Dear Secretary Blinken,
I have just listened to your news conference broadcast from Tel Aviv after visiting many countries in the Middle East, including Turkey, Egypt, Qatar and others.You have faithfully represented the interest of the United States in this terrible conflict occurring now in Gaza, with threats of a wider war and bringing the innocent hostages home. I am very appreciative of your attempts to limit this war in scope and size. I am also appreciative of your gift of diplomacy and attempting to include other Arab countries in the post-Hamas solution.
What is most concerning to me is the inability to say forcefully to the Palestinian people and the Arab press that Israel is here to stay. The Palestinian people have not asked for a state, even though you have graciously offered them one. The Palestinians and Islamic Jihad, and Hezbollah all say the same thing. They want Israel to be replaced by a Palestinian State from the river to the sea with murder or expulsion or genocide of the inhabitants of the Jewish State. They don’t seem to care which. Mr. Secretary, I don’t think the Palestinian side is listening. They want Israel’s War of Independence to be decided by the Arab side from 1948. I would like you to remind them of the UN Resolution establishing the State of Israel, and dividing the land which the Palestinian side has never accepted. This is the cause of Israel’s wars in the past and the present.
The Republic of Iran has now picked up this mantle, even though it would appear that the Abraham Accords were on their way towards getting Arab acquiescence to the existence of a Jewish State in its ancient homeland.
I don’t like, or approve of, what the Palestinian side is saying, but I do hear them, and would like to avoid a misunderstanding.
They need to hear that Israel stays, and that Israel is a historically Middle Eastern country, and they need to hear it from people like yourself, as well as the Abraham Accords.
