Last week, Der Spiegel interviewed Mahmoud Abba, president of the Palestinian Authority. (h/t Bookworm Room) The way the interview was presented was with a question: how many lies did Abbas tell?
I didn’t go over the interview with a fine toothed comb, but one of his answers stuck out right away.
SPIEGEL: Netanyahu’s predecessor Ehud Olmert made you the best offer: The establishment of a Palestinian state on far more than 90 percent of the West Bank, a division of Jerusalem and the return of a few thousand refugees to Israel. Why did you reject it?
Abbas: I didn’t reject it. Olmert resigned from office because of his personal problems.
Except Abbas most certainly rejected Olmert’s offer. A contemporaneous account tells us:
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Tuesday rejected an Israeli peace proposal, which included withdrawal from 93 percent of the West Bank, because it does not provide for a contiguous Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital.
Nabil Abu Rdainah, Abbas’s spokesman, told the official Palestinian news agency WAFA that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s plan showed a “lack of seriousness.”
MEMRI translated this account from the PA’s chief negotiator Saeb Erekat:
“Let me recount two historical events, even if I am revealing a secret. On July 23, 2000, at his meeting with President Arafat in Camp David, President Clinton said: ‘You will be the first president of a Palestinian state, within the 1967 borders – give or take, considering the land swap – and East Jerusalem will be the capital of the Palestinian state, but we want you, as a religious man, to acknowledge that the Temple of Solomon is located underneath the Haram Al-Sharif.’
“Yasser Arafat said to Clinton defiantly: ‘I will not be a traitor. Someone will come to liberate it after 10, 50, or 100 years. Jerusalem will be nothing but the capital of the Palestinian state, and there is nothing underneath or above the Haram Al-Sharif except for Allah.’ That is why Yasser Arafat was besieged, and that is why he was killed unjustly.
“In November 2008… Let me finish… [Israeli prime minister Ehud] Olmert, who talked today about his proposal to Abu Mazen, offered the 1967 borders, but said: ‘We will take 6.5% of the West Bank, and give in return 5.8% from the 1948 lands, and the 0.7% will constitute the safe passage, and East Jerusalem will be the capital, but there is a problem with the Haram and with what they called the Holy Basin.’ Abu Mazen too answered with defiance, saying: ‘I am not in a marketplace or a bazaar. I came to demarcate the borders of Palestine – the June 4, 1967 borders – without detracting a single inch, and without detracting a single stone from Jerusalem, or from the holy Christian and Muslim places.’ This is why the Palestinian negotiators did not sign…”
Aside from his paranoid delusion that Arafat was killed, this is fascinating, in that it makes clear that Abbas didn’t run out of time, but, as the interviewer stated: he rejected the offer. The interview could have been better, as the interviewer failed to follow up. But his questions were informed and the only answers Abbas had were lies.
Only regarding Israel would a powerless, violence promoting Holocaust denier be portrayed as a moderate peacemaker.
Crossposted on Soccer Dad.
And, again, the denial that the Temple Mount has any Jewish significance. No one suggested he turn over custody of it or even allow Jews free access to it, simply he was asked to acknowledge the connection. And that a Palestinian leader will not and cannot do, because their media constantly insist that there is no unique Jewish connection to Jerusalem.
But it’s the Jews who are intransigent and an obstacle to peace.
And, again, someone should ask him why the June 3, 1967 borders are sacred. Not one Arab state thought so on that date; the unanimous stance was that they were merely cease-fire lines that marked where the Arabs had chosen to stop fighting for the nonce, with the struggle to extinguish the Zionist entity to be resumed at an opportune time.
Der Spiegel at least asks a couple of questions but pressing enough to reveal for its readers the mendacity of the Palestinians–well, maybe next year.