PDavidHornik

Closing the vise on Israel

"Predicting potentially grave security consequences for Israel, defense officials responded pessimistically Thursday to news that former NATO commander and retired US general James Jones had been tapped by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice as the new special envoy to coordinate security between Israel and the Palestinians.

"A senior defense official involved in talks with the Palestinians said that Jones was likely to invest most of his efforts in pressuring Israel to concede to the Palestinians and take risks on issues of security.

". . . officials warned Thursday that Jones's appointment could actually be detrimental for Israel since the general, who they said is known for having a cold attitude towards Israel, would put pressure on the IDF to prematurely compromise on security issues at a time that the Palestinian security forces are not yet prepared to crack down on terror - as they are expected to under the Road Map...."

A Fatah official gave a different kind of warning:

"Fatah will fight alongside Hamas if and when the IDF launches a military operation in the Gaza Strip, a senior Fatah official in Gaza City said Thursday.

"'Fatah won't remain idle in the face of an Israeli invasion of the Gaza Strip,'" the official said. 'We will definitely fight together with Hamas against the Israeli army. It's our duty to defend our people against the occupiers.'

"The Fatah official said his faction would place political differences aside and form a joint front against Israel if the IDF enters the Gaza Strip. 'The homeland is more important than all our differences,' he said."

In other words, if Israel moves against the Hamas terror army in Gaza, it will be seen as "derailing Annapolis" by driving "moderate" Abbas back into the arms of "extremist" Hamas--with whom Abbas was already openly allied in a joint government until Hamas's coup in Gaza last June.

This week Gaza terrorists fired 70 mortars and over 25 Qassams at Israeli communities. Israel fought back only tactically, killing individual terrorists but doing nothing on an effective, strategic level that would protect the affected Israeli citizens from their danger and ordeal.

The vise is closing in. The Bush administration does not wish Israel well. It considers Israeli checkpoints in Judea and Samaria, a crucial antiterror measure, to be a humanitarian issue because they inconvenience Palestian Arabs. But the Bush administration does not give a damn about the real suffering and danger of Israelis living near Gaza. Would you rather wait at a checkpoint or have a rocket fall on your home?

The anti-Israeli, anti-American, anti-Western, mass-murdering terror organizations keep getting stronger both in the West Bank and Gaza while Israel is reduced to near-passivity and the U.S. "monitors" the constant worsening of this already grave situation.

Arab commentary on the conference

Newspapers throughout the Arab world  give their take on the Annapolis conference.

It's not just Syria and Saudi Arabia

"For too long, the people of Darfur have suffered at the hands of a government that is complicit in the bombing, murder, and rape of innocent civilians. My administration has called these actions by their rightful name: genocide."

--George W. Bush, in a speech last May.

Guess who else is present at the Annapolis  "peace conference"? Of course, Sudan, represented by its ambassador to the U.S. John Ukec. So add to the tally of conference participants a representative of outright genocidists.

Bernard Lewis speaks out

Yesterday in the Wall Street Journal, on a page available online only to subscribers, renowned scholar Bernard Lewis had his say about Annapolis. It's nice to have the basic issues set forth so succinctly and clearly.

On the Jewish Question

By BERNARD LEWIS

November 26, 2007; Page A21

Herewith some thoughts about tomorrow's   peace conference, and
the larger problem of how to approach the Israel-Palestine conflict. The
first question (one might think it is obvious but apparently not) is,
"What is the conflict about?" There are basically two possibilities: that
it is about the size of  Israel, or about its existence.

If the issue is about the size of Israel, then we have a straightforward
border problem, like Alsace-Lorraine or Texas . That is to say, not easy,
but possible to solve in the long run, and to live with in the meantime.

If, on the other hand, the issue is the existence of Israel, then clearly
it is insoluble by negotiation. There is no compromise position between
existing and not existing, and no conceivable government of  Israel is
going to negotiate on whether that country should or should not exist.

PLO and other Palestinian spokesmen have, from time to time, given formal
indications of recognition of Israel in their diplomatic discourse in
foreign languages. But that's not the message delivered at home in Arabic,
in everything from primary school textbooks to political speeches and
religious sermons. Here the terms used in Arabic denote, not the end of
hostilities, but an armistice or truce, until such time that the war
against Israel can be resumed with better prospects for success. Without
genuine acceptance of Israel's right to exist as a Jewish State, as the
more than 20 members of the Arab League exist as Arab States, or the much
larger number of members of the Organization of the Islamic Conference
exist as Islamic states, peace cannot be negotiated.

A good example of how this problem affects negotiation is the
much-discussed refugee question. During the fighting in 1947-1948, about
three-fourths of a million Arabs fled or were driven (both are true in
different places) from Israel and found refuge in the neighboring Arab
countries. In the same period and after, a slightly greater number of Jews
fled or were driven from Arab countries, first from the Arab-controlled
part of mandatory Palestine (where not a single Jew was permitted to
remain), then from the Arab countries where they and their ancestors had
lived for centuries, or in some places for millennia. Most Jewish refugees
found their way to Israel.

What happened was thus, in effect, an exchange of populations not unlike
that which took place in the Indian subcontinent in the previous year,
when British India was split into India and Pakistan. Millions of refugees
fled or were driven both ways -- Hindus and others from  Pakistan to India,
Muslims from India to Pakistan. Another example was Eastern Europe at the
end of World War II, when the Soviets annexed a large piece of eastern Poland and compensated the Poles with a slice of eastern Germany. This too
led to a massive refugee movement -- Poles fled or were driven from the
Soviet Union into Poland, Germans fled or were driven from Poland into Germany.

The Poles and the Germans, the Hindus and the Muslims, the Jewish refugees
from Arab lands, all were resettled in their new homes and accorded the
normal rights of citizenship. More remarkably, this was done without
international aid. The one exception was the Palestinian Arabs in
neighboring Arab countries.

The government of  Jordan granted Palestinian Arabs a form of citizenship,
but kept them in refugee camps. In the other Arab countries, they were and
remained stateless aliens without rights or opportunities, maintained by
U.N. funding. Paradoxically, if a Palestinian fled to Britain or America, 
he was eligible for naturalization after five years, and his locally-born
children were citizens by birth. If he went to Syria, Lebanon or Iraq, he 
and his descendants remained stateless, now entering the fourth or fifth
generation.

The reason for this has been stated by various Arab spokesmen. It is the
need to preserve the Palestinians as a separate entity until the time when
they will return and reclaim the whole of Palestine; that is to say, all
of the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and Israel. The demand for the "return"
of the refugees, in other words, means the destruction of Israel. This is
highly unlikely to be approved by any Israeli government.

There are signs of change in some Arab circles, of a willingness to accept Israel and even to see the possibility of a positive Israeli contribution
to the public life of the region. But such opinions are only furtively
expressed. Sometimes, those who dare to express them are jailed or worse.
These opinions have as yet little or no impact on the leadership.

Which brings us back to the Annapolis summit. If the issue is not the size
of Israel, but its existence, negotiations are foredoomed. And in light of
the past record, it is clear that is and will remain the issue, until the
Arab leadership either achieves or renounces its purpose -- to destroy Israel. Both seem equally unlikely for the time being.
Mr. Lewis, professor emeritus at Princeton, is the author, most recently,
of "From Babel to Dragomans: Interpreting the Middle East" (Oxford
University Press, 2004).

Why not invite al-Qaeda?

" . . . inviting Syria [to Annapolis] is the equivalent of inviting Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida to an anti-terrorism conference," writes Barry Rubin. Rubin is a rather detached analyst who is not usually critical of U.S. or Israeli policy. But Annapolis is a case so extreme that he's dropped his usual diplomacy. This conference proclaims that importing any thug into the U.S. and seating them at a table with Israel is a way to reach peace. Syria--just one, relatively very small example--is responsible for a series of murders of Lebanese "anti-Syrian" (Lebanese who want their country to regain its independence) figures over the last few years, of which the Rafik Hariri assassination is only the most famous. In almost every case the murder of a single individual was achieved by setting a car-bomb on a busy street that also took with it up to a couple of dozen bystanders. This is how Syria makes its points. It's a regime at the lowest level of cruelty, rapacity, and brutality. On to Annapolis!

And I'm so elated to see that the Saudis are coming too. Recently, in a case where a girl was gang-raped by seven men, Saudi Arabia sentenced the girl to six months in prison and 200 lashes for "adultery." That's the George Bush-Condi Rice peace partner for Israel. Really, for shame. Dragging the Western, democratic achievements and character, as represented by the United States and Israel, through the mud of Middle Eastern barbarism--a repulsive circus in Annapolis.

The original Bush doctrine of democratizing the Middle East was naive and unrealistic. That doesn't mean one has to go all the way to the other extreme--the Jim Baker-Jimmy Carter mentality of "the more you're a brutal outlaw, the more you're my friend."

Elon plan gets traction

Knesset Member Benny Elon's alternative plan for dealing with the West Bank (Judea and Samaria) is fortunately getting some traction in both Israel and the U.S. It tries to replace the destructive, outmoded, and idiotic "land for peace" formula (Israel gives land for promises, gets terrorism) with a more reasonable, reality-attuned proposal whereby Israel becomes sovereign over the West Bank, the Israelis living there remain there, the Arabs living there also remain there and become citizens of Jordan, and the "refugee camps" there are dismantled and their residents given normal places to live. This would be a fair solution that benefits all: Israel retains defensible borders and historically-religiously resonant territory; the Arabs living there become formally part of the Palestinian state, i.e. Jordan.

The one catch is that this would constitute a peaceful solution, and so it's not what most of the Arab side wants. But in a better world, Western leaders would present the Arab side with this plan as the paradigm for a solution, instead of serving up Israel in pieces until it becomes indefensible. That's the Bush-Condi-Olmert plan.

Thank you, Frank Gaffney

A superb op-ed by Frank Gaffney exposes the staticidal zealotry of Condi and the U.S.'s mad push for Annapolis. That's right, staticide: creating a terror state constricting and abutting Israel means mortally endangering Israel, something that even most of the Israeli Labor Party understood before the dire period of Oslo infamy began in 1992-1993.

It would be nice to hear even a word from Norman Podhoretz, William Kristol, or Charles Krauthammer on the Annapolis outrage. Maybe too much cognitive dissonance for them.

Ettinger explains reality

Israeli activist and commentator Yoram Ettinger explains how the U.S. and Israeli governments ignore the culture that they're dealing with and pursue policies doomed to fail.

Jacoby demolishes canard

Saeb Erekat, longtime media flack for the Palestinian Authority and PLO, huffed that his movement couldn't possibly recognize Israel as a Jewish state because "it is not acceptable for a country to link its national character to a specific religion." Jeff Jacoby demolishes the canard that this is uniquely true of Israel, beginning with the 55-member Organization of the Islamic Conference. It's not just Erekat--all sorts of people who hate Israel and want it to disappear profess being deeply offended by this confluence of nationality and religion. Actually it's one of Israel's most attractive aspects--the Jewish-national dimension, which is lacking in the Jewish Diaspora, gives space for more secular-minded Israeli Jews to live meaningfully as Jews as part of a diverse collective. The haters are blind to all this and always will be.

"Terrorist" responds

Israel's left-wing daily Haaretz, in an editorial, equated Likud Member of Knesset Gideon Saar with Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal. A standard experience, of course, for security realists within democracies--the Left views you as equivalent to the terrorists at best, and actually as worse--with the terrorists, peace can be made, but you are hopeless. Today Haaretz published Saar's admirable reply.