The Zionist Organization of America Thursday slammed South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley's nomination for United Nations ambassador, saying that it was "disappointed and concerned" about her support of two-state solution in the Middle East and "her inaccurate statement about Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria."
"The ZOA has argued for years that creating a Palestinian state under prevailing conditions would simply be to ensure the creation of another terror-promoting, failed, beggar state that would not bring peace," said National President Morton Klein.
"Without a genuine Palestinian desire to live in peace beside the Jewish state of Israel, establishing a Palestinian state today would simply mean rewarding terrorism and hatred and ensure such a state's steady descent into an Iranian-backed terror regime, shielded by sovereign borders, that would endanger Israel and the region.
"Until the Palestinian Arab leadership and society have evolved to seeking a genuine peace with Israel, no-one should be proposing establishing a Hamas-Fatah Palestinian state," Klein said.
Haley, nominated in November by President-elect Donald Trump, supported the two-state solution for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in her hearing Wednesday before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
She told legislators that she understands how settlements "can hinder peace."
Haley also ripped the Obama administration's abstention on the U.N. Security Council vote last month that condemned Israel for its settlement activity in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
She also backed Trump's call to move the American embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
Klein bashed the governor's assertion about the West Bank settlements.
"Gov. Haley is wrong is saying that 'settlements' 'can hinder peace,'" he said. "Jewish communities within Judea and Samaria have a fundamental legitimacy and pose no obstacle to a genuine peace with Palestinian Arabs, should the latter ever be ready and willing to negotiate one.
"To mention Jewish residence in the territories at all as an obstacle to peace is factually incorrect, morally indefensible, politically dangerous and counter-productive."
Klein referenced various international agreements — including the 1993 Oslo Accords, those resulting from 1920 San Remo Conference, and other United Nations resolutions — that make clear that Jewish settlements are allowed in Judea and Samaria.
"The false claim that Jewish residence is illegal is a propagandist lie, usually based on a willful, false, flat-earth distortion of Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention," Klein said.
"As we have long argued, the obstacles that stand in the way of peace are not Jews living in Judea and Samaria, nor Israeli security measures that are necessitated by Palestinian terrorism," he added. "Checkpoints and roadblocks can virtually disappear as soon as Palestinians accept Israel as a Jewish state, arrest terrorists, confiscate illegal weaponry, close the bomb-making factories and dismantle terrorist groups.
"But until Palestinians cease being raised, educated and nurtured for war, jihad, murdering Jews and destroying Israel, nothing will avail the cause of peace and reconciliation.
"Gov. Haley should be beware of recycling pro-Palestinian propagandist falsehoods about the obstacle to peace posed by Israeli Jews –– and only Israeli Jews, because they are Israeli Jews –– living in Judea and Samaria."
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