Sultan Knish - The End of the Peace Process

Daniel Greenfield
Sultan Knish
21 November '11

http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/2011/11/end-of-peace-process.html

The "peace process" which created two terrorist states inside Israel may have begun in Oslo, but it ended in Cairo. Normalizing relations with the rest of the Middle East was one of the carrots that got the Jewish state hopping down the appeasement trial-- and that carrot is now officially off the table.

The days when Thomas Friedman and his Saudi buddies could talk about normalization have passed. The Arab Spring saw to that and with Egypt, Tunisia, Libya and an unknown number of others sliding into the Islamist camp, and out of reach of negotiations, there's a New Middle East that has even less in common with the old gentlemanly diplomacy model than the old one did. Some of the dimmer Israeli leaders may still believe that peace is possible with the Islamists of Turkey's AKP, but not even they think that peace is possible with the Brotherhood.

If Western diplomats could offer regional acceptance twenty years ago, today that has all the credibility of a Rolex sold out of a briefcase just off Central Park. The end of the Camp David Accords has killed the grandaddy of the appeasement through territorial surrender template and with Assad looking shaky, the refusal to give up the Golan Heights to Syria seems downright prescient even to peaceniks.

The Brotherhood's attitude toward Israel is indistinguishable from that of Iran, and with the Islamist way in ascendance, that attitude will be the dominant one throughout the region, turning back the clock on decades of diplomatic efforts. The Islamists will negotiate temporary truces and ceasefires, but not the peace and brotherhood accords so beloved by the US and the EU.

And even the remaining regimes that haven't fallen look like poor prospects for paying out peace dividends after even the most stable country in the region, Egypt, melted down into mob violence and religious fanaticism. If Egypt can turn into battling mobs who don't agree on anything except their hatred for religious and ethnic minorities, including a country full of them living next door, then no Muslim nation in the region is safe.

Rubin - Peace Process Profiteers and The Blessings of a Preferable Status Quo

Barry Rubin
GLORIA Center
01 August '11



http://www.gloria-center.org/peace-process-profiteers-and-the-blessings-of-a-preferable-status-quo/

Israel’s historic position toward the territories captured in the 1967 war has been: Israel will control this land until it can achieve peace or at least a better situation for itself by leaving them. Jordan made peace. And it agreed to pull out of most of the Gaza Strip and much of the West Bank when the PLO promised (that’s a key word and a promise not kept) to make peace.

In contrast, Israel later withdrew from the Gaza Strip and dismantled all of the settlements there for two reasons. First, as a gesture that it hoped would show its desire for peace and would promote that goal. Second, because it seemed better to have its forces on a defensible line.

Believe it or not, there are some military advantages to the withdrawal and Israel’s casualties might have been higher if it hadn’t been carried out. Nevertheless, this policy did not work out so well and Israel ended up in a worse strategic situation without making any serious gains (arguably the reverse was true) in international support.

Regarding the West Bank, the lesson of the Gaza Strip withdrawal and also the southern Lebanon withdrawal have been learned. There, Israel turned over all of the populated sections (except for a small portion of Hebron) to the Palestinian Authority. Since 1993, no new settlements have been established (there have been small new outposts against government policy though the government has not always removed them) or expanded in their size. The status quo isn’t wonderful but itis quite tolerable.

Recently, a number of people–many of them with a wide public audience–in the West have started clanging the bell that Israel must clear out of the West Bank as soon as possible or else face a terrible situation. Their arguments have no merit but since the other side is not given equal time (and often no time at all) their audiences are deprived of seeing how ridiculous are the claims being made.

Lerner: Israel, Palestine, and the Peace Pieties

Barbara Lerner
National Review Online
17 June '11

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/269836/israel-palestine-and-brthe-peace-pieties-barbara-lerner

The peace pieties are the code phrases used to undermine Israel and, ultimately, the West.

Faithful NRO readers are increasingly clear-eyed about what President Obama and his supporters call “the Middle East peace process.” They know this process has a diplomatic language of its own, a propaganda language that uses code phrases to make maximalist demands sound like righteous — or at least reasonable — negotiating positions. I call these phrases “the peace pieties.” Four of them are fundamental to the process, and NRO authors such as Andrew McCarthy, Charles Krauthammer, Mona Charen, and Clifford May have done an outstanding job of translating the first three into plain American English.

Peace piety #1 holds that “Israel must return to its 1967 borders.” President Obama said just that on May 19, 2011, and was clearly surprised by the speed with which a wall of opposition rose up against him. He hadn’t caught up with the fact that this peace piety has become the most widely exposed of the lot. NRO readers and millions of other Americans translated it swiftly and accurately. It means: Make Israel indefensible by giving the Arabs the high ground to the north and the east, leaving the Jewish state with an exposed western plain and a midsection nine miles wide. There would be no natural barrier between tiny Israel and millions of Palestinian Arabs committed to its destruction, backed by 22 Arab states with the same aim, as well as Iran. Calling that an acceptable border is a cruel joke. More and more Americans get it, and they’re not laughing.

Peace piety #2, the insistence that “Jerusalem must be a shared capital,” has long been transparent to Christian Evangelicals, and is increasingly so to millions of other thoughtful Americans, secular as well as religious. It means: Ignore the fact that Jerusalem is the holiest, most historically significant city in the 4,000-year history of the Judaeo-Christian world, the geographical heart of the two great religions that shaped Western civilization, making us who we are and our country the beacon of freedom it is. Ignore the fact that no self-respecting Muslim would — or should — accept non-Muslim control of any part of Islam’s holiest and most historically significant cities, Mecca and Medina. Ignore the fact that no honorable Muslim would or should passively accept the sight of Islam’s holy shrines elsewhere being willfully defaced or destroyed, or the sight of peaceful Muslims being denied access to them or the right to pray there.

Then, ignore the fact that whenever Arab forces have controlled Jewish and Christian shrines, in Jerusalem and beyond — from the seventh century right through to today — they have repeatedly done exactly that and more, killing Jewish and Christian worshippers in a long series of attacks on “infidels,” in Jerusalem as in Cairo, Baghdad, and every other Middle Eastern city that still has any Jewish or Christian shrines left standing, or any Jews or Christians left alive to try to gain access to them. “Sharing Jerusalem” means ignoring all that and giving half of Jerusalem to the terrorist-embracing, shrine-destroying Arabs who call themselves Palestinians. This is not “sharing.” It is surrendering, and it is neither wise nor honorable. It sends a powerful message of weakness, of a declining Western civilization, ripe for toppling.