In his speech on the Middle East, Obama gave the Palestinians nothing and gave Israel a lot, which means he strengthened the status quo, which Israel is perfectly happy with and only the Palestinians want to change.
By saying the Israeli-Palestinian border should be based on the ’67 line, he just repeated what Clinton said publicly about a year ago (and what her husband said in the White House a decade ago). What was new, or at least newer, was his endorsement of Netanyahu’s call for a “non-militarized” Palestine – which is a contradiction to a sovereign Palestine, something Obama claimed also to support. And by mentioning the need to stop the smuggling of weapons into Palestine, he might have been giving a nod to Netanyahu’s demand to keep the Israeli army on the Jordan Valley. Also, he repeated his opposition to the Palestinians’ plan to seek recognition from the UN in September. Meanwhile, he mentioned nothing about the refugees killed by Israeli troops on the borders. In all, a very, very good day for Fortress Israel.
But I think Obama just lost the Palestinians. Abbas cannot go along with this prescription, none of them can. They have to go to the UN, they have to go ahead with the popular resistance, to go out into the street en masse – to the settlements, to the army outposts, to the fence, and hope for the Tahrir effect – to win the world to their side – and for this, they must remain non-violent – and shame Israel in the eyes of the world and force Obama and the other timid Western leaders to force Israel to end the occupation. There’s just no other way.
I’d thought that maybe after killing Bin Laden, Obama would have the political capital to pressure Israel. Whether he has it or not, he’s too timid, or too election-minded, to use it. For the cause of peace and justice in Israel and Palestine, he just became a write-off.
Larry Derfner
Dimi
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Yes Larry! How can we get the President to read this!!!????
We keep telling the Palestinians what to do. Maybe by now they know what to do and we should be thinking seriously about what we Israelis can do? What can we do to force Obama and other timid Western leaders to force Israel to end the occupation?
I think you missed the message.
The last couple ping-pong shots came from the Palestinians, in the form of a moderate mass surge on a border (at least partially orchestrated by Syria and Hezbollah for their own political street cred), following the unity agreement between Fatah and Hamas (immediately following the announcement Hamas declared and reiterated three times by three different officials that they would NEVER recognize Israel).
Obama is rationally countering those “Arab spring” assertions by boundaries. ‘We are committed to 67 borders, recognition of Israel as Israel, peace as the goal.’
Not, sanctioning rushes on borders as “non-violent civil disobedience”. Not, sanctioning calm for calm as the same as peace and reconciliation. (With the presumption of escalation of Gazan rights to equivalent to a state, but without any implication of fulfilling the responsibility of a state.)
If Abbas deviates even to direct action in any form, the chance of a peaceful Palestinian state in the current setting will go to less than zero.
The human rights posture as the reason for change will NOT convince states in power that have and are dealing with the prospect of terrorism. They will sympathize with Israel even if they criticize policies. They will note that in war, civil liberties are suspended. And, they will recognize the condition of assault on a democracy, that continues as a democracy. (Israel has not suspended elections in a condition of crisis. It remains confidently a democracy, with obvious threats to that.)
The stance on the UN vote troubled me. I thought the Obama should have kept that as an “if’. He is playing the path that eliminating risks for Israel is the best policy, the best path towards peace. That is mediation!!!!!
The Palestine Papers demonstrated that Fatah subscribed to that view. The Palestinian solidarity street (hard to know the actual street as no polls have been taken) regards Fatah as pandering to Israel by that approach.
There is no question that it is frustrating, irritating, demoralizing.
But, there is a pattern emerging in all relations between Israel and Palestine.
My interpretation of the Cast Lead buildup is that at the start of the cease-fire, Israel assumed and hoped that Hamas would break it, proving their point. When Hamas didn’t break it for 4 1/2 months, that reality itself shook up Israeli logic, Israeli governmental and military logic and popular logic. The concept that Hamas had the internal and external discipline to maintain a cease-fire if it chose to shifted the argument to ‘what can we do to get it to choose calm, if not reconciliation’?
The November 4 skirmishes are sited by solidarity as the end of the cease-fire, but I don’t see that. In early December, the rates of firing had declined, when the formal cease-fire ending date approached. That after the formal cease-fire ending date, the rate and range of missiles amplified enormously, indicated that there was a vestige of a cease-fire still in place.
The resumption of shelling a day after the cease-fire ended, resulted from the frustration of Hamas and other factions. ‘We were promised – they thought – the relaxation of the borders. And they broke their promise. We have a right to retaliate.’
In returning to active state of conflict a month before the Israeli elections, Hamas functionally shifted the Israeli electorate 5 seats to the right (probably the difference between Kadima controlling the government and likud). From a state of reluctant consideration of Hamas as someone that Israel might justifiably talk to, it went back to ‘terrorist shelling of civilians’, as common descriptor of Hamas.
So, if Fatah also gets frustrated and resorts to direct action rather than the slow, steady, confidence building that makes them welcome at capitals in Europe and US, the confidence will be stressed, at least confused.
From ‘You are obviously a reliable prospective state that a humane nation can and should advocate for in the UN’ to ‘I don’t know if you are really a prospective responsible state, or a prospective militant state’.
Lets not urge that Palestinians repeat the stereotype. Please. Lets actually urge a change in relations.
The Fayyad approach was the most eloquent of non-violent direct action. The mass uprising approach is the least.
I’m sorry, I neglected my summary.
That is that another two months of calm would have achieved Hamas’ international redemption, the path not taken.
And, that in this case, my view is that another two months of calm institution-building will do similarly for the Palestinians, hopefully the path taken.
Netanyahu’s bluff can be called. Only so long as Paletinians don’t fall into the PR trap, as ‘humiliating’ as it can be spun.
Laeey, you are wrong
Obama is just not walking with his eyes wide shut.
Obama realized that Israel’s can’t sign a peace agreement with the PLO while Hamas refuses to recognize the existence of the state of Israel (and refuse to change its covenant), when most likely, Hamas will win the next election, and there will be no value to the paper signed.
as for non-militarized Palestinian state, They would have a well armed police force, they do not need more then that. it’s retaining what they have to date. The have light armored vehicles, they will not be allowed to get artillery force. they will not be allowed to get an air force (and Israel will retain control over the skies) but they will have light armored border police.
That’s not a state. That’s basically Palestinian municipal rule, with national rule remaining in Israel’s hands and the Palestinians having no vote. A state can do what it wants inside its sovereign borders, including, of course, build an army. No people seeking statehood, least of all the Jews in pre-state Israel, has ever agreed to such subservience, so it takes a diehard colonialist mentality to expect the Palestinians to.
Yes you are right.
but The Palestinian state will be established under special circumstances and with consideration to the region recent history (that period of time, you rather forget in which the Arabs were trying to push the Jews to the sea). and that dictates what was listed above.
In Sinai the Egyptians have a limited number of troops they are allowed to station east of the passes line, with heavy restrictions on their equipment. the territory between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean sea is much narrower, so to assure Israel’s security further restrictions on force buildup would have to be implemented. especially when Hamas is involved.
There are mutual restrictions on Egypt in the Sinai, and Israel in the Negev, these were negotiated at Camp David – but no one suggested a non-militarized Egypt, or that Israel should control Egypt’s borders, coast and airspace, which are the terms Israel, and you, expect the Palestinians to accept. Is that your idea of 1) fair or 2) realistic?
Egypt and Jordan negotiated clear and confident non-aggression treaties.
If Palestine does similarly, confidently, then that could change the background tenor of all subsequent positions.
It is not ignorable.
Richard, a peace treaty between Israel and Palestine will be by definition a non-aggression treaty, and will have at the very, very least as many guarantees of Israel’s security as the treaties w/Egypt and Jordan did. I really think this goes w/out saying.
I agree that that is critically important.
Do you see any way that Hamas will willingly go along with a peace treaty with Israel?
There is a triangulation that occurs. Militant Palestine, moderate Israel/Palestine, militant Israel.
If you want to define the conflict in polar terms (two positions), my polar definition is between dogmatic militants and moderates. For a very long time, I’ve thought of Hamas (and sentiments of demands or decrees) as dancing with likud (and sentiments of demands or decrees).
That contrasts with the work of Fayyad, Abbas, Obama, to mediate, meaning to make a path for a contract or reconciliation primarily by eliminating the substantive obstacles to reconciliation.
I don’t think Hamas will agree to peace w/Israel. The best to hope for, I think, is that they can be coerced into not sabotaging it – which would be enough.
Larry, you are willing to gamble with many peoples lives. Being a journalist this is acceptable being a prime minister this is unacceptable.
reducing the width of the state to 12 miles while allowing a presence of a regular army west of the Jordan river is simply a too high risk of a gamble, especially considering the fact that Hamas won the last elections and will most likely win the next one.
we have no dispute over the facts, yet you are willingly closing your eyes and jumping head first to an empty pool. why ?
Hala, we are surrounded by much, much stronger armies than the Palestinians are about to field anytime soon – Egypt, Syria, Hizbullah, Turkey, etc. None of them dare lift a finger to us – even Syria after we bombed their embryonic nuclear reactor, even Turkey when we boarded their unarmed ship in intl waters and killed nine of their nationals. We bombed Gaza to smithereens and for all the Muslim world’s round-the-clock rage, no Muslim army or country dared touch us. What does that tell you? The Muslim world is utterly deterred by us. The only one of the 57 Muslim nations that still fights us, even occasionally, is the Palestinians. Interestingly enough, the only one of the 57 Muslim nations that is ruled over by us is also the Palestinians. Do you think this is a coincidence? Do you think these two unique characteristics of the Palestinians – the only nation that fights us, the only nation whose lives we rule at gunpoint – are unrelated? I don’t. I think that if we stop ruling the Palestinians, they will leave us alone like every other Muslim nation does. I’m not proposing that Israel take a crazy risk, I’m proposing that all those who support the status quo stop committing the “treason of the hawks” – picking fights out of paranoia, getting innocent Israelis and Arabs killed, and seriously endangering their own country’s future.
I’m pretty sure the hundreds of Katyushas that hit Israel in 2007 were not fired by Palestinians.
Shai, you’re right, it was Hizballah that fired Katyushas at Israel (tho in 2006, not 2007). That was an aberration – and Israel retaliated so hard that Hizbullah hasn’t fired a single bullet at Israel in the five years since, and things are back to normal.
If I remember correctly, after WW2 both Germany and Japan were not allowed to have an army – why is it so out of the question for an interim period to prevent the Palestinians from having an army (sometimes such agreements are called “confidence building measures”).
It would certainly help the Israeli public to warm to an agreement.
If I read the Israel public correctly its biggest worry is due to lack of trust of the sincerity of the Palestinians. Having weapons capability so close to Israel’s border would not convince the public to support an agreement for “peace”.
How can you compare Germany/Japan with the Palestinians? Germany and Japan invaded and occupied foreign countries – have the Palestinians done that? Just the opposite – the Palestinians’ land was invaded and occupied by Israel in 1967. (Don’t think I’m comparing Israel to the Nazis or Japan, I compare Israel to colonial-era powers like France and England. As for the Israeli public’s fears, if Palestinian independence has to wait until they go away, Palestinian independence will wait forever. At any rate, Israeli fears have nothing to do with justice and injustice.
Larry
Israel’s history didn’t start the moment you immigrated. it started in 1947 with the Arab’s (they weren’t Palestinian then) trying to push the Jews to the sea. they were trying that again in 1956, 1967, 1973 and that’s not counting all that happened in between.
i say Israel has a great reason asking for extra security measures.
Thanks for the news that Israel’s history didn’t start when I immigrated. More to the point, ask yourself: If Israel can’t live with the threat of a Palestinian state that has an army and control of its own airspace and borders, how can it live with the threat of those 56 other Muslim states that do?
Lary, You are partially right about palestinians/ They did attack the yeshuv before 1948, as someone here already mentioned.
I think the problem here is mutual: Theres no real reason for the palestinians to have an army if theres a peace treay signed with israel, and theres no reason for israel to care such army exists in such case as well.
Seems like none of the sides really believes there will be a real peace here anytime soon, or theyre too busy playing cheap ego games.
I wouldnt care for a palestinian army, but i cant help bt ask myself why would they need one.
They would need an army only if they wanted to think of themselves, and be thought of by others, as equally independent and sovereign to the 200-odd other nation-states of the world.
Larry, the real issue isn’t a Palestinian army, the real issue is loosing control over the Jordan border, and the mountain tops. the real issue is Palestinians letting Arab armored column into the west bank, and them mounting an attack into Israeli territory from Tul-Karem area. that’s why the Palestinian state has to be DE-militarized. and if they will not agree to that… they will not get a state anytime soon.
Hala, you talk as if Israel has no army, no air force, no navy, no missiles, no nothing – as if topography is everything. Those “Auschwitz borders” are the borders from which Israel fought the Six Day War – they proved pretty defensible, I’d say. We are not the weak Jews of old, we have become the colossus of the Middle East and all the Arabs are scared of us, and rightly so. Everybody in the world knows this except Israelis.
Larry-
What are you talking about? The Six-Day War proves to you that the 1949 Armistice lines are supposedly “defensible”?! The Israelis made A PRE-EMPTIVE STRIKE in 1967 because they felt they couldn’t absorb a first-strike. This proves exactly the opposite of what you are trying to show.
In the event of a crisi, if Israel is back inside the Green Line, Israel would have to be prepared for a hair-trigger response, possibly even nuclear to a signficant threat. There would be NO flexibility. I don’t understand how you can’t see that.
Israel struck first in 67 because it figured the war was coming anyway, so better that they start it than the Arabs – which made perfect sense, but which would have also made perfect sense NO MATTER WHERE ISRAEL’S BORDERS WERE. The real question is – if Israel’s pre-67 borders were indefensible, and we all agree that the Arabs would have loved to defeat the Jewish state, why didn’t any Arab country start a war with Israel between 48 and 67? And if we’re talking about now and the future, I think it’s a little outdated to think that the greatest threat to Israel comes from tanks invading from Tulkarm, or that a few more kilomerters of width spells the difference between Israel’s security and vulnerability. What good did the territory of the West Bank do Israel against Saddam’s Scuds or Hizbullah’s rockets; what good will it do against the missiles of Iran or anybody else?
Hence, the necessity of a confident peace, rather than a gamble, for both.
Larry,
think what the consequences would have been if the attack in 73 would have started from tul-karem and not from the Israeli Syrian border.
want to take a wild guess how fast one of those nukes Israel holds (according to foreign sources) would have been deployed ? want to take a wild guess how long it would have taken the Arabs to divide the country in half (by reaching the med)
Hala, with your logic why should we sign any peace treaty with them anyway?
If u think it all eventually leads to them attempting to throw us to the sea – why should there be any peace process to start with?
I want to believe theyll have better things to do than to constantly wage wars against us once they get their independence.
@ Y – first i think that with current changes in the Arab world, especially with the MB gaining control over Egypt, and most likely Syria, and the Hamas gaining a lot more power in the west bank after the next election, Israel will be facing another regional war soon.
Second – i think that we can’t continue ruling the faith and the daily activities of all the Palestinians in the west bank, and it’s within our best interest that they will form a legitimate state.
the two paragraphs above do contradict each-other, but do not cancel each-other, they do emphasis the need for extra security measures while reaching an agreement with the Palestinians, those security measures include two things:
1. a long time military presence in along the Jordan riven border and in military installations on top of the mountains over looking the border.
(25 – 50 years)
2. demilitarized Palestinian territory with heavy restriction on the type of weapons that can have.
the above is from the military standpoint. and doesn’t include all the items that should be included in such an agreement of course. Like ROR etc.
@ Larry, missiles do not define territory, tanks and infantry do. the vision of fire from afar executed by Israel in Lebanon during the SLW failed. it fails in Libya currently. Israel can stand a missile attack, but will find itself in a real problem if would have to fight when the country is divided (think about what we constantly do in Gaza)
Larry, Fatah response shows how wrong you are in your assessment.
Hamas reaction of course justifies your response.
http://www.nrg.co.il/online/1/ART2/242/619.html?hp=1&cat=404&loc=1
Jackson Diehl of the Washington Post points out that there is nothing new in Obama’s speech that Bush didn’t say before, but that it will poison the atmosphere with the Israeli gov’t. In other words, things will go on as they have in the past…
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/post/obamas-mideast-peace-gaffe/2011/04/19/AFyl0R7G_blog.html?hpid=z2
Judging from what Mr. Obama has said, to enable democracy, peace and the rule of law to gain significant traction in the Middle East, a long and, at times, a bumpy road lies ahead for all concerned.
So many previous journeys have had the same goal in mind but, somewhere along the trail, the vehicle always broke down, the maps became outdated, the path was lost and everyone found themselves stranded in the middle of nowhere.
Let us hope that on this occasion a better vehicle can be acquired, more reliable maps obtained and a route taken that will not leave us all axle-deep in sand before we’ve gone even half a mile.
To date, in all our expeditions to find the lost treasure, we’ve always come up empty-handed. Maybe, for our next foray into the wilderness, we would be well advised to take out a little travel insurance.
http://yorketowers.blogspot.com
Let’s make it a real adventure this time; one we can all explore together.
.
I believe Israel will never agree to give up the land they have taken without the UN recognizing Palestine and Israel becoming a official rogue state by UN definition. As Rabine said, “We did not attack in 1967 for security. We are secure with the world’s 2nd most powerful military. We need the land!”
Israel has the 2nd most powerful military in the world. Security is not the issue. Rabin said it, “We invaded in 1967 because we needed the land.” Of course, what he did not say is, “We desperatly needed the water under the Golan Heights, one of the biggest aquafiers in the world.”
Care to back up any of ur quotes?
btw theres why israel shouldnt really give the golan heights back, at least not before theres some kind of treaty with the palestinians. what exactly do u thin assad wants?