Taking a Look Ahead at Middle East "Peace"

...As long as Hamas and the PA are permitted both to spend sponsors' money on terrorism and warfare while escaping responsibility for the needs of their people, and as long as Iran is a key donor -- with all the temptations, means and opportunity to "wipe Israel," as it repeatedly threatens to do -- the idea of a U.S.-led "peace process" is fantasy.

Bridging the Sunni-Shia divide, for the
goal of genocide: Hamas leader
Khaled Mashaal (left) confers with Iranian
Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, in 2010.
 (Image source: Office of the Supreme Leader)

Shoshana Bryen..
Gatestone Institute..
17 August '15..

The Obama Administration has made it clear that it will not pursue Israeli-Palestinian "peace talks" while the Iran deal remains fluid. But as the President heads into his last year in office, the "two state solution" apparently remains an important political aspiration. The Iran deal and the "peace process" are linked by concerns over Iranian behavior on the non-nuclear front, and concerns about American willingness to remain the sort of ally Israel has found it to be in the past.

The following stories -- all involving money and how it is spent -- should be understood together:

- U.S. requests lower bond for Palestinian appeal of terror case
- Infant mortality in Gaza
- Schools in Gaza may not open
- Iranian assistance to Hamas

First, the U.S. Department of Justice this week asked a judge to "carefully consider" the size of the bond he requires from the Palestinian Authority (PA) as it appeals the award of damages to the victims of six terrorist attacks that killed and injured Americans in Israel. Concerned about the possible bankruptcy of the PA, Deputy Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken added a statement to the Justice Department filing, saying, "A P.A. insolvency and collapse would harm current and future U.S.-led efforts to achieve a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict."

The Palestinian Authority was proven in a U.S. court to have organized and paid for terrorist attacks that killed Americans and Israelis. The U.S. has provided approximately $5 billion to the Palestinians in bilateral aid since the mid-1990s and about $540 million this year. The EU added more than €500 million ($558 million), making it the largest single-year donor. Why should PA not have to pay the bill for its own savage behavior?

And why is the U.S. so determined to protect it?

Middle East Peace Won't Be Bought by the Prospect of Profits

...That intifada not only cost the lives of more than a thousand Jews and many more Arabs but also nearly destroyed a Palestinian economy that seemed on the rise after Oslo. By choosing a terrorist war of attrition over peace with Israel and statehood, the Palestinian leadership didn’t merely set off a bloodbath, it set back the living standards of their people by decades. But rather than rise up against such a leadership, Palestinians instead began to turn more to Hamas, which offered an even more uncompromising view of the conflict....Seen from that perspective, it’s no good telling Israelis that they’ll be better off with two states and Middle East peace. They know that but have already tried it and learned their potential peace partners have other ideas. We can hope that eventually the Palestinians will create a political culture that doesn’t regard violence against the Jews as praiseworthy and will embrace ideas like those Rand is offering them. Until then, this report, like so many others will remain moldering on the shelf as the Palestinians continue to pursue their dream of eliminating Israel.

Jonathan S. Tobin..
Commentary Magazine..
09 June '15..

There are some things that are so obvious that perhaps it takes an intellectual to think that stating them constitutes penetrating insight. Perhaps that’s why some are treating the release of a new report on the costs of the Israel-Palestinian conflict and the potential benefits of a stable two-state solution by the Rand Corporation as a profound contribution to the discussion about peace. The report is being extolled by some on the left as yet another sign of the Israeli government’s poor judgment since it has supposedly chosen investment in West Bank settlements and the military over decisions that could lead to a deal that would bring the country greater prosperity. But the problem with this formulation is that the history of the last hundred years, and even of the opening years of the 21st century, shows that while Israelis have always hoped that peace could be built around economic cooperation, Palestinian Arabs have always viewed the standoff with the Jews as a zero-sum conflict into which financial considerations have never been allowed to intrude.

We need to start any discussion about this report or a two-state solution that the economic benefits of such an idea require more than merely the establishment of a Palestinian state along with the withdrawal of some or all of Israel’s settlements in the West Bank or even a re-partition of Jerusalem. The economic benefits of peace are real but they require more than merely a piece of paper. Just as Israel must be willing to cede territory and allow the Palestinians sovereignty over it, the Palestinians are going to have to recognize the legitimacy of a Jewish state no matter where the border between the two countries is drawn. To date, that is something that not even the supposed moderates of Fatah who run the West Bank are willing to do. The Hamas rulers of the independent Palestinian state in all but name in Gaza may be willing to temporarily observe cease-fires with Israel, but actual peace that would lead to cooperation and prosperity is nothing they care to contemplate.

Still, something so sensible as a peace that would increase the average per capita income of each Palestinian by $1,000 (a rise of 36 percent over current levels) and boost the average Israeli income by $2,200 (up by 5 percent) seems worth a try. That’s especially true when Rand tells us that another intifada that would put the Palestinians into a state of armed conflict with Israel would decrease Palestinian incomes by an average $1,130 and Israelis by $4,330.00.

Why then won’t they do it? The answer is simple. The Palestinians have always viewed this discussion as one in which they were being asked to sell their homes and national honor for money. And that is something that a majority of them have never been willing to do.

Tobin - The Islamist Winter and Middle East Peace

Jonathan S. Tobin..
Commentary/Contentions..
22 January '12..

Anyone inclined to be sanguine about the future of Palestinian politics need only read the latest report by the Jerusalem Post’s Khaled Abu Toameh to understand that the threat of a Hamas takeover of the West Bank is real. The Fatah-Hamas unity agreement concluded last year may not yet have been consummated but, as Abu Toameh writes, even Fatah officials are starting to understand that if they allow another election, the Islamists may take control of all of the territories just as their Muslim Brotherhood allies have done in Egypt. According to Abu Toameh, Fatah officials are now openly expressing worry about the outcome of these elections, assuming they are held in May as Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has promised.

No one should be holding their breath waiting for Abbas to make good on that pledge. Given that he is in now about to start the 8th year of the four-year-term to which he was elected in 2005, Abbas’s idea of democracy is limited to elections that he thinks he’ll win. Yet the pact he signed with Hamas last year is an indication he believes he cannot govern indefinitely without the protection of the radical terrorist group. That’s a piece of intelligence that should inform not only Fatah, but those in the United States that are urging Israel to make further concessions to the Palestinians in the vain hope they will finally agree to make peace.

Israel Straight Talk: Peace in the Middle East?

Avi Abelow
Israel Straight Talk
IST #42
05 April '11

Bottom line, we here at Israel StraightTalk believe that we can live in peace with our Arab neighbors, just not based on the failed Oslo paradigm of land for peace and not with terrorists - whether from the Palestinian Authority or with the Hamas. It will be years until this can happen, but it can happen.



Watch the video to understand more. Share this video so others can better understand as well. Visit us on http://www.facebook.com/israelstraighttalk and let us know what you think. All comments and questions are welcome.

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Weekly Commentary: Imperative to wait for the dust to settle

Dr. Aaron Lerner
IMRA
Weekly Commentary
24 February '11

Recent developments in the Middle East have slammed shut the window of opportunity for palming off land for pieces of paper deals based on best case scenarios. Schemes that relied on the performance of Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and others in the region now sound silly. Even the ability of the United States to deliver on “iron clad guarantees” to compensate for the security risks is not certain today.

If 2011 is the “year of revolution” in the Middle East, 2012 may be the “year of disappointment” followed by 2013 as the year when the leadership seeks to divert the wrath of the mob.And if and when that day comes, it won’t matter if there is or isn’t a sovereign Palestinian state. It won’t even matter if a Palestinian flag flies from the Al Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem. There will always be a reason to justify attacking the Jewish State when the alternative is being ousted by the mob.

It is going to take years before we have a clear idea as to where our region is actually heading.Until then, the uncertainty is simply too great to make it possible to reach a viable and durable agreement.

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Erasing Reality: The Invention of "Peace" in the Middle East

Fiamma Nirenstein
Hudson New York
07 January '11

Rather than scrutinizing the Middle East -- where the dream of peace that we so tirelessly hope for keeps evaporating again and again -- we prefer to picture a scenario in which everyone will, in the end, want peace; in which the extremism of the Middle East is only a fantasy dictated by fear, and in which the menace of extremism is called a mere exaggeration.

This clearly springs from the desire to be left in peace -- the same syndrome that convinces us to consider figures like Tarik Ramadan a "moderate Islamist," or to class as a "dialogue between religions" a situation in which, quietly in London, the Islamic courts are gaining ground. We merely shake our heads when we hear that the most popular name in many European countries is now Mohammed, or that the burqa is permitted in the name of multiculturalism; or that over 200,000 people in Paris alone now live in polygamous families.

We subject the real dangers of war to censorship, as with Iran and its quest for a nuclear bomb, its solidifying international hegemony and its attitude towards the rights of women, homosexuals, dissidents and freedom in general, all of which violate the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

The international community still insists on believing that dialogue is possible with Ahmadinejad, whom we have repeatedly heard in the platform of the United Nations inciting the President of the United States to convert to Islam, and declaring his intention to kill all the Jews and extend the dominion of Islam throughout the world. In a month's time, the meeting between Iran and the 5 + 1 group will convene yet again, even though the Iran, with its recent waves of arrests and purges, shows signs of rallying around the atomic project. No one even attempted to help the opposition after the fake election results last year, even though the opposition's size is unquestionable, as millions of people have been desperately demonstrating in Iran's city squares for months.

The USA has remained silent even in the face of the Iranian war-games in the Strait of Hormuz; clear evidence that Iran has extended its war front in Afghanistan; the fact that Iran has prevented the pro-American faction that won the elections in Iraq from forming a government; that Iran imposed the reinstatement of the Prime Minister, Nouri al Maliki; and that Iran has made conspicuous investments in South America to foment an attitude -- now extremist -- and foster Anti-Semitic hate, of which President Chavez of Venezuela is an example.

Iran is frightening, and this is why it is allowed to continue its advance undeterred, frightening us more and more as a result. And this deceptive judgment is enabling Iran to spread its influence to Turkey, Syria, Lebanon and to the Palestinians, as well as to South America.

With the Palestinians, the idea that we like to convey is that of a world in which Fatah, in opposition to Hamas, is amenable to achieving peace through a partition plan that would enable "two States for two Peoples." But this is far from reality: all the most recent statements, including those of a few days ago in which Abu Mazen declared that there would be no room in a Palestinian state for even a single Israeli, or that of his chief negotiator, Sa'eb Erekat, according to whom there would be an inevitable "return" of 7,000,000 refugees – or their grandchildren and great-grandchildren – inside the borders of Israel, which has precisely 7,000,000 inhabitants, including the Arabs; or the declared Palestinian lack of willingness to negotiate land-swaps or to recognize the existence of a Jewish State -- all these are in keeping with what is perhaps the most dramatic rejection of peace: the culture of hate and terrorism which the TV, the press and the Palestinian schools disseminate. Squares bearing the names of suicide terrorists; the Fatah congress opening with standing ovations for the suicide terrorists;, the "study" on the Palestinian Authority website of a Vice-Minister of Culture, who declares that there has never been any trace of Jews in Jerusalem; or the invention of a Palestinian Jesus persecuted by the Jews at a time when the concept of "Palestinians" did not even exist... perhaps all these truths, together with the weakness of Abu Mazen who now wields his power with substantial use of the police force while Hamas threatens him from afar, should remind us that a peaceful end of conflict with Israel might not be a priority.

(Read full "Erasing Reality: The Invention of "Peace" in the Middle East")

Note: Originally published in Italian in Il Giornale, December 30, 2010

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Wrong Move

The key to a lasting peace, argues Israeli Nobel Prize winner Robert Aumann, is not to insist on ‘peace now’

Lee Smith
Tablet Magazine
22 September '10

Why, despite the backing of the American superpower, has the Middle East peace process failed again and again? I was in Jerusalem last week when U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton led Washington’s peace parade through town, and there was so little fanfare that I was almost forced to conclude that Time Magazine was right: Perhaps given the current dynamism of Israel’s one-time quasi-socialist economy, Israelis are now too busy making money and going to the beach to participate in the secular passion play of the peace process.

But it is also true that the excitement of the Oslo peace agreements culminated in the second intifada, and the 2005 withdrawal from Gaza brought thousands of Hamas missiles directed at southern Israel. Maybe then the problem is not that Israelis don’t want peace, but that the context into which they have been forced is fatally flawed. So, why do Western diplomats and policymakers keep pursuing the same formulas even though the evidence of failure is plain?

For answers I went to visit Robert Aumann, winner of the 2005 Nobel Prize for economics whose work in game theory, or interactive decision theory, is a formal analysis of repeated games. “Repeated games model long-term interaction and account for phenomena such as altruism, cooperation, trust, loyalty, revenge,” Aumann said in his Nobel lecture, “War and Peace.” If anyone could explain the repeated failure of the Middle East peace process, I thought, it is a Nobel laureate who actually lives in the region and who has experienced the results of diplomatic failure in his daily life.

(Read full article)

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PM Netanyahu’s great speech to the GA

Ted Belman
Israpundit
10 November 09

This is one of his best speeches. He keeps calling for “peace”. This is a brilliant strategy. Everybody wants peace. Thus he builds a consensus. Then comes Israel’s need for security. Who can argue about that. Let the politicians negotiate the details.

Meanwhile the Palestinians keep digging a hole from which they cannot extricate themselves. Obama, who’s he? Obama chose to support the weak horse and fell into the hole. Time for him to support the strong horse.

My dear friends, leaders of the Jewish communities of North America,

The history of the Jewish people has been marked by a paradox. We are at once both small and great. We are few in number but luminous in achievement. In the ancient world, the Jews were a small people on the foothills of Asia touching the Mediterranean. But in Alexandria some 2200 years ago, the Bible was translated into Greek, and the world has never been the same since.

“The Jews brought to civilization at least three big ideas: the idea of monotheism, the belief that all people have innate rights that transcend the power of kings, and a prophetic vision of universal peace.
(Read more…)

Obama's Mideast Strategy: Useless If Not Harmful

Eric Trager
EricTrager.org
22 September 09

On Tuesday, President Barack Obama will hold trilateral talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas at the annual U.N. Summit in New York.

Naturally, smart gamblers will bet against a peace process breakthrough. For starters, history suggests that the forthcoming Obama-Abbas-Netanyahu meeting will go the way of previous Bush-Abbas-Olmert and Clinton-Arafat-Barak encounters: nice photos, no results. Moreover, the two parties seem as far apart as ever on all of the issues – security, borders, refugees, and Jerusalem – that stand at the heart of the conflict. And then there’s the inconvenient fact that Hamas – an Iranian-funded terrorist organization that rejects Israel’s very right to exist – controls half of the Palestinian body politic.

But even if these traditional barriers to Middle East peacemaking weren’t enough, President Obama has – through his own policy decisions – erected another. Indeed, by reinforcing Islamists’version of history and calling it “public diplomacy,” Obama has systematically alienated the Israeli people, who have increasingly backed Netanyahu’s more skeptical approach to both U.S. policy and peace making. Polls currently show that Netanyahu’s approval rating among Israelis is at 65% – staggeringly high, especially by the standards of Israel’s fractious political system – while only 4% of Israeli Jews see Obama as pro-Israel.

How might this affect Obama’s ability to forge Middle East peace? Try this thought experiment: put yourself in Netanyahu’s shoes and assume that, like most politicians, your top priority is political survival. Do you take the risks associated with immediate peace negotiations and more closely align yourself with an American president who is deeply unpopular among your constituents? Or, do you stick with an alternative approach that a strong majority of your countrymen endorse? The answer should be obvious.

Of course, none of this is news to the Obama administration. In recent months, it has attempted to counteract Israeli skepticism by pressing Arab regimes to make friendly gestures towards Israel. But, once again, Obama’s own policies have gotten in the way: Arab leaders have refused incremental “normalization,” using the administration’s earlier demand for a complete freeze of Israeli settlement expansion as an excuse for doing nothing at all. And, strategically, this makes perfect sense for them. Just put yourself in the shoes of an Arab leader: when the U.S. President naïvely affirms your long-held contention that Israeli settlements – and not terrorism, nor your own rejection of Israel’s right to exist – are the primary obstacles to peace, you run with it.

It is worth repeating that, even without Obama’s policy blunders, Israeli-Palestinian peace would be highly improbable. Still, Obama is supposed to be the “realist” president who, according to his most erstwhile defenders, prioritizes strategy and interestsabove principles. If so, how has he failed to understand Arab and Israeli leaders’ interests and decision-making so spectacularly?

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Wishing For Peace (1993)

I did this cartoon at the end of December in 1993 and snail-mailed it out to subscribing newspapers. Thirteen years ago this month. I dated the signature as 1994 because that's when it would be printed.

This is another one of those cartoons that I could run today without any changes

The Big Israel Lie

Sultan Knish

sultanknish.blogspot.com

26 August 09

There are two interconnected lies that reside at the heart of any American discussion about Israel. The first lie is that the road to peace in the Middle East lies through Israel. The second lie is that Israel controls American policy toward itself. Those lies are not the product of ignorance or misunderstanding, they are the product of an effective propaganda campaign by the unofficial suit and tie spokesmen of the Saudi lobby who dominate American policy in the Middle East. The goal of that campaign has been to make Israel seem like the axis on which the Middle East and America turn, in order to put Israel on the firing line. And it is a campaign that has been wickedly successful up until now.

Let's take a moment to examine those lies now.

Within the Middle East, Israel is physically insignificant. At 8500 square miles, Israel could not just fit comfortably into Pennsylvania, it is 1/5th the size of Jordan, 1/8th the size of Syria and 1/12th the size of Egypt. Simply put, Israel is smaller in land and population than every country that borders it. If you looked at the Middle East from space, you could easily put a fingernail across all of Israel.

Israel has beaten all of these countries in wars and has the best military in the region, but that is because if it didn't, it wouldn't exist. Israel's military is not the product of a will to conquer, but of an attempt to maintain its own territorial integrity and protect its citizens from attack. Israel's neighbors have never needed to work as hard or spend as much to maintain their own armed forces, because they don't truly need them. For them a strong army is not a survival strategy, it is optional.

All those who rant endlessly about Israel's settlements in the West Bank and Gaza as proof of Israel's desire to seize land, forget that Jordan annexed the West Bank only two years after its forces captured it in the 1948 War of Independence. Israel has not annexed the West Bank even after more than 40 years, and has continued to offer it in peace negotiations year after year. That is not the policy of an aggressive land hungry regime. It is not the behavior of a country that keeps its neighbors up late at night. While Israel's leaders have spent over half a century staying up late at night worrying about a war, Israel's neighbors know that war is their choice.

But what this means in practice is that Israel has very little influence beyond its own borders. With a small size, no expansionist program beyond its own territory, and as one of only two non-Arab states and the only non-Muslim state in the region... Israel's impact on the rest of the Middle East is surprisingly limited. To get a proper picture of Israel's role in the Middle East, imagine plopping Singapore in the middle of a wartorn part of Africa. It can be attacked, it can fight back, but it cannot have any real local influence.

That is why Israel remains an outsider in the political trends and turmoil of the region. The shift between Arab Nationalism and Islamism, the coups and the bloodletting between Shiite and Sunni, are all events that Israel watches from a distance. Israel is not a political participant in the ideological conflicts of the Middle East, because it does not share a common religion or ethnicity or much of anything with its neighbors. Its diplomatic relations are primarily formal, not intimate. As a result Israel has very little political influence on the Middle East, and what little influence it has, is on its immediate neighbors, such as Lebanon and Jordan, who are fairly small on the scale of the Middle East as well.

Furthermore Israel and its neighbors are in part of the Middle East that has become largely irrelevant because of its lack of oil. While Egypt and Jordan were once considered major regional players, both have long ago been sidelined by the oil rich Saudi Arabia, Iran and the UAE. None of these countries share a common border with Israel. While diplomats and pundits obsess over the West Bank and Gaza, what happens there has virtually no impact on what happens where the oil and power lie.

Not only does the road to peace in the Middle East not run through Israel, it doesn't even run anywhere near Israel. A quick look at a map shows you just how off the beaten path Israel is when it comes to the true token of global power, oil. And it is not some Elders of Zion fantasy of the Israel lobby that defines global power to the Middle East, it is who has the oil. And while Israel has plenty of olive oil, it has none of the kind of oil that the world is interested in.

(Continue)