What will Trump do when Abbas lies?

US president Donald Trump is scheduled to visit Israel next week. He's expected to meet with both Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas. Trump is expected to ask both men to engage in 'peace talks'. 

The first time Trump met with Abbas (May 3, 2017), Abbas lied. He lied when he said Palestinians were the last people still 'occupied' (Tuvia brodie, "Fake news: Abbas in Washington, tuviabrodieblog, May 4, 2017). He lied when he told Mr Trump that he teaches Palestinian children about a 'culture of peace' (Bassam Tawil, "Palestinians: Abbas’ ‘culture of peace’”, gatestoneinstitute, May 8, 2017). Now, he's just said he is "striving to implement the two-state solution within the 1967 borders, that is, an independent sovereign Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital living in peace alongside the State of Israel" (Dalit Halevi, “Abbas: We want a state alongside Israel”, arutzsheva, May 17, 2017).  Is he lying again?

Why should anyone believe Mahmoud Abbas is lying with this statement?  Well, it seems Abbas has a little problem. He's a liar. He's been called a Serial Liar (Benny Morris, “Mahmoud Abbas is peddling lies and distortions. Apparently The New York Times is buying”, nationalinterest, May 19, 2011). He thinks he can fool all in the West all the time, by lying (Bassam Tawil, “Palestinians: A Strategy of Lies and Deception”, gatestoneinstitute, January 13, 2017).

Here’s a sampling of his lies:

-In 1984, Abbas published, The Other Side: the Secret Relations between Nazism and the Leadership of the Zionist Movement. In this text, he claimed that only a “few hundred thousand” Jewish victims were killed during World War Two (“Abbas: Story of 6 million cremated Jews is propaganda”, palwatch, February, 1984).  

-Gas chambers were never used to murder Jews in Nazi Germany (Morris, ibid);

-In an English-language essay, Abbas has written that, as a 13-year old boy in Safat during the 1948-49 Arab-Israel war, he and his family were ”forced” out of their home by Israelis, suggesting that Israel had driven him and his family away (Mahmoud Abbas, “The long overdue Palestinian State”, nytimes, May 16, 2011). This ‘personal account’ supported the ‘Palestinian’ narrative that Jews in 1948-9 had committed ethnic cleansing of ‘Palestinians’. But in truth, Abbas had already (on July 6, 2009) told an interviewer on Falastina TV, in Arabic, that “his family had actually fled Safad voluntarily, fearing Jewish retribution for a massacre the Arabs had committed against the town's Jews two decades before” (Morris, ibid). Jews had not forced him from his home.

-Shortly after the November 1947 UN vote to create both a Jewish and an Arab state, Abbas wrote, “Zionist forces expelled Palestinian Arabs to ensure a decisive Jewish majority in the future state of Israel, and Arab armies intervened” (Abbas, ibid). This is a five-Pinocchio lie. What actually happened was, “The Arab states and the Palestinian national leadership, headed by Haj Amin al-Husseini, opposed the partition of Palestine, claiming all of Palestine for the Arabs. When the General Assembly voted in favor of partition, on 29 November 1947, the Palestinian leadership rejected the resolution and…Palestinian militias launched hostilities” to destroy the as-yet unborn Israel (Morris, ibid). These attacks against Jews by local Arabs represented a civil war of Arabs against Jews. It lasted until the day Israel declared its independence. The next day, May 15, 1948, as the state of Israel officially ‘began’, the civil war ended—and “the armies of Egypt, Syria, and Iraq invaded Palestine, in defiance of the will of the international community, as embodied in the partition resolution, and attacked the Jewish state” (ibid). 

Jordan then invaded Judea-Samaria and Jerusalem (ibid).

-Jesus was a ‘Palestinian’ (Gil Ronen and Ari Soffer, “Mahmoud Abbas Mocked For Claiming Jesus was a 'Palestinian'”, arutzsheva, December 25, 2013); does anyone need proof this is a lie?

-‘Palestinians’ are descended from Canaanites (“Another Abbas Lie: Palestinians are the Descendants of the Canaanites”, unitedwithisrael, March 27, 2017); to understand the lie of this claim, see, David Bukay, “Founding National Myths: Fabricating Palestinian History” meforum, the Middle East Quarterly, summer 2012, volume 19, no. 3).

-The Palestinian people are 6,000 years old (Itamar Marcus, "Abbas falsely claims 6,000-year old Palestinian nation", palwatch, June 6, 2016).

Abbas has a long history of lying. Some of his lies can take your breath away. Israelis have very good reason to wonder if his 'two-states...peace' announcement is another lie. 

President Trump has announced he wants peace in the Middle East. He wants 'a deal'. Presumably, that's part of why he's coming here next week. 

If he wants that deal, he’ll need to trust Abbas. Can he trust a Serial Liar?

I have an answer to that question: Trump won’t care how much Abbas lies.  

Donald Trump is a deal-maker, not a morality leader. When deal makers look for a deal, they ask only one question: do you have the power to sign off on the deal. Truthfulness isn’t relevant--at least, not to get a signature for a deal. 

I suspect Donald Trump will ignore Abbas’ lying ‘problem’. I suspect he’ll take Abbas’ statement about ‘two-states…side-by-side in peace’ at face value. I suspect he’ll take that declaration to Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu and say, “Look—here’s a peace partner. Make peace”.

How do you think that’s going to work out?