banks.

Yet this would be a lame excuse for them forgetting about – or seeking to minimise – the existence and crucial importance of the letters exchanged on 14 April 2004 between President Bush and Israel’s then Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, who died recently after languishing in a coma for seven years.

These letters enabled courageous and highly dangerous decisions being taken by Sharon to kick start President Bush’s stalled 2003 Road Map – whose goal had been to end the Jewish-Arab conflict by 2005.

President Bush's letter provided the catalyst – and the political justification – for Israel unilaterally evacuating the entire Jewish population of 8000 from Gaza and withdrawing Israel’s army totally from there – without any preconditions or undertakings being sought from the Palestinian Authority.

The Presidential letter set out the framework that Bush would support in negotiations between Israel and the PLO – conditions that Obama cannot possibly now discard as Kerry finalises his own framework agreement.

President Bush’s letter clearly – and unambiguously – assured Sharon that;

1. The borders of any Palestinian Arab State would not encompass the entire West Bank despite successive Arab leaders having demanded this outcome for the previous 37 years,

2. Jewish towns and villages in the West Bank would be incorporated into the borders of Israel

3. The Arabs would have to forego their demand to be given the right to allow millions of Arabs to emigrate to Israel and

4. Israel’s existence as a Jewish State would be non-negotiable

Bush's commitments to Sharon were approved – almost unanimously – by both the US House of Representatives and the Senate.

It didn't take too long however for these Congress-endorsed commitments to be downplayed by Bush and his advisors.

In an editorial published on 14 May 2008, former Jerusalem Post editor David Horovitz revealed the extent of the American resistance to remaining bound by President Bush's 2004 letter following a meeting with Bush in the White House with a group of Israeli journalists:

“Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, however, has been known to minimise the significance of this four-year-old letter. Just last week, for instance, she told reporters that the 2004 letter “talked about realities at that time. And there are realities for both sides….

Bush’s National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley has also given briefings to the effect that Israel had tried to overstate the importance of a rather vague letter, which was issued at a time when Sharon was seeking to bolster support for the pullout from Gaza.

And in answering my question, Bush did not at first even realise that I was referring to the 2004 letter. Hadley, who was also in the Oval Office, had to prompt him. “Okay, the letters,” the president then said, remembering.”

This was far worse and more sinister than mere memory loss. An attempt was being made – as early as 2008 – to renege on America’s clear and unequivocal commitments given to Israel as the price for Israel’s total evacuation of Gaza.

Israel had already paid a high price relying on Bush’s Congress-endorsed letter. Gaza had become a de facto terrorist State – with Hamas firmly entrenched as the governing authority.

Israel had – since its evacuation of Gaza in 2005 – been subjected to a sustained barrage of rockets and mortars fired indiscriminately into Israeli population centres from Gaza by a bewildering variety of terrorist groups and sub-groups who would have had no chance of operating so freely from Gaza if the Israeli Army had remained there.

Israel’s Prime Minister Ehud Olmert – who succeeded Sharon – had neither forgotten nor overlooked the critical significance of President Bush’s letter when agreeing to resume negotiations with the Palestinian Authority in 2007.

At the international conference held in Annapolis in November 2007 to announce a breakthrough in the resumption of those negotiations, Olmert told Bush and the world leaders gathered there that:

“The negotiations will be based on previous agreements between us, U.N. Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338, the road map and the April 14, 2004 letter of President Bush to the Prime Minister of Israel.”

The subsequent failure of those negotiations can be directly attributed to the Palestinian Authority's refusal to countenance the Bush commitments made to Sharon.

 As Obama gets ready to approve Kerry's framework agreement, he and Kerry need to have their memory banks updated to remind them of the importance of honouring Bush's commitments.

Any attempt by Obama and Kerry to resile from or circumvent Bush’s Congress-endorsed commitments to Sharon will torpedo any prospects for success in the current negotiations – leaving Obama and Kerry with no one but themselves to blame for bringing the current negotiations to an ignominious end.

The idea that any American President would not consider himself bound by the written commitments of a former President – as endorsed by Congress – would undermine America's very democratic foundations.

Disavowing the Bush commitments would prejudice the integrity of American diplomacy world wide
 – ensuring any political decisions by the current administration would not be worth the paper they are written on.

Sharon has left behind a bitter pill – which Obama and Kerry must reluctantly swallow.

Congress will be there to make sure they do.'