The Map Is On The Wall: Arafat Wants No Part Of ‘Peaceful Co-Existence’ With Israel, Must Get No More U.S. Aid Until He Does

(Washington, D.C.): Fifty years ago
this month, a converted cruise ship
dubbed the S.S. Exodus 1947 left
France in the hope of securing refuge in
Palestine for the more than 4,500
Holocaust survivors crammed onboard.
Arabs vehemently opposed such immigration
and the prospect that it would help
create a Jewish State in the Holy Land,
prompting the British government to use
extreme measures to thwart the Exodus’
mission of mercy.

A powerful documentary aired last
Sunday by the Public Broadcasting System
recounted the unintended effects of
Britain’s actions against the passengers
and crew of this vessel — including
murderous violence and forced
repatriation to a Germany that had only
recently been prevented from completing
the annihilation of the Jews: The United
States and other nations were shamed into
agreeing to a partitioning of Palestine
by the United Nations. Approximately 20
percent of British Mandate Palestine was
to be set aside for a Jewish homeland;
the remainder, including all of present
day Jordan, would be retained by the
Arabs.

The Arab world found even this
apportionment unacceptable and, in 1948,
went to war against the newly declared
State of Israel in the hope of driving
the Jews into the sea. Fortunately, the
Arab armies were unable to accomplish
this goal through force of arms, either
on that occasion or in four subsequent
wars aimed at destroying Israel.

Plus Ça Change…

This is of more than historical
interest. The sad current reality
is that Palestinian Arabs are no more
reconciled to a Jewish State in their
midst today than they were fifty years
ago — a fact that bears
directly on the prospects for peace in
the region and for U.S. policy toward
Yasser Arafat’s Palestinian Authority.

A ten-minute videotape sitting in the
in-boxes of every Member of Congress as
they returned from the 4^th of
July recess documents the repeated use of
a crude, but unmistakable, symbol of the
PLO’s ultimate objective: a map
of Palestine that encompasses all of the
territory of the State of Israel.
Whether displayed as part of the uniforms
of employees of the Palestinian
Authority, as backdrops for Palestinian
television broadcasts and for officially
sponsored public performances or as
memorials to the “martyrs of the
Intefada,” the message is clear. The
Palestinian Arabs’ goal remains the
“liberation” of the entirety of
Palestine.

While the videotape circulated by two
New Jersey Congressmen, Republican
Jim Saxton and Democrat Robert
Andrews, has many vivid scenes
— including Arafat’s calls to jihad
(holy war) against Israel, his eulogizing
of “heroes” like Yahya Ayyash,
the Hamas terrorist known as “the
Engineer,” and his incitement of
Palestinian police against Israelis —
perhaps the most appalling involves one
of these maps. It is a photograph
of President Clinton’s Middle East envoy
Dennis Ross meeting with Arafat in his
office with the image of Palestine
without Israel prominently displayed in
the background.

U.S. Policy: ‘See No Evil’
in Arafat

Whereas the U.S. government fifty
years ago came to be a leading force
behind the creation of the State of
Israel, today — in the name of pursuing
the so-called “Middle East peace
process” — it seems to be turning a
blind eye toward abiding Arab enmity to
the very existence of the Jewish State.
Worse yet, the Clinton Administration
could reasonably be construed as endorsing
such sentiments.

After all, its senior representatives
are not only seen meeting with Arafat
beneath a map that gives lie to any
suggestion that the Palestinian Arabs are
committed to peaceful co-existence with
Israel. Administration officials like
Ross and Martin Indyk,
the outgoing U.S. Ambassador to Israel
and highly controversial nominee
to become Assistant Secretary of State
for Near East Affairs, are also proposing
effectively to reward Arafat for conduct
consistent with the “Plan of
Phases” — a strategy adopted by the
PLO in 1974 for using diplomacy to
acquire territory from Israel that could
be used to launch the ultimate campaign
for the destruction of the Jewish State
— by urging Congress to allow hundreds
of millions in U.S. tax dollars to
continue to flow to the Palestinian
Authority.

The Bottom Line

The issue will come to a head shortly.
By the end of July, Congress must
decide whether to reauthorize the Middle
East Peace Facilitation Act (MEPFA).
This legislation was adopted in the heady
days following the White House signing
ceremony for the Oslo I accords and
permits the executive branch to waive
myriad prohibitions on U.S. dealings with
the PLO and to extend financial
assistance to the Palestinian Authority.
Clearly, such authority cannot
responsibly be extended in the face of
abundant evidence of Arafat’s malign
intent without signaling at a minimum
indifference to it — if not a de
facto endorsement of it.

Consequently, Congress should,
at the very least, prohibit further U.S.
aid to the Palestinian Authority until
such time as its President formally and
publicly renounces and terminates all
official production, dissemination and
use of maps of the Middle East or
depictions of Palestine which do not
clearly reflect the sovereign boundaries
of pre-1967 Israel. Importantly,
Melvyn Dow, president of the
influential American Israel Public
Affairs Committee, put it very
well in his address to the organization’s
annual policy conference last April:

“It is the
responsibility of [the
Palestinian Authority’s] leaders
to encourage and nurture a desire
among their people for peaceful
co-existence. This means
there should be no incitement to
violence by speeches given in
Arabic. It means that terrorist
murderers like Yahya Ayyash —
the late Hamas operative who
designed and built terrorist
bombs, must not be honored as
‘martyrs.’ Fulfillment
of these obligations means that
maps on PLO stationery and police
uniforms must not show a proposed
‘Palestine’ absorbing and
eliminating Israel.”

The United States government must clearly
demonstrate that it remains on the side
of those like the passengers aboard the Exodus
1947, who recognized the need for a
secure homeland for the Jews, and
steadfastly opposes those who would deny
them that place in Israel.

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