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QUARTET AGAIN CALLS FOR DIRECT NEGOTIATIONS: REVIVING THE “PEACE PROCESS” OR “BEATING A DEAD HORSE”?

Last week, the Quartet issued yet another call for direct Israeli-Palestinian talks “without delay or preconditions”—its third such declaration since September 23—following separate meetings in Jerusalem with Palestinian and Israeli officials. The statement by the Quartet—made up of the US, EU, UN and Russia—stressed “the important objective of a direct exchange between the parties…beginning with a preparatory meeting and leading to the presentation of proposals on territory and security.”

 

True to form, the Palestinians summarily rejected the appeal. Conversely, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu accepted the Quartet’s terms, reiterating Israel’s desire to “get to the damn table,” as US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta so eloquently put it.

 

The most recent attempt by the “international community” to jump-start Israeli-Palestinian negotiations comes on the heels of the reunification between Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas, his Fatah party, and the Hamas terrorist organization. According to Abbas, “There are no more differences between [them] now.” Furthermore, a senior Palestinian official over the weekend confirmed the Palestinians would proceed with efforts to obtain a unilateral declaration of independence at the United Nations, despite this constituting a blatant violation of the Oslo Accords.

 

Given these circumstances, it is difficult to envision a breakthrough of any sorts occurring in the near future. It seems the Palestinians once and for all have proven themselves unworthy “partners in peace.” However, as today’s Briefing shows, in the Mideast, everything depends on one’s definition of those words.

 

THE POISON IN THE WELL
Sarah Honig

Jerusalem Magazine, December 16, 2011

On November 11, 1999, back when she was first lady, Hillary Clinton visited Gaza. She was graciously greeted by Yasser Arafat’s wife, Suha, who spiritedly launched into a blood-libel diatribe.

None of this, incidentally, could be laid at the door of Binyamin Netanyahu’s demonic disrepute. Israel’s then-prime minister was Ehud Barak, whose electoral campaign was enthusiastically aided and abetted by Hillary’s own hubby. But contrary to conventional wisdom, it never really matters much who’s in power in Jerusalem. Israel is always the regional bogeyman. And so, back in the good old days of post-Oslo Labor rule, America’s first lady, self-satisfied and basking in ultra-liberal sanctimony, smiled contentedly as Suha railed in indignation: “Our people have been subjected to the daily and extensive use of poisonous gas by the Israeli forces, which has led to an increase in cancer cases among women and children.”

No way could Hillary claim to have gotten the wrong end of the stick. She listened via simultaneous translation to Suha’s prepared script, accusing Israel—in genuine medieval well-poisoning tradition—of resorting to all manner of noxious concoctions to kill Arab women and tots. Among its other sins, Hillary’s hostess charged, Israel deliberately contaminated with lethal toxins 80 percent of the water consumed by Palestinian females and infants.

Hillary listened to the calumny without a hint of displeasure. Indeed, she nodded approval from time to time, and when Suha concluded, Hillary embraced her warmly and planted affectionate kisses on her cheeks. Thus, the uninitiated onlooker may be forgiven for assuming that Suha listed irrefutable grievances and that her claims won at least the tacit corroboration of her American guest. Significantly, even after the bizarre scene ended, Clinton never bothered to dispel that impression. This, however, should have come as no shocker to anyone familiar with her record.

Going back to the earliest stirrings of Hillary’s public-life debut, she treated the PLO as a hip revolutionary liberation movement, rather than as spearheading an Arab war to destroy the Jewish state. When she chaired the New World Foundation in the ‘80s, she funneled finances to PLO subsidiaries. In 1998, she preceded Bill Clinton in unabashed advocacy of a Palestinian state.

So is it any surprise that, just as the Mideast is awash with reactionary Islamic-supremacist takeovers (cheered by the beguiled Free World as democratic uprisings), Secretary of State Clinton should choose to berate Israel’s treatment of women? Hardly.

She has certainly imbibed scraps of disjointed and tendentious information on our much-hyped in-house quarrels. Yet our boisterous debate, more than all else, attests to the vibrancy of our civil liberties rather than to their demise, as she disingenuously contended in her skewed monologue at the Brookings Institution’s Saban Center.

Clinton likened Israel to Iran after harping on controversies at the extreme-most fringes of our society, making them look like the mainstream. She omitted to mention that the mainstream is diametrically different. That is rank distortion. The same goes for Clinton’s excoriation of legitimate Knesset legislative initiatives to limit the ability of foreign governments to derail our domestic democracy via financial largesse to various NGOs. All these outfits face is the loss of tax exemptions, which is hardly a mortal blow to freedom and certainly less than what the American law prescribes. But the truth, as was the case in Suha’s address, is immaterial—perhaps it’s altogether undesirable.

With doting chums like this secretary of state, it’s safe to deduce that we need no enemies in America’s corridors of power. But the really bad news is that pals like Hillary abound there. She is an authentic representative of her boss, President Barack Obama.

In his friendliest guise yet, he has just told Jewish campaign donors that he considers “no ally more important than the State of Israel” and that “Prime Minister Netanyahu knows he can count on the United States.… We will not abandon the pursuit of a just and lasting peace that will end the conflict.” Yep, we got the message: Obama wants money and votes. Electioneering begets lots of brotherly blarney, but the devil is in the details. What’s a “just” peace, and what does its “pursuit” denote?

The answers were furnished by Obama’s defense secretary, Leon Panetta, at the same forum in which Clinton tongue-lashed the Mideast’s lone democracy. If Clinton defamed our democratic deportment, Panetta acerbically scorned our survival strategies. Put in a nutshell, he blamed all regional ills on Israel.

The inescapable corollary is that justice can only be achieved by righting wayward Israel’s wrongs and winning concessions from it. Unambiguously placing the onus upon Israel, Panetta indeed urged Israel to take risks and “lean forward” to achieve peace with the Palestinians. Never mind that Israel had already taken risks aplenty—time after disastrous time—gaining nothing but more bloodshed and abuse for its sacrifices, while whetting appetites for yet more sacrifices.

What if our goodwill blows up in our faces yet again? “If the gestures are rebuked, the world will see those rebukes for what they are. And that is exactly why Israel should pursue them,” Panetta pontificated. Subtext: Israel needs to bare its throat to genocidal enemies, so that the watching world would admire its virtue. One would think Panetta, a former CIA director, has just surfaced from a sealed bunker, entirely oblivious to repeated displays of Israeli virtue that only intensified Israel’s vilification.

We won’t be better liked for being weaker, and getting weaker won’t improve our self-preservation prospects. Yet weakening Israel is precisely the Obama administration’s definition for “just,” and consequently the “pursuit” of a just solution means twisting Israel’s arms. This begins with reading it the riot act.

That was plainly Panetta’s mission when he sternly warned against a preemptive Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities. That was plainly Panetta’s mission when pompously proposing that Israel “reach out and mend fences with those who share an interest in regional stability—countries like Turkey and Egypt.” We might question how much stability has been furthered by Egypt and Turkey, but Panetta left no doubt regarding who’s liable for the busted fences. That was plainly Panetta’s mission when he suggested that Israel undermines the Palestinian Authority and is at fault for not restarting moribund negotiations with it. That was why he hectored: “Just get to the damn table.”

In the simplistic Obamaesque worldview, Israel is the irritant that predisposes the entire Arab/Muslim sphere against America. Israel is the figurative poison in the Mideastern well, much like the contaminants with which Suha insisted Israel literally polluted actual Palestinian wells.

Unfortunately (by their perception) Obama and crew can’t thoroughly disinfect the region from the Israeli venom. Even a faint trace of such sentiment would be politically super-stupid with elections in the offing. But Barack, Hillary and Leon can bully us while nonetheless posing as our bosom buddies. Of course, successive Israeli governments have well demonstrated that crude pressure from Oval Office patrons can be marketed as evidence of deep, abiding friendship.

OBAMA’S DEFAULT MODE: BLAME ISRAEL
Mona Charen

National Review, December 9, 2011

After a two-hour meeting in Cairo, Khaled Mashaal, unelected leader of Hamas, and Mahmoud Abbas, unelected leader of the Palestinian Authority, were all smiles. “We want to assure our people and the Arab and Islamic world that we have turned a major new and real page in partnership on everything to do with the Palestinian nation,” Mashaal announced. “There are no more differences between us now,” agreed Abbas.

In other words, the “moderate” Abbas is now a full partner with the leader of an organization whose charter is committed not just to the destruction of Israel but to the elimination of all Jews everywhere. This is the same Abbas who forfeited whatever slim claim he held to moderate status by declining to accept Israel as a Jewish state, refusing to engage in direct negotiations with Israel (as recently as last week, chief PA negotiator Saeb Erekat declined a Quartet request to sit down with the Israelis), and flouting the Oslo accords by going to the United Nations to demand recognition. Now he is formally partnered with a genocidal Islamist organization. But the Obama administration thinks Israel is the problem.

Meanwhile, in Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood won 40 percent of the vote in parliamentary elections, while another 25 percent went to Salafi forces.… So two-thirds of the Egyptian electorate support candidates who will find Hamas utterly congenial. But the Obama administration is dismayed by Israel. In Syria, the regime’s brutal massacres of peaceful protesters continue. The U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, said this week that “we are placing the [number of deaths at 5,000]. But the information coming to us is that it’s much more.” Guess who the Obama administration is angry at?

In Turkey, the Islamist party won a huge victory in June, permitting the government to crack down on opposition voices (jailing hundreds of critics) and move the once-Western-oriented Muslim country more firmly in the direction of an Islamist state. Turkey has also noisily supported Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria, and Islamists in other Muslim nations. Inexorably, Iran continues its march toward nuclear weapons.

The Muslim world is in turmoil, with results that so far do not bode well for peace, democracy, or development. But what worries the Obama administration? Israel.

Twice in the past week, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta has declared that a military attack on Iran’s nuclear capabilities would do more harm than good—a signal not just that the Obama administration (its promises never to permit an Iranian bomb notwithstanding) has no intention of using force to prevent Iran from going nuclear, but also that it seeks to prevent Israel from acting. Panetta also dispensed advice to Israel, snapping, “Get back to the damn table,” as if Israel, not the PA, were the party boycotting negotiations. It is Israel’s fault, the defense secretary implied, that the region is becoming ever more radicalized and that Israel’s formerly cordial relations with Egypt and Turkey are fraying. Repairing to the favorite expression of those with nothing on the line, Panetta demanded that Israel “take risks.”

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, too, managed to put a finger in the eye of the region’s lone enduring democracy. Speaking to a Brookings Institution gathering, Mrs. Clinton expressed dismay about Israel’s treatment of women. She had read a Washington Post column suggesting that some Israeli buses in ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods were sex-segregated, forcing women to sit in the back. Clinton fumed that it reminded her of Rosa Parks and Iran. Mrs. Clinton failed to mention that the issue has already been litigated in Israel. The High Court has declared sex segregation illegal. But why acknowledge the workings of a vibrant democracy when you can posture about Rosa Parks?

In Belgium, Amb. Howard Gutman suggested that Arab anti-Semitism springs from the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. He later insisted his comments were “taken the wrong way.”

Speaking to potential Jewish donors, President Obama preened, “I try not to pat myself too much on the back, but this administration has done more for the security of the state of Israel than any previous administration.” Both clauses of that sentence are priceless.

NO WAY TO PLEASE THE AMERICAN GOVERNMENT, MEDIA, EXPERTS
Barry Rubin

Jerusalem Post, December 18, 2011

There is a constant effort—especially by the anti-Israel Left (and also by its anti- Semitic portions) to portray those who express mainstream public and professional Israeli views as “right-wing” or “Likudnik.” This leads me to wonder what one would have to say to please these people. What would be centrist? What would be the equivalent of “liberal?”

I presume one would have to say that US President Barack Obama is the best American president for Israel ever (even he says so!), and that there are no problems in the US-Israel relationship. Furthermore, even if there were to be problems, they would be entirely due to the Israeli government’s selfish, short-sighted and unreasonable intransigence.

To them, the only acceptable liberal view would state that peace with the Palestinians could be achieved within a few months if only Israel would make a few more concessions and stop being so belligerent and stubborn. The Palestinian Authority wouldn’t even have to change any of its policies, wouldn’t have to stop anti-Israel and anti-Semitic incitement or admit openly, clearly and in Arabic that the Jews have a right to an independent country in the historic land of Israel, nor would the Palestinians be required to negotiate or compromise. Israelis should never talk about these things.

I suppose the only acceptable liberal view is that the PA sincerely wants peace, and if given the West Bank plus a corridor to the Gaza Strip and all of east Jerusalem it would be a reliable partner and keep all of its commitments. In exchange for a peace agreement, Israel should withdraw to the 1967 borders with minor modifications and dismantle all settlements. But to ask for recognition by the PA of Israel as a Jewish state, prior agreement to resettle all Palestinian refugees in Palestine (or where they are living now), and demilitarization are unreasonable demands and should be dropped because these demands only block peace.

If all the above were to happen, the liberal view must be that the Middle East would become quiet and peaceful. Islamists would either become moderate or lose support. Terrorism against the West would cease and America would be very popular. Nor is the PA-Hamas partnership really a problem, because once there is a peace agreement, Hamas will give up its goal of wiping Israel off the map and there will be no more rocket, mortar, or cross-border attacks. But if Hamas does attack Israel from the Gaza Strip then Israel shouldn’t retaliate since to do so would inevitably involve disproportionate force and hurt Palestinian civilians.

The failure of Western countries to keep their commitments to Israel in 2006 to keep Hezbollah out of southern Lebanon and stop arms smuggling is unimportant, and Israel should not mention it. That fact is unimportant and should not influence Israel’s thinking or actions, and neither should the experiences of the 1990s peace process and 2000 Camp David meeting.

As for Islamist takeovers in Egypt, Tunisia and Libya, Israel really has nothing to fear. The Muslim Brotherhood is really moderate, and Israel should stop talking about a supposed threat from these groups. It is up to Israel to patch up relations with Egypt and it should not be concerned about cross-border terrorist attacks, repeated assaults on the natural gas pipeline or the government-permitted mob takeover of the Israeli Embassy in Cairo. Perhaps Israel should agree to renegotiate the Egypt-Israel peace treaty.

Same with regard to Turkey. Israel should apologize to Ankara for letting IDF soldiers defend themselves after being attacked by jihadi terrorists on the Mavi Marmara. It should pay compensation to the families of the attackers and allow the whole-scale import of advanced weaponry to the Gaza Strip. The collapse of the Israel-Turkey relationship was completely Israel’s fault.

Israel should give up any option of attacking Iran’s nuclear weapons’ facilities at any time, not only now to prevent Tehran from getting such weapons but presumably in the future as well if there is a perceived threat from Iran. Instead, Israel should depend on US protection. If Iran hits Israel with nuclear weapons, the United States will then (probably?) retaliate.

I honestly don’t think I’ve exaggerated the attitudes of American and European leftists (including many Jews) about “proper” Israeli policy. Strangely, I don’t see the Kadima or Labor parties adopting such a program. It would be amusing to survey random Israeli pedestrians on the street in Tel Aviv or Jerusalem about what they think of the “liberal” plan for Israel.

As always, since the mainstream Western media generally does not allow a real response to the ridiculousness of the program for Israel it so often advocates you won’t be reading any of the points made above there. People will just be left to believe that the current government is just unreasonably reactionary; that most Israelis support Obama (or that they deserve what they get if they don’t); and that the region would be just fine if only Israel would let the American far-Left choose its government. Indeed, if any left-wing blog mentions this article it will only be to brand it “right-wing.”

IN THE MIDEAST, EVERYTHING DEPENDS
ON YOUR DEFINITION OF PEACE
George Jonas
National Post, November 26, 2011

It was four years ago that the last White House-sponsored Middle East peace conference was held at Annapolis, Maryland, on Nov. 27, 2007. It produced smiles and hugs, along with joint communiqués. The closest friends don’t hug half as much as mortal enemies do at international gatherings. If counterfeiting affection were a crime, three-quarters of the diplomatic corps would be in jail.

Still, perhaps the most refreshing thing about the Annapolis peace conference was that it was almost illusion-free. Unlike Madrid, Oslo, Wye River and similar chimeras conjured up under the optimistic tutelage of U.S. presidents…no one expected anything from Annapolis: Not the Americans convening it, not the Middle Easterners observing it and certainly not the Palestinians and Israelis sitting around a U-shaped table in a frescoed hall underneath the chandeliers of the U.S. Naval Academy.

In 2007 most people saw a factor that only a few noticed in the 1980s and 1990s. For peace-negotiations to succeed, it’s not enough for both sides to want peace in the abstract. They must also ascribe the same meaning to the term—and the two sides in the Middle East do not. Israel wants peace and so does the Arab/Muslim world, but Israel wants peace with the Arab/Muslim world and the Arab/Muslim world wants peace without Israel.

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, many people failed to see what seemed self-evident to a few, namely that for the Palestinian leadership the “peace-process” was a mere ruse de guerre. When the late Yasser Arafat stepped unto the world’s stage, he made no bones about it at first. “The end of Israel is the goal of our struggle,” he had told the Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci in 1972. “Peace for us means the destruction of Israel and nothing else.…”

Around the time of Annapolis, writing in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, one-time Soviet dissident Natan Sharansky described an episode when, as an Israeli delegate to the Wye River summit, he and some colleagues managed to extract a promise from Arafat to delete from the Palestinian Charter the sections calling for the destruction of Israel.

“Upon leaving the conference room,” Sharansky recalled in his piece, “we saw one of the closest advisors of president Bill Clinton and proudly told him about our achievement. ‘Are you out of your minds?’ he shouted. ‘He’s going to be killed because of that. He is too weak for dramatic steps like that. First he has to be strengthened!’” This anecdote sums up the charade of sham peace initiatives and “road maps” of the last 20 years, up to and including Annapolis.

To begin with, Arafat probably had no intention of excising any section calling for Israel’s destruction from the Palestinian Charter anyway. He had made half-hearted promises to do so long before Wye River and nothing came of them. He knew that understanding souls in the U.S. State Department would exempt him from having to go out on any such limb until he was suitably “strengthened.” But—and here’s the point—in the unlikely event that Arafat had actually made an attempt to remove the clause, he might well have been killed, just like Egypt’s Anwar Sadat.

I’ll go further and suggest that if Sadat’s successor, Hosni Mubarak, the ex-strongman of Egypt, is put to death now that he had been deposed by the much vaunted Arab Spring, he will die at least in part for having honoured his predecessor’s peace treaty with Israel. Minimally, in the eyes of his judges it will weigh against him as heavily as any of his misdeeds.

Throughout his career, Arafat was prepared to accept down payments from Israel on merchandise he had not only no intention of delivering, but which wasn’t his to deliver anyway. Arafat had no title to peace. Neither had Israel’s negotiating partner at Annapolis, Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud “Abu Mazen” Abbas. If anything, Abbas’ grip on peace had been even more tenuous all along. Hamas, the terrorist group that controlled Gaza by 2007, had immediately scheduled a “counter-conference” to protest Palestinian attendance at Annapolis, which they described as “treason.”

Forget the smiles, the hugs, the photo ops. They secure Nobel Peace Prizes for politicians, not peace for people. The region wasn’t ready for peace in Arafat’s days and it isn’t ready now. A minority saw it then; a majority sees it today. Paradoxically, if there’s any hope, it’s only because majorities are so often wrong.

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