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Anyone who still thinks Turkey is a Western ally ought to pay close attention to what Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan told members of his AKP party this weekend. Defending his decision to invite Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir to Istanbul for an Organization of the Islamic Conference summit, AP reported, he said he has no problem with the fact that Bashir is wanted by the International Criminal Court for mass murder in Darfur, because the accusation is clearly false.
“It is not possible for those who belong to the Muslim faith to carry out genocide,” he declared.
In other words, Erdogan is convinced that his co-religionists can do no wrong, in blatant disregard not only of the facts in Darfur but also of Muslim atrocities in many other places around the globe. And not only did he make it clear where his loyalties lie — with Islam, not the West (which supported Bashir’s indictment) — but in the process, he also rejected two of the cornerstones of the Western world, rationality and empiricism, preferring to disregard any facts that are inconvenient to his theology.
But lest anyone think this was a mere slip of the tongue, Erdogan went on to say that Israel committed far worse crimes during January’s war in Gaza than anything that happened in Darfur. Moreover, even if Bashir were responsible for state killings, he would still find it much easier to talk with Bashir than with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Hmm. Human-rights groups estimate that as many as 300,000 people were killed in Darfur in 2003-05, and the killing continues even today, albeit at a slower pace. The highest estimate of Palestinian fatalities in Gaza is 1,440. Any unbiased observer would naturally agree that 1,440 deaths are much worse than 300,000 — given that the 300,000 were killed by Muslims (who, as we know, cannot commit genocide) and the 1,440 by non-Muslims. My co-religionists, right or wrong.
Adding a further note of surrealism to all this, Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said last Friday that Turkish-Israeli relations would improve if only Netanyahu would let Turkey resume its role as mediator in Israeli-Syrian talks. Netanyahu has flatly refused, saying (correctly) that Turkey has forfeited any pretense of being an honest broker. It requires a serious disconnect from reality to even imagine that you can accuse someone of being the world’s worst war criminal one moment and expect him to treat you as an impartial mediator the next. Have we mentioned yet that Erdogan’s Turkey doesn’t seem too keen on rationality?
The Bashir contretemps is hardly the first time Erdogan has behaved in a matter incompatible with Turkey’s traditional alliance with the West. But it is past time for the West to finally admit the unpalatable truth. Turkey’s departure from the Western camp undoubtedly leaves a gaping hole. But only if Western leaders finally admit that this hole exists can they start thinking, as they must, about how to fill it.
A group of South African immigrants to Israel submitted a novel proposal to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last week. Netanyahu, they said, should accede to the UN’s demand that Israel investigate its own actions during January’s war in Gaza. But it should do so in the only way that makes sense: not by focusing on Israel’s actions in a vacuum but by comparing them to those of other Western military campaigns in populated areas – for instance, American operations in Iraq and Afghanistan or NATO’s bombing of Serbia.
“I particularly mention Serbia, where the number of bombs dropped on a civilian population was tremendously high,” Charles Abelsohn, one of the proposal’s authors, told Haaretz. “This is how war is conducted. But all of a sudden, when Israel is involved, there is a law of human rights that doesn’t appear to apply anywhere else.”
The South Africans are right: The Gaza war can only be understood comparatively. Only by analyzing how the level of civilian casualties and efforts to minimize them compared with casualty levels in other Western military campaigns, only by assessing how Hamas’ efforts to use civilians as cover compare with those of other terrorist groups in other conflicts — only then can a fair determination be made about whether Israel is a war criminal, as the Goldstone Report claims, or whether it “did more to safeguard the rights of civilians in a combat zone than any other army in the history of warfare,” as British Col. Richard Kemp claims.
Abelsohn is also right that such data would “assist those who are fighting the good fight on Israel’s behalf.” Without comparative facts and figures, Israel’s assertion that its Gaza operation was a model of morality will not convince anyone not predisposed to believe it – unless, like Kemp, they have the firsthand knowledge needed to make their own comparisons. But because most people have no combat experience, they have no basis for comparison.
During World War II, according to historian William Hitchcock, the British bombing of one single city, Rouen, on one single day, April 19, 1944, killed 900 allied civilians. And that figure, which was not atypical, does not even include combatants and enemy civilians.
By comparison, according to IDF figures, Israel killed 1,166 Palestinians in Gaza over the space of three weeks, of whom 709 were combatants. Hence, even if, as Palestinians claim, the total casualty figure was higher and the proportion of combatants lower, Israel would clearly not fare badly in an international comparison.
I doubt that would matter to the Goldstones of the world. But it would matter to those who would like to think well of Israel but are troubled by the endless stream of accusations, which Israel has done too little to counter. Israel needs to produce the necessary comparative data, and its friends need to make sure it gets disseminated. Indeed, this should have been done long ago. But better late than never.
After announcing last Thursday that he would not run in January’s Palestinian election, which he himself called, Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) upped the ante this weekend by threatening to dissolve the entire PA. Both are moves in a well-known game that the Israeli media call “saving Abu Mazen.”
PA officials are open about its purpose: to extort additional concessions from Israel and, especially, the U.S. This time, they want America to publicly pledge East Jerusalem as the capital of the Palestinian state and support Abbas’s demand that negotiations be conditioned on a complete halt to settlement construction.
This game, which Abbas has successfully played many times before, rests on a simple premise: he is the most moderate Palestinian leader conceivable and therefore the best hope for Israeli-Palestinian peace. Hence, if he is weakening, he must be bolstered by new concessions.
The problem is that this premise is utterly false. He may indeed be the most moderate Palestinian leader conceivable, but that just shows how unready Palestinians are for peace — because Abbas has proved decisively over the past four years that he is no “peace partner.”
First, his negotiating positions preclude any deal. This is true on several counts but is particularly obvious in his demand for a “right of return” for 4.7 million descendants of Palestinian refugees. Combined with Israel’s 1.5 million Arab citizens, they would easily outnumber its 5.6 million Jews and could thus vote the Jewish state out of existence. Conditioning any deal on Israel’s self-destruction is hardly proof of peaceful intent.
Indeed, Abbas’s total lack of interest in a deal was evidenced by his handling of Ehud Olmert’s (overly) generous September 2008 offer, which included 94 percent of the territories, 1:1 territorial swaps to compensate for the remainder, international Muslim control over the Temple Mount, and absorption into Israel of several thousand refugees. Last week, Abbas said that he and Olmert “almost closed” a deal, implying that the current impasse stems from Olmert’s replacement by Benjamin Netanyahu. But in reality, Abbas never even bothered responding to Olmert’s offer until nine months later, long after Olmert had left office — and even then, he did so via a media interview rather than directly. And, most important, he rejected the offer, saying “the gaps were wide.”
Even Abbas’s vaunted opposition to terror has proved false. In 2005, his one year in sole control over the PA before Hamas’s electoral victory, Palestinians killed 54 Israelis and wounded 484, while 1,059 rockets and mortars were fired at Israel from Gaza. Yet not only did Abbas never order his forces to combat this terror; he explicitly and repeatedly refused to do so. He first cracked down on Hamas only in 2007, after its violent takeover of Gaza convinced him that Hamas threatened him, not just Israel. And he recently agreed to end this clampdown under a reconciliation agreement with Hamas.
In short, there is no point in “saving” Abbas. Instead, the world should finally admit the truth — and let him go.
It’s hard not to be impressed by the sheer range of people who publicly lost patience with Barack Obama’s Iran policy this week.
Most noteworthy, of course, was the Iranian opposition, whose activists chanted, as Jennifer noted, “Obama: either with the murderers or with us” during a demonstration in Tehran on Wednesday. By siding with a brutal regime against its most serious democratic challengers in 30 years, Obama is not only betraying American ideals and squandering America’s best shot at effecting real change in Iran since 1979; he is also destroying a priceless asset. Currently, Iran is the only Mideast Muslim country whose public is generally pro-American rather than rabidly anti-American. That is unlikely to last long if America is seen siding with the regime against the people.
That same day, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner told journalists in Paris that the Security Council will not even discuss new sanctions against Iran before the end of the year, at Washington’s request. He then proceeded to bluntly dissociate himself from that policy: “Our American friends ask us to wait until the end of the year,” he said. “It’s not us.”
Then, lest his listeners miss the point, he reiterated it: the Obama administration wants to wait and see whether Iran will respond to its offer of negotiations, he explained, so “we’re waiting for talks. But where are the talks?”
That’s truly impressive. Anyone remember the last time a veteran French leftist thought America was carrying appeasement too far?
The Democratic-controlled Congress sent the same message in subtler fashion on Tuesday, when German Chancellor Angela Merkel addressed a joint session. “She drew her most resounding applause,” the New York Times reported, when she declared that “zero tolerance needs to be shown when there is a risk of weapons of mass destruction falling, for example, into the hands of Iran. … A nuclear bomb in the hands of an Iranian president who denies the Holocaust, threatens Israel and denies Israel the right to exist is not acceptable.”
It’s not that Merkel didn’t mention other issues dear to Obama’s heart, like climate change and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It’s just that Congress, unlike the administration, has its priorities straight. Last week, National Security Adviser James Jones told the J Street conference that if the administration could solve only one international problem, it would be the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Congress understands that stopping thugs from getting the bomb is more important.
Finally, the Guardian reported this morning that previously unpublished International Atomic Energy Agency documents reveal that Iran may have tested components of a “two-point implosion” device, a highly sophisticated (and highly classified) technology that enables the production of smaller nuclear warheads, thus making it easier to mount one on a missile. This development, which “was described by nuclear experts as ‘breathtaking’ … has added urgency to the effort” to find a solution to the crisis, it said. So even an ultra-Left British newspaper has noticed that time is running out. Isn’t it time Obama did the same?
Jennifer wonders how 22 congressmen could be so incapable of making up their minds on the Goldstone report that they merely voted “present.” I’d say the answer is obvious: they’re applying to join the European Union.
As of this writing, EU representatives are still negotiating with Arab delegates over the wording of the pro-Goldstone resolution that the UN General Assembly began debating yesterday, hoping to find language that would let them vote in favor. But if no compromise is reached, they have threatened … to abstain. “There will be at least 60 abstentions, and only 120 votes in support,” Haaretz quoted an EU source “threatening” on Tuesday.
Now there’s a threat to strike terror into the hearts of Goldstone supporters: instead of the resolution passing by an overwhelming majority, with only Israel, the U.S., and a few others voting against, it will pass by … an overwhelming majority, with only Israel, the U.S., and a few others voting against.
Not that Arab delegates ever seriously feared that the EU might vote against: after all, when the UN Human Rights Council voted on the report last month, Britain and France could not even bring themselves to abstain; instead, they skipped the vote. And as the two EU countries with by far the most extensive military operations overseas, Britain and France are precisely the ones with most to lose should Goldstone actually become the new international bible for warfare. Thus, even though four EU states courageously bucked the party line by voting “no” in the HRC (Italy, The Netherlands, Hungary, and Slovakia), most will certainly fall in line behind Britain and France.
But the British-French hypocrisy doesn’t stop there. After the HRC vote, Haaretz reported, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and French President Nicolas Sarkozy wrote to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to assure him that, of course, Israel has the right to defend itself — but if it wants European support in keeping its officers and cabinet ministers out of international courts afterward, it must open the border crossings with the Gaza Strip, completely freeze construction in the settlements, and resume negotiations with Mahmoud Abbas (never mind that he refuses to do so) on the terms dictated by Barack Obama — namely, a full return to the 1967 lines.
In other words, Israel has no right to self-defense unless it bows to EU political dictates — and then it still doesn’t, because these dictates require it to abandon the ability to defend itself, by withdrawing to indefensible borders and ending an embargo that has at least impeded (though certainly not prevented) Hamas’s efforts to rebuild its arsenal.
And that, in a nutshell, is what abstention means: we fully support stripping Israel of its right to self-defense, but we want to keep our hands clean while doing it. So we’ll sit back and let other countries do the dirty work instead. That, apparently, is the EU’s idea of “moral leadership”: being the “good men” who let evil triumph by doing nothing.
Following the Israeli police’s announcement on Sunday of the arrest of a Jewish terrorist, Yaakov (Jack) Teitel, the daily Haaretz published an editorial today that termed him “the Jewish counterpart of ‘The Engineer,’ Yahya Ayyash — Hamas’ expert bomb maker.” That analogy is as false as it is damaging. The two men may have shared an identical passion for killing, but there is a world of difference in their respective societies’ responses.
According to both the police and the Shin Bet security service, Teitel was a lone wolf, perpetrating his terrorist acts with no help from anyone. Moreover, when his deeds became known, he was unequivocally repudiated by his own society. Both the Yesha Council of settlements and the settlement where he lived issued condemnations. So did every settler-on-the-street that Haaretz reporters interviewed. Even on far-Right websites, the paper found very few statements of support for Teitel’s acts (and probably not for lack of trying; Haaretz usually likes nothing better than vilifying settlers). And of course, Israel arrested him itself.
Ayyash, in contrast, belonged to a large, well-funded group whose terrorist acts, far from being denounced, have consistently been lauded by Palestinian society. As leading Palestinian psychiatrist Eyad Sarraj told the Los Angeles Times in 2002, suicide bombers have “unparalleled” status among Palestinians. “Their pictures are plastered on public walls, their funerals are emotional celebrations, their families often receive visits from state officials. They become almost holy,” the LA Times report continued, “praised by imams at mosques or over loudspeakers at rallies, where children are often dressed as shrouded dead or as pint-sized suicide bombers.” Indeed, Palestinians value terror so highly that in 2006, they elected Hamas — a terrorist organization that not only holds the record for most Israelis killed in suicide bombings but flaunts its prowess in anti-Israel terror as its calling card — to run their government. Palestinians don’t arrest their terrorists; they make them cabinet ministers.
This different societal responses also explains the difference in the amount of mayhem the two men succeeded in perpetrating. In a terrorist career spanning a dozen years and about a dozen attacks, Teitel managed to kill two people. In contrast, Hamas suicide bombers killed 57 people in the two years before Ayyash met his death (at Israel’s hands) in December 1995; as the organization’s chief bomb maker, Ayyash presumably shares credit for most of these deaths. It’s not that Teitel was any less enamored of bombs; it’s just that it’s easier to perpetrate mass murder when you are backed by a large organization and a supportive society.
Haaretz‘s false moral equivalence is unlikely to confuse Israelis, who have a clear grasp of the importance of this societal distinction. But it will undoubtedly be seized on by Israel’s enemies to support the canard that settlers are the Israeli equivalent of Hamas and that Israel is thus indistinguishable from the Palestinians when it comes to terror. And it will thereby deal another blow to Israel’s already battered good name.
Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman told Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Saturday that he is urging his government not to resume negotiations with the Palestinian Authority until the PA withdraws its international legal complaints over alleged Israeli war crimes in Gaza. The real question is why Lieberman is having trouble convincing his cabinet colleagues of this position.
These complaints have only one purpose: to hamstring Israel’s ability to defend itself against Palestinian terror by making it fear that any defensive military operation will land its political and military leadership in the dock. After all, as Col. Richard Kemp courageously told the UN Human Rights Commission last month, the Israel Defense Forces “did more to safeguard the rights of civilians in a combat zone than any other army in the history of warfare” during its operation in Gaza this past January. And Kemp, a former commander of British forces in Afghanistan who also served in Northern Ireland, Bosnia, and Iraq, is certainly in a position to make comparisons. Hence, if Israel’s actions in Gaza are deemed war crimes, there is no military action it could take against Palestinian terrorists that wouldn’t be. Avoiding civilian casualties entirely is not possible when terrorists operate, as the Palestinians do, from the heart of a civilian population.
Yet even as he seeks to abolish Israel’s right to self-defense, PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas is also giving his imprimatur to terror attacks on Israel: last month, he accepted a proposed reconciliation agreement with Hamas that not only did not require Hamas to halt anti-Israel terror but explicitly obligated the PA security services to “respect the Palestinian people’s right to resist.” Since “resistance” is the well-known Palestinian code word for anti-Israel terror, that translates as requiring PA forces “to respect the Palestinian people’s right to perpetrate anti-Israel terror” — or. in other words, not to interfere when they do so. (Hamas, incidentally, has not yet signed the document; it is still holding out for more concessions.)
How exactly does Israel talk peace with someone who seeks to cripple Israel’s ability to defend itself even as he endorses anti-Israel terror? That isn’t an act of peace; it’s an act of war. And while Abbas may have had little political choice about jumping on the Goldstone Report bandwagon, he can hardly plead that Goldstone forced his hand: the PA filed its own war-crimes complaint against Israel in the International Criminal Court in January — nine months before the Goldstone Report came out. It even signed a special cooperation agreement with the court to get around prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo’s initial objection that he lacked jurisdiction, since Israel is not a member of the court, and the PA, not being a sovereign state, cannot be.
In short, this looks remarkably like a deliberate strategy for war on Israel. And Israel should be calling Abbas on it rather than keeping up the pretense that he is a “partner for peace” with whom it is eager to negotiate.
The PA’s demand that talks with Binyamin Netanyahu resume from where they broke off under his predecessor, Ehud Olmert, is nothing less than a demand to completely rewrite the principles of diplomacy. Were it accepted, countries would no longer be bound only by signed agreements. Instead, they would be bound by any offer ever made during negotiations, even if the offer were rejected by the other party.
A brief recap: In September 2008, when he had already resigned as prime minister but not yet left office, Olmert made PA chairman Mahmoud Abbas a far-reaching offer. The offer, which Olmert and his advisors later detailed to various media outlets, and which Abbas confirmed to The Washington Post, gave the Palestinians even more than the 1996 Clinton plan, long considered the blueprint for any agreement. It included an Israeli withdrawal from 94 percent of the West Bank, with territorial swaps to compensate for the remainder; international control over Jerusalem’s holy sites, with Muslim countries holding three of the governing body’s five seats; and a symbolic absorption by Israel of some 5,000 Palestinian refugees. It was backed by a detailed map of the proposed border.
According to Israeli reports, Abbas wanted a copy of the map, and Olmert replied, “if you sign it, you can have it.” Abbas requested a day to think it over and promised to return for another meeting the next day.
But Abbas never returned; he never even called. Olmert remained in office for another six months, but throughout that time he heard nothing from Abbas. In February, he made one final effort, using US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as an intermediary, but to no avail.
Only in May 2009 did he finally learn – via Abbas’s Washington Post interview – what the PA chairman thought of his offer: He rejected it, Abbas told the paper, because “the gaps were wide.”
Now, Abbas is demanding that the offer he rejected become the starting point for future negotiations. “There were maps prepared by both sides and proposals for territorial swaps, so we can’t go back to square one,” he told the pan-Arab daily Al-Hayat last month. He has reiterated this position in discussions with American officials, vowing not to resume the talks unless it is accepted. In short, he is demanding that Israel be bound not by signed agreements, but by an offer to which he never even deigned to respond.
Nor is he alone in this demand. Just last week, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak told his country’s Armed Forces paper that it would be “unreasonable and unacceptable” for talks not to begin where they left off, while Jordan’s King Abdullah II made similar comments to Haaretz.
WERE THIS position actually accepted, the consequences for all diplomacy, worldwide, would be devastating.
First, if negotiators fear that offered concessions will bind their governments even if no agreement is reached, they will be loath to offer such concessions, making it impossible ever to conclude any agreement. After all, no country wants to forfeit negotiating assets without receiving anything in exchange. Yet that is the meaning of Abbas’s demand: Once a concession is offered, it remains on the table even if the other side offers nothing in exchange, and can thus no longer be traded for reciprocal concessions.
Second, this eliminates a crucial tool that all negotiators and mediators use in trying to close deals: the threat that an offered concession will no longer be available tomorrow, so it is in the other party’s interest to say yes today. Under the Abbas principle, any concession, once offered, would always be available, so saying yes is contrary to the other party’s interest: It is better off waiting to see what additional concessions might be forthcoming.
But beyond its consequences for diplomacy, this principle would also destroy a fundamental democratic right: the public’s right to replace a government whose policies it opposes. A decisive majority of Israelis voted for parties opposed to Olmert’s concessions precisely because they deemed his offer reckless. But should Abbas’s demand be accepted, the policy Israel’s majority rejected would nevertheless remain in force. In other words, voters would no longer have the right to change their country’s foreign policy; they would be limited to replacing the personnel administering this policy.
Granted, all democracies accept such limits in one particular case: Signed, ratified agreements – which require parliamentary or popular approval and apply to both sides – obligate subsequent governments regardless of those governments’ views. But under the Abbas principle, any lone negotiator – even one who, like Olmert, had already been so repudiated that his own government compelled him to resign – would have the power to bind his country’s future governments while imposing no reciprocal obligations on his interlocutors, merely by offering a concession that the other side rejected.
Acceding to Abbas’s demand would obviously sound the death knell for the peace process. Not only can Netanyahu’s government not accept some of Olmert’s concessions, but it would be deterred from offering any concessions of its own by the knowledge that these would be deemed binding even were no agreement reached. And Abbas would have no incentive to sign anything if he could instead keep pocketing concessions without offering anything in exchange.
For this reason alone, one would have expected the West to unceremoniously reject this condition. Astoundingly, however, neither the US nor the European Union has yet done so publicly, nor is there any indication that they have even done so privately.
Their silence becomes even more incomprehensible when one considers the destructive implications of this principle for both democracy and diplomacy in general. It would be a pity if brand-new Nobel Peace Prize laureate Barack Obama, who won precisely for striving “to strengthen international diplomacy” by preferring “dialogue and negotiations” as the means of resolving international conflicts should be the very person to render those tools utterly ineffective.
The plan in question was first broached publicly by the European Union’s foreign policy czar, Javier Solana, at a speech in London in July. The international community should set a deadline for negotiations, Solana said, and if no agreement is reached by this deadline, the world should immediately recognize a Palestinian state, admit it to the UN and announce its own solution to all outstanding issues (borders, refugees, Jerusalem, security arrangements), along with a binding timetable for implementation.
Washington never publicly endorsed this idea. But this week, it was reported that Solana floated his trial balloon with backing from “the highest levels of the US administration,” and that the US indeed plans to adopt it – with some twists that make it even worse.
Specifically, Washington will announce a two-year deadline for talks that will focus mainly on borders. If no agreement is reached by then, the US and EU – and presumably the rest of the world, too – will recognize a Palestinian state with borders “based on” the June 4, 1967 lines.
IN OTHER words, Abbas will receive international recognition of the borders he has consistently demanded, the 1967 lines – and by implication, also east Jerusalem, which was not Israeli pre-1967. The announcement will say the parties “may” alter the border via territorial exchanges, but that is up to them: The world will not insist.
And in exchange, he will have to concede absolutely nothing – not the settlement blocs, not Jewish neighborhoods of east Jerusalem, not the Western Wall, not security arrangements, not the “right of return,” not recognition of Israel as a Jewish state. Some of these will be awarded him outright; others, like the refugees and recognition, will be left to future negotiations. But he would obviously have no incentive to compromise in these future negotiations, since the only thing Israel has to trade is land, and the international community will already have awarded him every inch of that.
In contrast, even an EU diktat would have mandated Palestinian concessions on some issues, like the “right of return.” Moreover, Solana’s original plan stipulated that implementation of the international diktat would constitute a definitive, internationally recognized end to all Palestinian claims. This version does nothing of the sort, since it leaves major issues like the refugees up in the air.
Thus from Abbas’s perspective, this is a dream come true: He receives international recognition of a state in his preferred borders without having to make any concessions in exchange. Even Hamas could this embrace this deal. They could simply pocket their gains and move on to their next demands.
But if merely doing nothing for two years would produce such a bonanza, why would any sane Palestinian leader bother negotiating? Granted, the fact that this plan was reported in the media does not mean it is true. First, journalists’ sources always have their own agendas, and the European sources behind this report could easily have presented an idea that is merely being considered as settled policy – either with Washington’s consent, as a trial balloon, or without such consent, in an effort to pressure the US to adopt it. Second, even if Obama does favor this plan, wiser heads within his administration might yet prevail.
NEVERTHELESS, THERE are reasons to fear it might be true. First, Washington has not denied it. Second, it accords with Obama’s known desire to create a Palestinian state within two years, thus assuring him of one foreign policy success in what otherwise looks likely to be an unbroken string of failures. Third, it would appease his left-wing base, which is currently furious at him over issues ranging from the “surge” in Afghanistan to his apparent willingness to make concessions to moderates on health care reform. Fourth, it would please the EU and the Muslim world, and Obama has made better relations with both a major goal of his foreign policy.
Finally, he has even found a way to avoid alienating his big-ticket Jewish donors: The media reports market the plan as being based, inter alia, on ideas presented by Israel’s very own president, Shimon Peres. What Jewish donor could possibly object to that? That Peres’s proposal actually called for a Palestinian state in temporary borders – which, until a deal was finalized, would comprise only part of the West Bank and would exclude east Jerusalem – is a mere bagatelle.
Indeed, the plan has only one drawback: Far from bringing peace, it would perpetuate the conflict for all eternity. If 16 years of deadly terror combined with refusing to budge an inch on any of their demands could produce such stellar results, why would any Palestinian want to abandon these successful tactics?
Thus they will continue the terror, and Israel will continue its counterterrorism operations. They will continue refusing to make concessions on the settlement blocs, Jerusalem and the refugees, and Israel will continue refusing to evacuate tens of thousands of settlers with no quid pro quo. They will continue teaching their children that the Jewish state has no right to exist, and Israeli attitudes toward the Palestinians and the “peace process” will continue to harden.
It would require massive self-centeredness, and massive short-sightedness, to sacrifice any chance of lasting peace for the sake of a momentary foreign policy “achievement.” But that is exactly what this plan would do.
Aluf Benn, Haaretz‘s diplomatic correspondent, articulated one problem in an August 7 column describing a conversation with a “senior European diplomat.” Benn posed one simple question: How would a deal benefit ordinary Israelis? The diplomat was stunned. Wasn’t it obvious? It would create a Palestinian state! After Benn pointed out that most Israelis care very little about the Palestinians; they want to know how peace would benefit them, the diplomat tried again: “There would be an end to terror.” “Don’t make me laugh,” Benn replied.
When the IDF withdrew from parts of the West Bank and Gaza under the Oslo Accords, Israelis got suicide bombings in their cities. When it quit Gaza entirely, they got rockets on the Negev. But the bombings stopped after the IDF reoccupied the West Bank, and the rockets stopped after January’s Gaza operation. In short, the IDF has done a far better job of securing “peace” as Israelis understand it – i.e., not being killed – than the “peace process” ever has.
NORMALIZATION WITH the Arab world is also scant attraction, Benn noted; most Israelis “have no inherent desire to fly El Al through Saudi Arabian airspace or visit Morocco’s ‘interests section.'” And the downsides of a deal – financing the evacuation of tens of thousands of settlers and “the frightening prospect of violent internal schisms” – are substantial.
Benn’s conclusion from the conversation was shocking: Thus far, the international community has never thought about how a deal might benefit Israelis; that was considered unimportant.
But to persuade Israelis to back an agreement, he noted, the world is going to have to start thinking. For Israelis already have what they want most, “peace and quiet,” and they will not willingly risk it for “another diplomatic adventure whose prospects are slim and whose dangers are formidable.”
A week later, Prof. Carlo Strenger – a veteran leftist who, as he wrote, thinks “the occupation must end as quickly as possible” – addressed a second problem in his semi-regular Haaretz column. Seeking to explain why Israel’s Left has virtually disappeared, he concluded that this happened because leftists “failed to provide a realistic picture of the conflict with the Palestinians.”
For years, he noted, leftists claimed a deal with the Palestinians would produce “peace now.” Instead, the Palestinian Authority “educated its children with violently anti-Israel and often straightforwardly anti-Semitic textbooks,” failed to prevent (or perhaps even abetted) repeated suicide bombings in 1996, torpedoed the final-status negotiations of 2000-2001 and finally produced the second intifada.
But instead of admitting it had erred in expecting territorial withdrawals to bring peace, Strenger wrote, the Left blamed Israel: The 1996 bombings happened “because the Oslo process was too slow”; the talks failed because Israel’s offers were insufficient; the second intifada began because Ariel Sharon visited the Temple Mount.
In short, the Left adopted two faulty premises: First, “anything aggressive or destructive a non-Western group says or does must be explained by Western dominance or oppression,” hence “they are not responsible for their deeds.” Second, “if you are nice to people, all conflicts will disappear”; other basic human motivations, like the desire for “dominance, power and… self-respect,” are irrelevant.
Strenger concluded that if the Left “wants to regain some credibility and convince voters that it has a role to play, it needs to give the public a reasonable picture of reality.”
But the same could be said of the international community, which has also blamed every failure of the peace process on Israeli actions: settlement construction, “excessive force” against Palestinian terror, insufficient concessions, etc.
THOUGH BENN and Strenger were ostensibly addressing different issues, they are closely related. Leftists reinforced the West’s habit of blaming Israel for every failure, because they are the only Israelis that Western politicians and journalists take seriously. And this habit contributed greatly to mainstream Israelis’ view of the peace process as all pain, no gain.
First, because the world placed the onus on Israel, Palestinians never felt any pressure to amend their behavior, whether by stopping terror or by making concessions on final-status issues vital to Israelis. Israel has repeatedly upped its offers over the past 16 years, but the Palestinians have yet to budge an inch: Not only will they not concede the right of return, they refuse to even acknowledge the Jews’ historic connection to this land.
Second, while Israelis care very little about relations with the Arab world, they care greatly about relations with the West. Thus a major attraction of the peace process was the prospect of enhancing this relationship.
Instead, Israel’s standing, especially in Europe, has plummeted since 1993. Europeans now deem Israel the greatest threat to world peace. Anti-Semitic violence in Europe has surged. European and American leftists routinely deny Israel’s very right to exist, and calls for sanctions and divestment are gaining momentum. All this would have been unthinkable 16 years ago.
And this nosedive in status is directly connected to the fact that every time something goes wrong with the peace process, most of the West blames Israel. Indeed, the fact that Washington (pre-Barack Obama) was the one exception to this rule goes far toward explaining why Israel’s standing remains strong in America.
Because this knee-jerk response has remained unchanged for 16 years, Israelis are now convinced it will continue even after a final-status agreement is signed: The moment Palestinians voice a new demand post-agreement or engage in anti-Israel terror, the West will insist that Israel accede to the demand or refrain from responding to the terror, and vituperate it for not doing so. In short, Israel is liable to make all the concessions entailed by an agreement and still see its relationship with the West deteriorate.
The bottom line that emerges from both Benn and Strenger is that no peace deal is likely unless both the West and Israel’s Left radically alter their behavior. The million-dollar question is whether anyone in either camp is listening.