Bahrain and John Kerry, Kushner is repeating the same mistake - by Ben-Dror Yemini

It's difficult, very difficult, to wean an entire community off illusions. After all, the "forces of progress" cultivate illusions. It's a lot easier to invite people to a workshop in Bahrain.

Ben-Dror Yemini..
Israel National News..
22 June '19..
Link: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/264947

John Kerry, who served as US Secretary of State under former US President Barack Obama, claimed more than once that poverty leads to terror. We'll give the poor economic prosperity, he thought, and the level of terror will drop. If anyone thought that the Trump administration had changed direction - the "deal of the century" proves that nothing has changed.

The economic workshop, to be held this week in Bahrain, is proof. We'll give the "Palestinians" economic prosperity, says Jared Kushner, who leads the Trump administration's peace deal staff, and the level of enmity will drop.

Both Kerry and Kushner, along with many others, should know that this is an illusion. The poor in Africa do not choose terror. There are millions of poor people in Nigeria. They don't choose terror. And among the "Palestinians" as well, those who choose violence are not necessarily poor.

The city of Shechem (Nablus) has enjoyed relative prosperity in recent years, thanks to the buying power of Israeli Arabs. Has it changed anything for Zakaria Zubeidi? After all, in recent years he has enjoyed status and is well-to-do financially. But he went back to terror. Because the brainwashing and incitement are a lot stronger than the options of money and prosperity. All the mass terror attacks in the US were carried out by successful, middle-class Muslim youth. Did any of that prevent them from choosing terror?

The biggest obstacle to achieving peace was and remains the fantasy of a "Palestinian right of return," which are supported by not insignificant portions of academia, the media, and the Israeli and global Left. In this sense, the anti-Israel campaigns are not promoting peace. They are preventing it. In order to advance towards peace, we need to look the "Palestinians" in the eye. They'll act like adults the moment we treat them like adults. Anyone who walks around campuses around the world and turns Israel into a criminal is someone who encourages their fantasies, someone who is funding UNRWA, someone who is cultivates the illusion of return - and someone who is perpetuating the problem.

It's difficult, very difficult, to wean an entire community off illusions. After all, the "forces of progress" cultivate illusions. It's a lot easier to invite people to a workshop in Bahrain. Kerry's mistake was in his theory regarding poverty and terror. Kushner, it's sad to see, is repeating that exact same mistake.

The full article was published in the Yediot Ahronot newspaper.

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

.

The absolute absurdity of land swaps - by Victor Rosenthal

The next time someone tells you that the “West Bank” is “Arab land,” ask them how nineteen years of illegal Jordanian occupation made it so.

Victor Rosenthal..
Abu Yehuda..
22 February '19..
Link: http://abuyehuda.com/2019/02/the-absurdity-of-land-swaps/

Recent hints about what might be in Donald Trump’s deal of deals indicate that it includes Israel annexing parts of Judea and Samaria containing major settlement blocks, in return for “land swaps” in which a Palestinian entity would receive land that is presently within the Green Line.

I am not sure where the idea first surfaced, but it was included in the Clinton Parameters, the offer made at the 2000 Camp David summit, which was rejected by the PLO.

Let’s consider the history.

Prior to 1948, all of the land from the river to the sea was a single entity, the British Mandate for Palestine, established in 1922 and intended to constitute or contain a “national home for the Jewish people.” In 1947, Britain had had enough rioting and terrorism from both Jews and Arabs in the territory of the Mandate, and wanted to be done with its obligation. Over the years, they had lost interest in the Jewish national home, and felt that their interests would best be served by Arab control of the area. But others supported the establishment of a Jewish state, for various reasons.

There was the worldwide Zionist movement, and of course the Yishuv, the Jewish settlement in Eretz Yisrael itself, which had already put into place the structure of a shadow state. There were Christian Zionists, who believed that the establishment of such a state would be a fulfilment of Biblical prophecy. There were elements in the US who thought that the Jews deserved recompense after the Holocaust. There were those who saw a Jewish state as a convenient destination for millions of Jewish refugees that nobody wanted. And there was Stalin, who saw in the socialist leanings of the leadership of the Yishuv a possible ally in a very strategic neighborhood.

So the UN proposed a compromise and recommended a partition of the area of the Mandate into a Jewish and an Arab state. The Jewish Agency, happy to get any kind of state no matter how attenuated, accepted it, although both Begin and Ben-Gurion were apprehensive, correctly expecting war. The Arabs – both those who lived in the Mandate and the Arab nations – rejected it. Why should the Jews get anything at all? The nonbinding recommendation (UNGA 181) of the General Assembly was never implemented. It’s important to understand that it was only a recommendation, with no legal force. Both Jews who say “the UN gave us a state” and Mahmoud Abbas, who in 2016 called for the implementation of the partition on its original lines, are wrong.

In May 1948, the State of Israel was proclaimed without specifying borders (although an agent of the “provisional government” wrote to US President Truman that the state was declared “within the frontiers approved by the General Assembly… in [Resolution 181],” it’s not clear if this had any legal significance). It has been persuasively argued by Eugene Kontorovich that Israel inherited the borders of the Mandate, since there was no other entity that could have a claim on it.

Setting Red Lines For "The Trump Deal" Now - by Dr. Aaron Lerner

A vague reply to the Trump deal when it is announced will make it considerably harder for us to hold by critical red lines in the future that were already violated by the deal that we declined to reject.

Dr. Aaron Lerner..
IMRA Weekly Commentary..
14 February '19..
Link: http://www.imra.org.il/story.php3?id=73457

Our ambassador to the UN, Danny Danon, disappointed me tonight when he asserted on Israel Radio that it was good that the release of details of the Trump "deal" was postponed until after our elections.

He noted that if the details of the deal were made public today that this would be the focus of the elections.

Why would it be bad for there to be a public debate of the details of the deal?

Why can't I know before I cast my ballot what Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and the leaders of the other lists think about the offer?

These are the red lines I would like to cast my ballot in support for:

The Mideast Peace Deal You Haven’t Heard About

Ted Belman
Israpundit
19 December 09

Netanyahu has agreed to terms of reference for future negotiations, that are enshrined in Clinton’s statement,

“an outcome which ends the conflict and reconciles the Palestinian goal of an independent and viable state based on the 1967 lines, with agreed swaps, and the Israeli goal of a Jewish state with secure and recognized borders that reflect subsequent developments and meet Israeli security requirements.”

No surprise there. It was obvious when she made the statement right after Bibi agreed to the freeze. In fact the deal was done in the summer.

In addition Jerusalem is on the table and so is the refugee problem. So much for no preconditions.

When Rosen tells why no one can resist the peace jaugernaught, what he fails to mention is that it is only peace on Arab terms that it is concerned with. Peace is a euphemism for capitulation.

Even within the confines of these terms of reference, the differences between the parties are enormous. How can borders based on the ‘67 lines, even with mutually agreed swaps, be reconciled with “borders that…meet Israeli security requirements.” Look for a great deal of pressure on Bibi to capitulate.

by Steven J. Rosen, ForeignPolicy.com

For a year or two at an early stage in his career, I commuted to and from our adjacent offices each morning and evening with Martin Indyk, later a top peace-process official of the Clinton administration at the Camp David negotiations and now vice president for foreign policy at the Brookings Institution. I had just left the Rand Corporation to work at AIPAC, the main pro-Israel lobbying organization in Washington.

Even in those pre-Oslo days of 1982 to 1983, Martin was a True Believer in the idea of a grand land-for-peace bargain between Israel and moderate Palestinians. Reviewing each day the latest installments in the Middle East epic as we rolled down Rock Creek Parkway, we argued all the way. I heaped scorn on any solution that required Israel to trust Palestinian intentions, and I held that Israel’s security could only be based on a qualitative military edge and the balance of power. I told Martin that he and our mutual friends Dennis Ross, Aaron Miller, and Dan Kurtzer, though with the noblest of intentions, were pursuing an illusion.

(Read more…)

.