Marine Le Pen

Or did Marine Le Pen have in mind that “negotiated settlement of the conflict” that Ehud Olmert offered Mahmoud Abbas 2008, which included 94% of the West Bank, and territorial compensation to the Palestinians consisting of Israeli land equivalent to 5.8 percent of the West Bank, along with a link to the Gaza Strip, as well as offering to withdraw from Arab neighborhoods of east Jerusalem and to place the Old City under international control? Not good enough. Abbas didn’t discuss the offer. He just walked out.

And since then, Le Pen may not have realized, it is the Palestinians who have refused to negotiate face-to-face with Israel. They want others involved, to take their side against Israel, the way that Jimmy Carter and Zbigniew Brzezinski took Sadat’s side against Begin in the negotiations leading to the Camp David Accords in 1979. Mahmoud Abbas is waiting for the Quartet – Russia, the EU, the UN, and the U.S. – to take charge of negotiations, for he knows perfectly well that three members of that Quartet are on the side of the Palestinians, with only the U.S. providing a modicum of fairness.

Marine Le Pen again:

“The Israeli-Palestinian conflict can only be resolved by the creation of a viable and democratic independent Palestinian state living in peace and security alongside Israel on borders based on the 1967 lines. This is a fair, equitable and agreed solution to the problems of refugees,” said the leader of the extreme right National Rally party who, as in 2017, will again face incumbent President Emmanuel Macron in a run-off election on April 24.

A “viable and democratic” Palestinian state? How likely is it that that will be achieved? Of the 22 Arab states, how many are truly “viable and democratic” in the Western sense? Just one, and that one just barely – Tunisia. In Gaza the Palestinians are ruled by Hamas, a ruthless terror group, that murders its political rivals, beginning with its killing of Fatah fighters in 2007. Just two Hamas leaders – Khaled Meshaal and Mousa ibn Marzouk – have amassed fortunes of $2.5 billion apiece – and decamped, the first to Doha, Qatar, and the second to New Cairo, Egypt. Meanwhile 600 Hamas millionaires, the lesser leaders and their relatives, live in villas in Gaza, far from the prying eyes of the general population. In the West Bank, the PA is ruled by Mahmoud Abbas, who is now in the seventeenth year of his four-year term as President. With his two sons Tareq and Yasser, Abbas has accumulated $400 million, partly from monopolies on goods they control in the PA territories, but mainly from the foreign aid provided to the PA by foreign donors. Democracy? It’s an idea Mahmoud Abbas toyed with early in 2021, even announcing that there would be parliamentary and presidential elections later in the year, but then he promptly cancelled them when he realized that both he, and his loyalists, would lose.

Can either Gaza or the PA be said to be “viable”? Both entities rely almost entirely on handouts, from the United States, the European Union, and Gulf Arab states. They are the international welfare queens, beneficiaries of foreign aid largesse that has created in the Palestinian population a culture of permanent dependency. Neither Gaza nor the PA-run territories in the West Bank are economically “viable,” and even if they were to be joined in a single state, that nation of “Palestine” would never become that “viable, democratic” state that Marine Le Pen so blithely imagines can be achieved.

“For the sake of consistency and because I believe it is right, politically, historically and morally, I will remain faithful to the official line of the Quai d’Orsay [the French foreign ministry], that is to say, France’s commitment to the two-state solution,” Le Pen said.

What is called “the two-state solution” is really a surrender to the salami tactics of the Slow Jihadists of the PA. The first step in their program is to squeeze Israel back within the 1949 armistice lines (called “the 1967 lines” by Le Pen), which were once described by Abba Eban as the “lines of Auschwitz.” Those 1949 armistice lines – which were never a recognized border – would again leave Israel with a nine-mile-wide waist from Qalqilya to the sea. The Jewish state would also be stripped of the Jordan Valley, so necessary for control of the invasion routes from the east. And with Israel having been so shrunk in size, in order to achieve that “two-state solution” that Le Pen favors is achieved, then the Arabs can again go in for the kill, presumably with better results this time than in 1948, 1967, and 1973. The “two-state solution” is no solution at all, and will only whet, not sate, Arab appetites for more. Le Pen fails to realize that the only thing that can permanently keep the peace between Israel and the Arabs is for Israel to be so obviously stronger, militarily, and with continued control of territory in the West Bank, so necessary to its defense, that it will deter Arab aggression. Deterrence worked to keep the peace in the Cold War; it can work to keep the peace between Israel and the Arabs.

According to Le Pen, the French position represents “the only solution that can meet the national aspirations of Israelis and Palestinians.”

The “national aspiration” of the Israelis is simply to survive and thrive, in the ancient homeland, of the Jews, the very territory that was assigned by the League of Nations to be included in Mandatory Palestine, which then was to become the reconstituted commonwealth of the Jews, the Jewish state in the Land of Israel.

The “national aspiration” of the Palestinians is quite different: it is to destroy the Jewish state and to replace it with the Arab state of Palestine. Both the Fast Jihadists of Hamas, whose Charter explicitly calls for the destruction of Israel, and the Slow Jihadists of the PA, want to achieve the same goal. The Fast Jihadists of Hamas think Israel can be brought low by terrorism and war. The Slow Jihadists of the PA differ with Hamas on tactics and timing; they hope by degrees to so weaken Israel, by making it an international pariah, that it will agree to be squeezed back within the 1949 armistice lines. After that, when the Arabs feel powerful enough, they can launch another assault on the much-reduced Jewish state, and given the gigantic buildup in the armories of both Arab states and Muslim terror groups — with Hezbollah alone having 150,000 rockets and missiles in Lebanon aimed at Israel — they may be able to do greater damage than occurred in any previous assault.

France advocates the creation of a Palestinian state and considers that Jerusalem must become the capital of both states pending a negotiated settlement of the conflict and under international law,” she added, stressing that Paris does not “recognize any sovereignty over Jerusalem.

Early in April, in an interview with i24NEWS, she had also said that the transfer of the French embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem was “not on the agenda.” She pleaded in favor of an “international status” for the city.

Why isn’t the transfer of the French Embassy to Jerusalem “on the agenda”? Does Marine Le Pen not know that Jews have lived continuously in Jerusalem for more than 3000 years? That Jerusalem has always been the political and religious capital of the Jewish people? That Jerusalem is where the holiest site in Judaism, the Temple Mount, is located? That Jerusalem is where the First and Second Temple were built? Why can’t she, if elected, not only fight to “put it [the Embassy move] on the agenda,” but also make sure that the transfer of the French Embassy to Jerusalem takes place? Donald Trump transferred the American Embassy to Jerusalem, and the sky did not fall, as some had feared. Not a single Arab state cut off relations with the U.S., or ceased to sell oil to the Americans, or stopped buying American weapons and technology.

Le Pen might have said that “the transfer of the Embassy is a question that needs to be considered in all its aspects” or “I think we should examine the historical basis for the claims of Jews and Muslims to Jerusalem.” Instead she briskly took the Palestinian side: moving the Embassy, she said, is “not on the agenda.” Not good.