President Obama Follows Up on His Middle East Victory, A Satire.

by Barry Rubin

"President Obama! President Obama," said the aide in a cheery voice as he entered the Oval Office, "we just heard that Prime Minister Netanyahu is going to stop all construction in Jerusalem and give in to all your demands!"

"That is wonderful news," chortled the chief executive. ''And as you know I never waste a moment. Quick! Get me my friend Mahmoud Abbas on the phone."

With the magical swiftness of the White House communications equipment, within moments the leader of the Palestinian Authority was on the line. Quickly, Obama explained to him what had happened, adding, "and now we can move quickly to a comprehensive peace."

"Not so fast," answered Abbas. "Since you got the Israelis to back down on that issue—and a great job you did, Mr. President-- surely you can now get them to agree to a return to the 1967 borders, accept all the Palestinian refugees who want to go live in Israel, and drop all the demands they have on us to do anything. Oh, and they have to agree that if we sign a peace treaty that doesn't mean the conflict is over so we can then launch another round to get everything."

"But you said that's all you needed to make a peace treaty!"

"Oh, yes, Mr. President, it's all I need. But then there are all those Fatah leaders who have the real power and they have their heart set on a Palestinian state from the Jordan river to the Mediterranean. Then there are those Hamas leaders, and you know how unreasonable they can be! Why if I settled for anything less they'd have my head! Oh, yes, that reminds me, unless Hamas agrees do keep in mind that anything I accept doesn't apply to the Gaza Strip and Hamas. They can just go on fighting. Hope you don't mind."

After a bit more discussion, Abbas said, "Sorry, Mr. president but I must go now as my favorite show, `Do You Want to Marry a Suicide Bomber,` is coming on Palestinian television right now."

The president hung up, fuming. But then he brightened up, realizing that since it wasn't the Israelis he couldn't possibly have been insulted. Still, he needed something to cheer him up so he telephoned Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, president of Iran.

Obama explained what had happened, and added, "So now that the Israelis aren't building in Jerusalem will you reconsider your nuclear weapons' program?"

"Oh yes, Mr. President," said Ahmadinejad in a soft voice, "of course we're going to reconsider it." Then he screamed at the top of his lungs—if you know the comedians Gilbert Gottfried or Sam Kinison you can imagine them doing it—"We're going to double our speed, you dummy! Since we see you're so weak and the Zionist entity is about to fall apart!" Ahmadinejad hung up.

Once again, Obama was a bit miffed. But since it was an enemy he couldn't stay angry for long. Instead, he dialed up Syrian President Bashar al-Asad, asking if this news would make Syria stop paying, arming, and training terrorists to kill Americans in Iraq. Asad sounded like Ahmadinejad but just a little more polite.

"Ha," thought Obama, my concessions really are moderating him and splitting him away from Tehran. But the president was still a bit down. "I know," he decided, "I'll call my good buddy King Abdallah. That should cheer me up."

"This is wonderful news, Mr. president," said the king respectfully. "Of course we will need a bit more. If I ask the Arab League to support talks the Syrians will try to veto it but you have done a very good job. Please feel assured that the Muslim and Arab people really love you and appreciate you."

By the time Obama was finished with that call he was in a much better mood. "I did it," he thought, "I'm a great statesman."

But as soon as the king hung up the phone he called his finance minister. "Quick," shouted the king excitedly in a panicky voice. "Sell as many dollars as you can and buy Iranian war bonds!"

Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal.

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

 

Obama's Jewish Defenders.

 

by  Caroline Glick

 

Two weeks ago, President Barack Obama opened a diplomatic war on Israel. The proximate cause of his offensive was the Jerusalem District Planning and Building Board's decision to approve the future construction of 1,600 housing units in northern Jerusalem.

 

The goal of the assault is twofold. First, it seeks to undermine the legitimacy of Israel's control over Jerusalem in order to weaken Israel's standing among the American public. As Obama advisor Martin Indyk mocked, Obama's onslaught against Israel has made the Netanyahu government "supersensitive," about Jerusalem.

 

Second, as Obama's advisors explained to The Atlantic, through his unprecedented attacks on Israel's right to sovereignty over its capital city, Obama is working to topple Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's government in the hopes of replacing it with a leftist government led by Tzipi Livni and Kadima.

 

It is a startling turn of events. Obama of course was elected to the presidency with the overwhelming support of the American Jewish community. Part of that support - which netted him 78 percent of the Jewish vote -- was based on his repeated assertion that he is absolutely committed to Israel's security.

 

Obama's expressed desire to overthrow the democratically elected government of Israel stands in contrast to his refusal to acknowledge the basic illegitimacy of the Iranian regime he seeks to appease. That government is founded on last June's stolen presidential elections which returned Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to power amidst massive opposition from the Iranian people. And of course, the Iranian regime which Obama coddles is publicly developing nuclear weapons with the declared purpose of destroying Israel; serves as the leading state sponsor of terrorism; and according to the US and British militaries is training al Qaida and Taliban fighters to kill US and British forces in Afghanistan and Iraq.

 

In an interview with ABC News in January, Obama made clear that the transformative change he pledged to bring to America during the 2008 presidential campaign remained the goal of his administration. Indeed, he made clear that to enact the sort of unpopular, radical domestic and foreign policies he favors, he is willing to diminish his prospects for reelection. As he put it, "I'd rather be a really good one-term president than a mediocre two-term president."

 

To enact his deeply unpopular domestic agenda, Obama relies for support on labor unions, the leftist leadership of the Democratic Party on Capitol Hill, the leftist media and pressure organizations like MoveOn.org. These organs work to demonize Republicans while threatening Democrats who are not leftists with defunding and primary challenges in order to coerce them to support Obama's radical domestic policies.

 

In light of the deep and widespread support Israel enjoys among Israelis, Obama has cobbled together a similar coalition against the Netanyahu government specifically and against a strong Israel generally. His coalition for weakening the US alliance with Israel is comprised of Leftist Israelis - and particularly the Kadima Party and the Israeli media on the one hand -- and leftist pro-Palestinian American Jewish groups on the other hand. Together, these Israeli and American Jewish groups provide political cover for Obama's onslaught against Israel and the US alike.

 

The Jerusalem planning board's decision was non-political. The board is staffed by professional urban planners, representatives of the nature reserves authority and other statutory bodies who convene to determine whether building schemes comport with law and building regulations or not. Its meetings never attract much attention.

As the Netanyahu government sought to understand how a routine meeting of the board became an international story, many officials alleged that Kadima had colluded with the Obama administration to exploit the board's decision to provoke a crisis in US-Israel relations. Kadima's purpose in this, it was argued, was to lower the public's support for Netanyahu.

 

These allegations have been supported by the fact that a week before Vice President Joseph Biden's visit to Israel, Livni confidante and Kadima MK Yoel Hasson told Israeli Radio, "In the coming weeks we will see how messed up Netanyahu's relations with the Europeans and Americans are."

 

Furthermore, Makor Rishon's senior columnist Amnon Lord reported last Friday that Kadima heavyweight Haim Ramon met with one of Obama's senior Middle East advisors ahead of Biden's visit. He also pointed out that Livni's key political advisor Eyal Arad is also an advisor to Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat.

 

Whether or not Kadima colluded with the Obama administration to cook up the crisis over building in Jerusalem, Livni and her cohorts were quick to loudly condemn Netanyahu for the decision - about which he was uninformed and regarding which he has no legal authority to intervene.

 

In condemning Netanyahu, Livni and her Kadima colleagues were energetically assisted by the Israeli media.

 

All the major commentators at all the major newspapers pounced on the story as a means to attack Netanyahu and side with the Obama administration. Prominent among these condemnations was Yediot Ahronot's senior commentator Shimon Shiffer. Ignoring Biden's long record in the Senate of rejecting every sanctions bill against Iran, and his fair-weathered support for Israel, Shiffer declared Biden the greatest friend Israel has ever had in the US Senate while lambasting Netanyahu for "insulting" this great friend of Israel by not preventing a meeting he didn't know about and had no authority to interfere with.

 

With the Israeli Left actively supporting Obama's onslaught against Netanyahu in Israel, Obama's Jewish American surrogates J Street and Americans for Peace Now denounced his critics at home. In time for AIPAC's annual policy conference this week in Washington, J-Street published a full page ad in The New York Times on Monday applauding Obama's condemnation of Israel and calling for the administration to dictate the terms of a "peace" deal between Israel and the Palestinians.

 

These Jewish American and Israeli forces provide cover not only for Obama to attack Israel, but even for anti-Semites to gain credibility for their vicious broadsides against the Jewish state. So it is that last week The Washington Post published an op-ed by Prof. Steve Walt, the co-author of the anti-Semitic tome The Israel and US Foreign Policy. In his article, Walt claimed that AIPAC, the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations and the Anti Defamation League are anti-Israel and that Obama, J-Street and Americans for Peace Now are Israel's true friends. By inference, of course, Walt asserted that he too, is a great friend of Israel. And this is from a man who won his fame by claiming that Israel's Jewish American supporters operate in a conspiratorial, underhanded manner to influence US foreign policy in a way that harms US national security.

 

By proclaiming that Obama is pro-Israel, his Jewish supporters in Israel and the US invert reality. Their obvious intention is to use the jargon of supporting Israel to confuse, demoralize and disenfranchise Israel's actual supporters in the US while demonizing the majority of Israelis who believe that Obama is hostile to Israel and support Netanyahu in his rejection of Obama's pressure.

 

The great challenge of the overwhelming majority of Israelis, and of Israel's actual supporters in the US is to hold these mendacious voices in Israel and in the American Jewish community alike accountable for their actions. Otherwise, by pretending to be pro-Israel while attacking Israel's sovereign rights and actual supporters these forces will do more than simply destabilizing the democratically elected government of Israel. They will undermine the foundations of the US-Israel alliance and endanger the security of the Jewish state and the wellbeing of the American Jewish community. 

 

 

Caroline Glick

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

 

The ‘Obama Intifada’ Begins in Israel.

 

This Passover season the struggle for Jewish survival persists as a modern-day Pharaoh, with a hardened heart, sits in the White House.

 

by Abraham H. Miller

This Passover, as in every previous Passover, the struggle for Jewish survival continues.

We now face an administration that has turned a bureaucratic flap over an incomplete building permit into a diplomatic crisis with Israel.

Ramat Shlomo is a Jewish neighborhood. The Arabs never protested building there because the Arabs never envisioned that Ramat Shlomo would be turned over to them in a final peace accord.

Twelve years ago, major construction began in Ramat Shlomo without a stone being thrown.

Today, a fourth stage of a seven-stage building permit and the rebuilding of Jerusalem's central synagogue, malevolently and illegally destroyed under the Jordanian occupation, creates an Intifada, the Obama Intafada.

Obama has created negotiation positions for the Palestinians they themselves knew were unrealistic. But no Palestinian leader can afford to demand less for the Palestinians than the Americans are willing to demand for them.

First there was the demand for a settlement freeze as a prelude to negotiations. But negotiations took place all the time while settlements were being built. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas never asked for a freeze as a precondition, but once Obama carved out that position, Abbas had to fall into line. Can the Palestinian president be more accommodating to the Israelis than the Americans are?

Then, of course, the Obama administration put the building freeze in Jerusalem on the table. Abbas never asked for a freeze in Jerusalem until after the administration took the lead. Does the Obama administration believe they can make Jerusalem Judenrein ("Jew free")?

Building in Ramat Shlomo, and the reopening of the central synagogue, the Huvra, transformed into rallying cries for a new Intifada, about which the administration remains mute. Whenever Jews choose to return to where they lived before the Jordanians evicted them, they are met with outcries from the international community. This is the same international community that chose to be blind and mute about Jews being evicted from their homes and cut off from their holy places during the Jordanian occupation.

Obama wants to be the American president who created a Palestinian state, and his vision is clear: Israel returns to the '67 boundaries and large segments of Jewish Jerusalem are given over to the Palestinians for a capital.

There are two problems with that offer. First, it has been rejected by two Palestinian leaders, Yasser Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas. Second, the refugee problem now overshadows the issue of territory.  No Palestinian leader has ever said that the return of the territories is a sufficient or even a necessary condition for peace. Yet all forays into the "peace process" behave as if territory will solve everything.

This is the view of the vacuous liberal elements of the Jewish community, who seem to suffer from a terminal case of battered wife syndrome: Just give them more land and they won't blow themselves up. They are really nice people when they are not teaching their children jihad or celebrating the deaths of their "martyrs."

The Palestinians want three generations of Jew-hating refugees settled within Israel's borders, a demand designed to topple the Jewish state. That is not going to happen, but there are options in terms of compensation, if only the Palestinians were serious about negotiations.

To date, the Obama administration has exceeded the demands of the Palestinians. The administration's public face has hyped the proximity talks, a throwback to 1992 before there were direct negotiations, and the administration has refrained from making a single demand on the Palestinians for concessions, not even for direct negotiations.

We already know what a Palestinian state will bring Israel. Gaza is the laboratory for that. The Israelis withdrew from Gaza.  Jewish philanthropists bought the settlers' greenhouses and donated them to the Palestinians, hoping to give the Palestinians an economic livelihood. Instead, the Palestinians vandalized the greenhouses, tearing them apart for the value of their scrap copper and tubing. This was followed by an escalation of Kassam rockets and subsequently  by Iranian-supplied Grad missiles. Gaza became a launching pad for attacks on Israel.

And so, too, will become the Judean Hills above Ben Gurion Airport. The airport will become the next Sderot.

What my liberal Jewish friends forget is that the Palestinians do not even have to fight the next war; all they have to do is position themselves so as to make life in Israel miserable, so that those Israelis who can leave will leave.

The Palestinians have repeatedly shown that they are interested in pseudo negotiations about a "peace process," but they never have shown any real interest in peace through deeds.  No Palestinian leader has ever suggested that the return to the 1967 boundaries, what Abba Eban called "the Auschwitz  borders," will lead to peace.

What our liberal American Jewish community has done and continues to do is to mindlessly embrace this administration and project the community's own values on to the Palestinians. We are engaged in mirror imaging and are playing recklessly with the lives of over six million Israeli Jews.

The real chance for peace will come from strength, as Ronald Reagan showed with regard to the Soviets. Only by defeating this administration at the polls will there be a prospect for peace. To follow this administration blindly into the Palestinian abyss by weakening Israel means the end of the Jewish state.

This Passover season the struggle for Jewish survival persists as a modern-day Pharaoh, with a hardened heart, sits in the White House, deluded by his own narcissism and worshiped by liberal Jews who slavishly follow him.

 

Abraham H. Miller is an emeritus professor of political science and a former head of the Intelligence Studies Section of the International Studies Association.

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

 

Obama's Foolish Settlements Ultimatum.

 

by Steven J. Rosen

U.S. President Barack Obama's decision to confront Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Israeli construction activity in East Jerusalem has been greeted by a hail of praise, especially from people impatient to proceed with peace negotiations with the Palestinians. The belief seems to be that meeting this issue head-on will accelerate progress toward an agreement ending a conflict that has festered for generations. The historical record suggests a different conclusion.

The assumption that a faceoff over construction in Jerusalem will advance negotiations has not been subjected to much scrutiny. But the last two decades show that progress has occurred not when this issue was put first, but when it was finessed and left for the final status negotiations on Jerusalem.

Consider this: If, 17 years ago, U.S. President Bill Clinton or Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat had insisted that Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin freeze all settlement construction, including in Jerusalem, before Arafat would sit down with Rabin, there would have been no Oslo agreements. By Rabin's own account, in comments before the Knesset, Israel's parliament, he had to fudge the issue.

"I explained to the president of the United States," he said,"that I wouldn't forbid Jews from building privately in the area of Judea and Samaria ... I am sorry that within united Jerusalem construction is not more massive."

The same year as the famous handshake on the White House lawn, 1993, the Rabin government completed the construction of more than 6,000 units in the Pisgat Zeev neighborhood of East Jerusalem, out of a total of 13,000 units that were in various stages of completion in areas of the city that had been outside Israeli lines before 1967.

So Arafat did sit down with Rabin, even while Israel's construction in Jerusalem continued. And, on Sept. 13, 1993, the Oslo peace accord was signed -- by the same Mahmoud Abbas who refuses to sit down today. And on October 14, 1994, Rabin, who built homes for Jews in East Jerusalem, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

Altogether, Israel completed 30,000 dwelling units in the West Bank, Gaza, and Jerusalem in the four years of Rabin's government. Even the Jan. 9, 1995, announcement of a plan to build 15,000 additional apartments in East Jerusalem neighborhoods beyond the 1967 borders (especially Pisgat Zeev, Neve Yaacov, Gilo, and Har Homa) did not stop negotiations, which resulted in the Oslo II accord of September 28, 1995. Israeli construction continued while Abbas and Rabin signed an historic accord.

And what was the American policy toward Rabin's construction of Jewish homes in East Jerusalem? Mild annoyance.

On Jan. 3, 1995, the State Department spokesman said mildly, in response to the Rabin government's announcement of expanded construction, "The parties themselves ... have to judge whether it presents any kind of a problem in their own dialogue. The important thing is to continue to meet." The spokesman added on Jan. 10, 1995, "We admit that settlements are a problem, but we ... enjoin the parties to deal with these issues in their negotiations."

Clinton's Middle East peace advisor, Martin Indyk, told the U.S. Senate on Feb. 2, 1995, that Rabin's government had recently "given approval for something like 4,000 to 5,000 new housing units to go up in settlements around the Jerusalem area." But, he said, Clinton had decided to stay out of it. "To take action now that would in one way or another ... would be very explosive in the negotiations, and frankly, would put us out of business as a facilitator of those negotiations." Had Clinton taken Obama's approach, it might well have exploded the negotiations and brought the Oslo process to a halt.

Nor was this example of construction in Jerusalem while diplomacy made progress an isolated exception. Two years after Oslo II, in January 1997, Abbas and Arafat sat down with another Israeli prime minister, Netanyahu, to sign the Hebron Protocol, which provided for the withdrawal of the Israeli armed forces from 80 percent of the very sensitive area of Hebron in the West Bank. Arafat and Abbas had no illusions that Netanyahu intended to freeze Israeli construction in East Jerusalem. In fact, Netanyahu had announced that he would proceed with the building of Har Homa, a controversial Israeli suburb conceived by Rabin. Nor, another 18 months later, did the Palestinians' fierce objections to Har Homa stop them from joining the Wye Plantation negotiations from October 15-23, 1998. These talks led to an agreement known as the Wye River Memorandum, in which Netanyahu, under considerable pressure from President Clinton, agreed to pull the Israel Defense Forces out of an additional 13 percent of the West Bank. This move was fiercely opposed by Netanyahu's right flank, and it led to his downfall in January 1999 when the hard-liners in his coalition defected.

Had Clinton demanded Netanyahu freeze construction in Jerusalem and Arafat made it a precondition for negotiations, neither the Hebron nor Wye agreements would have been signed.

The Labor government that was elected in the wake of Netanyahu's ouster continued the pattern of building in Jerusalem while moving forward in negotiations with the Palestinians. At the Camp David Summit (July 11-25, 2000), then Prime Minister Ehud Barak went past Israel's past "red lines" and the Palestinians most of the West Bank and a capital in Jerusalem, along with land swaps. But, at the same time that he was taking these unprecedented steps, Barak was accelerating the construction of Har Homa and other Jerusalem communities across the pre-1967 line. While the talks accelerated, Barak also moved ahead with the Ras al-Amud neighborhood on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem. President Clinton said he " would have preferred that this decision was not taken." But Clinton added that the United States "cannot prevent Israel from building in Har-Homa." Haim Ramon, Rabin's minister for Jerusalem affairs, said "I would like to make it clear that the government has no intention of stopping the building at Har Homa."

Here again, had Clinton taken Obama's position and issued an ultimatum demanding that all construction in Jerusalem stop, and had Arafat made that American demand a precondition to begin negotiations, the Camp David Summit of 2000 and the Taba talks in January 2001 would not have occurred.

The next Israeli government, headed by retired general Ariel Sharon, did not seek any breakthroughs in negotiations with the Palestinians. But Sharon ordered the most dramatic territorial concession in Israel's history since 1967: the withdrawal of all Israeli soldiers from every square inch of Gaza along with the abandonment of 21 settlements in Gaza and four in the West Bank, in the "unilateral disengagement" of August-December 2005. Sharon pulled 8,000 Israeli settlers from their homes against fierce opposition from his right flank.

President George W. Bush played a key role in making Sharon's withdrawal from Gaza possible by softening U.S. policy on the settlement issue. To offset the concession that Sharon was making, and counter opposition to it from Israel's right, he wrote a letter to Sharon on April 14, 2004, acknowledging that, "In light of new realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli populations centers, it is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949. ... It is realistic to expect that any final status agreement will only be achieved on the basis of mutually agreed changes that reflect these realities." One implication of the letter was that the United States would treat Israeli construction in communities that all parties knew will remain part of Israel in any future two-state agreement, like the Jewish neighborhoods of Jerusalem, differently from settlement activity on controversial areas in the interior of the West Bank.

Elliott Abrams, the White House advisor who negotiated the Bush administration's compromises on the natural growth of settlement, explained the significance of the step Bush took last June in the Wall Street Journal: "There were indeed agreements between Israel and the United States regarding the growth of Israeli settlements on the West Bank. ... The prime minister of Israel relied on them in undertaking a wrenching political reorientation ... the removal of every single Israeli citizen, settlement and military position in Gaza. ... There was a bargained-for exchange. Mr. Sharon was determined to ... confront his former allies on Israel's right by abandoning the 'Greater Israel' position. ... He asked for our support and got it, including the agreement that we would not demand a total settlement freeze."

There were expressions of unhappiness by Palestinian leaders and European diplomats about the Bush policy of giving a green light to limited construction in Jerusalem and certain settlement blocs. But the Bush administration defended it as a realistic policy that moved the peace process forward.

Four months after the disengagement from Gaza, on Jan. 4, 2006, Sharon went into a coma. His deputy, Ehud Olmert, became prime minister. Olmert sought a resumption of negotiations with the Palestinians. Following the Annapolis Summit in November 2007, Abbas, who had taken over as president of the Palestinian Authority and head of the PLO after Arafat's death in November 2004, agreed to begin intensive negotiations with Olmert. While Abbas expressed his unhappiness with continued Israeli construction in East Jerusalem and the settlement blocs, he did not make cancelation of these projects a precondition for talks. In fact, Olmert said, "It was clear from day one to Abbas ... that construction would continue in population concentrations -- the areas mentioned in Bush's 2004 letter. ... Beitar Illit will be built, Gush Etzion will be built; there will be construction in Pisgat Zeev and in the Jewish neighborhoods in Jerusalem ... areas [that] will remain under Israeli control in any future settlement."

These negotiations produced significant results: on Sept. 16, 2008, Olmert offered Abbas 93 percent of the West Bank, partition of Jerusalem, and a land swap. Abbas's deputy Saeb Erekat boasted to a Jordanian newspaper that he and Abbas had achieved considerable progress with the Olmert government between the November 2007 Annapolis talks and the end of 2008 in as many as 288 negotiation sessions by 12 committees -- all while Israeli construction continued.

The record is clear and consistent: The United States has never liked Israeli construction in East Jerusalem, and frequently stated that it complicated the peace process. But until Obama, no U.S. president had made its cancelation a precondition for negotiations, and until Obama, Palestinian leaders including Abbas did not make it a precondition either. For 19 years -- from the Madrid conference of October 1991 through the Olmert/Abbas negotiations that ended in 2008, negotiations moved forward while Jerusalem construction continued. Madrid, Oslo I, Oslo II, the Hebron Protocol, the Wye River Memorandum, Camp David, Taba, the disengagement from Gaza, and the Olmert offer to Abbas -- all these events over the course of two decades were made possible by a continuing agreement to disagree about Israeli construction of Jewish homes in Jewish neighborhoods outside the pre-1967 line in East Jerusalem.

Today, for the first time in 19 years, we have an aministration unable to produce Israeli-Palestinian negotiations . Abbas is following Obama's lead in demanding an unprecedented precondition that Israel cannot satisfy. This is the same Abbas who negotiated with seven previous Israeli prime ministers -- Shamir, Rabin, Peres, Netanyahu (in his first term), Barak, Sharon, and Olmert, without the precondition that he now demands of Netanyahu. We have a crisis. Netanyahu is doing something that every past Israeli prime minister of the left and right has done, but Obama is doing something that past American leaders considered unwise. It is the U.S. behavior that has changed.

At this moment, Obama's decision to confront Netanyahu about construction in Jerusalem wins wide praise. Whether Obama's policy will still look good in six months, when people realize he has mired the negotiations in quicksand, remains to be seen.

Obama would do better to take the advice of his own Mideast envoy, George Mitchell, who wisely told PBS host Charlie Rose, "For the Israelis, what they're building in is in part of Israel. Now, the others don't see it that way. So you have these widely divergent perspectives on the subject. Our view is, let's get into negotiations, let's deal with the issues and come up with a solution to all of them including Jerusalem. ... The Israelis are not going to stop settlements in or construction in East Jerusalem. ... There are disputed legal issues. ... And we could spend the next 14 years arguing over disputed legal issues or we can try to get a negotiation to resolve them in a manner that meets the aspirations of both societies."

 

Steven J. Rosen served for 23 years as foreign-policy director of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and was a defendant in the recently dismissed AIPAC case. He is now director of the Washington Project at the Middle East Forum.

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

 

Leaving Behind All Logic and Rational Policy in an Effort to Bash Israel.

by Barry Rubin

When you barely scratch the surface of what's being said by the Obama Administration and supporters about its current one-way feud with Israel it is easy to see how ludicrous are the claims being made.

For example, here's Thomas Friedman producing a much-quoted statement where no one seems to see the glaring omission:

"This tiff actually reflects a tectonic shift that has taken place beneath the surface of Israel-U.S. relations. I'd summarize it like this: In the last decade, the Israeli-Palestinian peace process — for Israel — has gone from being a necessity to a hobby. And in the last decade, the Israeli-Palestinian peace process — for America — has gone from being a hobby to a necessity. Therein lies the problem."

Typically, of course, he leaves out the second main party: the Palestinians. Imagine, in a conflict between two sides, the attitude of one of them has been completely left out of this formula. So I would add: for the Palestinians (or, if you wish, Palestinian Authority) the peace process has gone from a necessity to a nuisance.

And by the way: can anyone make a serious argument that obtaining a quick peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinian Authority is either possible or a necessity for the United States? No. And the only way that this claim can be asserted is by systematically censoring out a dozen counter-arguments.

Moreover, as the United States fights for an instant peace process—only a few weeks after President Barack Obama admitted in January that it wouldn't go anywhere—the Palestinians have been the main factor blocking it. The PA has refused to negotiate for 14 months while daily Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has expressed the willingness to talk immediately.

The nonsensical view of the situation being pushed by the White House and its supporters can only be maintained by massive censorship of the facts.

Now we have the first fruits of U.S. engagement with Syria, as the Syrian government urges the PA to abandon negotiations altogether and return to violence. There has been no reflection on the fact that the concessions to Damascus have produced more extremism there.

Also censored out of history was the U.S.-Israel agreement last October to let Israel continue building in Jerusalem.

And how about speaking as if the only thing blocking a comprehensive peace was Israeli construction of apartments in Jerusalem without mentioning the fact that a radical Islamist group called Hamas, backed by Iran and Syria, which seeks to overthrow the PA and wipe Israel off the map, is ruling almost half of the Palestinian-claimed territory. No mention whatsoever as to how this might be a problem.

And no credit whatsoever is being given Israel for its last big concession: freezing all construction on the West Bank at the U.S. request, as painful as this was. If this is erased amidst demands that Israel prove itself supportive of peace (as if this has never happened before), isn't it completely predictable that the next big concession--say, stopping construction in Jerusalem--will be treated the same way?

The administration can twist the facts as it wishes but why should the mass media go along with these distortions?

It is starting to seem conceivable that the Obama Administration will back sanctions on Israel before it does so effectively on Iran. That says more about its foreign policy foolishness than just about anything else could.

I know that people have come up with many reasons for this confrontation--ranging from  visceral and ideological hatred of Israel, to a cover for failure over sanctions on Iran, to a way to justify sanctions on Iran, to a way (rather misguided!) to protect American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. But here's the bottom line analysis:

From a rational national interests standpoint, from a political standpoint to win support for the administration, from a standpoint of getting the administration's first foreign policy victory, from the standpoint of trying to strengthen support for U.S. policies in the Muslim-majority and Arabic-speaking world, this tactic makes no sense.

And for a U.S. government to behave that way is the scariest thing of all.

Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal.

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

 

Middle East: Are Europeans Thwarting Normalization?

 

by Khaled Abu Toameh

Like most of the Arab world, Fatah and Hamas are strongly opposed to any form of normalization with the Jewish state.

Ironically, the anti-normalization movement in Egypt and Jordan - the only two Arab countries that have signed peace treaties with Israel - is the strongest and most vocal.

Similarly, Fatah, whose leaders signed the Oslo Accords and supposedly recognized Israel's right to exist, has long been spearheading the anti-normalization campaign in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

It is easy to understand why Hamas and Muslim fundamentalists are opposed not only to normalization with Israel, but to the very existence of the Jewish state. However, it's hard to see why the "moderates" in Ramallah, Cairo and Amman continue to call for the boycott of Israel.

It is even more difficult to understand why EU-funded NGOs in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and the Arab world are taking an active role in the anti-normalization campaign. Why are Dutch, Swedish, Danish and Belgian tax-payers funding organizations whose main goal is to widen the gap between Jews and Arabs instead of bringing them closer to each other?

Wouldn't be better and more beneficial if Europeans started investing their money in programs and seminars that promote coexistence and tolerance between Arabs and Jews? An organization that combats normalization with Israel is actually serving the interests of the extremists of the Arab world who want peace without  - and not with - Israel.

On the other hand, there's a large degree of hypocrisy in the fact that Fatah is opposed to normalization with Israel.

Many of the Palestinian faction's leaders hold Israeli-issued VIP cards that enable them to move around freely, a privilege denied to a majority of Palestinians. Some of these leaders use the cards to visit Tel Aviv's fine restaurants and hotels. Others use the VIP cards to travel abroad frequently, another privilege that many Palestinians do not enjoy.

Moreover, how can Fatah claim to be opposed to normalization with Israel while its security commanders are collaborating with the IDF and Shin Bet on a daily basis?

Why is it all right for Fatah officials to visit Tel Aviv and conduct security coordination with Israel and not all right for Palestinian journalists to see their Jewish colleagues? Why is it all right for representative of the Jordanian and Egyptian governments to meet with Israelis and not all right for their people to do the same?

Palestinian journalists who last week met with their Israeli colleagues and an Israeli army spokesman in Tel Aviv have come under fire from both Hamas and Fatah.

The journalists - Lana Shaheen, Mueen al-Hilu and Abdel Salam Abu Askar - may be expelled from the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate on charges of promoting normalization with Israel.

The Palestinian journalists who visited Tel Aviv did not commit any crime - as claimed by Hamas and Fatah. These journalists did not make any attempt to keep the visit a secret because they did not feel that they were doing anything wrong or harmful to their people.

Despite the anti-normalization drive, many Palestinian journalists continue to cooperate with Israeli media on a daily basis. This type of cooperation has been going on since even before the peace process began in 1993.

Such meetings and cooperation are the best way to promote understanding and coexistence between Jews and Arabs in this part of the world. It is time to wage a counter-attack on those who are trying to foil any chance of reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians. The best way to confront the extremists  is by cutting off the funding to their organizations.

 

 

Khaled Abu Toameh

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

 

A reality too terrible to admit.

 

By Jonathan Spyer

 

The Obama administration's approach to the Middle East is characterized by an apparent desire to revive the sunny illusions of the 1990s peace process - in an era that is far more uncertain and dangerous. This is particularly noticeable in the Israeli-Palestinian arena, in which the United States, the dominant world power, sets the parameters of debate. As a result, international discussion of the conflict is now more detached from reality than at any time in the past 40 years.

There are two layers to the edifice of unreality in which mainstream debate on the Israeli-Palestinian issue is now taking place. The first and most obvious one concerns the Hamas enclave in Gaza. It is now over four years since the movement's victory in elections to the Palestine Legislative Council, and nearly three years since the Hamas coup in Gaza. It is therefore past time to acknowledge that a single, united Palestinian national movement no longer exists.

 

Since this is, apparently, a reality too terrible to be admitted, the U.S. and the Europeans have chosen, in public at least, to ignore it. The fiction that the West Bank Palestinian Authority speaks in the name of all Palestinians is politely maintained. Behind the scenes, however, the reality is widely acknowledged. The intended means for coping with it constitutes the second layer of illusion.

The inability of even mainstream Fatah-style Palestinian nationalism to accept partition as the final outcome of the conflict has prevented its resolution twice - in 2000 and 2008. This type of nationalism understands the conflict as one that pits a colonial project against a native, authentic nationalism.

From such a perspective, partition of the land means admitting defeat. But Palestinian nationalism does not feel defeated. It is characterized, rather, by a deep strategic optimism. From its point of view, it is therefore not imperative to immediately conclude the struggle - but it is forbidden to end it. Hence the endless reasons why the partition deal somehow can never be inked.

The solution to this obstacle, the West has now decided, is that a new Palestinian leadership, unburdened by this outlook, must be created and defended. The manifestation of this approach is the meteoric career of Salam Fayyad, who was first imposed upon Palestinian politics as finance minister in 2002 by then-secretary of state Condoleezza Rice, and is today PA prime minister.

Fayyad is working closely with Western representatives to build up the institutions and the economic prosperity that are supposedly going to transform Palestinian political culture from the all-or-nothing logjam that has prevented conflict resolution until now, into something with which the world can do business.

The essential logic of this is the same wishful thinking that doomed the 1990s peace process: namely, the idea that institution-building and economic advancement will - and must - eventually have a transformative effect on political outlook. This idea, experience has shown, is fundamentally flawed.

Some liken Fayyad to Konrad Adenauer, the German chancellor who presided over the transformation of political culture and the emergence of democracy in his country after 1945. But Adenauer operated in an era in which the anti-modern, anti-Western element in German political culture had just experienced a final, crushing Gotterdammerung, and Germany was living under a massive and permanent occupation.

In the Palestinian territories, by contrast, the anti-Western and anti-modern element is flourishing, and has state backers in Iran and Syria. It would probably quickly consume Fayyad, were he to cease to be cradled in the arms of the West.

Like the pleasant, well-dressed leaders of the March 14 movement in Lebanon - who have now been devoured by Syria and Hezbollah - Fayyad and company are the product of Western wishful thinking. And like those of March 14, they will survive for precisely as long as the West is willing to underwrite them. And no longer.

This would be fine. The economic development Fayyad is promoting in the West Bank is wholly positive. The problem is that this fantasy version of Palestinian politics is now being seen as real in Brussels and Washington. There are those in the West who seem to have convinced themselves that their creation can walk by itself.

The pleasant figure of Fayyad allows outside observers to pretend that the underlying realities of Palestinian politics do not exist. From there, it is a short step to convincing oneself that the only reason there isn't peace in the Middle East is because Interior Minister Eli Yishai wants to build houses for ultra-Orthodox families in north-central Jerusalem.

In the case of the U.S. administration, it is not entirely clear if this view derives from genuine naivete, or a calculated rationale. There are those who suspect that President Obama will find a way to hold Israel responsible for the absence of peace, regardless of the truth of the situation, because of broader considerations that in his view require the distancing of Washington from Jerusalem.

Either way, it is difficult to discern what advantage the administration's approach will bring for Western interests and good governance in the region. The main impression to be gained is that the West and its allies are confused, disunited and fractious. A cause for celebration for their enemies, no doubt, but hardly an impression one would expect Washington to wish to promote.

Jonathan Spyer is a senior research fellow at the Global Research in International Affairs Center at the Interdisciplinary Center, Herzliya.

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

 

Israel's Unwavering Guardsmen.

 

by Caroline Glick

 

As the local and international press corps converged on Jerusalem's Old City to cover the Arab riots at the Temple Mount two weeks ago, little mention was made of the fact that Jerusalem was not the only flashpoint. In Tel Aviv-Jaffa, Israeli Arab rioters supported by far-left protesters stoned buses. Israeli Arabs firebombed motorists on Highway 443 and on the roads to Beersheba. In the North, cars were stoned.

 

These little-reported attacks are the consequence of one of the most dangerous emerging threats to Israel's national survival: the rapidly escalating radicalization of Israel's Arab citizens.

 

Over the past decade and at a frenzied pace since the 2005 withdrawal from Gaza, acting at least partially at the direction of the Israeli Islamic Movement and with the active support of the far left, Israeli Arabs and Beduin have launched a massive assault on the state. The relevant national authorities including the courts, the state prosecution, the police, the IDF, the Jewish National Fund, the Israel Lands Authority and the Ministry of Interior have failed to defend against it.

 

Firebombing Jewish-owned vehicles is small potatoes in comparison to developments at the center of mass of the Israeli Arab onslaught: state land. Over the past decade, Israeli Arabs have seized millions of dunams of state land.

 

The dimensions of this phenomenon were spelled out in last year's State Comptroller's Report. While the local and international Left pillories Israel when the state tries to demolish a handful of the thousands of illegal Arab buildings in Jerusalem, what goes unmentioned is that by the end of 2007 there were more than 100,000 illegally built structures in Israel. The overwhelming majority were constructed on state land seized by Arab land thieves in the Negev and the Galilee. By the end of 2009, the number of illegal buildings grew to an estimated 150,000. The scope of the theft is so vast that the Comptroller's Report referred to it as a "national scourge."

 

Most of the open land in Israel is owned by the state and administered by farmers, ranchers and the IDF. Farmers and ranchers - particularly in the North and the South, but in areas around Jerusalem as well - are daily terrorized by neighboring Arab thieves. The thieves destroy their fences, steal and slaughter their livestock and threaten to murder them if they raise any objections, mend their fences or install surveillance cameras. Many farmers and ranchers - like most business owners around Beersheba and Upper Nazareth - are coerced into paying protection money to the same Arab gangs who target their fields.

 

As the Comptroller's Report makes clear, the threatened and abused farmers have no official body to turn to for help. While incidence of land theft has increased more than 50 percent in recent years, enforcement measures at all levels have decreased by 81%. In 2007, courts issued just 5,400 judgments on illegal construction. Of these, only 193 led to demolition orders. And just a handful of those orders were carried out.

 

Israel has no official policy for contending with the problem. A police unit formed specifically to enforce land laws has only recruited 55% of its allotted personnel and most of those 64 policemen devote their energies to routine policing duties.

 

The absence of state protection has led farmers and ranchers to abandon their lands. For instance, continuous harassment by Arabs from the village of Tuba Zangaria forced Kibbutz Kfar Hanassi just east of Rosh Pinna to abandon 4,000 dunams (400 hectares) of land. Neighboring Kibbutz Amiad abandoned 13,000 dunams. Upper Nazareth is poised to abandon 20,000 dunams. The police refuse to even escort Upper Nazareth's Mayor Shimon Gafsou to threatened areas.

 

In the South, the situation is no different. Illegal Beduin squatters from the Taarbiya tribe that migrated to Israel from Sinai have gone to war against the Omer Local Council for trying to build a new neighborhood on land they illegally seized. They have shot at contractors, attacked police escorts. They burned down an electrical transformer station, leaving the area with no electricity for over a week, and then burned down a replacement station.

 

Omer Council Chairman Pini Badash has been the target of repeated attacks. Badash bought an airplane to document the illegal construction as part of his efforts to force the state to act. The Beduin burned his plane. They burned his wife's car in front of her and have repeatedly threatened to kill him.

 

LIKE THE farmers and local councils, the army has simply given up. The IDF has abandoned training areas throughout the North and South. For instance, the Nevetim Air Force base has abandoned 17,000 dunams stolen by Beduin. According to the Comptroller's Report, 220-250 families have squatted on the land and built approximately 800 illegal buildings. Between 2004 and 2008, there was a 53% increase in the number of illegally built structures.

 

Rather than defend its bases and the surrounding areas, the IDF has limited the movement of its own officers. The IAF has prohibited its fighter pilots (!) from traveling alone on the highway linking Tel Arad with Beersheba via the Shoket junction. Due to repeated shooting attacks on Jewish-owned vehicles, the pilots who protect our skies are required to travel in convoys of no less than four vehicles.

 

Just as its grantees played a lead role in the formation of the UN's Goldstone Commission and the drafting of its defamatory accusations against Israel, organizations supported by the New Israel Fund have played a large role in abetting the Israeli Arab theft of state lands. NIF- and EU-supported groups like Adallah, the Regional Council of Unrecognized Arab Villages, Um Batin and The Steering Committee for Planning and Protection of Arab Rights in the Negev have waged a political and legal assault on Israel to prevent the state from protecting itself and its citizens from Beduin and Arab land crimes.

 

Cowed by the twin forces of the Red-Green alliance, successive governments have tried to solve the problem by buying off the Arabs. The Olmert government built a village for the Taarbiya Beduin outside of Omer and gave each family NIS 180,000 to leave the illegal structures they had built on state land and accept free houses. Most agreed to relocate, but the 50 families who remained in place stepped up their assaults on Omer while demanding to receive ownership rights for the land they stole.

 

Just this past Sunday the cabinet unanimously approved a multi-year program to transfer NIS 800 million to 12 Beduin and Arab communities. The government touted the move as a "stimulus plan."

 

LUCKILY FOR Israel, the leadership vacuum created by successive governments is beginning to be filled today by a group of law abiding, idealistic young Israelis. The New Israeli Guardsman is a voluntary organization formed two years ago by the sons and daughters of distressed farmers and ranchers.

 

Yoel Zilberman was an officer in one of the IDF's elite commando units who got tired of watching his father - a farmer at Moshav Tzipori in the Western Galilee - despair as Arab gangs from surrounding villages cut his fences, stole his livestock and wrecked his crops. During his furloughs, Zilberman began carrying out night time patrols of his father's fields and repeatedly intercepted thieves as they infiltrated his land.

 

Over time, Zilberman realized that it wasn't enough for him to guard his father's land. His efforts just deflected the problem onto his neighbors. So he organized his friends, the sons and daughters of other farmers in the area, and formed the New Israeli Guardsmen, named after the original Guardsmen - the first Jewish self-defense organization in the Land of Israel in the modern era, which was formed a hundred years ago.

 

The New Israeli Guardsmen - which today operates throughout the Galilee and the Negev - fields more than 650 volunteers who devote up to 20 days a year to guarding land or mending vandalized farm equipment and fences.

 

Recognizing that the long-term solution to the problem is to increase the public's dedication to classic Zionist ideals of Jewish control over the Land of Israel, in addition to building and manning guard posts, the Guardsmen organize courses and lectures on Jewish history, Zionism, Jewish philosophy and other relevant topics at their guard posts for the general public.

 

Next year, 30 young men carefully vetted from a pool of 300 volunteers will receive a yearlong deferral of their military service to serve with the Guardsmen. They will be split into three groups of 10 and man three guard posts in the Galilee and the Negev. Each guard station controls between 5,000 and 20,000 dunams. In addition to their guard duties, the young men will receive agricultural training and study Jewish history, Talmud, philosophy and Arab history. Zilberman hopes that the program will inspire its participants to choose farming as their vocation after they finish their army service.

 

The Guardsmen operate on a shoestring budget scraped together from private donors. Contingent on raising the necessary funds, the group intends to increase its corps of volunteers tenfold by 2013. If it meet its goals, 6,000 volunteers and 300 national service program members will operate from 30 guard stations in the Galilee and the Negev and protect between 400,000 and 600,000 dunams of state land. They also hope to reach out to Jews in the Diaspora and encourage them to come to Israel and volunteer for the Guardsmen, to bring them closer to the story and fate of the State of Israel.

 

Zilberman believes that the success of the Guardsmen will empower the state to take the necessary action to enforce Israel's laws and so defeat the strategic threat posed by the radicalization of the Israeli Arab sector. And he is probably right. At any rate, it is all but certain that the government could take no action without the Guardsmen.

 

In light of the growing force of the international campaign to delegitimize Israel's right to exist, no government in Jerusalem will act unless it feels it has strong and stable backing from a mobilized citizenry. For instance, it is hard to imagine how Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu could have defended Jerusalem as stalwartly as he did during his trip to Washington this week if he hadn't known that the public is with him.

 

By the same token, the state will only enforce its laws without prejudice when it is certain that the public will rally behind it. Our leaders need to know that the public will stand behind them when the New Israel Fund grantees collaborate with the international Left and the Islamic Movement to demonize Israel as racist for protecting the property rights of the state and its citizens.

 

Israel, like all democracies, is only as strong as its citizens. What organizations like the New Israeli Guardsmen show is that Israel's citizens are strong. We are willing to bear the burdens of a free people. As Pessah, the Jewish festival of freedom, approaches, we must support their endeavors and demand that our leaders follow their example.

 

 

Caroline Glick

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