Sultan Knish - Israel's Peace Disease

Daniel Greenfield..
Sultan Knish..
07 May '12..

For the last twenty years Israel has been swept into an obsession with few parallels except to the Dutch Tulip economy. Except instead of tulips, its commodity of choice is an even more insubstantial thing, the faint promise of peace.

Peace fever is the disease consuming Israel as surely as the Black Death took Europe. If the Dutch traded fortunes for flowers, the Israelis have traded away most of their territory for worthless pieces of paper that last about as long as tulips do. Mostly, like Madoff's investments, after they wither and die it turns out that they were never worth anything to begin with.

Take the Camp David Accords, greeted with insane romantic fervor in Jerusalem and European capitals, but resented and despised by Egyptians because they were a reminder of how their army had failed to destroy Israel. It was a worthless accord that gave Egypt a vast amount of territory in exchange for maintaining a status quo that it had no choice but to maintain after losing multiple wars. With the fall of Mubarak, it was revealed that the Accords were never more than moonbeams and fairy dust. A puff of Arab Spring and they are gone.

Camp David was an illusion, but the Oslo Accords are a delusion. A tulip economy where Israel doles out fortunes in money, land and power in exchange for the promise of peace and an end to the violence... tomorrow, always tomorrow. The most devastating impact of the delusion isn't on the cemeteries where children lie side by side with soldiers, on the broken homes and synagogues of Gaza, or on the tightening circle of terror around Jerusalem. As with all delusions, its most devastating impact is on the mind.

Israel Matzav: Liberal Jews embrace reincarnation

Zev (Vladimir)
Jabotinsky

Carl
Israel Matzav
19 May '11

http://israelmatzav.blogspot.com/2011/05/liberal-jews-embrace-reincarnation.html#links



The 'peace process' never dies


I received this by email:

“As long as the Arabs feel that there is the least hope of getting rid of us, they will refuse to give up this hope in return for either kind words or for bread and butter, because they are not a rabble, but a living people. And when a living people yields in matters of such a vital character it is only when there is no longer any hope of getting rid of us, because they can make no breach in the iron wall.”

---Vladimir Jabotinsky, The Iron Wall, 1923

There is an interesting pattern (call it a leitmotif) that typically runs through the writing of Jewish liberals like Jeffrey Goldberg, who today provides us with a prime specimen right here.

Be it the murder of infants in their bed, or Abbas’s fabrication of history in the New York Times on Tuesday, every Arab assault on Israel is just another reason both sides need to try harder to reach an “agreement.” Goldberg adheres closely to this liberal protocol. He begins on a promising note by devoting about the first 65% of his essay gently exposing the “contradictions” in Abbas’s vicious lie. But that formality is just a tease in the run-up to the standard-issue liberal sales pitch, which in Goldberg’s iteration goes something like this:

“There is no particular reason to hope for a successful peace process when the leader of the Palestinians is selling a false history of Israel's independence... Mahmoud Abbas cannot bring himself to note that the Jews accepted the partition plan, while the Arabs rejected it, and went to war to extinguish the new Jewish state in the cradle, and then lost their offensive war.”

Yet:

“Mahmoud Abbas.... could be president of an independent state of Palestine on the West Bank and Gaza with a capital in Jerusalem. If only he -- and, of course, Prime Minister Netanyahu -- could find a way to avoid rehearsing old grievances and instead work toward a future in which both parties don't get all that they want, but get enough to live.” (Sigh. If only.)

What cloying condescension! - especially to the proud Muslim Arab standing atop 1300 years of real history that commands him to hate and subjugate the Jews.

Sadly, this is the canned sound effect an obsessed (but sincere) Jewish peace processor produces in order to stay on the liberal kibbutz and still sound like a sane man. In the final analysis, though, the only thing separating the liberal Jeffrey Goldberg from the extremist Tony Kushner is the theatrics they employ before the curtain comes down on Israel in the last act.

Maybe that’s why the “peace process” is a perennial crowd pleaser. It’s the triumph of sweet fantasy over bitter experience.

Dan Friedman
NYC

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How Israel's Peacemaking Endangers Itself and the Stability of the Region

Daniel Greenfield
Sultan Knish
09 March '11

When Israeli leaders embarked on peace negotiations with the Islamic-Marxist terrorists who called themselves representatives of the ""Palestinian people", they hoped to improve relations with the Muslim world. But not only did Israel not succeed in improving relations with the Muslim world, but its bid for peace has actually destroyed its old relationships which were built on a certain respect for Israel's staying power.

The more Israel has traded land for peace, the more its staying power has diminished. There is no better place to see that shift than in Turkey, formerly Israel's closest ally in the Muslim world. That relationship was built not on mutual friendship, but mutual respect. Today Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu envisions a region in which Israel ceases to exist and is replaced by a Muslim-Jewish protectorate of Turkey. In 1986 that vision would have gotten him laughed off the podium when through war after war, Israel proved that it would not be pushed into the sea. But in 2011, with two Muslim terrorist states under international protection inside its own borders, and an American administration pushing for a handover of half its capital, Davutoglu's vision of the destruction of Israel has become the basis for Turkish policy toward Israel. And the only way that Jerusalem can improve its relations with Ankara is to change that perception of its destructibility.

The so-called Peace Process has dramatically undermined Israel's viability as a state in perception and reality. And American and European pressure on Israel to create a terrorist state within its borders has undermined regional stability and sped up the process of regional Islamization. Israel has gone from a regional power capable of guaranteeing the security of American-allied neighbors such as Jordan, to a state under siege by rockets falling on its own towns and villages. If Turkey's Islamists needed proof that Iran was the future and Israel the past, Hamas has been helpfully supplying it.

(Read full "How Israel's Peacemaking Endangers Itself and the Stability of the Region")

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Portraits of the Peace Process in Its 92nd Year

Rick Richman
Commentary/Contentions
20 January '11

http://www.commentarymagazine.com/blogs/index.php/richman/387179

In the National Interest, Benny Morris succinctly summarizes the peace process, writing that there can be disagreement about tactical mistakes made over the years, but that:

[T]here can be no serious argument about what transpired in July and December 2000, when Arafat sequentially rejected comprehensive Israeli and Israeli-American proposals for a two-state solution which would have given the Palestinians (”the Clinton Parameters”) sovereignty and independence in 95% of the West Bank, all of the Gaza Strip, and half of Jerusalem (including half or three-quarters of the Old City).

And further that:

[T]here can be no serious argument either about Abbas’s rejection of the similar, perhaps even slightly better deal, offered by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in 2008. (Indeed, these rejections of a two-state solution were already a tradition set in stone: The Palestinians’ leaders had rejected two-state compromises in 1937 (the Peel proposals), 1947 (the UN General Assembly partition resolution) and (implicitly) in 1978 (when Arafat rejected the Sadat-Begin Camp David agreement, which provided for “autonomy” in the Palestinan territories).

That is six Palestinian rejections of a Palestinian state: 1937, 1947, 1978, 2000 (twice), 2008.

Actually, the correct number is seven, since Morris omitted the first one: in 1919, Chaim Weizmann, president of the World Zionist Organization, and Emir Feisal Ibn al-Hussein al-Hashemi signed an agreement providing for Arab recognition of the Balfour Declaration, Arab retention of the Muslim holy sites, and WZO agreement to the establishment of an Arab state. Later that year, the Arabs repudiated the agreement.

We are now in the 92nd year of a peace process in which the Palestinians are the first people in history to be offered a state seven times, reject it seven times, and set preconditions for discussing an eighth offer.

In the February 10 issue of the New York Review of Books, Hussein Agha and Robert Malley also provide an interesting analysis of the peace process. They assert the Obama administration has badly damaged U.S. credibility:

[It] was repeatedly rebuffed—by Israel, from whom it had demanded a full halt in settlement construction; by Palestinians it pressed to engage in direct negotiations; by Arab states it hoped would take steps to normalize relations with Israel. An administration that never tires of saying it cannot want peace more than the parties routinely belies that claim by the desperation it exhibits in pursuing that goal. Today, there is little trust, no direct talks, no settlement freeze, and, one at times suspects, not much of a US policy.

Agha and Malley do not recommend a policy of their own. They suggest Mahmoud Abbas is the “last Palestinian” able to end the conflict, but it is an unconvincing conclusion. He has already missed multiple moments: in 2005, he received all of Gaza and presided over its conversion into Hamastan; in 2006, he could not win an election against a terrorist group; in 2007, he got thrown out of Gaza altogether; in 2008, he received the seventh offer of a state and turned it down; in 2009, he arrived in Washington D.C. and told the Washington Post he would do nothing but wait; in 2010, he is turning to the UN rather than negotiate. His term of office ended more than two years ago.

Rather than being the key to peace, he is a reflection of the fact that on the Palestinian side, in the 92nd year, there is no one there to make it.

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A Peace Process That Always Leads to War

Avi Davis
The Intermediate Zone
08 December '10

Those reading Hanan Ashwari’s cryptic warning this week in a Los Angeles Times oped, that the Palestinians may return to armed resistance should not mistake its meaning: It is a hint at what might be in store for the Middle East in the next six months.

Ms. Ashwari, who sits on the Palestinian Legislative Council, is not the only PA leader to indicate that the Palestinians have not forsworn violence. Other leaders such as former prime-minister Ahmed Qurei have stated openly that, failing the achievement of a diplomatic breakthrough, a new Intifada cannot be ruled out.

History reveals that when Palestinian leaders threaten to take unilateral actions and talk violence, it is never represents just a nervous premonition; it threatens war.

In 1936, the British Mandatory Authority in Palestine, seeking to negotiate the end of a general Arab strike with the Higher Arab Committee, was stunned when Arab violence erupted in the Galilee and then spread throughout the country. The disturbances took the form of murderous attacks on Jewish settlers, the bombing of the Iraq Peteroleum Company’s oil pipeline and the abduction of British officers. It was only put down with the exercise of the harshest of measures by British authorities.

In 1994, within seven months following the signing of the Oslo Accords, an infamous bus bombing killing eight in the northern Israeli town of Afula signaled that ongoing negotiations would not prevent the continuation of armed conflict . Over the following 24 months suicide bombings in markets, cafes, discotheques, malls and on buses resulted in 137 Israeli civilian deaths and 451 wounded without any serious attempt by Arafat or the Palestinian Authority to stanch the flow of terrorists into Israeli towns and cities.

(Read full "A Peace Process That Always Leads to War")

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Left-Wing Israeli Site Pours Cold Water on Obama’s ‘Process’

The Obama administration ignores realities in order to push a "process" that even lefty Israelis are beginning to doubt will lead to peace.

P. David Hornik
pajamasmedia.com
18 October '10

“Stop the Peace Process.” That’s the name of an editorial that appeared this week on Walla!, the most popular of Israel’s indigenous Hebrew websites. What’s surprising is that Walla! is strongly left-leaning and was founded by Haaretz, Israel’s left-wing daily.

The editorial is quite interesting and worth quoting. “Israelis observe with total indifference,” it says,

the political process that Benjamin Netanyahu, Mahmoud Abbas, and Barack Obama are trying to sell them. The streets were supposed to be churning with political activity, pro and con. In the city squares the believers in the process were supposed to be angrily confronting the opponents. But the Israelis aren’t fools. Their sense of smell, which is sharp and sensitive after years of peace follies and piles of corpses, can well detect when a genuine political process is occurring and when it’s a matter of PR for an [Israeli] prime minister who pretends to be a statesman, a president of an [i.e., Palestinian] Authority who’s scared to death, and a U.S. president who’s determined and naïve to the same extent.

Aside from the arguable characterizations of those three leaders, especially the obligatory jab at Netanyahu, Walla! is right. Anyone who lived in Israel in the 1990s recalls the fierce standoffs between those who supported the “peace process” of that time — and in many cases continued supporting it even as those corpses from terror attacks kept piling up — and those who opposed it. In comparison, the situation today can be described as “eerily silent.”

True, left-wing columnists and opposition politicians have been lashing out at Netanyahu for allegedly wrecking peace by failing so far to make all the concessions — first the settlement freeze, now the extension of the settlement freeze — that Abbas and Obama demand of him. But the passion is lacking. In the ’90s, Peace Now would have mustered tens of thousands in the streets beating the drums for a renewed settlement freeze. Now there isn’t a peep out there.

(Read full article)

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Just Out: TIME Magazine’s Latest Blood Libel About Israel

Phyllis Chesler
newsrealblog.com
04 September '10

The September 13, 2010 issue of TIME Magazine arrived yesterday. The cover story is titled “Why Israel Doesn’t Care About Peace” and is illustrated by a large Jewish star composed of daisies. Yes, daises—as in “counting daisies, don’t have a care in the world.”

This is precisely the point of Karl Vick’s article. He writes:

Israelis are no longer preoccupied with the matter [of peace with the Palestinians]. They’re otherwise engaged: They’re making money; they’re enjoying the rays of the late summer … they have moved on.

Vick quotes an Israeli real estate agent in Ashdod, one Eli, who tells him:

People are indifferent. They don’t care if there’s going to be war. They don’t care if there’s going to be peace. They don’t care. They live in the day.

According to Vick, Israelis don’t care about peace, peace negotiations, or about the Palestinians because they are simply having too good a time: sunbathing, swimming, café-hopping, profiting from start-up companies, and, according to polls cited by Vick, utterly disconnected from “politics;” indeed Vick suggests that Israelis resemble Californians more than they resemble Egyptians. These are all points which scream: Israel does not fit in; if Israelis were only more impoverished, more indolent, and paradoxically, even more “laid back,” they might be recognizable as indigenous to the region, a true part of the Middle East.

These are Vick’s thoughts, not mine.

(Read full article)

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Probe the ‘peace process’

Ron Breiman
Israel Opinion/Ynet
13 August '10

These days, Israel is home to intensive acts of scrutiny that had already graced the country with the dubious label of “a state of all its inquiries.” One should not disparage the need for commissions of inquiry, as long as their purpose is to identify the reasons for failures, in order to prevent them from repeating. The personal aspect should be secondary.

Regrettably, the shallow media (and mostly the electronic kind) seeks blood and wants to see heads roll – if possible along with a change of government not via the natural ballot-based way.

The last days, where our leaders testified before the needless Turkel committee, constitute an example of turning the essence – prevention of repeated failures – into the insignificant, while turning the insignificant – a witch hunt, especially against those disliked by the media – into the essence.

If there is a desirable and beneficial outcome for commissions of inquiry, it’s the improvement in decision-making processes, and especially the integration of a risk assessment process – in advance – in respect to any operations of this type. Committees that would assess risks in advance, before making and implementing a decision, can spare us the failures, their cost, and subsequent commissions of inquiry.

In the case at hand, stopping the Turkish terror ship was an important act and the objective was achieved, yet the risks that could reasonably be assumed to exist on board the vessel were not predicted, thereby complicating the raid’s execution. In fact, the working assumption was that no mishaps were expected.

(Read full article)

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What Obama Has Done Wrong in the Middle East

Jennifer Rubin
Contentions/Commentary
21 May '10
Posted before Shabbat

In a fascinating interview, former Deputy National Security Adviser Elliott Abrams, who oversaw George W. Bush’s Israel policy (remember — when we treated our ally with affection and respect?), details Obama’s errors regarding Israel (yes, it’s a lengthy interview), gives some insight into the Bush administration, and offers some predictions and suggestions. The program should be watched in full or the transcript read, but there are certain sections that are especially noteworthy.

Topping the list of Obama’s errors, Abrams explains, is the peace-process fixation:

First, I guess, and — and — most significant. They seem to think that peace between Israel and the Palestinians comes top-down. It is created someplace at a conference table in — in Taba or Camp David or Annapolis or Geneva. And that’s wrong. Peace between Israel and the Palestinians will be created between them, on the ground, in the real world. And it will depend on essentially what happens on the West Bank, on creating the institutions of Palestinian — self-government. And the fight against terrorism, I guess — critical things on the Palestinian side. So — concentrating on diplomacy, concentrating on the settlements is just wrong. That’s not what’s critical. What’s critical is what happens in the so — in the West Bank.

This leads to a glimpse inside the Bush White House:

I thought Annapolis was a mistake because — obviously, President Bush didn’t agree with me. I thought they were not going to reach an agreement. It seemed to me that — that if you look at the terms that were out there, neither Israeli nor Palestinian leaders were ready to accept those terms. I thought we were putting the emphasis in the wrong place, again, on conferences and conference tables and flying flags and all, rather than on the pretty — undramatic but critically important work of building institutions on the ground.

(In a prior interview with the Jerusalem Post, Abrams made clear that Condoleezza Rice pushed for the peace process, failing to provide the president with a full array of options.) It is a candid admission that presidents of both parties have fallen prey to peace-process-itis – the ailment characterized by a deep aversion to candidly assessing reality. But unlike the current president, Bush, to his credit, did not make a settlement freeze the cornerstone of his policy or escalate the issue of Jerusalem:

(Read full post)

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What Do the New Israel-Palestinian Indirect Talks Mean?

Barry Rubin
The Rubin Report
04 May '10

The question of the day is whether the Israel-Palestinian Authority (PA) indirect talks will make progress in the "peace process" or result in failure. One wonders at this point how many naive people believe that peace is at hand, and how many misled people think that the lack of peace is Israel's fault.

What is needed to understand the issue is precisely what is not presented by policymakers, academics, and all-too-much of the mass media: The PA neither wants nor is capable of delivering a compromise peace agreement.

Radicalism within its ranks, in public opinion, and the ever-present challenge from Hamas ties the hands of leaders who are not so moderate themselves. Belief that if they continue the struggle or keep saying "no" or subvert Western support for Israel they will get everything they want without giving up much is too tempting.

But can these specific talks at this specific time bring progress or failure?

Depends on what you mean by "progress"; depends on what you mean by "failure."

(Read full post)

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The peace process is about to continue ... no it isn't ... arrgh!

Soccer Dad
25 April '10

What's the current state of Middle East negotiations?

According to the New York Times ... they're back on track ... maybe

The American envoy to the Middle East, George J. Mitchell, planned to meet on Friday with Israeli and Palestinian leaders, a sign that indirect Israeli-Palestinian peace talks may be getting back on track, officials from all three parties said.
In advance of encounters with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and, separately, with Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, Mr. Mitchell met on Friday with the Israeli defense minister, Ehud Barak, Reuters reported, but no details of the discussions were made public.

The talks with the two leaders had been expected to begin last month but were delayed after Israel announced plans to build 1,600 housing units in East Jerusalem, where the Palestinians hope to build their capital. The Palestinians and President Obama were furious at the announcement, made during a visit to Israel by Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., and the Americans made a number of demands of Israel aimed at restoring the negotiations.

According to the Washington Post, still no signs of life.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas called Saturday for a resumption of peace negotiations with Israel and said he had asked the United States more than once to unilaterally "impose" a solution in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
"I call upon the American administration, especially President Obama, to resume peaceful negotiations and to stop the settlements and to launch serious negotiations for establishing the Palestinian state," Abbas told leaders of his Fatah party in a speech.

"We asked them more than one time to impose the solution," Abbas said of U.S. officials, voicing frustration over the absence of progress toward a peace settlement.

What's interesting is that the Post acknowledges that Abbas is asking the United States to impose a settlement.

(Read full post)

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Stop Worshipping the False “Peace Process” Religion

Jennifer Rubin
Contentions/Commentary
19 April '10

There have been few more dogged proponents of and participants in the “peace process” than Aaron David Miller. So when he now hops off the bandwagon and declares the “peace process” to be the equivalent of a false religion, it’s worth taking note. He explains:

Like all religions, the peace process has developed a dogmatic creed, with immutable first principles. Over the last two decades, I wrote them hundreds of times to my bosses in the upper echelons of the State Department and the White House; they were a catechism we all could recite by heart. First, pursuit of a comprehensive peace was a core, if not the core, U.S. interest in the region, and achieving it offered the only sure way to protect U.S. interests; second, peace could be achieved, but only through a serious negotiating process based on trading land for peace; and third, only America could help the Arabs and Israelis bring that peace to fruition.

He notes that he wrote his share of memos reciting the same catechism, but he couldn’t do it again today:

(Read full post)

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Reality Intrudes

Jennifer Rubin
Contentions/Commentary
14 April '10

The AP characterized Obama’s comments on the Middle East “peace process” at the conclusion of the nuclear summit as “surprisingly downbeat.” But, given what’s been coming out of the White House these days, it was the best news Israel and its supporters have had in weeks – since the beginning of the contrived tizzy over a Jerusalem housing permit. It was, I’ll grant you, a bit of a surprise. A sliver of reality, it seems, has intruded into the Obami’s Israel policy. The AP reports:

The two sides “may say to themselves, ‘We are not prepared to resolve these issues no matter how much pressure the United States brings to bear,’” Obama said.

Obama reiterated that peace is a vital goal, but one that may be beyond reach “even if we are applying all of our political capital.”

Obama was responding to a question about whether the successful negotiation of a new arms control treaty with Russia and the agreements he won at this week’s nuclear summit could help him make gains elsewhere. His words are a recognition that although he pledged to work hard for a deal from his first day in office, Obama has gotten little traction in the decades-old conflict.

Now it’s not normally good news for Israel’s supporters when James ”f*** the Jews” Baker is quoted by an American president. But in this case it was an improvement over what we’ve heard of late:

(Read full post)

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Break the linkage

Carl
Israel Matzav
12 April '10

Over the past few weeks, the Obama administration has been becoming more and more shrill in its insistence that there is a connection between 'progress' on the 'Palestinian front' and Western efforts to stop Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. The Council on Foreign Relations' Ray Takeyh insists that linkage exists only in the minds of Western policymakers and not in the minds of the Arab states. Insisting on that linkage will weaken Israel and prevent it from taking action to stop Iran in the (likely) event that the United States fails to do so.

The notion that the incumbent Arab regimes are reluctant to collaborate with the United States on Iran because of the prevailing impasse in the peace process is a misreading of regional realities. The Arab states, particularly the Persian Gulf sheikdoms, have an odd policy toward Iran. In private, as any visiting American dignitary can attest, they decry Iran's ambitions, fear its accelerating nuclear program and even hint at the advisability of using military force against its atomic installations. Yet they are loath to be part of an aggressive strategy, which they would see as unduly antagonizing the Islamic Republic.

(Read full post)
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A deepening crisis between U.S., Israel

John Bolton
American Security Council
29 March '10

Passover is an unfortunate time to be asking what has gone wrong between America and Israel. Is today's strenuous disagreement over Israel's West Bank housing policy the real problem, or is this controversy merely a symptom of deeper, more profound differences?

Partly because of the extraordinary secrecy surrounding Prime Minister Netanyahu's recent White House meeting with President Obama, much remains hidden from public view. Nonetheless, after 14 months in office, Obama has made clear he sees the U.S.-Israeli relationship very differently than any of his predecessors.

Consider, for example, Obama's September 2009 U.N. General Assembly speech, profoundly anti-Israeli, and to a body where Israel is perennially even more isolated than the United States. There, among other things, Obama called for a "Palestinian state with contiguous territory that ends the occupation that began in 1967."

That, of course, is the Palestinian position. No wonder they are "outraged" at every subsequent Israeli construction project outside the 1967 borders. No wonder Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas told an Arab League summit on Saturday he would not negotiate with Israel until all settlement activity ceases. They see Obama delivering Israel into their hands, and they will simply insist on their optimal position while they measure how well he succeeds.

More fundamentally, Obama assumes, as do many Europeans, that solving or at least making substantial progress on Arab-Israeli issues is key to many other Middle East problems. In particular, he believes there will be no progress against Iran's nuclear weapons program until there is proof that Israel's commanding position has been reduced.

(Read full article)
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