http://weeklystandard.com/articles/future-illusionA piece of paper will not bring peace to the Middle East

The Future of an Illusion
BY Elliott Abrams
The Weekly Standard
April 5 - April 12, 2010, Vol. 15, No. 28


Those who cannot remember the past are condemned, it seems, to direct the Middle East policy of the Obama administration.

Since the Oslo Accords of 1993, 17 years of efforts under three American presidents and six Israeli prime ministers have taught five clear lessons. Each of them is being ignored by President Obama, which is why his own particular "peace process" has so greatly harmed real efforts at peace. Today the only factor uniting Palestinian, Israeli, and Arab leaders is distrust of the quality, sagacity, and reliability of American leadership in the region.

The patching-up efforts of the last two weeks were impressive, but perversely: They showed how much damage had been done and how little the administration cares about reversing it. Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, against whom Obama was said to be "boiling with rage" after the Jerusalem housing announcement, got the complete slate of Washington meetings: Clinton, Gates, Biden, Obama. But the meetings were virtually secret: The White House did not permit a single photo to be taken of the Oval Office session, an unprecedented snub. Same at State: no ceremony, no press conference.

For her part, Secretary Clinton told the giant AIPAC meeting, "Our credibility in this process depends in part on our willingness to praise both sides when they are courageous, and when we don't agree, to say so, and say so unequivocally." Several recent Palestinian actions, she said, were "provocations" that are "wrong and must be condemned." That was nice, but saying it to a Jewish audience in a kiss-and-make-up session in Washington fools no one, not after her famous 43-minute telephone call to Netanyahu. These "provocations .  .  . that must be condemned" (note the passive voice) did not after all elicit a timely call to Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas condemning them, nor did she use the Quartet meeting in Moscow on March 19 for that purpose. And general administration protestations that the United States is committed to Israel's security and that relations are "rock solid" now carry little persuasive power; they sound like Obama's (and for that matter Clinton's) campaign rhetoric, and everyone knows how useful a guide to administration policy all of that proved to be.

What are the lessons the Obama team is ignoring?


1. Israel's flexibility is dependent on its sense of security.

Martin Indyk, Bill Clinton's ambassador to Israel, put it this way in his memoirs: "The record .  .  . suggests that American presidents can be more successful when they put their arms around Israeli prime ministers and encourage them to move forward, rather than attempt to browbeat them into submission." During the George W. Bush years, the leader of the Israeli right, Ariel Sharon, decided to abandon the idea of a "Greater Israel," impose constraints on settlement construction in the West Bank (no new settlements, no outward expansion of settlement territory), and remove every settlement in Gaza and four small ones in the West Bank. His closest advisers say all of this was possible for him only in the context of unwavering American support for Israel's security steps—including the targeting and killing of Hamas terrorists and the refusal to deal with a terrorist leader like Arafat. What was the turning point for Sharon? Bush's June 24, 2002, speech, where he abandoned Arafat, denounced Palestinian terrorism, and said thorough reforms were the only possible basis for Palestinian statehood. Reassured, Sharon began to act.

Contrast this with the Obama administration, where Israel has been "condemned"—the toughest word in the diplomatic dictionary—for a housing project. Instead of seeking practical and politically feasible limits to settlement activity, the Obama approach has been to say every brick cemented to another was "illegitimate."

Israelis know that these American denunciations of Israel liberate Europeans and others to crank up their own, and so it has been this past year: Israel has been increasingly isolated and criticized internationally. Once we used "condemn," it was impossible (even if we were trying, which we were not) to keep it out of Quartet and EU statements. Add a few other international assaults (the Goldstone Report on the Gaza war, for instance) and American acts of distancing (the president visits Cairo and Riyadh but skips Israel, for example), and Israelis are in no mood for additional risktaking. Who, after all, will have their back if things get rough? Hillary Clinton told AIPAC that "the status quo is unsustainable," as if just about anything we can get on paper would be better. Such phrases do not inspire Israeli confidence that their country's security is anywhere near the top of the administration's list. All this should be elementary, but it seems to have escaped the Obama White House.

2. The failure to set standards for Palestinian conduct hurts the cause of peace.

In the Bill Clinton years, the foreign leader who visited the White House most often was Yasser Arafat—13 times. Who can blame Arafat for failing to take seriously criticism of his "alleged links" to terrorism when the invitations kept on coming? For years, American officials of both parties have said the "incitement must end," but they have imposed no penalty for its failure to end. When in March the Palestinian Authority (PA) named a square for a terrorist involved in an attack in 1978 that killed 38 Israelis, including 13 children, Obama, Biden, and Clinton were silent. Lower-ranking officials tut-tutted. In Palestinian society, the veneration of this terrorist, Dalal Mughrabi, is widespread; Fatah, not Hamas, is the one celebrating Mughrabi. PA radio and television incite hatred of Israel and Jews with regularity, as Palestinian Media Watch and MEMRI document every month.

[Chaim T: Ha anyone noticed that it was Hamas, and not Fatah that Hillary Clinton credited with the naming of the square? Either she is woefully misinformed (highly doubtful, given her position), or she was straight out lying, for political motives. What do you think?]

In recent weeks the Obama administration has stated that both sides have responsibilities to meet, but it made no serious demands of the PA. Had there been early and regular insistence that incitement end, the Mughrabi incident would never have taken place. The price for such negligence is being paid in both Israeli and Palestinian society: Every such action and every vicious broadcast helps persuade Israelis that Palestinians do not truly seek peace and helps raise a new generation of Palestinians who see Jews as enemies to hate, not neighbors with whom to reach an accommodation. This infantilization of Palestinian society, moreover, moves it further from the responsibilities of statehood, for it holds harmless the most destructive elements of West Bank life and suggests that standards of decency are not necessarily part of progress toward "peace."

A tough demand that all the incitement end now—no more terrorist squares, a clean-up of Palestinian broadcasting, the replacement of offending school textbooks—would both help Palestinian moderates undertake these actions and reassure Israelis that President Obama shares at least some of their concerns about the ability of Palestinians to negotiate and sustain a peace deal. The silence thus far, the unconvincing and rote handling of this issue, leaves the impression that Obama simply wants a deal signed and doesn't much care about what happens after that. Like his distancing himself from Israel and his apparent lack of concern for Israeli security, this undermines any chance of successful peace talks.


3. Israeli withdrawals do not lead to peace unless law and order can be maintained by responsible security forces.

Israelis learned this the hard way in South Lebanon and Gaza, and it is unquestionably the greatest factor leading them to oppose a similar withdrawal from the West Bank. The Labor party leader Ehud Barak is not viewed in Israel as a hardliner; when he was prime minister he offered Arafat a dramatic peace proposal in 2000. But when, as defense minister, he met with President Bush in 2008 he handed over, and raised repeatedly in later meetings with Secretary Rice, a list of Israel's security needs in the West Bank. He and Netanyahu (and the vast majority of Israelis) are of one mind on this: Terrorism from Gaza is a security challenge for Israel, but terrorism from the West Bank threatens Israel's survival. There has been considerable progress in training Palestinian security forces, but no one believes they can yet maintain order without the presence of the IDF and Shin Bet. Those who say, as George Mitchell—Obama's special envoy to the Middle East—and the Quartet have, that there can be a peace deal in 24 months are saying that fundamental security issues can be finessed or forgotten. Of course they can if your goal is a piece of paper—or, perhaps better put, a paper peace. If you want a real and lasting peace, you must have the answer to the question: What will fill the vacuum when Israeli forces leave? Today the answer is chaos or Hamas, and any prediction that in 24 months these matters will be resolved shows a lack of seriousness. Palestinians who value law and order and seek to build a decent society, as well as Jordanians who worry what forces will be across the river from them, cannot be so cavalier. This brings us back to lesson one: If the United States is intent on a deal in 24 months no matter what, Israelis will understand that we are not going to protect their security and that we'll complain when they assert the need to do it themselves.

4. The Israeli-Palestinian dispute is not the center of world, Arab, or Muslim politics.

George Mitchell once acknowledged that when he talks to Arab leaders they raise Iran first, but no one in the administration wants to allow mere facts to interfere with their ideology. George W. Bush was as close as any American president ever has been to Israel, but had excellent relations with the Moroccan, Algerian, Emirati, Omani, Bahraini, Kuwaiti, Saudi, and Jordanian rulers—all except the Egyptians, who were annoyed that he thought they should have free elections. Paying attention to what Arab political leaders say publicly about Israel is foolish, for their real views consist of tough-minded assessments of the balance of power in the region. What they want most of all is calm; they do not want their streets riled up by Israeli-Palestinian violence. Palestinians are not at the center of their hearts or they would visit the West Bank and bring plenty of cash with them. What preoccupies them is survival and Iran. If they take any lesson from the current coldness between the United States and Israel, it is that the United States is not a reliable ally. If we can ditch Israel, they know we can far more easily ditch them.

The most perverse misunderstanding along these lines is the thought that supporting Israel is risking American lives in Iraq and Afghanistan and in the war on terror. Vice President Biden is reported to have told Netanyahu that "this is starting to get dangerous for us. What you're doing here undermines the security of our troops who are fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan." White House denials suggest that the quotation is not exact, but there has also been no flat-out denial of the sentiment. David Axelrod, the political hack who appears to be a key foreign policy strategist and spokesman for the president, was asked on one of the Sunday shows if he agreed that settlement construction puts U.S. troops' lives at risk. He replied, "It is important for our own security that we move forward and resolve this very difficult issue." Not exactly a resounding "no." General David Petraeus, the CENTCOM commander, told the Senate that "clearly the tensions in these issues have an enormous effect on the strategic context in which we operate in the Central Command area of responsibility." Once again, not a "No way" or a "Get real." Petraeus had a chance to say the Pakistanis are not thinking hard about West Bank settlement construction when they watch the Taliban and developments in Waziristan, and he failed to do so then or in later explanations. How hard would it have been for him or some other official to remind everyone that Osama bin Laden became a terrorist to overthrow the government in Riyadh, not the one in Jerusalem? The struggles between modernizers and traditionalists, Sunni and Shia, secularists and Islamists are tearing the Islamic and the Arab world apart. They would continue to do so if Israel no longer existed.

Israelis listening to official American remarks hear an amateurish interpretation of Arab politics, which as Lee Smith reminded us in his recent book (quoting bin Laden himself) is basically about backing the strong horse. Arab leaders want to know what we will do to stop Iran; they want to know if their ally in Washington is going to be the top power in the region. Israelis wonder where the "uh oh, this will make Islamic extremists angry" argument stops. Does anyone think al Qaeda or the Taliban would be mollified by a settlement freeze? The Islamists are not interested in "1967 issues" related to Israel's size, but in "1948 issues" related to Israel's existence. If henceforth we mean to engage such people rather than to defeat them, Israel's existence—not its settlement policy—comes into play.

If this is not the Obama view of the world, the administration should say so quickly and very clearly. Otherwise his administration can fairly be said to be revisiting our own "1948 issues." The argument that Israel would be a great burden and ruin our place in the Arab world was proffered then by George Marshall—and rejected by Harry Truman. In his memoirs, Clark Clifford wrote at length about the State Department's efforts to stop -Truman from recognizing the new State of Israel. Clifford quoted Marshall's deputy Robert Lovett as saying on May 14, 1948—the day Israel declared its independence and Truman offered recognition—"There will be a tremendous reaction in the Arab world. We might lose the effects of many years of hard work with the Arabs. We will lose our position with Arab leaders. It will put our diplomatic missions and consular representatives in personal jeopardy." After 60 years of American leadership and military dominance in the Middle East, it should be as disturbing to Americans—not least to Democrats who venerate -Truman—as it is to Israelis that traces of this approach are emerging again in Washington.

Netanyahu answered these poor arguments in his address to AIPAC:

Our soldiers and your soldiers fight against fanatic enemies that loathe our common values. In the eyes of these fanatics, we are you and you are us. To them, the only difference is that you are big and we are small, you are the Great Satan and we are the Little Satan.


5. The `peace process'retards peace.

A single-minded concentration on "the peace process" hurts the cause of peace and moderation throughout the region and does little to build the necessary institutions of Palestinian society. It's obvious that nearly two decades of negotiations have not produced peace. Instead this focus has had two deleterious effects.

First, it means we care more about getting Syria, Egypt, or others to endorse some negotiating plan than we do about their own internal situations. The people, the politics, the alliances of such countries become unimportant, as we focus on whether their rulers will deign to sit at some table we've laid. Human rights and democracy issues evaporate.

Second, we use all our chips for the negotiating sessions, instead of applying them to the hard work of nation building. We ask Arab states to reach out to Israel (which they will not do) when we should be demanding that they reach out to the Palestinians (which they might). We explode, and damage U.S.-Israeli relations, over a tiny construction announcement because it might slow "proximity talks" Mitchell has cooked up. We use American influence with Israel not to promote economic growth in the West Bank, but to try and impede Jewish (never Arab) construction in Israel's capital city. This set of priorities is perverse and will not lead to peace. Instead, a pragmatic approach that seeks to create in the West Bank a decent society and a state that will maintain law and order should be our goals.

The last week of March brought talk of "reconciliation" between the Obama administration and the government of Israel. Relations are so strained that we, too, appear to need our own set of "proximity talks" now. But reconciliation is not a simple matter, as the Catholic Church knows. In that faith, it is a sacrament consisting of three elements: conversion, confession, and celebration. Conversion is the internal realization of wrongdoing, confession is the external admission of it, and celebration follows when (and only when) the sinner has converted, repented, confessed, and returned. Given the Obama administration's view of Israel and the Middle East, celebration seems a long way off.

--------------------------------
Elliott Abrams is a senior fellow for Middle East studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.

--
Before you speak, think -Is it necessary? Is it true? Is it kind? Will it hurt anyone? Will it improve on the silence?"— Sathya Sai Baba, (1926 - )

Muslims Won't Play Together

 

By EFRAIM KARSH

Published: February 27, 2010

London

Otto

WE may scoff at the idea that the Olympic Games have anything to do with the "endeavor to place sport at the service of humanity and thereby to promote peace," as the Olympic charter enshrines as its ideal. But at least nations across the world were able to put aside differences for two weeks of friendly competition in Vancouver.

A mundane achievement, perhaps, but it's one that's beyond the grasp of the Islamic world. The Islamic Solidarity Games, the Olympics of the Muslim world, which were to be held in Iran in April, have been called off by the Arab states because Tehran inscribed "Persian Gulf" on the tournament's official logo and medals.

It's a small but telling controversy. It puts the lie to the idea of the Islamic world as a bloc united by religious values that are hostile to the West. It also gives clues as to how the United States and its allies should handle two of their most urgent foreign policy matters: the Iranian nuclear program and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

This is not the first time that Arabs have challenged the internationally accepted name of the waterway that separates Persia (or Iran, as it has been called since 1935) from the Arabian Peninsula. Pan-Arabist thought — which dominated Arab political life for most of the 20th century — insisted on the creation of a unified vast empire "from the Atlantic Ocean to the Arab Gulf," provoking sharp confrontations with Iran since the late 1960s.

The Islamic regime in Tehran, which came to power in 1979 dismissing nationalism as an imperialist plot aimed at weakening the worldwide Muslim community (or umma), initially displayed less interest in the gulf's Persian identity than in the spread of its Islamist message. "The Iranian revolution is not exclusively that of Iran, because Islam does not belong to any particular people," insisted Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. "The struggle will continue until the calls 'there is no god but Allah and Muhammad is the messenger of Allah' are echoed all over the world."

Yet like Stalin, who responded to the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 by urging his people to fight for the motherland rather than for the Communist ideals with which they had been indoctrinated, Khomeini reverted to nationalist rhetoric to rally his subjects after the Iraqi invasion of 1980. He also used the war to justify a string of military and diplomatic actions against the smaller Arab states like Qatar and Kuwait aimed at asserting Iran's supremacy in the gulf.

In this history of a single body of water, one sees a perfect example of the so-called Islamic Paradox that dates from the seventh century. For although the Prophet Muhammad took great pains to underscore the equality of all believers regardless of ethnicity, categorically forbidding any fighting among the believers, his precepts have been constantly and blatantly violated.

It took a mere 24 years after the Prophet's death for the head of the universal Islamic community, the caliph Uthman, to be murdered by political rivals. This opened the floodgates to incessant infighting within the House of Islam, which has never ceased. Likewise, there has been no overarching Islamic solidarity transcending the multitude of parochial loyalties — to one's clan, tribe, village, family or nation. Thus, for example, not only do Arabs consider themselves superior to all other Muslims, but inhabitants of Hijaz, the northwestern part of the Arabian Peninsula and Islam's birthplace, regard themselves the only true Arabs, and tend to be highly disparaging of all other Arabic-speaking communities.

Nor, for that matter, has the House of Islam ever formed a unified front vis-à-vis the House of War (as Muslims call the rest of the world). Even during the Crusades, the supposed height of the "clash of civilizations," Christian and Muslim rulers freely collaborated across the religious divide, often finding themselves aligned with members of the rival religion against their co-religionists. While the legendary Saladin himself was busy eradicating the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, for example, he was closely aligned with the Byzantine Empire, the foremost representative of Christendom's claim to universalism.

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Efraim Karsh, the head of Middle East and Mediterranean studies at King's College London, is the author of "Islamic Imperialism: A History" and the forthcoming "Palestine Betrayed."

Wrongheaded Obama's policy.... it will backfire on the US and the free world, not only Israel and region.

 

Reports: Netanyahu 'Humiliated' by Obama Snub

Times of London

According to Israeli reports, Obama walked out of his meeting with the prime minister for a private dinner.

 

  

AP

Mar. 22: Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addresses the American Israel Public Affairs Committee Policy Conference dinner in Washington.

For a head of government to visit the White House and not pose for photographers is rare. For a key ally to be left to his own devices while the President withdraws to have dinner in private was, until this week, unheard of. Yet that is how Benjamin Netanyahu was treated by President Obama on Tuesday night, according to Israeli reports on a trip viewed in Jerusalem as a humiliation.

After failing to extract a written promise of concessions on settlements, Obama walked out of his meeting with Netanyahu but invited him to stay at the White House, consult with advisers and "let me know if there is anything new", a U.S. congressman, who spoke to the Prime Minister, said.

"It was awful," the congressman said. One Israeli newspaper called the meeting "a hazing in stages", poisoned by such mistrust that the Israeli delegation eventually left rather than risk being eavesdropped on a White House telephone line. Another said that the Prime Minister had received "the treatment reserved for the President of Equatorial Guinea".

Left to talk among themselves Netanyahu and his aides retreated to the Roosevelt Room. He spent a further half-hour with Obama and extended his stay for a day of emergency talks to try to restart peace negotiations. However, he left last night with no official statement from either side. He returned to Israel yesterday isolated after what Israeli media have called a White House ambush for which he is largely to blame.

Sources said that Netanyahu failed to impress Obama with a flow chart purporting to show that he was not responsible for the timing of announcements of new settlement projects in east Jerusalem. Obama was said to be livid when such an announcement derailed the visit to Israel by Joe Biden, the Vice-President, this month and his anger towards Israel does not appear to have cooled.

Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, cast doubt on minor details in Israeli accounts of the meeting but did not deny claims that it amounted to a dressing down for the Prime Minister, whose refusal to freeze settlements is seen in Washington as the main barrier to resuming peace talks.

Continue reading at The Times of London

Confessions of a Zionist soldier:

Yoav, an Israeli soldier, writes about army life...

With great power comes great responsibility

This post actually relates to an event that took place more than a year ago, soon after I was drafted to the IDF and began my mandatory service.

You see, as a kid, I've always been such a big fan of action films, especially the ones with the big explosions. And what's exactly the essence of action movies (beside the tough hero and the beautiful girl...)? That's right - guns. Big guns.

I mean, pretty much all of the kids worldwide are really enthusiastic about guns - they buy gun-like toys, they play outdoors pretending they shoot one another (while making funny noises), watch action films and playing video games. I was no different.

When I was 14, I remember having this conversation with my grandfather. "When I'll be in the army I'll fight all of the bad guys and let'em have it!" I said. I remember imagining myself jumping and shooting at the battlefield, completely unaware of danger and not even acknowledging the feeling of fear. "I wish we won't need the army when it's time for you to join it" he answered. Classic answer...

Few years went by, I turned 18, finished high school, and it was my time. Soon after we began the basic training, they told us that we're going to get guns - M16 automatic assault rifles. And although I already wasn't as excited about it as I was at the age of 14, I couldn't believe what I felt as my commander took the rifle from the armory guy and gave it to me: I was completely shocked and my stomach rolled over.

 

Continued: With great power comes great responsibility

An Israeli diplomat expelled? But look who the British government won't get rid of !!

Wednesday, March 24, 2010

An Israeli diplomat expelled? But look who the British government won't get rid of !!

The following article from the Daily Telegraph UK is reprinted in its entirety to illustrate the hypocracy of the UK government

By Douglas Murray : March 23rd, 2010

So the British government has decided to expel an Israeli diplomat over the alleged forging of British passports relating to the assassination of a Hamas terrorist in Dubai on January 20.

We are told that the British government believes British passport holders would be at risk as a result of the assassination of the Hamas terrorist.

So it is interesting to record just some of the people whom the British government will not expel and who it must therefore believe pose no threat whatsoever to British passport holders.

Abu Qatada: known as Osama bin Laden's ambassador to Europe. He has been in London since 1993. He came here on a forged UAE passport. In 1999 he was convicted in absentia in Jordan for conspiracy to cause explosions, relating to an attempted bomb attack on an American school and a car bomb explosion outside an Amman hotel that was frequented by tourists in 1998. He was also convicted in absentia of conspiracy to cause explosions at Western and Israeli targets in Jordan, to coincide with the millennium New Year celebrations.

Farj Hassan al-Saadi: entered the UK illegally in March 2002. He was added to the United Nations Sanctions Committee's permanent register of al-Qaeda and Taliban members in November 2003. The Special Immigration Appeals Commission ruled that his cell 'clearly was a group of men with extremist Islamist views supportive of violence against the West which had been acting together for some time in the ways we have set out including recruiting for Al Qaeda, raising money for terrorist activities and obtaining false documents for that purpose. This group can properly be regarded as a serious terrorist group' and al-Saadi was 'a highly respected member of the group and that he may well have been its leader for a while'. On 7 February 2008, he was found guilty in absentia in Italy of belonging to a terrorist group and being part of a terrorism plot in 2002. At the trial, he was described as the 'European envoy' of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the head of al-Qaeda in Iraq.

Ismail Kamoka: a member of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group who arrived in the UK in November 1994 from Saudi Arabia, claiming asylum. His claim was based on the fact that he could not return to Libya because he belonged to a group there which aimed to overthrow the government and replace it with an Islamist one. When attempting to claim asylum in the UK he said he had been to Pakistan in 1992 to take part in jihad against communists in Afghanistan. Despite having his asylum claim refused, he was not removed from the UK as it was deemed unsafe for him to return to Libya. He was granted leave to remain in the UK in November 1999. On 21 November 2002 Kamoka was arrested while trying to travel to Iran from London Heathrow. On 23 November he was detained under Section 21 of the Anti-Terrorism Crime and Security Act 2001 and was recommended for deportation. He successfully appealed this to the SIAC in 8 March 2004, as they were unconvinced that Kamoka was linked to al-Qaeda and had knowingly supported extremists linked to al-Qaeda. He was released on 18 March 2004 following a failed government appeal against the decision. In June 2007, he was convicted in the UK of terrorist offences.

I for one am deeply grateful to the UK government for their sudden concern for the sanctity of UK passports and the security of UK passport holders. Though it may be a little late in the day, has the Government thought about turning this concern towards people who actually are terrorists?

How on earth these people can be "peace partners" with Israel?

 

Abbas turns 3 latest terrorists into Palestinian heroes by Itamar Marcus and Barbara Crook Dec. 29, 2009

Rabbi Meir Avshalom Hai - a 45-year old Israeli and father of seven children - was killed in a drive-by shooting last Thursday. The Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, part of Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah movement, took responsibility for the killing. On Friday night, Israeli forces located and killed three of the terrorists involved in the attack. The fourth surrendered to the PA police. The response of the PA has been unequivocal support and backing for the terrorists. Since Friday, the leadership of the PA, the heads of Fatah, the heads of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades and the PA-controlled media have continuously portrayed the killers as Palestinian heroes and Shahids -- holy Martyrs -- while describing Israel's killing of the three terrorists as "murder in cold blood" and "assassination." PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas declared the killers "Shahids" (holy Martyrs) and sent his personal emissary to visit the families: "Secretary General of the President's Bureau, Tayeb Abd Al-Rahim, conveyed condolences on behalf of President Mahmoud Abbas to the residents of Nablus and to the families of the three Shahids [Martyrs] for the Martyrdom of their sons, who were assassinated by Israeli occupation forces yesterday morning. He conveyed to the fighting families letters of condolences from the President [Abbas] and updated them as to [Abbas's] decision to declare them as Shahids [Martyrs] of the Palestinian revolution..." Tayeb Abd Al-Rahim: "Without doubt, what the [Israeli] occupation authorities have carried out is a wild and barbaric act and a deliberate, malicious assassination in cold blood." [PA TV (Fatah) News, Dec. 27, 2009] PA Prime Minister Salam Fayyad went even further, personally visiting the families of the terrorists along with other senior PA officials. "Prime Minister visits Nablus and conveys condolences to the families of the Shahids (Martyrs). Prime Minister Dr. Salam Fayyad today visited the city of Nablus in the wake of the Israeli military operation, and presented condolences to the families of the three Martyrs who were murdered by the occupation forces. Dr. Fayyad was accompanied by Internal Affairs Minister Dr. Said Abu Ali, leaders of the security agencies, and Police Director-General Major General Hazem Atallah, and they visited the house of mourning, which was held in the Trade Unions compound in the city... The Prime Minister condemned the Israeli military operation in the city." [WAFA news agency, Dec. 26, 2009]   The Fatah movement is glorifying the terrorists: "Mahmoud Al-Aloul, member of the Fatah Central Committee, said that the occupation murdered these three young men as well as another three in Gaza, in cold blood. He described them as '[military] commanders, brave heroes, and fighters.'" [Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Dec. 27, 2009] PA TV focused on the Fatah poster (above), signed with condolences of PA Chairman Abbas, honoring the three terrorists. The following is the text on the poster with pictures of the terrorists: "With honor and admiration to those who are more honored than all of us."  [Reference to supreme honor of Shahids - Martyrs in Islam] "The Palestine Liberation Organization, Fatah, accompanies to their wedding:" [Reference to Islamic belief that Martyrs marry virgins in Paradise]   The Martyr, Commander, Hero: Rassan Abu Serah The Martyr, Commander, Hero: Ra'ed Al Aschregi The Martyr, Commander, Hero: Anan Sobh   The Director General of the Presidency expresses condolences to the Nablus Martyrs - in the name of the President [Abbas] It's important to note that in condemning Israel's killing of the terrorists, the PA is not denying that those killed were responsible for the murder of Rabbi Hai: "The Shahid Imad Mughniyeh group [named after Hezbollah terrorist] of the [Fatah's] Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades has denounced the [Israeli] crime of the assassination in Nablus, killing three Fatah activists, including Anan Sobh, who, according to the [Fatah's Al-Aqsa] Brigades, planned the Tulkarem operation which led to the death of the settler in a shooting operation." [Ma'an News Agency, Dec. 26, 2009] In the official announcement right after the terror attack, Fatah took responsibility, while calling the killers "Jihad Fighters" and warning of more "quality operations": "A group announcing that it belonged to the Fatah's Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades claimed responsibility for the shooting... 'The Jihad Fighters confirmed that the person who was in the car had taken a direct hit, and praise to Allah - the Jihad Fighters escaped unharmed...' The announcement said that 'this action is part of a series of operations; you can expect more quality operations [terror attacks] from us.'" [Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Dec. 25, 2009] After the terrorists were killed, Fatah changed from threatening more "quality operations" to warning that it would avenge the killing of the "Jihad Fighters": Headline: "The occupation murders three residents of Nablus in cold blood... the President's [Abbas's] Bureau denounces the Israeli crime..." "The [Fatah's] Al-Aqsa Brigades announced: 'By the act of murdering an elite group of our Jihad Fighters in Nablus and in Gaza, the occupation is opening for itself the gates of Hell.' They threatened that 'our activists will not stand idly by while the blood of Jihad Fighters is spilled... The enemy will hear nothing from us but the language of blood and fire, and our Shahada [Martyrdom] Seekers will go out to [the enemy] from every place in order to turn his days into nights, and he will come to regret his crime. We shall not sleep over the blood of our Jihad Fighters, and our response will be swift... We affirm the continuation of our choice of blood and Martyrdom. The only choice, in the face of the repeated attacks against our people in the towns and villages and refugee camps of the occupied homeland. We shall turn the spilled blood of the Martyrs and the commanders into a torch of fury that will burn the forces of evil and aggression.'' [Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Dec. 27, 2009]

 

 

 

Hillary Clinton has a selective way of getting insulted.

The Jerusalem Syndrome
by Emmanuel Navon
Tuesday Mar 16, 2010
The Jerusalem Post

Hillary Clinton has a selective way of getting insulted. When Assad received Ahmadinejad in Damascus after the US had sent a new ambassador there, Clinton asked for an explanation and was told to mind her own business. But when the Israeli Housing Ministry announced the construction of additional homes in an existing Jewish neighborhood of Jerusalem, Clinton couldn't take it.

The reaction of the international community to the "Ramat Shlomo" affair reveals double-standards, one-sidedness and an ignorance of historical facts.

Double-standards, because in the attempts to rebuild confidence between Israel and the Palestinians, only Israel is expected not to "provoke" the other side. The Palestinians, for their part, get away with everything. True, Biden asked the PA to cancel the inauguration of a square named after Dalal Mughrabi. But the inauguration was only pushed off and the fact is that you did not hear Hillary Clinton or Catherine Ashton scold the Palestinians about this provocation.

Mughrabi led one of the most horrendous terror attacks in Israel's history, perpetrated on 11 March 1978, when she and other terrorists hijacked a bus and killed 37 civilians. In December 2009, PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas decided to sponsor a ceremony celebrating the 50th anniversary of Mughrabi's birth. A few months before, Abbas inaugurated a computer center named after Mughrabi. On 11 March 2009, PA television called Mughrabi and her accomplices "heroes." This year, the PA has planned on marking the 11 March event by naming a new square after Mughrabi. Biden happened to be in town on March 11, and so he asked Abbas to spare him the embarrassment (Israel shot itself in the foot by taking care of that).

How exactly is peace supposed to prevail between Israel and the Palestinians if the Palestinian leadership teaches its children that murdering innocent Israeli civilians is an act of heroism worthy of praise? If both Israel and the Palestinians are expected to show that they are sincere about peace, why do the Palestinians get away with teaching their children that killing Israelis is praiseworthy while Israel gets publicly scolded for adding a few apartments to an existing neighborhood that would anyways remain within Israel's jurisdiction in the framework of a peace agreement?

Then there is one-sidedness. By subscribing to the position that Israel is not entitled to build in the Ramat Shlomo neighborhood, the international community is siding with the Palestinians. East Jerusalem is not an occupied territory. When the British withdrew from their mandate on Palestine in May 1948, they left a legal vacuum behind them. The United Nations General Assembly resolution from November 1947 had recommended that Jerusalem be a corpus separatum, but this resolution (being a General Assembly resolution) was not legally binding, and was rejected by the Arabs anyway. With the signing of the 1949 armistice agreements between Israel and the Arab states that initiated the war, Israel became sovereign de facto in the western part of Jerusalem and Jordan in the eastern part.

Jordan's annexation of east Jerusalem was not recognized by the international community (with the exception of Britain and Pakistan). Its sovereignty there was the result of a war of aggression. Israel's sovereignty after June 1967, by contrast, was the result of a war of self-defense. This difference alone, as argued by former International Court of Justice member Judge Stephen Schwebel, makes Israel's rights and case much stronger than Jordan's. Yet Jordan was never dubbed an "occupier" in east Jerusalem, while Israel is.

In order to be considered "occupied" under international law (and in order for the Fourth Geneva Convention to apply), a territory must have been previously a sovereign country or part of a sovereign country. East Jerusalem was never part of a sovereign country in modern times. Either you consider Jordan's 1949 annexation as illegal and illegitimate, meaning Israel did not conquer sovereign land in 1967, or you do consider Jordan's 1949 annexation as legal and legitimate, meaning Israel's 1967 annexation is even more so since it was the result of a war of self-defense and not of aggression.

It is precisely because Israel did not conquer a sovereign country or part of a sovereign country when it entered the West Bank in 1967, and because Israel crossed an armistice line and not a border, that UN Security Council Resolution 242 calls for an Israeli withdrawal "from territories" (as opposed to "from the territories") conquered during the war, in the framework of a negotiated peace agreement. The Arab position is that Israel must withdraw from "all the territories" and that east Jerusalem is an occupied territory. Israel contests that position on firm legal and historical grounds. By calling Israel's building activities in east Jerusalem "illegal" and "illegitimate" (as opposed to calling the timing of the "Ramat Shlomo" announcement unfortunate), the international community is siding with the Arab position regarding Jerusalem and Resolution 242, and is dismissing Israel's position. In simple English, this is called one-sidedness.

The third and last issue is the ignorance of historical facts. The Economist recently ran an article on Jerusalem ("A city that should be shared," March 6, 2010) that completely ignores the desecration of non-Muslim sites by Jordan and by the PA, and which fails to mention why no agreement was reached on Jerusalem during the 2000 Camp David Summit. When east Jerusalem was under Jordanian control between 1949 and 1967, Jews were not allowed to pray at the Western Wall; fifty-eight synagogues and Jewish schools were destroyed in the Old City; and the Jewish cemetery of the Mount of Olives was systematically desecrated. After the PA gained control over the Waqf from Jordan in 1996, it engaged in acts of archeological vandalism under the Temple Mount, trying to erase any remnants of the two Jerusalem Temples.

The PA built two huge mosques under the Temple Mount: one in 1996 (the "Solomon's Stables" mosque), and one in 1999 (the "Al-Aqsa Al-Qadim" mosque). In both cases, the PA-controlled Wakf removed tens of thousands of tons of archeological rubble containing artifacts dating back to the First Temple period. The PA has also desecrated and partially destroyed the Tomb of Joseph in Nablus and the ancient Jericho synagogue.

By contrast, Israel is on record for preserving the integrity of all the Muslim sites that came under its jurisdiction in 1967 and for guaranteeing freedom of access to Muslim worshipers. In the 1970s and 1980s there was this ceremonial at UNESCO, where Muslim countries would ask the organization to look into Israel's alleged "desecrations" of Muslim sites; but those allegations were systematically rebuffed by UNESCO's own archeological expert (Prof. Raymond Lemaire) who actually praised Israel for its treatment of Muslim religious sites.

This is a strong argument against the division of Jerusalem: Israel is the only country that has shown (and continues to show) respect for Muslim and Christian holy sites, while the Palestinians have destroyed and desecrated (and continue to do so) Jewish and even Christian sites (In April 2002, during Operation Defensive Shield, Palestinian terrorists used the Church of Nativity in Bethlehem as a refuge and committed acts of vandalism there). But there is also the reason why recent attempts to share Jerusalem during peace negotiations have failed: The Palestinians refuse to even recognize Israel's connection to Jewish holy sites.

At Camp David in 2000, the Israeli delegation agreed to share Israel's sovereignty over Jerusalem with a future Palestinian state. The United States even went so far as to suggest Palestinian custodianship over the Temple Mount and full Palestinian sovereignty in the Muslim and Christian quarters of the Old City. The deal faltered only when the Palestinians rejected the American proposal in favor of full Palestinian sovereignty over all parts of Jerusalem conquered by Israel in June 1967, including the Temple Mount itself. To this, then-prime minister Ehud Barak replied that Israel's sovereignty over the Temple Mount was "the Archimedes point of our existence." In response, the Palestinians claimed that no Jewish Temple had ever existed in Jerusalem and denied any connection between Israel and the Temple Mount altogether.

Considering the position of the Palestinian side, further negotiation on the matter of the Temple Mount might have seemed pointless. Nevertheless, even after the failed summit, Israel suggested division of sovereignty over the Temple Mount whereby a future Palestinian state would control the upper level, and Israel the lower one. In December 2000, then-Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben-Ami even offered the Palestinians full and exclusive sovereignty over the Temple Mount (including the lower level), provided merely that the Palestinians recognize the site's holiness to the Jewish people and prevent the destruction of Jewish remnants on the Temple Mount. Yet even that proposal was rejected by the Palestinians.

By applying double-standards to Israel and the Palestinians on the question of confidence building measures, by publicly supporting the Palestinian position and dismissing Israel's on the legal status of Jerusalem, and by ignoring the record of Israel and of the Palestinians regarding the treatment of the holy places of other faiths, the international community is convincing Israel that setting facts on the ground seems indeed to be the only way for Israel to remain sovereign in its capital.