Tobin - Obama’s ’67 Borders Mistake Haunts Talks

Jonathan S. Tobin..
Commentary/Contentions..
29 January '12..



The Palestinian reaction to Israel’s position about West Bank settlement blocs once again demonstrates that rather seeking an agreement that will lead to a Palestinian state, what they are doing is looking for an excuse to avoid ever having to sign a peace deal. Even worse, it is evidence that President Obama’s misguided intervention into the question of future borders last May is still having a harmful effect on the effort to revive negotiations.

The Israeli position in the discussions taking place in Jordan is they want the major settlement blocs (which comprise a tiny portion of the West Bank’s territory but also the vast majority of the more than 250,000 Jews who live there) to be incorporated into Israel as part of a deal. But rather than negotiate this point, the Palestinians have rejected it out of hand and said they won’t talk if the Israelis stick to their position. Israel’s position is compatible even with President Obama’s stand on the issue which allows for territorial swaps that would enable Israel to retain these blocs. But even though the president’s Jewish defenders claim his May 2011 speech merely restated existing policies, the Palestinian interpretation seems to illustrate how damaging his mention of the 1967 lines has been.

But President Obama— There is No Such Thing as ‘Israel’s Pre-1967 Borders’

Jeff Dunetz
bigpeace.com
19 May '11




Today President Obama called for any Israeli/Palestinian peace agreement to be based on the pre-June 1967 borders:

So while the core issues of the conflict must be negotiated, the basis of those negotiations is clear: a viable Palestine, and a secure Israel. The United States believes that negotiations should result in two states, with permanent Palestinian borders with Israel, Jordan, and Egypt, and permanent Israeli borders with Palestine. The borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps, so that secure and recognized borders are established for both states. The Palestinian people must have the right to govern themselves, and reach their potential, in a sovereign and contiguous state.

Forgetting for a moment whether Obama was right or wrong for making that declaration, there is a serious problem with his statement…the pre-June 1967 borders do not exist!

What President Obama refuses to admit is that there is no such thing as pre-1967 borders. That “green line” running through the West Bank is the 1949 Armistice Line. The armistice line was created solely because that’s Israeli and Arab forces stopped fighting at the end of the War of Independence (with some added adjustments in certain sectors). It was if the whistle blew and everyone dropped their gear. That 1949 line, that people call 1967 border, is really only a military line.

But don’t believe me, believe the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan:

Article II of the 1949 Armistice Agreement with the Jordanians explicitly specified that the line that was designated did not compromise any future territorial claims of the two parties, since it had been “dictated by exclusively by military considerations.” Of course the Jordanian rationale for that clause is to allow them to claim territory inside the armistice line for their very own.

Even the “famous” UN Resolution 242 which was passed by the UN Security Council five months after the Six-Day War recognized that the 1949 Armistice line was not supposed to designate final Israeli borders.

(Read full 'But President Obama— There is No Such Thing as ‘Israel’s Pre-1967 Borders’")

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Obama’s Partition Plan: A Trap for Israel

David M. Weinberg
A Citadel Defending Zion
20 May '11

http://davidmweinberg.com/2011/05/20/obamas-partition-plan-a-trap-for-israel/


Over the past twelve hours, most news outlets and commentators have focused on President Barack Obama’s partition plan: the 1949 (or “1967”) armistice lines for Israel and Palestine. This is of course a significant departure from US policy and great achievement for the Palestinians. (Read Robert Satloff’s analysis of this matter).

What may be worse than this, however, is Obama’s suggestion to immediately negotiate borders and security arrangements, and delay discussions on core issues such as Jerusalem and refugees.

This is a trap for Israel!

The very impatient Obama is demanding that the Palestinians “urgently” get a West Bank state without settling the conflict with Israel; a Palestinian state that will not be at peace with Israel.

According to Obama, first Israel withdraws – a “full and phased withdrawal of Israeli military forces” to allow for “a sovereign and contiguous Palestinian state” – then the Palestinians continue to struggle for Jerusalem and refugee return. This, of course, means continuation of the conflict and no real recognition of Israel’s right to exist. It will provide another opportunity for Palestinians to swarm the 1949/1967 lines and to ramp up BDS and lawfare efforts until Israel accepts suicide through refugee “return” or the division of Jerusalem.

This is not a recipe for Israeli-Palestinian peace.

Obama even left open the possibility that the US would support some sort of refugee return! Where was the standard US statement – previously quite clear — that Palestinian refugee rights would have to be satisfied in the context of a Palestinians state or though resettlement elsewhere in the Arab world? Why introduce doubt into what was previously a settled topic and thus allow the Palestinians to continue dreaming of drowning Israel with refugees?

Note also that Obama did not repeat the Quartet’s established stance on Hamas: that it cannot be a partner for peace unless it recognizes Israel, accepts past agreements, and forswears terror. Instead, he mumbled something about how the Fatah reconciliation with Hamas “raises profound and legitimate questions for Israel.”

Apparently the “questions raised” – what a weak formulation for referencing the genocidal Hamas platform regarding Israel! – don’t bother Obama all that much, since he just commanded Israel to facilitate a 1967-borders-state for the Palestinians including Hamas – without an end-of-conflict situation for Israel.

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Rennert: The '1967 border' -- the lie that won't die

Leo Rennert
American Thinker
22 April '11

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2011/04/the_1967_border_the_lie_that_w.html

New York Times and the Washington Post, in their April 22 editions, report that a group of prominent Israeli leftist intellectuals demonstrated in Tel Aviv in support of a Palestinian state based on the "1967 borders."

Except that there was no "border" on Israel's eastern flank from 1948 until 1967 -- only a 1949 armistice line that marked the farthest westward military penetration by Jordan during Israel's War of Independence when half a dozen Arab armies unsuccessfully tried to exterminate the nascent Jewish state.

The 1949 armistice line was never recognized internationally as a "border." Neither of course were Jordan's aggression and illegal occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem since they occurred in flagrant violation of the 1947 UN partition plan to divide British Mandate Palestine between a Jewish state and an Arab state.

But since the Times and the Post espouse the media myth of prior existence of a formal "border" that Israel somehow transgressed in the 1967 Six-Day War, their correspondents keep repeating it, evidently hoping to transmute a historical lie into acceptable contemporary parlance.

Yet, however many times it gets repeated, existence of a 1967 "border" remains an unvarnished lie.

Compounding this lie, the Times and the Post also erase from actual history the fact that during Jordan's illegal 1949-67 occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, including the entire Old City of Jerusalem, Jews were barred from Judaism's holiest sites -- the Western Wall, Temple Mount and Hebron's Cave of the Patriarchs. A return to the 1967 line would deal Jews a similar fate.

The truth, so lacking in the Times and the Post, is that Israel still awaits an eastern "border" that can and will be fixed only as part of a final resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict , as mandated by the UN Security Council in Resolution 242. In the meantime, history and Arab aggression have swept away the 1949 armistice line and, notwithstanding the lie perpetuated by the Times' Isabel Kershner and the Post's Joel Greenberg, a "border" still remains an elusive quest that has yet to reach its final destination.

It is bad enough that Kershner and Greenberg use the news pages of the Times and the Post to beat the drums for a Palestinian state on Palestinian terms; it makes a complete mockery of responsible, objective journalism to inject a demonstrable lie -- a non-existent 1967 "border" to further their agenda.

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Israel must not succumb to false diplomatic alarms

Moshe Arens
haaretz.com
12 April '11

http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/israel-must-not-succumb-to-false-diplomatic-alarms-1.355459

The important thing is to stay calm, not press the panic button, and not listen to those familiar faces who reappear every now and then with a new-old initiative suggesting that Israel announce it is prepared to withdraw to the '67 borders.'

Anyone who has helped design alarms and early warning systems knows the phenomenon of false alarms. They bedevil both the developers and those who are supposed to be protected by the system. The systems being put in place to warn of oncoming "tsunamis" are also affected by this false alarm syndrome. The more sensitive the system, the more likely it is to sound the alarm when there is nothing to actually be alarmed about. Israel has its own tsunami warning system - and it is none other than our defense minister, who has already sounded the alarm.

According to him, Israel will be hit by a political tsunami in September. His warning bell is being echoed by many who demand the government launch a daring initiative before it is too late, before the tsunami hits us. But they have a pleasant surprise awaiting them: Israel will still be here in September, and for many many months to come; it will not be devastated like northern Japan.


States have never been created by UN declarations and never will be. For those who have forgotten, Israel was not created by UN resolution 181 in November 1947, but by David Ben-Gurion's declaration of Israeli independence on May 15, 1948 and by the IDF's ability to take and control the areas of the new state.

A UN declaration, whether at the Security Council or the General Assembly, recognizing a Palestinian state within the borders of the April 1949 armistice lines with Jordan, with Jerusalem as its capital, will be no more effective than Security Council resolution 1701, which prohibited Hezbollah from military operations in southern Lebanon, or General Assembly resolution 3379, which equated Zionism with racism.

If this latest declaration is actually passed, it will merely serve as another reminder of the impotence of the United Nations and its irrelevance when it comes to dealing with international conflicts. The U.S. government must surely be aware of this.

All this brouhaha about the coming tsunami skirts the fundamental issues preventing an agreement between Israel and the Palestinians. Namely, that such an agreement must constitute the end of the conflict, and that the Palestinian signatories to the agreement must be capable of assuring that no acts of terror will be launched from territories that Israel turns over as part of the agreement.

The current Palestinian spokesman, or president if you like, Mahmoud Abbas, is not capable of satisfying either of these conditions. At best, he represents only half of the Palestinians, and regardless of what commitments he undertakes, Hamas and other Islamic jihadists will have plenty of additional claims on Israel even after Abbas signs an agreement. His control over areas in Judea and Samaria is limited at best, and he certainly cannot be relied on to prevent acts of terror against Israel from those areas Israel would withdraw from.

Until the Palestinians get their act together, there seems little chance of reaching an Israeli-Palestinian agreement. That is the sad truth, and no amount of theatrics by Abbas, and maneuvering by the Quartet, the United States and the United Nations, or all of them in concert, will change that. That is what Israeli spokesmen should be explaining to everyone - friends, do-gooders and enemies alike.

And one other point must be made: What they call the 1967 borders are in fact the armistice lines that were agreed on with Jordan in April 1949, an agreement that was violated by Jordan in June 1967. There is nothing sacrosanct about these lines, while many things have changed in the intervening 62 years that cannot be wished away.

The important thing is to stay calm, not press the panic button, and not listen to those familiar faces who reappear every now and then with a new-old initiative suggesting that Israel announce it is prepared to withdraw to the "'67 borders." And to not make any hasty, half-baked statements under the illusion that they will appease those applying pressure on Israel.

At this point, their minds are made up. And such statements will only come to haunt us in the future when the time becomes ripe for proper negotiations with the Palestinians. Only when it is clear that the Israeli government is standing firm on its positions will the pressure on Israel be relaxed.

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The Great Mind Robbery

Marc Prowisor
Yesha Views
05 January '11

It will probably be written in the future that one of the great deceptions of the age was the ruse the Arabs of Israel tried to pull over on the world when they stated they wanted a state of “Palestine” along the 1967 borders or the “Green Line” of Israel. It will be written how they duped most everyone they came in contact with, especially the “Left Wing” Israelis and many Jews of the world. Further more this “Face Book Nation” as called by would be Prime Minister Fayyad, managed to play the fool of the United States, Europe and South America, or at least get them to play along with this deadly practical joke.

The daily headlines are full with the claims and soon to be declared “Palestinian State” within the 1967 borders, yet every Arab you ask in Israel especially in Judea and Samaria will tell you that they mean all of Israel. Look at their virtual Flag, see the T-Shirts, listen to the music, go to the market place and buy a souvenir…they are not talking 1967 borders, they are talking 1920 borders, the same borders that the League of Nations declared to be a Jewish State.

It may also go down as one of the most unifying jokes in history as it seems that “anyone who is anyone” is going along with it, it has become the latest “fashion” from Hollywood to Ivy league campuses and many are going to great lengths to make this dupe appear to have some truth to it.

The international media is full of designer misinformation, while South American nations follow one another declaring their support of this mirage, (I was always wondering if the Nazi’s who ran to South America would affect these nations).

The Core Fallacies

Emmanuel Navon
For the Sake of Zion
26 December '10

Most diplomats and journalists repeat at will that Israel and the Palestinians need to address the “core issues” such as borders and refugees in order to make peace. Yet on both issues, historical and legal fallacies have become the conventional wisdom.

On borders, the conventional wisdom is that Israel must “return to the 1967 borders.” Indeed, the Palestinian Authority (PA) is asking the world to recognize a Palestinian state “within the 1967 borders.” But such “borders” never existed. The 1949 Rhodes Agreements established an armistice line between Israel and Jordan, a line that was defined as “temporary” upon Jordan’s insistence, and that had no political or legal significance so as not to prejudice future negotiations on final borders. The armistice demarcation line represented nothing more than the lines of deployment of the forces involved in the conflict on the day a ceasefire was declared. The line was demarcated on the map attached to the Rhodes Agreements with a green marker pen and hence received the name "Green Line."

UN Security Council Resolution 62 (November 16, 1948) stressed the temporary nature of the armistice lines that were to be maintained “during the transition to permanent peace in Palestine.” This meant, and still means, that future permanent borders would be negotiated in the framework of a peace agreement, and that those borders would be different from the temporary armistice lines. As Judge Steven Schwebel (former President of the International Court of Justice) explained: "The armistice agreements of 1949 expressly preserved the territorial claims of all parties and did not purport to establish definitive boundaries between them." This is why UN Security Council Resolution 242 (November 22, 1967) calls for Israel’s withdrawal “from territories” to agreed-upon and defensible boundaries –not to the temporary and indefensible armistice lines of 1949.

(Read full "The Core Fallacies")

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Baker's Got Slightly Wrong Ingredients

Yisrael Medad
My Right Word
21 December '10

Alan Baker has a position paper out at JCPA (and IMRA had it a fortnight ago),

The Fallacy of the “1967 Borders” – No Such Borders Ever Existed

and the executive summary contains these points:

- The Palestinian leadership is fixated on attempting to press foreign governments and the UN to recognize a unilaterally declared Palestinian state within the "1967 borders."

- But such borders do not exist and have no basis in history, law, or fact. The only line that ever existed was the 1949 armistice demarcation line, based on the ceasefire lines of the Israeli and Arab armies pending agreement on permanent peace. The 1949 armistice agreements specifically stated that such lines have no political or legal significance and do not prejudice future negotiations on boundaries.

- UN Security Council Resolution 242 of 1967 acknowledged the need for negotiation of secure and recognized boundaries...the previous lines cannot be considered as international boundaries.

- The series of agreements between the PLO and Israel (1993-1999) reaffirm the intention and commitment of the parties to negotiate permanent borders. During all phases of negotiation between Israel and the Palestinians, there was never any determination as to a border based on the 1967 lines...

As Amb. Baker, Director of the Institute for Contemporary Affairs at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs and former Legal Adviser to Israel's Foreign Ministry as well as former Ambassador of Israel to Canada explains in the article:

...the Palestinian leadership, as well as members of the international community, are well aware that such borders do not exist, nor have they ever existed. They have never figured in any of the international, agreed-upon documentation concerning the Israel-Arab and Israel-Palestinian issues, and have no basis whatsoever, neither in law nor in fact.

There are no provisions in any of the agreements signed between Israel and the Palestinians that require withdrawal to the "1967 borders." There were never any geographic imperatives that sanctify the 1967 lines.

But there's a problem.

True, the 1949 armistice lines have no true international legal validity other than being the line where the fighting halted.

Nevertheless, one needs to review the context of the Declaration of Principles (DOP) of the Oslo Accords and see where the Pals. are coming from.

(Read full "Baker's Got Slightly Wrong Ingredients")

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The Fallacy of the “1967 Borders” – No Such Borders Ever Existed

Alan Baker
JCPA
Vol. 10, No. 17
December 2010

- The Palestinian leadership is fixated on attempting to press foreign governments and the UN to recognize a unilaterally declared Palestinian state within the "1967 borders." Indeed, this campaign appeared to have some initial successes in December 2010 when both Argentina and Brazil decided to recognize a Palestinian state within what they described as the "1967 borders."

- But such borders do not exist and have no basis in history, law, or fact. The only line that ever existed was the 1949 armistice demarcation line, based on the ceasefire lines of the Israeli and Arab armies pending agreement on permanent peace. The 1949 armistice agreements specifically stated that such lines have no political or legal significance and do not prejudice future negotiations on boundaries.

- UN Security Council Resolution 242 of 1967 acknowledged the need for negotiation of secure and recognized boundaries. Prominent jurists and UN delegates, including from Brazil and Jordan, acknowledged that the previous lines cannot be considered as international boundaries.

- The series of agreements between the PLO and Israel (1993-1999) reaffirm the intention and commitment of the parties to negotiate permanent borders. During all phases of negotiation between Israel and the Palestinians, there was never any determination as to a border based on the 1967 lines.

- The PLO leadership solemnly undertook that all issues of permanent status would be resolved only through negotiations between the parties. The 2003 "Road Map" further reiterated the need for negotiations on final borders.

With ongoing and increasing intensity, the Palestinian leadership is fixated on advancing a concerted policy vis-à-vis the international community and public opinion, demanding recognition of what they claim to be the "1967 borders," and acceptance of a unilaterally declared Palestinian state within those borders. Indeed, this campaign appeared to have some initial successes in December 2010 when both Argentina and Brazil decided to recognize a Palestinian state within what they described as the "1967 borders."1

In actual fact, the Palestinian leadership, as well as members of the international community, are well aware that such borders do not exist, nor have they ever existed. They have never figured in any of the international, agreed-upon documentation concerning the Israel-Arab and Israel-Palestinian issues, and have no basis whatsoever, neither in law nor in fact.

There are no provisions in any of the agreements signed between Israel and the Palestinians that require withdrawal to the "1967 borders." There were never any geographic imperatives that sanctify the 1967 lines. Clearly, there could be no legal or political logic to enshrining as an international boundary an inadvertent and coincidental set of ceasefire lines that existed for less than 19 years

While the above is fully evident to the Palestinian leaders who are actively and daily advancing this policy - principally the head of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, and the head of the Negotiations Department of the Authority, Sa'eb Erekat, both of whom were themselves actively involved in all the stages of negotiation - they nevertheless continue with their fixation to present the concept of the "1967 borders" as an accepted international term-of-art and as an Israeli commitment.

The following is a summary of the background to the 1967 lines as described in the international documentation:

(Read full "The Fallacy of the “1967 Borders” – No Such Borders Ever Existed")

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The Myth of the 1967 Borders

Dore Gold
29 April '10

In rejecting, the proposal for a Palestinian state with temporary borders, that Haaretz reported last Friday, Abu Mazen insisted that the only basis for any future political arrangements with Israel is "the 1967 borders". He is not the only one today talking about the 1967 lines. President Carter's, national security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, just wrote an article in the Washington Post on April 11, along with former congressman Steve Solarz calling for a territorial solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict "based on the 1967 borders." Brzezinski had recently been invited to discuss the Middle East with the President Barack Obama's National Security Adviser Jim Jones.

Even Secretary of State Hillary Clinton seemed to slip by using the same language during a visit to Bahrain on February 4, 2010: "we believe that the 1967 borders, with swaps, should be the focus of the negotiations over borders." That sentence contradicted the formal policy of the Obama administration, that she carefully crafted herself, which said that the U.S. believed that it was possible to reconcile the Palestinian position demanding the 1967 lines with the Israeli position calling for secure boundaries, which took into Israeli security requirements and realities on the ground. Clinton subsequently corrected herself.

In short, the 1967 lines are coming back as a common reference point when many officials and commentators talk about a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It is increasingly assumed that there was a recognized international border between the West Bank and Israel in 1967 and what is necessary now is to restore it. Yet this entire discussion is based on a completely distorted understanding of the 1967 line, given the fact that in the West Bank it was not an international border at all.

(Read full article)

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Three major working assumptions clouding the policy debate

Dr.Aaron Lerner
IMRA
Weekly Commentary
22 April '10

The first step towards effectively addressing dangerously faulty policy recommendations is to understand the underlying assumptions that drive them.

Here is a quick review of some of the major assumptions.

Assumption #1. If Israel withdraws to the ’67 line the Arabs will no longer have any claim against Israel and there will be peace for generations.

Ramifications: Israeli concerns regarding secure borders, enforcement of the demilitarization of the Palestinian state and pretty much any other security issue do not have to be seriously addressed since withdrawal will in and of itself insure Israel’s security.

Assumption #2. The utopian peace derived from withdrawal to the ’67 is an “all or nothing” proposition, with the resulting peace only observable after complete withdrawal.

Ramification: Arab attitudes and activities prior to the completion of Israel’s withdrawal to the ’67 lines are completely irrelevant for the purposes of analyzing post withdrawal scenarios.

Assumption #3. The entire world shares a set of universal values that coincides with “Western” values. All other value systems are no more than cultural window dressing.

(Read full post)

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Can the Palestinians Recite Them, Too?

Evelyn Gordon
Contentions/Commentary
12 November 09

In a letter to the International Herald Tribune, J Street’s Jeremy Ben-Ami urges the U.S. to finally close an Israeli-Palestinian deal, “the parameters of which we can all recite in our sleep.” So if everyone agrees on the parameters, how is it that 16 years of negotiations have yet to produce a deal?

The answer, of course, is that there is no such agreement — not on the parameters, and still less on the pesky details.

For instance, “everyone knows” — even Ben-Ami — that any deal requires the Palestinians to abandon their demand to resettle millions of descendants of refugees in Israel, as that would spell the end of the Jewish state. Everyone, that is, except the Palestinians, who have yet to budge on this demand.

And “everyone knows” that any deal must give the Palestinians control over the Temple Mount. (Well, actually, most Israelis disagree, but that doesn’t seem to matter to anyone — even their own prime ministers.) Yet every time Israel offers them the Mount, the Palestinians refuse to accept it, because they insist that it be accompanied by an Israeli renunciation of any Jewish connection to Judaism’s holiest site, to which Jews have prayed three times a day for millennia. In other words, they insist that Jews deny their history, religion, and cultural and spiritual heritage as the price of a deal.

Hence they rejected even the ridiculous and totally unenforceable Clinton compromise of Palestinian sovereignty atop the Mount and Israeli sovereignty underneath. That effectively gave the Palestinians full control, since if they control the top, nobody can prevent them from doing what they please underneath — nor can Israel gain access to exercise its underground rights. But since this compromise did acknowledge an Israeli connection to the Mount, even it was too much for the Palestinians.

They also rejected Ehud Olmert’s proposal last year that the Mount be controlled by a five-member international panel composed of “Palestine,” Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the U.S., and Israel, on which Israel would obviously be permanently and automatically outvoted. But its very membership would acknowledge an Israeli connection to the Mount, and that was unacceptable to the Palestinians.

And then there’s the issue of borders. “Everyone knows” (except the Israeli majority, which doesn’t count) that the border must be based on the 1967 lines, with 1:1 territorial swaps for a few settlement blocs, since relocating 300,000 settlers is unfeasible. Yet the Palestinians rejected exactly that when Olmert offered it last year. Olmert proposed swaps equivalent to 6 percent of the West Bank, but the Palestinians say their maximum is 2-3 percent. It’s not enough for them to get the equivalent of 100 percent of the territory; they want the satisfaction of making Israel suffer by having to throw hundreds of thousands of Israelis out of their homes.

So it really doesn’t matter whether “everyone” knows the parameters or not. Because until someone manages to convince the Palestinians that Israel’s cultural, spiritual, and physical suicide isn’t part of the deal, there isn’t going to be one.

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