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On May 3, Mahmoud Abbas, the Israeli-U.S. puppet who is the figurehead leader of the Palestinian Authority, met with his secondary puppet-master, U.S. President Donald Trump. What he promised in exchange for nothing is yet to be seen. At present he is working to undermine Hamas, the elected government of the Gaza Strip. He has refused to allow the construction of a desperately-needed power plant that even apartheid Israel approved, and is paying government employees in the Gaza Strip not to go to work, in an effort to cause dissatisfaction with Hamas. This is typical U.S. methodology: stir up trouble and discontent in the populace, and assist in the eventual overthrow of the government. The U.S. has done this successfully, with tragic consequences in terms of human life and violations of human rights, countless times.

One of the things Mr. Abbas seeks to accomplish is the disarmament of the Gaza Strip. The West Bank is basically without weapons, and the death toll of defenseless Palestinians there is constantly increasing. This isn’t surprising since it is occupied by the heavily-armed IDF (Israel Defense Forces) terrorists and settler-terrorists, who believe that Palestinians are not human, and should have no rights whatsoever. And this is the vision Mr. Abbas seems to have for the Gaza Strip.

Congress has also set its sights on Palestine, with pending legislation to deny, as usual, the $300 million that it annually budgets for that nation. Congress wants to assure that none of it goes to the families of Palestinians who kill Israelis.

Now, let’s look at this for just a moment. The U.S. gives Israel $4 billion a year, more than thirteen times the amount it budgets for, but usually doesn’t give, to Palestine. And it is committed to that $4 billion for the next ten years. With much of it, Israel purchases, often from the U.S., the most advanced weaponry on the planet. It periodically tests that weaponry on Palestinians. And it doesn’t hesitate to use chemical weapons.

That money also goes to provide trucks which spray raw sewerage on homes and schools in the West Bank. It funds IDF terrorists breaking into the homes of Palestinians at all hours of the day and night, ransacking them and arresting any and all males over the age of 10.

South Carolina Republican Senator Lindsay Graham is a key sponsor of this bill. The good senator is silent about Israeli atrocities against Palestinians; he says nothing about the blatant, shocking and constant violations of the basic human rights of the Palestinians, and doesn’t seem to care at all about international law, which condemns the occupation, and recognizes Palestine’s and Israel’s borders as those that were mandated by the United Nations in 1948 (the legality of that action is a topic for another essay). One can’t help but wonder if Mr. Graham isn’t just a tad influenced by the $391,200.00 that pro-Israel lobbies contributed to his campaigns between 2010 and 2016. Could he be looking at the situation in Palestine through green-colored glasses?

When Israeli Sergeant Elor Azaria was convicted of murdering a wounded Palestinian, lying immobile on the ground, he received a sentence of 18 months. Israeli Prime Murderer Benjamin Netanyahu said he supported a pardon for Mr. Azaria, and surveys indicated that two-thirds of Israelis agreed with him. Yet Palestinian teenagers convicted of throwing stones at IDF terrorists are often sentenced to 15 years in Israeli prisons. Mr. Graham has been silent about this travesty.

One would like to point out, not only to the head-in-the-sand senator from South Carolina, but to the rest of the U.S. so-called governing body, including the illustrious former reality television star who now occupies the White House, that Palestine is occupied by Israel, and according to international law, an occupied people has the right to resist the occupation in any way possible. While U.S. elected officials decry any Palestinian violence, they are silent about Israeli violence. Not satisfied with ignoring international law, and condemning violent measures to achieve justice, they also condemn peaceful ones, with their futile attempt to outlaw the BDS (Boycott, Divest and Sanction) movement.

And into all this comes Mr. Abbas, doing the bidding of his Israeli and U.S. masters, making his photo-op appearance at the White House, where he was lectured by President Donald Trump on the need for civility and, of course, negotiations.

This writer will once again point out the obvious: negotiations can only be successful when each party has something that the other wants, that can only be obtained by surrendering something it has. Israel takes whatever it wants from Palestine – land, water, other natural resources – with complete impunity. How can ‘negotiations’ ever be successful when one party gets whatever it wants without them? Yet Congress, and countless presidents, have all encouraged this farce for decades.

Perhaps Mr. Abbas will meet with Vice President Mike Pence, a born-again Christian in the most evangelical of evangelic modes. There he will be lectured on the Christian Right’s bizarre interpretation of the Bible, and will be told that Israel is entitled to Palestine, because ‘God said so’.

This writer is a Christian, involved in the religion he joined decades ago as a young adult. He is well versed in the Bible. He recognizes that that sacred book is not meant to govern nations; if it were, atheists would be stoned along with adulterers (which would result in many vacancies in the halls of Congress, not to mention the White House), slavery would be legal, and all businesses would be closed on Sundays, so those who work in them would be spared execution.

So what will Mr. Abbas accomplish? The same thing he usually does, which is to further the occupation at the expense of the people he supposedly represents. And as he does so, Israel will steal more land, oppress and kill more Palestinians, and work to obliterate that beleaguered nation from existence. The world must not allow it to happen.

*(Head of the Palestinian Authority Mahmoud Abbas in his address to MEPs on Thursday 23rd of June, 2016. Image credit: Martin Schulz/ flickr).