Israel-Jewish Congress President warns of unilateral recognition of Palestinian State

Vladimir Sloutsker says move opens the door for terrorists world wide to reach their own political targets.

By GREER FAY CASHMAN
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas arrives for the opening of a museum of late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in Ramallah, November 9 (photo credit: REUTERS)
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas arrives for the opening of a museum of late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in Ramallah, November 9
(photo credit: REUTERS)
Everyone talks about the dreams in the aftermath of a Palestinian State and not the consequences warned Vladimir Sloutsker, the President of the Israel Jewish Congress at a briefing with local and foreign journalists on Tuesday.
Speaking at the Jerusalem Press Club Sloutsker said that he was not opposed to a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but “if today the State of Palestine is recognized as a sovereign member of the international community, it opens the door for terrorists world wide to reach their own political targets and to create a sovereign territorial entity ruled by them.”
Far-fetched though this may seem, Sloutsker cautioned that “it could become a reality like a probable State of Palestine.”
He envisaged that the terrorists will use pressure in order to have territorial sovereignty.
In the event of such a development, Sloutsker did not believe that it would harm Israel itself, “but it can harm the world,” he said, adding that the European Union must give serious consideration to such a possibility and its unpredictable consequences.
Sloutsker queried how the Palestinian Authority and Israel can enter into a proper dialogue if the Palestinians don’t recognize Israel’s right to exist.
He was also concerned that some Islamic movements in European countries are demanding the establishment of Sharia Law in the districts where they live and wondered aloud whether Sweden whose government was the first to recognize the State of Palestine would recognize a Sharia Law area in Sweden as the territory of the Muslim community that lives there.
“To recognize a Palestinian state is to encourage terrorism world wide,” he declared. He was however aware that the rapidly growing Muslim communities in Europe make it difficult for their host countries not to recognize a Palestinian state. The Palestinians have mounted an intensive information and media campaign in Europe to justify terrorist activities, Sloutsker observed, and was critical of the fact that Israel is lacking in this sphere. The campaign is much more effective in Europe than in the United States, he said.
Sloutsker charged that the Palestinian Authority pays salaries to terrorists in relation to the number of victims they have killed.
Asked if he thought that there were parallels between the resurgence of anti-Semitism throughout Europe, economic instability and support for a Palestinian state, Sloutsker responded that the causes for anti-Semitism are multiple but that the roots of all global events are in the Middle East.
The rise of anti-Semitism is in his opinion much more serious than people realize.  “We’re watching the beginning of a new Holocaust,” he said, but was quick to differentiate between the current wave of anti-Semitism and what was perpetrated by the Nazis. Sloutsker views the expulsion and exile of Jews from Spain and Portugal in 1492 as a form of Holocaust and compares what is happening today more to that period in Jewish history than to what happened to the Jews in the twentieth century, with the exception that it’s a new time with new conditions.