Schumer is Hoping That ‘Responsible Palestinian Leaders’ Will Replace Abbas

Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) knows how to solve Israel’s problems: “Schumer: Netanyahu a major obstacle for peace, Israel must hold elections,” by Hannah Sarisohn, Jerusalem Post, March 14, 2024:

Schumer said he believes there’s enough strength in the Arab world to get President Abbas to step down and support a gradual succession plan for responsible Palestinian leaders to take his place.

No one will get Mahmoud Abbas to step down. Not the 80% of Palestinians ruled by the Palestinian Authority who say they want him to resign at once, and not the Arab states. But he’s 88, and illness or death should soon remove him. Schumer thinks the “Arab world” could support a “gradual succession plan” — what does that mean? — that somehow, magically, would allow “responsible Palestinian leaders to take his place.”

Who are those “responsible Palestinian leaders”? Marwan Barghouti, who is serving five life sentences in an Israeli prison for his part in the murders of five Israelis? He’s the most popular figure among the Palestinians. Does he meet Schumer’s definition of a “responsible Palestinian leader”? And what about Abbas’ younger henchmen, like Mohammed Shtayyeh, who recently resigned as Prime Minister, who is sullied by his connection to Abbas? How might he fare against the hard men waiting in the wings to replace Abbas and determined to use their high offices to follow Abbas’ example, that is, to steal as much as they can from the Palestinian exchequer? Schumer does not realize how deep and wide is the corruption in both Hamas and the Palestinian Authority. In Gaza, just three Hamas leaders — Khaled Meshaal, Ismail Haniyeh, and Mousa Abu Marzouk — have between them managed to steal the colossal sum of $11 billion from the aid money meant to support all the people of Gaza. And in the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas and his two sons Yasser and Tariq have managed to amass a business fortune worth $400 million. How likely is it that future leaders of a new state called “Palestine” would be honest, that is, so very different from all the Palestinian leaders that have gone before?

“The US can be a partner in the grand bargain in the Middle East by deepening its relationship with the Saudis and other Arab nations to induce them to make a deal only if they actively guide Palestinians to a more peaceful future….

This is confusing. Does Schumer want the U.S. to “deepen its relationship with the Saudis and other Arab nations” in order that they will promise to “guide Palestinians to a more useful future”? How can they assure the Americans of this? Won’t the Palestinians continue, instead, to rely on vast sums — tens of billions of dollars — coming from Qatar, and on weapons supplied by Iran?

“After Israelis and Palestinians have experienced so much horror and loss of life, to not have something meaningful come out of this war to be doubly tragic,” Schumer said. “History will look back on what we do here. Are we prepared together to have the courage to make an all out push to bring about peace once and for all?”

Something “meaningful” will indeed come out of this war. First, by its end, more than four-fifths of Israelis will have abandoned any belief they might previously have held in the wisdom of that “two-state solution.” Second, the destruction of Hamas will remove a grave threat to the people of Israel, and also improve the lives of the Palestinians of Gaza for it’s hard to imagine rulers more corrupt, incompetent, and savage than Hamas. Third, by removing the threat of Hamas in Gaza, the IDF will then be able to turn its full attention to its northern border, and may decide that Hezbollah, too, will need to be dealt with as forcefully as the IDF has just done with Hamas in Gaza. And now would be the right time, before Iran acquires nuclear weapons.

The scales have fallen from Israeli eyes. Three-quarters of Israeli Jews now oppose such a “solution” that will endanger a Jewish state much reduced in size. The peace between Muslim Arabs and Israel can only be maintained through deterrence, rather than through establishing a twenty-third Arab state east of the Jordan. Schumer should read deeply in the Qur’an, where he will discover the permanent unpleasant truth: that Muslims have a duty to engage in jihad until the whole world has been subdued for Islam. And attempts to placate them, by squeezing Israel back within the 1949 armistice lines, and establishing a twenty-third Arab state, will be deemed insufficient both by them, and by Allah.