When they talk to Arabic-speaking audiences, a different message about terror and a two-state solution

...Shaath's exhortations to violence over the years have had little impact on the public relations people at University of Pennsylvania, Shaath's alma mater, who wrote of Shaath that he "has devoted decades his life working toward peace between the Israelis and Palestinians" ["A Palestinian Voice for Peace", Wharton School, 2007]. We're guessing they don't speak Arabic.

Arnold/Frimet Roth..
This Ongoing War..
16 February '17..

While impassioned speeches about a "two state solution" to the Arab/Israel conflict remain in the air, we think it's useful to publicize the views of one of the most central figures in the Palestinian Arab political firmament.

We're speaking about Nabil Ali Muhammad Shaath, also known as Abu Rashid, who has been the foreign minister of Palestinian Authority (between April 2003 and February 2005, the first person to occupy that office), a cabinet minister in the Palestinian Authority regime, the Acting Prime Minister of the Palestinian National Authority, a member of Fatah's Central Committee and currently the Commissioner of the Fatah Department of International Relations (whose website, we see , has been hacked, evidently by pro-Israel vandals).

Shaath has established himself as an important Palestinian leader with close ties to European and other governments. He maintains a strong relationship with President Abbas but is viewed by a large part of the Palestinian public as corrupt. Still, he has never having spent time in prison, unlike most Fatah Central Committee members. He has developed a substantial fortune and owns an excellent collection of Palestine stamps. [Fatah Central Committee Profiles, Washington Institute for Near East Policy, 2015]

Shaath is a figure of top-level seniority. He's also well-educated, having gotten both a masters degree and a doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania. The consulting firm he established in the mid-seventies, TEAM International, is well-known and successful. What he says has significance.

(Continue to Full Post)

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

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You must be kidding. Sha’ath simply makes things up?

“We have always said that if you don’t hear news about the talks from senior U.S. officials, you can’t count on it being reliable,” Marie E. Harf, a State Department spokeswoman, said in an e-mailed statement. “This is a good example.”

Elliott Abrams..
Pressure Points..
10 September '13..

Today’s New York Times carries an interesting story about the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations being fostered by Secretary of State Kerry. Basically, Sha’ath has made a claim that American officials are politely denying:

Signs of strain emerged Monday around the nascent Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, as a senior Palestinian official said Secretary of State John Kerry had “guaranteed us in writing” that negotiations would start from the 1967 lines, and American officials suggested he was not telling the truth. Nabil A. Shaath, the Palestinian commissioner for international relations, said the Palestinians had agreed to enter the talks only because of the guarantee. He declined to provide a copy, but when asked if it was signed by Mr. Kerry personally, said: “Absolutely. We wouldn’t have done it without this.”

But American officials denied there was such a document, which would have been a significant gesture to the Palestinians and could have enraged Israel. “We have always said that if you don’t hear news about the talks from senior U.S. officials, you can’t count on it being reliable,” Marie E. Harf, a State Department spokeswoman, said in an e-mailed statement. “This is a good example.”

This is not the first time that Sha’ath has invented claims about the United States. In 2005, he made several such statements to the BBC:

The Sad Story of Palestinian “Leadership”

Elliott Abrams..
Pressure Points..
30 November '12..

Nabil Sha’ath has been a top Palestinian official for decades, serving as foreign minister, ambassador to the UN, planning minister, and in many other posts. He has been in the Fatah Party Central Committee and the Palestine Legislative Council. He accompanied Yasser Arafat to the United Nations as early as 1974. He was for years a key negotiator with Israel, and was a central figure in the PLO’s delegation at the Madrid Conference. My own experience with him was in 2003, when he was part of a Palestinian delegation to Washington. There he was one of several Palestinian Authority (PA) leaders who met with President Bush. Afterwards, Sha’ath told the press the following:

President Bush said to all of us: ‘I’m driven with a mission from God. God would tell me, George, go and fight those terrorists in Afghanistan. And I did, and then God would tell me, George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq… And I did. And now, again, I feel God’s words coming to me, Go get the Palestinians their state and get the Israelis their security, and get peace in the Middle East. And by God I’m gonna do it.’

As the White House said at the time, this was a complete fabrication. No other Palestinian who met with the President made such a claim, and Sha’ath was of course never alone with the President. It was simply false, start to finish. In the aftermath, the PA leaders were told not to bring Sha’ath to Washington in future visits because no one would see him. From 2003 to 2008 he stayed away, but I am told he has been around again in the last four years under a different U.S. president. If that is accurate it was a mistake for the Obama administration, for the problem with Sha’ath was not that he had insulted George Bush but that he had demonstrated he was simply untrustworthy.

Sha’ath is back in the news. He was a member of the Palestinian delegation to the UN last week, has just published an op-ed in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, and went to Gaza right after the recent fighting to give a speech that MEMRI reported.

Here are some of the things he said to Israelis on November 29:

Shameful anti-Israel propaganda piece runs at the Daily Telegraph

Robin Shepherd..
The Commentator..
01 November '12..

If I were to write a point by point refutation of former PLO foreign minister Nabeel Shaath's screed in today's Telegraph I'd be here all day.

Suffice it to say that it's the standard Palestinian cocktail of falsehoods, half-truths and omissions; the Palestinian victim complex in all its shabby dishonesty. But let me just focus on two key elements which tell you everything you need to know about the real reason that, after all these decades, the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians endures.

Shaath's piece sets out to persuade Britain that it should back a forthcoming Palestinian bid to get some sort of recognition as a state at the United Nations. The whole exercise is a classic piece of Palestinian subterfuge so they can avoid direct talks with Israel. But Shaath's aim in his piece is to give Britain a good telling off for trying to discourage the Palestinians from adopting such a course of action. On the contrary, we should be right behind them.

He says: "It is unacceptable that today, 65 years after the partition of Palestine, the UK has recognised the state of Israel but not the state of Palestine.... For a country with the historic responsibility that the UK carries towards Palestine, a victim of British colonialism, this should be the least we can expect in order to repair decades of occupation and exile."

Who does this guy think he is in admonishing British foreign policy as "unacceptable"?

And, more importantly, when will the Palestinians ever start telling the truth about their own past? On November 29, 1947 they were offered a Palestinian state under the UN partition plan passed by the General Assembly. They rejected it and opted for war and violence, while the Jewish/Israeli side accepted it.

Typical of Shaath's writing are sentences like this in which he refers to the, "Palestinian catastrophe of 1948, during which approximately two thirds of the Palestinian people, Christians and Muslims, were expelled to become refugees..."

That is just a flat out lie. Most of the displaced Palestinians were not expelled at all, they either simply fled the war zones to save themselves and their families or, deliberately and calculatingly, moved out of the way to allow the Arab armies in to slaughter the Jews, or "drive them into the sea" as they so quaintly described the mooted genocide.

IMRA - Nabil Shaath to IMRA: PA will take complete responsibility for Gaza - denies rockets are there

Dr. Aaron Lerner..
IMRA..
06 February '12..

In a telephone conversation today held several hours after announcement of the agreement to form a Hamas-Fatah government, senior Palestinian Official Nabil Sha’ath told IMRA that the unity government will take complete responsibility for the management of the Gaza Strip and West Bank and not just preparations for the elections.

IMRA asked Sha'ath if that responsibility included responsibility for security matters and Sha'ath responded that it would be responsible for all matters.

IMRA asked Sha'ath if the unity government would be responsible for the thousands of rockets and missiles now deployed in the Gaza Strip.

Sha'ath replied: "What missiles? This is propaganda. What about all the Israeli missiles?"

IMRA noted that Hamas is proud of the missiles they possess and that they have released video clips of launchings.

Sha'ath ended the conversation.

Link: http://www.imra.org.il/story.php3?id=55615


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Daphne Anson - Fatah "Moderate" Speaks With Forked Tongue

Daphne Anson..
11 January '12..

In an article entitled "Voices Of Palestine: Nabil Shaath" ​Arnold Ahlert, a former columnist on the New York Post, examines the evident double-speak of Fatah's ostensibly "moderate" head of foreign relations.

Explains Arnold Ahlert:

'Despite all misinformation to the contrary, the futility of negotiations between the Arab-Palestinians and the Israelis hinges on the Palestinians’ categorical rejection of Israel’s right to exist; certainly not as a Jewish state. Second, the Palestinians remain steadfastly committed to the annihilation of Israel and its replacement with an Islamic Arab Judenrein, as most recently represented by the attempted reconciliation between Fatah and the genocidal terrorist organization Hamas. Hamas’s founding charter not only calls for the destruction of Israel, but also the genocide of all Jews.

Although the fact fails to be acknowledged by some, the so-called “moderate” Fatah party shares Hamas’s objectives, and Shaath’s own words expose this common cause. ”The Palestinian Authority will never recognize Israel as a Jewish state,” he declared on September 8, 2010. “Such a declaration would directly threaten the Muslims and Christians in Israel and prevent Palestinian refugees, who left their homes and villages a number of decades ago, from being granted the right to return to them,” he added. The “right of return” that Shaath mentions is little more than a tactic to demographically destroy the Jewish character of Israel.

On July 13, 2011, Shaath made where he stands even clearer in an ANB TV (Lebanon) interview. (This was when hopes were still high among Palestinians that they could get the United Nations to recognize their independence unilaterally). “At the end of the day, we want to exert pressure on Israel in order to force it to recognize us and leave our country,” he said. “This is our long-term goal.”

The full article can be read here

It would seem, then, that the sentiments in this poster, dating to the start of the PLO, are as alive as they were back in 1964.

Link: http://daphneanson.blogspot.com/2012/01/fatah-moderate-speaks-with-forked.html


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IMRA - Ask Abbas at UN if he will release Shalit after unification

Dr. Aaron Lerner
IMRA
Weekly Commentary
22 September '11


Palestinian terrorists kidnap and hold Israelis as hostages.

A legitimate Palestinian governing body doesn’t.

This is nothing new.

Even at the most strained points of relations, the Ramallah PA never traded Israelis.

That’s not to say that they didn’t murder Israelis. But it was never an official policy that they openly adopted and implemented.

That’s why I was frankly stunned last 25 May when Senior Palestinian (Fatah/PA) official Nabil Sha'ath told me in a telephone interview [ http://youtu.be/ppziLJTuaCA for the audio ] that after unification the PA will be responsible for GIlad Shalit and will continue negotiating a trade with Israel. In fact, he didn’t expect the PA to be any easier in its demands than Hamas has been to date.

Mahmoud Abbas apparently hasn’t taken an official position on this issue yet.

It is time to put him on the spot.

Because the response to this question regarding Shalit serves is a simple intuitive litmus test of the true nature and intentions of the respondent.

There are scores – if not hundreds - of journalists who will have the opportunity in the coming hours and days in New York to ask Mahmoud Abbas if he intends to free Shalit if he succeeds in unifying PA authority in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

And they even have Nabil Sha’ath’s response to the same question available at the click of a mouse for background.

This is a story available on a silver platter.

Will there be any takers?

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Fresnozionism - Revealing nonsense from Nabil Shaath

Fresnozionism.org
19 September '11

http://fresnozionism.org/2011/09/revealing-nonsense-from-nabil-shaath/


About six weeks ago I caught PLO official Nabil Shaath (former PM of the Palestinian Authority) explaining that the Palestinians do not, and will not, accept the idea of two states for two peoples.

Shaath gave an interview on Army Radio yesterday and made three notable statements:

1. Asked why the Palestinian leadership refuses to recognize Israel as the state of the Jewish people, Shaath responded that the Jewish people, on their own, decided “that they have really built their state that is not only for the Jewish people because 22 percent of Israelis are not Jewish.”

Jewish tradition is clear about the need to treat the ‘stranger that resides in your midst’ justly. It is therefore possible to have a Jewish state, a homeland for the Jewish people, whose national symbols and national character are Jewish, which nevertheless has some non-Jewish inhabitants who are treated fairly. Indeed, it would not be a truly ‘Jewish’ state otherwise!

But Shaath cannot understand this, because his idea of a national state is one that will expel everyone who is not a Palestinian Arab.

2. Presented with statements attributed to the Palestinian Authority envoy to the United States last week that a Palestinian state would be without Jews, Shaath said that Maen Areikat “never said ‘Jewish free,’” but rather “that at the beginning of our peace, we want to separate.”

But Areikat did say, quite explicitly, that Jews would not be permitted to live in ‘Palestine’, in an interview in Tablet magazine last year. And he said it in the context of explaining a similar statement about ‘separation’. He was speaking in English on both occasions. He was not misquoted, quoted out of context or mistranslated.

3. Asked whether settlers would be allowed to live in a future Palestinian state, [Shaath] added, “If [settlers] decide to accept Palestinian citizenship and buy the territory that they have and live as individual citizens, then why not?”

Why not? Well, for one thing, because PA residents are forbidden by law — on pain of death — to sell land to Jews.

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IRR - Palestinians Push for 1947 lines - not 1967 lines:Once again, the UN Partition Plan for Palestine

Frank Meir Loewenberg

Frank Meir Loewenberg
Israel Resource Review
WinnipegJewishReview.com
08 August '11





http://www.winnipegjewishreview.com/article_detail.cfm?id=1417&sec=
1&title=Palestinians_Push_for_1947_lines_%EF%BF%BD_not_1967_lines:
Once_again,_the_UN_Partition_Plan_for_Palestine

A demand to implement the UN Partition Plan of 1947 is one of the options the Palestinians are studying in the wake of Washington’s decision to veto their request for statehood in September, according to Nabil Shaath, ex-Palestinian Foreign Minister and now Fatah commissioner for international relations. He refers to UN Resolution 181 on the partition of Palestine that was adopted by the General Assembly on November 29, 1947, with 33 votes in favor, 13 against, 10 abstentions and one absent. All of the Arab states voted against the resolution. At the time, the partition plan was accepted by the Jews of Palestine, but rejected by the Arabs in Palestine and the Arab states. While the Jews of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem danced in the streets to express their joy about becoming a state, their neighbors, seven Arab states, massed their armies on the borders and within days attempted to conquer all of the area. Their attempt was only partially successful - they conquered the area now known as the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem, but Israel was able to stop the invading armies and secure a large area for its state.

Now, 64 years later, the Palestinians have second thoughts about the Partition Plan which they totally rejected in 1947. However, Dr. Shaat should carefully consider what will be the final result of any such demand to implement the partition plan. UN Resolution 181 called for the establishment of independent Arab and Jewish States in Palestine and an international corpus separatum in Jerusalem. It is crucial to consider all of the provisions of the Partition Plan. Dr. Shaath should pay special attention to three of these.

1. A Jewish State - The United Nations Partition Plan unambiguously calls for the establishment of a Jewish State. This seems to run counter to Dr. Shaat's earlier statement that the Palestinian Authority will never recognize Israel as a Jewish state, even if it has a Jewish majority (Haaretz 08 September 2010). This provision is also contrary to the Palestinian Authority's stated position that it will never recognize Israel as a Jewish state. Thus, Nabil Abu Rdainah, spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, said the "the issue of the Jewishness of the state has nothing to do" with our return to peace talks. (Haaretz 12 October 2010)

2. Jews in the Arab State - The Partition Plan specifically states, "No discrimination of any kind shall be made between the inhabitants on the ground of race, religion, language or sex." This means, among other things, that "Arabs and Jews who...reside in Palestine... shall...become citizens of the State in which they are resident and enjoy full civil and political rights." Yet Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has repeatedly made it clear that there is no room for Jews in the future state called Palestine. For example, he said, "I will never allow a single Israeli to live among us on Palestinian land.” (The official Egyptian Maan News Agency, 28 July 2010) And a year later he again said, “We have frankly said, and always will say: If there is an independent Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital, we won’t agree to the presence of one Israeli in it.” (American Thinker, 28 July 2011)

3. Bethlehem - Bethlehem is a thriving Arab city with a population of about 30,000 people, located approximately 5 miles south of Jerusalem. It is the capital of the Bethlehem District of the Palestinian National Authority and one of the centers of Palestinian Arab culture. Is Dr. Shaat aware that when UN Resolution 181 calls for the establishment of a a corpus separatum under a special international regime for the City of Jerusalem, it defined the international area to include the present municipality of Jerusalem plus the surrounding villages. The "surrounding villages" listed in the resolution include Abu Dis, Shu'fat, Ein Karim, and Bethlehem. Two years after the Partition Plan resolution was adopted, the UN General Assembly reiterated its commitment to the internationalization of Jerusalem and again defined the area of the corpus separatum to include Bethlehem (Resolution 303 of 9 December 1949). Is Dr. Shaat really willing to give up Arab control of Bethlehem?

No doubt, all this is not news for Dr. Shaat who uses the demand for a return to the Partition Plan as an experienced poker player who has a weak hand would bluff his way through the game.

Frank. M. Loewenberg is a professor emeritus at Bar-Ilan-University in Israel. He was born in Germany and now lives, together with his wife, in Efrat, a town 22 kilometers south of Jerusalem. At the age of 12 he immigrated together with his parents and brothers to the United States. He is a graduate of Harvard University (A.B.), Columbia University (M.S.), and Wayne State University (Ph.D.). He immigrated to Israel in 1971 and became a professor of social work at Tel Aviv University and Bar-Ilan University. He is the author of many books and articles in professional journals.


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Rubin - Palestinian “Moderate” (He Is In Relative Terms) Shows Why Real Peace is Impossible At Present

Barry Rubin
Rubin Reports
pajamasmedia.com
27 July '11

http://pajamasmedia.com/barryrubin/2011/07/27/palestinian-moderate-he-is-in-relative-terms-shows-why-real-peace-is-impossible-at-present/

Nabil Shaath has given a fascinating and insightful interview that is well worth analyzing. But first let’s take a look at who Shaath is.

Supposedly, he is the archetypal Palestinian moderate. There was a time when the Western media ridiculed the Israeli declaration that he was a secret Fatah member. When Israel agreed to negotiate with non-PLO Palestinians, the PLO put his name forward although it knew, of course, that he was no such thing. Peace processors ridiculed Israel’s refusal to accept him.

Since 1994, he has held several high positions. He has been credibly accused, by Fatah militants who criticized Yasir Arafat’s corruption, of taking a lot of Palestinian Authority money for himself and his family.

Nevertheless, it is reasonable to call Shaath as moderate as anyone in the PA’s leadership, more moderate than the Fatah leadership. And what does Shaath say in an interview on July 13, 2011:

Nabil Shaath: The recognition of a [Palestinian] state…will make many things possible in the future. Eventually, we will be able to sign bilateral agreements with states, and this will enable us to exert pressure on Israel. At the end of the day, we want to exert pressure on Israel, in order to force it to recognize us and to leave our country. This is our long-term goal.”

In other words, the goal is not to come to a deal with Israel but to gain recognition from other countries which will pressure Israel and force it to give the PA what it wants. (Incidentally, this is pretty much Yasir Arafat’s strategy from 30 years ago, though he was using a higher level of violence in that process.)

But what does the phrase “leave our country” mean as a “long-term goal?” Does “leave our country” mean just the West Bank and east Jerusalem (pre-1967 borders without mutually agreed swaps) or wiping Israel off the map and replacing it with an Arab Muslim state? It’s ambiguous, isn’t it? So perhaps Shaath is a moderate (as advertised in the Western media? In this case, though, Shaath gives us an answer.

Clip and Save: Senior Fatah Official: IDF deployment prevents us from exercising our right to launch armed attacks against Israel

Dr. Aaron Lerner
IMRA
05 April '10

[Dr. Aaron Lerner - IMRA:

Hat's off to Khaled Abu Toameh for providing the readers of The Jerusalem Post with what is probably the most stunning and significant report relating to the Palestinians this year.

Too bad the folks at the Post who wrote the headline that goes with the story seemed to miss the point.

Here we have none other than "moderate" senior Fatah official Nabil Shaath explaining that the "moderate" Palestinian Authority's "moderate" security forces have every right to launch an attack today against Israel (using, among other things, their American weapons) but that they can't because the deployment of IDF makes this unworkable.

Yes.

That's what he says.

Follow his words: "... he stressed that this does not mean that the Palestinians don't have the right to launch an armed intifada "against an armed occupation and an armed settlement on Palestinian lands...obviously, we have the right"

What's stopping the "moderate" PA from trying to slaughter Israelis?

Because it is not a nice thing to do to murder Israelis?

No.

Its because "According to Shaath, the option of an armed intifada under the current circumstances, where Israel "fully occupies the West Bank and is besieging the Gaza Strip, is impossible."

So we have some interesting policy question:

#1. President Obama is pushing PM Netanyahu to pull back the IDF from various locations in the West Bank as a gesture to the same "moderate" PA that is complaining that it would like to launch armed attacks against Israel but can't because the deployment of IDF forces makes it impossible.

#2. Would these redeployments make the "armed intifada" possible?]

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Fatah: We want a peaceful intifada
By KHALED ABU TOAMEH The Jerusalem Post
02/04/2010 02:32
http://www.jpost.com/MiddleEast/Article.aspx?id=172299

The new "popular intifada" that Fatah is planning in the West Bank won't be an armed one, Nabil Shaath, a senior Fatah official, said on Thursday.

Shaath's clarification came a day after he and some of his colleagues in Fatah called on Palestinians to escalate the "popular resistance" in protest against the settlements, the West Bank security barrier and the decision to build new homes in east Jerusalem.

"Apparently the Palestinian leaderships in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip are in control of the situation to make sure that the intifada is not transformed into an armed confrontation," Shaath explained. "This was not the case during the second intifada."

(Read full article)
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