Plan for Arab-Israeli Reconciliation
- The P.A.I.R. Initiative -

******** PART 1 ********
"The Historical and Factual Background of the Conflict"

One of the major obstacles to peace between Jews, Arabs and Muslims, and one major reason why no solution to the problems of the Palestinian Arabs has been implemented, is that historic truths are being ignored and distorted. The first component of the P.A.I.R Initiative must therefore be to communicate the actual historical background of the conflict, and to correct the misconceptions, the distortions, and the outright lies that advocates of war against Israel and the Jewish people have perpetuated over sixty years, in order to justify  an  irrational and pointless vendetta.

I-A The Land of Israel was the national home of the Jewish People three thousand years ago.
I-B The Qur'an, the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Bible all confirm Jewish claims to the Land of Israel.
I-C How the Arabs/Muslims acquired ten million square miles of territory.
I-D There never was a State of Palestine. until very recently, There was no Palestinian people.
I-E The Peace That Almost Happened
I-F The League of Nations ratified an international Arab-Jewish agreement over eighty years ago
I-G Britain Betrays its Mandate
I-H Origins of the Palestinian Arab refugee problem
I-I Sixty long years of unrelenting Arab war against Israel
I-J The Palestinian terrorist organizations
I-J.1 Fatah
I-J.2 Hamas
I-J.3 Other Palestinian terrorist organizations
I-K Origins of the Israeli "occupation" of the "West Bank" and Gaza
I-L Israel has withdrawn from Over 90% of the territory it occupied in 1967, and has offered to withdraw from nearly all the remaining territory in return for peace. The Palestinian terrorist organizations have responded with more and more aggression.
I-M The Oslo accords
I-N What is the Roadmap?

I-A The Land of Israel was the national home of the Jewish People three thousand years ago.

The Jewish People have legitimate land claims. The Hebrew bible is the historical record of the Jewish People from the time of Abraham, some 4,000 years ago. The Israelites led by Moses formally became a Jewish nation at Mount Sinai thirty-three centuries ago when they received the divine Law of the holy Torah, including the Ten Commandments.

King David established Jerusalem as the capital of ancient Israel over 3,000 years ago. That event took place over fifteen hundred years before Mohammed was born and before the Arabs even set foot outside of Arabia. [link to a map showing Arabia and Jerusalem] King Solomon, the son of King David, built the First Temple in Jerusalem in ancient Israel which then existed as a fully sovereign nation. Later they were attacked, defeated and driven into the Babylonian exile from which they returned seventy years later to build their Second Temple under King Herod.

During the Roman occupation of the Land of Israel, about two thousand years ago, the Jews revolted against Roman domination. In the ensuing savage war lasting over three years the Jews sustained horrific loses, the Holy Temple was destroyed and Jerusalem was sacked. Most of the survivors were sold into slavery and ultimately driven into an exile lasting into modern times.

Some Jews always remained in the Land of Israel throughout the centuries. They survived conquests by multiple invading armies including those of European Christian Crusaders and Muslim jihads. The State of Israel is the Third Jewish Commonwealth existing on a small part of the holy land that G-d first promised to Abraham. Israel does not "occupy" one inch of land that is not theirs. Claims against Israel have no basis in law, history or theology. Those claims are not based upon equitable considerations because the Arab and Muslim nations combined occupy more than one thousand times the area controlled by Israel. They already possess far more than their fair share of land on this planet. During the past millennia many nations came and went; many boundaries were drawn and redrawn time and time again. However, the Jewish People remains eternally connected to that small sliver of holy land to which G-d assigned them. Acknowledging that truth can go a long way toward promoting peace and justice to that region. Contesting the right of the Jewish People to their holy land will create endless strife and suffering to that region and beyond.

It is not true, as so many Arabs and Muslims have been led to believe, that the Qur'an rejects Jewish claims to the Land of Israel/Palestine. In fact the Qur'an confirms Jewish claims to the land of Israel. Sheikh Prof. Abdul Hadi Palazzi, Secretary General of the Italian Muslim Association, has said the Jewish right to the Land of Israel is indeed inscribed in the Qur'an. He also traced how the original message of acceptance became perverted into one leading to implacable rejection and bloody conflict. The following verses from the Qur'an are but three examples supporting the Jewish right to the Land of Israel/Palestine.

"And thereafter We said to the children of Israel: ‘Dwell securely in the Promised Land. And when the last warning will come to pass, we will gather you together in a mingled crowd.’ " (Qur'an 17:104, The Night Journey)

"Remember Moses said to his people: "O my People! call in remembrance the favor of Allah unto you, when He produced prophets among you, made you kings, and gave you what He had not given to any other among the peoples." (Qur'an 5:20)

"O my people! enter the holy land which Allah hath assigned unto you; and turn not back ignominiously, for then will ye be overthrown, to your own ruin." (Qur'an 5:21)

I-C How the Arabs/Muslims acquired ten million square miles of territory.

Today’s maps show a vast Arab/Muslim area encompassing over fifty countries and spanning multiple continents, a situation which everyone accepts as unquestionable and legitimate. However, there was a time when Arabs occupied less than one tenth of their present domain. Mohammed, the founder of Islam, was born in Arabia some fourteen hundred years ago. It was only during the century following Mohammed’s teachings that Arabs embarked on a jihad to spread Islam and conquered vast areas of the Middle East, North Africa, parts of Europe and parts of Asia. In Mohammed’s time Arabia comprised less than one million square miles and contained multiple ethnic groups, including Christians and Jews. Mohammed’s Islamic conquest virtually eliminated non-Muslims from Arabia. Today the Islamic conquests extend over some ten million square miles. About half of that territory contains twenty-two Arab Muslim nations. The other half contains dozens of non-Arab Muslim nations.

The historic land of Israel [link to a map of the time] was conquered by the Muslims in the year 638, over five and a half centuries after the Jewish revolt against Rome was crushed and many Jews were expelled from their country.

Many Arab/Muslims today espouse the doctrine that any land conquered by Islam must forever remain Muslim. There are even some Muslims who argue for a Muslim re-conquest of Spain which was under Muslim rule centuries ago. Over ninety percent of present Arab/Muslim lands were acquired by Islamic conquest.

Before 1948, few Arab inhabitants of the area termed "Palestine" by the British colonial authorities during the 1918-1948 period called themselves "Palestinians."

The name Palestine originated with the Romans almost two thousand years ago following their crushing of the Jewish revolt. It was the Roman authorities’ intention to erase Jewish history from the Land of Israel. The name Palestine, derived from the ancient "Philistine" people, who had already disappeared by Roman times, was intended to replace the name" Judea." It only represented a geographical renaming and redistricting but never introduced a new nation or a new national identity

During four hundred years of Turkish rule in the region,, "Palestine" did not even exist as a geographic entity, let alone as a national or ethnic one. The Arabic-speaking inhabitants of the area viewed themselves as members of a particular tribe, and inhabitants of a particular village, as subjects of the Turkish Sultan, and above all as Muslims or Christians, as the case may be. They had no idea that they were "Palestinians" or even that such a place as "Palestine" existed.

During the period of British rule, between 1918 and 1948, Palestinian Arabs began to think of themselves as Arabs and as part of a larger Arab nation. But even then, few of the country’s Arab inhabitants called themselves "Palestinians."

Only after Israel’s founding in 1948, and the refugee "exodus" from portions of Palestine that became Israeli territory, did it become common for Arabs with origins in the Palestine Mandate territory to begin to refer to themselves as "Palestinians." They were encouraged to do this by the Arab League states, who saw the "Palestinian " identity as a way of developing a sense  grievance among the Palestinians toward Israel, and a way of encouraging them to wage a war of terrorism against the Jewish people in their old-new homeland, aimed at achieving an Arab reconquest of what had once been Arab or Muslim-ruled land. Arab leaders and propagandists also saw the "Palestinian" identity as a means of gaining sympathy for their anti-Israel war in the West. Instead of presenting the conflict as merely an effort to enable individual Arab families to return to former homes in what had become Israel, the Arab politicians and propagandists realized that it would attract more sympathy for the Arab cause in Europe, the United States and elsewhere to claim that a "Palestinian" nation had been dispossessed of their homeland, "Palestine," by Israel. Such a propaganda ploy made it possible for Arab leaders and spokesmen to claim that Israel needed to withdraw from Judea, Samaria and Gaza in order to make way for a "Palestinian" state, and that ultimately all of Israel should be converted into an Arab state, to be named "Palestine."

In order to preserve the Palestinian "identity," many Arab states refused to allow’ Palestinians ,"meaning anyone with ancestry in the former Palestine Mandate territory, to become citizens of the Arab states which they actually lived, and in which, in many cases, they were born.  In Lebanon, "Palestinians" are prevented by law from working in 69 different occupations and are forced to live in exclusively "Palestinian" refugee camps, rather than being allowed to integrate into the Lebanese population. Of course they are also denied the right to vote or to exercise any other citizenship rights, even if they were born in Lebanon and their parents were born there too, as is frequently the case. Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and numerous other Arab countries also deny the Palestinians citizenship, even if they were born in these countries.

Many Arab leaders have openly admitted that their refusal to grant the "Palestinians" citizenship rights in their actual countries of birth and residence is intended to keep them focused on their supposed "patriotic" Arab duty to wage war against Israel, in order to recover their "original" homes, lost or abandoned by their ancestors during the unsuccessful Arab assault on Israel in 1947-48. The failure of this aggression, and the founding of Israel, which occurred at the same time, is frequently referred to by Arab politicians as the "naqba," or "disaster. Palestinian Arabs are indoctrinated from birth with the idea that it is their sacred duty to fight for the "liberation" of "Palestine," the destruction of Israel (called "the Zionist entity,") and the reversal of the so-called "naqba," which supposedly was a shameful defeat suffered by their ancestors.

Palestinian Arabs continued, and still continue, to be ambivalent about how important and primary the "Palestinian" identity really is to them. The "Constitution" of the Palestinian terrorist organization Fatah, and the "Covenant" or "Charter" of its front organization, the PLO, assert that the Palestinian Arabs are part of a larger "Arab" nation, rather than an entirely separate nation in their own right. And the "Covenant" or "Charter" of the even more extreme Palestinian terrorist group Hamas asserts that Palestinian Arabs are part of a larger Islamic "nation" (ummah), and not a separate people. "Palestine" is regarded by the Hamas not as a separate country but as a tract of land owned by all Muslims as a religious trust (wakf), which the Palestinian Arabs are responsible for re-conquering on behalf of the entire Muslim world.

Some Palestinian leaders have been frank about viewing the "Palestinian" identity as essentially a propaganda ploy, aimed at justifying the conquest of Israel. These leaders say, in unguarded moments, that the Palestinian identity will disappear once the Arabs conquer Israel and then form a new super-state, uniting the entire Arab and/or Muslim worlds.

 During the period of British Mandatory rule from 1918 until Israel’s rebirth in 1948 the term "Palestinian" was used almost exclusively for the Jews who were reclaiming, resettling and revitalizing their ancient homeland after nearly twenty centuries of exile.  Following the re-birth of Israel the Palestinian Jews logically became known as Israelis. This presented an opportunity for hostile Arab leaders to appropriate the names, "Palestine" and "Palestinian". They thus created an artificial, and only partial and ambivalent, new national identity

For a brief period following WWI it appeared that both Arabs and Jews were poised to embark on a future of peace and prosperity. What went wrong?

The principal ‘roots’ of the current Arab-Israeli conflict are neither Arab nor Israeli but British. Following WWI, The League of Nations drew new boundaries for the Middle East. Arabs would gain sovereignty in multiple countries covering five million square miles. Jews would finally have a homeland in under one percent of that area.  Britain, the dominant regional power, was assigned, and accepted, a League of Nations Mandate to facilitate the establishment of the Jewish homeland in the region called Palestine.  Unfortunately, the British governments of the day sabotaged their own Mandate, thereby ruining prospects for peace between Arabs and Jews for several generations.

In 1919 the Arabs and the Jews were poised to embark on a peaceful and bright future as friends and neighbors in the Middle East. But it was the British government of Palestine that itself reneged on its commitments to the Jewish people, and in various ways incited the Arabs to oppose the Jewish presence, leading to anti-Jewish riots and eventually to all-out war.

At the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 His Royal Highness Emir Feisal Ibn Hussein, head of the Arab delegation and acting on behalf of the Arab Kingdom of Hejaz and all Arab peoples, warmly supported the Jewish return from exile in his letters to Jewish leaders Dr. Chaim Weizmann and Felix Frankfurter. The noble spirit exemplified by Feisal and Weizmann deserves to be publicized and rekindled as the basis for a just and lasting peace.

The errors of a colonial power in a past era of human history should not continue to be allowed to poison relations between Muslims, Arab Christians and Israelis. These errors should be recognized for what they were and "confined to the dustbin of history," where they will cease to be an obstacle to peace.

I-F The League of Nations ratified a Arab-Jewish agreement over eighty years ago.

An amicable, far-reaching and far-sighted agreement between Arabs and Jews was reached over eighty years ago. Had the terms of that agreement been faithfully implemented it would have provided a historic opportunity to establish an enduring peace and perhaps avoid the current Arab-Israeli conflict. Following WWI, a series of peace conferences were held by the victorious allies to draw new boundaries in the vast territory of the defeated Turkish Ottoman Empire, which had ruled over those lands for four hundred years. The newly formed League of Nations soon became involved in these negotiations, and issued "mandates" for future independent states in the region, to be temporarily governed by Britain and France as ‘mandatories," or trustees, for the soon-to-be-independent new nations.

The Arabs were promised sovereignty in a number of newly-created "countries" comprising about five million square miles. The Jews were initially promised a national home that was to include what is now Israel, the "West Bank", Gaza, and the Golan Heights and the territory of what later became the present Kingdom of Jordan. All of these territories comprised less than one percent of the area assigned to the Arabs. The Arab and Jewish delegations to the peace conferences were both in amicable agreement about the need and right of the Jews to a national homeland in Palestine, and expressed their anticipation of friendly cooperation in the future. The League of Nations strongly endorsed that idea with an internationally binding agreement to be known as the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine. England was assigned the responsibility for faithfully implementing that Mandate.

The Arabs received their promised territories but the Jews did not, because, Britain first modified the terms of the Palestine Mandate  which  was assigned to it, and later abandoned and defaulted on these terms altogether. Soon after accepting responsibility for the Palestine Mandate England began to incite Arab hostility against the Jews. In 1921 England detached three-fourths of the full Palestine Mandate territory and unilaterally created the Arab emirate Transjordan out of it.   This area, ruled by a nobleman from what is now called Saudi Arabia, evolved into the present Kingdom of Jordan with British sponsorship.  Britain also agreed with France to transfer the Golan Heights to French-controlled Syria. These massive restrictions on the territory of the Jewish National Home were accepted only after the fact by the Council of the League of Nations.

Later, in 1939, the British issued a "White Paper" drastically restricting future Jewish immigration to Palestine, just when the rise of the Nazi regime and the beginning of World War II made admission to Palestine an urgent necessity to save millions of Jewish lives, and promising that the entire country would become an Arab state within ten years. The League of Nations Mandates Commission rejected this unilateral British action as a violation of the terms of the Palestine Mandate.

Arab guerillas or terrorists under the leadership of Amin al-Husseini, who had been appointed Mufti of Jerusalem by the British, repeatedly organized riots against the Jews, in 1920, 1921, and 1929. These culminated in an all-out campaign of terrorism and guerilla war against the Jews from 1936 until 1939. Hundreds of Jews, nearly all civilians and including many children, were slaughtered.

Had Britain honored its original obligations under the Mandate, a Jewish State might have emerged prior to WWII, and in time to rescue many of those who ultimately perished in the Holocaust. That would also have produced a far stronger Israel and a less tempting target to her enemies, thus increasing the chances for peace.

 After World War II, the United Nations was formed as a successor to the League of Nations. Its charter guaranteed that the rights of peoples established in the League of Nations Mandates would remain in effect under the new international organization. One of these rights was the right of the Jewish people to a national home of their own in what was then called Palestine. However, in 1947, the United Nations General Assembly recommended partitioning remaining area  of the Jewish National Home (10,000 square miles, or about the size of New Hampshire) into a Jewish state and a second Arab state. Despite the whittling down in the proposed area of the Jewish homeland, the Jews nevertheless accepted this proposal  The Palestinian Arab leaders and the League of Arab States not only rejected it, but launched a full-scale military offensive, carried out by both Palestinian guerillas or terrorists and armed forces dispatched by six Arab states, against the Jewish inhabitants of the Palestine Mandate territory.

The British responded to the United Nations partition proposal by completely abandoning Palestine and its responsibilities under the Mandate. On the day that the British completed their withdrawal, the Jews proclaimed their reborn State of Israel, in accordance with the United Nations General Assembly resolution.  The withdrawing British refused to recognize the State of Israel, offered the Palestinian Arabs no assistance or encouragement to form a state, as recommended by the General Assembly resolution, and left no orderly government behind in the Arab populated areas of the country. On the other hand, the British gave military assistance to the Arab states that invaded Palestine and attacked Israel.

 The Jews defended themselves against overwhelming odds from the Palestinian guerilla/terrorist forces and the armies of the six invading Arab states. The proposed second Palestinian State was never formed, not because of Jewish objections, but because the Palestinian Arab leaders refused to organize and proclaim such a state. They even refused to cooperate with the United Nations Commission created to assist them in forming a Palestinian Arab state.

On instructions from their leaders, or in imitation to the behavior of the Palestinian Arab elite, which deserted the country en masse almost as soon as hostilities commenced, several hundred thousand Palestinian Arab residents evacuated the areas which were being contested by the opposing armies. This was the origin of the Palestinian refugee problem.

Even after the war of 1948, when Palestinian Arab guerillas or terrorists, joined by the armed forces of seven Arab states, attempted to strangle Israel in its crib, the entire Arab world has continued to wage war on Israel for sixty long years. Armistice agreements were signed by Israel and the Arab states in 1948, but the Arab governments insisted that these were only temporary military truces, not peace treaties, and that the borders established by these agreements were only ceasefire lines, not permanent borders between Israel and its neighbors. They asserted that a state of war between Israel and the Arab nations continued to exist despite these temporary ceasefire agreements.

Within less than a year the signing of the armistice agreements, Palestinian Arab guerillas or terrorists had begun conducting armed raids into Israel again. They have been conducting these raids ever since. Over the years, the Palestinian guerillas or terrorists have killed several thousand Israeli civilians and wounded or maimed thousands of others.

 The Arab states imposed a strict economic and diplomatic embargo against Israel. The Suez Canal, and on and off, an international waterway known as the Gulf of Aqaba or the Gulf of Eilat were closed to Israelis, thus making it nearly impossible for them to import oil. Even Western companies that did business with Israelis were boycotted. The Arab states provided financial aid, military training and propaganda encouragement to the Palestinian terrorists to conduct their armed incursions into Israel.  Israeli villages near the border with Syria were shelled almost continuously for years from the Syrian-controlled Golan Heights. Through all these means, the Arab regimes placed the Jewish state under siege. This siege has continued to this day

The armies of the entire Arab world mobilized against Israel in 1967, and Egypt and Syria launched a massive surprise attack on Israel with their armies in 1973. For the most part, however, the Arab world has preferred to wage war against Israel through Palestinian and other Arab terrorist organizations that were formed, or at least heavily sponsored and encouraged, by the Arab States, but for which the Arab regimes refuse to accept full responsibility. (This is yet one more way in which the "Palestinian" identity has proven useful to the Arab regimes).

The terrorist organizations do not wear uniforms or others markings identifying themselves as soldiers. They operate out of civilian populated areas and  disguise themselves as civilians. They kill Jewish civilians and soldiers, non-combatants and combatants alike, even including young children, without making any distinctions whatsoever between them. These methods are serious war crimes under international law.

Prominent among the Palestinian terrorist organizations has been Fatah, originally sponsored and financed by Syria. In 1968, Fatah took over another terrorist organization formed by the entire League of Arab States organization in 1964, called the Palestine Liberation Organization (or PLO). In this way, Fatah obtained funding for their terror operations from the entire Arab world. have They also obtained a huge amount of funding from a "tax" that the Arab governments enabled them to levy on all Palestinian Arabs residing in the Arab countries. Fatah, through its diplomatic and financial front the PLO, also has acquired billions of dollars from international drug dealing, other smuggling operations, and extortion rackets. According to some financial experts, the assets of the PLO total over $50 billion worldwide. This does not even include the vast amounts of money held by other fronts for Fatah, such as the "Palestinian National Authority" ( or PNA, established in 1994; see below under "The Oslo Accords" for more about this terrorist front organization), and the hundreds of millions squirreled away in the private bank accounts of corrupt Fatah officials—including the late Yasser Arafat and the surviving members of his family. In many ways, Fatah and the other Palestinian Arab terrorist organizations are massive criminal gangs that use terrorism as a cover for their massive, and extremely profitable, illegal rackets.

Fatah now also obtains vast amounts of money, weapons, and military training from Iran, and through its front organizations the PLO and the PNA,  from the European nations, the United States, and even from Israel as well! These democratic nations have for some strange reason now recognized Fatah, through its PLO and PNA fronts, as "the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people." Nearly all of the nations of the world, including the European Community nations and the United States, have also established diplomatic relations with Fatah. Yet its terrorist operations and objective of destroying Israel remains unaltered.

I-J.2 Hamas 

Another, even more extreme Palestinian Arab terrorist organization is Hamas, which is a branch of the international Jihadist-Islamist organization the Muslim Brotherhood. Like other Muslim Brotherhood member organizations, Hamas aims not only at the conquest of Israel, but of the entire world on behalf of Islam. Hamas is lavishly funded by Saudi Arabia and Iran, and maintains its headquarters in Syria. By taking over the PNA through elections in the Palestinian Arab communities of Judea, Samaria and Gaza, Hamas has now gained access to the vast funding sources and diplomatic ties originally established by Fatah when it established the PNA "government " of these communities. It is true that some (by no means all) European countries, and the United States, make a pretense of dealing only with Fatah officials of the PNA, and try to avoid official contact with its Hamas officials. However, this is a meaningless gesture, since Hamas now  largely controls the PNA and has access to all of its vast funding sources.  In any case, nearly all of the Arab countries, Iran, Russia, China, South Africa, Norway, Spain, and most of the other world governments  openly deal with the Hamas officials of the PNA and funnel money to them. Nor should we forget that Fatah is just as dedicated as Hamas to terrorism and to the destruction of Israel. This reality renders the attempt by some of the democracies, including the United States and Israel, to draw a distinction between these two organizations pointless, self-deluding and self-destructive.

There are dozens of other Palestinian terrorist organizations, such as Islamic Jihad, the United Resistance Committees, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), the Popular Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PDFLP), etc. These organizations frequently work closely with each other as well as with the dominant Fatah and Hamas organizations. Such a plethora of terrorist factions helps to diffuse responsibility for terrorist acts, and to make it difficult for Israel, other democratic governments and the international press to determine who is responsible for them. They enable Fatah and Hamas to deny that they are responsible for terrorist attacks carried out in defiance of various so-called "cease fires," by blaming these attacks on the smaller groups, which are actually fronts or subcontractors for the "major" terrorist organizations. The war against Israel is thus conducted through a maze of deceptive front organizations.

In May and early June of 1967, the Arab states mobilized again for all-out war against Israel.  Egypt, Syria and Jordan placed their armed forces under a joint Egyptian military command and moved large forces towards the Israeli frontier. President Abdul Jamal Nasser of Egypt ordered a United Nations peacekeeping force, which had been stationed along the Egyptian-Israeli borde, to evacuate. He once again imposed a blockade on Israeli shipping in the Gulf of Aqaba. And he openly declared war on Israel.

Throughout the Arab world, other countries from Morocco to Iraq also declared war on Israel. They moved armed forces towards Israel’s borders.

After weeks of attempting to resolve the conflict by diplomatic means, Israel was finally compelled to launch a strike in order to push the assembling Arab armies back from its frontiers and avoid being conquered by the Arab regimes, who openly proclaimed the complete annihilation of Israel as their goal. In order to prevent this massive attack, Israel was obliged to occupy Judea,  and Samaria ("The West Bank,"), which had been illegally occupied by Jordan in 1948, the Gaza area, which had been illegally occupied by Egypt in 1948, the Sinai desert of Egypt, and the Golan Heights, which had been assigned to Syria by Britain and France in 1922. Israel was thus forced into an "occupation" that it never sought or desired.

In 1979-81, Israel withdrew from the entire Sinai Peninsula, which formed over 90% of the total territory it occupied during the 1967 war, in return for a peace treaty with Egypt.

Israel has repeatedly offered to return the Golan Heights to Syria, in return for a peace treaty and an end to Syrian support for the Palestinian Arab terrorist organizations. Syria has refused all of these offers.

In 1995 the Israelis withdrew completely from the major Palestinian Arab population centers in  population centers in Judea and Samaria ("The West Bank"). In 1994, Israel withdrew from most of the Gaza area, and in 2005, Israel withdrew completely and unconditionally from all of Gaza. In 2000 and early 2001, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak offered to withdraw from 95% or more from the total area of Judea , Samaria and Gaza, including parts of Jerusalem, in return for a peace treaty with the Palestinian National Authority and its leader, Yasser Arafat. Arafat not only refused the offer, but immediately launched a major terrorist offensive, the so-called "Al-Aksa Intifada," which has killed nearly one thousand Israelis, most of them civilians.

None of these territorial withdrawals and proposed territorial withdrawals by Israel have brought Israelis peace.

In 1993, Israel most unwisely signed an agreement with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), a front for the terrorist organization Fatah, permitting the PLO-Fatah to take over the civil administration of the Palestinian Arab communities of Judea, Samaria (together called "The West Bank" by the former Jordanian occupiers) and Gaza.  This agreement has become known as the "Oslo Accords," from the Norwegian city where it was first negotiated. The newly established Fatah-PLO front established to govern these communities was named the Palestinian National Authority (PNA). The agreement also allowed Fatah to create what was called a "strong police force," and to introduce into the area more than 7,000 soldiers of what is called the Palestine Liberation Army (PLA), yet another Fatah front. The PLA soldiers were trained by, and stationed in, Iraq and the Sudan, two Arab states deeply involved in international terrorism, and also extremely despotic regimes involved in genocide against much of their own population.

Pursuant subsequent agreements with the PNA, Israel has withdrawn completely from the largest Palestinian Arab population centers, leaving them under the exclusive control of the PNA. This has meant in practice that these communities are governed, if one can call it government, by the numerous terrorist organizations that the PNA has allowed to establish themselves in these communities. It has conceded full civil government to the PNA over large areas of Judea and Samaria containing the smaller Palestinian Arab communities, while retaining a token military presence in these areas, concerned exclusively with preventing the movement of terrorists from these areas into Israel itself.

In 2005 Israel withdrew completely from the Gaza area, unilaterally and without making any requests of the Palestinians at all for this withdrawal. Israel even forced 9,000 Jewish residents of the area from their homes and destroyed the twenty villages they had established, as an additional goodwill gesture toward the Palestinians.

The PLO and the PNA promised, in return for being permitted to establish their government, to prohibit and suppress all terrorist attacks on Israelis, and to prevent the establishment of any armed organizations other than the Palestinian police. But they have systematically violated and ignored these and numerous other solemnly made undertakings to Israel that they signed.. Instead, Fatah and other terrorist organizations, such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad, that the PNA welcomed into its areas of control, greatly expanded their membership, arms and training, and have launched massive terrorist campaigns against the people of Israel, including the "suicide bombings directed against civilian bus passengers, restaurants, discothèques where teenagers gather, etc. Over a thousand Israelis have been murder by terrorists operating from their sanctuaries in the PNA-governed areas since 1993; this is more than the Israelis murdered by terrorists between 1949, when the first Arab-Israeli war ended, and the signing of the of the Oslo Accords in 1993. Many thousands of others have been injured, often maimed for life. Far from bring peace, then, the Oslo "peace accords" have brought Israel endless war aggression, and loss of life.

In 2006, the aggression against Israel deepened when the Palestinian electorate chose Hamas, which has an even more extreme and overtly ant-Jewish program than Fatah, to govern them and take over the PNA. The new Hamas administration has openly repudiated the Oslo accords with Israel signed by the preceding Fatah administration, and has openly conducted a war of terror against Israel, including continuous rocketing of Israeli towns and villages near the Gaza border. However, it is important to realize that Fatah is also a terrorist organization dedicated to the destruction Israel, and is only slightly less shrill in its anti-Israel and anti-Semitic rhetoric. It is not, as many American , European and even Israeli political leaders seem to believe, a viable "peace partner" for Israel.  While it has not been as open in repudiating the Oslo accords as Hamas, it has systematically violated them in exactly the same way. Fatah’s "military" arm, the Al-Aksa Martyr’s brigades, has carried out numerous "suicide"( really homicide) bombings and slaughtered hundreds of Israelis.

The Roadmap is a proposal put forward in 2003 by the so-called "Quartet" of great powers, The United States, the European Community, Russia, and the United Nations, as a means of resolving the conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs. It calls for the partition of Mandatory Palestine between an Israel that has withdrawn more or less to its temporary frontiers as they were before the 1967 war, and a Palestinian state for the territories of Judea and Samaria (the "West Bank") and Gaza. The Palestinian state would be the Palestinian National Authority—in effect the terrorist groups Fatah and Hamas, and the smaller allied terrorist groups—given the full powers of an independent state, including the right to maintain unlimited armed forces.

The Roadmap requires Israel to end all new construction and housing for Israelis living outside the June 4, 1967 ceasefire lines, "including natural growth." And it requires the "dismantling" of some or all of the Israeli communities (referred to as "settlements" or "colonies") outside the June 4, 1967 lines. These towns, villages, urban and suburban neighborhoods are home to 400,000-500,000 people.

Israel has not only accepted the Roadmap in principle, but has already unilaterally implemented many of its provisions, including a complete withdrawal from Gaza, the dismantling of more than twenty Jewish communities in Gaza and Samaria, an almost complete prohibition of  "natural growth" in the Israeli towns and villages of Judea and Samaria (at most a few hundred new housing units have been permitted for a population in the hundreds of thousands, growing rapidly by natural increase), the dismantling of many military checkpoints in Judea and Samaria, even though they are essential for the protection of Israel’s people from terrorist attacks.

President Mahmoud Abbas, the Fatah-affiliated President of the Palestinian National Authority, has stated his acceptance of the Roadmap, but has done absolutely nothing to implement the "responsibilities" specified by it for the Palestinian Arab side, which consist in preventing or at least making a good faith effort to prevent, terrorist attacks. In fact, the Al-Aksa Martyr’s Brigade, the "military" wing of Abbas’ Fatah organization, has continued its unrelenting attacks on Israel’s civilian population, as have Hamas, Islamic Jihad, the Popular Resistance Committees, and other Palestinian terrorist organizations. In early 2007, Abbas called publicly for "resistance" to the Israeli ‘occupation"—a euphemism for terrorist attacks on Israel.

The new Hamas-dominated government of the PNA, elected in 2006, has for its part openly repudiated the Roadmap and all other agreements or proposed agreements that recognize Israel as a legitimate "entity,"  and which call for peace between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs.

Israel remains under intense pressure from the "Quartet" to implement unilaterally and unconditionally its "responsibilities" under Roadmap, in spite of the PNA’s utter refusal to halt or even call for a halt in terrorism. Mahmoud Abbas and Fatah continue to receive strong support, both financial and military, from the "Quartet" of powers, and even Israel, despite their utter refusal to implement the Roadmap.

The Appendixes to Part I, A through O, provide extensive documentation for this historical survey, including original source documents and links to original source material.