Sam Brownback: “As recently as this morning, upon Chairman Arafat's arrival back in Gaza, Arafat said: There is an agreement between us…”

“As recently as this morning, upon Chairman Arafat's arrival back in Gaza, Arafat said: There is an agreement between us and the Israeli government made in Sharm-El-Sheikh that we continue negotiations until Sept. 13th, the date for declaring our independent state, with Jerusalem as its capital, whether people like it or not. By itself, the threat undermines confidence in the Palestinians' commitment to the peace process and, in effect, would abrogate the foundation of the Oslo accords that all outstanding final status issues will be resolved through negotiations. Allow me, for a moment, to review the history here. More than 50 years ago, the United Nations created two states: Israel and Palestine. The creation of a homeland for the Jews in Israel was unacceptable to the Arabs, and five Arab states attacked the newly created state. When all was said and done, Israel was a reality, and the nominal Palestine ended up in the hands of Jordan. We never heard about Jerusalem then. In fact, when the PLO was created in 1964, Jerusalem was never even mentioned. When Jordan lost the West Bank and Jerusalem in 1967, then the question of Palestine and Jerusalem became important once again. In fact, we are told that the reason Yasser Arafat walked out of Camp David was because he did not get all of east Jerusalem and the Old City. In other words, when Arafat did not get through the peace process what he could not get through war, he decided to walk away from peace.”