Remaining Steadfast in the Face of Pressure

...Unfortunately, many in the international community who will be pressing Israel to accept their proposals do not appreciate correctly how the dramatic shifts in the Middle East have altered Israel's basic requirements in any revived peace negotiations. There is a tendency to take old peace proposals from the 1990s and to try and rework them and make them relevant for today, ignoring how much the Middle East has changed. The next Israeli government will find itself pulled between the determination of the international community to implement its latest ideas and the necessities of Israel's security on the ground in a much more chaotic and unstable Middle East.

Dore Gold..
Israel Hayom..
13 March '15..

There are increasing indications that Western powers will seek to renew Israeli-Palestinian negotiations right after the Israeli elections. A Haaretz diplomatic correspondent reported on March 6 that senior White House officials had told him that a new initiative was under consideration. EU foreign affairs chief Federica Mogherini is also expected to appoint an envoy to deal with the renewal of negotiations.

At the end of December 2014, the U.N. Security Council rejected a draft resolution that demanded a 12-month deadline for completing negotiations. The future borders between Israel and a new Palestinian state, according to the proposal, were to be based on the 1967 borders with "limited" land swaps.

The new resolution, if adopted, could be argued by some as superseding U.N. Security Council Resolution 242 from November 1967, which never required Israel to withdraw from all the territories it captured in the Six-Day War. Instead, it called for "secure and recognized boundaries" instead.

In the years that followed, American presidents further clarified the meaning of Resolution 242 by explicitly stating that it did not require full withdrawal. Though the Palestinians initially failed to replace 242, they are expected to renew their efforts to drum up U.N. support for their draft resolution, now that new members have joined the Security Council in 2015.

Why should Israel be concerned about all these initiatives? After all, according to those who were involved in the last round of talks, it was Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas who rejected U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry's framework agreement in March 2014 during a meeting with U.S. President Barack Obama in the Oval Office. The pressure should be on the Palestinian side.

But unfortunately, since 2009, a pattern has emerged. At that time, Abbas wanted negotiations with Israel to pick up where they left off with former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who offered unprecedented concessions before he resigned. There was no signed agreement between Israel and the Palestinians, but Abbas wanted to pocket Olmert's proposed concessions and then demand that Israel go even further.

The "international community" chimera - A fantasy and fiction of the mind

...The "international community" is a shifty and shadowy ideal. Demands and verdicts are made on its behalf. The casualty is usually Israel, which tells you pretty much all you need to know

Steve Apfel..
The Commentator..
17 February '14..




In two words we trust. How many people, and how often when they want to make a viewpoint sound like a fact, defer to a bodiless power called the International Community. Legend, we know, is often better than reality, and far more useful than mere facts.

According to legend, then – according to a real power named Wikipedia, the international community is,

“A term used to imply the existence of common duties and obligations between countries. Activists, politicians and commentators often use the term, particularly in the context of calls for action to be taken against political repression and to protect human rights.”

‘Imply’ would be the operative word. Activists and politicians calling “for action…to protect human rights” would be the give-away reference to people and bodies that view Israel and the devil in one frame, and who cloak what ails them by deferring to a ghost community.

Useful ghosts have to be incorporeal. The spectral community “with common duties and obligations” is the epitome of a useful ghost. It has no address, no defined constituents, and can’t be touched or seen.

But this hardly matters. It may even help, considering that a notional body can pack a punch above its weight. With power and concept being what they are – inverted buddies – the less defined and real a concept the greater its power to manipulate the masses.

Stalin’s Bolshevism and Hitler’s National Socialism were like that – incorporeal, not cast in stone. For a very good reason. From day to day it was impossible to predict what new canard or atrocity they might inspire.

Likewise the shifty shadowy ideal we call the international community. Without it diplomacy would hardly stand on its feet. Not-for-profit bodies like Oxfam or Amnesty or Human Rights Watch have to sprinkle the ineffable name on their case dockets to make them credible. As an arbitrary arbiter of good and bad, or to pass down all manner of verdicts on Israel, the ghost community wins hands down.

Between a rock(et) and a hard place

Melanie Phillips..
melaniephillips.com..
18 November '12..

In Israel, an enormous call-up of reservists suggests that a ground invasion of Gaza is imminent – and this morning’s further attacks on Tel Aviv make that more likely still. The prospect of a ground invasion fills Israelis with dread. A ground invasion means that Israeli soldiers will go into Gaza street by street and house by house to destroy the rocket launchers, rockets and ammunition dumps where they have been stored. Many have been situated in residential neighbourhoods, for two reasons: first, to deter the Israel Defence Force from attacking them for fear of killing civilians as a consequence; and second, to ensure that many Gazan civilians are indeed killed, thus guaranteeing an international outcry so that Israel will be forced to stop its operation to destroy these weapons.

Such a ground operation, where from past experience many of these places have been booby-trapped, carry the certainty of a high casualty rate among the Israeli soldiers.

That is why Israel today waits in dread. People in Britain and elsewhere who have the luxury of living in a country that has not been under existential attack for six decades have absolutely no idea of the extraordinary pressure under which so many Israeli families live. Their children are conscripted into the armed forces because Israel is under permanent threat of attack by an Arab and Muslim world which is determined to wipe Israel off the map.

World to Israel: Surrender before it's too late

Caroline B. Glick
www.jewishworldreview.com
18 March '11

http://www.jewishworldreview.com/0311/glick031811.php3

The international community -- including some Israeli pols, American Jews and the media -- are pushing hard. The Obama administration isn't making things any easier. A penetrating analysis that considers claims against Israel's legitimacy

http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | Over the past several years, a growing number of patriotic Israelis have begun to despair. We can't stand up to the whole world, they say. At the end of the day we will have to give in and surrender most of the land or all of the land we took control over in the 1967 Six Day War. The world won't accept anything less.

These statements have grown more strident in the wake of the slaughter of the Fogel family last Friday night in Itamar. For example on Thursday Ari Shavit , a columnist for Israel's equivalent of the New York Times, Ha'aretz, called Israeli communities built beyond the 1949 armistice line the local equivalent of Japan's nuclear reactors. Like the reactors, he wrote, they seemed like a good idea at the time. But they have become our undoing.

The international community's response to the Palestinian atrocity in Itamar is pointed to as proof of that Israel must surrender. Instead of considering what the savage murder of an Israeli family tells us about the nature of Palestinian society, the world media have turned the massacre of the Fogel family into a story about "settlements."

Take the Los Angeles Times' for example From the Times' perspective the Fogels were not Israeli civilians. They were "Jewish settlers."
They weren't murdered in their home. They were killed in their "tightly guarded compound."

And, in the end, the Times effectively justified the murder of the Fogel children when it helpfully added, "Most of the international community… views Israel's settlements as illegal."

The Times' report was actually comparatively sympathetic. At least it mentioned the murders. Most European papers began their coverage with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's announcement that the government will permit Israelis to build 400 homes in Judea and Samaria.

As for the governments of the world, most were far swifter and more aggressive in their condemnation of Netanyahu's announcement of the building permits than they were in their condemnation of the murders.

Then there is the US Jewish community.

According to New York's Jewish Week, there is a new consensus in the American Jewish community that imposing an economic boycott on Israeli communities outside the 1949 armistice lines is a legitimate position. The paper interviewed Martin Raffel, the head of the new Israel Action Network, a multimillion dollar effort by the Jewish Federations of North America and other major Jewish groups to counter the delegitimization of Israel.

Raffel called the boycott movement misguided, rather than wrong. Then he justified it by arguing, "Being misguided in one's policies doesn't mean one necessarily has become part of the ranks of the delegitimizers."

If that wasn't enough, Ron Kampeas, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency's Washington bureau chief wrote Tuesday that we shouldn't rush to conclude that Palestinians carried out the attack. Kampeas wrote, "We do not yet know who committed the awful butchery in Itamar over the weekend."

With American Jews taking a lead role in delegitimizing Israel and flacking for Palestinian terrorists; with the international media ignoring the massacre of the Fogel family and attacking Israel for its response to the event they didn't cover; and with the US government united with the nations of the world in condemning the government's decision to allow Israelis who are Jewish to build on land they own, the despair of a growing chorus of Israelis is understandable.

But while understandable, the notion that Israel has no choice but to surrender Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem to the Palestinians is wrong and dangerous.

Like his fellow defeatists, Shavit argues that Jewish communities in these areas are the cause of international moves to delegitimize Israel. If they were gone, so the argument goes, then neither the Palestinians nor the international community would have a problem with Israel.

The first problem with this view is that it confuses the focus of Palestinian and international attacks on Israel with the rationale behind those attacks. This is a mistake Israelis have made repeatedly since the establishment of the Fatah-led PA in 1994. Immediately after the PA was set up and IDF forces transferred security control over Palestinian cities and towns in Judea and Samaria to Yassir Arafat's armies, Palestinian terrorists began attacking Israeli motorists driving through PA-controlled areas with rocks, pipe bombs and bullets.

Then prime minister and defense minister Yitzhak Rabin blamed the attacks on "friction." If the Palestinians didn't have contact with Israeli motorists then they wouldn't attack them. So Israel built the bypass roads around the Palestinian towns and cities to prevent friction.

For its efforts, the Palestinians and the international community accused Israel of building "Jews-only, apartheid roads." Moreover, Palestinian terrorists left their towns and cities and stoned, bombed and shot at Israeli motorists on the bypass roads.

Then there was Gaza. When in 2001 Palestinians first began shelling the Israeli communities in Gaza and the Western Negev with mortars and rockets, we were told they were attacking because of Israel's presence in Gaza. When the IDF took action to defend the country from mortar and rocket attacks, Israel was accused of committing war crimes.

The likes of Shavit said then that if Israel left Gaza the Palestinian attacks would stop. They said that if they didn't stop and the IDF was forced to take action, the world would support Israel.

Shavit himself engaged in shocking demonization of the Israelis living in Gaza. In May 2004 he wrote that they were undeserving of IDF protection and that no soldier should defend them because they weren't real Israelis.

But then the Palestinians and the international community threw Shavit and his friends yet another curveball. After Israel expelled every last so-called settler and removed every last soldier from Gaza in August 2005, Palestinian rocket attacks increased tenfold. The first Katyusha was fired at Ashkelon seven months after Israel withdrew. Hamas won the elections and Gaza became an Iranian proxy. Now it has missiles capable of reaching Tel Aviv.

As for the international community, not only did it continue blaming Israel for Palestinian terrorism. It refused to accept that Israel ended its so-called occupation of Gaza. It has condemned every step Israel has taken to defend itself from Palestinian aggression since the withdrawal as a war crime.
The lessons of these experiences prove is that Israeli towns and villages in Judea and Samaria and Israeli are not castigated as "illegitimate" because there is anything inherently illegitimate about them. Like the bypass roads and the Israeli presence in Gaza, they are singled out because those interested in attacking Israel militarily or politically think are an easy target.
The Arabs, the UN, the Obama administration, the EU, anti-Israel American and Israeli Jews, university professors and the legions of self-proclaimed human rights organizations in Israel and throughout the world allege these Israeli communities are illegitimate because by doing so they weaken Israel as a whole.
If Israel is convinced that it has no choice but to bow to these people's demands, they will not be appeased. They will simply move on to the next easy target. Israeli Jewish communities in the Galilee and the Negev, Jaffa and Lod will be deemed illegitimate. In a bid to pretend that the communities in Judea and Samaria are somehow different from communities in the Galilee, proponents of surrender point to the non-binding 2004 International Court of Justice opinion that the communities in Judea and Samaria are illegal.

But Israelis who accept the non-binding opinion as a binding ruling for Judea and Samaria ignore that the opinion also asserted that Israel has no right to self defense.

The same people who think that so-called settlements are illegal also believe that opposition leader Tzipi Livni is a war criminal. The same people who think the so-called settlements are illegal would condemn as a war crime any attempt to enforce the law against irredentist Israeli Arabs.

Israel's bitter experience proves incontrovertibly that bowing to international pressure just invites more pressure.

So what can Israel do?

The first thing we must do is recognize that legitimacy is indivisible. In the eyes of Israel's enemies there is no difference between Itamar and Maaleh Adumim on the one hand and Ramle and Tel Aviv on the other hand. And so we must make no distinction between them.

Just as law abiding citizens are permitted to build homes in Ramle and Tel Aviv so they must be permitted to build in Itamar and Maaleh Adumim. If Israel's assertion of its sovereignty is legitimate in Tel Aviv, then it is legitimate in Judea and Samaria. We cannot accept that one has a different status from the other.

Likewise, it is an act of economic warfare to boycott Israeli products whether they are made in Haifa or Mishor Adumim. Anyone who says it is permissible to boycott Mishor Adumim is engaging in economic warfare against Haifa.

Once we understand that Israel's legitimacy is indivisible we need to take actions that will put the Palestinians and their international supporters on the defensive. There are any number of moves Israel can make in this vein.

For example, following the Palestinian massacre of the Fogel family, Netanyahu highlighted the fact that the PA routinely glorifies terrorist murderers and pays them and their families handsome pensions for their illegal acts of war. He also highlighted the genocidal anti-Jewish incitement endemic in Palestinian society.
While all of this is useful, talk is cheap. It is time to make the Palestinians pay a price for their depravity and to put their international supporters on the defensive.

Specifically, Netanyahu should ask the US to cut off all US economic and military assistance to the PA. Two PA intelligence officers were arrested as part of the Fogel murder investigation.

The US is training and equipping the Palestinian intelligence services. This should stop.

Two days after the massacre in Itamar, the PA dedicated a public square in el Bireh to terror commander Dalal Mughrabi. Mughrabi commanded the 1978 bus attack on the coastal highway in which 37 Israelis - including 12 children were murdered. The PA previously named a street, a dormitory, a summer camp and a sports tournament after her. Several popular songs have been written to glorify her crimes.

The US is underwriting the PA's budget. This should stop.

Were the government to go after international aid to the PA, not only would it begin a debate in the US and perhaps Europe about the nature of Fatah specifically and Palestinian society generally, it would force the Palestinians' myriad supporters to justify their support for a society that is defined by its goal of annihilating Israel.

It is hard to stand up to the massive pressure being brought to bear against Israel every day. But it is possible.

And whether defying our foes is hard or easy, it is our only chance at survival. Either all of Israel is legitimate or none of it is.

JWR contributor Caroline B. Glick is the senior Middle East Fellow at the Center for Security Policy in Washington, DC and the deputy managing editor of The Jerusalem Post, where her column appears.

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The Blackmailer’s Paradox

Evelyn Gordon
Contentions/Commentary
23 August '10

With direct negotiations about to begin, Israeli negotiators should enroll in a crash course with the country’s Nobel laureate in economics, Prof. Robert Aumann. Aumann, whose specialty is game theory, offered valuable advice in an interview with Haaretz last month, in which he described a game-theory concept known as “the blackmailer’s paradox.”

“Someone offers Reuven and Shimon NIS 1,000 together, if they can manage to agree on the question of how to split the money between them. Reuven says to Shimon: ‘Great, let’s split it half and half.’ Shimon says: ‘No. I am not leaving here with less than NIS 900. You will get 100. Take it or leave it.’ Reuven says to him: ‘Be rational. What is the difference between us? Why should you get more?’ Shimon says: ‘Rational or not, do what you want. Either I leave here with 900 or with nothing. You decide.’

“Reuven thinks and says: ‘Okay, NIS 100 is money nevertheless. What am I going to do with this irrational mule? I myself am rational and I will take the 100. I need to advance my goal of getting as much money as possible, and my choice is between zero and 100. One hundred is still something.’

“What is the paradox? That the irrational person gets more than the rational person.”

The problem with Israel’s negotiations with both the Palestinians and Syria, Aumann said, is that the Arabs have successfully played the role of the blackmailer: they have convinced both themselves and Israel that their demands are sacred and must be met fully, whereas “we don’t manage to convince ourselves that anything is sacred.” And because Israel can’t convince itself, “there isn’t anything that we can convince the other side is sacred to us, that we’re willing to ‘be killed for it, rather than transgress.’”

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What price is the Jewish State willing to pay in order to reduce international pressure for a few months

Dr. Aaron Lerner
IMRA
Weekly Commentary
17 June '10

What price is the Jewish State willing to pay in order to reduce international pressure for a few months?

Repeat.

A few months.

Because, historically, that's the length of the "relief window" we typically enjoy after making a major concession.

A few months pass and the world asks "what have you done lately?"

But what about Operation Cast Lead in Gaza? Surely America and other key players allowed us to carry out the military campaign as a reward for withdrawing from the Gaza Strip a few years - not months - earlier.

Not really.

If one wants to attribute the foreign response to Operation Cast Lead to an Israeli concession, a considerably more relevant candidate would be the incredible concessions then PM Olmert was offering Mahmoud Abbas at the time.

Again. Israeli concessions only gain relief from pressure for a few months.

But surely, if we signed a "comprehensive peace" with the Palestinians and the Syrians, there would be nothing left to pressure Israel to do.

Wrong again.

A few months after the creation of a Palestinian state, we could readily find ourselves under pressure not to respond to Palestinian violations of the agreement that was the basis for the establishment of that state.

Not to mention pressure to make concessions to the Arab Israelis as they press for autonomy in the Galilee and elsewhere.

Temporary relief from pressure simply can't justify irrevocable concessions.

The concession advocates have to come up with a considerably better excuse.

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What will the nations think?’

International relations is not a high-school popularity contest. For Israel, it is a matter of survival.


Michael Freund
Opinion/JPost
09 June '10

Over the last week, in the aftermath of the Gaza flotilla incident, a scenario that harks back to our distant past began playing itself out. Mustering all the atavism at their disposal, various pundits and commentators took to the airwaves and the opinion pages, wringing their hands and wracking their brains as they tried to figure out just how we can maybe, possibly, hopefully, get the world to like us again.

Tossing aside any pretense of rationally assessing the country’s strategic or national security interests, this chorus of characters instead sought to convince the public that our overriding policy consideration must be what others might say about us.

Some, such as former Meretz minister Ran Cohen, writing on Ynet, argued that the IDF needs to lift the naval blockade of Gaza, even though this would effectively allow an unrestricted flow of weapons to terrorists. Israel, Cohen asserted, simply has no choice, because otherwise “the world will end up endorsing Hamas.”

Huh?

Others, such as Ze’ev Segal of Haaretz, practically pleaded with the government to establish a high-level committee of inquiry, with international observers, to investigate the flotilla affair. After all, Segal concluded, “It should be obvious to the prime minister and his advisers that the world will not be against us if we take real action to investigate what happened.”

Yeah, sure.

I don’t know about you, but all this pitiful pandering is like something straight out of a shtetl soap opera. It is as if we have reverted back to the days when Jewish public policy was dictated first and foremost by the age-old lament: “What will the goyim think?”

INDEED, THE most extreme and shocking example of the return of this mentality was on display on Army Radio.

I could hardly believe my ears when the host of a popular late-morning program actually toyed with the idea that in terms of Israel’s image, it might have been better had the commandos, rather than the socalled “Turkish “peace activists,” been killed aboard the Gaza flotilla. Does he really think that the life of even one Jewish soldier is worth a slightly less critical headline on CNN?

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