From a US dept of State Daily Press Briefing in Washington, DC, April 8, 2010, by Philip J. Crowley, Assistant Secretary:
...Regarding the Middle East, we are disturbed by comments of Palestinian Authority officials regarding reconstruction and refurbishing of Jewish sites in the Jewish quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City. Remarks by the Palestinian ministry of information denying Jewish heritage in and links to Jerusalem undermine the trust and confidence needed for substantive and productive Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.
We also strongly condemn the glorification of terrorists honoring terrorists who have murdered innocent civilians either by official statements or by the dedication of public places hurts peace efforts and must end. We will continue to hold Palestinian leaders accountable for incitement....
The question what do the WORDS mean? Will US funding of the PA be made contingent on cessation of denial and incitement?
Saturday, April 10, 2010
Friday, April 09, 2010
US denying visas to Israel's nuclear scientists
From IsraelNationalNews.com, 9/4/10, by Maayana Miskin:
The United States has begun denying visas to Israel's nuclear scientists ...Workers at the reactor in Dimona told the paper that they had been treated poorly by US representatives, and had been told they could not travel to the States.
For the past 20 years it has been common for scientists working at the Dimona reactor to travel to universities in the U.S. to enhance their knowledge in the fields of physics, chemistry, and nuclear engineering.
The only reason the Dimona scientists' visa requests were refused was their work at the reactor, sources in the military establishment said. None of the researchers has had any trouble with the law, in Israel or America.
A former Dimona worker told Maariv that the problems between Israel and America went beyond denied visas. The US has also created a “de-facto embargo” on equipment needed in the Dimona reactor, he said.
The refusal to sell Israel certain parts began after current US President Barack Obama took office, he said. When it comes to certain other pieces of equipment, he added, the US now permits sales only if Israeli officials explain exactly what the part will be used for.
"And yet, when it comes to those who manufacture nuclear terrorism, we hear a lenient approach, even though the entire world can see that Iran's leaders are making a joke out of the US,” he said.
Professor Zev Alfasi of the nuclear engineering program at Ben-Gurion University confirmed the statements made by the anonymous former Dimona worker. “Some people are not getting visas to the United States for the sole reason that they work at the Dimona reactor,” he said. In addition, he said, “The US does not sell a single piece of nuclear-related equipment to the Dimona reactor... They sell to the universities, but they refuse to sell equipment to the reactor.”
On Friday morning, spokesmen for Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu announced that he would not attend a Nuclear Security summit in the US as previously planned, but would send a senior minister in his place. Netanyahu apparently decided not to attend the summit due to concerns that he would face pressure over Israel's nuclear program. The visa refusals may have been another factor leading to his concerns.
The United States has begun denying visas to Israel's nuclear scientists ...Workers at the reactor in Dimona told the paper that they had been treated poorly by US representatives, and had been told they could not travel to the States.
For the past 20 years it has been common for scientists working at the Dimona reactor to travel to universities in the U.S. to enhance their knowledge in the fields of physics, chemistry, and nuclear engineering.
The only reason the Dimona scientists' visa requests were refused was their work at the reactor, sources in the military establishment said. None of the researchers has had any trouble with the law, in Israel or America.
A former Dimona worker told Maariv that the problems between Israel and America went beyond denied visas. The US has also created a “de-facto embargo” on equipment needed in the Dimona reactor, he said.
The refusal to sell Israel certain parts began after current US President Barack Obama took office, he said. When it comes to certain other pieces of equipment, he added, the US now permits sales only if Israeli officials explain exactly what the part will be used for.
"And yet, when it comes to those who manufacture nuclear terrorism, we hear a lenient approach, even though the entire world can see that Iran's leaders are making a joke out of the US,” he said.
Professor Zev Alfasi of the nuclear engineering program at Ben-Gurion University confirmed the statements made by the anonymous former Dimona worker. “Some people are not getting visas to the United States for the sole reason that they work at the Dimona reactor,” he said. In addition, he said, “The US does not sell a single piece of nuclear-related equipment to the Dimona reactor... They sell to the universities, but they refuse to sell equipment to the reactor.”
On Friday morning, spokesmen for Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu announced that he would not attend a Nuclear Security summit in the US as previously planned, but would send a senior minister in his place. Netanyahu apparently decided not to attend the summit due to concerns that he would face pressure over Israel's nuclear program. The visa refusals may have been another factor leading to his concerns.
Wednesday, April 07, 2010
Obama's legacy: an nuclear-armed Iran?
From: The Australian April 03, 2010, by Greg Sheridan, Foreign editor:
US President Barack Obama has decided to abandon any serious effort to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. He is determined instead to live with a nuclear Iran, by containment and, if possible, negotiation...
...This is the giant story of the past few weeks which the world has largely missed, distracted by the theatre of the absurd of Obama's contrived and mock confrontation with Israel over 1600 apartments to be built in three years' time in a Jewish suburb in East Jerusalem.
...Obama has not explicitly announced his new position and he and his cabinet secretaries still make speeches saying they will try to prevent Iran acquiring nuclear weapons. But if you look at the statements closely you see a steady weakening of resolve, a steady removal of any threat of any consequence for Iran. Similarly, if you look at the actions of the administration, the sombre conclusion is inescapable.
Given Iran's missile program ...profoundly undermines American strategic credibility, which is the bedrock of whatever global order this troubled planet enjoys.
The troubling realisation that the Americans have given up, or are in the process of giving up, the fight to prevent Iran going nuclear is backed by the best informed security sources in Washington, London, Jerusalem and Canberra.
The bust-up between Washington and Israel only makes sense in this context....
...It is inconceivable that Obama would have treated any Arab or Muslim leader with the same considered contempt that he showed to Netanyahu. I speculated last week that Obama engaged in his furious over-reaction in order to pursue personal popularity in the Muslim world, and perhaps to force Israel to make so many concessions that the Palestinians would come back to negotiations. Although these negotiations would not produce a comprehensive peace deal, at least Obama could claim the talks themselves as a victory of sorts.
I still think these were important considerations but there was a much bigger strategic purpose, as well. In 2008, Israel told Washington it was planning to strike Iran's nuclear facilities. Washington talked Jerusalem out of the move, not least by showing its own determination to stop the Iranians.
...When Obama spoke to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee in 2008, he said ,,,"I will do everything in my power to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon - everything in my power to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon - everything." That was Obama's equivalent to Bush's "all options".
Obama doesn't talk anything like that any more. In his message to Iran on the Iranian new year a few weeks ago, he reiterated his determination not to meddle in Iran's internal affairs and said the nuclear matter should still be negotiated.
Clinton, in her address to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee last week, spoke only briefly about Iran ...the bulk of her speech was all about the Israeli-Palestinian issue.
...The sub-text of Obama and Clinton's recent speeches can only be that they have decided that the battle against a nuclear-armed Iran is over.
One thing they are determined to do is to stop Israel from taking its own unilateral military action to stop or retard Iran's nuclear program. Israel has taken this type of action twice before. In 1981, it destroyed Iraq's nuclear reactor at Osirak. And in 2007, it bombed into obliteration a North Korean-supplied secret nuclear reactor in Syria.
... for several years the most senior US officials would agree that a nuclear-armed Iran represented an existential threat to Israel. Iran's rulers, after all, not only deny the Holocaust but have made militant anti-Americanism, confrontation with Israel and even anti-Semitism, defining ideologies of the Iranian state. Iran's President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has threatened to wipe Israel off the map. Most analysts believe that for all their extremism, the Iranian rulers are rational actors and would not actually use nuclear weapons. But this is a slender analytical thread to ask Israelis to hang their very lives on. And the danger of Iran proliferating some element of nuclear material or technology to terrorists is much more plausible.
This is where the Obama-Israel dust-up comes in. By so isolating Israel, by irresponsibly unleashing a global wave of anti-Israel sentiment, especially in nations which normally support Israel, Obama has made the possibility of Israel considering unilateral action against Iran much more unlikely. The Israelis would weigh such action very carefully. There are many pluses and minuses. By creating the impression of Israel as a besieged, isolated and reckless nation, which the wildly disproportionate reaction to the East Jerusalem apartments accomplished, Obama has made the potential cost to Israel of action against Iran much greater.
Is it fair to conclude definitively that Obama has decided to give up, except for symbolic and meaningless actions, the fight against a nuclear-armed Iran?
Obama might still change his mind - he is nothing, after all, if not flexible - but that is the inescapable conclusion of his actions so far.
He has set so many deadlines for Iran. Each of them has passed and nothing ever happens. There are never bad consequences for the US's enemies in Obama world, it seems, only for its friends.
Remember, initially, that the Obama administration wanted to wait for the Iranian election in the middle of last year before it exhausted dialogue or went down the sanctions road? Remember then the deadline was September? Remember the proposal for Iran's uranium to go to Russia for enrichment? Remember the revelation of Iran's secret nuclear facility at Qom? Remember Iran's announcement that it intended to enrich uranium up to 20 per cent, a vast leap on the technological road to weapons? Did you notice a couple of weeks ago Iran's announcement that it would build new nuclear facilities?
And where are we today? Now it is April and Obama is still talking in his feckless way about possible UN sanctions. Anything that is passed by China and Russia at the UN Security Council will be weak and ineffective. A serious US administration would have built a critical mass of like-minded countries to impose crippling sanctions on Iran outside the Security Council.
The only explanation that fits with all the facts is that the US administration is no longer serious about stopping Iran from getting nuclear weapons. ....
...There is no chance Obama will produce a comprehensive Israeli-Palestinian peace deal in his first term in office, which is how he would like to be remembered by history.
There is every chance history will remember him for something altogether different, as the American president on whose watch Iran became a nuclear-weapons state.
US President Barack Obama has decided to abandon any serious effort to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. He is determined instead to live with a nuclear Iran, by containment and, if possible, negotiation...
...This is the giant story of the past few weeks which the world has largely missed, distracted by the theatre of the absurd of Obama's contrived and mock confrontation with Israel over 1600 apartments to be built in three years' time in a Jewish suburb in East Jerusalem.
...Obama has not explicitly announced his new position and he and his cabinet secretaries still make speeches saying they will try to prevent Iran acquiring nuclear weapons. But if you look at the statements closely you see a steady weakening of resolve, a steady removal of any threat of any consequence for Iran. Similarly, if you look at the actions of the administration, the sombre conclusion is inescapable.
Given Iran's missile program ...profoundly undermines American strategic credibility, which is the bedrock of whatever global order this troubled planet enjoys.
The troubling realisation that the Americans have given up, or are in the process of giving up, the fight to prevent Iran going nuclear is backed by the best informed security sources in Washington, London, Jerusalem and Canberra.
The bust-up between Washington and Israel only makes sense in this context....
...It is inconceivable that Obama would have treated any Arab or Muslim leader with the same considered contempt that he showed to Netanyahu. I speculated last week that Obama engaged in his furious over-reaction in order to pursue personal popularity in the Muslim world, and perhaps to force Israel to make so many concessions that the Palestinians would come back to negotiations. Although these negotiations would not produce a comprehensive peace deal, at least Obama could claim the talks themselves as a victory of sorts.
I still think these were important considerations but there was a much bigger strategic purpose, as well. In 2008, Israel told Washington it was planning to strike Iran's nuclear facilities. Washington talked Jerusalem out of the move, not least by showing its own determination to stop the Iranians.
...When Obama spoke to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee in 2008, he said ,,,"I will do everything in my power to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon - everything in my power to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon - everything." That was Obama's equivalent to Bush's "all options".
Obama doesn't talk anything like that any more. In his message to Iran on the Iranian new year a few weeks ago, he reiterated his determination not to meddle in Iran's internal affairs and said the nuclear matter should still be negotiated.
Clinton, in her address to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee last week, spoke only briefly about Iran ...the bulk of her speech was all about the Israeli-Palestinian issue.
...The sub-text of Obama and Clinton's recent speeches can only be that they have decided that the battle against a nuclear-armed Iran is over.
One thing they are determined to do is to stop Israel from taking its own unilateral military action to stop or retard Iran's nuclear program. Israel has taken this type of action twice before. In 1981, it destroyed Iraq's nuclear reactor at Osirak. And in 2007, it bombed into obliteration a North Korean-supplied secret nuclear reactor in Syria.
... for several years the most senior US officials would agree that a nuclear-armed Iran represented an existential threat to Israel. Iran's rulers, after all, not only deny the Holocaust but have made militant anti-Americanism, confrontation with Israel and even anti-Semitism, defining ideologies of the Iranian state. Iran's President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has threatened to wipe Israel off the map. Most analysts believe that for all their extremism, the Iranian rulers are rational actors and would not actually use nuclear weapons. But this is a slender analytical thread to ask Israelis to hang their very lives on. And the danger of Iran proliferating some element of nuclear material or technology to terrorists is much more plausible.
This is where the Obama-Israel dust-up comes in. By so isolating Israel, by irresponsibly unleashing a global wave of anti-Israel sentiment, especially in nations which normally support Israel, Obama has made the possibility of Israel considering unilateral action against Iran much more unlikely. The Israelis would weigh such action very carefully. There are many pluses and minuses. By creating the impression of Israel as a besieged, isolated and reckless nation, which the wildly disproportionate reaction to the East Jerusalem apartments accomplished, Obama has made the potential cost to Israel of action against Iran much greater.
Is it fair to conclude definitively that Obama has decided to give up, except for symbolic and meaningless actions, the fight against a nuclear-armed Iran?
Obama might still change his mind - he is nothing, after all, if not flexible - but that is the inescapable conclusion of his actions so far.
He has set so many deadlines for Iran. Each of them has passed and nothing ever happens. There are never bad consequences for the US's enemies in Obama world, it seems, only for its friends.
Remember, initially, that the Obama administration wanted to wait for the Iranian election in the middle of last year before it exhausted dialogue or went down the sanctions road? Remember then the deadline was September? Remember the proposal for Iran's uranium to go to Russia for enrichment? Remember the revelation of Iran's secret nuclear facility at Qom? Remember Iran's announcement that it intended to enrich uranium up to 20 per cent, a vast leap on the technological road to weapons? Did you notice a couple of weeks ago Iran's announcement that it would build new nuclear facilities?
And where are we today? Now it is April and Obama is still talking in his feckless way about possible UN sanctions. Anything that is passed by China and Russia at the UN Security Council will be weak and ineffective. A serious US administration would have built a critical mass of like-minded countries to impose crippling sanctions on Iran outside the Security Council.
The only explanation that fits with all the facts is that the US administration is no longer serious about stopping Iran from getting nuclear weapons. ....
...There is no chance Obama will produce a comprehensive Israeli-Palestinian peace deal in his first term in office, which is how he would like to be remembered by history.
There is every chance history will remember him for something altogether different, as the American president on whose watch Iran became a nuclear-weapons state.
The pope must confront the depravities of child molestation and rabid anti-Semitism in his Church
From a JPOST EDITORIAL, 06/04/2010:
The pope must confront the depravities of [child molestation or rabid anti-Semitism in] his Church, wherever they appear.
...On Good Friday, Father Raniero Cantalamessa said he was thinking about the Jews in this season of Pessah and Easter, because “they know from experience what it means to be victims of collective violence and also because of this they are quick to recognize the recurring symptoms.”
Callously, astoundingly, the veteran preacher, who has held his position since Pope John Paul II’s era, was not sympathizing with the real victims of the sex scandal rocking the Church. Not the hundreds, perhaps thousands, of children who have allegedly been molested by a sexually rapacious clergy over the decades. These were not the “victims of collective violence” Cantalamessa had in mind. Nor was his talk of “recurring symptoms” an allusion to the sex scandals that have surfaced recurrently in the Catholic Church. No, Cantalamessa was reserving his compassion for his fellow clergymen and his boss, who are being rightly censured for failing to stop the abuse and punish the sex offenders.
...WHAT COULD possibly have been going through the mind of Cantalamessa, no newcomer to public scrutiny, when he trotted out the specter of anti-Semitism in this context? As The New Republic’s Leon Wieseltier put it, “Why would the Catholic Church wish to defend itself by referring to other enormities in which it was also implicated?”
Cantalamessa’s, and perhaps the Church’s, understanding of what constitutes anti-Semitism is all-too plainly deeply flawed. And the Church – itself responsible for such inventions such as the “Jew badge,” the auto-da-fé, the blood libel, the Inquisition and the expulsion of Jews from Spain and Portugal – has no excuse for such insensitivity.
Even more pernicious is the charge, also coming from within the Church, that a Jewish Cabal is escalating the present campaign against the pope and the Vatican. The center-left La Repubblica, Italy’s second largest daily, quoted “certain Catholic sources” last week as blaming a “New York Jewish lobby” for sensationalizing the scandal. Revelations such as the pope’s apparent willingness to refrain from defrocking a Wisconsin priest who allegedly sexually abused some 200 deaf children are, ostensibly, only considered news by Jews, such as The New York Times’ Sulzberger family, who are motivated by a “liberal” agenda. Nor is the Times redeemed by “not hesitating to attack Israel,” according to these Catholic sources. Even the “progressive” Archbishop of New York Timothy Dolan has accused the Times of having an “uncontrollable desire to personally involve” Benedict in the scandal, according to La Repubblica.
Will the real anti-Semites please stand up?
SINCE BECOMING the 265th pope in April 2005, Benedict has inadvertently hurt Jews while trying to reach out to more conservative – and some downright anti-Semitic – elements in the Church.
Prominent examples include his decision to revoke the excommunication of a group of schismatic fundamentalist bishops, including Holocaust denier Richard Williamson; his publicized meeting with anti-Semitic Polish priest Tadeusz Rydzyk just weeks after Rydzyk called Jewish demands for Holocaust reparations from the Polish government “insatiably greedy”; and his decision to revive a Latin-language rite that includes a prayer for the conversion of the Jews.
Now the pope is hurting the hundreds, perhaps thousands, of victims of pedophilia by attempting to play down the present scandal. While the Vatican’s newspaper has called media reports on the unfolding revelations “gross propaganda” against the pontiff and a spokesman has tried to shrug off the affair as “petty gossip,” Benedict himself in his Easter address chose not to speak out against the sick phenomenon, opting to completely sidestep the issue. Is he buying into the Vatican line that he is the target of a smear campaign by the world’s media?
The pope must confront the depravities of his Church, wherever they appear, whether they be child molestation or rabid anti-Semitism. A continued failure to do so undermines his moral legitimacy and the respect of the Catholic faithful worldwide.
The pope must confront the depravities of [child molestation or rabid anti-Semitism in] his Church, wherever they appear.
...On Good Friday, Father Raniero Cantalamessa said he was thinking about the Jews in this season of Pessah and Easter, because “they know from experience what it means to be victims of collective violence and also because of this they are quick to recognize the recurring symptoms.”
Callously, astoundingly, the veteran preacher, who has held his position since Pope John Paul II’s era, was not sympathizing with the real victims of the sex scandal rocking the Church. Not the hundreds, perhaps thousands, of children who have allegedly been molested by a sexually rapacious clergy over the decades. These were not the “victims of collective violence” Cantalamessa had in mind. Nor was his talk of “recurring symptoms” an allusion to the sex scandals that have surfaced recurrently in the Catholic Church. No, Cantalamessa was reserving his compassion for his fellow clergymen and his boss, who are being rightly censured for failing to stop the abuse and punish the sex offenders.
...WHAT COULD possibly have been going through the mind of Cantalamessa, no newcomer to public scrutiny, when he trotted out the specter of anti-Semitism in this context? As The New Republic’s Leon Wieseltier put it, “Why would the Catholic Church wish to defend itself by referring to other enormities in which it was also implicated?”
Cantalamessa’s, and perhaps the Church’s, understanding of what constitutes anti-Semitism is all-too plainly deeply flawed. And the Church – itself responsible for such inventions such as the “Jew badge,” the auto-da-fé, the blood libel, the Inquisition and the expulsion of Jews from Spain and Portugal – has no excuse for such insensitivity.
Even more pernicious is the charge, also coming from within the Church, that a Jewish Cabal is escalating the present campaign against the pope and the Vatican. The center-left La Repubblica, Italy’s second largest daily, quoted “certain Catholic sources” last week as blaming a “New York Jewish lobby” for sensationalizing the scandal. Revelations such as the pope’s apparent willingness to refrain from defrocking a Wisconsin priest who allegedly sexually abused some 200 deaf children are, ostensibly, only considered news by Jews, such as The New York Times’ Sulzberger family, who are motivated by a “liberal” agenda. Nor is the Times redeemed by “not hesitating to attack Israel,” according to these Catholic sources. Even the “progressive” Archbishop of New York Timothy Dolan has accused the Times of having an “uncontrollable desire to personally involve” Benedict in the scandal, according to La Repubblica.
Will the real anti-Semites please stand up?
SINCE BECOMING the 265th pope in April 2005, Benedict has inadvertently hurt Jews while trying to reach out to more conservative – and some downright anti-Semitic – elements in the Church.
Prominent examples include his decision to revoke the excommunication of a group of schismatic fundamentalist bishops, including Holocaust denier Richard Williamson; his publicized meeting with anti-Semitic Polish priest Tadeusz Rydzyk just weeks after Rydzyk called Jewish demands for Holocaust reparations from the Polish government “insatiably greedy”; and his decision to revive a Latin-language rite that includes a prayer for the conversion of the Jews.
Now the pope is hurting the hundreds, perhaps thousands, of victims of pedophilia by attempting to play down the present scandal. While the Vatican’s newspaper has called media reports on the unfolding revelations “gross propaganda” against the pontiff and a spokesman has tried to shrug off the affair as “petty gossip,” Benedict himself in his Easter address chose not to speak out against the sick phenomenon, opting to completely sidestep the issue. Is he buying into the Vatican line that he is the target of a smear campaign by the world’s media?
The pope must confront the depravities of his Church, wherever they appear, whether they be child molestation or rabid anti-Semitism. A continued failure to do so undermines his moral legitimacy and the respect of the Catholic faithful worldwide.
Tuesday, April 06, 2010
Israel's exports surged 145% in 2009
From The Ettinger Report, 3/4/2010, by Yoram Ettinger, :
Intel-Israel's exports surged 145% in 2009, reaching a record $3.4BN.
The record was facilitated by the completion of Intel's $4BN sixth plant in Israel. Intel is currently [in] negotiation with Israel's government [about] a possible $2.7BN expansion of the plant.
Intel employs 6,340 persons at its two plants and four R&D centers in Israel. Intel has invested $6.1BN in its Israel presence, boosted by a $1.2BN Israeli investment.
Intel-Israel's exports surged 145% in 2009, reaching a record $3.4BN.
The record was facilitated by the completion of Intel's $4BN sixth plant in Israel. Intel is currently [in] negotiation with Israel's government [about] a possible $2.7BN expansion of the plant.
Intel employs 6,340 persons at its two plants and four R&D centers in Israel. Intel has invested $6.1BN in its Israel presence, boosted by a $1.2BN Israeli investment.
Clinton Owes New Yorkers An Apology
From a ZOA press release 5/4/2010:
The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) has written to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton asking her "to apologize to your former New York constituents ...for having misled them by falsely claiming to support an undivided Jerusalem as Israel 's capital." The letter was signed by Morton A. Klein, President of ZOA; Dr. Michael Goldblatt, Chairman, National Board; Dr. Alan Mazurek, Chair, Executive Committee and Steven Goldberg, Esq., Vice-Chairman, National Board.
The letter went on to say, "when you were New York's Senator from 2001 to 2009, you repeatedly stated in speeches and in a September 2007 position paper that you believed ' Israel 's right to exist in safety as a Jewish state, with defensible borders and an undivided Jerusalem as its capital, must never be questioned.'...
"Madame Secretary, you also signed the June 2004 Senate Resolution endorsing President Bush's letter to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon that supported Israel 'retaining major Israeli population centers' in Judea and Samaria in any final peace agreement.'
"We make this demand following your passionate and heartfelt condemnation of Israel for announcing the construction of Jewish homes in a Jewish neighborhood in eastern Jerusalem by stating that Jews building and moving there 'is an insult to America .' The only reasonable interpretation of this policy is that it is a first step toward dividing Jerusalem ."
...Secretary Clinton made a harsh telephone call to Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu in which, according to the words of the State Department, she called the Israeli announcement "a deeply negative signal about Israel's approach to the bilateral relationship"*. Clinton also later described it as being "not only an insult to [visiting Vice-President Joseph] Biden, but an insult to the United States "**.
The ZOA letter went on to say, "Your shocking words about Israel building in east Jerusalem is especially perplexing in light of ...Congress passing the 'Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995' by a margin of 93 to 5 in the U.S. Senate and 347 to 37 in the U.S. House of Representatives.
"The Act which is U.S. Law stated:
(1) Jerusalem should remain an undivided city.
(2) Jerusalem should be recognized as the capital of the state of Israel .'
It also stated
(1) Each sovereign nation, under international law and custom, may designate its own capital.
(2) Since 1950, the city of Jerusalem has been the capital of the State of Israel.
(3) The city of Jerusalem is the seat of Israel 's President, Parliament, and Supreme Court, and the site of numerous government ministries and social and cultural institutions.
(4) The city of Jerusalem is the spiritual center of Judaism, and is also considered a holy city by the members of other religious faiths.
(5) From 1948-1967, Jerusalem was a divided city and Israeli citizens of all faiths as well as Jewish citizens of all states were denied access to holy sites in the area controlled by Jordan .
(6) In 1967, the city of Jerusalem was reunited during the conflict known as the Six Day War.
(7) Since 1967, Jerusalem has been a united city administered by Israel , and persons of all religious faiths have been guaranteed full access to holy sites within the city.
(8) This year marks the 28th consecutive year that Jerusalem has been administered as a unified city in which the rights of all faiths have been respected and protected.
(9) In 1990, the Congress unanimously adopted Senate Concurrent Resolution 106, which declares that the Congress ``strongly believes that Jerusalem must remain an undivided city."
(10) In 1992, the United States Senate and House of Representatives unanimously adopted Senate Concurrent Resolution 113 of the One Hundred Second Congress to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the reunification of Jerusalem , and reaffirming congressional sentiment that Jerusalem must remain an undivided city.
ZOA National President Morton A. Klein said, "It took only a few months to confirm that Secretary of State Clinton ...was apparently misrepresenting her true views and beliefs on Israel to her New York constituents. From having once loudly proclaimed support for an undivided Jerusalem, upon becoming Secretary of State, suddenly, parts of an "undivided Jerusalem" became places where Jews may not move or build, even though Jews were a majority in eastern Jerusalem from the mid-1800s until 1948, when Jordan forced Jewish residents to flee, and are now a majority once again. Her recent harsh words of condemnation - a term used in diplomacy normally only to describe the most heinous acts committed by a non-democratic regime, confirms that Secretary Clinton did not believe what she said about Jerusalem when she was Senator Clinton.
"Preventing Jews, because they are Jews, from moving into or developing their communities in Jerusalem is a racist and even apartheid American and Palestinian Arab policy which aims to weaken Israel's claim to Jerusalem an is a first step towards dividing the city. This is a policy one would never have expected Secretary Clinton to support in view of her previous unequivocal statements, as U.S. Senator from New York , of support for a united Jerusalem under Israeli sovereignty.
"Secretary Clinton owes her New York Jewish and pro-Israel constituents a public apology," the ZOA said.
*(Glenn Lessler, 'Clinton rebukes Israel over east Jerusalem plan, cites damage to bilateral ties,' Washington Post, March 15, 2010)
**(Moshe Dann, 'A blessing in disguise,' Yediot Ahronot, March 15, 2010 )
The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) has written to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton asking her "to apologize to your former New York constituents ...for having misled them by falsely claiming to support an undivided Jerusalem as Israel 's capital." The letter was signed by Morton A. Klein, President of ZOA; Dr. Michael Goldblatt, Chairman, National Board; Dr. Alan Mazurek, Chair, Executive Committee and Steven Goldberg, Esq., Vice-Chairman, National Board.
The letter went on to say, "when you were New York's Senator from 2001 to 2009, you repeatedly stated in speeches and in a September 2007 position paper that you believed ' Israel 's right to exist in safety as a Jewish state, with defensible borders and an undivided Jerusalem as its capital, must never be questioned.'...
"Madame Secretary, you also signed the June 2004 Senate Resolution endorsing President Bush's letter to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon that supported Israel 'retaining major Israeli population centers' in Judea and Samaria in any final peace agreement.'
"We make this demand following your passionate and heartfelt condemnation of Israel for announcing the construction of Jewish homes in a Jewish neighborhood in eastern Jerusalem by stating that Jews building and moving there 'is an insult to America .' The only reasonable interpretation of this policy is that it is a first step toward dividing Jerusalem ."
...Secretary Clinton made a harsh telephone call to Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu in which, according to the words of the State Department, she called the Israeli announcement "a deeply negative signal about Israel's approach to the bilateral relationship"*. Clinton also later described it as being "not only an insult to [visiting Vice-President Joseph] Biden, but an insult to the United States "**.
The ZOA letter went on to say, "Your shocking words about Israel building in east Jerusalem is especially perplexing in light of ...Congress passing the 'Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995' by a margin of 93 to 5 in the U.S. Senate and 347 to 37 in the U.S. House of Representatives.
"The Act which is U.S. Law stated:
(1) Jerusalem should remain an undivided city.
(2) Jerusalem should be recognized as the capital of the state of Israel .'
It also stated
(1) Each sovereign nation, under international law and custom, may designate its own capital.
(2) Since 1950, the city of Jerusalem has been the capital of the State of Israel.
(3) The city of Jerusalem is the seat of Israel 's President, Parliament, and Supreme Court, and the site of numerous government ministries and social and cultural institutions.
(4) The city of Jerusalem is the spiritual center of Judaism, and is also considered a holy city by the members of other religious faiths.
(5) From 1948-1967, Jerusalem was a divided city and Israeli citizens of all faiths as well as Jewish citizens of all states were denied access to holy sites in the area controlled by Jordan .
(6) In 1967, the city of Jerusalem was reunited during the conflict known as the Six Day War.
(7) Since 1967, Jerusalem has been a united city administered by Israel , and persons of all religious faiths have been guaranteed full access to holy sites within the city.
(8) This year marks the 28th consecutive year that Jerusalem has been administered as a unified city in which the rights of all faiths have been respected and protected.
(9) In 1990, the Congress unanimously adopted Senate Concurrent Resolution 106, which declares that the Congress ``strongly believes that Jerusalem must remain an undivided city."
(10) In 1992, the United States Senate and House of Representatives unanimously adopted Senate Concurrent Resolution 113 of the One Hundred Second Congress to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the reunification of Jerusalem , and reaffirming congressional sentiment that Jerusalem must remain an undivided city.
ZOA National President Morton A. Klein said, "It took only a few months to confirm that Secretary of State Clinton ...was apparently misrepresenting her true views and beliefs on Israel to her New York constituents. From having once loudly proclaimed support for an undivided Jerusalem, upon becoming Secretary of State, suddenly, parts of an "undivided Jerusalem" became places where Jews may not move or build, even though Jews were a majority in eastern Jerusalem from the mid-1800s until 1948, when Jordan forced Jewish residents to flee, and are now a majority once again. Her recent harsh words of condemnation - a term used in diplomacy normally only to describe the most heinous acts committed by a non-democratic regime, confirms that Secretary Clinton did not believe what she said about Jerusalem when she was Senator Clinton.
"Preventing Jews, because they are Jews, from moving into or developing their communities in Jerusalem is a racist and even apartheid American and Palestinian Arab policy which aims to weaken Israel's claim to Jerusalem an is a first step towards dividing the city. This is a policy one would never have expected Secretary Clinton to support in view of her previous unequivocal statements, as U.S. Senator from New York , of support for a united Jerusalem under Israeli sovereignty.
"Secretary Clinton owes her New York Jewish and pro-Israel constituents a public apology," the ZOA said.
*(Glenn Lessler, 'Clinton rebukes Israel over east Jerusalem plan, cites damage to bilateral ties,' Washington Post, March 15, 2010)
**(Moshe Dann, 'A blessing in disguise,' Yediot Ahronot, March 15, 2010 )
Friday, April 02, 2010
Jerusalem Belongs to Jews, by International Law
From IsraelNN.com, 27/1/08, by Hillel Fendel:
Jacques Gauthier, a non-Jewish Canadian lawyer who spent 20 years researching the legal status of Jerusalem, has concluded: "Jerusalem belongs to the Jews, by international law."
Gauthier has written a doctoral dissertation on the topic of Jerusalem and its legal history, based on international treaties and resolutions of the past 90 years. The dissertation runs some 1,300 pages, with 3,000 footnotes. Gauthier had to present his thesis to a world-famous Jewish historian and two leading international lawyers - the Jewish one of whom has represented the Palestinian Authority on numerous occasions.
Gauthier's main point, as summarized by Israpundit editor Ted Belman, is that a non-broken series of treaties and resolutions, as laid out by the San Remo Resolution, the League of Nations and the United Nations, gives the Jewish People title to the city of Jerusalem. The process began at San Remo, Italy, when the four Principal Allied Powers of World War I - Great Britain, France, Italy and Japan - agreed to create a Jewish national home in what is now the Land of Israel.
San Remo
The relevant resolution reads as follows: "The High Contracting Parties agree to entrust... the administration of Palestine, within such boundaries as may be determined by the Principal Allied Powers, to a Mandatory [authority that] will be responsible for putting into effect the [Balfour] declaration... in favour of the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people."
Gauthier notes that the San Remo treaty specifically notes that "nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine" - but says nothing about any "political" rights of the Arabs living there.
The San Remo Resolution also bases itself on Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations, which declares that it is a "a sacred trust of civilization" to provide for the well-being and development of colonies and territories whose inhabitants are "not yet able to stand by themselves under the strenuous conditions of the modern world." Specifically, a resolution was formulated to create a Mandate to form a Jewish national home in Palestine.
League of Nations
The League of Nations' resolution creating the Palestine Mandate, included the following significant clause: “Whereas recognition has thereby been given to the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine and to the grounds for reconstituting their national home in that country." No such recognition of Arab rights in Palestine was granted.
In 1945, the United Nations took over from the failed League of Nations - and assumed the latter's obligations. Article 80 of the UN Charter states: "Nothing in this Chapter shall be construed, in or of itself, to alter in any manner the rights whatsoever of any states or any peoples or the terms of existing international instruments to which Members of the United Nations may respectively be parties."
UN Partition Plan
However, in 1947, the General Assembly of the UN passed Resolution 181, known as the Partition Plan. It violated the League of Nations' Mandate for Palestine in that it granted political rights to the Arabs in western Palestine - yet, ironically, the Arabs worked to thwart the plan's passage, while the Jews applauded it.
Resolution 181 also provided for a Special regime for Jerusalem, with borders delineated in all four directions: The then-extant municipality of Jerusalem plus the surrounding villages and towns up to Abu Dis in the east, Bethlehem in the south, Ein Karem and Motza in the west, and Shuafat in the north.
Referendum Scheduled for Jerusalem
The UN resolved that the City of Jerusalem shall be established as a separate entity under a special international regime and shall be administered by the United Nations. The regime was to come into effect by October 1948, and was to remain in force for a period of ten years, unless the UN's Trusteeship Council decided otherwise. After the ten years, the residents of Jerusalem "shall be then free to express by means of a referendum their wishes as to possible modifications of regime of the City."
The resolution never took effect, because Jordan controlled eastern Jerusalem after the 1948 War of Independence and did not follow its provisions.
After 1967
After the Six Day War in 1967, Israel regained Jerusalem and other land west of Jordan. Gauthier notes that the UN Security Council then passed Resolution 242 authorizing Israel to remain in possession of all the land until it had “secure and recognized boundaries.” The resolution was notably silent on Jerusalem, and also referred to the "necessity for achieving a just settlement of the refugee problem,” with no distinction made between Jewish and Arab refugees.
Today
Given Jerusalem's strong Jewish majority, Gauthier concludes, Israel should be demanding that the long-delayed city referendum on the city's future be held as soon as possible. Not only should Israel be demanding that the referendum be held now, Jerusalem should be the first order of business. "Olmert is sloughing us off by saying [as he did before the Annapolis Conference two months ago], 'Jerusalem is not on the table yet,'" Gauthier concludes. "He should demand that the referendum take place before the balance of the land is negotiated. If the Arabs won’t agree to the referendum, there is nothing to talk about."
Jacques Gauthier, a non-Jewish Canadian lawyer who spent 20 years researching the legal status of Jerusalem, has concluded: "Jerusalem belongs to the Jews, by international law."
Gauthier has written a doctoral dissertation on the topic of Jerusalem and its legal history, based on international treaties and resolutions of the past 90 years. The dissertation runs some 1,300 pages, with 3,000 footnotes. Gauthier had to present his thesis to a world-famous Jewish historian and two leading international lawyers - the Jewish one of whom has represented the Palestinian Authority on numerous occasions.
Gauthier's main point, as summarized by Israpundit editor Ted Belman, is that a non-broken series of treaties and resolutions, as laid out by the San Remo Resolution, the League of Nations and the United Nations, gives the Jewish People title to the city of Jerusalem. The process began at San Remo, Italy, when the four Principal Allied Powers of World War I - Great Britain, France, Italy and Japan - agreed to create a Jewish national home in what is now the Land of Israel.
San Remo
The relevant resolution reads as follows: "The High Contracting Parties agree to entrust... the administration of Palestine, within such boundaries as may be determined by the Principal Allied Powers, to a Mandatory [authority that] will be responsible for putting into effect the [Balfour] declaration... in favour of the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people."
Gauthier notes that the San Remo treaty specifically notes that "nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine" - but says nothing about any "political" rights of the Arabs living there.
The San Remo Resolution also bases itself on Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations, which declares that it is a "a sacred trust of civilization" to provide for the well-being and development of colonies and territories whose inhabitants are "not yet able to stand by themselves under the strenuous conditions of the modern world." Specifically, a resolution was formulated to create a Mandate to form a Jewish national home in Palestine.
League of Nations
The League of Nations' resolution creating the Palestine Mandate, included the following significant clause: “Whereas recognition has thereby been given to the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine and to the grounds for reconstituting their national home in that country." No such recognition of Arab rights in Palestine was granted.
In 1945, the United Nations took over from the failed League of Nations - and assumed the latter's obligations. Article 80 of the UN Charter states: "Nothing in this Chapter shall be construed, in or of itself, to alter in any manner the rights whatsoever of any states or any peoples or the terms of existing international instruments to which Members of the United Nations may respectively be parties."
UN Partition Plan
However, in 1947, the General Assembly of the UN passed Resolution 181, known as the Partition Plan. It violated the League of Nations' Mandate for Palestine in that it granted political rights to the Arabs in western Palestine - yet, ironically, the Arabs worked to thwart the plan's passage, while the Jews applauded it.
Resolution 181 also provided for a Special regime for Jerusalem, with borders delineated in all four directions: The then-extant municipality of Jerusalem plus the surrounding villages and towns up to Abu Dis in the east, Bethlehem in the south, Ein Karem and Motza in the west, and Shuafat in the north.
Referendum Scheduled for Jerusalem
The UN resolved that the City of Jerusalem shall be established as a separate entity under a special international regime and shall be administered by the United Nations. The regime was to come into effect by October 1948, and was to remain in force for a period of ten years, unless the UN's Trusteeship Council decided otherwise. After the ten years, the residents of Jerusalem "shall be then free to express by means of a referendum their wishes as to possible modifications of regime of the City."
The resolution never took effect, because Jordan controlled eastern Jerusalem after the 1948 War of Independence and did not follow its provisions.
After 1967
After the Six Day War in 1967, Israel regained Jerusalem and other land west of Jordan. Gauthier notes that the UN Security Council then passed Resolution 242 authorizing Israel to remain in possession of all the land until it had “secure and recognized boundaries.” The resolution was notably silent on Jerusalem, and also referred to the "necessity for achieving a just settlement of the refugee problem,” with no distinction made between Jewish and Arab refugees.
Today
Given Jerusalem's strong Jewish majority, Gauthier concludes, Israel should be demanding that the long-delayed city referendum on the city's future be held as soon as possible. Not only should Israel be demanding that the referendum be held now, Jerusalem should be the first order of business. "Olmert is sloughing us off by saying [as he did before the Annapolis Conference two months ago], 'Jerusalem is not on the table yet,'" Gauthier concludes. "He should demand that the referendum take place before the balance of the land is negotiated. If the Arabs won’t agree to the referendum, there is nothing to talk about."
Obama - the First Anti-Israeli President
From IsraelNN.com, 1/4/10, by Hillel Fendel:
Lt.-Col. (ret.) Ralph Peters, military analyst and author of a book on Middle East politics, says Obama apparently has a chip on his shoulder against Israel – and it’s not “helpful to our civilization.”
Peters, who wrote “Endless War: Middle Eastern Islam vs. Western Civilization,” was asked to explain why he felt American-Israeli friendship appears to have been derailed so dramatically. “The answer is two words,” he said. “President Obama.”
“Obama’s treatment of [Prime Minister Binyamin] Netanyahu [during their recent meeting in Washington] was disgraceful and shameful,” Peters told FoxNews. “We treat our enemies with greater courtesy! In addition, it was counter-productive – because this vendetta on the part of the White House against Israel - all it does is encourage the Palestinians and their Arab backers to make ever wilder demands that Israel cannot possibly fulfill. This is not a peace process; this is something about a chip on the President’s shoulder.”
Peters says that Obama’s approach is “absolutely” a departure from past American policy. “It all started with Obama’s Cairo speech,” he said, “where Obama attempted to appease radical Muslims in the Middle East, cold-shouldered Israel, and raised Palestinian expectations that he’d take care of Israel and that the Palestinians would get their revenge. Secondly, in the past, under Presidents Clinton and Bush, there were face-to-face negotiations; the Palestinians were offered one deal after another, and it was always – always! - the Palestinians who walked away.”
Obama Refuses to Recognize the Basic Equation
The American animosity towards Israel “is not about housing in Jerusalem or anything else,” Peters emphasized. “We need to back up and get a little wide-angle picture and recognize the fundamental issue in play here: Israel wants to live in peace with its neighbors, and its neighbors want Israel destroyed. The President refuses to understand that.”
“It’s become a credo of the left-wing that Israel is always the oppressor,” Peters continued, “and that the Palestinian terrorists are freedom fighters, etc. … Obama’s mother is extremely left, his university chums are on the left, he spent 20 years with the Rev. Wright – all of their doctrines say that the Palestinians are wonderful and that the Israelis are basically Nazis... I think that the President has gotten that by osmosis… This is our first anti-Israeli President; it’s bewildering and astonishing.”
Peters said that Israel is not perfect: “This is not a question of giving in to everything that Israel wants; Israel screws up too. But [American policy must] be a balanced approach that takes into account that Israel, for all its many faults is the only rule of law, democracy and respecter of human rights in the entire Middle East; they are part of our civilization. To turn away from Israel as we are doing is not going to help our diplomacy; it is going to hurt our civilization.”
Lt.-Col. (ret.) Ralph Peters, military analyst and author of a book on Middle East politics, says Obama apparently has a chip on his shoulder against Israel – and it’s not “helpful to our civilization.”
Peters, who wrote “Endless War: Middle Eastern Islam vs. Western Civilization,” was asked to explain why he felt American-Israeli friendship appears to have been derailed so dramatically. “The answer is two words,” he said. “President Obama.”
“Obama’s treatment of [Prime Minister Binyamin] Netanyahu [during their recent meeting in Washington] was disgraceful and shameful,” Peters told FoxNews. “We treat our enemies with greater courtesy! In addition, it was counter-productive – because this vendetta on the part of the White House against Israel - all it does is encourage the Palestinians and their Arab backers to make ever wilder demands that Israel cannot possibly fulfill. This is not a peace process; this is something about a chip on the President’s shoulder.”
Peters says that Obama’s approach is “absolutely” a departure from past American policy. “It all started with Obama’s Cairo speech,” he said, “where Obama attempted to appease radical Muslims in the Middle East, cold-shouldered Israel, and raised Palestinian expectations that he’d take care of Israel and that the Palestinians would get their revenge. Secondly, in the past, under Presidents Clinton and Bush, there were face-to-face negotiations; the Palestinians were offered one deal after another, and it was always – always! - the Palestinians who walked away.”
Obama Refuses to Recognize the Basic Equation
The American animosity towards Israel “is not about housing in Jerusalem or anything else,” Peters emphasized. “We need to back up and get a little wide-angle picture and recognize the fundamental issue in play here: Israel wants to live in peace with its neighbors, and its neighbors want Israel destroyed. The President refuses to understand that.”
“It’s become a credo of the left-wing that Israel is always the oppressor,” Peters continued, “and that the Palestinian terrorists are freedom fighters, etc. … Obama’s mother is extremely left, his university chums are on the left, he spent 20 years with the Rev. Wright – all of their doctrines say that the Palestinians are wonderful and that the Israelis are basically Nazis... I think that the President has gotten that by osmosis… This is our first anti-Israeli President; it’s bewildering and astonishing.”
Peters said that Israel is not perfect: “This is not a question of giving in to everything that Israel wants; Israel screws up too. But [American policy must] be a balanced approach that takes into account that Israel, for all its many faults is the only rule of law, democracy and respecter of human rights in the entire Middle East; they are part of our civilization. To turn away from Israel as we are doing is not going to help our diplomacy; it is going to hurt our civilization.”
Monday, March 29, 2010
Arab-Jewish Population Swap?
Eugene Rogan, director of the Middle East Centre at St Antony’s College, Oxford university makes an interesting point in FT.com, Published: March 28 2010:
...The international community is agreed that a solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict lies in a two-state land-for-peace settlement on the basis of the pre-1967 boundaries. Yet a fallacy persists, that somehow these two states should be ethnically pure: that Israel should be uniquely Jewish, and Palestine uniquely Arab.
The truth is that the population of Israel and the Palestinian territories is highly intermixed. There are 1.2m Palestinians of Israeli citizenship [actually closer to 1.5 million - SL] – nearly 20 per cent of the population of Israel. And there are nearly 400,000 Israeli citizens living in settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank. When at some future date Israel and the Palestinian Authority agree to a peace deal, there is no reason to expect this trend to reverse.
Peace should accelerate exchanges of goods and people in the region. [hear, hear!! - SL]
Nor should peace be attempted through the expulsion of Israelis or Palestinians from each other’s territories. The history of Israel and Palestine has been stained by forced displacement in the past. The exile of Palestinians in 1948 and 1967 engendered the refugee crisis and more than 60 years of misery. The removal of settlements from Sinai in 1982 and the Gaza Strip in 2005 were deeply traumatic for Israelis – and would pale in comparison with any attempt to evacuate settlements in East Jerusalem or the West Bank.
[Here Rogan forgets, as many do, the "forgotten refugees": the 850,000 Jews who were expelled from the 22 Arab nations surrounding Israel, since 1948. As a result the calculus in his proposed solution is wrong. Here's what he suggests. I'll give you my version below. - SL]
...One way would be a right of return of Palestinians in refugee camps in Syria and Lebanon to offset Israeli settlements.
According to Central Intelligence Agency figures, there are about 177,000 Israeli settlers in East Jerusalem and 187,000 in the West Bank. The United Nations agency responsible for Palestinian refugees says there are about 224,000 in camps in Lebanon, and another 126,000 in camps in Syria. The number of Palestinian camp refugees is nearly as large as the number of Israeli settlers in the occupied Palestinian territories.
Imagine that the settlers were to be allowed to remain as Israeli citizens in the state of Palestine after a peace deal, in exchange for an equal number of Palestinians in refugee camps being allowed to return to their native lands inside Israel. ...
[In fact, the 600,000 Arab refugees of the 1948 War of Independence were more than offset by the 850,000 Jewish refugees from Arab lands. To truly "balance the scales" under this proposal, Israel should be allowed to settle the same number of Jews in prospective "Palestinian" territory, as the 1.5million Arabs who live in Israel.
However even this is wrong, because in 1922, referring to the entire area west of the Jordan River, the League of Nations recognised "the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine and to the grounds for reconstituting their national home in that country.” The “Mandate for Palestine,” thus recognised the Jewish legal right to settle anywhere in western Palestine, a 10,000- square-miles area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. The legality of the League of Nations’ “Mandate for Palestine” [i.e., The Trust] was not terminated with the end of the British Mandate. Rather, the Trust was transferred over to the United Nations.
Article 80 of the UN Charter implicitly recognizes the “Mandate for Palestine” of the League of Nations.
This Mandate granted Jews the irrevocable right to settle anywhere in Palestine, the area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, a right unaltered in international law and valid to this day. Jewish settlements in the West Bank, Gaza and the whole of Jerusalem are legal.
All of western Palestine, from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, including the West Bank and Gaza, and most certainly any part of Jerusalem, remains open to Jewish settlement under international law.]
...The international community is agreed that a solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict lies in a two-state land-for-peace settlement on the basis of the pre-1967 boundaries. Yet a fallacy persists, that somehow these two states should be ethnically pure: that Israel should be uniquely Jewish, and Palestine uniquely Arab.
The truth is that the population of Israel and the Palestinian territories is highly intermixed. There are 1.2m Palestinians of Israeli citizenship [actually closer to 1.5 million - SL] – nearly 20 per cent of the population of Israel. And there are nearly 400,000 Israeli citizens living in settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank. When at some future date Israel and the Palestinian Authority agree to a peace deal, there is no reason to expect this trend to reverse.
Peace should accelerate exchanges of goods and people in the region. [hear, hear!! - SL]
Nor should peace be attempted through the expulsion of Israelis or Palestinians from each other’s territories. The history of Israel and Palestine has been stained by forced displacement in the past. The exile of Palestinians in 1948 and 1967 engendered the refugee crisis and more than 60 years of misery. The removal of settlements from Sinai in 1982 and the Gaza Strip in 2005 were deeply traumatic for Israelis – and would pale in comparison with any attempt to evacuate settlements in East Jerusalem or the West Bank.
[Here Rogan forgets, as many do, the "forgotten refugees": the 850,000 Jews who were expelled from the 22 Arab nations surrounding Israel, since 1948. As a result the calculus in his proposed solution is wrong. Here's what he suggests. I'll give you my version below. - SL]
...One way would be a right of return of Palestinians in refugee camps in Syria and Lebanon to offset Israeli settlements.
According to Central Intelligence Agency figures, there are about 177,000 Israeli settlers in East Jerusalem and 187,000 in the West Bank. The United Nations agency responsible for Palestinian refugees says there are about 224,000 in camps in Lebanon, and another 126,000 in camps in Syria. The number of Palestinian camp refugees is nearly as large as the number of Israeli settlers in the occupied Palestinian territories.
Imagine that the settlers were to be allowed to remain as Israeli citizens in the state of Palestine after a peace deal, in exchange for an equal number of Palestinians in refugee camps being allowed to return to their native lands inside Israel. ...
[In fact, the 600,000 Arab refugees of the 1948 War of Independence were more than offset by the 850,000 Jewish refugees from Arab lands. To truly "balance the scales" under this proposal, Israel should be allowed to settle the same number of Jews in prospective "Palestinian" territory, as the 1.5million Arabs who live in Israel.
However even this is wrong, because in 1922, referring to the entire area west of the Jordan River, the League of Nations recognised "the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine and to the grounds for reconstituting their national home in that country.” The “Mandate for Palestine,” thus recognised the Jewish legal right to settle anywhere in western Palestine, a 10,000- square-miles area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. The legality of the League of Nations’ “Mandate for Palestine” [i.e., The Trust] was not terminated with the end of the British Mandate. Rather, the Trust was transferred over to the United Nations.
Article 80 of the UN Charter implicitly recognizes the “Mandate for Palestine” of the League of Nations.
This Mandate granted Jews the irrevocable right to settle anywhere in Palestine, the area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, a right unaltered in international law and valid to this day. Jewish settlements in the West Bank, Gaza and the whole of Jerusalem are legal.
All of western Palestine, from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, including the West Bank and Gaza, and most certainly any part of Jerusalem, remains open to Jewish settlement under international law.]
Sunday, March 28, 2010
Obama's anti-Israeli hysteria is dangerous and destructive
From: The Australian March 27, 2010, by Greg Sheridan, Foreign editor:
BARACK Obama's anti-Israel jihad is one of the most irresponsible policy lurches by any modern American president. It rightly earns Obama the epithet of the US president least sympathetic to Israel in Israel's history. Jimmy Carter became a great hater of Israel, but only after he left office.
Obama's dangerous new lurch into anti-Israel populism changes global politics in extremely dangerous ways, and poses a challenge for [Australian Prime Minister] Kevin Rudd.
Perhaps Obama's most distinctive contribution to the foreign policy debate in the lead-up to the US presidential election was his avowed determination to talk to and engage the US's enemies if he became president. He was happy in principle to talk to Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, but did not know for sure that the Iranian president wielded real power. But he sent all manner of felicitations and greetings to Iran and its government. When that government stole an election on Ahmadinejad's behalf and viciously brutalised its citizens, Obama refrained from speaking too much or too forcefully, as, he said, he didn't want to be seen to be interfering in Iranian internal affairs.
When Obama met the king of Saudi Arabia, a nation in which no one votes, women are subject to severe and demeaning restrictions and it is against the law to have a Christian church, Obama bowed in deep respect.
When Obama ran into Venezuela's murderous despot, Hugo Chavez, at a summit, there was a friendly greeting observed by all.
But there is one leader whom Obama draws the line at. He will not be seen in public with Israel's Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. Astonishingly, when Netanyahu saw Obama at the White House this week, all photographers and all TV cameras were banned, a level of humiliation almost completely unique in modern White House practice.
You might even conclude that Obama is trying to interfere in internal Israeli politics and bring down a government. This is something post-colonial, post-multicultural Obama would never do with Iran, but with Israel, the US's longstanding ally, it's fine.
And what was Netanyahu's crime, this act of infamy that Obama's senior staff described as an "affront" to America? It was that the relevant housing authority passed another stage of approval for 1600 Israeli housing units to be built in East Jerusalem in about three years' time. ...the US reaction went into overdrive.
Impeccable American sources tell me this reaction was driven by Obama, and to a lesser extent the Chicago mafia around him.
We must ask why this is so, but first let's get Netanyahu's infamous crime into perspective.
Last November Netanyahu announced a 10-month moratorium on all building activity in Jewish settlements in the West Bank. Israel has already promised not to take any more land for settlements but there is the question of renovating existing buildings and constructing new ones in existing settlements.
As Hillary Clinton acknowledged in her speech this week to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, East Jerusalem was never part of this agreement. The two main peace offers Israel has made to the Palestinians in recent years were the Camp David/Taba proposals and the accompanying Clinton parameters in 2000, and Ehud Olmert's offer to Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas in 2008. Both plans offered essentially the same formula. The Palestinians get all of the Gaza Strip, about 95 per cent of the West Bank and a compensating parcel of territory from Israel proper to make up for the small amount of territory in the West Bank that Israel would keep which houses the main Jewish population blocks. The Palestinians also get some parts of East Jerusalem as their capital. This principle of territorial swaps was accepted by Yasser Arafat and Abbas.
East Jerusalem has always had a different status from the West Bank and some Israelis certainly don't want to give any of it to a new Palestinian state. But everyone accepts that some Jewish neighbourhoods would remain part of Israel. These are mostly neighbourhoods, as Netanyahu pointed out this week, which are five minutes from the Knesset and a couple of blocks beyond the 1949 armistice line. The administration of George W. Bush had formally agreed with the Israelis that these areas would be permanently part of Israel. Bill Clinton had negotiated an offer to the Palestinians in 2000 which accepted this.
It would be a radical change of policy for an Israeli government to decree that no building would ever take place in Jewish areas of Jerusalem. It would also be a change of American policy.
Moreover, no serious analyst could believe that such building is a roadblock to peace. Peace negotiations have gone on with such building taking place in the past.
And all the things that truly make peace impossible
So why has Obama gone into full jihad mode against Israel?
Three explanations suggest themselves.
Obama has had a terrible year in foreign policy. He has achieved nothing on Iran or China or anything else of consequence. He is too smart to believe this intimidation of Israel will advance peace, but it might get peace talks going again. The Palestinians only made settlements a roadblock after Obama did. They are refusing to join Israel in peace talks, which Netanyahu would be happy to participate in. They have said they might engage in proximity talks - which means not talking to the Israelis directly but to mediators who will shuttle back and forth carrying messages between them and the Israelis. This is primitive and ridiculous stuff, but if such talks get going Obama could claim some kind of victory, or at least progress.
And Obama is showing that his personal popularity, not America's standing, still less matters of substance such as Iran's nuclear program, is what motivates him.
This leads to the second explanation of his behaviour, and that is to make himself personally popular in the Muslim world. Beating up on Israel is the cheapest trick in the book on that score and it can earn him easy, worthless and no doubt temporary plaudits in some parts of the Muslim world.
And thirdly, Obama is the first post-multicultural president of America. In his autobiography he talks of seeking out the most radical political theorists he could at university. For these people Israel is an exercise in Western neo-imperialism. Obama makes their hearts sing with this anti-Israel jihad.
Accompanying Obama's own actions has been some of the most dangerous rhetoric ever to come out of a US administration, to the effect that Israeli intransigence endangers US troops by inflaming extremists in the Islamic world.
No serious analyst anywhere believes that Israel is an important source of the conflicts in Afghanistan or Iraq.
Using this type of argument comes dangerously close to the administration licensing a mutant strain of anti-Semitism - it's all the Jews' fault.
Why is all this a challenge for [Australian Prime Minister] Rudd?
The anti-Israel hysteria is totally disproportionate and wildly over the top. The British decision to expel an Israeli diplomat because Israel is alleged to have used forged British passports in a Mossad operation is a case in point.
The British precedent pressures Rudd to do the same. Rudd should resist this pressure, as Opposition leader Tony Abbott has urged him to. 2010 is a critical year for the Middle East. Israel's friends now should rally round it, or the spectre of wild and hysterical anti-Israel sentiment will be unleashed with all manner of destructive consequences.
Now is the time for anyone who cares about Middle East peace, or who claims as Rudd does to care about Israel, to stick close to Jerusalem. The Australian Federal Police inquiry will not be conclusive about whether Israel used Australian passports or not. Obama wants to be popular. Gordon Brown wants Muslim votes and to distract attention from the latest scandals of his government. Rudd could be tempted to bash Israel as a way of courting Arab League votes at the UN. But the path of statesmanship here does not lie in apeing these foolish American and British moves.
There would also be a gruesome comparison in the way Australia responds to big as to small nations. China imprisons one of our citizens, denies consular access to most of the trial and treats Canberra with contempt. In return Rudd changes policy and declines to see the Dalai Lama and similarly declines to send an Australian minister to Taiwan in the entire course of the government's parliamentary term.
Yet Israel, our close friend, is alleged to misuse a passport and then gets the very big diplomatic penalty of having a diplomat expelled. It would be disproportionate and foolish and cowardly.
The Americans and Brits don't always get things right. There are times when Canberra should definitely not follow their lead.
BARACK Obama's anti-Israel jihad is one of the most irresponsible policy lurches by any modern American president. It rightly earns Obama the epithet of the US president least sympathetic to Israel in Israel's history. Jimmy Carter became a great hater of Israel, but only after he left office.
Obama's dangerous new lurch into anti-Israel populism changes global politics in extremely dangerous ways, and poses a challenge for [Australian Prime Minister] Kevin Rudd.
Perhaps Obama's most distinctive contribution to the foreign policy debate in the lead-up to the US presidential election was his avowed determination to talk to and engage the US's enemies if he became president. He was happy in principle to talk to Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, but did not know for sure that the Iranian president wielded real power. But he sent all manner of felicitations and greetings to Iran and its government. When that government stole an election on Ahmadinejad's behalf and viciously brutalised its citizens, Obama refrained from speaking too much or too forcefully, as, he said, he didn't want to be seen to be interfering in Iranian internal affairs.
When Obama met the king of Saudi Arabia, a nation in which no one votes, women are subject to severe and demeaning restrictions and it is against the law to have a Christian church, Obama bowed in deep respect.
When Obama ran into Venezuela's murderous despot, Hugo Chavez, at a summit, there was a friendly greeting observed by all.
But there is one leader whom Obama draws the line at. He will not be seen in public with Israel's Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. Astonishingly, when Netanyahu saw Obama at the White House this week, all photographers and all TV cameras were banned, a level of humiliation almost completely unique in modern White House practice.
You might even conclude that Obama is trying to interfere in internal Israeli politics and bring down a government. This is something post-colonial, post-multicultural Obama would never do with Iran, but with Israel, the US's longstanding ally, it's fine.
And what was Netanyahu's crime, this act of infamy that Obama's senior staff described as an "affront" to America? It was that the relevant housing authority passed another stage of approval for 1600 Israeli housing units to be built in East Jerusalem in about three years' time. ...the US reaction went into overdrive.
Impeccable American sources tell me this reaction was driven by Obama, and to a lesser extent the Chicago mafia around him.
We must ask why this is so, but first let's get Netanyahu's infamous crime into perspective.
Last November Netanyahu announced a 10-month moratorium on all building activity in Jewish settlements in the West Bank. Israel has already promised not to take any more land for settlements but there is the question of renovating existing buildings and constructing new ones in existing settlements.
As Hillary Clinton acknowledged in her speech this week to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, East Jerusalem was never part of this agreement. The two main peace offers Israel has made to the Palestinians in recent years were the Camp David/Taba proposals and the accompanying Clinton parameters in 2000, and Ehud Olmert's offer to Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas in 2008. Both plans offered essentially the same formula. The Palestinians get all of the Gaza Strip, about 95 per cent of the West Bank and a compensating parcel of territory from Israel proper to make up for the small amount of territory in the West Bank that Israel would keep which houses the main Jewish population blocks. The Palestinians also get some parts of East Jerusalem as their capital. This principle of territorial swaps was accepted by Yasser Arafat and Abbas.
East Jerusalem has always had a different status from the West Bank and some Israelis certainly don't want to give any of it to a new Palestinian state. But everyone accepts that some Jewish neighbourhoods would remain part of Israel. These are mostly neighbourhoods, as Netanyahu pointed out this week, which are five minutes from the Knesset and a couple of blocks beyond the 1949 armistice line. The administration of George W. Bush had formally agreed with the Israelis that these areas would be permanently part of Israel. Bill Clinton had negotiated an offer to the Palestinians in 2000 which accepted this.
It would be a radical change of policy for an Israeli government to decree that no building would ever take place in Jewish areas of Jerusalem. It would also be a change of American policy.
Moreover, no serious analyst could believe that such building is a roadblock to peace. Peace negotiations have gone on with such building taking place in the past.
And all the things that truly make peace impossible
- Arab and Palestinian refusal to accept the legitimacy of any Jewish state,
- Palestinian insistence on certain deal breakers such as the right of return of all Palestinian refugees and their descendants to Israel proper,
- the insistent and violent anti-Semitism of Palestinian and Arab propaganda and the regional ambitions of players such as Iran and Syria
So why has Obama gone into full jihad mode against Israel?
Three explanations suggest themselves.
Obama has had a terrible year in foreign policy. He has achieved nothing on Iran or China or anything else of consequence. He is too smart to believe this intimidation of Israel will advance peace, but it might get peace talks going again. The Palestinians only made settlements a roadblock after Obama did. They are refusing to join Israel in peace talks, which Netanyahu would be happy to participate in. They have said they might engage in proximity talks - which means not talking to the Israelis directly but to mediators who will shuttle back and forth carrying messages between them and the Israelis. This is primitive and ridiculous stuff, but if such talks get going Obama could claim some kind of victory, or at least progress.
And Obama is showing that his personal popularity, not America's standing, still less matters of substance such as Iran's nuclear program, is what motivates him.
This leads to the second explanation of his behaviour, and that is to make himself personally popular in the Muslim world. Beating up on Israel is the cheapest trick in the book on that score and it can earn him easy, worthless and no doubt temporary plaudits in some parts of the Muslim world.
And thirdly, Obama is the first post-multicultural president of America. In his autobiography he talks of seeking out the most radical political theorists he could at university. For these people Israel is an exercise in Western neo-imperialism. Obama makes their hearts sing with this anti-Israel jihad.
Accompanying Obama's own actions has been some of the most dangerous rhetoric ever to come out of a US administration, to the effect that Israeli intransigence endangers US troops by inflaming extremists in the Islamic world.
No serious analyst anywhere believes that Israel is an important source of the conflicts in Afghanistan or Iraq.
Using this type of argument comes dangerously close to the administration licensing a mutant strain of anti-Semitism - it's all the Jews' fault.
Why is all this a challenge for [Australian Prime Minister] Rudd?
The anti-Israel hysteria is totally disproportionate and wildly over the top. The British decision to expel an Israeli diplomat because Israel is alleged to have used forged British passports in a Mossad operation is a case in point.
The British precedent pressures Rudd to do the same. Rudd should resist this pressure, as Opposition leader Tony Abbott has urged him to. 2010 is a critical year for the Middle East. Israel's friends now should rally round it, or the spectre of wild and hysterical anti-Israel sentiment will be unleashed with all manner of destructive consequences.
Now is the time for anyone who cares about Middle East peace, or who claims as Rudd does to care about Israel, to stick close to Jerusalem. The Australian Federal Police inquiry will not be conclusive about whether Israel used Australian passports or not. Obama wants to be popular. Gordon Brown wants Muslim votes and to distract attention from the latest scandals of his government. Rudd could be tempted to bash Israel as a way of courting Arab League votes at the UN. But the path of statesmanship here does not lie in apeing these foolish American and British moves.
There would also be a gruesome comparison in the way Australia responds to big as to small nations. China imprisons one of our citizens, denies consular access to most of the trial and treats Canberra with contempt. In return Rudd changes policy and declines to see the Dalai Lama and similarly declines to send an Australian minister to Taiwan in the entire course of the government's parliamentary term.
Yet Israel, our close friend, is alleged to misuse a passport and then gets the very big diplomatic penalty of having a diplomat expelled. It would be disproportionate and foolish and cowardly.
The Americans and Brits don't always get things right. There are times when Canberra should definitely not follow their lead.
Obama: lawbreaker, fraud, and bully?
From The Boston Globe, March 21, 2010, by Jeff Jacoby:
LAST NOVEMBER the government of Israel agreed to a 10-month moratorium on new Jewish housing in the West Bank. The moratorium did not apply ...to eastern Jerusalem, which is home to around 180,000 Israelis — more than a third of Jerusalem’s Jewish population. Even with those caveats it was an unprecedented concession, intended, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, to “encourage resumption of peace talks with our Palestinian neighbors.’’
At the time, the Obama administration applauded Israel’s announcement. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton hailed it as a “move forward.’’ George Mitchell, the president’s special envoy to the Middle East, praised it as “a positive development’’ and acknowledged that “it is more than any Israeli government has done before.’’
So when Israel’s Interior Ministry recently announced its interim approval for the construction of 1,600 new apartments in Jerusalem’s Ramat Shlomo neighborhood, it was not reneging on any commitment. If anyone was guilty of bad faith in the diplomatic crisis that ensued, it was the Obama administration, which had explicitly accepted the terms of Netanyahu’s building freeze in November, yet was now going back on its word.
...the State Department spokesman then demanded that Israel demonstrate "through specific actions" its commitment to peace. Forgotten, apparently, was Netanyahu’s unprecedented moratorium of November, to say nothing of the innumerable Israeli goodwill gestures, concessions, prisoner releases, and peace offers to the Palestinians that preceded it — all of them unrequited.
...If the president’s goal was to bring Israel and the Palestinians to the negotiating table and thereby revive the so-called "peace process," he couldn’t have chosen a more counterproductive tactic. The Palestinian Authority promptly seized the opportunity to back out of the indirect talks it had agreed to — why negotiate for Israeli concessions if Washington can force Israel to deliver them on a silver platter?
...Israel will generally bend over backward to accommodate Washington, but there are some things no Israeli government can relinquish. One of them is the right of Jews to live in Jerusalem — in all of Jerusalem, including the parts of the city conquered by Jordan in 1948 and kept judenrein until 1967. Israelis quarrel over many things, but the vast majority of them agree that Jerusalem must never again be divided. Americans agree as well. Indeed, as a matter of federal law — the Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995* — it is US policy that “Jerusalem should remain an undivided city in which the rights of every ethnic and religious group are protected.’’
As a candidate for president in 2008, Barack Obama said** that was his position too. Millions of pro-Israel American voters believed him, just as they believed his pledge of "unwavering friendship with Israel." The recent unpleasantness suggests it may be time for second thoughts.
*From US Public Law 104-45, by the 104th Congress of the United States: Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995 [does this make Obama a lawbreaker?]:
...
(2) Since 1950, the city of Jerusalem has been the capital of the State of Israel.
...
(4) The city of Jerusalem is the spiritual center of Judaism, and is also considered a holy city by the members of other religious faiths.
(5) From 1948-1967, Jerusalem was a divided city and Israeli citizens of all faiths as well as Jewish citizens of all states were denied access to holy sites in the area controlled by Jordan.
(6) In 1967, the city of Jerusalem was reunited during the conflict known as the Six Day War.
(7) Since 1967, Jerusalem has been a united city administered by Israel, and persons of all religious faiths have been guaranteed full access to holy sites within the city.
(8) This year [1995] marks the 28th consecutive year that Jerusalem has been administered as a unified city in which the rights of all faiths have been respected and protected.
(9) In 1990, the congress unanimously adopted Senate Concurrent Resolution 106, which declares that the Congress ‘‘strongly believes that Jerusalem must remain an undivided city in which the rights of every ethnic and religious group are protected’’.
(10) In 1992, the United States Senate and House of Representatives unanimously adopted Senate Concurrent Resolution 113 of the One Hundred Second Congress to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the reunification of Jerusalem, and reaffirming congressional sentiment that Jerusalem must remain an undivided city....
**From the remarks of Senator Barack Obama: AIPAC Policy Conference, Washington, DC, June 04, 2008 [does this make him fraud?]:
Let me be clear. Israel's security is sacrosanct. It is non-negotiable. The Palestinians need a state that is contiguous and cohesive, and that allows them to prosper – but any agreement with the Palestinian people must preserve Israel's identity as a Jewish state, with secure, recognized and defensible borders. Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided.
From Daniel Pipes Blog, March 22, 2010:
LAST NOVEMBER the government of Israel agreed to a 10-month moratorium on new Jewish housing in the West Bank. The moratorium did not apply ...to eastern Jerusalem, which is home to around 180,000 Israelis — more than a third of Jerusalem’s Jewish population. Even with those caveats it was an unprecedented concession, intended, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, to “encourage resumption of peace talks with our Palestinian neighbors.’’
At the time, the Obama administration applauded Israel’s announcement. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton hailed it as a “move forward.’’ George Mitchell, the president’s special envoy to the Middle East, praised it as “a positive development’’ and acknowledged that “it is more than any Israeli government has done before.’’
So when Israel’s Interior Ministry recently announced its interim approval for the construction of 1,600 new apartments in Jerusalem’s Ramat Shlomo neighborhood, it was not reneging on any commitment. If anyone was guilty of bad faith in the diplomatic crisis that ensued, it was the Obama administration, which had explicitly accepted the terms of Netanyahu’s building freeze in November, yet was now going back on its word.
...the State Department spokesman then demanded that Israel demonstrate "through specific actions" its commitment to peace. Forgotten, apparently, was Netanyahu’s unprecedented moratorium of November, to say nothing of the innumerable Israeli goodwill gestures, concessions, prisoner releases, and peace offers to the Palestinians that preceded it — all of them unrequited.
...If the president’s goal was to bring Israel and the Palestinians to the negotiating table and thereby revive the so-called "peace process," he couldn’t have chosen a more counterproductive tactic. The Palestinian Authority promptly seized the opportunity to back out of the indirect talks it had agreed to — why negotiate for Israeli concessions if Washington can force Israel to deliver them on a silver platter?
...Israel will generally bend over backward to accommodate Washington, but there are some things no Israeli government can relinquish. One of them is the right of Jews to live in Jerusalem — in all of Jerusalem, including the parts of the city conquered by Jordan in 1948 and kept judenrein until 1967. Israelis quarrel over many things, but the vast majority of them agree that Jerusalem must never again be divided. Americans agree as well. Indeed, as a matter of federal law — the Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995* — it is US policy that “Jerusalem should remain an undivided city in which the rights of every ethnic and religious group are protected.’’
As a candidate for president in 2008, Barack Obama said** that was his position too. Millions of pro-Israel American voters believed him, just as they believed his pledge of "unwavering friendship with Israel." The recent unpleasantness suggests it may be time for second thoughts.
*From US Public Law 104-45, by the 104th Congress of the United States: Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995 [does this make Obama a lawbreaker?]:
...
(2) Since 1950, the city of Jerusalem has been the capital of the State of Israel.
...
(4) The city of Jerusalem is the spiritual center of Judaism, and is also considered a holy city by the members of other religious faiths.
(5) From 1948-1967, Jerusalem was a divided city and Israeli citizens of all faiths as well as Jewish citizens of all states were denied access to holy sites in the area controlled by Jordan.
(6) In 1967, the city of Jerusalem was reunited during the conflict known as the Six Day War.
(7) Since 1967, Jerusalem has been a united city administered by Israel, and persons of all religious faiths have been guaranteed full access to holy sites within the city.
(8) This year [1995] marks the 28th consecutive year that Jerusalem has been administered as a unified city in which the rights of all faiths have been respected and protected.
(9) In 1990, the congress unanimously adopted Senate Concurrent Resolution 106, which declares that the Congress ‘‘strongly believes that Jerusalem must remain an undivided city in which the rights of every ethnic and religious group are protected’’.
(10) In 1992, the United States Senate and House of Representatives unanimously adopted Senate Concurrent Resolution 113 of the One Hundred Second Congress to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the reunification of Jerusalem, and reaffirming congressional sentiment that Jerusalem must remain an undivided city....
**From the remarks of Senator Barack Obama: AIPAC Policy Conference, Washington, DC, June 04, 2008 [does this make him fraud?]:
Let me be clear. Israel's security is sacrosanct. It is non-negotiable. The Palestinians need a state that is contiguous and cohesive, and that allows them to prosper – but any agreement with the Palestinian people must preserve Israel's identity as a Jewish state, with secure, recognized and defensible borders. Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided.
From Daniel Pipes Blog, March 22, 2010:
Netanyahu has meets Obama (on a previous occasion).
[Does Obama look like a bully?]
Friday, March 26, 2010
Israeli Prime Minister admonishes the US President
From Israel MFA, 29 May 1981:
Statement by Prime Minister Begin on U.S. Measures Against Israel, 20 December 1981.
In an unprecedented move, Mr. Begin summoned the United States ambassador to Israel, and read to him the following statement. ...
Three times during the past six months, the U.S. Government has "punished" Israel.
On June 7 we destroyed the Iraqi nuclear reactor "Osirak" near Baghdad. ...our action was an act of salvation, an act of national self-defense in the most lofty sense of the concept. We saved the lives of hundreds of thousands of civilians, including tens of thousands of children.
Nonetheless, you announced that you were punishing us - and you left unfilled a signed and sealed contract that included specific dates for the supply of (war) planes.
Not long after, in a defensive act - after a slaughter was committed against our people leaving three dead (including an Auschwitz survivor) and 29 were injured we bombed the PLO headquarters in Beirut.
You have no moral right to preach to us about civilian casualties. We have read the history of World War Two and we know what happened to civilians when you took action against an enemy. We have also read the history of the Vietnam war and your phrase "body-count". We always make efforts to avoid hitting civilian populations, but sometimes it is unavoidable - as was the case in our bombing of the PLO headquarters.
We sometimes risk the lives of our soldiers to avoid civilian casualties.
Nonetheless, you punished us: you suspended delivery of F-15 planes.
A week ago, at the instance of the Government, the Knesset passed on all three readings by an overwhelming majority of two-thirds, the "Golan Heights Law."
Now you once again declare that you are punishing Israel.
What kind of expression is this - "punishing Israel"? Are we a vassal state of yours? Are we a banana republic? Are we youths of fourteen who, if they don't behave properly, are slapped across the fingers?
Let me tell you who this government is composed of. It is composed of people whose lives were spent in resistance, in fighting and in suffering. You will not frighten us with "punishments". He who threatens us will find us deaf to his threats. We are only prepared to listen to rational arguments.
You have no right to "punish" Israel - and I protest at the very use of this term.
You have announced that you are suspending consultations on the implementation of the memorandum of understanding on strategic cooperation, and that your return to these consultations in the future will depend on progress achieved in the autonomy talks and on the situation in Lebanon.
You want to make Israel a hostage of the memorandum of understanding.
I regard your announcement suspending the consultations on the memorandum of as the abrogation (by you) of the memorandum. No "sword of Damocles" is going to hang over our head. So we duly take note of the fact that you have abrogated the memorandum of understanding.
The people of Israel has lived 3,700 years without a memorandum of understanding with America - and it will continue to live for another 3,700. ...
...Some say we must "rescind" the [Golan Heights] law passed by the Knesset. "To rescind" is a concept from the days of the Inquisition. Our forefathers went to the stake rather than "rescind" their faith.
We are not going to the stake. Thank God. We have enough strength to defend our independence and to defend our rights.
If it were up to me (alone) I would say we should not rescind the law. But as far as I can judge there is in fact no one on earth who can persuade the Knesset to rescind the law which it passed by a two-thirds majority.
Mr. Weinberger - and later Mr. Haig - said that the law adversely affects UN Resolution 242. Whoever says that has either not read the Resolution or has forgotten it, or has not understood it.
The essence of the Resolution is negotiation to determine agreed and recognized borders. Syria has announced that it will not conduct negotiations with us, that it does not and will not recognize us - and thus removed from Resolution 242 its essence. How, therefore, could we adversely affect 242?
As regards the future, please be kind enough to inform the Secretary of, State that the Golan Heights Law will remain valid. There is no force on earth that can bring about its rescission....
Statement by Prime Minister Begin on U.S. Measures Against Israel, 20 December 1981.
In an unprecedented move, Mr. Begin summoned the United States ambassador to Israel, and read to him the following statement. ...
Three times during the past six months, the U.S. Government has "punished" Israel.
On June 7 we destroyed the Iraqi nuclear reactor "Osirak" near Baghdad. ...our action was an act of salvation, an act of national self-defense in the most lofty sense of the concept. We saved the lives of hundreds of thousands of civilians, including tens of thousands of children.
Nonetheless, you announced that you were punishing us - and you left unfilled a signed and sealed contract that included specific dates for the supply of (war) planes.
Not long after, in a defensive act - after a slaughter was committed against our people leaving three dead (including an Auschwitz survivor) and 29 were injured we bombed the PLO headquarters in Beirut.
You have no moral right to preach to us about civilian casualties. We have read the history of World War Two and we know what happened to civilians when you took action against an enemy. We have also read the history of the Vietnam war and your phrase "body-count". We always make efforts to avoid hitting civilian populations, but sometimes it is unavoidable - as was the case in our bombing of the PLO headquarters.
We sometimes risk the lives of our soldiers to avoid civilian casualties.
Nonetheless, you punished us: you suspended delivery of F-15 planes.
A week ago, at the instance of the Government, the Knesset passed on all three readings by an overwhelming majority of two-thirds, the "Golan Heights Law."
Now you once again declare that you are punishing Israel.
What kind of expression is this - "punishing Israel"? Are we a vassal state of yours? Are we a banana republic? Are we youths of fourteen who, if they don't behave properly, are slapped across the fingers?
Let me tell you who this government is composed of. It is composed of people whose lives were spent in resistance, in fighting and in suffering. You will not frighten us with "punishments". He who threatens us will find us deaf to his threats. We are only prepared to listen to rational arguments.
You have no right to "punish" Israel - and I protest at the very use of this term.
You have announced that you are suspending consultations on the implementation of the memorandum of understanding on strategic cooperation, and that your return to these consultations in the future will depend on progress achieved in the autonomy talks and on the situation in Lebanon.
You want to make Israel a hostage of the memorandum of understanding.
I regard your announcement suspending the consultations on the memorandum of as the abrogation (by you) of the memorandum. No "sword of Damocles" is going to hang over our head. So we duly take note of the fact that you have abrogated the memorandum of understanding.
The people of Israel has lived 3,700 years without a memorandum of understanding with America - and it will continue to live for another 3,700. ...
...Some say we must "rescind" the [Golan Heights] law passed by the Knesset. "To rescind" is a concept from the days of the Inquisition. Our forefathers went to the stake rather than "rescind" their faith.
We are not going to the stake. Thank God. We have enough strength to defend our independence and to defend our rights.
If it were up to me (alone) I would say we should not rescind the law. But as far as I can judge there is in fact no one on earth who can persuade the Knesset to rescind the law which it passed by a two-thirds majority.
Mr. Weinberger - and later Mr. Haig - said that the law adversely affects UN Resolution 242. Whoever says that has either not read the Resolution or has forgotten it, or has not understood it.
The essence of the Resolution is negotiation to determine agreed and recognized borders. Syria has announced that it will not conduct negotiations with us, that it does not and will not recognize us - and thus removed from Resolution 242 its essence. How, therefore, could we adversely affect 242?
As regards the future, please be kind enough to inform the Secretary of, State that the Golan Heights Law will remain valid. There is no force on earth that can bring about its rescission....
Obama’s Own Goal
From BESA Center Perspectives Papers No. 102, March 25, 2010, by Eytan Gilboa*:
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: The Obama administration is repeating a pattern of behavior towards Israel that, as in the past, will achieve exactly the opposite of what was intended. The intense and exclusive pressure on Israel will result in the hardening of Arab and Palestinian positions, and will scuttle, rather than initiate, real negotiations.
...Three recent incidents testify to the troubled relations between the US and Israel: the speeches by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Netanyahu to the annual conference of the pro-Israeli lobby AIPAC, which highlighted the contradictory views on the building in Jerusalem; the meeting between Netanyahu and Biden that was described as fraught with disagreements; and the Netanyahu-Obama meeting that was closed to media coverage and not even photographed. The only friendly meeting was between Netanyahu and House speaker Nancy Pelosi. Congress supports Israel, reflecting the strong backing for Israel and its policies in US public opinion. Congress has already rebuked Obama for his treatment of Israel in a letter signed by 71 bi-partisan senators in August 2009.
... Senior Obama administration figures, who cannot stomach Netanyahu and do not trust him, wanted to exploit the crisis [over plans to build in Ramat Shlomo] so as to improve the conditions for entering proximity talks, and to show that the US can pressure Israel and alter its policy.
Upon taking office, Obama sought to renew the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations immediately. He set a timetable of two to three years for reaching a solution and establishing an independent Palestinian state. This timetable was determined according to the time frame of the US political system and not according to the existing conditions in the region. Obama wants an historic achievement exactly before beginning his re-election campaign, to improve his chances for victory.
To resume the negotiations, Obama presented demands for concessions from the leaders of Israel, the Palestinians, and the pro-American Arab states. The only leader who acceded to the demands, albeit in partial and qualified fashion, was Netanyahu. In his June 2009 speech at the BESA Center, he accepted the principle of two states for two peoples. In November-December 2009, he announced a freeze on construction in the West Bank. In contrast to the past, which was characterized by winks back and forth between Jerusalem and Washington on the settlements issue, Netanyahu in fact clarified the limits of his undertakings and excluded Jerusalem from the freeze. For their part, however, the leaders of the Arab states rejected all of Obama’s requests for gestures toward Israel, and the Palestinian Authority (PA) refused to resume the negotiations. Nevertheless, Netanyahu was the only one to draw harsh criticism from the Obama administration.
...The US demand for a total construction freeze hardened the Palestinian position. Even when Netanyahu announced a temporary freeze in the West Bank and the United States welcomed this step, the PA persisted in its refusal to restart the negotiations and demanded that the United States abide by its original position. Obama’s policy achieved exactly the opposite of what it aimed to accomplish. It hardened the Palestinian position and delayed negotiations.
General David Petraeus, commander of US forces in the Middle East, has reported to Congress that the pro-American Arab states are losing their confidence in the United States because it is unable to bring Israel to the negotiating table with the Palestinians. The lack of negotiations and a solution to the conflict makes it hard for the pro-American Arab states to stand beside the US in stopping the Iranian race toward developing nuclear weapons. Petraeus added that the lack of a solution enables the radical Islamic terrorist organizations to recruit operatives and supporters. The inference was that Israeli policy thereby endangers the lives of American soldiers. These statements were quoted by Obama’s adviser, David Axelrod, and other members of the administration. This is a grave assertion which could damage the US public’s staunch support for Israel.
Patraeus' claims are baseless. Netanyahu criticized them in his speech to the members of AIPAC. Netanyahu said the situation is exactly the reverse, that Israel assists the United States in the fields of intelligence, weaponry, and warfare, and this assistance saves the lives of American soldiers.
Indeed, in the Obama era, American credibility has eroded in the Middle East. This loss is in no way related to Israel or to negotiations with the Palestinians. It began, in fact, with Obama’s historic, conciliatory address in Cairo in June 2009. Arab and Muslim states, friendly and hostile, saw it as a revelation of weakness. Obama’s credibility was damaged even further by the widening gap between his declarations about US determination to deny Iran nuclear weapons and the ongoing failure to achieve that goal.
...Petraeus’ statements and the Palestinians’ recalcitrance are among the causes for the Obama administration’s decision to intensify the dispute with, and the pressure on, Netanyahu. Obama wanted to achieve better conditions for opening the proximity talks and to show the Arab states that the United States is pressuring Israel, and that pressure is bearing fruit. Hillary Clinton made statements in this spirit after she received Netanyahu’s letter of clarification. This is apparently the main reason that Netanyahu has had a hard time in Washington.
Obama’s approach can succeed only in the short term. In the longer term it will bring, as in all the previous cases, the opposite of what it seeks. The Palestinians and the Arabs have long dreamed that the United States will “do the work” for them; that is, to pressure Israel into accepting their terms for a settlement without having to make hard concessions themselves. The latest crisis plays into their hands and will harden their positions. Thus, it is likely to thwart, rather than improve, the chances for a comprehensive peace settlement.
Prof. Eytan Gilboa is a senior research associate at the Begin-Sadat (BESA) Center for Strategic Studies and an expert on US-Israeli relations at Bar-Ilan University.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: The Obama administration is repeating a pattern of behavior towards Israel that, as in the past, will achieve exactly the opposite of what was intended. The intense and exclusive pressure on Israel will result in the hardening of Arab and Palestinian positions, and will scuttle, rather than initiate, real negotiations.
...Three recent incidents testify to the troubled relations between the US and Israel: the speeches by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Netanyahu to the annual conference of the pro-Israeli lobby AIPAC, which highlighted the contradictory views on the building in Jerusalem; the meeting between Netanyahu and Biden that was described as fraught with disagreements; and the Netanyahu-Obama meeting that was closed to media coverage and not even photographed. The only friendly meeting was between Netanyahu and House speaker Nancy Pelosi. Congress supports Israel, reflecting the strong backing for Israel and its policies in US public opinion. Congress has already rebuked Obama for his treatment of Israel in a letter signed by 71 bi-partisan senators in August 2009.
... Senior Obama administration figures, who cannot stomach Netanyahu and do not trust him, wanted to exploit the crisis [over plans to build in Ramat Shlomo] so as to improve the conditions for entering proximity talks, and to show that the US can pressure Israel and alter its policy.
Upon taking office, Obama sought to renew the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations immediately. He set a timetable of two to three years for reaching a solution and establishing an independent Palestinian state. This timetable was determined according to the time frame of the US political system and not according to the existing conditions in the region. Obama wants an historic achievement exactly before beginning his re-election campaign, to improve his chances for victory.
To resume the negotiations, Obama presented demands for concessions from the leaders of Israel, the Palestinians, and the pro-American Arab states. The only leader who acceded to the demands, albeit in partial and qualified fashion, was Netanyahu. In his June 2009 speech at the BESA Center, he accepted the principle of two states for two peoples. In November-December 2009, he announced a freeze on construction in the West Bank. In contrast to the past, which was characterized by winks back and forth between Jerusalem and Washington on the settlements issue, Netanyahu in fact clarified the limits of his undertakings and excluded Jerusalem from the freeze. For their part, however, the leaders of the Arab states rejected all of Obama’s requests for gestures toward Israel, and the Palestinian Authority (PA) refused to resume the negotiations. Nevertheless, Netanyahu was the only one to draw harsh criticism from the Obama administration.
...The US demand for a total construction freeze hardened the Palestinian position. Even when Netanyahu announced a temporary freeze in the West Bank and the United States welcomed this step, the PA persisted in its refusal to restart the negotiations and demanded that the United States abide by its original position. Obama’s policy achieved exactly the opposite of what it aimed to accomplish. It hardened the Palestinian position and delayed negotiations.
General David Petraeus, commander of US forces in the Middle East, has reported to Congress that the pro-American Arab states are losing their confidence in the United States because it is unable to bring Israel to the negotiating table with the Palestinians. The lack of negotiations and a solution to the conflict makes it hard for the pro-American Arab states to stand beside the US in stopping the Iranian race toward developing nuclear weapons. Petraeus added that the lack of a solution enables the radical Islamic terrorist organizations to recruit operatives and supporters. The inference was that Israeli policy thereby endangers the lives of American soldiers. These statements were quoted by Obama’s adviser, David Axelrod, and other members of the administration. This is a grave assertion which could damage the US public’s staunch support for Israel.
Patraeus' claims are baseless. Netanyahu criticized them in his speech to the members of AIPAC. Netanyahu said the situation is exactly the reverse, that Israel assists the United States in the fields of intelligence, weaponry, and warfare, and this assistance saves the lives of American soldiers.
Indeed, in the Obama era, American credibility has eroded in the Middle East. This loss is in no way related to Israel or to negotiations with the Palestinians. It began, in fact, with Obama’s historic, conciliatory address in Cairo in June 2009. Arab and Muslim states, friendly and hostile, saw it as a revelation of weakness. Obama’s credibility was damaged even further by the widening gap between his declarations about US determination to deny Iran nuclear weapons and the ongoing failure to achieve that goal.
...Petraeus’ statements and the Palestinians’ recalcitrance are among the causes for the Obama administration’s decision to intensify the dispute with, and the pressure on, Netanyahu. Obama wanted to achieve better conditions for opening the proximity talks and to show the Arab states that the United States is pressuring Israel, and that pressure is bearing fruit. Hillary Clinton made statements in this spirit after she received Netanyahu’s letter of clarification. This is apparently the main reason that Netanyahu has had a hard time in Washington.
Obama’s approach can succeed only in the short term. In the longer term it will bring, as in all the previous cases, the opposite of what it seeks. The Palestinians and the Arabs have long dreamed that the United States will “do the work” for them; that is, to pressure Israel into accepting their terms for a settlement without having to make hard concessions themselves. The latest crisis plays into their hands and will harden their positions. Thus, it is likely to thwart, rather than improve, the chances for a comprehensive peace settlement.
Prof. Eytan Gilboa is a senior research associate at the Begin-Sadat (BESA) Center for Strategic Studies and an expert on US-Israeli relations at Bar-Ilan University.
Say "No" to Obama: NO, NO, NO!!
From BESA Center Perspectives Papers No. 103, March 25, 2010, by Efraim Inbar*:
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: The Obama administration’s attempt to force Israel to accept the division of Jerusalem as a prerequisite for peace talks is astonishing. Despite the obvious reluctance to confront an American president, Prime Minister Netanyahu can effectively resist such American pressure on Jerusalem. In fact, Jerusalem is the issue on which Netanyahu can best make a stand against Obama.
President Barack Obama ... seeks to renegotiate the agreement reached for starting proximity talks with the Palestinians and to extract additional concessions from Israel. Most striking and central is the administration's effort to force Israel into accepting the division of Jerusalem even before the talks start.
.. the administration may be overplaying its hand on the issue of Jerusalem. Despite the obvious reluctance to confront an American president, Prime Minister Netanyahu can effectively resist American pressure. In fact, this is the issue on which Netanyahu can best take a stand against Obama.
The division of the city is opposed by the current democratically-elected Israeli government and (according to polls that I have directed) by over 70 percent of the Jews in Israel. Few issues in Israel command such a large and clear majority.
The timing of the crisis also serves Israel well. A few days before Passover when Jews repeat a 2,000-year-old text pledging, “Next year in Jerusalem,” Netanyahu can say no to American demands for concessions in Jerusalem. Rejection of the division of Jerusalem expresses the deepest wishes of an overwhelming number of Jews living both in Israel and the Diaspora.
...The Palestinian claim to Jerusalem is weak. There was never a Palestinian state and the Jews have been the majority in Jerusalem for the past 150 years. Jerusalem has never been a capital of any political entity, except that of a Jewish State. Moreover, the Arab residents of Jerusalem, if given a choice, would in all probability prefer to live under Israeli sovereignty than become part of a failed Palestinian state. Finally, dividing a city makes very little urban or political sense.
Netanyahu has the rhetorical power to galvanize widespread Jewish support for continued and unrestrained Israeli rule in Jerusalem. In 1967, the Jews were fortunate to liberate Jerusalem, their ancient capital, and particularly the Temple Mount, their holiest site. The fortunes of the eternal city strike an emotional chord for every Jew. Even many non-Jews share the same sensitivity.
Israel can reject the Obama demands for additional confidence-building measures by pointing to Obama’s unfairness toward Israel. Netanyahu’s already significant concessions have been belittled by the American administration and rejected as a sign of Israeli seriousness entering into peace talks. Netanyahu’s acquiescence to the two-state paradigm was coolly received in Washington. A partial freeze in Judea and Samaria, an unprecedented concession by an Israeli government, was welcomed only as a “step in the right direction.” Agreeing to proximity talks instead of insisting on direct negotiations – another significant Israeli concession – also is not good enough for the Obama White House.
In contrast, Obama appears to relish humiliating and bullying Netanyahu, the prime minister of a democratic, embattled state. This appears to fit Obama’s overall foreign policy approach of estranging democratic allies while appeasing anti-American dictators.
Israel’s prime minister is acutely aware of the need for American support and friendship and has gone a long way to dispel skepticism about his sincere pursuit of peace. Israelis are frustrated with Obama for favoring the Palestinians, who continue to deny the right of Jewish self-determination and who continue to glorify terrorists that kill Jews. The US, under Obama, ignored the fact that the offers by Ehud Barak and Ehud Olmert to cede virtually all of the disputed territories were respectively rejected by Arafat in 2000 and ignored by his successor, Abbas, in 2008.
Moreover, in 2000 the Palestinians launched a campaign of terror and recently they have threatened to renew it. Similarly, after the Sharon government unilaterally withdrew from Gaza and dismantled all settlements in 2005, the Gaza Strip was converted into a launching pad for intensified missile attacks. Nowadays, it is the Palestinians that are dragging their feet, hoping that the US will force Israel to accept their preconditions.
Flagrant conflict with the US is not something an Israeli leader prefers, but sometimes the asymmetry between a great power and its small ally is not compelling. The Israeli interest in keeping Jerusalem united is more intense than the Obama desire for a foreign policy success. The balance of determination tilts in Israel's favor. Moreover, Israel has some leverage by its nuisance value; that is, it can do things that the US does not like. One clear example is an attack on Iran. Another source of Israeli influence is the character of the American political system, which is susceptible to lobbies and popular sentiment.
Fortunately, the level of public support for Israel in the US is at a record high. Over two-thirds of Americans view Israel favorably and prefer the Jewish State to the Palestinians. Congress reflects such widespread attitudes. Since the President is not in sync with a huge majority of Americans on this issue, Israel has a good chance of convincing the American people that their president is unfair to the Jewish State and is wrong in trying to impose his views on democratic Israel. We already see American voices in the media and in Congress expressing criticism of Obama for not treating Netanyahu properly.
At stake is not just a policy issue. Hanna Arendt in her book, The Origins of Totalitarianism, points out that attitude toward Jews is the litmus test for measuring democratic retrogression. This is true of the attitude toward the Jewish state as well. The unwavering American commitment to democracy incorporates respect for choices made by other democracies. Israel can convince Americans that its democratically-elected government has every right to determine its future.
If Obama continues to insist on freezing construction in Jerusalem, Israel’s prime minister has the option to tell the US and the world that the Jews have returned to where King David established his capital 3,000 years earlier and that they intend to stay there. The text of such a response is easily available: “If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand wither. Let my tongue cleave to my palate if I do not remember you, if I do not set Jerusalem above my highest joy" (Psalms 137, 5-7). Once in a while such words have great power.
*Prof. Efraim Inbar is director of the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, and professor of political science at Bar-Ilan University. He will visit Australia in June 2010.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: The Obama administration’s attempt to force Israel to accept the division of Jerusalem as a prerequisite for peace talks is astonishing. Despite the obvious reluctance to confront an American president, Prime Minister Netanyahu can effectively resist such American pressure on Jerusalem. In fact, Jerusalem is the issue on which Netanyahu can best make a stand against Obama.
President Barack Obama ... seeks to renegotiate the agreement reached for starting proximity talks with the Palestinians and to extract additional concessions from Israel. Most striking and central is the administration's effort to force Israel into accepting the division of Jerusalem even before the talks start.
.. the administration may be overplaying its hand on the issue of Jerusalem. Despite the obvious reluctance to confront an American president, Prime Minister Netanyahu can effectively resist American pressure. In fact, this is the issue on which Netanyahu can best take a stand against Obama.
The division of the city is opposed by the current democratically-elected Israeli government and (according to polls that I have directed) by over 70 percent of the Jews in Israel. Few issues in Israel command such a large and clear majority.
The timing of the crisis also serves Israel well. A few days before Passover when Jews repeat a 2,000-year-old text pledging, “Next year in Jerusalem,” Netanyahu can say no to American demands for concessions in Jerusalem. Rejection of the division of Jerusalem expresses the deepest wishes of an overwhelming number of Jews living both in Israel and the Diaspora.
...The Palestinian claim to Jerusalem is weak. There was never a Palestinian state and the Jews have been the majority in Jerusalem for the past 150 years. Jerusalem has never been a capital of any political entity, except that of a Jewish State. Moreover, the Arab residents of Jerusalem, if given a choice, would in all probability prefer to live under Israeli sovereignty than become part of a failed Palestinian state. Finally, dividing a city makes very little urban or political sense.
Netanyahu has the rhetorical power to galvanize widespread Jewish support for continued and unrestrained Israeli rule in Jerusalem. In 1967, the Jews were fortunate to liberate Jerusalem, their ancient capital, and particularly the Temple Mount, their holiest site. The fortunes of the eternal city strike an emotional chord for every Jew. Even many non-Jews share the same sensitivity.
Israel can reject the Obama demands for additional confidence-building measures by pointing to Obama’s unfairness toward Israel. Netanyahu’s already significant concessions have been belittled by the American administration and rejected as a sign of Israeli seriousness entering into peace talks. Netanyahu’s acquiescence to the two-state paradigm was coolly received in Washington. A partial freeze in Judea and Samaria, an unprecedented concession by an Israeli government, was welcomed only as a “step in the right direction.” Agreeing to proximity talks instead of insisting on direct negotiations – another significant Israeli concession – also is not good enough for the Obama White House.
In contrast, Obama appears to relish humiliating and bullying Netanyahu, the prime minister of a democratic, embattled state. This appears to fit Obama’s overall foreign policy approach of estranging democratic allies while appeasing anti-American dictators.
Israel’s prime minister is acutely aware of the need for American support and friendship and has gone a long way to dispel skepticism about his sincere pursuit of peace. Israelis are frustrated with Obama for favoring the Palestinians, who continue to deny the right of Jewish self-determination and who continue to glorify terrorists that kill Jews. The US, under Obama, ignored the fact that the offers by Ehud Barak and Ehud Olmert to cede virtually all of the disputed territories were respectively rejected by Arafat in 2000 and ignored by his successor, Abbas, in 2008.
Moreover, in 2000 the Palestinians launched a campaign of terror and recently they have threatened to renew it. Similarly, after the Sharon government unilaterally withdrew from Gaza and dismantled all settlements in 2005, the Gaza Strip was converted into a launching pad for intensified missile attacks. Nowadays, it is the Palestinians that are dragging their feet, hoping that the US will force Israel to accept their preconditions.
Flagrant conflict with the US is not something an Israeli leader prefers, but sometimes the asymmetry between a great power and its small ally is not compelling. The Israeli interest in keeping Jerusalem united is more intense than the Obama desire for a foreign policy success. The balance of determination tilts in Israel's favor. Moreover, Israel has some leverage by its nuisance value; that is, it can do things that the US does not like. One clear example is an attack on Iran. Another source of Israeli influence is the character of the American political system, which is susceptible to lobbies and popular sentiment.
Fortunately, the level of public support for Israel in the US is at a record high. Over two-thirds of Americans view Israel favorably and prefer the Jewish State to the Palestinians. Congress reflects such widespread attitudes. Since the President is not in sync with a huge majority of Americans on this issue, Israel has a good chance of convincing the American people that their president is unfair to the Jewish State and is wrong in trying to impose his views on democratic Israel. We already see American voices in the media and in Congress expressing criticism of Obama for not treating Netanyahu properly.
At stake is not just a policy issue. Hanna Arendt in her book, The Origins of Totalitarianism, points out that attitude toward Jews is the litmus test for measuring democratic retrogression. This is true of the attitude toward the Jewish state as well. The unwavering American commitment to democracy incorporates respect for choices made by other democracies. Israel can convince Americans that its democratically-elected government has every right to determine its future.
If Obama continues to insist on freezing construction in Jerusalem, Israel’s prime minister has the option to tell the US and the world that the Jews have returned to where King David established his capital 3,000 years earlier and that they intend to stay there. The text of such a response is easily available: “If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand wither. Let my tongue cleave to my palate if I do not remember you, if I do not set Jerusalem above my highest joy" (Psalms 137, 5-7). Once in a while such words have great power.
*Prof. Efraim Inbar is director of the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, and professor of political science at Bar-Ilan University. He will visit Australia in June 2010.
Thursday, March 25, 2010
Why the Palestinians Don't Want a State
From American Spectator, 5 March 2010, by David Gutmann:
...The received wisdom has it that the Palestinians wish above all things to have a state of their own, but that their fervent wishes are frustrated by Israeli delaying tactics, such as endless arguments over West Bank settlements, security fences, water rights, and the like.
While the Israelis probably do not want a Palestinian state on their borders, an entity that could easily become Hamastan II (and yet another missile launching platform), there is increasing evidence that the Palestinians themselves are of two minds about the prospect of their own statehood.
The first piece of evidence is the unchallenged observation that Palestinian leaders have rejected or sabotaged every proposal for statehood since 1947. In that year the Palestinians rejected the UN-sponsored division of the former British mandate into Jewish and Arab states on the grounds that they did not want to share Palestine with the infidel Jews. Instead of developing trheir own state, they tried through armed conflict to eradicate the nascent Jewish state. Their leaders took this big step just two years after the end of the Holocaust; and, guided by Hitler's associate Haj Amin Al-Husseini, their implicit goal was to continue the slaughter....
..the next time a state was practically handed to them, they again turned it down, in favor of war with the Jews. Thus, when Clinton and Barak, reviving the stalled Oslo Accords of 1994, made Arafat an offer he couldn't refuse -- 95% of the West Bank, control of the Temple Mount, border adjustments, etc. -- he refused it, while giving an ultimatum that only a thoroughly defeated Israel could accept: the resettlement of some five million "refugees" within the boundaries of the Jewish State. No diplomatic pause to negotiate this new demarche: just "take it or leave it," and Arafat flounced out, to fire up the second, soon to be crushed, Intifada.
Why don't the Palestinians learn their lesson? Why won't they accept the grant of statehood? To repeat, perhaps because they don't really want their own country? There are, after all, many bounties attached to their current status, perks that would disappear under the condition of statehood.
This is the age of the sanctified victim ...the Palestinians years ago captured the victim's high-ground, and have since worked their claim for great profit. They are the darlings of the UN and of European elites: The West Bank hums with idealistic foreign youth eager to interpose their bodies between Palestinian flesh and Israeli tanks, as well as with foreign NGOs eager to drip healing valuta over the physical, psychological and financial wounds of this martyred folk. ...leading to decisive political victories as an outraged world threatens to sanction and boycott Israel.
But under statehood, the Palestinians will no longer have their special charisma as the world's premier victims, innocent agrarians suffering under a harsh occupation. When the fickle world turns its attention to the latest victim du jour, their welfare benefits are likely to be sharply cut,
Then too, the wiser Palestinians, who remember Arafat and his predatory crew, have their own good reasons for quietly resisting statehood. They realize that, should they gain their own country, externally imposed Israeli rule would be replaced by internally based oppression, by the corrupt or fanatic leaders who -- via factional warfare and the Arab politics of assassination -- typically reach the top in their societies.
Thus far, we have been looking at the Palestinians' practical reasons for avoiding statehood. They don't want to lose their world-celebrity status, nor the funding that goes with it, and they don't want either the likes of Hamas forcing Sharia law on them, or the likes of Arafat robbing them blind. But the Palestinian resistance to statehood has also less rational but equally compelling bases.
Foremost among these is the legacy of collective shame. With the possible exception of the Japanese, no culture is so vulnerable to a sense of shame and humiliation as the Arab world. ...Palestinian Arabs have been exposed to traumatic humiliation by their defeat during the Israeli War of Independence. I remember how they initiated that war with febrile enthusiasm, confident that their magnificent Islamic warriors would sweep away the puny, cowardly Jewish opposition, certain that the Palestinians would inherit all of the Holy Land. But when push came to shove, instead of chasing the Jews into the sea, it was the majority of Arabs who ran away from the poorly armed Israeli Hagana (a militia that added insult to Arab injury by fielding women).
For example, the local Arabs had cleared out of Sidn'a Ali, a fairly prosperous village on the Sharon Plain, before our Palmach contingent had even arrived in their neighborhood. They ran on the rumor of our coming, and before our sparsely armed troops could have evicted them. The same drama was enacted across Palestine. A vast Palestinian and leftist PR apparatus has been developed to deny this truth, but the Naqba was largely self-inflicted.
The refugees' reluctant hosts in neighboring Arab states were not as sympathetic as Europe's Leftists: "You Palestinian whores! You sold your land to the Jews, and then ran away!!" The refugees, who had shamed not only themselves but also the whole Arab nation, were not generally accepted as citizens of the Arab countries to which they fled. Instead, they were penned up in fetid camps, where many remain to this day.
The calculus of Shame dictates that the Palestinian stigma of defeat can only be removed by a bloody victory over the Jews who inflicted it. By the same token, their state cannot be handed to the Palestinians by some benign international arbiter, or by a generous Israeli government. These are people who elect Hamas, who celebrate the "Victories" of Hezbollah, and who dance in the street when Israeli teenagers are blown up in a pizza parlor. The gift of a state that was not won in battle would only increase Palestinian shame. ... Until a defeated Israel begs for terms, or better yet, is utterly destroyed, no final peace is possible, and no state otherwise gained can be acceptable to the Palestinians....
...The received wisdom has it that the Palestinians wish above all things to have a state of their own, but that their fervent wishes are frustrated by Israeli delaying tactics, such as endless arguments over West Bank settlements, security fences, water rights, and the like.
While the Israelis probably do not want a Palestinian state on their borders, an entity that could easily become Hamastan II (and yet another missile launching platform), there is increasing evidence that the Palestinians themselves are of two minds about the prospect of their own statehood.
The first piece of evidence is the unchallenged observation that Palestinian leaders have rejected or sabotaged every proposal for statehood since 1947. In that year the Palestinians rejected the UN-sponsored division of the former British mandate into Jewish and Arab states on the grounds that they did not want to share Palestine with the infidel Jews. Instead of developing trheir own state, they tried through armed conflict to eradicate the nascent Jewish state. Their leaders took this big step just two years after the end of the Holocaust; and, guided by Hitler's associate Haj Amin Al-Husseini, their implicit goal was to continue the slaughter....
..the next time a state was practically handed to them, they again turned it down, in favor of war with the Jews. Thus, when Clinton and Barak, reviving the stalled Oslo Accords of 1994, made Arafat an offer he couldn't refuse -- 95% of the West Bank, control of the Temple Mount, border adjustments, etc. -- he refused it, while giving an ultimatum that only a thoroughly defeated Israel could accept: the resettlement of some five million "refugees" within the boundaries of the Jewish State. No diplomatic pause to negotiate this new demarche: just "take it or leave it," and Arafat flounced out, to fire up the second, soon to be crushed, Intifada.
Why don't the Palestinians learn their lesson? Why won't they accept the grant of statehood? To repeat, perhaps because they don't really want their own country? There are, after all, many bounties attached to their current status, perks that would disappear under the condition of statehood.
This is the age of the sanctified victim ...the Palestinians years ago captured the victim's high-ground, and have since worked their claim for great profit. They are the darlings of the UN and of European elites: The West Bank hums with idealistic foreign youth eager to interpose their bodies between Palestinian flesh and Israeli tanks, as well as with foreign NGOs eager to drip healing valuta over the physical, psychological and financial wounds of this martyred folk. ...leading to decisive political victories as an outraged world threatens to sanction and boycott Israel.
But under statehood, the Palestinians will no longer have their special charisma as the world's premier victims, innocent agrarians suffering under a harsh occupation. When the fickle world turns its attention to the latest victim du jour, their welfare benefits are likely to be sharply cut,
Then too, the wiser Palestinians, who remember Arafat and his predatory crew, have their own good reasons for quietly resisting statehood. They realize that, should they gain their own country, externally imposed Israeli rule would be replaced by internally based oppression, by the corrupt or fanatic leaders who -- via factional warfare and the Arab politics of assassination -- typically reach the top in their societies.
Thus far, we have been looking at the Palestinians' practical reasons for avoiding statehood. They don't want to lose their world-celebrity status, nor the funding that goes with it, and they don't want either the likes of Hamas forcing Sharia law on them, or the likes of Arafat robbing them blind. But the Palestinian resistance to statehood has also less rational but equally compelling bases.
Foremost among these is the legacy of collective shame. With the possible exception of the Japanese, no culture is so vulnerable to a sense of shame and humiliation as the Arab world. ...Palestinian Arabs have been exposed to traumatic humiliation by their defeat during the Israeli War of Independence. I remember how they initiated that war with febrile enthusiasm, confident that their magnificent Islamic warriors would sweep away the puny, cowardly Jewish opposition, certain that the Palestinians would inherit all of the Holy Land. But when push came to shove, instead of chasing the Jews into the sea, it was the majority of Arabs who ran away from the poorly armed Israeli Hagana (a militia that added insult to Arab injury by fielding women).
For example, the local Arabs had cleared out of Sidn'a Ali, a fairly prosperous village on the Sharon Plain, before our Palmach contingent had even arrived in their neighborhood. They ran on the rumor of our coming, and before our sparsely armed troops could have evicted them. The same drama was enacted across Palestine. A vast Palestinian and leftist PR apparatus has been developed to deny this truth, but the Naqba was largely self-inflicted.
The refugees' reluctant hosts in neighboring Arab states were not as sympathetic as Europe's Leftists: "You Palestinian whores! You sold your land to the Jews, and then ran away!!" The refugees, who had shamed not only themselves but also the whole Arab nation, were not generally accepted as citizens of the Arab countries to which they fled. Instead, they were penned up in fetid camps, where many remain to this day.
The calculus of Shame dictates that the Palestinian stigma of defeat can only be removed by a bloody victory over the Jews who inflicted it. By the same token, their state cannot be handed to the Palestinians by some benign international arbiter, or by a generous Israeli government. These are people who elect Hamas, who celebrate the "Victories" of Hezbollah, and who dance in the street when Israeli teenagers are blown up in a pizza parlor. The gift of a state that was not won in battle would only increase Palestinian shame. ... Until a defeated Israel begs for terms, or better yet, is utterly destroyed, no final peace is possible, and no state otherwise gained can be acceptable to the Palestinians....
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