Imbecility squared, part 2 - by Martin Sherman

...Apparently aware that, as currently formulated, the Arab Peace Initiative is too pernicious to be approved by the Israeli public, Commanders for Israel's Security tries to preempt criticisms of its acceptance of the so called "peace initiative" by adding a proviso that it should be adjusted "to accommodate Israel's security and demographic needs, as a basis for negotiation." But suggestions that "adjustments" might be made were rapidly and resolutely rejected by both the Saudis, who authored the initiative, and the Arab League, which endorsed it. And why wouldn't they? For as Commanders for Israel's Security's proposal clearly demonstrates, continued Arab intransigence is sure to engender further Israeli compliance.

Martin Sherman..
Israel Hayom..
19 June '16..
Link: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=16447

A comprehensive Israeli policy declaration accepting, in principle, the Arab Peace Initiative, with requisite adjustments to accommodate Israel's security and demographic needs, as a basis for negotiation. -- Key political measure in plan titled "Security First," proposed by Commanders for Israel's Security, which claims to "improve Israel's security and international standing"

The Arab Peace Initiative does not need changing or adjusting, it is on the table as is. ... Why should we change the Arab Peace Initiative? I believe that the argument the Arab Peace Initiative needs to be watered down in order to accommodate the Israelis is not the right approach. -- Saudi Arabian Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir, Paris, June 3, 2016.

Last week I began a critical analysis of a plan put forward by a group calling itself "Commanders for Israel's Security," comprising over 200 former senior security officers and officials.

I argued that the plan, which purports to offer a formula "to extricate Israel from the current dead end and to improve its security situation and international standing," is a deeply flawed policy prescription, both in terms of the political principles on which it is based and the practical details it presents. As such, it is highly unlikely to achieve its own stated objectives. Indeed, it is far more likely to precipitate precisely the opposite outcomes, exacerbating the very dangers it claims it will attenuate.

To recap briefly, the major political components that comprise the plan call for Israel to:

(a) Proclaim, unilaterally, that it forgoes any claim to sovereignty beyond the yet-to-be-completed security barrier, which, in large measure, coincides with the pre-1967 Green Line, adjusted to include several major settlement blocks adjacent to those lines; but,

(b) Leave the IDF deployed there -- until some "acceptable alternative security arrangement" is found -- presumably the emergence of a yet-to-be-located pliant Palestinian Arab entity that will pledge to recognize Israel as the Jewish nation-state; and

(c) Embrace the Saudi Peace Plan subject to certain -- but significantly, unspecified -- changes, which the Arabs/Saudis recently resolutely refused to consider.

Learning the lesson of Gaza; ignoring the lesson of southern Lebanon

Commanders for Israel's Security claims that it has learned the lesson of the unilateral withdrawal from Gaza in 2005, when the IDF evacuated the territory and allowed the Islamist Hamas to take over. Accordingly, their plan "calls for the IDF to remain in the West Bank and retain complete security control until a permanent status agreement with the Palestinians ushers in alternative concrete, sustainable security arrangements."

So while Commanders for Israel's Security may have indeed learned the lesson of Gaza in 2005, it seems to have forgotten the lesson of Lebanon in 2000.

Indeed, as I underscored last week, the combination of the first two elements -- the forswearing of claims to sovereignty over Judea and Samaria on the one hand and the continued deployment of the IDF in that territory on the other -- replicate precisely the same conditions that prevailed in southern Lebanon until the hasty retreat by the IDF in 2000. This unbecoming flight was orchestrated by then-Prime Minister, former IDF Chief of Staff and Israel's most decorated soldier, Ehud Barak, under intense pressure from left-leaning organizations to extricate the IDF from the "Lebanese quagmire" and bring our boys back home. Thus abandoned to the control of Hezbollah, the area was swiftly converted into a formidable arsenal, bristling with weaponry capable of hitting almost all major Israeli cities.

Netanyahu, Israelis and the Peace Charade - by Jonathan Tobin

...Despite his reputation as a hardliner Netanyahu continues to try to meet the West halfway as befitting the fact that his stances place him in the center of the Israeli political spectrum rather than its right wing. But Israelis who tire of the peace charade should not be faulted for labeling these exchanges as pointless gestures that do nothing to convince the Palestinians to put down their stabbing knives and start thinking about ending the conflict.

Jonathan S. Tobin..
Commentary Magazine..
31 May '16..
Link: https://www.commentarymagazine.com/foreign-policy/middle-east/netanyahu-and-the-peace-charade-arab-peace-initiative/

Israel’s critics lambast its government as incorrigibly right wing and unwilling to advance the peace process. Those criticisms grew shriller in the last week after Prime Minister Netanyahu expanded his coalition by bringing in the Yisrael Beitenu Party and making its leader Avigdor Lieberman minister of defense. But on Monday, the same Netanyahu who embraced a two-state solution and expressed willingness to give up most of the West Bank as part of a negotiated agreement, took one step further to try and make clear that Israel is serious about peace. Netanyahu did what no other Israeli leader has done by saying he was willing to negotiate the terms of the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative first suggested by Saudi Arabia and embraced by the Arab League.

After swearing Lieberman into his new office, Netanyahu said the following:

I remain committed to making peace with the Palestinians and with all our neighbors. The Arab peace initiative includes positive elements that can help revive constructive negotiations with the Palestinians. We are willing to negotiate with the Arab states revisions to that initiative so that it reflects the dramatic changes in the region since 2002, but maintains the agreed goal of two states for two peoples.

Though left-wingers and pundits have embraced the Saudi proposal as a real breakthrough for peace, there were good reasons why Israel did not rush to embrace an idea that included recognition of Israel and an end to the conflict. The Saudis presented it as a take-it-or-leave-it proposal. Its terms required Israel to give up every inch of land it won in 1967, including Jerusalem. It also said that peace must also include a “just” and “agreed upon” solution to the question of Palestinian refugees, a poison pill that is equivalent to calling for an end to Israel as a Jewish state that seemed incompatible with the notion that its sponsors were truly prepared to live in peace. It was later adjusted to imply the possibility of some territorial swaps, but the refugee clause remains problematic because the only “just” solution to that problem in the eyes of the refugees and the Muslim world is a “right of return” that means the elimination of Israel. Many in the peace process crowd continue to ignore the fact that a nearly equal number of Jewish refugees from Arab and Muslim countries were forced to flee their homes after 1948.

In spite of all that, Netanyahu has just said he’s willing to talk about it and, provided that it be changed to reflect certain obvious problems, such as the refugees and the sheer impossibility of giving the Golan Heights back to a Syria wracked by civil war and the rise of ISIS, it could even serve as the starting point for negotiations.

But in spite of that, do you think Netanyahu will get any credit for this? Will the Palestinians leap at his suggestion? Will the United States, the Diplomatic Quartet or Western European nations like France, which are so interested in starting their own peace process, start devoting their efforts to following up on this opening?

Of course not.

While the Israeli left's strategy is a nice try, it still won't wash

...And why would Israel’s inevitable military operations in the West Bank after such partial withdrawal produce less civilian victims, less Goldstone reports and less outraged media coverage than previous military operations in Gaza? Trying to force oneself out of a Catch-22 situation is legitimate and even praiseworthy, but defying logic is neither.

Dr. Emmanuel Navon..
For the Sake of Zion..
18 February '15..

The Institute for National Security Studies (INSS), a leading Israeli think-tank, hosted its annual conference this week on Israel’s regional and international challenges. INSS’s policy recommendations are of special significance this year because its Director, Amos Yadlin, was designated by the joint Labor-Hatnua list as its candidate for the position of Defense Minister in the next government. Whether in the unlikely scenario of a Labor victory or in the less unlikely scenario of a national unity government, INSS’s policy recommendations might be implemented (even partially) after the elections, and must therefore be gauged.

On the issue of the stalemate with the Palestinians, INSS expressed its views ahead of the conference in a short paper authored by Gilead Sher and Liran Ofek (“An Integrated Political Strategy: Regional, Bilateral, and Independent”). Sher, a practicing lawyer, is a senior fellow at INSS and served as Israel’s chief negotiator during the failed 2000 Camp David summit and Taba talks. While Sher witnessed firsthand the failure of the 2000 negotiations, and while subsequent negotiations failed as well (including the 2007-2008 negotiations under the Olmert government and the 2013-2014 negotiations under the third Netanyahu government), Sher is adamant that “a political solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict … can be achieved” though he himself admits that, in practice and “at present,” the likelihood of such a solution is “slim.”

According to Sher, the stalemate between Israel and the Palestinians is detrimental to Israel because it threatens Israel’s future as a Jewish and democratic country, and because it undermines Israel’s international standing. Therefore, Sher suggests, Israel should initiate a move meant to neutralize the “demographic threat” and to ease international pressure. While the initiative proposed by Sher is not a mere replication of the 2005 unilateral withdrawal from Gaza, its outcome would unlikely be significantly different.

Like Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Sher talks about “regional opportunities.” Unlike him, however, he considers the so-called Arab Peace Initiative to be a serious and valuable offer. This “initiative” was first issued by the Arab League thirteen years ago. Since then, the Arab world has turned into one big war zone. Iraq, Syria and Libya have imploded. Iran has become a threshold nuclear state that controls four Arab capitals (Baghdad, Damascus, Beirut, and Sana'a). Saudi Arabia, generally considered the main promoter of the “Arab Peace Initiative,” is surrounded by Iran’s allies in the north (Iraq, Syria, Lebanon) and in the south (Yemen). Its economic clout has been affected by falling oil prices. Who, seriously, is supposed to deliver peace on behalf of the Arab world in 2015?

Israel is expected to adopt an Arab peace plan? The Arab world is a war zone

...Those “peace-processors” who claim that Israelis should take their fate into their hands are therefore correct, but for the wrong reasons. They would have us rely on the peaceful intentions of jihadists, believe in the sincerity of the Europeans, and trust the competence of the Americans. With a fate like this in your own hands, you need good feet with which to run.

Dr. Emmanuel Navon..
i24 News..
22 October '14..

Recent talks about the Arab Peace Initiative beg disbelief. The Arab world is a war zone. Syria has been destroyed by a more than three years of an ongoing civil war. Iraq and Libya have imploded, replaced by belligerent fiefs. Lebanon has lost its sovereignty to Iran and Hezbollah. The Islamic State organization is spreading despite Western airstrikes, and it might overtake the weak Hashemite Kingdom. ​Iran now controls four Arab capitals: Baghdad, Damascus, Beirut, and Sanaa.​ How foolish and paranoid of Israel, then, not to thankfully grab the peace promised by the world’s most violent, dysfunctional, and war-torn region.

The “Arab Peace Initiative” is an oxymoron. It calls for an Israeli withdrawal from the Golan Heights to achieve peace with Syria. One minor problem is that Syria no longer exists. Is Israel supposed to sign a peace agreement with Bashar Assad, who barely controls a quarter of his virtual country, or with ISIL?

On the Palestinian issue, the text of the initiative calls for “a just solution to the Palestinian refugee problem to be agreed upon in accordance with UN General Assembly Resolution 194.” The meaning of this article is that Israel should agree on the so-called right of return of the Arabs who lived here until 1948. Once Israel becomes a bi-national state with an Arab majority, in other words once Israel ceases to be the nation state of the Jewish people, it will gain recognition from its neighbors.

In 2008, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert offered Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas a full Israeli withdrawal but without a full-fledged implementation of the Palestinian right of return. Abbas said he could not give in on that crucial issue.

The Arab League cannot deliver peace with Israel on behalf of a Palestinian leadership that is adamant on right of return. Not surprisingly, the Arab Peace Initiative includes the right of return by way of reference to UN Resolution 194.

If Israel had any doubts about the sincerity of its neighbors and their ability to deliver, it can certainly count on European guarantees. No European diplomat would ever buy into flimsy promises or compromise on Israel’s security. The recent donors’ conference on Gaza is a case in point.

An open letter to Shimon Peres

Martin Sherman..
Into the Fray/JPost..
30 May '13..




History is made of biographies of men and women who failed to forecast the future. – Shimon Peres, Amman, May 26, 2013

My good friends, for the second time in our history, a British prime minister has returned from Germany bringing peace with honor. I believe it is peace for our time. – Neville Chamberlain, September 30, 1938

The Arab Peace Initiative is a meaningful change and a strategic opportunity. It replaces the strategies of war with the wisdom of peace....History will judge us not by the process of negotiations, but by its outcome. – Shimon Peres – Amman, May 26, 2013

To: Shimon Peres, President of Israel

Dear Sir,

I confess I was appalled by your speech at the World Economic Forum in Amman earlier this week. There were many elements in it I found disconcerting, but what I found particularly disturbing was your approving embrace of the so-called “Arab Peace Initiative” (API).

Devious, deceptive, disastrous

There are of course, numerous reasons why Israel should firmly reject the API as a devious, deceptive and disastrous blueprint for its demise. But this in itself is not why I find your endorsement of it so galling.

Rather it is because no one other than yourself has, in the past, better elucidated why this is so.

Indeed, you can hardly be unaware of the fact that the adoption of the API entails Israel undertaking measures that are the diametric opposite of those you once prescribed.

After all, no one other than yourself has set out a more compelling rationale why implementing the measures it calls for would provide the Arabs an opportunity to emaciate Israel, compress it back into indefensible borders and make its survival dependent solely on their discretion – creating, in your own words, “compulsive temptation to attack Israel from all directions.”

I trust, therefore, that you will fully understand why it is so perturbing to encounter the staggering dichotomy between the views you once expounded and those you propound today, particularly as the experience of recent decades appears to corroborate the sober realism of your former positions rather than the flighty optimism of your current ones.

Washington Post Peddles the Arab League Peace Plan

Leo Rennert..
American Thinker..
03 May '13..

To read the Washington Post account of Secretary of State John Kerry's flirtation with a new Arab League peace plan, one would think this is really and finally the key to an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. And that Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu's cool response is rather puzzling and unwarranted ("Israel's Netanyahu responds coolly to Arab League land-swap initiative" by William Booth, May 2, page A10)

Booth touts the latest version of the Arab League plan as an important and positive breakthrough. Instead of insisting that Israel withdraw completely from all lands conquered in 1967 -- from the entire West Bank and all of East Jerusalem -- Arab leaders now have opened the door to minor land swaps. Israeli settlement blocs right across the 1967 line presumably could remain in Israel. Booth's account includes high praise from the Palestinian Authority and encouraging responses from opposition leaders in Israel. What's really not to like is the impression left with Post readers.

Well, there's plenty not to like, but Booth prefers to leave readers in the dark.

Playing the Palestinian Shadow Game

Jonathan S. Tobin..
Commentary/Contentions..
02 May '13..

Secretary of State John Kerry was encouraged yesterday by the idea of a revived and improved Arab Peace Initiative being floated by an Arab League delegation. But the Palestinian Authority wasted no time in pouring cold water on the idea that even this baby step means a thing. Palestinian Authority negotiators dismissed the significance of the statement issued by the foreign minister of Qatar that the 2002 proposal would be modified to recognize the idea of “minor” territorial swaps that would modify the 1967 lines. As far as Erekat is concerned, the Palestinians won’t even bother to return to the talks so long as Israel is unwilling to concede the outcome in advance.

“Netanyahu has to say 1967,” Erekat told Nazareth-based Radio Ashams. “If he doesn’t say that, there’s nothing to talk about. For us, what the Arab League delegation presented in Washington is no different from the official Palestinian position.”

Erekat noted that the Palestinian Authority had negotiated in the past based on the 1967 borders and had been willing to adjust 5 percent to 7 percent of the border.

“We don’t see that as recognition of the settlement blocs, as some commentators on both sides try to interpret it. For us, every stone in the settlements constitutes a violation of international law, so it’s impossible to talk about Palestinian consent regarding the settlements,” he said.

“Our position is clear: As long as Netanyahu does not say the number 1967, there’s nothing to talk about. Maybe he needs to undergo psychological therapy to utter that number.”

But if the Palestinians are really interested in peace, it’s they who need the therapy. By issuing demands in this manner, Erekat is not just directly defying President Obama’s call for them to come back to the peace table without preconditions. Nor is his attempt to justify a continued refusal to talk just about borders. It’s part of a strategy the Palestinians have been pursuing for more than four years. Since the PA knows it has neither the will nor the ability to sign a peace agreement recognizing the legitimacy of a Jewish state no matter where its borders are drawn, their goal is to avoid any diplomatic setting at which they might be forced to admit this, as they did when they turned down peace offers in 2000, 2001 and 2008.

The Balfour Declaration, the Arab League, and a Peace Plan.

Michael Curtis..
American Thinker..
21 April '13..

Rarely has a short letter influenced the course of history so much as the one known as the Balfour Declaration. Written by Lord Balfour, the British foreign secretary, on November 2, 1917 to Lord Rothschild, the letter "viewed with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people." The newly established League of Nations substantiated this principle when it accepted the Declaration as the basis for the Mandate for Palestine, which the League announced on July 24, 1922. Britain was appointed as the Mandatory Power and ruled Palestine for twenty-six years. The State of Israel was established on May 14, 1948 after Britain relinquished that power.

The Rothschild family gave the letter to the British Museum, which transferred it to the British National Library. The BNL has now given approval to Israel to display the original document for a limited time in the Independence Hall in Tel Aviv. The choice of the Hall as the venue for the display is symbolically significant. The Hall is the place where David Ben Gurion proclaimed the establishment of the State of Israel. It is to be renovated, and in two years' time, it will be the site of a museum that will display not only the Balfour Declaration, but also the document of Israel's Declaration of Independence and the writing desk of Lord Balfour, which has actually been in Israel for some time.

A historic artifact will thus be on public display for the first time. However, the Arab League has condemned the British National Library for granting approval for the display of the 96-year-old Declaration. The Arab League has denounced the Balfour Declaration as a document that led to continuing bloodshed and strife and which denied the rights of Palestinians who, according to the League, owned 98 percent of the land in Palestine in 1917.

This condemnation is yet another example of Arab denial of the non-Arab past. It is in the same vein as the Islamic actions to obliterate the artifacts and the history of non-Islamic peoples. It is also a reminder of the continuing extreme Arab rhetoric against Israel and the fallacious Palestinian historical narrative with its emphasis on Nakba, the so-called catastrophe, caused in the Arab view by the establishment of Israel.

Peace needs a very different Arab League approach [suicidal to establish Palestinian state]

IMRA
15 April '11
Posted before Shabbat




"Israel would have to be clearly suicidal to enter today into a process that enables the establishment of another Palestinian state in Judea and Samaria"

Center for the Study of the Middle East and Islam (under formation)
Bar-Ilan University

Middle Eastern Insights
No. 6, 15 April, 2011

Peace needs a very different Arab League approach

Mordechai Kedar

The Arab Peace Initiative (API) comprises both positive and negative elements, and I have plenty to say about them. But I would prefer to describe an experience I had that, I believe, reflects the real objective of the API.

Several years ago, I appeared on the Arabic-language satellite channel al-Hurra, which is run by the US State Department, in a discussion of the API. With me on the panel, from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, was Dr. Muhammad Al Zulfa, diplomatic adviser to King Abdullah. I believe, not without foundation, that he was the brains behind the API, which entered the world as a Saudi initiative presented to the Arab League summit in March 2002 in Beirut.

In the ensuing televised discussion, I argued that the API comprised positive components like recognition of Israel and comprehensive Arab peace with us. The Arab League should, I stated, negotiate with Israel regarding the details. Al Zulfa insisted that Israel must accept the plan word for word without deleting a single letter and implement it, only after which the Arabs would agree to talk to Israel. The Arabs would not negotiate with Israel over anything until the latter completed implementation. Al Zulfa insisted this was a non-negotiable condition.

I went on to offer my opinion on this approach by posing a simple question: would Saudi Arabia accept and implement any proposal whatsoever, down to the most elementary issue, if it had not participated in drafting and determining the conditions? Is there any other Arab state that would agree to be dictated to by a foreign entity? Is it conceivable for Israel to accept a document relating to Israeli national security that has been drafted by the Arab summit without having the right to change a single word?

This approach, as presented by the most important formulator of Saudi foreign policy, projects a sense of superiority and disdain, and broadcasts a clear intent to bring Israel to its knees, to deny it security and return it to the 1948 borders that all agree are not defensible ("Auschwitz borders", according to the late Abba Eban). The Arab desire to tear away the Old City of Jerusalem, the capital of the Jewish people for 3,000 years, essentially reflects an Islamic refusal to recognize the legitimacy of the Jewish religion and expresses the belief that Islam emerged to replace Judaism rather than coexist with it. (Incidentally, according to this approach, Christianity too lost its role after the arrival of Islam.)

It's my sense that the intention behind the API, as presented in this discussion by its originator, is to create an irreversible situation in which Israel has given up its territorial assets, following which all or some of the Arabs will find excuses for not delivering on their part of the deal. They might cite the "non-return" of demilitarized zones separating Israel and Syria prior to 1967 or of land north of Gaza where the moshav Nativ HaAsara is now located, or some aspect of the refugee problem that is impossible to solve in accordance with refugee demands.

At a time when voices are increasingly heard in Egypt calling for cancelling the peace treaty, Israel has no long-term guarantee that peace, however cold and partial, will survive the revolution there. Jordan's fate, too, is uncertain in view of the wave of unrest sweeping through the Arab world.

Israel would have to be clearly suicidal to enter today into a process that enables the establishment of another Palestinian state in Judea and Samaria after we already have a terror state in Gaza that torments Israel with rockets and missiles made there or smuggled from Iran. There is no country in the world that can guarantee that the Arab League commitment to recognize Israel will be honored by a new Palestinian state, particularly if it is again taken over by Hamas through elections as in January 2006 or a military coup as in June 2007. Will the armies of Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Libya come to the territory of a Palestinian state to disperse the Hamas' Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades or confiscate missiles and mortars from Islamic Jihad?

If the Arab League, led by its summit, wants to persuade Israel to accept the API, it must treat Israel as a negotiating partner and engage in serious discussions of conditions for peace. Once agreement is reached concerning the outline and phases of the peace process, we can discuss the substance of peace. But the words of Mohammad Al Zulfa, spoken to the Arab nation, point to a different outcome: the Saudis and the Arab summit have no intention save the defeat of Israel without a fight, by means of false premises that harbor no commitment to real implementation.

In view of the sorry state of the Arab world today, with key Arab states confronting unprecedented challenges, Israel and the world must wait patiently until the smoke clears. Only then will it be possible to enter into negotiations – nothing less – in which Israel might concede strategic assets.

Published 13/4/2011 © bitterlemons-api.org

Mordechai Kedar is a lecturer in the Department of Bar-Ilan University, an a member of the Center for the Study of the Middle East and Islam (under formation), Bar-Ilan University

mkedar@mail.biu.ac.il

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‘Israeli peace initiative’ not Israeli, wouldn’t bring peace

Annual re-packaging
of failed proposals YH

Fresnozionism.org
05 April '11

http://fresnozionism.org/2011/04/israeli-peace-initiative-not-israeli-wouldnt-bring-peace/

There’s a new peace initiative in town. It is similar to the Clinton-Barak proposals of 2000, with the Golan Heights thrown in. It is framed as an Israeli response to the Arab (or Saudi) Peace Initiative. My feeling is that although it was officially created by a group of Israelis, including former security officials and relatives of former PM Itzhak Rabin, it is in essence the Obama Plan. And it is much worse than the Clinton-Barak proposals because of the influence of the Arab initiative.

Some things I noticed:

It begins thus:

Reaffirming that Israel’s strategic objective is to reach a historic compromise and permanent status agreements that shall determine the finality of all claims and the end of the Israeli Arab conflict…

This principle will not be a part of any permanent agreement signed with any Palestinian Arab faction, because it contradicts their national goals as set out in their founding documents — the assertion of Arab (and in the case of Hamas, Muslim) control over the entire area from the Jordan to the Mediterranean.

…the Israeli Palestinian conflict shall be resolved on the principle of two states for two nations: Palestine as a nation state for the Palestinians and Israel as a nation state for the Jews (in which the Arab minority will have equal and full civil rights as articulated in Israel’s Declaration of Independence).

“A nation state for the Jews” is not the same as ‘a Jewish state’. We know that the Arabs will not agree to recognize a “Jewish state”. Is a “state for the Jews” different? Apparently it is something less. It makes my head spin.

Regarding the Arab minority. It says the “will have equal and full civil rights…” Don’t they already? If not, what civil — as opposed to national rights don’t they have? Will they get additional rights that they don’t have today?

The state shall be demilitarized, exercising full authority over its internal security forces. The International community shall play an active role in providing border security and curbing terrorist threats.

‘Demilitarized’ will need to be defined, as will a mechanism for ensuring demilitarization. Count me very, very skeptical about the possibility of doing this in the real world. Regarding the ‘active role’ of the ‘international community’, will it work as well as it did in disarming Hizballah?

The borders shall be based on the June 4, 1967, lines, with agreed modifications subject to the following principles: the creation of territorial contiguity between the Palestinian territories; land swaps (not to exceed 7% of the West Bank) based on a 1:1 ratio, including the provision of a safe corridor between the West Bank and Gaza, under de facto Palestinian control.

I must ask: what is special about these ‘borders’, which are simply the 1949 armistice lines, which both Israel and the Arab states clearly did not accept as borders, and which UNSC resolution 242 implied were not ‘secure and defensible’? How did illegal Jordanian occupation for 19 years create an Arab claim on them? Israel has occupied them for longer than that, if occupation is a criterion for ownership.

How was it decided that ‘Palestine’ must have “territorial contiguity” but Israel not?

EU funding to promote the Arab Peace Initiative among Israeli journalists

NGO Monitor
22 April '10

1) An April 18, 2010 article on the News1 website (Hebrew) discusses a European Union project to promote the Arab Peace Initiative among Israeli journalists. As noted below, this is part of EU efforts to "Influence Institutions/ Decision makers, Public opinion and Media" outside of diplomatic channels, and under the guise of Israeli "civil society."

2) The project is entitled "Simulating the Arab Peace Initiative," and is part of the Partnerships for Peace (PfP) program (€298,422 in 2010-12). The official link on the EU website is: http://www.delisr.ec.europa.eu/english/content/cooperation_and_funding/3.asp

3) The recipients are Neve Shalom School and Conflict Resolution and Reconciliation (CCRR). CCRR, a Palestinian NGO, calls for the boycott of Israeli academics or Israeli academic institutions that support the occupation ("for more than 50 years," i.e. Israel as a Jewish state), as well as those that do not take a position on it.

4) In contrast to the track record of CCRR, the PfP website claims: "The project aims to promote tolerance and better understanding between Israeli and Palestinian societies by engaging core representatives of the media in a process of reflection on the past treatment and historical background of the API and simulate the adoption of API and its potential consequences in the media; Moreover, the project will facilitate critical discussions on the journalist-editor relationship in uni-national settings, on the one hand, and establish open and sustained channels of communication between Israeli and Palestinian journalists and editors, on the other" (emphasis added).

(Read full article)

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Honest Broker, Anyone?

Evelyn Gordon
Contentions/Commentary
15 January '10

Nothing in George Mitchell’s interview with PBS last week received more attention than the envoy’s implied threat to revoke American loan guarantees to Israel. That’s a pity — because far more worrisome is the goal he set for the negotiations, as highlighted by Aluf Benn in today’s Haaretz. “We think the way forward … is full implementation of the Arab peace initiative,” Mitchell declared. “That’s the comprehensive peace in the region that is the objective set forth by the president.”

The Arab initiative mandates a full Israeli withdrawal to the 1967 lines — every last inch of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights. It also demands a solution to the refugee problem “in accordance with UN General Assembly Resolution 194,” which Arabs interpret as allowing the refugees to “return” to Israel.

Later in the interview, Mitchell says this initiative requires “a negotiation and a discussion,” and that you can’t negotiate by telling “one side you have to agree in advance to what the other side wants.” Yet by saying his goal is “full implementation” of this initiative, he’s effectively saying, “You can have your negotiation and discussion, but Washington has no intention of being an honest broker: it fully backs the Arab position on borders, Jerusalem, and even (to some extent) the refugees.”

This is the administration’s clearest statement yet that it’s abandoning the position held by every previous U.S. administration: that Israel needs “defensible borders” — which everyone agrees the 1967 lines are not. Mitchell also thereby abandoned the position, held by every previous administration, that any deal must acknowledge Israel’s historic ties to the Temple Mount via some Israeli role there, even if only symbolic (see Bill Clinton’s idea of “sovereignty under the Mount”). The Arab initiative requires Israel to just get out.

(Read full post)
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A New Arab Strategy: Israel Gives Up Everything, and Then Maybe Gets Something in Exchange

Barry Rubin

The Rubin Report

13 September 09

There’s been an important new development in Arab strategy toward Israel. Although it was implicit in the Saudi, later Arab, peace proposal it has now become explicit, as in the Turki al-Faisal New York Times op-ed.

He wrote:

"Saudi Arabia ... must therefore refuse to engage Israel until it ends its illegal occupation of the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and the Golan Heights as well as Shabaa Farms in Lebanon. For Saudis to take steps toward diplomatic normalization before this land is returned to its rightful owners would undermine international law and turn a blind eye to immorality."

This is an open and direct rejection of the Obama Administration policy of seeking confidence-building measures from both sides. Of course, the Administration won't criticize the Saudis for trampling on their policy and will go on insisting that they have received positive responses from Arab states which show that progress is being made.


Yet even more important, the Arab states' position--in part excluding Egypt and Jordan--on the peace process is now this:

First, Israel must withdraw from all territories captured in the 1967 war, meaning east Jerusalem, the West Bank, and the Golan Heights. In addition, it must allow all Palestinians who lived or had any ancestor who lived in what is now Israel come and live in Israel without restriction if they want to do so.

Then, Arab states will negotiate about making peace and giving diplomatic recognition. The Palestinian Authority's leader, Mahmoud Abbas, and Syria have taken stances along similar lines.

This can be summarized as: First land, then peace.

If such an intiative would be taken by any country on any other issue in the world, observers would ridicule such an absurd position.

It is, of course, absurd and contrary to UN Resolutions 242 and 338 as well as all the Israel-Palestinian agreements including the Oslo accord of 1993. All of these put obligations on both sides to be implemented simultaneously. No Israeli government would ever agree to such an absurd notion that it gives up all the cards in the hope of then getting something in exchange.

In short, it is a formula for killing the peace process.

The problem is that Western leaders, diplomats, experts, and media don’t seem to see this alteration and its significance. Along with the increasing talk of a “one-state solution” or just wiping Israel off the map, it is one more signal that we are going back to the 1960s, with peace an increasingly distant dream.

Far from showing that Israel needs peace-at-any-price as-soon-as-possible, it shows that the status quo is superior to what’s being offered. It also shows the increasing absurdity of the idea that Israel is at fault for the lack of peace agreements.

Note also--something else nobody is going to notice--that the op-ed insults the United States as it directly contradicts Obama's current initiative to get something from the Arab states to match an Israeli construction freeze.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, it disproves the two main theories regarding this issue.

First, contrary to the conventional wisdom, the more Israel gives, the more the other side demands and dismisses all previous Israeli concessions.

Second, the more the United States moves away from Israel and criticizes it, the more the Arab and Palestinian position harden.

Is anyone in the mass media--a single reporter or editorial?--or in political authority going to notice any of this?

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