by Mudar Zahran
Last Thursday, Obama was the first president in US history to call for outcome Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations to be within the pre-1967 borderlines "with land swaps." This call means that the President thinks that any future final settlement should put Israel out of land it seized in the six-day war, thus making Judea and Samaria out of the question for Israel in the president's future peace vision. Obama explained his policy: that Israelis and Palestinians will negotiate land swaps resulting in a border that will be different than the ones that existed before the 1967 war. Despite the criticism and shock voiced by Israel's Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and pro-Israeli activists in the US and elsewhere, Obama seemed determined to fulfill his vision in his first speech before the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), all while assuring his listeners of his administration's commitment to "Israel's security."
Despite Obama's verbal commitment to Israel's wellbeing, Obama's vision of a Palestinian state controlling most of the pre-1967 war borders will result in one thing: Israel's destruction. Obama and his advisors should be able to realize this, as the Democrats have engaged in direct peace talks between the Palestinians and Israelis during the Clinton years -- the most intense and engagement for all parties involved.
Precedents suggest that the more land that the Palestinians gain inside Israel, the more trouble there will be, and the more distant peace becomes. This has been the result of so many examples: when control over major Palestinian-populated cities was handed swiftly to the Palestinians in the late 1990s, the second Intifada broke out on an unprecedented scale, with terrorist attacks harbored by both the PLO and Hamas, and carried out on an average of once per week, sometimes more, claiming the lives of Israeli civilians and resulting in a lengthy showdown that has hurt both the Israelis and the Palestinians. Déjà vu with Gaza, when Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon withdrew troops from there, even evacuating their own Israeli settlements by force; as a result, Gaza turned into a major stronghold for Hamas, a serious threat to Israel and a castle of oppression for the average Palestinian under the Hamas's ultra-Islamic-style of dictatorship.
Why should President Obama assume that Israel would willingly accept a Palestinian state on even larger area than what has ever been proposed --by any US administration-- when the most reasonable outcome is more threats to Israel's security?
And it is not only Israel's security that is at stake, Israel's legitimacy of rule over its own soil itself has been challenged by the still very-weak Palestinian Authority. In September, the PA may be making a bid to the UN for statehood; how would the men running the PA today behave when they become in charge of an independent state based on the pre-1967 borders?
Obama, on the other hand, does acknowledge the need to maintain the settlements as factual changes in the ground, yet offers an even more deadly solution for those: "land swaps," while noting that the future borders will look different from those of the pre-1967 war. What Obama and his staff must know is that this concept was turned down by none other than the PA itself in 2000, when former Israel Prime Minister Ehud Barak offered PLO leader Yasser Arafat to swap settlement areas for territories inside Israel. The reason for Arafat's rejection may have not been clear to Barak, yet the simplest explanation is that the Palestinian Authority's doctrine is against Jewish presence itself, and not just area Israel controls. As is clear in both the Palestinians and Hamas Charters, the problem is with Jewish existence on any land there, not just borders; therefore, any "swap" would be challenged by the PA regardless how small it was, or how much land would be "swapped" in exchange for those. To both Abbas's Palestinian Authority and to the Hamas, all of Israel is a "settlement." Moreover, in any negotiation, the price for a swap increases in proportion to what each side wishes to retain: what would be the "swap" for Jerusalem, Tel Aviv? Rest assured, no swaps will be able to be agreed upon.
Jews surrounded by the Palestinian authority is a recipe for explosion that would take place eventually. Israel would be at the mercy not only of their Palestinian neighbors, but also of any other hostile countries in the region, which would most likely urge the Palestinians to resume their "phased plan" -- using any land they might acquire as the launching pad from which to try to get even more land.
Obama's vision does not stop at leaving Israel vulnerable, but also extends to giving the PA land inside Israel -- another recipe for trouble that poses a direct threat to Israel's existence. Obama explains that the '67 borders and the "land swap" is "a well-known formula to all who have worked on this issue for a generation," yet it is not. The only formula agreed to was that of UN Resolution 242, which determined that both sides would conduct direct negotiations with one another for "territories," without ever mentioning which. The danger of Obama's statement is that now how can Mahmoud Abbas ever settle for anything less? As he himself said, how can he be "less Palestinian" than the President of the United States?
Obama's justification for Israel to accept a Palestinian state with the pre-1976 borders is the dramatic changes in the ground caused by the Arab Spring revolutions. Changes that have already taken place, such as that in Egypt and potential changes to come should actually give even more reason for the Israelis not to pursue peace on fragile grounds rather than nose dive into a hasty peace deal. The Palestinian majority in Jordan, or one of Jordan's neighbors, might someday topple the Hashemite regime and its Bedouin loyalists. Such a scenario is no longer impossible with the recent regimes meltdowns; the Hashemite regime in Jordan is no match to Mubarak's. Should this happen in Jordan, the Palestinians will have a state in Jordan in addition to that in the Judea and Samaria, and the occasional one in Gaza, should Hamas choose to break off again from the PA.
Further, Obama unwittingly admits that his proposal will failed even before it starts. He states that the recent "unity" between the PA and Hamas government is an obstacle to peace, and ignores the obvious: that the Palestinian Authority itself is a de facto terrorist organization for uniting with Hamas. If they are able to get what president Obama is envisioning for them, they would make the most successful terrorist organization in history. Such peace proposals by the President are a call for Israel to commit suicide. The President is proposing that Israel should give up land, in exchange of good will from the PA, and assurances that treaties would be kept - which they never are -- just look at Southern Lebanon -- and at a time where the future shape of the Middle East ruling regimes is not clear anyone. Further, a Palestinian state on pre-1967 borders would squeeze Israel geographically into an impossible position. With a horizontal length of just nine miles at one point, it would force Israel into becoming an even narrower and a smaller country even harder to defend.
Historically, what has been bad for the Israelis has proven to be bad, and compromising to the Palestinians, as well. Whether Obama realizes it or not, the PA is not a democracy; has a very bad record on human rights, with serious violations against its very own citizens, and a dramatic infestation of corruption, subjecting the Palestinians into such governing body has proved to be against their own interests to the point where a recent survey of Palestinians in Jerusalem showed that 70% of them would rather remain under Israeli rule. At the same time, Obama's proposal opens a Pandora's Box, the so-called "right of return": so far, Obama has not chosen to dismiss such a claim or state that the Palestinians would be required to go the new Palestinian state rather than to their homes in Haifa and Jaffa, as past administrations have always publicly assured Israel, and despite the fact that the Palestinians always have been -- and still are -- promised every day, in Arabic, by their leaders, as well as others, such as the King of Jordan's recent, and sudden, emphasis on "the right of return" of his country's Palestinian majority.
Not mentioned are many Palestinians, in Jordan in particular, where they make up the majority of the population, and who would view a Palestinian state as a threat to their right to stay in their own country, Jordan. Recently, a group of retired Jordanian Bedouin military commanders, sent a letter to Jordan's King Abdullah, requesting that the Palestinians of Jordan be stripped of their citizenships "in order to secure their right of return," whether or not they even wish to return.
The Israelis and the pro-Israel American lobby in the US should not appease Obama's administration by tolerating unrealistic views that would only set the stage for Israel's destruction and even greater Middle Eastern explosions, as the 1949 armistice lines to which Israel is being asked to return ("with swaps") will invite yet more wars of aggression against Israel as they already have twice in the past, and became the reason Israel acquired the areas being disputed -- Judea, Samaria, Jerusalem, Gaza and the Heights of Golan -- in the first place. Although Obama was right when he said that his views are not recent or "original" -- several US administrations, as far back as Carter's, have been entertaining unrealistic visions for solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict --and each time a part of those visions was actualized, more wars, pain, and terror was generated for the suffering of both the Palestinians and the Israelis.
Nonetheless, such development of a twisted vision should give the pro-Israel lobby in the US a reason to consider the fact that the peace process itself is about to become officially dead, which logically calls for attention to developing a backup plan, a "plan B". Developing an alternative geographic option for peace, that involves establishing a Palestinian state other than on Israel soil, has been around ever since the Palestinian-Israeli conflict began. Jordan, for example, has been named by many, from both sides, as the true Palestinian state; nonetheless, the current unrest in the Middle East region makes promoting such an option a risky task, even though it would be better for Palestinians as human beings, rather than living in the horrific refugee camps where the UN has dumped them to let them fester. Until we see how radicalized the Middle East region will become, however, and also what will happen next September, when the world shall witness the outcome of a possible Palestinian Authority bid for statehood at the UN, true peace seekers, both Israelis and Palestinians, should probably observe developments with skepticism and caution -- which leads one to wonder: Is the UN really a help or toxic?
Mudar Zahran
Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.
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