Plunging Into the Peace Gap: David M. Weinberg, Israel Hayom, Jan. 29, 2016 — Is it possible to oppose a two-state solution under the current circumstances but to be for it in principle?
Those Nice Israel-Bashers’ Achilles’ Heel: Melanie Phillips, Jerusalem Post, Feb. 4, 2016— Why can’t Israel’s self-styled friends understand that the things they say about Israel are not in fact the sentiments of friends but of enemies?
France’s Ultimatum to Israel – Legally Flawed and Politically Imprudent: Amb. Alan Baker, JCPA, Feb. 2, 2016— On January 28, 2016, France’s Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, in a statement issued after meeting with the head of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, voiced a somewhat curious and ominous warning and threat, directed solely against Israel…
Israel is Not Isolated — it is Highly Sought After': Shlomo Cesana, Israel Hayom, Jan. 8, 2016 — On the face of things, Israel's standing in the international arena has never been worse.
In Wake of Arab Terror Spree, UN Chief Castigates…Israel but Israel Responds: Lori Lowenthal Marcus, Jewish Press, Jan. 27, 2016
Hope is Not a Strategy: Caroline Glick, Breaking Israel News, Feb. 1, 2016
The Last Temptation of Barack Obama and John Kerry: Aaron David Miller, Foreign Policy, Jan. 11, 2016
So, I Guess it Wasn’t all Israel’s Fault After All: Gary Gambill, National Post, Jan. 11, 2015
David M. Weinberg
Israel Hayom, Jan. 29, 2016
Is it possible to oppose a two-state solution under the current circumstances but to be for it in principle? The answer is yes, and that is the de facto position of both the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the declared policy of the official opposition Labor party, as expressed this week by Opposition Leader Isaac Herzog. It's time to take a moment and reflect on this complex Israeli consensus, and to calibrate diplomacy accordingly.
In a formal speech and candid radio interview for which he was savaged by the extreme Left, Herzog stated the obvious: A two-state solution is "not realistic" in the current reality between Israel and the Palestinians. Absent the ability "to do it now," Herzog pledged to continue to "yearn" for a two-state solution, but honestly admitted that a Labor government would not be birthing a Palestinian state any faster than a Netanyahu government would.
In the meantime, Herzog's plan for the West Bank involves increased security measures for Israeli cities and settlements (fences), souped-up separation from the Palestinians (more fences), and confidence-building measures all around (more economic assistance to the Palestinians; more focused/restrained Israeli settlement policy; and a crackdown on terrorist teachers, preachers and practitioners). Sound familiar? Essentially this is a gloss on Netanyahu's approach. The most that Herzog can say to distinguish himself from Netanyahu is to argue that he would be "more serious" in implementing the tough security and moderate settlement policies that both leaders have talked about…
Like Netanyahu, Herzog believes the Israel Defense Forces must remain in the West Bank and especially in the Jordan Valley to secure Israel's eastern frontier. And like Netanyahu and Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapid, Herzog seeks a regional security conference with Arab nations that share Israel's concerns, to discuss new paradigms for peace diplomacy that go beyond the narrow, struggling two-state construct. (See Gen. Giora Eiland's creative proposals for four-way land swaps and shared sovereignty arrangements with Egypt and Jordan, published by the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies; or the sober proposals of Professor Shlomo Avineri for "halfway" measures, published in Foreign Affairs; or the modest proposals of former peace negotiator Tal Becker for "tangible" progress, published by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.)
In short, a fully demilitarized and truly democratic Palestinian state (in the West Bank, if not also in Gaza, and allied with or subsumed by Jordan) that lives peacefully next to Israel with both Jews and Arabs free to live unmolested on either side of the border may be an ideal solution to the conflict. But until a sea change in the Palestinian political culture happens to make that an actual possibility rather than merely a fantasy, no rational Israeli government is about to consider significant withdrawal from Judea and Samaria. That's an Israeli consensus; rare, but real and valuable.
Unfortunately, the Obama administration and much of the international community still messianically thinks that immediate establishment of a Palestinian state must be diligently pursued via pressure on Israel, regardless of the circumstances or the complete lack of interest in implementing such a scheme on the part of the Palestinians. To this end, some are even considering a U.N. Security Council resolution in 2016 that would gut Resolution 242 ("negotiated" borders and security) and instead attempt to dictate the parameters of, and an imposed timetable for, Israeli withdrawal. Others already are seeking to pressure and isolate Israel via labeling schemes, reprimanding speeches and boycotts.
But for people claiming to be friends of Israel, this path must be rejected. The confidence that precipitous Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank will magically create peace is unfounded. It is a belief that must be called blind to reality and hostile to the security of Israel. It runs contrary to the experience-based views of the vast majority of Israelis and Israeli political leaders. It is not consistent with friendship for the Jewish state. What the world ought to be doing instead is helping to close the "peace gap." By this I mean helping Palestinian leaders bring their own constituency towards the levels of compromise and moderation that Israeli leaders have successfully achieved in Israel.
Consider the following: As the result of an intensive political-educational process, Israelis have shifted their views tremendously over the past 30 years. They've gone from denying the existence of a Palestinian people to recognition of Palestinian peoplehood and national aspirations; and from insisting on exclusive Israeli sovereignty and control of Judea, Samaria and Gaza to acceptance of a demilitarized and peaceful Palestinian state in these areas. Israel has also withdrawn entirely from Gaza, and allowed a Palestinian government to assume authority over 95% of West Bank residents. Israel has made the Palestinian Authority three concrete offers for full-fledged Palestinian statehood in more than 90% of the territory of the West Bank (all rejected by Yasser Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas).
By contrast, the Palestinians have utterly failed to move themselves away from rejectionism and toward peace with Israel. Many Palestinian political and religious figures still deny the historic ties of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel, and refuse to accept the legitimacy of Israel's existence in the Middle East as a Jewish state. They continue to demand the resettlement of Palestinian refugees in pre-1967 Israel as a way of swamping and destroying the Jewish state.
They support and glorify Palestinian suicide bombers, missile launchers, shooters and stabbers, all of whom target Israel's civilian population. The Palestinian airwaves and newspapers are filled with viciously anti-Semitic and bloodthirsty propaganda. Palestinian leaders crisscross the globe and lobby every international institution to condemn, vilify, criminalize and isolate Israel. So there is an enormous gap between the two peoples in their readiness for peace. It is just not true that both Israelis and Palestinians are equally ready to accept one other and to compromise with each other. It is not true that both sides are ready to make difficult sacrifices for peace. There is no "balance" here…
[To Read the Full Article Click the Following Link—Ed.]
THOSE NICE ISRAEL-BASHERS’ ACHILLES’ HEEL
Melanie Phillips
Jerusalem Post, Feb. 4, 2016
Why can’t Israel’s self-styled friends understand that the things they say about Israel are not in fact the sentiments of friends but of enemies? Whenever someone says “As a friend/candid friend/staunch ally of Israel…,” you know that what’s coming is a vicious kick to the head. Delivered, of course, purely in a spirit of friendship. The Canadian foreign minister Stéphane Dion, describing himself as a “steadfast ally and friend to Israel,” criticized both the Palestinians’ unilateral pursuit of statehood and the Israelis’ settlement construction. “Canada is concerned by the continued violence in Israel and the West Bank,” he said. “Canada calls for all efforts to be made to reduce violence and incitement and to help build the conditions for a return to the negotiating table.”
Dion seemed to be suggesting that Israeli terrorism victims were somehow asking for it and that Palestinian murder attacks were to be equated with Israeli self-defense. Doubtless he thought he was being studiously even-handed and therefore fair, wise and just. But in the battle between victim and aggressor, legality and illegality, truth and falsehood, even-handedness inescapably entails blaming the victim and tacitly endorsing illegality and lies.
A few days later the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon did something similar. While condemning the current wave of Palestinian stabbings and other attacks upon Israelis, he claimed the perpetrators were driven by “alienation and despair.” “It is human nature to react to occupation, which often serves as a potent incubator of hate and extremism,” he said. When Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu expressed outrage at such an apparent justification for Palestinian violence, Ban appeared genuinely affronted. His words, he said, had been twisted. Palestinian attacks and incitement were reprehensible and he condemned them.
Yet having stated, “Nothing excuses terrorism,” he then repeated the excuse for Palestinian terrorism. “No one can deny that the everyday reality of occupation provokes anger and despair, which are major drivers of violence and extremism and undermine any hope of a negotiated two-state solution.” Well actually, no one who pays the slightest regard to reality could maintain such a thing. Whatever the provocation, it is not “human nature” to set out to murder as many innocents as possible, including women and children.
Ban’s apparently real bewilderment that anyone could possibly think he supports terrorism arises from two things. The first is his fundamentally false view of the Arab war against Israel. The “occupation” does not cause Palestinian violence. It is unending Palestinian violence that prolongs the “occupation.”
The Palestinians aren’t driven by despair at the absence of their state. How can this be so, when they have turned down repeated offers of such a state since the 1930s? Isn’t it more logical to assume that the relentless incitement – to which Ban himself alluded – which tells them falsely that Israel plans to destroy al-Aksa and that their highest calling is to kill Jews and conquer the whole of Israel has rather more to do with it? Moreover, this is not an occupation in the normally accepted understanding of the word. Israel has not occupied another people’s land, because the disputed territories never belonged to another people.
Nor is Israel there out of an aggressive colonial impulse. The Jews are entitled to hold and settle the territories under international law several times over, both as a legally permitted defense against continuous belligerence and from their never-abrogated entitlement to do so – as the only people for whom this was ever their national homeland – under the terms of the Palestine Mandate. These false premises about Israel’s “occupation,” however, are widespread.
This helps explain the distressing fact that most of the almost daily Palestinian terrorist attacks on Israelis aren’t noted at all in the Western media. Few realize that Israelis going about their everyday lives are routinely being murdered or wounded by stabbing, shooting, rock-throwing or cars driven into bus queues. This onslaught is not being reported because, to the Western media, it is the understandable response to occupation. The settlers have chosen to put themselves in harm’s way, goes the thinking, and other Israelis have also brought this upon themselves merely by being Israelis.
So to the West, these Jewish victims of terrorism just don’t exist. At the same time, the Western media never reports the near-daily Palestinian incitement of the mass murder of Israeli Jews. That doesn’t fit the narrative of Palestinian victims of Israel. For identical reasons, the media also ignores the victimization of Palestinians by other Palestinians. According to Palestinian Media Watch, last year the Palestinian Independent Commission for Human Rights received 292 complaints of torture, maltreatment and physical assault in the West Bank and 928 in the Gaza Strip.
The West remains almost totally ignorant of the tyrannical abuse Palestinians inflict upon one another. But why is its Palestinian narrative thus hermetically sealed against the truth? Here’s the second reason for Ban’s bewilderment. Progressives subscribe to universalizing agendas. These by definition deny any hierarchy of cultures or moral values. So Palestinian society cannot be held to be innately hostile to human rights, and Palestinian terrorism is equated (at best) with Israeli defense against such attacks. Thus on Holocaust Remembrance Day, of all things, Ban equated anti-Semitism with anti-Muslim bigotry. But the two are not remotely comparable. Of course there are some who are irrationally bigoted against Muslims. But most anti-Islamic feeling is a rational response to Islamic violence and aggression. By contrast, anti-Jewish hatred is true bigotry as it is based entirely on lies, myths, and paranoid and deranged beliefs about Jews who have never posed an aggressive threat to anyone.
Ban and others committed to universalism think this equation is fair. In fact, it diminishes Jew-hatred and sanitizes Islamic aggression. Which is why progressives who think they are pure because their hearts so conspicuously bleed for the oppressed are not pure at all. They are morally corrupt. They aren’t driven by compassion for any kind of victim. What drives them instead is hatred of supposed victimizers in the “powerful” West. Their purported even-handedness thus camouflages a moral degeneracy…
[To Read the Full Article Click the Following Link—Ed.]
FRANCE’S ULTIMATUM TO ISRAEL –
LEGALLY FLAWED AND POLITICALLY IMPRUDENT
Amb. Alan Baker
JCPA, Feb. 2, 2016
On January 28, 2016, France’s Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, in a statement issued after meeting with the head of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, voiced a somewhat curious and ominous warning and threat, directed solely against Israel: If imminent efforts being organized by France to end the deadlock in peace talks between Israelis and Palestinians end without result, France intends to “live up to our responsibilities as a permanent member of the UN Security Council and recognize a Palestinian state.”
This curious, unprecedented, biased, and far from friendly ultimatum raises some pertinent legal and diplomatic questions regarding France’s capacity and standing, both in the context of the Israel-Arab peace process, as well as regarding France’s “responsibilities” as a permanent member of the UN Security Council.
France, as a leading member of the EU, is party to the EU’s signature as witness to the 1995 Israeli-Palestinian Interim Agreement on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. This agreement constitutes the internationally acknowledged backbone of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. The commitments set down in this agreement, to negotiate the permanent status of the territories as well as other central issues such as Jerusalem, borders, settlements and refugees, are solemn Palestinian and Israeli obligations which France, together with its EU partners, as well as the United States, Russia, Egypt, Jordan and Norway are obligated to honor after placing their signatures on the agreement as witnesses.
By the same token, the UN General Assembly in its Resolution A/50/21 of December 4, 1995, supported by France, expressed its full support for the Oslo Accords and the peace negotiation process. In its capacity both as a signed witness to the agreement, as well as a permanent member of the UN Security Council, it is incumbent on France, which voted in favor of the UN resolution endorsing the agreement and the negotiation process, not to attempt to undermine the same agreement and process, nor to prejudge issues that are still open and to be negotiated.
In threatening to unilaterally and arbitrarily recognize a Palestinian state, France is clearly prejudging the issue of the permanent status of the territory, which, as set out in the agreement itself, is a negotiating issue yet to be resolved. In this context, France and its European colleagues cannot and should not act to undermine the Palestinian obligation set out in the Final Clauses of the agreement, according to which no step will be taken to “change the status of the West Bank and Gaza Strip pending the outcome of the permanent status negotiations.” Thus, in acting to unilaterally organize an “international conference bringing together the parties and their main partners, American, European, Arab, notably to preserve and make happen the solution of two states,” France is attempting both to bypass and undermine a negotiating process called for by the UN in several resolutions since 1967, all supported and endorsed by France.
France is also undermining the various reciprocal commitments between the Palestinian leadership and Israel, including a letter from Yasser Arafat to Yitzhak Rabin dated September 9, 1993, in which Arafat declared that “all outstanding issues relating to the permanent status will be resolved through negotiations.”
As such, by engaging in a parallel, un-agreed process with the declared aim of imposing upon one side – Israel – the outcome of an international conference, France is, in fact, acting ultra vires all accepted norms and principles of conflict-resolution. Since all the agreed issues between Israel and the Palestinians, including borders between them, Jerusalem, settlements, refugees, security and cooperation, as well as the permanent status of the territory, require reciprocal negotiation, France cannot deceive itself and the international community into believing that these issues can be imposed arbitrarily by any conference or international or regional organization…
[To Read the Full Article Click the Following Link—Ed.]
ISRAEL IS NOT ISOLATED — IT IS HIGHLY SOUGHT AFTER
Shlomo Cesana
Israel Hayom, Jan. 8, 2016
On the face of things, Israel's standing in the international arena has never been worse. The media and other outlets, mainly from the left side of the political spectrum, are telling us that the world actively wants us to settle the conflict with the Palestinians and that the international arena is getting behind the Palestinian demand that Israel withdraw to the 1967 borders. They constantly remind us that there are no international embassies in Israel's capital — Jerusalem. They note that the U.S. and the EU consistently condemn Israeli construction and sovereignty in Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem. Certain organizations talk about imposing sanctions on Israel and blast our policies as a matter of routine. But does all this truly reflect Israel's standing in the world? Is Israel really as isolated, rejected and unwanted as they say, because of its current policies toward the Palestinians? Well, we asked Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely these questions, who didn't seem the least bit perturbed.
"Israel is not isolated or rejected," she says, speaking to Israel Hayom at her office in Jerusalem. "Quite the opposite, actually. The media has a focus problem — they always focus on the problems and the familiar rather than highlighting positive achievements. If you ask the average Israeli about our relations with the world, they will recite the very narrow view of the ties with Europe — a very vocal relationship primarily because of the EU's tendency to condemn the building of every home beyond the Green Line. The average Israeli is also aware of the Israeli-American relationship over the last year, which revolved around the deep conflict surrounding the Iranian issue. But that is a mistake."
With the help of a few charts, Hotovely presents a very different picture — of flourishing commerce and active diplomatic relations with 80% of the world's nations, all suggesting that Israel is not at all isolated, neither diplomatically nor economically. "Today, Israel is holding the U.S.'s hand on one side — a very strong ally — and on the other side the hands of India, China and Japan," she says, underscoring Israel's international dealings.
"In my capacity as deputy foreign minister I have traveled to Japan and to Vietnam, and I discovered a very different discourse there than the one in Europe," she goes on to say. "In the East, the discourse is about what Israel contributes to the world, and not about what Israel does wrong. Israel can indeed contribute greatly: It can provide solutions to enormous problems in the fields of air pollution, farming, water management and medicine, to name a few. "Our experience suggests that Israel is not a leper; it is highly sought after. There is a lot of warmth coming in Israel's direction from countries that, for years, were aligned with the Arab world. These countries have become fans of Israel, and, as I said, seek our friendship. In the Far East Israel is seen as a superpower. A country unparalleled in its work ethic. They want to learn from Israel about entrepreneurship."
Q: So the problems are mainly in Europe? A: "In Europe there has also been a shift. The French know that global terrorism tops their agenda right now. Suddenly the Palestinian issue has become negligent, though they will never stop obsessing about it. These days, when you meet the prime minister at the climate change summit in Europe, the main topic of conversation is how to fight terrorism and how to use Israel's cyber know-how to fight radical Islamism. "So with all due respect, the notion of what the world is concerned with, and what is at the center of the world's focus, is anachronistic. It is the old way. We have now entered a new era in international discourse. It is all about global solutions in medicine, agriculture, cyber warfare and technological innovation."…
[To Read the Full Article Click the Following Link—Ed.]
In Wake of Arab Terror Spree, UN Chief Castigates…Israel but Israel Responds: Lori Lowenthal Marcus, Jewish Press, Jan. 27, 2016—Ban Ki-Moon had it right when he began his remarks to the United Nations Security Council on Tuesday, Jan. 26. In the first session of 2016, Ban said that this new year started the same way that 2015 ended, with “unacceptable violence.” We’re with you there.
Hope is Not a Strategy: Caroline Glick, Breaking Israel News, Feb. 1, 2016—Our government is playing games with itself. And losing. On Wednesday Chaim Levinson reported in Haaretz that for the first time in nearly two years, last week the Civil Administration of Judea and Samaria approved new building plans for a small number of Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria.
The Last Temptation of Barack Obama and John Kerry: Aaron David Miller, Foreign Policy, Jan. 11, 2016—Despite all sense and reason, the president and his secretary of state will have one more go at Middle East peace.
So, I Guess it Wasn’t all Israel’s Fault After All: Gary Gambill, National Post, Jan. 11, 2015—A friend of mine recently lamented that the Western media was downplaying the brutal string of Palestinian stabbings that has claimed 25 Israeli lives since September. I nodded in assent, but couldn’t help recalling the closing scene of the film Casablanca. With religious and ethno-sectarian violence rampant in Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, and across the Arab world claiming several tens of thousands of lives every year, fuelling an unprecedented wave of global Sunni Islamist terror, Israeli-Palestinian troubles “just don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world.”
