Visiting the ancient Israeli settlementof Shiloh in the West Bank, 59-year-old former Baptist preacher and Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee crossed the politically correct line referring his West Bank visit as part of Israel. Known for some time inside Jewish circles, the West Bank, former part of Jordan before the 1967 War, was part of Israel’s biblical lands. Once part on ancient tabernacle that kept Moses’ tablets, Shiloh was part of Jewish history, not recent claims to the land by local Arab inhabitants calling themselves Palestinians. When Israel defeated the Egyptian, Syrian, Jordanian, Iraqi, Lebanese and Palestinian militaries June 10, 1967, it annexed Jordan’s West Bank and East Jerusalem, Egypt’s Gaza Strip and Sinai Peninsula and Syria’s Golan Heights, taking the territories as spoils of war. No one after the Six-Day-War doubted Israel kept the territories as a buffer zone.
Once the Six-Day-War backfired on Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, Lebanon and the PLO, the warring parties went to the U.N. Security Council to make sure that Israeli spoils were not recognized by the international community. PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat and Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser were confident June 5, 1987 that they’d destroy the Jewish State, less than 20 years after declaring statehood May 14, 1948. Since the end of the 1967 war, the PLO claimed all land seized by Israel as Palestinian, despite having no sovereignty before the Six-Day-War. Israel negotiated a return of the Sinai and peace treaty with Egyptian President Anwar Sedat March 26, 1979, with the help of former President Jimmy Carter. It took 16 more years for the late Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to hand Gaza over to the PLO Sept. 14, 2005. Six months later Hamas won parliamentary elections in Gaza.
When it became clear the Ramallah-based PLO would not relinquish control of Gaza to Hamas, Hamas revolted seizing Gaza in a coup June 13, 2007. Since then, Gaza-based Hamas and Ramallah-based PLO could not get on the same page, even after a short-lived unity agreement April 23, 2014 where Hamas officials refused to share power with its once PLO rulers. Visiting ancient sites like Shiloh, Huckabe acknowledge that the West Bank territory was once part of ancient Israel. “I am delighted tonight to be here at Shiloh. It is an exciting place and an important place. It is the place where tabernacles once was. It ‘s a place of biblical history,” said Huckabee, antagonizing Ramallah-based Palestinian officials. U.S. officials have played along since 1967 with Palestinian sovereign claims to the West Bank that was, in fact, part of Jordan before the Six-Day-War ended June 10, 1967.
Palestinian claims on Israeli spoils of the 1967 War continue to divide Israelis, despite backing at the U.S. State Department and in European Union. At odds with Gaza’s Hamas, 80-year-old PLO leader Mahmoud Abbas wants to control all Palestinian lands for a single state. Threatening another intifada or uprising, Abbas doesn’t see that armed conflict won’t win him one inch of land. PLO founder Yasser Arafat went to his grave Nov. 11, 2004 without a Palestinian State, largely because he never got over losing the 1967 War. How Arafat convinced the U.N. Security Council to recognize all Israeli spoils of the 1967 War as Palestinian territory is anyone’s guess. Huckabee’s comments underscore that no one in the evangelical community recognizes Palestinian’s rightful claim of Israeli’s sovereign biblical lands. Like old warring tribes, the PLO and Hamas can’t get on the same page.
Secret talks between Israel and Hamas unnerved Abbas’s Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority. Israeli authorities denied “any meetings with Hamas, neither directly, nor via other countries our intermediaries.” “There have been negotiations and they are on the verge of reaching an agreement about a truce of eight to 10 years,” said PLO Foreign Minister Riad al-Malki. Fighting a six-week long war with Israel ending Aug. 24, 2014, Gaza watched itself bombed into the Stone Age for firing missiles and tunneling into Israel. Hamas’s 52-year-old Gaza leader Ismail Haniyeh watched his over-crowded Palestinian enclave decimated, all to prove he could defend Gaza against Israel. Despite a devastating war with Israel killing 2,500 Gazans, Haniyeh’s more comfortable talking to Israel than the PLO. Both Hamas and Israel deny working secretly on a lasting truce.
Working behind the scenes, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair has been working on the so-called “Hamas-Blair agreement,” that would end Israel’s blockade in exchange for a long-term peace agreement. “We don’t know if it will happen tomorrow or in a month,” said al-Malki, seeing the attempt to bypass Ramallah as a real possibility. “The Hamas-Blair agreement . . . paves the way for division and the isolation of the Gaza Strip,” said Ramallah-based Fatah spokesman Ahmed Assaf, trying to prevent any agreement between Israel and Hamas. Meeting with Abbas in Ramallah, Zionist Union Leader Issac Herzog said a peace deal was possible in the next two years but only if Palestinians refrain from another uprising. While Herzog can’t speak for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Herzog sees Netanyahu’s days numbered, seeing himself as Israel’s next prime minister.
