Why the Oslo Accords should be abrogated by Israel Part I

 

by  Louis Rene Beres -

 

1^st part of 2

 

Benjamin Netanyahu, the new Prime Minister of Israel, intends to honor those portions of the Oslo Accords that have already become "facts on the ground." Although this intention would appear to support the authoritative expectations of international law, exactly the opposite is true. As the following argument makes clear, international law now requires abrogation, not compliance, with these invalid and illegal agreements.

 

The Oslo Accords between Israel and the PLO are in violation of international law. Israel, therefore, is now obligated to abrogate these nontreaty agreements. A comparable argument could be made regarding PLO obligations, but this would make little jurisprudential sense in light of that particular nonstate party`s intrinsic incapacity to enter into a legal arrangement with Israel.

 

Taken by itself, the fact that the Oslo accords do not constitute authentic treaties under the Vienna Convention - because they link a state with a nonstate party - does not call for abrogation. But as the nonstate party in this case just happens to be a terrorist organization whose leaders must be punished for their egregious crimes, any agreement with this party that offers rewards rather than punishments is entirely null and void. Significantly, in view of the peremptory expectation known in law as Nullum crimen sine poena, "No crime without a punishment," the state party in such an agreement - here the State of Israel - violates international law by honoring the agreement.

 

According to Principle I of the binding Nuremberg Principles: "Any person who commits an act which constitutes a crime under international law is responsible therefore and liable to punishment." It is from this principle, which applies with particular relevance to Hostes humani generis ("Common enemies of humankind") and which originates in three separate passages of the Jewish Torah, that each state`s obligation to seek out and prosecute terrorists derives. Hence, for Israel to honor agreements with terrorists - agreements that require, among other pertinent violations - the release of thousands of other terrorists - is to dishonor the very meaning of international law.

 

Is Yasser Arafat personally a terrorist? In the U.S. case of Klinghoffer v. Palestine Liberation Organization, the court answered in the affirmative. In the Israeli courts, a petition to charge Yasser Arafat with terrorist crimes was submitted to Israel`s High Court of Justice in May 1994. This petition, filed by Shimon Prachik, an officer in the IDF reserves, and Moshe Lorberaum, who was injured in a 1978 bus bombing carried out by the PLO, called for Arafat`s arrest. The petition noted that Arafat, prima facie, had been responsible for numerous terror attacks in Israel and abroad, including murder, airplane hijacking, hostage-taking, letter-bombing and hijacking of ships on the high seas. The petitioner`s allegation of Arafat`s direct personal responsibility for terrorism was seconded and confirmed by Dr. Ahmad Tibi, Arafat`s most senior adviser: "The person responsible on behalf of the Palestinian people for everything that was done in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is Yasser Arafat," said Dr. Tibi on July 13, 1994, "and this man shook hands with Yitzhak Rabin."

 

Terrorism is not the only crime in which Arafat and many of the released Palestinian prisoners are complicit. Related Nuremberg-category crimes, including crimes of war and crimes against humanity, were also committed by these persons. In this connection, the new Prime Minister should recall that units of the Palestine Liberation Army (PLA) served with Saddam Hussein`s forces in occupied Kuwait, making them, and Yasser Arafat personally (the legal principle of command responsibility is known as respondeat superior, or "Let the Master Answer") responsible for multiple crimes of extraordinary horror and ferocity. And if these offenses were not enough of an affront to world law, many of the terrorists now being released from Israeli jails in furtherance of the Oslo accords are immediately accepting high positions in the Palestine Authority`s security forces.

 

Even if the nonstate party to the Oslo accords were not a terrorist organization, Israel would have entered into an agreement of unequal obligations, an agreement where the PLO would not be held under international law to the same standards of accountability. Several recent federal court decisions in the United States reaffirm that agreements between nonstate and state parties impose asymmetrical compliance expectations. For example, in a concurring statement in the case of Tel-Oren v. Libyan Arab Republic, a 1981 civil suit in U.S. federal courts in which the plaintiffs were Israeli survivors and representatives of persons murdered in a terrorist bus attack in Israel in 1978, Circuit Judge Harry T. Edwards stated: "../...I do not believe the law of nations imposes the same responsibility or liability on nonstate actors, such as the PLO, as it does on states and persons acting under color of state law."

 

The PLO, of course, is a terrorist organization, and Israel has no right to honor the Oslo accords` requirement to release convicted members of that organization. No government, in fact, has the right to lawfully pardon or grant immunity to terrorists with respect to criminally sanctionable violations of international law. In the United States, it is evident from the Constitution that the President`s power to pardon does not encompass violations of international law, and is limited to "Offenses against the United States." This limitation derives from a broader prohibition that binds all states, including Israel, namely the overriding claims of pertinent peremptory rules stemming from Higher Law or the Law of Nature. These claims are identified in Blackstone`s COMMENTARIES, which acknowledge that all law "results from those principles of natural justice, in which all the learned of every nation agree../..../.."

 

In its apprehension and incarceration of terrorists, Israel acted, however unintentionally, not only for itself, but on behalf of the entire community of states. Moreover, because some of the jailed terrorists had committed crimes against other states as well as against Israel, the government in Jerusalem cannot possibly pardon these offenses against other sovereigns. The Jewish State, therefore, possesses absolutely no right to grant immunity for terrorist violations of international law. No matter what might be permissible under its own Basic Law and the Oslo accords, any freeing of terrorists is legally incorrect. By its freeing of terrorists, Israel is guilty of what is known in law as a "denial of justice."

 

Israel`s obligation to abrogate the Oslo accords, as we have seen, stems from certain peremptory expectations of international law. Israel, however, has substantial rights of abrogation here apart from such expectations. These rights derive from the doctrine of Rebus sic stantibus. Defined literally as "So long as conditions remain the same," this doctrine of changed circumstances now augments Israel`s obligations to cease compliance with Oslo. This is because Israel`s traditional obligations to the accords ended promptly when a fundamental change occurred in those circumstances that existed at the effective dates of the accords and whose continuance formed a tacit condition of the accords` ongoing validity. This change, of course, involved multiple material breaches by the PLO, especially those concerning control of anti-Israel terrorism and extradition of terrorists. In short, Rebus sic stantibus has become pertinent for Israeli abrogation because of the profound change created by the PLO in the very circumstances that formed the cause, motive and rationale of consent.

 

According to Oslo expectations, Arafat should be actively committed to control of anti-Israel terrorism. Yet, as THE JERUSALEM POST pointed out correctly in a mid-March 1996 editorial, "Arafat not only shelters terrorists; he lets them incite, recruit, organize, train, arm, raise funds, and launch operations from areas under his control. This is now indisputable."

 

The "head of the snake," admitted former Prime Minister Shimon Peres, "is in Gaza." And it is in Gaza, PLO-controlled Gaza, that Hamas - allegedly at odds with PLO - has been fomenting much of its terror campaign against Israel. It is the Palestinian security services that sustain this Hamas campaign. In the words of THE JERUSALEM POST:

 

"It was the Hamas leadership in Gaza which decided on terrorist strikes and issued operational orders for the bus bombings. It was in Gaza that the Hamas military organization trained suicide bombers and assembled explosives. It was in Gaza that "the engineer" Yihye Ayyash found shelter until he was killed, and where his successor Mohammed Dief has been living openly. It was in Gaza that Arafat`s Preventive Security chief was negotiating with Dief - a close friend - both before and after the first bus bombing. He knew of Dief`s involvement in the bombing and did nothing either to detain him or prevent the next outrage."

 

Israel`s obligation to terminate the Oslo accords stems also from a related principle of national self-preservation. Under this peremptory norm, any agreement may be terminated unilaterally following changes in conditions that make performance of the agreement injurious to fundamental rights, especially the rights of existence and independence. Known in law as "rights of necessity," this norm was explained with particular lucidity by none other than Thomas Jefferson. In his "Opinion on the French Treaties," written on April 28, 1793, Jefferson stated that when performance, in international agreements, "becomes impossible, nonperformance is not immoral. So if performance becomes self- destructive to the party, the law of self-preservation overrules the laws of obligation to others." Later, in that same document, Jefferson wrote: "The nation itself, bound necessarily to whatever its preservation and safety require, cannot enter into engagements contrary to its indispensable obligations." Israel, the reader should recall, has an "indispensable obligation" to endure.

 

 

Louis Rene Beres                                                    

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.         ./..

 

Why the Oslo Accords should be abrogated by Israel Part II

 

by  Louis Rene Beres -

 

2^nd part of 2

 

How, exactly, do the Oslo accords impair this obligation? Here is what THE JERUSALEM POST had to say about the expected consequences of Oslo II:

 

" ../...the implementation of Oslo II signals the relinquishment of Israel`s security control over the territories and the assumption of such control by the PLO. For the first time, there will be a large PLO army on the outskirts of Israel`s major population centers, and it will be in control of strategic areas which dominate Israel`s heartland. Soon, Israel will be able to control neither the influx of Palestinians from refugee camps in neighboring countries nor the importation of arms. To expect such an arrangement to bring anything but unrest, terrorism and ultimately war, is to live in a world of make believe."

 

To better understand this "world of make believe," it is instructive to consider the Charter of Hamas, another terrorist organization that is central to current difficulties in implementing "peace." According to this Charter:

 

Peace initiatives, the so-called peaceful solutions, and the international conferences to resolve the Palestinian problem, are all contrary to the beliefs of the Islamic Resistance Movement. For renouncing any part of Palestine means renouncing part of the religion; the nationalism of the Islamic Resistance Movement is part of its faith, the movement educates its members to adhere to its principles and to raise the banner of Allah over their homeland as they fight their Jihad../..../..There is no solution to the Palestinian problem except by Jihad../..../..In order to face the usurpation of Palestine by the Jews, we have no escape from raising the banner of Jihad../..../..We must imprint on the minds of generations of Muslims that the Palestinian problem is a religious one, to be dealt with on this premise../..../.."I swear by that who

holds in His Hands the Soul of Muhammad! I indeed wish to go to war for the sake of Allah! I will assault and kill;, assault and kill, assault and kill.

 

 

Regarding relationships with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), the Hamas Charter offers the following: "The PLO is among the closest to the Hamas, for it constitutes a father, a brother, a relative, a friend. Can a Muslim turn away from his father, his brother, his relative of his friend? Our homeland is one, our calamity is one, our destiny is one and our enemy is common to both of us../..../.." On the primacy of hatred toward Judaism, not Israel (i.e., Israel is despised because it is Jewish), the Hamas Charter states: "Israel, by virtue of its being Jewish and of having a Jewish population, defies Islam and the Muslims. `Let the eyes of the cowards not fall asleep.`"

 

After the assassination of terrorist Yechya Ayyash, known widely as "The Engineer," Yasser Arafat delivered a eulogy in Dura, near Hebron. Speaking before a large crowd of Hamas supporters, Arafat praised all "Palestinian martyrs," including those who had murdered Israeli women and children in schools, buses and homes. Referring to the imminent takeover of Jerusalem from the Jews, Arafat expressed confidence that, "in a few months, we will pray together at the Al-Aksa mosque,:" adding that "those who don`t like it can go and drink the water of the Dead Sea."

 

At a eulogy given on June 15, 1995, for Abed Al Karim Al Aklok, a former PLO official, Arafat remarked: "We are all seekers of martyrdom in the path of truth and right toward Jerusalem the capital of the State of Palestine../..../..We will continue this difficult Jihad, this long Jihad, this arduous Jihad, in the path of martyrs - via death - the path of sacrifice../..../.." On January 30, 1996, speaking to 40 Arab diplomats at the Grand Hotel in Stockholm, Sweden, Arafat`s topic was: "The Impending Total Collapse of Israel." Said Arafat, "We Palestinians will take over everything, including all of Jerusalem../..../..All the rich Jews who will get compensation will travel to America." Further: "We of the PLO will now concentrate all our efforts on splitting Israel psychologically into two camps. Within five years we will have six to seven million Arabs living on the West Bank and in Jerusalem../..../..You understand that we plan to eliminate the State of Israel and establish a purely Palestinian State../..../..I have no usefor Jews; they are and remain Jews. We now need all the help we can get from you in our battle for a united Palestine under total Arab-Moslem domination."

 

Regarding the Oslo accords and Israel`s vulnerability to war, Israeli security is now increasingly dependent upon nuclear weapons and strategy. Faced with a codified and substantial loss of territories - a loss that might still be enlarged by transfer to Syria of the Golan Heights - the Jewish State will have to decide on how to compensate for its diminished strategic depth. While this shrinkage does not necessarily increase Israel`s existential vulnerability to unconventional missile attack, it surely does increase that state`s susceptibility to attacking ground forces and to subsequent enemy occupation. And the loss of strategic depth will almost certainly be interpreted by enemy states as a significant weakening of Israel`s overall defense posture, an interpretation that could lead to great enemy incentives to strike first.

 

Should Israel`s sacrifice of strategic depth occasioned by the Oslo accords result in a Palestinian state, the geostrategic victory of the Islamic world would be complemented by something less tangible but no less critical: an Arab and Iranian perception of an ongoing and unstoppable momentum against the Jewish State, a jihad-centered perception of military inevitability that would reiterate the policies of war. Recognizing such perceptions, Israel could be forced to take its bomb out of the "basement," and/or it could have to accept a greater willingness to launch preemptive strikes against enemy hard targets.

 

For their part, certain Arab states and/or Iran would respond to such Israeli decisions. Made aware of Israel`s policy shifts - shifts that would stem from both Israel`s Oslo-generated territorial vulnerabilities and from its awareness of enemy perceptions spawned by the Oslo-generated creation of Palestine, these enemy states could respond in more or less parallel fashion. Here, preparing openly for nuclearization and aggression against Israel, these states would illustrate dramatically certain far-reaching results of the Oslo accords - results that are still generally unrecognized and that provide, together with other above-listed rationales, a fully authoritative basis for permissible abrogation.

 

There is one last point that would need to be emphasized by Israel`s new Government. Contrary to widely disseminated but wholly erroneous allegations, a Palestinian state did not exist before 1967 or 1948. A state of Palestine was not promised by authoritative U.N. Security Council Resolution # 242. Indeed, a state of Palestine has never existed.

 

As a nonstate legal entity, Palestine ceased to exist in 1948, when Great Britain relinquished its League of Nations mandate. When, during the 1948-49 War of Independence, Judea/Samaria and Gaza came under illegal control of Jordan and Egypt respectively, these aggressor states did not put an end to an already-existing state. Fromn the Biblical Period (ca.1350 BCE to 586 BCE) to the British Mandate (1918-48), the land named by the Romans after the ancient Philistines (a naming intended to punish and demean the Jews) was controlled exclusively by non-Palestinian elements. Significantly, however, a continuous chain of Jewish possession of the land was legally recognized after World War I at the San Remo Conference of April 1920. There, a binding treaty was signed in which Great Britain was given mandatory authority over Palestine (the area had been ruled by the Ottoman Turks since 1516) to prepare it to become the "national home for the Jewish People."

 

Palestine, according to the treaty, comprised territories encompassing what are now the states of Jordan and Israel, including Judea/Samaria and Gaza. Present-day Israel, including Judea/Samaria and Gaza, comprises only twenty-two percent of Palestine as defined and ratified at the San Remo Peace Conference. In 1922, Great Britain unilaterally and illegally split off 78 percent of the lands promised to the Jews - all of Palestine east of the Jordan River - and gave it to Abdullah, the non-Palestinian son of the Sharif of Mecca. Eastern Palestine now took the name Transjordan, which it retained until April 1949, when it was renamed as Jordan.

 

From the moment of its creation, Transjordan was closed to all Jewish migration and settlement, a clear betrayal of the British promise in the Balfour Declaration of 1917 and a patent contravention of its Mandatory obligations. On July 20, 1951, a Palestinian assassinated King Abdullah because of his hostility to Palestinian nationalist aspirations. Several years prior to Abdullah`s killing, in 1947, the newly-formed United Nations, rather than designate the entire land west of the Jordan River as the Jewish National Homeland, enacted a second partition. Ironically, because this second fission again gave unfair advantage to the Arabs, Jewish leaders accepted the painful judgment while the Arab states rejected it.

 

On May 15, 1948, exactly one day after the State of Israel came into existence, Azzam Pasha, Secretary General of the Arab League, declared to the tiny new nation founded upon the ashes of the Holocaust: "This will be a war of extermination and a momentous massacre../..../.." This genocidal declaration has been and remains to this day at the heart of all subsequent Arab orientations toward Israel. In 1967, almost twenty years after Israel`s entry into the community of nations, the Jewish State - as a result of its stunning military victory over Arab aggressor states - gained unintended control over Judea/Samaria and Gaza. Although the idea of the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war is enshrined in the U.N. Charter, there existed no authoritative sovereign to whom the territories could be "returned." Israel could hardly have been expected to transfer these territories back to Jordan and Egypt, which had exercised unauthorized and cruel control since the Arab-initiated war of extermination in 1948-49. Moreover, the idea of Palestinian "self- determination" was only just beginning to emerge after the Six-Day War, and was not even codified in U.N. Security Council Resolution #242, which was adopted on November 22, 1967. For their part, the Arab states convened a summit in Khartoum in August 1967, concluding "No peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel, no negotiations with it../..../.."

 

Prime Minister Netanyahu, please take heed. International law does not require compliance with the Oslo Accords. It requires abrogation of these illegal agreements.

 

 

Louis Rene Beres is Professor of International Law, Department of Political Science, Purdue University

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.             ../..

The four tools of delegitimization

 

by  Vic Rosenthal

I've talked about the 'information war' being waged against Israel, and how her enemies and their supporters are constantly trying to delegitimize her historically, legally and morally — in order to weaken Western support and clear the path for the physical destruction of the Jewish state that is their ultimate goal:

• Historically, they attempt to revise history to show that today's Jews have no roots in the Land of Israel

• Legally, they try to prove that Israel's creation was not justified and that her actions violate international law

• Morally, they accuse Israel as acting for the basest of motives and in the most despicable ways, to show that Israel does not deserve to exist as a nation

While reading the very biased Amnesty International report on alleged war crimes during the recent Gaza war, I started thinking about how they do these things. I've discussed the historical revisionism on several occasions. Today I want to write about how they try to distort perceptions of current events.

They use four basic tools:

1. Lies
2. Exaggerations
3. Facts without context
4. False imputation of motives

Lies are sometimes just stories about things that never happened. For example, it's said that such-and-such a woman was denied permission to leave Gaza for medical treatment, but upon investigation it turns out that she doesn't exist.

Or they can be elaborate hoaxes, such as the videotaped drama of the shooting of the boy Mohammed al-Dura. This was particularly notable because of the far-reaching consequences of the story — "al-Dura" became a rallying cry of the intifada — and the involvement of the well-known France II TV bureau chief Charles Enderlin and even the President of France at the time, Jacques Chirac

Exaggerations take advantage of the normal tendency to say "the truth lies somewhere in between" when two sides make opposing claims. Start with an outrageous exaggeration when the other side tells the truth, and you have automatically gained ground. An obvious example is the inflated Palestinian figure for civilian casualties in the Gaza war.

Sometimes an exaggeration changes not just the degree, but the nature of  something. Consider the accusation that Israel fired white phosphorus  munitions directly at civilians, a war crime. Israel did use white phosphorus, for smoke and illumination. There undoubtedly were some people injured by the residue which fell from air bursts of such shells.  But the number and severity of these incidents were multiplied beyond measure in Palestinian reports.

Facts without context: Pro-Arab NGOs say that the Israeli navy interferes with Gazan fishing boats. But they don't tell you the context — that the boats have been used to smuggle explosives, weapons and terrorists.

False imputation of motives: Palestinians say that Israel's actions are always designed to punish and humiliate them, not for legitimate security purposes. Israel is accused of deliberately targeting civilians in the Gaza war. But reports of civilian casualties caused international pressure which ultimately forced Israel to withdraw without achieving its military goals. The IDF was aware of this possibility from the beginning; is it logical that it would behave this way?

Note that the first three techniques make the fourth possible. A noncombatant is hurt — was it an accident or was it done on purpose? If such incidents are rare, you can infer that it is probably accidental. But if it seems to be part of a pattern, then maybe it was deliberate — and the lies, exaggerations and facts presented without context are intended precisely to establish such a pattern.

For example, the Amnesty International report mentioned above includes a number of unverifiable second-person atrocity stories, which it follows by accusing the IDF of remarkably evil intent.  Here is a quotation from the report with the implications of motive highlighted:

Much of the destruction was wanton and deliberate, and was carried out in a manner and circumstances which indicated that it could not be justified on grounds of military necessity. Rather, it was often the result of reckless and indiscriminate attacks, which were seemingly tolerated or even directly sanctioned up the chain of command, and which at times appeared intended to collectively punish local residents for the actions of armed groups. [my emphasis]

All of these techniques are designed to work together to produce an image of Israel as an outlaw nation. And they are effective, especially when they fall on the fertile ground of those who are disposed to believe — either for ideological reasons, or because they've already been conditioned to do so by the massive flow of propaganda that appears in most media today, or from a predisposition to antisemitism.

 

Vic Rosenthal

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

 

President Obama Repeating Errors of a Two State Solution.

 

by  Louis René Beres

In Washington, alas, there has always been too little learning from lessons of the past. Now, President Obama elegantly repeats the worn cliches concerning a "Two State Solution." For his part, in Jerusalem, Prime Minister Netanyahu awkwardly straddles the political fence by first expecting a Palestinian state to be "demilitarized." It is bound to be a vain expectation.

Oddly, especially if real history is taken into account, Mr. Obama still refuses to acknowledge that "Palestine" would represent a distinctly enemy state. Fragmented by civil war, both Fatah and Hamas would seek ever-closer ties to Iran. There would also be substantial collaborations with al-Qaeda, ties that are now already being fashioned in Hamas-controlled Gaza.

On September 11th, celebrations of American distress were evident all over Gaza and West Bank, in areas controlled by both Hamas and Fatah. Now, nothing has changed. America, despite its consistently misplaced largesse, is still widely loathed in all Palestinian territories.

Mr. Obama`s adherence to the so-called "Road Map" will surely backfire. Despite their plaintive pleas for "justice," the Palestinians always manage to stand stubbornly in their own way. Time after time, whenever they seem on the threshold of what appears to be a plausible path to independence, their strife-addicted leaders unleash new and unproductive spasms of random violence. Over time, this collective self-destructiveness has been characteristic of both Fatah and Hamas.

Even after Israel`s Operation Cast Lead in Gaza, and even while Israel`s cease fires with Hamas must remain effectively unilateral because of intransigent Palestinian commitments to Jihad, Mr. Obama asks that a Palestinian state be carved from the still-living body of Israel. This rabidly anti-American 23rd Arab state would quickly seek extension across the "green line." The official Palestine Authority (PA) map of "moderate" Fatah already shows all of Israel as part of Palestine. Our principled president should also recall that Arab terrorism arrived long before "occupation" (actually, even before Jewish statehood in May 1948) and that the PLO was founded in 1964 – three years before West Bank and Gaza fell into Israel`s hands. What was it, then, that the PLO was seeking to "liberate?"

Israel remains the front line position of anti-terrorist engagement for the United States in particular, and for the West in general. It is still the lead "canary" in the mine. In this connection, any Palestinian state would have an irremediably injurious effect on Israel`s survival. After "Palestine," Israel`s security would require (1) a far more comprehensive nuclear strategy involving deterrence, preemption and war fighting capabilities; and (2) a corollary and interpenetrating conventional war strategy. Without such strategic improvements, America – not just Israel - would be at greater risk than before.

"Palestine" could affect these two core strategies in several ways. First, it would enlarge Israel`s need for "escalation dominance." With Israel`s conventional capabilities more doubtful, IDF command could decide to make the country`s nuclear deterrent less ambiguous. Taking the Israeli bomb out of the "basement" might actually enhance Israel`s security for a while, but – over time – ending "deliberate ambiguity" could also heighten the odds of nuclear weapons use. If Iran were permitted to "go nuclear," as now still seems certain, such use might not necessarily be limited to the immediate areas of Israel and "Palestine."

Nuclear war could arrive in Israel not only as a "bolt-from-the-blue" surprise missile attack, but also as a result (intended or inadvertent) of escalation. If an enemy state were to begin "only" conventional and/or biological attacks upon Israel, Jerusalem might still respond at some point with nuclear reprisals. If this enemy state were to begin with solely conventional attacks upon Israel, Jerusalem`s conventional reprisals might still be met, sometime in the future, with enemy nuclear counterstrikes.

Why should Israel need a conventional deterrent at all? Even after "Palestine," won`t rational enemy states desist from launching conventional and/or biological attacks upon Israel for fear of an Israeli nuclear retaliation? Not necessarily. Aware that Israel would cross the nuclear threshold only in extraordinary circumstances, these enemy states could be convinced, rightly or wrongly, that so long as their attacks remained non-nuclear, Israel would only respond in kind.

After creation of "Palestine," strategic circumstances in the region would be markedly less favorable to Israel. The only credible way for Israel to deter large-scale conventional attacks following any such creation would be by maintaining visible and large-scale conventional capabilities. Naturally, enemy states contemplating first-strike attacks upon Israel using chemical and/or biological weapons are apt to take more seriously Israel`s nuclear deterrent. Whether or not this nuclear deterrent had remained undisclosed could also affect Israel`s strategic credibility.

A strong conventional capability will always be needed by Israel to deter or to preempt conventional attacks. Obama`s Road Map would critically impair Israel`s strategic depth, and thus the IDF`s essential capacity to wage conventional warfare.

If frontline regional enemy states were to perceive Israel`s own expanding sense of weakness, this could strengthen Israel`s nuclear deterrent. If, however, enemy states did not recognize such a "sense" among Israel`s key decision-makers, these states, animated by Israel`s presumed conventional force deterioration, could be encouraged to attack. Logically, the result, spawned by Israel`s post-"Palestine" incapacity to maintain strong conventional deterrence, could be: (1) defeat of Israel in a conventional war; (2) defeat of Israel in an unconventional chemical/biological/nuclear war; (3) defeat of Israel in a combined conventional/unconventional war; or (4) defeat of Arab/Islamic state enemies by Israel in an unconventional war.

For Israel, even the "successful" fourth possibility could become intolerable. The probable consequences of a regional nuclear war or even a chemical/biological war in the Middle East would be calamitous for the victor as well as the vanquished. Here, all notions of "victory" and "defeat" would promptly lose traditional meaning.

President Obama, please note: The dangers to Israel and the United States of any Palestinian state would outweigh any conceivable benefits.

------------

Louis René Beres (Ph.D., Princeton, 1971) lectures and publishes widely on Israeli and American security matters. Born in Zurich, Switzerland, on August 31, 1945, he is the author of ten major books on international relations and international law, and is a frequent contributor to journals of law, military strategy, intelligence, and counterintelligence.

 

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

 

The Judgment of Solomon on a Hot Summer’s Day.

 

 

by Moshe Feiglin 

 

The first summer heat wave is already here, and with it the burning forests. If you have any doubt as to whose land this is, just take a look at the Judgment of Solomon that takes place here every time the desert wind blows in from the East. The Jews say, "the baby is mine" and plant trees. The Arabs say "the baby is mine, and as long as he is in your hands, we will turn him to ashes."

This is nothing new. In February 1947, when British Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin explained the decision of her majesty's government to transfer the Land of Israel mandate to the UN, he explained the basis of the Arab-Israel conflict as follows:

"For the Jews, the main point is to establish a sovereign Jewish state. For the Arabs, the main point is to completely oppose any form of Jewish sovereignty in any part of Palestine."

The Arabs are not motivated by positive national aspirations. They have no desire to return to a "homeland" and to realize their imaginary "Palestinian" nationality. They simply want to make sure that the Jews are not in Israel. It is not despair caused by loss of what is theirs that motivates them; it is the hope to destroy what belongs to the Jews. The nurturing of this hope is the factor that gave birth to Arab nationalism. The elimination of the hope of the Arabs to drive us from our land will induce calm.

In his book, The Long Short Way, former IDF Chief of Staff Moshe (Bogi) Ya'alon describes how when he was head of Israeli Intelligence he initially believed that Arafat actually wanted a state. Slowly but surely, and after a horrifying period of bloodshed that left scores of Israelis dead, he reached the conclusion that the Arabs of the Land of Israel do not want a state. If the politicians and generals who determine Israel's policies would only study the roots of the conflict, delve into its historical sources and draw conclusions on the basis of facts and not on the basis of wishful thinking - we could save the painful price that Israel's citizens have been paying as they wait for reality to dawn upon its political and military leaders.

The Arabs in Israel never had a separate self-definition. There is not and there never has been a Palestinian nation or a Palestinian state. There is no cultural difference between an Arab in Shechem and an Arab in Damascus or Baghdad - not in language, not in religion and not in custom. The Arabs in the Land of Israel did not have independent national aspirations until the Zionists arrived here. Even afterwards, their national aspirations were limited to the territory in which the Jews lived. Arab nationalism focused its aspirations - not on the Land of Israel - but on the State of Israel. The only territories that interested the Arabs were those that Jews had already settled.

Israel's War of Independence in 1948 was not waged over Judea and Samaria, Jerusalem or over the Right of Return. According to the Partition Plan, all those territories were to remain in Arab hands. The War of Independence was initiated by the heads of the Islamic movement in Israel. Their purpose was strictly to prevent the Jews from establishing a state on a tiny piece of land - much smaller than the area within the "Green Line." And remember, the Arabs were but a small minority in the area that the UN designated for the Jews.

When the PLO was established - prior to the Six Day War, its national aspirations were focused inside the boundaries of the Green Line - the territory held by the Jews after the War of Independence. But wonder of wonders: After the Six Day War and the liberation of Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem, everything changed. Now the stolen Palestinian homeland was no longer Israel's coastal region, but rather the mountains. Why? Because that's where the Jews lived.

As soon as an Arab army - any Arab army - be it Jordanian, Iraqi, Syrian or Egyptian - controls territory in the Land of Israel - the Palestinian nationalism evaporates. The motivation of the Arabs of the Land of Israel is negative. Bevin's definition was most exact. The smoke from this year's forest fires is proof of his words. Let the land burn - the main thing is that the Jews should not be here.

 

Moshe Feiglin 

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

 

PA Chief Abbas: We Left Galilee on Our Own.

 

by Hillel Fendel

Fatah chief Mahmoud Abbas says the Arabs of the Galilee city of Tzfat left in 1948 not because they were driven out, but on their own volition.

Many biographies of Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas imply that his family became “refugees” because of the War of Independence in 1948. For instance, a BBC profile on Abbas when he succeeded Yasser Arafat as PLO chairman in 2005 writes, “In the light of his origins in Safed in Galilee - in what is now northern Israel - he is said to hold strong views about the right of return of Palestinian refugees.” Answers.com states, “As a result of the Arab-Israel War of 1948, he became a refugee.” Wikipedia articles on the topic say the same – all giving the impression that the Abbas family was driven out and became

homeless.

It is notable that the Abbas family moved back to Damascus, as that is likely the place where it had originated less than 90 years earlier. However, Abbas himself – co-founder of Fatah with Arafat, and known as Abu Mazen - now tells a different story. Speaking with Al-Palestinia TV on Monday, Abbas admitted that his family was not expelled or driven out, but rather left for fear that the Jews might take revenge for the slaughter of 20 Jews in the city during the Arab pogroms of 19 years earlier.

In the words of Abbas:

“I am among those who were born in the city of Tzfat (Safed). We were a family of means. I studied in elementary school, and then came the naqba [calamity, namely, the founding of the State of Israel – ed. At night, we left by foot from Tzfat, to the Jordan River, where we remained for a month. Then we went to Damascus, and then to our relatives in Jordan, and then we settled in Damascus.

“My father had money, and he spent his money systematically, and after a year, the money ran out and we began to work.

“The people’s basic motives brought them to run away for their lives and with their property. These [motive were very important, for they feared the violence of the Zionist terrorist organizations – and especially those of us from Tzfat felt that there was an old desire for revenge from the rebellion of 1929, and this was in the memory of our families and parents.”

The “rebellion” Abbas referred to was a series of brutal Arab attacks on Jewish towns in the summer of 1929. Nearly 70 Jews were slaughtered in their homes in Hevron, 20 in Tzfat, 17 in Jerusalem, and others were murdered in Motza, Kfar Uriah and Tel Aviv.

The memory of the slaughter, Abbas said, “brought [our familie to understand that the military balance had changed, and that [ no longer had military forces in their real meaning. There were only young people who fought, and there was an initial action. They felt that the balance of power had collapsed and they therefore decided to leave. The entire city was abandoned based on this thought – the thought of their property and saving themselves.”

Return to Roots - in Damascus

It is notable that the Abbas family moved back to Damascus, as that is likely the place where it had originated less than 90 years earlier. Joan Peters, in her scholarly work “From Time Immemorial” on the Arab population of Israel, writes that in 1860, “Algerian tribes moved from Damascus en masse to Safed.” She notes that the Muslims in the city were mostly descended from Moorish settlers and from Kurds – more evidence negating the claim that the Arabs in the Land of Israel had been there “from time immemorial.”

 

 

Hillel Fendel
Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

 

Avoiding Obama's ambush.

 

by Caroline B. Glick

It works out that US President Barack Obama is a man of heartfelt, long-held principles. It also works out that his principles are divorced from reality and unresponsive to any facts that contradict them.

This much was made clear by a New York Times report on Sunday which discussed a recently "rediscovered" 1983 article Obama published in a student magazine on the subject of nuclear disarmament when he was an undergraduate at Columbia University.

Obama's article, "Breaking the war mentality," was ostensibly a feature story showcasing two student organizations that advocated a freeze in the US's nuclear arsenal. But the young Obama didn't hesitate to use his platform to make his own, even more radical views known to his readers. As he put it: "The narrow focus of the Freeze movement, as well as academic discussion of first- versus second-strike capabilities, suit the military-industrial interests, as they continue adding to their billion-dollar erector sets."

Citing a Rastafarian reggae musician as his foreign policy authority, Obama ruminated, "When Peter Tosh sings that 'everybody's asking for peace, but nobody's asking for justice,' one is forced to wonder whether disarmament or arms control issues, severed from economic and political issues, might be another instance of focusing on the symptoms of a problem, instead of the disease itself."

As one of the freeze advocates explained gently, contending with "the disease itself" was an unachievable goal since "you're not going to get rid of the military in the near future."

 

THERE IS NOTHING shocking about Obama's embrace of radical politics as a college student. Particularly at Columbia, adopting such positions was the most conformist move a student could make. What is disturbing is that these views have endured over time, although they were overtaken by events 20 years ago.

Just six years after Obama penned his little manifesto, the Iron Curtain came crashing down. The Soviet empire fell not because radicals like Obama called for the US to destroy its nuclear arsenal, it fell because president Ronald Reagan ignored them and vastly expanded the US's nuclear arsenal while deploying short-range nuclear warheads in Europe and launching the US's missile defense program while renouncing the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.

On Monday Obama arrived in Moscow for a round of disarmament talks with Russian President Dmitri Medvedev. According to most accounts, while in Moscow Obama plans to abandon US allies Ukraine and Georgia and agree to deep cuts in US missile defense programs. In exchange, Moscow is expected to consider joining Washington in cutting back on its nuclear arsenal just as the likes of Iran and North Korea build up theirs.

Of course, even if Russia doesn't agree to scale back its nuclear arsenal, Obama has already ensured that the US will slash the size of its own by refusing to fund its modernization. In short, Obama is working to implement the precise policy he laid out as an unoriginal student conformist 26 years ago.

 

BY NOW of course, none of this is particularly surprising. Since entering office seven long months ago, Obama has demonstrated that his guiding philosophy for foreign affairs is that the US and its allies are to blame for their adversaries' hostility toward them. All that needs to happen for peace to break out throughout the world is for the US and its allies to quit clinging to their guns and religions and start apologizing for their rudeness. In furtherance of this goal, Obama has devoted himself to putting the screws on US allies, slashing America's defense budget and embarking on a worldwide tour apologizing to US adversaries.

The basic reality that the US is being led by a radical ideologue who clings to his views in the face of overwhelming proof of their falsity is the most fundamental fact that world leaders must reckon with today as they formulate policies to contend with the Obama administration. This is first and foremost the case for Israel.

Since the Netanyahu government took office three months ago, the Obama administration has placed inordinate pressure on Jerusalem in a bid to coerce it into making massive concessions to the Palestinians. These concessions are demanded not for peace, but simply for the sake of placing pressure on Israel. Obama wishes to pressure Israel to show his good intentions to the Arabs and Iran.

 

TO DATE, Obama's loudest demand has been to officially prohibit all Jewish construction in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria. Although the demand is intrinsically bigoted, illegal and immoral, and although the consequences of the expulsion of all Jews from Gaza in 2005 show that Israeli land giveaways and ethnic cleansing bring war not peace, the Netanyahu government has opted not to get into an open confrontation with the administration on the issue.

Instead, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and his government have sought to treat Obama's offensive as a routine disagreement between otherwise close allies. Rather than defending the principles of Jewish national, legal and human rights and the country's right to security, Netanyahu has sought to reach an accommodation with Obama by reducing the discussion to a conversation about the inevitable natural growth of Jewish communities due to expanding families.

But what Obama's slavish devotion to his radical world view shows is that Netanyahu's decision to seek an accommodation is not simply an exercise in futility, it is a recipe for disaster. Obama and his advisers do not care that Jewish fertility rates are the fastest rising in the world. They do not care that by arguing for a complete halt in "natural" growth, they are effectively adopting a eugenics argument the likes of which no US policy-maker has dared to advance since before the Holocaust. They are looking to fight because they believe that the US is best served by fighting with its allies - particularly with Israel. Any concession Netanyahu makes will just form the basis for the next round of demands.

Far from seeking an agreement with Obama, Netanyahu should realize that given the president's ideological rigidity, there is no agreement to be had. Instead of trying to resolve the issue, Netanyahu's goal should be to prolong discussions until Obama finds someone else to pick on.

Rather than making wrongheaded concessions to Obama on Jewish population growth in the vain hope of mollifying him, Israel should go on the offensive on issues where it has something to gain from a confrontation. Two specific issues - aside from Iran's nuclear program - should be raised in this regard.

 

FIRST, IN recent months the Obama administration has applied massive pressure on Israel to remove its military forces from Judea and Samaria, curtail its counterterror operations and allow US-trained, anti-Israel Palestinian military forces to deploy in the towns and cities. Rather than openly oppose these demands, in the interests of cultivating good relations, the Netanyahu government has gone along with the program. This it has done in spite of the fact that the Palestinian forces now deploying throughout the areas have a history of participating in and supporting terror attacks against Israel as well as terrorizing their own people.

Last week the government quietly announced that the IDF is pulling out of most Palestinian population centers and turning the keys over to these hostile US-trained forces. This was a mistake.

In the weeks to come, the government should bluntly and publicly discuss and protest Fatah political and military leaders' continued support for terrorists and terrorist attacks against Israel. Netanyahu and his government should also detail human-rights abuses Fatah personnel routinely carry out against Palestinian journalists, businessmen and other civilians. The administration should be forced to defend its decision to empower these corrupt, terror-supporting brutes at the expense of Israel's security, and to force US taxpayers to foot the bill for its cockamamie priorities.

 

THE SECOND ISSUE is US military aid. For years Israel's detractors have pointed to this aid as "proof" that Israel is a strategic burden for America. But in recent years, and particularly since the Obama administration took office, it is becoming increasingly clear that US military assistance may be a greater burden for Israel than for the US.

On Sunday The Jerusalem Post reported that the Pentagon has forced Israel Aerospace Industries to back out of a joint partnership with a Swedish aerospace company to compete in a multi-billion dollar tender to sell new multi-role fighters to the Indian air force. And as the Post reported, this is the second major deal the Pentagon has forced Israel to withdraw from in the past year. Last summer it was forced to bow out of a $500 million tender to supply the Turkish army with a new main battle tank. In both cases, US firms were competing in the tenders and the Pentagon threatened that Israeli participation would risk continued US-Israeli cooperation.

Today the Israel Air Force faces the prospect of not having a new-generation fighter. The Pentagon has placed so many draconian restrictions on its purchase of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, and raised the price so high, that it makes little strategic or economic sense to purchase it. So too, last week the Israel Navy announced it has decided to explore the option of building its own warships rather than buy one of two competing US naval platforms as planned because the US contractors' costs have gone up so high. The Navy is also taking into consideration the fact that by building domestic platforms, it will provide needed employment to shipyard workers.

All in all, both in terms of pure economics and in terms of the massive and constantly escalating restrictions the Obama administration is now placing on Israeli use of US technologies and munitions, maintaining US military assistance makes less and less sense with each passing day.

Were Israel to initiate a conversation about cutting back on this assistance, it would be able to ensure that the talks take place on its terms. Moreover, given the fact that Israel may indeed be best served by simply ending its military assistance package, the risk involved in such discussions would not be particularly earth shattering. Finally, by making clear that it is not dependent on Obama's kindness, it would be expanding its maneuvering room on other issues as well.

What Obama's radicalism tells us is that he is not a man who is moved by rational discourse. He is not a man who is willing to be convinced that he is mistaken. But even in these dire circumstances, Israel is not without good options for securing its interests vis-a-vis Washington.

To do so, Jerusalem must first understand that it gains nothing from making concessions to a president bent on picking a fight with it. Then it must recognize that there are issues where a confrontation with Obama can serve its interests. Finally it must pursue those issues with energy and passion.

Caroline B. Glick is the senior Middle East Fellow at the Center for Security Policy in Washington, DC and the deputy managing editor of The Jerusalem Post.

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.