In a situation provoked by Palestinian leaders' lies, Jerusalem's Temple Mount has become a war zone. Arab riots, assaults and weapons stockpiling atop Judaism's holiest site have spiraled out of control, and it has become a tinderbox for violent anti-Zionist rage.

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Last week's Al-Aqsa rampage should convince Israel that it's time to drastically alter the governance scheme known as the "status quo." Israel can no longer tolerate the Temple Mount's use as a protected staging area for insurrection.

The utterly false accusation that Israel plans to destroy the Al-Aqsa mosque has been relentlessly marketed to Palestinians, including by their politicians and religious figures. With no evidence, Muhammad Hussein, the Grand Mufti of Palestine, recently warned of the "danger" of Israel's plans to "demolish the Al-Aqsa mosque." Today, that slander is accepted by 73% of Palestinians.

This "Al-Aqsa lie" is so persistently powerful that it served to justify the intifada in 2000 and innumerable acts of terrorism – including Hamas's massive missile war last April.

The situation on the Temple Mount is the result of an arrangement created in July 1967 by then-Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Dayan. He called it the "status quo," implying that it was mere preservation of the Jordanian rules that had been in force preceding the Six-Day War.

In that war, Israel defeated the Jordanian and other Arab armies that were intent on exterminating the nation of Israel and all of its Jews. Jordan had, 19 years earlier, illegally invaded and conquered Judea and Samaria, renamed the areas as the West Bank, and annexed them. This area included the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.

During Jordan's occupation, Israelis were banned from these territories, including the Temple Mount.

So when Moshe Dayan claimed that he was "preserving the status quo" in 1967, he was peddling a fantasy. In fact, the Ottoman-era "status quo" never pertained to the Temple Mount, but only to feuding Christian denominations' sites.

Dayan, the military genius who had just crushed his Arab enemies, felt Israel should be magnanimous in victory. He was a secular Zionist who had little connection to Judaism as a religion. He saw national ardor and religious passion as separate.

Dayan explained in his memoirs that in his "status quo" formula, he hoped to prevent Israel's national victory from creating an ongoing religious debacle. He didn't realize that for millions of Muslims, the political and religious realms are one.

Even Dayan's phony "status quo" hasn't lasted: It's gotten worse for Israel and worse for Jews, decade after decade.

Under the Dayan "status quo":

Jews had access to the Temple Mount at all times – but not to pray.

Now, Jews have limited access, and often are completely barred from the site. Arab gangs roam the Mount, harassing – even assaulting – any Jew even suspected of praying.

Back then, Israel retained full security control over the Mount.

Today, Israeli police must don protective gear due to Arab rioting on the Mount. The cops' standing orders are to not enter the Al-Aqsa mosque itself, even when murderers take sanctuary there or when large stores of weapons are stockpiled inside, making it resemble an armory more than a holy place.

Then, the Israeli sovereignty over the Temple Mount was not in question.

Now, massive excavations by Palestinians – with no Israeli oversight – routinely destroy the priceless archaeological record of two Jewish Temples and an entire era of Jewish culture. Israel lifts not a finger to prevent this rape of its own past.

When Israel captured the Temple Mount in 1967, its soldiers hoisted an Israeli flag there. Dayan ordered it taken down and dictated that no flags were to fly on the Temple Mount.

Today, the Temple Mount is festooned with a sea of Hamas and PLO flags. A single Israeli flag? No: "too provocative."

These and other signs of the erosion of the Dayan plan demonstrate that there is no such thing as the "status quo" – there is just a Palestinian enclave that serves as the core of an anti-Zionist revolt.

Israeli citizens and policemen are routinely assaulted and murdered there. Israeli worshippers at a Sukkot festival at the Kotel – below the Temple Mount – were bombarded with stones and steel bars by rioting Arabs above. Days ago, a similar barrage was unleashed on Passover worshippers.

This state of anarchy should not be tolerated by any society.

At this point, nothing short of revoking the "status quo" will do. A policy meant to ensure peace and tolerance at a holy site has instead become an enabler of Arab rejectionism and violent hatred of Israel.

Canceling the "status quo" will surely attract condemnation from many, including U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken. According to a State Department press release, "Secretary Blinken emphasized the importance of upholding the historic status quo at the Temple Mount for peace."

He is utterly wrong, and he disregards the history and the nightly videos of the rioting on the Temple Mount. He should listen to the bloodthirsty anti-Semitic tirades PA leaders and Temple Mount religious officials spewed last week. The situation on the Temple Mount is an incubator for hatred and war, not peacemaking.

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Jordan's King Abdullah II – whose father was allowed to preserve authority over the Temple Mount under Dayan's misguided policy – will surely respond with outrage. He has played a double-dealing game with Israel and the Palestinians throughout his reign.

But without the water and other resources generously provided by Israel since Jordan's 1994 peace treaty, Jordan would be a very thirsty, very impoverished country. Let Abdullah make his disgruntled speech.

Israel needs to oust the Hamas-supported officials on the Temple Mount, and find new, tolerant-minded, peace-seeking Muslim leaders from anywhere to administer the Temple Mount.

Reprinted with permission from JNS.org.

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Following the publication of the list, Bruno Stagno Ugarte, deputy director for advocacy of NGO Human Rights Watch, stated, "The long-awaited release of the UN settlement business database should put all companies on notice: To do business with illegal settlements [sic] is to aid in the commission of war crimes."

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Ponder that: For the 112 companies on the list – including 18 foreign companies, like General Mills, Airbnb and Expedia – to do business in Judea and Samaria (the "West Bank" to the UN) is a war crime.

But what exactly is the crime here? Employing 20,000 Palestinian Arabs as managers, software engineers and in other capacities for triple the pay offered by local Arab businesses, and with far better health and other benefits?

Or perhaps it is a war crime for the wily Israelis and others to have Palestinian Arab and Jewish Israeli workers learn to view each other as colleagues and friends, rather than as adversaries.

In the eyes of the United Nations, it is a war crime to pour hundreds of millions of dollars into the financially distressed disputed territories. And it is especially a war crime for Jews or other "outsiders" to make a profit in the sacred land of "Palestine." In no other disputed area of the world does the UNHRC address this issue, much less treat it as a war crime.

The United States appropriately denounced this BDS-inspired blacklist with utter disdain. U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo flatly rejected the UNHRC's effort to defame Israel. In addition, it is worth noting that various federal laws and 28 states' statutes specifically prevent any action by American firms to participate in a boycott action related to the UNHCR list.

Unsurprisingly, the Palestinian Authority celebrated the UNHRC's publication of the blacklist.

P.A. Prime Minister Mohammed Shtayyeh pledged that the blacklisted companies would be "pursued through international legal institutions and in courts … for taking part in human rights violations in Palestine." He further demanded that blacklisted companies immediately close offices, branches and headquarters located on "Palestinian land."

So once again, the Palestinian leadership is demanding action to harm its own people, and diminish the chances of fruitful negotiations with Israel in the future.

Many European countries reacted negatively to the release of the blacklist, and in fact the decision to compile and publish the database was backed solely by nations belonging to the Arab League, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation and a handful of dictatorships, which dominate the 47-member UNHRC. Included in this human-rights-defending world body are paragons of tolerance such as Libya, Venezuela, Cuba, Somalia, Eritrea, Angola, Afghanistan, Sudan and Pakistan.

Former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley announced American withdrawal from the UNHRC two years ago, due to its obsessive pursuit of Israel: Since its inception, the only standing UNHRC agenda item at each of its three sessions per year is the notorious Item Seven, calling for a review and action related to Israel and Palestine.

True to its obsessive agenda, in 2019, UNHRC issued 18 resolutions condemning Israel. The rest of the world's nearly 200 nations – despite their energetic efforts at human-rights abuses – could only garner a measly seven condemnations from UNHRC.

The United Nations has become a cesspool of anti-Semitic misbehavior. Israel, sadly, cannot expect justice in any form from the United Nations or its agencies, and must ignore – and vigilantly combat – the string of biased, hateful actions emanating from this morally bankrupt organization.

Reprinted with permission from JNS.org

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Exhibit A: The present map of Middle East, reflecting dysfunction within nearly all its borders, is largely the work of the nations that comprise today's European Union. France in particular, along with its World War I ally Great Britain, drew the boundary lines of the Middle East, creating new states and states-to-be under the aegis of the post-war League of Nations.

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All evidence is that they made a hash of it, and the turbulence that has wracked the Middle East for decades is attributable to European ham-handedness and cultural ignorance in creating its boundaries and ethnic compositions.

Sadly – but unsurprisingly – the Europeans are still at it, most recently opposing central elements of US President Donald Trump's Middle East peace plan. Rather than help, the EU's posture is more likely to exacerbate one of the key messes it has sustained year after year.

With the EU still in disbelief over the exit of the United Kingdom, EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell nevertheless found the time to critique the Trump plan, stating that "the US initiative departs from internationally agreed parameters." He singled out the need to address the unresolved final-status issues, like agreements on borders, the status of Jerusalem, and the alleged Palestinian right of return.

In other words, Borrell basically demands that the catastrophic policies of past decades be perpetuated. He may not have noted this, but every prior attempt to address these "final-status issues" has resulted in abject failure – often accompanied by massive bloodletting, as in the case of the Second Intifada at the beginning of this century.

He also seems to have overlooked the fact that the Palestinian Authority and its leader, Mahmoud Abbas, have steadfastly refused to negotiate with Israel for almost five years. Likewise, Abbas has embargoed any diplomacy with the United States since President Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital two years ago.

The European Union, true to its supercilious attitude toward Israel, maintains its diplomatic offices in Tel Aviv, which it has decided is Israel's real capital – no matter what those silly Jews think.

The finality of the EU foreign minister's rejection of the Trump initiative shouldn't be overstated though. Borrell's statement was a "preliminary" assessment of the deal. This was because final positions of the EU collectively must receive unanimous support from its 26 (remaining) members. Poland, Italy, Hungary, Austria and two others decided to withhold support for Borrell's position, pending further assessment of the Trump plan and issues it seeks to address.

The European Union, which has poured billions into the corrupt PA's coffers and which allocates tens of millions of dollars each year to support NGOs whose only purpose is to subvert Israel, seems not to have noticed that the Middle East of 2019 bears little resemblance to the Middle East of 1949, 1967, 1993 or even 2008.

The Arab Spring upheaval and the unimaginable rise of Islamic State have made all Middle East regimes but Israel's seem quite impermanent. Syria, Iraq and Lebanon are independent countries? Check back next year. Jordan and Egypt's peace treaties with Israel remain reliable? Maybe, maybe not.

And that doesn't begin to address Iran and its proxy militias like Hezbollah, who are digging tunnels under Lebanon's border with Israel and launching missiles into the Golan Heights.

To the European Union, almost anything Israel does to protect itself is "provocative" and "disproportionate." For America to insist that Israel receive the "secure borders" promised to it in 1967 via UN Resolution 242 is, in the judgment of the European Union, over-reaching. And the fact that the Jewish people is indigenous to the disputed territories or that the Palestinian Arabs have no inherent international rights to Judea and Samaria has always escaped the European Union's notice.

The European Union's initial take on Trump's initiative was all too predictable. Their reversion to infantile – and hopelessly obsolete – truisms about the Middle East and its denizens should be no surprise. They are the architects of this mess known as the Middle East.

If America and Israel have the energy and creativity to adapt the Europeans' deluded Middle East blueprints to today's reality, a simple "thank you" from the Europeans would be nice. In the meantime, the European Union should turn inward to confront its own problems – which, by the way, include rampant anti-Semitism and related anti-Zionist passions across the continent.

Europe has little concern for Israel's security, and is advancing tired positions on the Middle East and peace that are long past their sell-by date.

Reprinted with permission from JNS.org.

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The proper question at this point about Palestinian rejectionism ought to be: "Who cares?"

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Anyone surveying the history of Israeli-Palestinian relations already knows that the Palestinians' goal is the eradication of Israel. The difference in the new US plan, however, is that the initial major steps in its implementation can be taken unilaterally by Israel, even with no Palestinian participation.

Having refused four major peace initiatives in the past 25 years, the Palestinians are well schooled in rejectionism. Each of those earlier plans – starting with the Clinton initiative in 2000 – would have given them a state roughly corresponding to the original 1949 armistice lines from Israel's War of Independence.

But the Palestinians' many "unconditional" demands – like the right of return for millions of Arab refugees and their descendants to Israel proper – created built-in excuses for walking away from the table. The new plan explicitly rules out this refugee demand.

This time, the Palestinian leadership didn't even walk up to the table, having severed all relations with the United States in 2017 over America's recognition of Jerusalem as the Jewish capital. Similarly, other than some security and bureaucratic coordination with Israel, they have refused all bilateral negotiations with Netanyahu and his government.

But this latest rejection could very well do them in once and for all. In prior negotiations, the United States would pressure Israel to make concessions to Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas and his predecessor, Yasser Arafat. The Palestinian leadership would then pocket those concessions, and use them as the new baseline in future peace negotiations with Israel.

Happily, that half-century-old (losing) diplomatic strategy has been abandoned by Trump. Indeed, the new peace plan specifies a future Palestinian state located in the disputed territories, but rejects the idea that the 1949 armistice lines are relevant to the current day.

The offered Palestinian state – under the new plan – would occupy about 70 percent of Judea and Samaria (aka The West Bank). The remaining 30 percent would be annexed by Israel – importantly including the length of the Jordan River Valley, which would at last give Israel a formal, defensible border with the Kingdom of Jordan .

The entirely contiguous Palestinian state would be contained inside Israel's borders, and Israel would enforce border control. This is vital, to prevent the nascent demilitarized state from becoming an terrorist enclave like the Gaza Strip is now.

And, by the way, under the Trump plan, the new State of Palestine will receive $50 billion from international donors, including America.

Characteristically, Abbas and Co. have rejected any interest in massive benefits for the Palestinian people – including statehood – if Israel also derives benefits from an agreement.

But, as noted above, "Who cares?"

An Israeli-American team will draw up the detailed maps of areas to come under Israeli sovereignty in the coming weeks. All Israeli settlements will be included in the annexation, and all Palestinian cities, villages and farms will be set aside for the new Palestinian state. To give the Palestinians time to reconsider, no Israeli construction will take place for four years on the proposed State of Palestine's lands.

The Palestinians – and their allies – can scream all they want to the United Nations Security Council, but the United States will veto any and all restraining resolutions targeting Israel.

Arab countries, who once would have thrown a fit over Trump's plan, have actually issued moderate statements, encouraging everyone – including their Palestinian brethren – to explore possibilities under the plan.

Many of these erstwhile fanatical supporters of "the Palestinian cause" seem to have recalibrated their reactions in light of recent regional developments, mainly involving Iran.

The Palestinians have spent decades overplaying their hand – through intransigent negotiating positions, violations of pacts and, of course, terror and death. The world seems to be catching on to their lethal game, and we can expect more "who cares?" shrugs as the Trump plan moves into implementation in the coming weeks and months.

As to whether Abbas and his cronies get around to actually creating a State of Palestine – although handed to them on a silver platter loaded with gold – a valid response would likewise be "who cares?"

Reprinted with permission from JNS.org.

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This action by Jordan emphasizes the need for Israel to assert its necessary security rights in the Jordan Valley. Just as the Golan Heights are clearly vital to the security of northern Israel in any foreseeable future, so, too, is the Jordan Valley for its eastern frontier.

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Israel annexed the Golan in 1981 – a move recently recognized by the United States. It is time – especially in the context of an utter absence of a "peace process" and Jordan's less than trustworthy conduct – for Israel to annex the strategically vital parts of the Jordan Valley, or to formalize its perpetual control of this vital territory without the ambiguity of some future "final-status" resolution.

Jordan's action doesn't mean the end of peace between Israel and Jordan, and the minor farming tracts in question have little more than symbolic value. But that value has until now been to underscore the ability of the two nations to live amicably in a spirit of mutual trust.

Jordan has been playing a paradoxical role in the Middle East for decades, but has become increasingly hostile to Israel in recent years. Underlying it all is the supreme irony that the Jordanian monarchy is almost totally dependent on Israel for its continuance in power. Israel provides enormous water resources to Jordan, without which it would shrivel and die. Further, Israel is Jordan's primary supplier of energy, and Israel's new Leviathan gas fields – coming online next year – will power the bulk of Jordan's industry and housing.

As a result of the US-brokered Israel-Jordan peace treaty, Jordan receives enormous annual foreign aid sums from Washington. Not only is the kingdom's economic stability dependent on Israel, but the clandestine security assistance given by Israel to Jordan is crucial in maintaining King Abdullah II's control in the face of an unhappy populace and no shortage of Islamist and other challenges to his continued rule.

King Abdullah's monarchy was inherited from a line of Saudi emirs – the Hashemites – who were placed on the throne in Amman by the British after World War I. Simply put, Abdullah and his family are foreigners to Jordan, inhabiting a royal house imposed by Western powers. The majority of the Jordanian population are Palestinian Arabs – those who came during the British Mandate, many who fled there during Israel's War of Independence and still more who retreated there during and after the 1967 war. The bedrock of traditional Jordanian society has always been Bedouin, but they are now a minority in their own country.

The Bedouin resent the Palestinian "newcomers," and the Palestinian Jordanians are as concerned with their brethren across the Jordan River as their fellow Jordanian countrymen. Above all, there is no natural love to be found either among Bedouins or Palestinian Arabs for the imported Hashemite house of King Abdullah.

Like his father and great-grandfather, he must curry favor with his divided populace. Without Israeli financial and economic support, his regime would not have been among the few to avoid the chaos of this decade's Arab Spring throughout the region.

But his Israeli peace partners and benefactors are hated in Jordan more than in almost any other Arab nation. Abdullah is thus forced to play the anti-Israel card at every opportunity. The legislature in Amman – in theory subservient to the crown – is an echo chamber of anti-Israel invective, saber-rattling, and anti-Semitism.

In 1994, Jordan's King Hussein and Israel's Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin signed a peace treaty on the White House lawn, with US President Bill Clinton serving as the main mediator – and funder – of the deal.

After the 1967 Six-Day War, the holy sites in the Old City of Jerusalem were allowed to remain under Jordanian management by Moshe Dayan. They provide a constant source of Jordanian grievance and Israel-Jordan diplomatic rows.

In short, King Abdullah is required to be anti-Israel in public and pro-Israel in private if he is to maintain his fragile grasp on power.

For Israel and the Middle East, this is not the sort of dynamic that should inspire long-term trust.

Unfortunately, the kind of double-cross King Abdullah recently perpetrated in the Jordan Valley's contested territories is becoming the norm in Israel-Jordan relations, and casts a long shadow over the cause of peace and the extent to which Israel can rely on its eastern neighbor as a joint defender of a secure border in the Jordan Valley.

Abdullah continued in his speech to observe that "Israeli-Jordanian relations are at an all-time low."

Not quite.

Before the war, Jordan had illegally conquered and annexed the co-called West Bank, along with most of the rest of what was to be an independent Arab state, in 1948.

After his crippling defeat in the Six-Day War, Hussein of Jordan renounced Jordanian claims to the territory – and officially designated the PLO under Arafat to take up cudgels against Israel in reclaiming the territory for the Arab world. The PLO took this opportunity to add the West Bank to the territories it was aiming to liberate – along with the rest of Israel.

Leaving aside the sheer chutzpah involved in a defeated nation deciding who should become sovereign in territory it stole 20 years earlier, Jordan effectively took itself out of the power equation in deciding the disposition of the lands won by Israel in 1967.

The threat to Israel now is that Jordan is a very unstable partner in maintaining security in the Jordan Valley. In fact, after 1967, Israeli statesman Yigal Allon proposed a plan for the territories that stated the necessity of Israel annexing the Jordan Valley if it ever wanted to have a secure eastern border at the Jordan River. This call has been repeated by candidates in Israel's recent elections – by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, among others.

While Islamic State no longer threatens a takeover in Jordan, other militant Islamist groups have their eyes set on Amman, and a combination of guerrilla and militia actions could undo Abdullah's unstable rule.

Or Abdullah, to maintain his throne, may opt to enter alliances with the more radical elements within Jordan. His cancellation of the Israeli leases in the Jordan Valley do not bode well for his willingness to risk popularity at home in exchange for Israel's vital security interests.

Israel's border with Jordan is a very vulnerable one, and a vital issue. In any "final" deal with the Palestinian Authority, the uncertainties about the survival of the Jordanian regime and doubts about King Abdullah's willingness to take risks to ensure a demilitarized Jordan Valley must be key components.

One thing is certain: Israel will insist on military control of this territory via annexation or through a permanent, irrevocable agreement guaranteed by the Israel Defense Forces.

Reprinted with permission from JNS.org.

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Arafat's successor, PA President Mahmoud Abbas – now serving the fifteenth year of his four-year term of office – has elevated the crookedness of PA finances to a level even Arafat might admire. The misappropriation of billions in Western by PA cronies – facilitated by a lack of financial transparency or any sort of accountability – makes the realization of Palestinian aspirations more unrealistic by the day.

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Thankfully, America has discontinued direct aid to the PA, due to the PA's insistence on rewarding convicted terrorists under its repulsive "pay-for-slay" program. Israel has reduced its transfer of funds to the PA by the amount used to pay for that despicable program. In response, the PA has for months refused to accept any transfers from Israel less than the full amount it is due – and thus found itself in a financial crisis of its own making.

Moreover, since roughly 40 percent of the PA's multi-billion dollar budget vanishes into private pockets in Ramallah and beyond, the PA's financial crisis is also largely an illusion.

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For example, over 100 PA employees work for the Central Elections Commission (CEC) – despite the fact that there have been no Palestinian elections since 2006. A few hundred more work for Palestine Airlines – which hasn't had a flight since 2001, when Israel bombed Gaza International Airport at the height of the Second Intifada. Most of these "workers" are Abbas's cronies' clan members, and most never even have to show up to collect their paychecks; direct deposits save them the trouble.

The latest public opinion poll on the question, conducted by the respected Palestinian research group AMAN, shows that over 95%t of Palestinians think the PA is utterly corrupt. This number hasn't shifted much in recent years, which explains why, in the last Palestinian legislative election in 2006, Hamas – archrival of Abbas's clique – received a majority in the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC). Hamas was broadly perceived as less corrupt than Abbas's group.

The result of that election was Abbas's unilateral suspension of the PLC, which hasn't met in over a decade. It also resulted in the ultra-violent Hamas coup in Gaza the following year. The dual – and dueling – Palestinian regimes in Ramallah and Gaza City have made any movement towards peace with Israel almost unimaginable. How does one achieve a "two-state solution" among three mutually hostile entities?

In his latest unilateral and unsanctioned gambit, Abbas has formally dissolved the inert PLC. The main reason is that the Hamas-affiliated speaker of the PLC was next in line for the presidency.

In fact, Abbas's hold on power in the PA is predicated entirely on the systemic corruption over which he presides. He and his sons possess monopoly power over most economic sectors of the Palestinian economy – from cement to telecommunications and from gasoline to the Coca Cola bottler outside Ramallah. These PA -granted monopolies have a death-grip on the economy, skimming massive amounts of money from over-priced products and stifling the development of any semblance of real private enterprise.

The feather-bed jobs essentially cement personal loyalty to Abbas and his partners in crime. They also ensure an unending chain of kickbacks to Abbas personally and to his family and cronies. The Panama Papers – detailing offshore secret accounts in various offshore money havens – included most of the senior members of Abbas's inner circle.

All of this helps to explain why there has been almost no political or economic progress in the territories in a quarter of a century of PA rule – let alone peace with Israel.

Then there are the PA security services, which consume more than 44 percent of the PA budget and are filled with cronies and Fatah terrorists who are effectively on state pensions. Despite this enormous police complement, crime is rampant in the PA

Even budgets that seem promising, like the $17.9 million quarterly budget for the Palestine Development Agency, are rerouted to the benefit of Abbas or simply disappear into unaudited "miscellaneous" accounts. Of that "development" budget, for instance, $9.4 million went for Abbas's private airplane and $4.4 million vanished into an account labeled simply "other."

The real problem is that ultimately, any peace agreement leading to greater Palestinian autonomy will have to include rigid provisos for accountability – far greater than the wispy promises of Oslo. That is the last thing Abbas and Co. want. Also, any elections for a permanent Palestinian government are almost certain to result in the trouncing of Abbas's PLO and Fatah parties and the election of Hamas – which neither Israel nor the PA can accept. Forgetting about policy issues, such a loss of power would simply be too expensive for Abbas and his buddies.

Until the world donor community, including the European Union, Arab donors and numerous non-governmental agencies, force a major clean-up in Ramallah, efforts at a political settlement with Israel will be stillborn, or will result in the birth of a Palestinian civil war that may consume the entire region in terror, bloodshed and result in a mere redistribution of power and wealth in the vast kleptocracy that is the current Palestinian Authority.

Reprinted with permission from JNS.org.

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It is a pernicious lie that portrays Israel as existing simply as a result of "the kindness of strangers" and as a foreign body imposed on the region by outside forces.

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In fact, Jews have yearned and struggled to return to their ancestral homeland for millennia. Zionism began as a movement in 1897, when Jews began to resettle in Palestine, culminating in Israel's declaration of independence in 1948 on the same day that Great Britain left.

Those dates in 1947 and 1948 were momentous events in the Zionist effort to create a Jewish nation in its indigenous land, and are celebrated annually in Israel and among most diaspora Jews. But Nov. 29 – the date of the UN General Assembly vote to recommend the partition of the land – is, appropriately, not an Israeli holiday. Appropriately though, May 14 – or its equivalent date on the Jewish calendar – is feted as Israeli Independence Day.

In any event, the UN vote is of merely symbolic value in explaining Israel's creation.

After World War II, Great Britain was a thoroughly exhausted shadow of its former colonial power. While the creation of a Jewish homeland was the express purpose of the British Mandate starting in 1922 under the League of Nations, Britain utterly betrayed its Mandate obligations.

Rather than fulfilling its role of welcoming Jewish immigrants to Palestine, the British – in order to pacify Arab anti-Semitic terrorism –issued the notorious White Paper of 1939, which prohibited Jewish immigration to Palestine. It thus cut six million European Jews off from the only place in the world that could have saved them from Hitler's genocide.

Neither the Jewish nor the Arab inhabitants of Palestine wanted the British there, and armed chaos was proliferating.

So when Britain renounced its mandate after World War II, the two-year-old United Nations took the problem over. The United Nations Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP) recommended that the only solution for Palestine was its partition into a Jewish state and an Arab state.

UNSCOP's proposed borders for the two suggested states were utterly impractical, and bear little relation to the frontiers Israel achieved after its War of Independence. During that long war, of course, Jordan and Egypt stole all of the land that could have become UNSCOP's "Arab state."

The General Assembly – by a vote of 33-13, with 10 abstaining, including Britain – voted to accept the UNSCOP plan and to recommend its implementation.

The vote created nothing except more chaos.

With the Arab League promising to eradicate any Jewish state, the UN General Assembly requested that the Security Council assure the fulfillment of its partition recommendation. As David Ben-Gurion, Israel's first prime minister, succinctly stated in 1949, "The UN didn't lift a finger" to stop the Arab onslaught. The Security Council surveyed the situation, including the massed Arab armies, and decided to let the chips – or the Jews – fall where they may.

So while the UN suggestion of partition lent some level of international moral endorsement to the Zionist cause – as did European guilt over the Holocaust – Israel's birth in May 1948, was fully the achievement of the Zionist dream through the efforts of the Israel Defense Forces and world Jewry.

Neither the Orwellian United Nations nor any individual nation – except Czechoslovakia – sent a single bullet to help Ben-Gurion bring Israel into existence. Having passed its toothless partition plan, the world and the General Assembly turned its back on the Jews once again.

In fact, the partition plan was never implemented. It was rendered moot by a massive Arab invasion of the fledgling state. It is hard to see how the absence of such a UN plan would have altered history one bit.

The UN's fecklessness in its partition plan has been multiplied many times over in the years since. Not only did the UN do nothing to help Israel survive the 1948 Arab assault, but it has also been the faithful agent of anti-Semitic forces for seven decades in undermining Israel's legitimacy and survival.

So, in discussions with friends, family, and adversaries, beware of the canard "the UN-imposed the Jewish state in Palestine," or that "Israel should respect the United Nations because it owes its very existence and legitimacy to the UN."

Explain patiently to them that Israel owes little to nothing to the UN, and that Israel's reason for existence is its own ability to assert the Jewish people's right as an indigenous people to its ancestral homeland. Oh yes – and Israel is also indebted to itself for its democratic vibrancy, its respect for its minority populations and its ability to defend itself in the face of a hostile world … including the United Nations.

Reprinted with permission from JNS.org.

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The older Palestinian textbooks were filled with ugly anti-Zionist – and anti-Semitic – propaganda. Shockingly, this pervasive spirit of distortion and hate wasn't only employed in history textbooks, but also dominated language, math and even science lessons.

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The original P.A. textbooks were in use for about 20 years, having been published following the Oslo Accords. (Prior to that, Palestinian schools had continued to use Jordanian textbooks published before the 1967 Six-Day War.)

Over the past three years the P.A. has released the full set of new textbooks – and they are even worse than the old ones in teaching Jew-hatred, fictionalized history and a profound glorification of martyrdom, terrorism and hate. Though Western liberals continue to place the onus of peace-making on Israel, these materials make clear the Palestinians' dedication to waging war.

The Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education (IMPACT-se) recently published its reports on the textbooks – replete with examples – that demonstrate the horrific indoctrination being inflicted on Palestinian youth by their educators.

Geography, of course, is taught without reference to Israel's borders – or even the State of Israel's existence. All of the maps and exercises are predicated on a state of Palestine with its borders extending from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, and from Lebanon to Egypt. Israel is completely obliterated throughout the textbooks, although the Palestinian textbooks are rife with references to "Zionist occupiers" and "Zionist Jews."

The city of Haifa is treated as "occupied territory" – every bit as "occupied" as the disputed areas of Judea and Samaria which fell under Israeli control in June of 1967.

So while much of the world considers the issue of the eventual disposition of the "West Bank" to be the crux of the Arab-Israeli conflict, yet another generation of Palestinian kids in P.A.-administered schools are being indoctrinated to believe that the only satisfactory resolution of the situation is the total overthrow and expulsion of the "Zionist usurpers" from every square inch of "Palestine."

But the perfidious nature of the Palestinian textbooks extends well beyond geography or even history. Throughout the math and science textbooks – including even first- and second-grade math textbooks – problems and exercises are structured around the purported evils of the "Zionist occupation." Exercises include comparing the number of "martyrs" in the first and second intifadas, and what percentage of those shot by Israeli soldiers in the Gaza uprisings were elevated to "martyrdom."

The essential thrust of the P.A. literature and language textbooks is the glorification of martyrdom and jihad as unqualified virtues. Poetry extolling the virtues of suicide bombers and homicidal terrorists are frequent.

In what one might grimly consider a feminist virtue of the new Palestinian textbooks, girls are called to participate fully in jihad, and not to hesitate in making themselves into "holy martyrs."

But these teaching materials do not merely present a perverse political philosophy, they also convey blanket falsehoods designed to erase Jewish history and support exclusive Palestinian claims to all of Israel.

Thus, Jewish culture and history in "Palestine" are, not surprisingly, completely expunged. According to the Palestinian textbooks, any Jewish presence in the area has existed only in the past century, when synagogues were first built by the Zionist invaders and the Al-Buraq wall – built by Arabs in honor of the Prophet Muhammad's horse – was renamed and co-opted by Zionists as "the Western Wall."

Since – according to the Palestinian textbooks – there were never any Jewish Temples in Jerusalem, the Western Wall is clearly another recent Zionist-Jewish invention.

The Palestinian "phased plan" to eliminate the "Zionist cancer" from Palestine – which is still in the PLO charter – is diligently taught throughout the curriculum.

Yet the primary concern of PA Education Minister Sabri Saidam is that Israel refuses to use these Palestinian textbooks in Arab-majority schools in Israel or the disputed territories, particularly in Jerusalem. Saidam insists that Israel's use of versions of the Israeli curriculum for Arab-Israeli kids is "an ugly crime of counterfeit" perpetrated by the "Zionist oppressors."

Great Britain and the European Union have contributed hundreds of millions to the development and propagation of the Palestinian textbooks and curriculum, but that may be drawing to a close. Both are doing their own reviews of the Palestinian textbooks; each has laws outlawing aid in furtherance of terrorism, incitement, violence and hatred. Their reports are due later this year, and by all rights should spell the end of UK and EU furtherance of this despicable educational charade.

Those who doubt any imminent resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict need look no further than these Palestinian textbooks to become even more pessimistic about a new Palestinian generation leading the way – at long last – to a peaceful future for Arabs and Jews alike. These unfortunate children are being brainwashed by their elders to seek no compromise, but to continue on the suicidal path of terror, hate and ignorance so well established by past generations of Palestinian Arabs and their leaders.

Reprinted with permission from JNS.org.

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One of the main factors has been the conduct of the Palestinian Authority and PLO. Add the recklessness and terrorist intransigence of the Hamas regime in Gaza, plus the realities of global economics and politics, and most Arab countries have decided that the creation of a Palestinian state can be put on the back-burner.

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Another factor is the passing of pan-Arabism, a political and transnational force in the 20th century, advocated by bygone leaders such as Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser. Its passing has been helped along by the so-called Arab Spring, which forced Middle East regimes, from Tunisia to Iraq, to focus on national self-preservation.

Above all, however, is the quest of non-Arab, non-Sunni Iran to extend its brutal sphere of influence into the heart of the Arab world, which has necessitated a re-evaluation of Arab national priorities. Resolving the Palestinian issue is irrelevant to addressing this threat. In fact, because Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Gaza, as well as Hezbollah in Lebanon and Syria, are in Iran's pocket, any Palestinian progress at Israel's expense would boost Iran's penetration of the Middle East.

Last year, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman reportedly stated in a closed-door meeting that "Palestinians should accept peace or shut up and stop complaining." Ongoing contacts between the Saudi government and Israel are pervasive, even if diplomatic recognition is still a long way off.

While hostility to Israel is still common on the Arab "street," Arab leaders have come to the conclusion that the reality of Israel and all that it offers – militarily, economically, agriculturally and technologically – is to be cultivated, and if their Palestinian brethren don't like it, too bad.

Israel's military provides a real bulwark against Iranian adventurism, and Israel's intelligence services far outstrip anything in the Arab world. As long as Arab leaders perceive Iran to be the greatest regional threat, Israeli links must be cultivated.

As long as Israel leads the world in water management and desert agriculture, Arab countries with those shared challenges must listen to Israel and try to share in the entrepreneurial and technological leadership that Israel has demonstrated.

Remember, too, that until 1967 most Arab countries didn't much care about the recently invented "Palestinian nation." In 1948, Egypt and Jordan had stolen the land that might have become the Palestinian state – and no other Arab nation wanted to rock that boat.

Even after 1967, when Palestine's "liberation" from Israel became a cause in the Arab world – which had previously merely wanted to exterminate Israel – Palestinians did precious little to form deep sympathetic links with the Arabs.

In fact, under Yasser Arafat the PLO did everything it could to take over the Kingdom of Jordan, until the Black September purge in 1971 by King Hussein.

Arafat and the PLO relocated to Lebanon, where he started a civil war and precipitated the Israeli invasion in 1978. Lebanon has still not recovered from that invasion and its aftermath, and now is thoroughly dominated by Shi'ite Iranian proxy Hezbollah.

In short, Palestinian Arabs have done little to endear themselves to Arab leaders. It would be easy to argue that ongoing Arab support for the Palestinian cause has had little to do with caring about the Palestinian Arabs, and more to do with demagogic, religious and ethnic hatred of Jews and their Jewish state.

The recent economic confab in Bahrain saw three powerful Arab states – Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan – joined by Morocco, the United Arab Emirates, and, of course, Bahrain itself. Leading the meeting, America set forth an aggressive economic program to lift Palestinians and their neighbors out of their pervasive problems. Predictably, the Palestinian leadership utterly rejected this "Middle East Marshall Plan," whose prime beneficiaries would be … the Palestinian people.

Despite Ramallah and Gaza's denunciations of the conference, a dozen leading Palestinian Arab businessmen attended.

The Palestinian leadership has alienated its own natural allies – the Arab states. The terrorism, intransigence and corruption of both the Palestinian Authority and Hamas are understood by all – including Arab leaders.

It has become clear that, in the current and near-term political configuration, no possibility of a satisfactory peace plan with Israel exists. The Palestinian Arabs won't even come to the table. Accordingly, Arab leaders have moved on to deal with their real problems and opportunities today – most of which can be more easily addressed with an Israeli partner.

On the issue of uncritical pan-Arab support for the Palestinian cause – as on so many other issues in the Middle East – time seems to be staunchly on Israel's side.

For Israel and its allies – and for most of Israel's former Arab enemies – the road to the future runs through neither Ramallah nor Gaza, but through Israel's increasingly open engagement with the Arab world in the effort to create a better tomorrow for all.

Reprinted with permission from JNS.org.

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