Category Archives: Israel

Obama’s passivity could pave the way to a civil uprising against Israel

Akiva Eldar writes:

To realize the extent to which the lame-duck candidate has regressed from the positions of the new and promising President Obama, the speech to the United Nations in September 2011 should be compared to one he gave in Cairo in 2009. At that time he pledged to “personally pursue this outcome with all the patience that the task requires,” and said “… it is time for all of us to live up to our responsibilities.” Yesterday he sent the occupied and the occupier, the strong and the weak, to solve the core issues on their own.

In Cairo he recalled, along with Jewish suffering in the Holocaust, the “daily humiliations … that come with the occupation.” And he added: “Let there be no doubt: The situation for the Palestinian people is intolerable.” He even compared the struggle of the Palestinians for freedom to the struggle of black people in the United States for equal rights. On Wednesday, Obama paid pursed lip service to the legitimate aspirations and forgot to mention the occupation.

In June 2009, Obama spoke of “the obligations that the parties have agreed to under the road map.” He meant, among other things, and perhaps mainly, Israel’s obligation to completely stop construction in the settlements and dismantle the outposts built after March 2001. To remove all doubt, he stated resolutely: “It is time for these settlements to stop.”

On Wednesday, not one word of criticism was heard about Israel creating unilateral physical facts on the ground. To the 2011-model Obama, only the Palestinians’ approach to the United Nations is unilateral, objectionable and meriting the death penalty.

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Obama to UN: yada yada yada — Israelis applaud

In case anyone is in any doubt that President Obama’s comments on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, delivered to the UN General Assembly this morning, were nothing more than a string of worthless peace-process platitudes, then listen to the rave review he got from Israeli foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman: “I congratulate President Obama, and I am ready to sign on this speech with both hands.” Prime Minister Netanyahu and opposition leader Tzipi Livni were similarly pleased.

As usual Israel and the United States are speaking with one voice: Israel’s.

One year ago, I stood at this podium and called for an independent Palestine. I believed then – and I believe now – that the Palestinian people deserve a state of their own. But what I also said is that genuine peace can only be realized between Israelis and Palestinians themselves. One year later, despite extensive efforts by America and others, the parties have not bridged their differences. Faced with this stalemate, I put forward a new basis for negotiations in May. That basis is clear, and well known to all of us here. Israelis must know that any agreement provides assurances for their security. Palestinians deserve to know the territorial basis of their state.

I know that many are frustrated by the lack of progress. So am I. But the question isn’t the goal we seek – the question is how to reach it. And I am convinced that there is no short cut to the end of a conflict that has endured for decades. Peace will not come through statements and resolutions at the UN – if it were that easy, it would have been accomplished by now. Ultimately, it is Israelis and Palestinians who must live side by side. Ultimately, it is Israelis and Palestinians – not us – who must reach agreement on the issues that divide them: on borders and security; on refugees and Jerusalem.

Peace depends upon compromise among peoples who must live together long after our speeches are over, and our votes have been counted. That is the lesson of Northern Ireland, where ancient antagonists bridged their differences. That is the lesson of Sudan, where a negotiated settlement led to an independent state. And that is the path to a Palestinian state.

We seek a future where Palestinians live in a sovereign state of their own, with no limit to what they can achieve. There is no question that the Palestinians have seen that vision delayed for too long. And it is precisely because we believe so strongly in the aspirations of the Palestinian people that America has invested so much time and effort in the building of a Palestinian state, and the negotiations that can achieve one.

America’s commitment to Israel’s security is unshakeable, and our friendship with Israel is deep and enduring. And so we believe that any lasting peace must acknowledge the very real security concerns that Israel faces every single day. Let’s be honest: Israel is surrounded by neighbors that have waged repeated wars against it. Israel’s citizens have been killed by rockets fired at their houses and suicide bombs on their buses. Israel’s children come of age knowing that throughout the region, other children are taught to hate them. Israel, a small country of less than eight million people, looks out at a world where leaders of much larger nations threaten to wipe it off of the map. The Jewish people carry the burden of centuries of exile, persecution, and the fresh memory of knowing that six million people were killed simply because of who they were.

These facts cannot be denied. The Jewish people have forged a successful state in their historic homeland. Israel deserves recognition. It deserves normal relations with its neighbors. And friends of the Palestinians do them no favors by ignoring this truth, just as friends of Israel must recognize the need to pursue a two state solution with a secure Israel next to an independent Palestine.

That truth – that each side has legitimate aspirations – is what makes peace so hard. And the deadlock will only be broken when each side learns to stand in each other’s shoes. That’s what we should be encouraging. This body – founded, as it was, out of the ashes of war and genocide; dedicated, as it is, to the dignity of every person – must recognize the reality that is lived by both the Palestinians and the Israelis. The measure of our actions must always be whether they advance the right of Israeli and Palestinian children to live in peace and security, with dignity and opportunity. We will only succeed in that effort if we can encourage the parties to sit down together, to listen to each other, and to understand each other’s hopes and fears. That is the project to which America is committed. And that is what the United Nations should be focused on in the weeks and months to come.

The New York Times reports:

Less than an hour after Mr. Obama spoke, President Nicolas Sarkozy of France stood at the same podium in a sharp repudiation, calling for a General Assembly resolution that would upgrade the Palestinians to “observer status,” as a bridge towards statehood. “Let us cease our endless debates on the parameters,” Mr. Sarkozy said. “Let us begin negotiations and adopt a precise timetable.”

For Mr. Obama, the challenge in crafting the much-anticipated General Assembly address on Wednesday was how to address the incongruities of the administration’s position: the president who committed himself to making peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians a priority from Day One, who still has not been able to even get peace negotiations going after two and a half years; the president who opened the door to Palestinian state membership at the United Nations last year ending up threatening to veto that very membership; the president who was determined to get on the right side of Arab history ending up, in the views of many on the Arab street, on the wrong side of it on the Palestinian issue.

The US-Israeli message to Palestinians remains now what it has long been: the Palestinians deserve a state, but not just yet.

So if you’re looking for Palestine, all you need to do is find your way to the end of the peace process rainbow — it’s right there, alongside a pot of gold.

But if the White House is still willing to collude with its Israeli partners in refusing to set a deadline for the creation of a Palestinian state, France’s president issued Obama a stern warning:

“Each of us knows that Palestine cannot immediately obtain full and complete recognition of the status of United Nations member state,” he said. “But who could doubt that a veto at the Security Council risks engendering a cycle of violence in the Middle East?”

Those who still declare their belief that a two-state solution is the only viable solution to the conflict must move beyond their endless repetition of the parameters of such a solution and declare without equivocation when a Palestinian state must be created.

Without a date there will be no state.

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U.S. should recognize Palestinian state

Zvi Bar’el writes:

Memory is short and forgetfulness is often deliberate, but 23 years ago the UN General Assembly decided to move its session from New York to Switzerland so that Palestine Liberation Organization head Yasser Arafat could deliver a speech. The reason: U.S. Secretary of State George Schultz refused to issue Yasser Arafat an entry visa to the United States.

Today too, with the opening of the session of the General Assembly, Washington is standing like a fortified wall blocking the entry of Palestine to the UN building. Although Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has no problem getting a visa, when he comes to ask for a state for the Palestinians he is put on a roller coaster. The list of threats and future punishments to be imposed on him and his country, if it is established, guarantees that this will be a state that is battered from birth.

Here is colonialism in all its glory. After all, the United States agrees that there should be a Palestinian state, it even twisted the arm of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a little bit, cautiously so it wouldn’t hurt, so that he would blurt out the necessary formula “two states for two peoples.” U.S. President Barack Obama even spoke about the optimal borders of the Palestinian state and Abbas was not yet required to recognize Israel.

After all, Arafat already recognized it. Palestine fulfilled all the threshold conditions. And still, this state has only one chance of being born the American way. Through negotiations that will lead to a consensual agreement and a handshake. And if Israel’s hand is missing, never mind, the Palestinians will wait until it grows.

But Abbas has learned a thing or two from Israel. The main lesson he has learned is that his real negotiations are not with Israel but with Washington. The second lesson: The negotiations must not take place on a playing field that is convenient for Obama, but rather at the United Nations. There Obama is not facing a beggarly Palestinian Authority that can be frightened with a shout, but 193 countries, each of which must be negotiated with.

New York is not Ramallah. Abbas saw how Israel chose its own playing field in the U.S. Congress, and carefully responded in kind. Instead of going out on a limb, he planted the tree by himself, nurtured it, diligently recruited most of the countries in the world, was helped substantially by Israel’s mistakes, took good advantage of Jerusalem’s isolation, examined the pros and cons and decided that even in loss there would be great gain.

If the United States casts a veto in the UN Security Council, it will cause more damage to Washington than to Abbas; if he makes do with recognition in the General Assembly, it will be in exchange for an American commitment to support a Palestinian state if negotiations fail, as they will.

Abbas caused Washington to be embroiled in a dispute with its European colleagues, and presented Israel as a cripple. He is forcing the United Nations to do what it usually fails to do: to find a peaceful solution to conflicts. As a bonus he caused Netanyahu to say that he is going to deliver a “speech of truth” at the United Nations, thereby admitting in effect that until now he has been lying.

The panic in Washington is genuine. It was evident when David Hale, Obama’s special envoy, was unable to control his temper and simply shouted at Abbas when he understood that he had no intention of retreating from his initiative.

Anger and helplessness could also be detected in the voice of U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, when she announced that the United States would cast a veto in the Security Council. Suddenly she realized that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not only “the business of the parties involved” but threatens Washington’s regional and international status.

If the United States fails to recognize the Palestinian state, it will have difficulty sidelining its rivals in the new Middle East, where the public has more power than the rulers; if it recognizes the Palestinian state, it will have to ensure its sustainability, in other words, to direct the sanctions against Israel. Truly a bad situation for a great power that aspires to draw the map of the new Middle East.

Had it only made an effort to achieve genuine negotiations when that was still possible, had it invested its efforts into reaching an agreement that it is now investing in preventing the declaration of independence, had it shared the threats equally between the PA and Israel, it may not have found itself in this difficult situation.

It should at least recognize the state now. It should recall what has happened since it refused to grant Arafat his visa.

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New York Times discovers Netanyahu has friends in Congress

“House Republicans Discover a Growing Bond With Netanyahu” says the headline in the New York Times.

Discover? This isn’t exactly news. What the headline should say (and I know I’m fantasizing about an imaginary New York Times whose headlines don’t pull any punches) is: “House GOP trusts Netanyahu more than Obama.”

The report does acknowledge: “Unbending support for Israel has long been a bipartisan fact of American politics, but Mr. Netanyahu’s popularity in Congress now runs deeper than ever.” Or, as Pat Buchanan would put it, Capitol Hill is still Israeli occupied territory.

When the Obama administration wanted to be certain that Congress would not block $50 million in new aid to the Palestinian Authority last month, it turned to a singularly influential lobbyist: Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.

At the request of the American Embassy and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, Mr. Netanyahu urged dozens of members of Congress visiting Israel last month not to object to the aid, according to Congressional and diplomatic officials. Mr. Netanyahu’s intervention with Congress underscored an extraordinary intersection of American diplomacy and domestic politics, the result of an ever-tightening relationship between the Israeli government and the Republican Party that now controls the House.

On Tuesday, one of President Obama’s potential rivals in 2012, Gov. Rick Perry of Texas, delivered a speech in New York criticizing Mr. Obama’s stance toward Israel as “naïve, arrogant, misguided and dangerous.” Mr. Perry said that he would be a guest soon of Danny Danon, the hard-right deputy speaker of the Israeli Parliament.

The relationship between the Israeli government and the Republican Party has significantly complicated the administration’s diplomatic efforts to avert a confrontation at the United Nations this week over the Palestinian bid for full membership as a state, limiting President Obama’s ability to exert pressure on Mr. Netanyahu to make concessions that could restart negotiations with the Palestinians.

One of the members of Congress who attended the meeting with Mr. Netanyahu in August, Representative Michael G. Grimm of New York, a Republican, said that it was carefully explained to the delegation that the money would be used for training Palestinian police officers who work closely with the Israeli government.

Mr. Grimm said he felt more comfortable receiving the explanation from the prime minister than from Obama administration officials.

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Obama’s Jewish problem

John Heilemann writes:

Again and again, when Israel has been embroiled in international dustups—over its attack last year on a flotilla filled with activists headed from Turkey to Gaza, to cite but one example—the White House has had Israel’s back. The security relationship between the countries, on everything from intelligence sharing to missile-­defense development to access to top-shelf weapons, has never been more robust. And when the Cairo embassy was seized and Netanyahu called to ask for Obama’s help with rescuing the last six Israelis trapped inside the building, the president not only picked up the phone but leaned hard on the Egyptians to free those within. “It was a decisive moment,” Netanyahu recalled after the six had been freed. “Fateful, I would even say.”

All of which raises an interesting, perplexing, and suddenly quite pressing question: How, exactly, did Obama come to be portrayed, and perceived by many American Jews, as the most ardently anti-Israel president since Jimmy Carter?

This meme, of course, has been gathering steam for some time, peddled mainly by right-wing Likudophiles here and in the Holy Land. But last week, it took center stage in the special election in New York’s Ninth Congressional District, maybe the most Jewish district in the nation and one held by Democrats since 1923. When the smoke cleared, the Republican had won—and Matt Drudge was up with a headline blaring REVENGE OF THE JEWS.

Obama’s people deny up and down that the loss of a seat last occupied by Anthony Weiner portends, well, pretty much anything for 2012. But the truth is that they are worried, and worried they should be, for the signs of Obama’s slippage among Jewish voters are unmistakable. Last week, a new Gallup poll found that his approval rating in that cohort had fallen to 55 percent—a whopping 28-point drop since his inauguration. And among the high-dollar Jewish donors who were essential to fueling the great Obama money machine last time around, stories of dismay and disaffection are legion. “There’s no question,” says one of the president’s most prolific fund-raisers. “We have a big-time Jewish problem.”

It’s often said that Netanyahu has an exquisitely calibrated feel for American politics and great savvy in working its press corps. Both are true and both have helped him enormously in resisting the pressure brought to bear by Team Obama. But the administration has also sabotaged itself, in particular by frequently failing to speak with one voice to Israel.

Through much of 2009 and 2010, Obama’s people were divided over just how hard to lean on Netanyahu when it came to negotiating with the Palestinians. On one side were many central figures who favored the tough-love approach: Obama, Clinton, Mitchell, Emanuel. On the other were Dennis Ross, the president’s special assistant on the Middle East, and Tom Donilon, his national-security adviser. “The underlying argument of Dennis and Tom was that you’ll never get the Israelis to do anything by pushing them,” says one official. “The contrary argument is, there’s no evidence you’ll ever get them to do anything without pushing them.”

For Netanyahu, however, the internal division within the administration was a gift. Wary of Emanuel and senior adviser David Axelrod—Netanyahu was quoted in the Israeli press calling them “self-hating Jews,” though he later denied it—he turned to those in the White House who were more sympathetic. “What you had was Bibi doing this go-to-mommy, go-to-­daddy thing,” says the same official. “Which meant there was never a real, effective, tough negotiation with Israel, because every time you tried to say something tough, he’d go to someone else who would tell him, ‘Don’t worry about it.’ ”

Netanyahu’s penchant for forum shopping goes a long way toward explaining the bilateral conniption that erupted this past May. After briefly negotiating face-to-face last fall, the Israelis and the Palestinians were again at loggerheads. For weeks this spring, the administration debated internally how to modify U.S. policy in light of that breakdown as well as the dawning of the Arab Spring and the wave of instability engulfing the region.

With the new Republican Congress having invited Netanyahu to address a full joint session—making him only the fourth foreign leader (along with Yitzhak Rabin, Nelson Mandela, and Winston Churchill) to have been granted the privilege more than once—Obama was planning a major speech on the Middle East ahead of Bibi’s. The question was whether the president should lay out a framework for a two-state solution, including principles on borders, security, Jerusalem, and refugees. Clinton and Mitchell were in favor of including all four; Ross and Donilon were in favor of including none, and until a few days before the speech, it appeared that they would have their way. But in the end, Obama opted for two: principles on borders and security.

Everyone knew that the language on borders would stir up a hell of a fuss, though in truth there was nothing terribly controversial about what Obama said. The 1967 lines plus land swaps has been for decades the geographic template for any plausible two-state solution, and was employed (almost fruitfully) by Clinton, Ehud Barak, and Yasser Arafat in 2000 and (again, almost fruitfully) by Bush, Ehud Olmert, and Abbas in 2008. The trouble was that its explicit embrace by Obama caught Netanyahu by surprise, almost certainly because Dennis Ross had assured him privately that it wouldn’t be in the speech.

Netanyahu threw a nutty. Before he departed Israel for Washington, his office issued a statement saying that the “Prime Minister expects to hear a reaffirmation from President Obama of U.S. commitments made to Israel in 2004 … commitments [that] relate to Israel not having to withdraw to the 1967 lines.” The statement was extraordinary on multiple levels: in its sheer presumptuousness (“expects”?); in its willful misreading of Obama’s words (ignoring the part about land swaps); and in its total neglect of the many hard-line pro-Israel positions the president had advanced, including a scornful rejection of the Palestinian statehood bid at the U.N., sharp criticism of Israel-denying Hamas, skeptical questioning of its new alliance with Israel-accepting Fatah, and harsh condemnation of Iran and Syria.

The next day, Netanyahu delivered his on-camera lecture to Obama. What enraged the president and his team wasn’t the impudence on display; they could live with that. It was the dishonesty at the heart of the thing. “I’ve been in more than one meeting with Bibi where he used the same language to describe the outlines of a deal,” one official says. “It’s outrageous—attacking the president for something he didn’t say, claiming he was putting Israel’s security at risk for stating out loud a position Bibi himself holds privately.”

But Netanyahu knew he could get away with it—so staunch and absolute is the bipartisan support he commands in the U.S. Garishly illuminating the point, on the night before his speech to Congress, the prime minister attended the annual AIPAC policy conference in Washington, where he was the headline speaker at the event’s gala banquet. Before he took the stage, three announcers, amid flashing spotlights and in the style of the introductions at an NBA All-Star game, read the names of every prominent person in the room, including 67 senators, 286 House members, and dozens of administration and Israeli officials, foreign dignitaries, and student leaders. (The roll call took half an hour.) When Harry Reid spoke, he obliquely but unambiguously chastised Obama for endorsing the use of the 1967 lines as the basis for a peace deal: “No one should set premature parameters about borders, about building, or about anything else.” The ensuing ovation was deafening—but a mere whisper compared with the thunderous waves of applause that poured over Netanyahu.

The next day came his speech to Congress, in which he spelled out demands that were maximal by any measure: recognition by the Palestinians of Israel as a Jewish state as a precondition for negotiations, a refusal to talk if Hamas is part of the Palestinian side, an undivided Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, and absolutely no right of return for Palestinian refugees. Taken as a whole, his whirlwind Washington visit provided a strong dose of clarity: With Barak having moved his newly formed Independence Party into Netanyahu’s governing coalition, its new stability has reduced to near zero the incentives for him to take the risks required for peace.

In the eyes of some observers, Netanyahu’s performance over those days suggested something else: that he was taking sides in the 2012 race. As Time’s Joe Klein sharply noted, Netanyahu “has now, overtly, tossed his support to the Republicans.” With cover from Bibi, Mitt Romney pronounced that Obama had “thrown Israel under the bus.” Michele Bachmann tweeted that his “call for 1967 borders will cause chaos, division & more aggression in Middle East and put Israel at further risk.” Tim Pawlenty (remember him?) called Obama’s policy “a disaster waiting to happen.” And Ron Paul declared, “Unlike this president, I do not believe it is our place to dictate to Israel how to run her affairs.”

So much pandering, so little time! Republicans sucking up to Israel, and by extension Jewish voters, is nothing new; and in the past, it has come to naught. Might this election be different? Some political professionals think so. The perception of Obama as harboring antipathy to Israel, they argue, makes 2012 a ripe opportunity for the right Republican to swipe a larger than usual share of Jewish votes and/or pick the Obama campaign’s pocket. Skeptical? I would be, too, except for one thing: the sight of the Obamans scrambling to make sure it doesn’t happen.

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‘Israel will look like South Africa during the apartheid’ — Israeli ambassador Shalev

Gabriela Shalev, Israel’s ambassador to the UN from 2008-2010, was interviewed by Shalom Yerushalmi for Israel’s Hebrew daily, Maariv. Translation provided by Viktoria Lymar (Watching America).

September is already here, and professor Gabriela Shalev, Israel’s previous ambassador to the U.N., is more pessimistic than ever: “We have no tools, we’re in trouble.”

Gaby Shalev, formerly Israel’s ambassador to the U.N., has a joke on the occasion of the beginning of the school year. Someone turns to his mom and complains in the corner: “I don’t want to go to school. All the teachers hate me, and I hate them. All the students hate me, and I hate them.” “You don’t have a choice,” responds the mother. “You’re the principal.”

Israel has no choice as well. Neither does the former ambassador. She had to return daily to a place where she felt condemned and despised. Today, exactly one year after finishing her term, she’s sitting in her beautiful house in Even Yehuda, still overcome by fear. September is in the doorway, and she sees that Israel will be engulfed in the wave of an unprecedented political tsunami, at the end [of which] Israel will be thrown outside of the fence, subject to heavy sanctions and boycotts.

After taking off the diplomat suit, Shalev speaks eloquently and daringly, trying to confront the failures of public relations, acknowledging weaknesses and mistakes and even how she was fundamentally unsuitable for the role she was asigned to.

“Operation Cast Lead [the Gaza War] broke out. The Netanyahu government came to power, the talks with the Palestinians were stopped, the Goldstone report loomed into prominence, and the Marmara affair struck waves in the world,” analyzes Shalev. “Add to this the rewarding diplomatic effort of the Palestinians and Arab countries, and you’ll fathom why Israel is at a political nadir in the U.N. that we have never before been driven to. The U.N. is a drainage collector of all the hostility toward Israel and the global delegitimization of Israel. There, they already don’t recognize our right to exist. These days are the gravest of all you can possibly recollect.”

But the United States is with us.

“Not precisely. We’re going from bad to worse, and losing the United States as well on the way. U.S. Ambassador Dan Shapiro may say that relations are steadfast, strong and good, but this is no longer the same type of relationship and support. A rapport between the leaders is not the most important thing, but even that is nonexistent. Obama is not opening his arms to us. He’s different. In my view, this is very impressive. Distant, noble. He is a cold and rational person. He thinks unusually. Esther Brimmer, Clinton’s assistant secretary of state, told me once, “Help us to help you.” In short, these are not the days of John Bolton, who was the American ambassador to the U.N., but everybody thought he was the Israeli delegate.

What has changed?

“You should comprehend the totality of the new interests of the United States. It wants to be the leader of the world, not to isolate itself from it. Ambassador Susan Rice remarked that the U.N. is not perfect, but it’s impossible [to do] without it. There is new black elite in America today: Barack Obama, his wife Michelle, Susan Rice, Esther Brimmer who is very close to the president and the others. Everyone went to Harvard. They became very associated with the blacks from Africa, from the islands. Susan Rice became attached to them, socially and politically. We remained outside. We are the separatists, we help neither our friends nor ourselves.”

What’s going to happen in September?

“It’s terrifying. I don’t call this ‘the black September’ only because my son was born in September, but the state of affairs is serious. The president of the [General] Assembly will be Abdelaziz al-Nasser, Qatar’s ambassador to the U.N. He used to be my friend, despite Qatar being extremely against us. The president of the Security Council (which changes according to monthly rotation) will be the Lebanese ambassador. From our standpoint, that is an intolerable condition. They are chairing meetings, bringing up proposals, setting the agenda, gaining control of the whole show.

Meanwhile, there are no talks between us and the Palestinians, there is an absolute standstill. Sept. 20 may yield a resolution for the recognition of the Palestinian state within 1967 borders. There’s no way it won’t be accepted.

At a conference of experts organized by the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee last May, you noted that “As soon as the declaration on the disputable territories is received, the Yesha areas [West Bank] will not be considered as anything other than territories under occupation.”

“It is actually beyond that. Several of my fellow jurists comment that with the declaration, we won’t be regarded as an occupying power but instead, an invading force. This involves international sanctions, and they have fateful significance. Should the Palestinians be admitted as a member state in the U.N. through the Security Council, — we’re in complete trouble.”

Aren’t the Americans going to exercise their veto?

”The Americans are not our puppets. They are not in our pocket. You should remember that sanctions could be imposed on us even without agreement in the Security Council. The matter is based on the Resolution 377, adopted under the name ‘Uniting for Peace.’ Whatever will happen after the declaration, Israel will look like South Africa during the apartheid.”

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The mainstreaming of Walt and Mearsheimer

Glenn Greenwald writes:

There were numerous reasons that Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer were accused in prominent venues of all sorts of crimes — including anti-Semitism — when they published The Israel Lobby, but the most common cause was the book’s central theme: that there is a very powerful lobby in the U.S. which is principally devoted to Israel and causes U.S. political leaders to act to advance the interests of this foreign nation over their own.  In The New York Times today, Tom Friedman — long one of Israel’s most stalwart American supporters — wrote the following as the second paragraph of his column, warning that the U.S. was about to incur massive damage in order to block Palestinian statehood:

This has also left the U.S. government fed up with Israel’s leadership but a hostage to its ineptitude, because the powerful pro-Israel lobby in an election season can force the administration to defend Israel at the U.N., even when it knows Israel is pursuing policies not in its own interest or America’s.

Isn’t that exactly Walt and Mearseimer’s main theme, what caused them to be tarred and feathered with the most noxious accusations possible?  Indeed it is; here’s how the academic duo, in The Israel Lobby, described the crux of their argument as first set forth in an article on which the book was based:

After describing the remarkable level of material and diplomatic support that the United States provides to Israel, we argued that his support could not be fully explained on either strategic or moral grounds  Instead, it was due largely to the political power of the Israel lobby, a loose coalition of individuals and groups that seeks to influence American foreign policy in ways that will benefit Israel . . . We suggested that these policies were not in the U.S. national interest and were in fact harmful to Israel’s long-term interests as well.

Is that not exactly the point which The New York Times‘ most “pro-Israel” columnist himself just voiced today?

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Israel does not want a Palestinian state. Period.

Gideon Levy writes:

What will we tell the world next week, at the UN? What could we say? Whether in the General Assembly or the Security Council, we will be exposed in all our nakedness: Israel does not want a Palestinian state. Period. And it doesn’t have a single persuasive argument against the establishment and the international recognition of such a state.

So what will we say, that we’re opposed? Four prime ministers, Benjamin Netanyahu among them, have said that they’re in favor, that it must be accomplished through negotiations, so why haven’t we done it yet? Is our argument that we object to it’s being a unilateral measure? What’s more unilateral than the settlements that we insist on continuing to build? Or perhaps we will say that the route to a Palestinian state runs through Ramallah and Jerusalem, not New York, a la the U.S. secretary of state. The State of Israel itself was created, in part, in the United Nations.

Next week will be Israel’s moment of truth, or more precisely the moment in which its deception will be revealed. Be it the president, the prime minister or the ambassador to the UN, even the greatest of public speakers will be incapable of standing before the representatives of the nations of the world and explaining Israeli logic; none of the three will be able to convince them that there is any merit to Israel’s position.

Thirty-two years ago, Israel signed a peace agreement with Egypt in which it undertook “to recognize the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people” and to establish an autonomous authority in the West Bank and Gaza Strip within five years. Nothing happened.

Eighteen years ago the prime minister of Israel signed the Oslo Accords, in which Israel undertook to conduct talks in order to achieve a final-status agreement with the Palestinians, including the core issues, within five years. That, too, did not occur. Most of the provisions of the agreement have foundered since then – in the majority of cases because of Israel. What will Israel’s advocate at the UN say about this?

For years, Israel claimed that Yasser Arafat was the sole obstacle to peace with the Palestinians. Arafat died – and once again nothing happened. Israel claimed that if only the terror were to stop, a solution would appear. The terror stopped – and nothing. Israel’s excuses became increasingly empty and the naked truth was increasingly exposed. Israel does not want to reach a peace arrangement that would involve the establishment of a Palestinian state. This can no longer be covered up in the UN. And what did Netanyahu’s Israel expect the Palestinians to do in this case – another round of photo ops, like the ones with Ehud Barak, Ehud Olmert and Tzipi Livni that led nowhere?

The truth is that the Palestinians have just three options, not four: to surrender unconditionally and go on living under Israeli occupation for another 42 years at least; to launch a third intifada; or to mobilize the world on their behalf. They picked the third option, the lesser of all evils even from Israel’s perspective. What could Israel say about this – that it’s a unilateral step, as it and the United States have said? But it didn’t agree to stop construction in the settlements, the mother of all unilateral steps. What did the Palestinians have left? The international arena. And if that won’t save them, then another popular uprising in the territories.

The Palestinians in the West Bank, 3.5 million today, will not live without civil rights for another 42 years. We might as well get used to the fact that the world won’t stand for it. Can Netanyahu or Shimon Peres explain why the Palestinians do not deserve their own state? Do they have even the slightest of arguments? Nothing. And why not now? We have already seen, especially of late, that time only reduces the possible alternatives in the region. So even that weak excuse is dead.

Yesterday, a coalition of Israeli peace organizations published a list of 50 reasons for Israel to support a Palestinian state. Assuming that you only accept five of them, isn’t that enough? What exactly is the alternative, now that the heavens are closing in around us? Can anyone, can Peres or Netanyahu, seriously contend that the regional hostility toward us would not have lessened had the occupation already ended and a Palestinian state been established?

The truths are so basic, so banal, that it hurts even to repeat them. But, unfortunately, they’re the only ones we have. And so, a simple question to whoever will be representing us at the UN next week: Why not, for heaven’s sake? Why “no” once again? And to what will we say “yes”?

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Rick Perry points to the connection between Texas and Israel — both born out of the blood of those they despise

Texas Rangers

Max Blumenthal points out that in an op-ed by Rick Perry this week, the historian who Perry chose to cite in drawing a comparison between Texas and Israel, saw a much uglier connection than the governor probably meant to reveal.

Yesterday, Republican presidential candidate and current Texas Governor Rick Perry attacked President Barack Obama and the Palestinian UN statehood bid in a foreign newspaper, the Jerusalem Post. Perry devoted most of the editorial to assailing Obama as anti-Israel. But buried in the op-ed, in a line intended to highlight the shared values of Texas and Israel, Perry quoted the historian T.R. Fehrenbach. “Historian T.R. Fehrenbach once observed that my home state of Texas and Israel share the experience of ‘civilized men and women thrown into new and harsh conditions, beset by enemies,’” Perry wrote.

Fehrenbach published an authoritative book on the ethnic cleansing of the Comanche Indians by the Anglo settlers of Texas. He wrote with deep sympathy for the indigenous population, and though he expressed a strong identification with Texan culture, he was harshly critical of the settlers’ cruelty toward the native population. Perry’s quoting of Fehrenbach seemed curious, so I opened up my copy of Fehrenbach’s “Lone Star: A History of Texas and the Texans” to see if he cited the historian accurately. When I found the passage Perry had pulled from, my suspicions were realized: Perry (or more likely some half-wit speechwriter) had distorted Fehrenbach’s original text and taken it wildly out of context. [Continue reading…]

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Virtual statehood or the Right of Return

Omar Barghouti writes:

“The Palestinian declaration of independence practically constitutes a victory for Israel’s declaration of independence, and this is why Israelis must celebrate in the streets and be the first to recognise Palestinian independence, calling on the world to follow suit.”

Sefi Rachlevsky, Yedioth Ahronoth, September 5, 2011 (Israeli writer who led a recent Israeli delegation that met Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to urge him to go forward with the statehood bid at the UN)

“Palestine 194” is the name of a campaign called for by Palestinian officials to drum up support for their “September Initiative”, or bid for statehood, in the hope that “Palestine” would become the 194th member of the UN. This same number, however, has historic connotations for the people of Palestine. It has been etched in our collective consciousness as the UN General Assembly resolution stipulating the right of the Palestinian refugees – most of whom were forcibly displaced and dispossessed during the 1948 Nakba by Zionist militias and later the state of Israel – to return to their homes and properties.

Without any sense of irony, Palestinian officials who have time and again colluded in eroding official international support for UNGA 194, as the Palestine Papers have amply shown, are now appropriating that very number and using it in a bid that runs the risk of surrendering the right of return associated with it for more than six decades. This is merely a symbol of the far more substantive moral, political and legal bind that this Initiative may potentially place the Palestinians and their supporters in.

The “September Initiative” is at best vague and confusing and at worst damaging to the interests of the Palestinian people. Regardless, it is entirely divorced from the will of the Palestinian people, and those advocating it have no democratic mandate from the people to employ it in any way that jeopardises our UN-sanctioned rights.

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With success or failure for Palestinians at the UN, Israel still wins

Whatever the outcome of the bid for Palestinian statehood being presented at the UN, Joseph Massad argues that only Israel’s interests will be served.

If the UN votes for the PA statehood status, this would have several immediate implications:

(1) The PLO will cease to represent the Palestinian people at the UN, and the PA will replace it as their presumed state.

(2) The PLO, which represents all Palestinians (about 12 million people in historic Palestine and in the diaspora), and was recognised as their “sole” representative at the UN in 1974, will be truncated to the PA, which represents only West Bank Palestinians (about 2 million people). Incidentally this was the vision presented by the infamous “Geneva Accords” that went nowhere.

(3) It will politically weaken Palestinian refugees’ right to return to their homes and be compensated, as stipulated in UN resolutions. The PA does not represent the refugees, even though it claims to represent their “hopes” of establishing a Palestinian state at their expense. Indeed, some international legal experts fear it could even abrogate the Palestinians’ right of return altogether. It will also forfeit the rights of Palestinian citizens of Israel who face institutional and legal racism in the Israeli state, as it presents them with a fait accompli of the existence of a Palestinian state (its phantasmatic nature notwithstanding). This will only give credence to Israeli claims that the Jews have a state and the Palestinians now have one too and if Palestinian citizens of Israel were unhappy, or even if they were happy, with their third-class status in Israel, they should move or can be forced to move to the Palestinian state at any rate.

(4) Israel could ostensibly come around soon after a UN vote in favour of Palestinian statehood and inform the PA that the territories it now controls (a small fraction of the West Bank) is all the territory Israel will concede and that this will be the territorial basis of the PA state. The Israelis do not tire of reminding the PA that the Palestinians will not have sovereignty, an army, control of their borders, control of their water resources, control over the number of refugees it could allow back, or even jurisdiction over Jewish colonial settlers. Indeed, the Israelis have already obtained UN assurances about their right to “defend” themselves and to preserve their security with whatever means they think are necessary to achieve these goals. In short, the PA will have the exact same Bantustan state that Israel and the US have been promising to grant it for two decades!

(5) The US and Israel could also, through their many allies, inject a language of “compromise” in the projected UN recognition of the PA state, stipulating that such a state must exist peacefully side by side with the “Jewish State” of Israel. This would in turn exact a precious UN recognition of Israel’s “right” to be a Jewish state, which the UN and the international community, the US excepted, have refused to recognize thus far. This will directly link the UN recognition of a phantasmatic non-existent Palestinian state to UN recognition of an actually existing state of Israel that discriminates legally and institutionally against non-Jews as a “Jewish state”.

(6) The US and Israel will insist after a positive vote that, while the PA is right to make certain political demands as a member state, it would have to abrogate its recent reconciliation agreement with Hamas. Additionally, sanctions could befall the PA state itself for associating with Hamas, which the US and Israel consider a terrorist group. The US Congress has already threatened to punish the PA and will not hesitate to urge the Obama administration to add Palestine to its list of “State Sponsors of Terrorism” along with Cuba, Iran, Sudan and Syria.

All of these six outcomes will advance Israeli interests immeasurably, while the only inconvenience to Israel would be the ability of the PA to demand that international law and legal jurisdiction be applied to Israel so as to exact more concessions from that country. However, at every turn the US will block and will shield Israel from its effects. In short, Israeli interests will be maximised at the cost of some serious but not detrimental inconvenience.

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How can Israel survive without growing up?

“Which prosperous ally gets $3 billion a year in aid, and a veto power over America’s entire Mid-East foreign policy? Which ally refuses to cooperate with its military and political protector – even to the point of humiliating a duly elected American president? Which ally violates the Non-Proliferation treaty and manages to get its super-power protector to maintain total silence on this glaring fact? Which ally is threatening conventional warfare if its own nuclear monopoly in the region is in any way threatened?” asks Andrew Sullivan.

“Israel is the exception to every rule. And its intransigence is beginning to force the US toward a horrible choice between allying ourselves with the tectonic democratic forces in the region, or backing a fundamentalist-dominated state bent on expansion and war.”

Sullivan hasn’t turned into a fringe anti-Zionist blogger. He’s merely echoing views that are expressed much more freely in Washington than mainstream media reports generally reveal.

Robert Gates, having served as defense secretary for both presidents Bush and Obama, clearly wasn’t a political maverick when he ran the Pentagon, yet his assessment of Israel was no less blunt than Sullivan’s.

As Bloomberg columnist Jeffrey Goldberg recounted last week:

In a meeting of the National Security Council Principals Committee held not long before his retirement this summer, Gates coldly laid out the many steps the administration has taken to guarantee Israel’s security — access to top- quality weapons, assistance developing missile-defense systems, high-level intelligence sharing — and then stated bluntly that the U.S. has received nothing in return, particularly with regard to the peace process.

Senior administration officials told me that Gates argued to the president directly that Netanyahu is not only ungrateful, but also endangering his country by refusing to grapple with Israel’s growing isolation and with the demographic challenges it faces if it keeps control of the West Bank. According to these sources, Gates’s analysis met with no resistance from other members of the committee.

Gates has expressed his frustration with Netanyahu’s government before. Last year, when Vice President Joe Biden’s visit to Israel was marred by an announcement of plans to build new housing units for Jews in East Jerusalem, Gates told several people that if he had been Biden, he would have returned to Washington immediately and told the prime minister to call Obama when he was serious about negotiations.

Even so, having thoroughly alienated himself from the Obama administration, who does Netanyahu turn to in a desperate situation?

Former Director of the Mossad Efraim Halevy, speaking in New York on Monday night, described the predicament the Israeli prime minister found himself in on Friday as protesters in Cairo were storming the Israeli embassy and six Israelis remained trapped inside.

[Netanyahu] turned to one man, to the President of the United States, and he spoke to him. And the president of the United States, without having much time to consult with Congress, and with the media, and with the analysts and with all of the other people who have to be consulted on major and grave decisions. He took a decision to take up the telephone and get on the line with the powers that be in Egypt, and get them to order the release of these six people, and the detail of the Egyptian commando forces entered and saved them.

I think that this decision by President Obama was a unique decision in many ways. Because I don’t have to tell you, and this was just said time and time and over again this afternoon/this evening, that the United States is not in a position the way it was many years ago in the Middle East, it has its problems, it has its considerations, and rightly so. But I believe the leadership that the President of the United States showed on that night was a leadership of historic dimensions. It was he who took the ultimate decision that night which prevented what could have been a sad outcome—instead of six men coming home, the arrival in Israel of six body bags.

And I want to say to you very openly and very clearly that had there been six body bags, there would have been a much different Israel today than we have been used to seeing over recent years. This would not have been one more incident, one more operation, one event. And the man who brought this about was one man and that was President Barack Hussein Obama.

And I believe it is our duty as Israelis, as citizens of the free world, to say, not simply thank you President Obama, but also we respect you for the way and the manner in which you took this decision.

Note first the ominous way in which Halevy says that had these Israelis died this would not have been “one more incident” — unlike, say, the deaths of six Egyptian border guards shot by Israelis in late August, or the deaths of nine Turkish activists killed by Israeli commandos on board the Mavi Marmara just over a year ago.

But note also that Israel, while pursuing what a senior Israeli official describes as a “porcupine policy” to defend itself, when caught in this particular corner found its prickles of no use and instead was compelled to turn to its only reliable protector, the United States.

As Tzipi Livni, the head of the Kadima Party, told Goldberg: “For Israelis, when they wake up in the morning and ask themselves, what is the general situation today, the litmus test for them is the health of the relationship between Israel and the United States.”

And thus we see the contradiction which is Israel — forever pumping itself up, flexing its muscles and showing its neighbors that no one should risk messing with the mighty Zionist state, yet all the while knowing that without the protection of the United States, Israel’s survival would depend on a revolutionary transformation.

Absent American protection, Israel, for the first time, would have to seriously take on the challenge of getting along with its neighbors and not, as it has for the last two decades, simply use diplomacy as a facade behind which it can pursue its policies of territorial expansion.

Is the West’s spoiled child ready to grow up? And is the United States ready to see that its own patronage is what has allowed the Jewish state to trap itself in such a prolonged adolescence?

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A Palestinian autumn in New York — what to expect at the U.N.

The Associated Press reports:

The Palestinians will ask the Security Council next week to accept them as a full member of the United Nations, the Palestinian foreign minister said Thursday, a move that would defy Washington’s threat to veto the statehood bid.

The remarks by Riad Malki came just ahead of the arrival in the West Bank of a senior U.S. diplomatic team that was in the region in a last-ditch effort to persuade the Palestinians to drop the UN bid. Although Mr. Malki did not close the door on compromise, his comments signalled the chances of breakthrough were slim.

With a diplomatic showdown looming, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced Thursday that he would travel to the UN next week to lead the opposition to the Palestinian initiative.

The emerging scenario would constitute a blow to U.S. diplomacy by forcing Washington to veto a proposal whose outcome – a Palestinian state – in principle is supported by most of the world, including the White House and many in Israel as well.

However, both the U.S. and Israel say a Palestinian state can be established only through negotiations.

It could also drag out the manoeuver at the United Nations for months.

The process would have to play out in the Security Council before the Palestinians turn to the General Assembly, where they are likely to find the needed majority for a lesser form of recognition as a “nonmember observer state.”

Mr. Malki said the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, will personally submit the Palestinian request for membership to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon after addressing the General Assembly on the afternoon of Sept. 23. In the meantime, he said the Palestinians would listen to suggested alternatives.

Daniel Levy writes:

While neither the United States nor the Palestinians will emerge unscathed from a Security Council showdown, this course of action might actually be the easiest fix for preserving the status quo (undesirable as that is). The Palestinian leadership could rue the injustice of the world and indulge in its favored pastime of righteous indignation, but it would be spared the hard choices associated with going down the path of accumulating leverage and challenging Israel. The journey back to the golden cage of Palestinian Authority (PA) co-habitation with Israeli occupation is a shorter one from the Security Council than it is from the General Assembly.

Israel could much more easily brush off a Palestinian Security Council failure than a General Assembly success. One can imagine Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu berating Palestinian President Abbas but asserting that he is still ready for negotiations without conditions at any time — a tri-fecta of domestic political win, great PR message, and an easier path for continuing to work with the PA as if nothing had happened (remembering that the continued functioning of the PA and security cooperation are above all an Israeli interest). Israeli messaging might even encourage Congress to maintain its PA and especially PA security funding.

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Israeli diplomats leave Jordan ahead of protest

The New York Times reports:

Israel nearly emptied its embassy here of staff members on Thursday ahead of a planned pro-Palestinian rally outside the gates. But officials denied Israeli press reports that the diplomats had been completely evacuated over fear that the building could be ransacked, in an echo of the attack on the Israeli Embassy in Cairo last week.

Paul Hirschson, a deputy spokesman at the Israeli Foreign Ministry, said that most of the diplomats in Jordan, including the ambassador, had been due to spend the weekend in Israel anyway, and that they had left Jordan a few hours earlier than they normally would have.

“Nothing has been evacuated,” Mr. Hirschson said. “We are watching what is going on.”

The weekend staff remains in Jordan, though Israeli officials would not comment on specifics — who was staying or whether they remained inside the embassy or not.

The embassy would normally close on Thursday after office hours and reopen on Sunday. Mr. Hirschson said he expected the ambassador and all staff members to be back by Sunday.

The demonstration has been called for 6.30 p.m., when the building would be mostly empty.

Earlier, Israel’s Haaretz newspaper and other Israeli news media had reported that a convoy carrying the Israeli diplomats had left Jordan overnight for Israel.

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Tony Judt: Israel is a country fast losing touch with reality

On July 6, 2010, a month before Tony Judt died and shortly after Israel’s deadly attack on the Mavi Marmara, he was interviewed by Merav Michaeli, a columnist for Ha’aretz.

Merav Michaeli: How do you see Israel’s actions in the Flotilla affair?

Tony Judt: The characterization that comes to mind is “autistic.” Israel behaved in a way that suggests it is no longer fully able to estimate, assess or understand the way other people think about it. Even if you supported the blockade (I don’t) this would be an almost exemplary case of shooting oneself in a painful part of the anatomy.

Firstly because it alienates Turkey, who Israel needs in the longer run. Secondly because it was undertaken in international waters and largely at the expense of civilian victims. Thirdly because it was an overreaction. Fourthly because it had the predictable effect of weakening the case for a blockade rather than strengthening it.

In short, this is the action of a country which is fast losing touch with reality.

Michaeli: The raid on the flotilla was far from being the worst of Israel’s behavior over 40 years of occupation, yet the international response to it was the most grievous. Why do you think that is?

Judt: I agree. But what happens in small West Bank towns, in the Israeli Parliament, in Gazan schools or in Lebanese farms is invisible to the world. And Israel was always very good at presenting the argument from “self-defense” even when it was absurd. I think that Israel’s successful defiance of international law for so long has made Jerusalem blind and deaf to the seriousness with which the rest of the world takes the matter.

Finally there is the question of cumulation. From the Six Day War to Lebanon, from Lebanon to the settlements, from the settlements to Gaza, Israel’s credibility has steadily fallen – even as the world’s distance from Auschwitz (the favorite excuse) has lengthened. So Israel is far more vulnerable today than it would have been twenty five years ago.

Michaeli: What do you tell those who say Israel has willingly withdrawn from Gaza and everything that has happened since proves the Israeli claim that there’s no partner for an agreement?

Judt: I tell them that they are talking nonsense, or else prevaricating. Israel withdrew from Gaza but has put it under a punishment regime comparable to nothing else in the world. That is not withdrawal. And of course we all know that there are those who would like to give Palestinians “independence” but exclude Gaza from the privilege. That too was part of the purpose of the withdrawal.

There is a partner. It may not be very nice and it may not be very easy. It’s called Hamas. In the same way the provisional [Irish Republican Army] was the only realistic “partner for peace” with whom London could negotiate; Nelson Mandela (a “terrorist” for the Afrikaaners until his release) was the only realistic “partner for peace”; the same was true of “that terrorist” ([according to Winston] Churchill) Gandhi; the well-known “murderous terrorist” Jomo Kenyatta with whom London fought a murderous war for five years before he became “a great statesman”; not to mention Algeria. The irony is that Washington knows this perfectly well and expects negotiations with Hamas within five years. After all, Israel virtually invented Hamas in the hope of undermining the PLO; well, they succeeded. But they are the only ones who can’t see what has to happen.

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