There is another road to peace

...Peace does not only come from diplomacy or agreements. More often, historically, lasting peace comes about because one side defeats the other. Chamberlain and Stalin signed ‘peace’ agreements with Hitler, but peace did not arrive until Russian tanks entered Berlin. And who is preventing Israel from defeating its enemies conclusively? Who is propping them up and giving them hope that they will win in the end?

Fresnozionism.org..
31 October '13..

Last week I spoke to a woman, a senior citizen who reads a column that I write in the local Jewish Federation newsletter. “I enjoy your articles,” she said, “but what I want to know is this: after all these years, when will Israel ever get peace?”

“When we get different Arabs,” I answered.

Of course what I meant was that we cannot reach an agreement with those whose deepest desire is that we be gone from the Middle East, who do not recognize the legitimacy of any Jewish sovereignty regardless of borders, and who encourage murder and venerate murderers in all of their institutions.

This becomes evident in negotiations in which the PLO refuses to recognize Israel as the state of the Jewish people, insists upon a ‘right of return’ for the descendants of 1948 refugees, and refuses to consider Israel’s most basic security needs — all the while continuing to glorify murderers and incite young people to become terrorists, even suicide terrorists.

Someday there might be a new Arab leadership, I suggested, that is more interested in economic development than revenge, and then there might be a possibility of peace.

So this morning I was telling “Robman,” who often comments on this blog, about the conversation. And he made an interesting point: there are other ways to get to peace than to make a deal with the Arabs.

There is more to the persistence of Arab terrorism than just hatred and a pathological desire for revenge. There is the belief that if they persist long enough, they will ultimately succeed in getting rid of the ‘Zionist enemy’. To a certain extent, this is part of Islamic ideology — after all, there was a 200-year Crusader kingdom in the Holy Land that was ultimately overcome, something Palestinians talk about a lot.

But that isn’t the only source of encouragement, and the intensity of the struggle is amplified, perhaps even sustained, by the encouragement the Palestinian (and other) Arabs receive daily from the rest of the world, implying that theirs is not a lost cause.

The Kerry plan and its implications

...Let’s leave aside all of the practical problems, like the fact that Abbas can’t speak for Hamas, the fact that there is no way to ensure that the Arabs would keep any bargain once Israel withdraws, the fact that Palestinian ideology calls for continued ‘resistance’ until ‘all of Palestine’ is ‘liberated’...

Fresnozionism.org..
08 July '13..

Palestinians often complain that the US is “biased” toward Israel. This could be because their fundamental belief is that all of the land between the Jordan and the Mediterranean belongs to them. So they see any recognition of Israel’s legitimacy as ‘biased’.

But if we stipulate that Israel is is not going away, then we can make a good argument that the US position — particularly as articulated by the Obama Administration — is strongly biased toward the Arabs.

Here’s a recent account of Secretary of State Kerry’s diplomatic effort:

“Kerry is trying to pave the way for relaunching the peace process. He is serious and we encouraged him. He made progress and we hope he can conclude a deal in the coming week,” said one [Palestinian] official.

While Israel would not explicitly commit to returning to its 1967 lines, negotiations would be based on a May 2011 policy speech by President Barack Obama. That speech called for a border based on the 1967 lines, with modifications based on mutually agreed “land swaps,” while also urging the Palestinians to recognize Israel as the homeland of the Jewish people. Abbas has repeatedly rejected Israeli calls to recognize the country as the Jewish state, fearing it would undermine the rights of Palestinian refugees displaced from properties inside Israel.

Kerry’s plan also calls on Israel to release about 100 of the longest-held Palestinian prisoners in its jails in several stages, and envisions a $4 billion international investment plan, conducted in various stages, to develop the struggling Palestinian economy.

The idea would be that within six to nine months the sides could pursue an agreement on all outstanding matters, including final borders, the fate of Palestinian refugees and resolving the competing claims to east Jerusalem.

Let’s leave aside all of the practical problems, like the fact that Abbas can’t speak for Hamas, the fact that there is no way to ensure that the Arabs would keep any bargain once Israel withdraws, the fact that Palestinian ideology calls for continued ‘resistance’ until ‘all of Palestine’ is ‘liberated’ (and ideology trumps development), the continued Arab insistence that the descendants of Arab refugees are Israel’s problem, and last but definitely not least, the instability of Syria and Egypt. Let’s just look at the implications of Kerry and Obama’s approach to borders.

Israel is the Jewish state of the Jewish people

There is a simple solution. Israel must insist that there can be no negotiations until all parties agree that Israel is the Jewish state of the Jewish people.

Fresnozionism.org..
27 March '13..






Palestinians must recognize that Israel will be a Jewish state — Barack Obama, March 21, 2013

The ‘Jewish state.’ What is a ‘Jewish state?’ We call it, the ‘State of Israel.’ You can call yourselves whatever you want. But I will not accept it. And I say this on a live broadcast… It’s not my job to define it, to provide a definition for the state and what it contains. You can call yourselves the Zionist Republic, the Hebrew, the National, the Socialist [Republic] call it whatever you like. I don’t care. — Mahmoud Abbas, 2009

When some 120 Israeli figures came here, they said, ‘What’s your opinion concerning the Jewish state?’, and I said that we wouldn’t agree to it. We know what they mean by it, and therefore we shall not agree to a Jewish state… — Abbas, 2011

We say to him [Netanyahu], when he claims — that they [Jews] have a historical right dating back to 3000 years BCE — we say that the nation of Palestine upon the land of Canaan had a 7000 year history BCE. This is the truth, which must be understood and we have to note it, in order to say: ‘Netanyahu, you are incidental in history. We are the people of history. We are the owners of history. — Abbas, 2011

Obama did not suggest that recognition of Israel as a Jewish state be a precondition for negotiations with the Palestinian Authority (PA), and PM Netanyahu has called for “negotiations without preconditions.” But there is no doubt that it must be a precondition — not just for talking to the PA, but for diplomacy with anybody about anything. How can a nation have a give and take discussion with someone who thinks that it is fundamentally illegitimate?

The Arab League initiative, for example, which I discussed here, does not include any mention of recognition. This is not merely an oversight: the initiative was conceived and is understood as an admission by the “Zionist regime” that is fully responsible for the conflict. The initiative calls for a redress of their historic grievance in part by means of the ‘return’ of almost 5 million Arabs who claim hereditary refugee status — something unheard of in the annals of diplomacy — which is incompatible with a Jewish state of Israel.

This is not a symbolic issue. Like Turkey’s Erdoğan, the Arabs have a narrative that they are not willing to compromise, not even a little. It includes the propositions that

The welcoming of rocket attacks by some Israelis

Fresnozionism.org..
06 February '13..

Here is a report posted today on an Israeli blog called The Muqata:

Due to the rising tensions in the countries neighboring Northern Israel, the IDF has recently positioned multiple “Iron Dome” anti-rocket systems around Israel’s north.

Some of the installations are nearby to Israeli Arab villages, and NRG/Maariv reports that today a group of Israeli Arabs cursed the IDF soldiers manning the installation, and pelted them with rocks till the police arrived. …

The question is, why would Israeli Arabs hurl curses, harass and stone IDF soldiers — when the anti-rocket system protects them as well.

The answer depends on understanding the phrase “Israeli Arab” and other names for the same thing.

An Israeli Arab is an Arab who lived (or his ancestors did) in the area that became Israel in 1948. He has the right to vote in Israeli elections, utilize Israeli health care, receive state funds for schools, etc. He is neither required to sing “Hatikva” nor to serve in the IDF, but is expected to be loyal to the state and not assist its enemies or engage in terrorism.

Arabs, Israeli Jews, From All Over - Together

Batya Medad..
Shilo Musings..
30 October '12..



Last night at Yafiz, Sha'ar Binyamin, an Arab customer asked me if I remember him. I was surprised and asked if he remembered me. The conversation was in English.

"Of course, last visit I shopped here many times. Then I had come from Saudi Arabia."

That seems like an apropos introduction to this picture I snapped a couple of weeks ago:

The license plate is hard to see, but it's Jordanian. The car was ahead of us at Hizme/Jerusalem "city line." I've decide to call it that and not "border."

A sizable percentage of our customers in Yafiz, a moderately priced "clothing for the entire family store" in Sha'ar Binyamin, just north of Jerusalem is Arab, Muslim Arabs. We also have Christian Arabs, lots of Jews and also some of the Christian Zionist volunteers from North America who do volunteer work, primarily Jewish agriculture in the area.

Like all businesses, the business comes in waves. Due to the Muslim holiday, Eid al-Adha, and the beginning of winter for all, it has been more like a tsunami. At least that's how we, the hapless staff, felt at times the past few days. No doubt that morning shift will think the store had been hit by hurricane winds, because by the time we closed to customers, our energies were more depleted than the shelves. We didn't do a total clean-up.

Fresnozionism - Conquering the land piecemeal

Vandalism at Jerusalem's
Mt. of Olives Cemetery

Fresnozionism.org..
17 February '12..

Recently, a car occupied by two Israeli Jews was attacked by rock-throwing Arabs in a Jerusalem neighborhood. Luckily, they escaped, one with minor injuries. Sometimes the victims are not so lucky, as in the case of Asher and Yonatan Palmer, murdered last year when a huge rock came through the windshield, striking the driver in the face and causing their car to veer off the road. Here is what I wrote then:

Every single day, hundreds of rocks, blocks, stones, etc. are thrown at Jewish vehicles in Judea, Samaria, Jerusalem and Arab towns or neighborhoods inside the Green Line. Sometime photographers are informed in advance that there will be exciting opportunities to view the heroic resistance to occupation. Throwing ‘stones’ (sometimes as big as a person’s head) is what Palestinian Arab adolescents do for entertainment. Even the great Columbia University ‘scholar’ Edward Said symbolically threw a stone across the Lebanese border at Israeli soldiers.

In the recent case, the driver was also struck in the face, but managed to control the car and get away from a crowd of ‘youths’ who would certainly have torn the two apart if they had been able to. Last October, a woman in labor on her way to Hadassah Hospital and her husband were attacked in a similar fashion; they also managed to escape.

Sometimes the Arabs throw gasoline bombs at cars, and sometimes people are dragged out of them and beaten.

Although the initial stone-throwing is often done by pre-teens or young teenagers, a crowd of older and more dangerous youths quickly gathers. In some cases, the lives of the victims have been saved by older Arabs who have not had the full ‘benefit’ of a Palestinian education.

Fresnozionism - Explaining Arab rage

Fresnozionism.org
11 September '11

http://fresnozionism.org/2011/09/explaining-arab-rage/




To find something to illustrate this post, I googled ‘Egyptian antisemitic cartoons’. I got 152,000 images. I picked one that was colorful, though not as bloody as most of them.

If you were to ask an Egyptian why a slavering mob tore down a concrete wall and furiously hammered on an inner door (video here) just a few feet from six trapped Israeli security guards in order to try to tear them to pieces, they would likely say that they were furious over the death of several Egyptians during the recent terrorist attack near Eilat, and angry about Israel’s ‘treatment of Palestinians’.

Never mind that a) several of the terrorists were Egyptian citizens, b) seven Israeli Jews died in the attack which was launched from Egyptian soil, and c) it’s quite likely that one of the Israeli casualties, police counterterrorism officer Pascal Avrahami, was murdered by Egyptian soldiers or police. Oh, and never mind that the ‘treatment of Palestinians’ is a direct result of about 100 years of murder and terrorism directed at Jews and Israelis by Palestinian Arabs.

The guards were armed and probably would have killed dozens before being overwhelmed. Then Egypt would have demanded an apology.

Nothing affected me personally more than this story, here in the words of PM Netanyahu:

During this long night, we were required to make many difficult decisions. I would like to share with you one conversation from this night. On the line was Yonatan, the security officer of the Embassy. He and his men, six in number, were trapped in the Embassy building. The mob entered the building and entered the office. Only one door separated between the mob and Yonatan and his friends. He sounded perfectly calm to me, and on the other hand understood the situation in which he and his colleagues found themselves.

During the ongoing event, he requested from the security officer in the Foreign Ministry one thing: If something happens to me, he said, my parents should be notified face to face, and not by telephone. I got on the phone line and I said to him, “Yonatan, be strong. I promise you that the State of Israel will do everything in its power and will use all possible resources in the world in order to rescue you and your friends unharmed and whole from this situation.”

And thank God this morning they all landed in Israel. A short while ago I spoke with Yonatan and his mother. They sounded wonderful.

There is more than one story of what happened to Jews who were not so lucky. There was the lynching of the two reserve soldiers who accidentally drove into Ramallah (video here), and countless attempted murders in which Jewish Israelis were stoned or stabbed (horrifying video here).

Fresnozionism - Goodbye to ‘land for peace’

Fresnozionism.org
28 August '11

http://fresnozionism.org/2011/08/goodbye-to-land-for-peace/


The Land for Peace theory (LFP) has always been something like this:

Israel and the Arab states are in conflict. The conflict can be ended if Israel gives up the lands it occupied in 1967.

This proposition was suspicious even in 1967, since the Jewish state — or even the Jews in pre-state Palestine — had never had peace until then, even without the territories. But the world in general — certainly the US and the European Union — at least pretends that it is true, and has worked hard to get Israel to divest itself of the land. So far Israel has evacuated the Sinai peninsula and the Gaza strip, surrendering them to complete Arab control. This represents by far the greater part of the lands conquered in 1967.

The Oslo accords included a great concession by Israel: the PLO — which had been responsible for numerous murderous terrorist attacks against Israelis inside and outside of Israel — was allowed to return to the territories and constitute itself as a government, the Palestinian Authority. As a result of the Oslo accords, about 95% of the Arab population of Judea and Samaria now live in areas under Palestinian civil control.

One would think that if LFP were true, then there would have been movement toward peace as a result of Israel’s concessions. But this has not proven to be the case:

With regard to the Sinai, although the Egyptian regime refrained from overt conflict (in return for billions in US aid), it did not reign in incitement, nor did it take steps to improve relations with Israel. The ‘peace treaty’ was treated as an extended cease-fire, and now as the regime changes we are seeing a retreat from the idea of peace.

With regard to Gaza, in effect a continuous state of war with Israel exists, and only fear of massive military intervention keeps a lid — loosely — on terrorism.

With regard to Judea and Samaria, the PLO never accepted the ‘peace’ part of the LFP formula, insisting on receiving land without granting recognition (Mahmoud Abbas recently reiterated his refusal to accept a Jewish state as a neighbor to ‘Palestine’). The PLO does not accept the idea of ‘two states for two peoples’ and understands the ‘two-state solution’ as an Arab ‘Palestine’ free of Jews, and an Israel which — by virtue of ‘right of return’ — will have an Arab majority.

Fresnozionism - NPR presents 4:16 of anti-Israel propaganda

Fresnozionism.org
29 July '11





http://fresnozionism.org/2011/07/npr-presents-416-of-anti-israel-propaganda/

Four minutes and 16 seconds on NPR’s premier daily news program, “All Things Considered,” is a major story. The longest one on Thursday, July 28′s program, about the difficulties facing the spouses of US military personnel, clocked in at 4:59.

Four minutes and 16 seconds were provided as a platform for Israel-bashing by one left-wing Israeli retired general, one Arab representing Fatah, the Arab terrorist organization that has killed more Israelis than any other — let’s call it what it is — and Daniel Levy, the co-founder of J Street who famously said (video here)

Maybe, if this collective Jewish presence can only survive by the sword, then Israel really ain’t a good idea.

Did I mention that these gentlemen are in the US on a tour sponsored by the same phony ‘pro-Israel’ lobby, J Street? NPR did, but its piece didn’t talk about J Street’s funding from anti-Israel sources, or its history of lobbying against sanctions on Iran, for the Goldstone report, and for the condemnation of Israel in the UN Security Council.

As expected, the speakers blamed Israel for the lack of negotiations with the Palestinian Authority, and predicted disaster if Israel did not preemptively surrender to Arab demands. I won’t repeat most of it — you can read it at NPR’s site. But the most outrageous statement of all was made by Levy:

Fresnozionism - Nakba, shmakba

Fresnozionism.org
23 June '11


http://fresnozionism.org/2011/06/nakba-shmakba/








We keep hearing that the Palestinians ‘yearn for a state’, they ‘deserve’ a state, their ‘plight’ is ‘unsustainable’, and so on. President Obama even went so far as to compare it to the Holocaust in his 2009 Cairo speech:

Around the world, the Jewish people were persecuted for centuries, and anti-Semitism in Europe culminated in an unprecedented Holocaust…

On the other hand, it is also undeniable that the Palestinian people – Muslims and Christians – have suffered in pursuit of a homeland. For more than sixty years they have endured the pain of dislocation. Many wait in refugee camps in the West Bank, Gaza, and neighboring lands for a life of peace and security that they have never been able to lead. They endure the daily humiliations – large and small – that come with occupation. So let there be no doubt: the situation for the Palestinian people is intolerable.

What is implicit here is the nakba myth: that a flowering Palestinian civilization was invaded by European Jews who forcibly dispossessed them from their homes and made refugees of them. Ever since then, they yearn for ‘justice’ in the form of return.

The nakba myth is what gives legitimacy to those like the President who argue that Israel must be pressured to imperil its own security to create a Palestinian state, because ‘it’s the right thing to do’ for the Palestinian Arabs.

It is called upon to ‘explain’ or even justify Arab ‘resistance’, from ‘nonviolent’ attempts to vandalize the security fence to launching rockets at random into civilian areas, to firing antitank missiles at yellow school buses, to slitting the throats of 3-month old babies.

The nakba myth is what underlies the Palestinian refusal to recognize a Jewish state — they believe that it belongs to them. The national identity of the ‘Palestinian people’ is as closely connected to the nakba myth as that of Americans is to our Revolutionary War.

But the myth is false in very significant ways:

1) The Zionists did not dispossess the local Arabs, forcibly or otherwise, before 1948

2) Zionist development of the land of Israel actually caused an increase in the number and prosperity of local Arabs

3) The exodus of Arabs from what would become Israel in 1947-48 was forcible in only in a few cases — and overall due to the decisions of their leaders and Arab neighbors

It’s also true that the Arabs practiced ethnic cleansing of Jews in eastern Jerusalem and Judea/Samaria before and during the War of Independence, and that more Jews fled Arab countries during and after the war than Arabs left Israel, but we can leave this aside for now and concentrate on the nakba.

The area that is now Israel was home to less than 200,000 Arabs and somewhat fewer Jews (who lived in places like Jerusalem, Tzfat and Hebron) when Zionist immigration began in the 1880′s. Did the Zionists forcibly dispossess the Arabs? In an article entitled “Not Stealing Palestine but Purchasing Israel,” Daniel Pipes writes,

In Jerusalem Besieged: From Ancient Canaan to Modern Israel, Eric H. Cline writes of Jerusalem: “No other city has been more bitterly fought over throughout its history” … The PA fantasizes that today’s Palestinians are descended from a tribe of ancient Canaan, the Jebusites; in fact, but they are overwhelmingly the off-spring of invaders and immigrants seeking economic opportunities. Against this tableau of unceasing conquest, violence, and overthrow, Zionist efforts to build a presence in the Holy Land until 1948 stand out as astonishingly mild, as mercantile rather than military. Two great empires, the Ottomans and the British, ruled Eretz Yisrael; in contrast, Zionists lacked military power. They could not possibly achieve statehood through conquest.

Instead, they purchased land. Acquiring property dunam by dunam, farm by farm, house by house, lay at the heart of the Zionist enterprise until 1948. The Jewish National Fund, founded in 1901 to buy land in Palestine “to assist in the foundation of a new community of free Jews engaged in active and peaceable industry,” was the key institution – and not the Haganah, the clandestine defense organization founded in 1920…

Only when the British mandatory power gave up on Palestine in 1948, followed immediately by an all-out attempt by Arab states to crush and expel the Zionists, did the latter take up the sword in self defense and go on to win land through military conquest. Even then, as the historian Efraim Karsh demonstrates in Palestine Betrayed, most Arabs fled their lands; exceedingly few were forced off.
This history contradicts the Palestinian account that “Zionist gangs stole Palestine and expelled its people” which led to a catastrophe “unprecedented in history” (according to a PA 12th-grade textbook) or that Zionists “plundered the Palestinian land and national interests, and established their state upon the ruins of the Palestinian Arab people” (writes a columnist in the PA’s daily). International organizations, newspaper editorials, and faculty petitions reiterate this falsehood worldwide.

The population of Native Americans declined drastically with European immigration into the New World, but what happened to the Arabs of Palestine as a result of the Zionist ‘invasion’? From about 200,000 in 1890, the Arab population of what would become Israel rose to almost 1.3 million in 1947 (see “MidEast Web: Population of Ottoman and Mandate Palestine“)! This fact alone refutes claims of violent dispossession.

Indeed, it was the opposite. George Gilder explains what happened (Gilder: The Economics of Settlement):

In ancient times, as [Walter Lowdermilk, an American soil expert] knew, Palestine was largely self-sufficient, with a population of millions. Replete with forests, teeming with sheep and goats, full of farms and wineries, the landscape evoked a European plenitude. By 1939, however, when Lowdermilk arrived in the area, it was largely an environmental disaster. As he recounted in his 1944 book, Palestine, Land of Promise, “when Jewish colonists first began their work in 1882…the soils were eroded off the uplands to bedrock over fully one half the hills; streams across the coastal plain were choked with erosional debris from the hills to form pestilential marshes infested with dreaded malaria; the fair cities and elaborate works of ancient times were left in doleful ruins.” In the late 19th century around the current Tel Aviv, Lowdermilk was told, “no more than 100 miserable families lived in huts.” Jericho, once luxuriantly shaded by balsams, was treeless.

What amazed Lowdermilk, though — and changed his life — was not the 1,000 years of deterioration but the some 50 years of reclamation of both the highlands and the lowlands by relatively small groups of Jewish settlers. As one of many examples of valley reclamation, he tells the story of the settlement of Petah Tikva, established by Jews from Jerusalem in 1878, in defiance of warnings from physicians who saw the area outside what is now Tel Aviv as hopelessly infested with malarial mosquitoes. After initial failures and retreats, Petah Tikva became “the first settlement to conquer the deadly foe of malaria,” by “planting Eucalyptus [locally known as ‘Jew trees'] in the swamps to absorb the moisture,” draining other swamps, importing large quantities of quinine, and developing rich agriculture and citriculture …

In draining swamps, leaching saline soils, redeeming dunes into orchards and poultry farms, in planting millions of trees on rocky hills, in constructing elaborate water works and terraces on the hills, in digging 548 wells and supporting canals in little more than a decade and irrigating thousands of acres of land, establishing industries, hospitals, clinics, and schools, the 500,000 Jewish settlers who arrived before the creation of Israel massively expanded the very absorptive dimensions and capacity of the country. It was these advances that made possible the fivefold 20th-century surge of the Arab population by 1940.

There’s one more chapter to this story. In 1948, Israel became independent, and somewhere between 600,000 and 650,000 Arabs fled, to become the ancestors of the 4.5 million who today claim refugee status (Palestinian refugee status is the only such status recognized by the UN as hereditary) and who are slavering at the gates of Israel demanding to ‘return’ and take what is ‘theirs’.

But in fact only residents of a few Arab villages, mostly those on the Tel-Aviv — Jerusalem Road, from which attacks were launched against convoys supplying besieged Jerusalem, were removed by force. Most left in fear that they would be caught up in fighting or massacred (although actual massacres of civilians by Jews were almost nonexistent — another story), and in many cases were encouraged to leave by their own leadership. Here is how Efraim Karsh describes it (Karsh: Reclaiming a Historical Truth):

While most Palestinian Arabs needed little encouragement to take to the road, large numbers of them were driven from their homes by their own leaders and/or the “Arab Liberation Army” that had entered Palestine prior to the end of the Mandate, whether out of military considerations or in order to prevent them from becoming citizens of the prospective Jewish state. Of this there is an overwhelming and incontrovertible body of contemporary evidence – intelligence briefs, captured Arab documents, press reports, personal testimonies and memoirs, and so on and so forth.

In the largest and best-known example of Arab-instigated exodus, tens of thousands of Arabs were ordered or bullied into leaving the city of Haifa (on April 21-22 ) on the instructions of the Arab Higher Committee, the effective “government” of the Palestinian Arabs. Only days earlier, Tiberias’ 6,000-strong Arab community had been similarly forced out by its own leaders, against local Jewish wishes (a fortnight after the exodus, Sir Alan Cunningham, the last British high commissioner of Palestine, reported that the Tiberias Jews “would welcome [the] Arabs back” ). In Jaffa, Palestine’s largest Arab city, the municipality organized the transfer of thousands of residents by land and sea; in Jerusalem, the AHC ordered the transfer of women and children, and local gang leaders pushed out residents of several neighborhoods, while in Beisan the women and children were ordered out as Transjordan’s Arab Legion dug in.

[Shlomo] Avineri mentions the strenuous Jewish efforts to persuade the Haifa Arabs to stay but not the AHC’s order to leave – which was passed on to the local leadership by phone and secretly recorded by the Haganah. Nor does he note the well-documented efforts of Haifa’s Arab leadership to scaremonger their hapless constituents, reluctant in the extreme to leave, into fleeing. Some Arab residents received written threats that, unless they left town, they would be branded as traitors deserving of death. Others were told they could expect no mercy from the Jews…

Nor was this phenomenon confined to Palestinian cities. The deliberate depopulation of Arab villages too, and their transformation into military strongholds was a hallmark of the Arab campaign from the onset of hostilities…

War is Hell, as much or more so for civilians as soldiers, but a great deal of the Hell that characterized the experience of the Arabs of Palestine was of their own making or that of their Arab neighbors. Very little was the responsibility of the Jews, who ought not to be asked to pay the price for it.

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.

The whole story in one line

Deputy FM Danny Ayalon

Fresnozionism.org
22 May '11

http://fresnozionism.org/2011/05/the-whole-story-in-one-line/


Israel’s Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon recently tweeted (I know, it sounds so ridiculous) this:

הסכסוך אינו סכסוך טריטוריאלי ועל כן המו”מ לא יכול להתבסס על סוגיית שטח

Which means,

The conflict is not a territorial conflict, so negotiations cannot be based on the issue of territory.

This is the whole story in one line.

Today I attended a talk by Yaakov Kirschen, the Dry Bones cartoonist. He said the same thing in slightly different words:

Everyone is upset about Obama’s mention of 1967 lines. This is irrelevant. The only issue, and one that he did not mention, is that the Arab world does not recognize the Jewish state of Israel as a native part of the Middle East.

This is what ‘recognition’ means.

It is what Arafat never changed the PLO charter to include, despite the fact that he agreed to do so in the Oslo agreements and despite pleas from President Clinton that he do it.

It is what the Arab Initiative does not offer — it refers only to “normal relations” even after Israel has withdrawn to aforesaid insecure borders.

It is what Mahmoud Abbas meant when he refused to say that Israel was the state of the Jewish people.

And despite the fact that President Obama claims to accept this principle himself, he proposes that the Palestinian Arabs be granted sovereignty without agreeing to accept the idea — in particular without saying that millions of descendants of 1948 refugees do not have a ‘right’ to the place now called ‘Israel’.

I think most people in the US and Israel understood this from 1948 to 1993. It was clear to everyone that the Arabs wanted Israel replaced by an Arab state, and they were ready to fight to make this happen. But when Arafat lied about his aims, Israelis sick of war and wanting to finally be ‘normal’, jumped at the chance to believe him.

Now, after Arab terrorism has claimed more than a thousand Israeli victims, most realize that it was all a trick. Unfortunately, in America and Europe and among Israel’s extreme Left, it’s easy for those who (for various reasons) want to see Israel out of the territories to insist that the principle is fine, it’s just that Israel hasn’t made enough concessions. They will continue to say this until there isn’t anything left to concede.

Recognition is everything. But if we are realistic we know that neither Hamas, Fatah nor any other Arab nation is prepared to grant it today — even the ones that are allegedly at ‘peace’ with Israel. The Arab world hasn’t changed its position since 1948.

As Danny Danon argues, the Arabs will abrogate the Oslo agreements by unilaterally seeking recognition of statehood at the UN. It can also be argued that the countenancing of terrorism by the PA, the Hamas-Fatah agreement and the refusal to provide recognition of Israel also constitute a rejection of Oslo.

It’s not possible to continue pretending that there is a path to peace through negotiation with the Fatah-Hamas Palestinian Authority. Obama’s plan only makes things worse by moving the US closer to the Arab position. Time for Plan B:

Let’s accept that the root of the problem (Kirschen said this, too) is the Arab refusal to accept a Jewish state in the Mideast and work on that.


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The real nakba

Palestinian refugees from
 Iraq after the fall of 
Saddam Hussein 
(2007 photo)

Fresnozionism.org
16 May '11

http://fresnozionism.org/2011/05/the-real-nakba/

I don’t have to tell you that every day we are bombarded with stories about ill-treatment, racism and apartheid perpetrated against Palestinian Arabs by Israel. Fifty, a hundred NGOs painstakingly document every tiny humiliation suffered by the noble Palestinian Arabs at the hands of the Jews. Half the world directly supports the Palestinian Cause, which is always described in terms of human rights and justice, although we know that as a matter of fact it is the opposite.

But I’ll bet there is some recent history of the Palestinian Arabs that you don’t know. It’s not surprising — the West doesn’t really care about Arabs; they are just barely above black Africans on the ladder of importance in our media and to our politicians (quick: how many died in the Second Congo War between 1998-2008? Did you even hear about the Second Congo war? Try 5.4 million human beings).

Of course since 1967 everyone’s heard the Arab version of the Palestinian story ad nauseum. But here are some questions to think about (and then I’ll tell you where to find the surprising, even shocking answers):

Who has practiced apartheid, de jure as well as de facto, against Palestinian Arabs?

What countries do not allow Palestinian Arabs to work in various professions, to go to regular schools, to be appointed to civil service jobs, to vote, etc.?

Who really made the Gaza Strip an “open-air prison?”


What country expelled 450,000 Palestinians?


Why does no Arab country except Jordan allow Palestinians to become citizens (and even in Jordan their rights are strictly circumscribed)?


What country has killed more Palestinian Arabs than have died as a result of their struggles with Israel since 1948?


In 1967, the life expectancy of a Gaza resident was 48 (today it is 72). Why is that?


Why are there 4-5 million claimants of Palestinian refugee status today (about 600,000 fled from Israel in 1948)? Why has this problem persisted longer than any other refugee problem in history, including that of 850,000 Jews who were kicked out or fled from Arab countries at about the same time?

Thanks to Ma’ariv writer Ben-Dror Yemini, and the bloggers Elder of Ziyon and IsraeliNurse, you can find the answer to these questions, as well as the real story of the Palestinian Arab refugees here.

Don’t miss it. Seriously, read it (you won’t find it in English anywhere else) and ask yourself why Israel should pay the price for the real nakba of the Palestinian Arabs.

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Will history repeat itself in September?

Fresnozionism.org
12 May '11

http://fresnozionism.org/2011/05/will-history-repeat-itself-in-september/


In September 1938, Hitler escalated his diplomatic assault on the Czechoslovak government. After Nazi elements in the Sudetenland, an area of Czechoslovakia with a majority of ethnic Germans, held violent demonstrations, Hitler demanded that the Sudetenland be ceded to Germany. The Sudeten Germans were being slaughtered, he said.

On September 30, France, the UK, Italy and Nazi Germany signed the Munich Pact. It gave Czechoslovakia two options: either cede the Sudetenland to Germany as Hitler desired, or the French would not honor their prior commitment to protect Czechoslovakia. In return, Hitler promised to leave the rest of the country alone and signed a peace treaty with the UK.

Czechoslovakia, which was not invited to the conference, had little choice. It allowed the Germans to occupy the Sudetenland, which meant that it lost “its defensible border and fortifications,” 70% of its iron and steel industry and 70% of its electricity (Wikipedia). In November, more pieces of the country were bitten off and by March 1939 what was left became a German protectorate. And as we all know, a few months later Chamberlain’s ‘peace’ evaporated.

This September will mark 73 years since the Munich Pact, which has become emblematic of the failure of appeasement to bring peace. And Europe is eerily preparing to repeat history, with the Arab world as the Third Reich:

Several European countries are threatening to recognize an independent Palestinian state — on the basis of the pre-1967 boundaries to include the West Bank, Gaza, and with East Jerusalem as its capital — if Israel refuses to return to the negotiating table with the Palestinian Authority by September. Given the new “reconciliation deal” between the rival Palestinian factions Fatah and Hamas, Europeans are effectively demanding that Israel negotiate with Hamas, an Islamist terrorist group unambiguously committed to Israel’s destruction …

In France, President Nicolas Sarkozy, in an interview with the L’Express newsmagazine on May 5, said: “If the peace process is still dead in September, France will face up to its responsibilities on the central question of the recognition of a Palestinian state. The idea that there is still plenty of time is dangerous. Things have to be brought to a conclusion” before September. Sarkozy also said that during the next few months, European countries would try “to relaunch the peace process along with the Americans, because Europe cannot be the main one paying for Palestine and yet remain a minor figure politically in the matter” …

In Britain, Prime Minister David Cameron told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on May 3 that Britain is prepared to formally recognize an independent Palestinian state in September unless Israel opens peace talks with the Palestinians. That warning came after Netanyahu told Cameron that the so-called unity pact between rival Palestinian factions Fatah, which rules the West Bank, and Hamas, the Islamic resistance movement that rules Gaza, is a “tremendous blow to peace and a great victory for terrorism.” Palestinian leaders say the deal is a major step towards an independent state, but Israel fears the reconciliation will open the door to Hamas militants being deployed in the West Bank.
– Soeren Kern, Europeans Threaten to Recognize Palestinian State Unless Israel Negotiates With Terrorist Group

In other words, with the Palestinian Arabs playing the role of the Sudeten Germans, Europe is trying to force Israel to give up its defensible borders, in return for what will clearly not be “peace in our time.”

True, they are not demanding immediate cession of the territories, just that Israel will “return to the negotiating table.” But it is the Arabs who have refused to negotiate, insisting on prior concessions such as a freeze on all construction in Judea/Samaria and eastern Jerusalem. This means that what is really being dictated to Israel is that it must agree to whatever conditions are demanded by the Palestinian Authority — which today includes the genocidal Hamas.

Of course analogies are just analogies. Israel isn’t Czechoslovakia — it is capable of defending itself against the Arabs and Iran. And while Chamberlain likely really believed that the piece of paper he received from Hitler would bring peace, it’s hard to imagine that today’s European governments are stupid enough to believe that forcing Israel to expose its soft underbelly to Hamas will result in anything other than war.

Unlike in 1938, the US is engaged in this conflict, and what it does could have a great effect on the outcome. The US President is expected to make a speech about the Middle East in the near future, and what he says will probably have a profound effect on what happens between now and September.

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Critical mass in the Israeli/Arab conflict

Fresnozionism.org
29 April '11

http://fresnozionism.org/2011/04/critical-mass-in-the-israeliarab-conflict/

The Israel/Arab conflict is reaching a new point of inflection. The status quo which has been in place more or less since the early ’90′s (when the PLO returned to the territories from Tunis) is about to be replaced by a new reality. This change could be peaceful, or — more likely — it could be mediated by the most vicious war in Israel’s history. But possible outcomes could be very different, depending primarily on the actions of the Israeli government.

The Hamas/Fatah arrangement, as I wrote recently, is designed to facilitate the creation of a state of ‘Palestine’ in the territories without recognition of Israel, end of conflict, or security arrangements. Such a state would immediately be in confrontation with Israel over settlements, etc., and would be a base for terrorism or outright war. If it were recognized by enough UN members, Israel’s self defense would be seen as aggression against the new state, and could be met with sanctions or worse.

But the Arab plan faces an obstacle: the US, and to a lesser extent, the Europeans, require that a Palestinian Authority that includes Hamas must agree to the three conditions of recognition, accepting prior agreements (Oslo) and renouncing violence. Hamas has never been prepared to even pretend to agree to these things.

The Arab strategy to overcome this is described brilliantly by the pseudonymous “Eldad Tzioni”:

So this is the game:


The PLO is the party that negotiates with Israel, and the party that officially recognizes Israel.


The PA [Palestinian Authority] is only responsible for governing the Arabs in the territories, not with any foreign relations.


The PA, despite claims of being democratic, reports to the PLO.


The fake Hamas/Fatah reconciliation is meant to only address the PA, not the PLO. They won’t hold any elections until after September, if ever.


So the PLO will claim to still recognize Israel and be peaceful, as it will claim that from its perspective nothing has changed.


The instant that Palestine is declared a state that is recognized by the world, in part because of these assurances that it is a peaceful state that recognizes Israel, Hamas and Fatah (and all the other terrorist parties that decide to join the government) will immediately take over the PLO’s foreign affairs, as that is what nations do. The PLO’s foreign affairs role will be superseded by “Palestine.

Which means that the very minute that Palestine is recognized as a state, it will be by definition a terror state that no longer recognizes Israel! And indeed it will not need to. The entire peace process since Oslo has been a sham in order to gain territory, with peace being a tactic, not a strategy.”

As I wrote yesterday, the introduction of Hamas into the PA means that the ‘peace process’ is over. Israel can no sooner make peace with Hamas than it could have with Hitler. The Oslo accords require recognition, etc., and so the day Hamas joins the PA, the PA will have abrogated the Oslo agreements. But Oslo created the PA. And Oslo recognized the PLO as the “sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people”.

This means that the PA will be illegitimate, and the status of the territories will revert to the way it was defined by UNSC resolution 242: the entire area is disputed, until the parties can agree on secure and recognized boundaries. And it means that Israel will not be required to negotiate with the PLO — something that was illegal under Israeli law before Oslo, by the way.

This gives Israel freedom of action from a legal point of view, I think. Of course, in the real world nations do whatever they can get away with. Force rules and diplomacy provides fig leaves. So Israel can’t depend on support from other nations just because it makes a convincing legal case.

I think that Israel needs to act preemptively to establish facts on the ground before the September declaration of ‘Palestine’, in order to ensure its continued security. Here is an example of a proposal for the kind of actions Israel might take:

Annex the large settlement blocs, the Jordan Valley, the ‘high ground’, and anything else that is necessary for security.

Re-emphasize Israel’s commitment to a unified Jerusalem under Israeli rule.
Publish a map which clearly defines the boundaries of the state.

Make a clear statement — and implement it — that Israel will work to provide full civil rights to its Arab and other minorities, but will not give them national rights.

The Palestinian Arab state will be outside the borders of Israel, which is defined as the state of the Jewish people.

Naturally the Arabs and their supporters will scream bloody murder, including threats of war. Israel’s leaders and supporters must keep in mind that the replacement of Israel by an Arab state is and always has been the goal of the major Palestinian Arab factions. What has happened now is that the mask has dropped, and it will not be productive for Israel to pretend that there is still a possibility of a compromise peace.

The possibility of a major war today is greater than it has been for some time. Now to the threat from Hizballah and Hamas, we must add the possibility that Bashar al-Assad will deliberately provoke or join a conflict in order to divert attention from his violent suppression of domestic opposition, and also the possibility that Egypt will facilitate the supply of weapons to Hamas in Gaza.

But it seems to me that war will come if and when Israel’s enemies see the possibility of victory — that is, when it appears to them that Israel’s deterrent and defensive capability can be overcome. Israel’s ‘provocative’ actions would have little to do with it — the existence of any Jewish state is sufficient provocation.

The best way to prevent war, therefore, is to maintain the strongest possible defensive and deterrent posture. Proposals for appeasement, like the so-called ‘Israeli peace initiative‘, would have exactly the opposite effect. Naturally, the ‘peace camp’ is frantically coming up with new ideas along these lines. The good news is that they will be contemptuously dismissed by the Arabs, who are going for the whole enchilada.

Israel is facing a very difficult period in the near future. The way to traverse it successfully is to take a stance that is positive rather than apologetic or conciliatory.

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Anti-Israel claims invert reality

Fresnozionism.org
26 April '11

http://fresnozionism.org/2011/04/anti-israel-claims-invert-reality/



Last week (“Secrets of Palestinian Arab propaganda“) I wrote about the way particular anti-Israel messages are targeted at specific audiences. For example, I talked about

An anti-racist message aimed primarily at the US, where the white population is suffused with guilt for the institution of slavery followed by institutional discrimination against African-Americans. Palestinian Arabs are (nonsensically) presented as discriminated against because of their ‘race’, comparisons are made to apartheid South Africa, and violent terrorism is compared to the civil rights movement of the 1960′s. This argument is epitomized by a recent article by Sarah Leah Whitson of Human Rights Watch.

Today I want to look at another dimension of these various messages, the way they are characterized by an inversion of reality. Let’s look at some of the most absurd anti-Israel claims and see how they are actually inversions of Arab actions or objectives:

1. The IDF deliberately targets civilians (Goldstone Report). Not only did Goldstone himself repudiate this conclusion, it has been conclusively shown that

[T]he Goldstone Report’s anti-Israel charges were just unproven partisan allegations masquerading as investigative conclusions.

But Palestinian Arab terrorism against Jews, which has been going on for at least 100 years, primarily targets civilians. They are soft targets, and best fit the goals of terrorism — to attract attention and to demoralize a population.

2. Children are especially victimized. If there ever was an inversion, this is it. No better example can be given than the recent murder of five members of the Fogel family, where one of the perpetrators returned to the house to kill a crying baby, and one said that they would have killed two other children if they had known they were present. There was the recent murder of a child when an antitank missile was fired directly at a yellow school bus. And there have been any number of ‘actions’ like the Ma’alot massacre, the Bus of Blood, the attack on the nursery at Misgav Am, etc., in which the victims were primarily children.

Time for a diplomatic U-turn

Fresnozionism.org
11 April '11

http://fresnozionism.org/2011/04/time-for-a-diplomatic-u-turn/

PM Netanyahu has been talking about an Israeli initiative to head off UN recognition of ‘Palestine’:

While there is speculation that Netanyahu is interested in a Palestinian state within temporary borders, with the final borders to be negotiated at a later date, others believe Netanyahu’s plan entails a reiteration of the goal of two states, and the announcement that the IDF will turn control of all the major cities in the West Bank over to the Palestinian Authority, giving it control over some 90 percent of the Palestinian population. Under this plan, the IDF would no longer operate inside the cities, except in extraordinary circumstances. — Herb Keinon, Jerusalem Post

The ever-patriotic Ha’aretz speculates thus:

Netanyahu mulls pulling IDF forces out of Palestinian [sic] West Bank

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is weighing a withdrawal of Israel Defense Forces troops from the West Bank and a series of other measures to block the “diplomatic tsunami” that may follow international recognition of a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders at the United Nations General Assembly in September…


Netanyahu is still uncertain to what extent the withdrawal would be, but it will probably not include the evacuation of settlements.

(I included the headline from the Ha’aretz article to illustrate their commitment to unbiased journalism).

Now, the PM may not be planning anything like this. At this point, nobody — probably not Netanyahu and his advisers — knows what diplomatic tack he will take to oppose the effort to declare a Palestinian state in the UN.

Nevertheless, the logic behind these ideas escapes me.

The Arabs are saying “we won’t negotiate because we can get everything we want from the UN without giving Israel anything” — no security arrangements, no recognition, etc. And Israel considers responding by saying “no, wait — let’s make more concessions! Let’s weaken and endanger ourselves!”

I expect that the Arabs will accept concessions offered and then continue their concurrent diplomatic whining and violent terrorizing. Why would any other action make sense for them?

I’d like to see a different approach. This one hasn’t worked yet.

I would like to hear PM Netanyahu tell the UN that he is sorry, but conditions are not ripe today for a Palestinian state. Given the danger of Hamas being supported via a newly hostile Egypt, because of the threat from Hizballah in Lebanon, Israel cannot permit the creation of another entity which will certainly be hostile, which expresses its hostile intentions every day, next door.

Surely the UN will understand that with all the instability in the Middle East today, now is not the time to add more (note that this is the opposite of the “linkage theory“).

When will it be possible for there to be a Palestinian state? It will be when the Arab world is ready to make peace with Israel — when Hamas and Hizballah are disarmed, when Egypt and Syria stop trying to solve their domestic problems by bellicosity toward Israel. And when the Palestinian Arabs are prepared to say, “this is the end of the conflict” (note that this is the opposite of the sequence prescribed by the Arab Initiative).

After the 1967 war, the UN expressed the idea that peace can come along with recognition and secure borders in UNSC resolution 242. Since then, the Arabs have said ‘no’ a thousand times, and punctuated these negations with violence. And every time, the ‘international community,’ often along with Israel, takes another step closer to the Arab position.

But there was nothing wrong with the original one. Secure borders, recognition and disarming the terrorist militias are necessary for peace.

The Israeli position should be based on demanding these things, not on giving them up!

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What to expect this summer

Fresnozionism.org
28 March '11

http://fresnozionism.org/2011/03/what-to-expect-this-summer/


News item:

JERUSALEM (AP) — Israel is considering annexing major West Bank settlement blocs if the Palestinians unilaterally seek world recognition of a state, an Israeli official said Tuesday — moves that would deal a grave blow to prospects for negotiating a peace deal between the two sides.

Israel has refrained from taking such a diplomatically explosive step for four decades. The fact that it is considering doing so reflects how seriously it is concerned by the Palestinian campaign to win international recognition of a state in the absence of peacemaking…

Israel annexed east Jerusalem, home to shrines sacred to Judaism, Islam and Christianity, immediately after seizing it. But it carefully avoided annexing the West Bank, where 300,000 settlers now live among 2.5 million Palestinians.

The Arabs are playing a serious game, and we need to see several moves ahead if we are going to beat them. Unfortunately they played the opening and most of the mid-game much more competently than we did, and our present position is poor. We gave up a lot when we in effect ceded the Temple Mount in 1967, and more at Oslo. But no use crying over spilt milk.

We have to deal with some facts that are unchangeable as premises:

 - There can be no accommodation with any Palestinian Arab faction. All of them are committed to the elimination of the Jewish state.

 - The West almost universally believes (or pretends to believe) that Israel could survive within 1949 lines and that areas outside them ‘belong’ to the ‘Palestinians’. These propositions are both false, but it’s a waste of time trying to change their minds.

A unilateral declaration of ‘Palestine’, even if approved by the UN, will not immediately establish the 1949 lines as borders. The West is much more likely to agree to a new Mandate, in which some power — perhaps the Quartet — will implement a gradual phase-in and adjustment of borders. Some settlements may be permitted to remain, with land swaps. Basically it will be the ‘Obama plan’, except that it will be imposed, not agreed upon.

It goes without saying that this will be highly disadvantageous to Israel, because there will only be lip service paid to Israel’s security concerns, and none at all to the importance of some sites to Judaism (only Islam gets to have religious sensibilities taken into account. Muhammad’s hitching post is more relevant than Abraham and Sarah’s tomb).

I’m not sure if it will be possible to forestall this by annexing settlement blocs — or by any other practical action — today. After all, the ‘international community’ still insists that Israel’s annexation of eastern Jerusalem in 1980 is null and void.

Moty & Udi: Contingencies

Fresnozionism.org
25 March '11

http://fresnozionism.org/2011/03/moty-udi-contingencies/

One of the things they stay up nights to do in the kiriya, the IDF headquarters in Tel Aviv, is contingency planning. What if Hizballah and Hamas launch their missiles in a coordinated attack? What if the new Egyptian government allows Hamas to get even more sophisticated weapons (this one appears to be moot already)? And so forth.

I hope that the policy people are doing similar planning. For example, what if the UN — in the form of the Security Council or the General Assembly — recognizes the state of ‘Palestine’ according to the 1949 lines?

Actually, I don’t think the question is a ‘what if’ — it’s a ‘when’. And when is probably before the end of 2011.

Although a UNSC resolution could have ‘teeth’ that a GA resolution normally wouldn’t, like the imposition of sanctions on Israel if it doesn’t agree to dismantle settlements within some time frame, even a GA resolution can be used as a justification for action by member states, even military action, as Jerusalem Post editor David Horovitz explains here.

But, you say, they can’t do that — the territory is disputed, it is part of the original Palestine Mandate, there are numerous resolutions calling for agreement between all concerned parties, etc.

Forget it. It doesn’t matter. Nations will do what they want and create legal justifications afterward. This is always how it has been. And Palestinian statehood is a (really bad) idea whose time has clearly come.

As I’ve said before, this would be very disadvantageous to Israel compared to the status quo or even to a negotiated pullout — which would be bad enough. It would include no concessions to Israel’s security needs, such as control of the Jordan Valley, a demilitarized ‘Palestine’, control of airspace, etc. And it would not force an end to further Arab claims on Israel, such as the demand to resettle ‘refugees’ in Israel. Even if lip service were given to these issues, that’s all it would be — there would be no concrete guarantees.

Another possibility is that the UN might not impose the ‘solution’ itself, but rather give the job of working out the messy details to another entity, like the Quartet. The difference between this and the Road Map would be that this new Mandatory Power would have the ability to force the parties to accept its dictates.

Ehud Barak has suggested that it’s still possible to prevent this by getting the Arabs to agree to bilateral negotiations now:

“Israel’s de-legitimization is in sight. It’s very dangerous and requires action,” Barak stated. He warned against an attempt to push Israel into the same corner South Africa once occupied.

“A political initiative will minimize the chances along the way. We have not tried to put all core issues on the table in the past two years. Israel must say it is ready to discuss security borders, refugees and Jerusalem and it will get a chance. If it fails, responsibility will be placed on the other side.” — YNet

The problem with this is that from the Arab point of view there’s no reason to make a bilateral agreement. If the objective were the rational maximization of benefits to both sides, the kind of “New Middle East” that Shimon Peres envisaged, then this would be the way to go. But the objective of the Arab side is different. In fact, they are prepared to make significant sacrifices in almost every area in order to bring about the end of the Jewish state. They don’t want to maximize their benefits, they want to weaken Israel as much as possible.

They know that in areas related to Israel’s security they will get a better deal from the UN, the Quartet or anyone else than they will from Israel. So the probability of meaningful negotiations is zero.

It’s likely that the UN will want to ‘unify’ the Palestinians, and certainly both factions will pretend to get along well enough to permit this. My guess is that without the IDF to protect it, Fatah is history, unless perhaps it gets new leadership. But as I argued recently, it really doesn’t matter which faction ultimately gets control of the Palestinian entity — both are committed to the elimination of the Jewish state.

Right now the question is what to do about Hamas. Should Israel exercise restraint, knowing that Hamas will ramp up terrorism? Or should it invade Gaza again to re-establish deterrence?

It’s not an easy question. The precedents of Cast Lead and the Mavi Marmara show that international pressure to stop before Hamas is completely neutralized will be immense, and condemnation afterward will be severe. It would certainly reinforce the movement for the UN to establish a Palestinian state. In fact, regardless of how careful the IDF is to prevent civilian casualties, accusations of massacres and war crimes will be made loudly and immediately. These could even conceivably be used to justify intervention according to the model of Libya, that is, the need to ‘protect’ Arabs from Israel. It’s also been suggested that Israeli action against Hamas would strengthen the hand of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.

On the other hand, Hamas is getting stronger every day, thanks to the porousness of the Egyptian border, and fully intends to use its weapons against Israel. Maybe it’s a good idea to nip them in the bud before they become a part of ‘unified Palestine’. War with Hamas is unavoidable. If not now, when?

Of course, any such campaign would have to be carried to completion. Do Israel’s leaders have the guts to do this in the face of pressure from the US? How far would the US and Europe go to stop it? Can Hizballah be deterred from joining in?

Lots of questions.

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