Netanyahu just loves to poke his finger in America’s eye… again, and again, and again…
Today, with Pres. Obama’s peace envoy George Mitchell still in Israel, Netanyahu bluntly told a key Knesset committee that “there will not be a complete freeze on settlement building and that building in Jerusalem will proceed as usual.”
The exact words, as reported by Haaretz’s Jonathan Lis, were,
- “The Palestinians expect a complete halt to building; it is now clear that this will not happen… Jerusalem is not a settlement and the building [there] will continue as normal.”
He even seemed to want to underline and mock the notable non-reaction of the Americans to all his earlier acts of defiance of their months-long campaign for a complete settlement freeze.
His taunting and his non-compliance are both outrageous. The best response from Obama is to move directly and speedily to securing the agreed delineation of final borders between Israel and the independent Palestinian state. In the West Bank, that border-line will, of course, also include one that runs through Jerusalem.
Deal with it, Netanyahu. Jerusalem does not belong only to Israel.
I thought it was beyond quackers to use crude finger in the eye metaphors, oh well. Defiance is what Iran does, Netanyahu’s is just a disagreement between friends.
True to the Arabsbarista playbook, when there is full agreement she call Israel a puppet of the US, and when there is not, she calls it defiance and poking fingers in the eye.
What part of sovereign don’t you get Helena?
Strangely enough, settling the borders first will register an extremely important effect on the Zionist psyche. Israel has always preferred to leave the borders ambiguous, the eventual limits of Greater Israel boundless. Depending on the person, it could include Judea and Samaria or it could include much, much more. Setting the border would for the first time set a specific, broadly accepted territorial limit on the dream, making it for the first time a current reality, not some fantasy of future,
Somewhat off topic:
I watched the film “Battle of Algiers” last night on YouTube. Many of the images reminded me of the West Bank, Gaza and even Baghdad.
The ultimately unsuccessful French-European occupation of Algeria spread before a time frame of roughly 160 years. That’s actually a useful yardstick of comparison for the current Jewish-European (Zionist) occupation of Palestine.
The film, which is worthy of another look even to those who have previously seen it, is available at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OWC6SstptmE
I can see that whether or not Netanyahu declares a settlement freeze is not intrinsically important to a final settlement.
At any rate, the non-recognising Arab states should not, under any circumstances, agree to recognise Israel in exchange for a settlement freeze. As a settlement freeze is revocable, whereas recognition is not, and certainly Israel will cheat. Anyway those states will not do so.
However getting to a final border agreement is going to require a highly complex formula, as Mitchell found in Northern Ireland.
As you will remember from Ireland, the IRA never publicly disposed of their weapons; we had to believe their statements that they had. The settlement freeze is the equivalent of the IRA laying down arms. Israel, at the moment, will never do it.
An agreement satisfactory to both sides would imply pre-1967 borders, including Jerusalem, with special extra-territorial rights for the settlements, guaranteeing their future.
If I were in the Palestinian position, I would insist upon pre-67 borders and then be generous about extra-territorial rights for the settlements – Israeli law, Israeli military defence.
I could imagine Mitchell is thinking along these lines. I don’t know whether Mitchell is capable of a second success, in more difficult circumstances; if he is, he will be recognised as one of the greatest diplomats ever.
Alex,
If there is a N Ireland lesson in this it is that the cause for which the Provisional IRA and its offshoots fought was the removal of a previously drawn border. The IRA weapons issue was long held as a pre-condition – a confidence building measure – for talks by the Unionists. So, borders and pre-conditions become the stalling point for decades.
I see the Saudi’s are now having their say on this:
http://www.aawsat.com/english/news.asp?section=1&id=18115
“The best response from Obama is to move directly and speedily to securing the agreed delineation of final borders between Israel and the independent Palestinian state. In the West Bank, that border-line will, of course, also include one that runs through Jerusalem.”
It would be nice if we do get that response. But it is more likely that we will get another “wet noodle flapped vaguely in the direction of Netanyahu”, if any.
“The best response from Obama is to move directly and speedily to securing the agreed delineation of final borders between Israel and the independent Palestinian state. In the West Bank, that border-line will, of course, also include one that runs through Jerusalem.”
It would be nice if we do get that response. But it is more likely that we will get another “wet noodle flapped vaguely in the direction of Netanyahu”, if any.
Steve,
In a way, Ireland and Israel are parallel, in that the IRA and the settler movement want to take over territory, but in other ways they are not. Particularly, Israel is a much greater military power, while the Palestinians have strengths which Israel seems unable to recognise.
The Saudi declaration is worth nothing, other than as an expression of interest in immediate peace. The Palestinians are not going to accept anything less than pre-1967 as final borders – I do not speak of the Ramallah government, which is seriously compromised by Israel. Mahmoud Abbas may make peace on lesser conditions, but he knows he will not survive long if he does it. So he havers.
That’s why I put things like I did. Pre-1967 borders are the red-line for the Palestinians. Survival of the settlements is the red-line for Israel.
My sincere hope is Obama sticks something back into Netanyahu. He has always been a preening jerk.
Alex,
Yes, I understand what you mean but I also believe that as a general rule one should try to avoid comparing conflicts and just deal with each according to their peculiarities.
Yes, there are similarities of certain elements or historical events that crop up across different wars but they often serve to highlight how different they are rather than any sameness.
Do you think the appointment of Sen Mitchell was encouraged by his seeming success in N Ireland? If so we need to find the McGuiness’, the Kelly’s and the Irvine’s who were willing to influence the rank and file to abide by the ceasefires and allow politics to happen. Mitchell and the rest of the people involved in the negotiations in NI were, essentially, enabled by those who had done the fighting.
Personally I don’t believe the I/P conflict to have been fully fought out and decisions on borders – though they may bring some temporary respite – are probably not going to be the end of the matter.
The situation in Northern Ireland was very different: the colonists there had stolen the land centuries earlier. Further they held out the option of converting, to Protestantism, to the Irish. They also depended upon Irish labour. And so on…
It seems to me that it is either 1967 borders or extra-territoriality for the settlements: if the settlements remain under Israeli rule, a Palestinian State is physically impossible.
Would Israel give Palestine extra territorial rights over non-Jewish neighbourhoods within the 1967 borders? Obviously not: the settlements are part of a process of ethnic cleansing, tearing Palestine into shreds.
Oh, dear…the Israel/Ireland comparison rears it’s ugly head again.
Here are a few major differences:
1) In Ulster, neither the Unionists nor the IRA had genocidal intentions towards the other. Both Fatah and Hamas have written platforms that involve genocide of Israel’s Jews, and in Hamas’ case, of all Jews.
2)In both cases, the Unionists and the IRA had somewhere else to go in the last analysis.That isn’t true for Israel’s Jews.
3) As one commenter points out, the original colonization of Ulster took place centuries ago. In the of Israel, the area was owned by the Ottomans for 5 centuries and then by the British. Both Gaza and the West Bank were disputed territories since the original partition plan was not followed by the surrounding Arab nations, who instead simply attempted to take the area allotted for the Jews for themselves via aggressive war.
3) There is a controversy over who the actual ‘colonists ‘ are. In actuality, the most recent colonization occurred at the hands of Jordan after 1948 when the entire Jewish population in Judea, Samaria (AKA the West bank) and East Jerusalem was ethnically cleansed, including property legally purchased by Jews in places like Gush Etzion.The Jordanians moved thousands of their own citizens into these areas to colonize the area, and had Jordan not attacked Israel in 1967, they would have remained exclusively Arab.
4) Despite their intense differences, many Catholics and Protestants soon sickened of the violence and many of them, particularly women, joined together to build bridges to prevent it.I’m not aware of either Catholic or Protestant mothers celebrating terrorism on either side as ‘holy acts’ or encouraging their children to emulate it.
5) A key part of ending or at least winding down the conflict came when Eire decided it had finally had enough of sheltering the military wing of the IRA and began cooperating with British law enforcement to end their funding and arms traffic and round up the worst offenders. The Arab nations have rarely if ever done that when it comes to Hamas, Hezbollah or the Tanzim(Fatah’s military terrorist wing).
Commenters on this board should also be aware that because of Jordan’s desecration of Jewish Holy sites in the Old City, the Israelis will never again permit Jerusalem to be divided – and that sentiment includes the majority of Left wing secular Jews as well as religious ones.It isn’t going to happen.
I apologize for the length of this comment.
Rob,
I don’t even know where best to start on that. So I won’t.
Most Algerian Jews were in fact native Arabs and Berbers of the Jewish faith, having been accorded French citizenship by the Loi Crémieux of 1870, they were “encouraged to leave” as French colonizers by their Algerian Muslim Arab and Berber brethren in 1962. An exception was the Sahrawi Jews of the Mzab, who were treated by the French wholly as “indigènes”, holding a “Mosaic personal status” equal to the pre-1948 “Muslim personal status” of Muslim natives. Since the Sahrawi Jews were deported as stateless people by their Algerian Muslim Arab and Berber brothers, in 1962 France made them French citizens in a one-time ex gratia measure.
Israeli Jews of Maghribi descent know this history, and they know what Jewish citizenship in a Palestinian state would ever be worth…nothing. But we thank you for your honesty.
There’s the Old City of Jerusalem, and then there are its suburbs. The Old City is of enormous symbolic importance but it is geographically tiny – about a square kilometer or a third of a square mile. The suburbs are probably twenty times larger.
Saying that there should be a “border-line […] that runs through Jerusalem” isn’t really helpful – do you mean that the mostly-Moslem suburbs should be divided from the mostly-Jewish ones, or that the Old City ought to be divided? Because that is such an enormous can of worms that it would derail any conceivable discussions. In contrast, dividing up the suburbs is obviously the sort of thing that needs to be discussed as part of any practical settlement.
Comparison with Northern Ireland is not useful, and only superficial. It was the role of Sen. Mitchell I was talking about.
Sadly, Obama’s unexpectedly poor diplomatic skill has shipwrecked what progress on the peace track was possible as a result of recent PA actions to establish security, Israel’s subsequent removal of a number of key checkpoints, and the PA’s refusal to let Hamas drag it into Hamas’ insane declaration of war in Gaza.
A freeze that prevented all building that expands the *perimeters* of built-up areas of settlements was possible, and would have been okay with many Israelis. It would have given supporters of peace a victory, by blocking the establishment of new settlements or the expansion of existing ones.
But the freeze that Obama’s administration demanded was an absolute freeze that does not even allow for rational work well within existing settlement neighborhoods. It was simply never going to fly, and the fact that the US proposed it anyway is stunning. It shows a complete disregard for the way middle easterners of all faiths interpret strength and weakness. If you make a strident demand and the other guy says no, you look REALLY WEAK. And in the middle east, from Iran to Algeria, nobody respects a weakling, and nobody does any favors for a weakling. Obama is making the same mistakes with Iran, which shows that he’s not only clueless about Israeli psychology, but clueless about the region in general. And the Arab leaders of the region are watching all of this and saying, “this administration is spineless.” In a region like the middle east, that’s REALLY DUMB.
The clumsy way in which Obama/Clinton tried to ram this demand down Israel’s throat, at a time when Israelis’ trust for Obama was already plunging steeply – it is now in the single digits, an incredible feat for a US president – made it virtually impossible for any middle eastern government, let alone Israel, to agree to cooperate.
The term is “setting yourself up for failure.” It’s really no wonder that this awesome (not) performance has caused the Saudis to publicly blow off US efforts to get Arabs to make even minor gestures. Good luck!
“rational work”, that’s a joke, Howard.
Obama is no dimmer than Bush in foreign policy, and Bush benefitted , or could have benefitted, from the experience of his father, who was generally good on foreign policy.
@Rob
Thanks for your insightful comments; I would like to make these additional points.
1. NI peace moves occurred AFTER the UK and Ireland were already deeply involved in a wider, increasingly active European economic and political framework that caused many people to conclude that a violent struggle to move NI from one EEC/EU country to another was simply stupid. The Arab regimes in the Middle East COULD work to establish such a system, thus making borders less important and thus de-escalating the conflict, but instead they do everything in their power to prevent the inclusion of Israel into any regional structure. They continue the same policies that have failed for more than 60 years (except, to an extent, Egypt and Jordan; Egypt and Jordan both got land back from Israel in exchange for peace, and have limited economic and security relationships with Israel – and even in these cases there is ample evidence that Israelis are willing to trust their partners in many areas).
2. Not only Ireland, but no Catholic government in Europe was willing to support terrorist activity by the IRA, regardless of the Catholic/Protestant angle. In the middle east, many Muslim regimes and “opinion leaders” actively encourage terrorism against “the Jews,” as long as it does not cause problems in their own back yards.
3. The IRA held a unilateral ceasefire for years in advance of political moves and for years before that, the IRA had been calling ahead to warn of bombings, allowing the evacuation of civilians. In contrast, Hamas and the other Arab terror groups make every effort to slaughter as MANY innocent civilians as possible in EVERY attack. The fact that most of these attacks fail is due to (1) Israeli preparations, including bomb shelters all over the place and (2) blind luck. Hamas is known for double suicide bombings in which the second bomb was intended to kill paramedics and “good Samaritans” who rushed to the scene to help victims of the first bombing, as well as panicky civilians rushing away from the first blast.
While there were likely a lot of sociopaths and evil creeps within the IRA, there is some evidence that somewhat less bloody-minded people eventually came to the fore and led that terror group away from the path of outright terror. In Hamas’ case, nothing of the sort has happened.
In Fatah’s case, Arafat created a deeply broken organization which, unlike the IRA, is literally incapable of fully accepting a peaceful course of action.
4. Sinn Fein’s party platform has NEVER called for the genocidal mass slaughter of British people. Hamas and Fatah are both founded on ideologies that REQUIRE it, and both maintain genocidal plans as core planks in their platforms. Oh, wait; you already made that point! Well, it bears repeating.
5. The IRA did not hide in Ireland and launch sometimes dozens of rockets per day into Protestant towns or major UK cities. Had it done so, the UK would have gone after the IRA much more bloodily than Israel has EVER gone after Hamas. Does anyone at all doubt this?
6. Unlike the UK, Israel withdrew every last Israeli from Gaza. Hamas responded by turning Gaza into a launch pad for near-daily attacks on Israel, even though, at first, Israel did not deign to respond to these attacks, hoping incorrectly that they were a hangover from previous years that would soon peter out.
Unlike Israel, the UK NEVER withdrew from Northern Ireland. The UK still occupies NI completely, and UK Protestant settlers continue to occupy large settlement blocks in NI. Neither Helena nor anyone else here is demanding that they leave. Neither is the Arab world, or the Catholic world, or the Republic of Ireland. Nobody is talking about slaughtering them, or having them “move back where they came from” or “driving them into the sea.”
If Israel had followed the UK’s approach, it would still be in Gaza today, and everyone, probably Helena and all the other leftists and “friends of the Palestinians” who comment here, would be demanding that it get out.
Unlike the UK, Israel withdrew. It made a Palestinian state possible in the west, with precisely the 1967 borders demanded by the Arab world. Hamas responded by demonstrating incontrovertibly that its sole purpose in the world is to kill Israelis, and that it has absolutely no intention of making peace, ever.
And that’s where we are today.
Thanks!
Peace is elusive until Zionists stop being racists!
@Alexno
Thanks for your response. You may be shocked to hear that I agree with you 100%.
Bush Jr. was a disaster. My comments about Obama’s clumsiness should ***NEVER*** be read as endorsements of the colossal ineptitude and, in quite a few cases, unethical and anti-Constitutional behavior of Bush-Cheney (-Rumsfeld-Gonzales-etc.)
The Clinton administration and the Bush (Senior) administration both performed more effectively. Of course, both made mistakes; mistakes are pretty much inevitable. But in general, both avoided most of the major land mines and were able to do accomplish improvements in the region rather than falling into the same potholes, week after week. Both made the best of some rather bad situations.
Obama-Biden-Hillary have been systematically blowing opportunities, one after another. Every time this administration falls into another hole, it weakens its ability to influence events in the region. The further this goes, the more governments across the region stop taking it seriously, and the more these governments look elsewhere (Russia, China) for strategic partnerships.
I say this as someone who absolutely despised Bush Jr., who voted for Obama, who supports Obama in many other contexts. But I am EXTREMELY disappointed by the bungled, slow-motion train wreck that is Obama’s middle east policy. I had hoped for better after the previous administration finally drew to a close.
anyone realy belives this “end the “occupation” and there will be peace” myth?
between 1948-1967, westbank+gaza+east jerusalem were occupied by arabs and were made “judenrein” by this rassists. noone intended to create a arab state there and although all this areas were “judenfrei”, hunderts of israeli civilians were killed by arab fedajin-terrorists.
end “occupation” today would mean more rockets from lebanon and gaza into israel and new rockets from westbank.
the muslim world simply needs this conflict to divert the attention of the people from the pitiful situation of the ummah about human rights, economy, culture, science…
beside that:
there is absolulty nothing wrong with 300.000 jews living in westbank when its allowed that 1.000.000 muslims live in israel with more rights then any other arab in any arab country.
you cant have the one with the others.
you leftists want a “judenrein” westbank? then you have to accept a israel without muslims.
Anybody who think Israel will come back to the pre-1967 time when Arabs were destroying Jewish holy sites in Jerusalem and forbidding access to the Western wall either is a fool or a knave.
Natanyahu was perfectly right. Most Arabs in Jerusalem are newly imported Jordanians who tossed Jews out and stole their property. Bibi is perfectly right to say what he said. And only useless fools would have expected something else.
Howard,
As I said, comparisons between NI and the Middle East are best avoided otherwise one gets into all sorts of convoluted twists of history and logic.
Amazing the revisionist history that is being written here — both Stalin and Hitler would be proud.
An example, Rob’s comments — too long and too delusionary to address, or even read. So let’s just take the first three points:
1. History has proven Israel’s continuous genocide against the Palestinians. Read Ilan Pappe’s “The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine”. And the genocide continues to this very day.
2. The jews that cannot accept the one-state solution can all return to their respective other homes. A majority of Israelis are dual-citizens. Most of them treat Israel as a version of summer camp where they sometimes go to live out their Zionist machismo, just like the White Supremacists in the US who strap on their guns and boo Obama and feel mucho macho. No difference between the two.
3. “Israel owned by the Ottomans?” That manufactured country did not come into existence until around 1947. It was PALESTINE that was part of the Ottoman Empire, it was PALESTINE that was occupied by the Brits, just like Algeria was considered a province of of France at one time and just like France was occupied by the Nazis at one time.
Helena is correct. Palestine should declare its borders and declare its unilateral independence. Palestine has waited too long. And the thugs and bar bouncers in Tel Aviv are fast losing any sympathy amongst the world community.
@kassandra:
another antisemit with a wet dream of jews beeing forced under foreign control (wheter people like you or muslims…there isnt a difference here).
jzst to show with which dirty tricks modern jew-haters work:
you speak about genocide against the palis…well, it must be the first genocide (other then the shoa, ruanda, armenien genocide, sudan…) in which the number of the “victim ethnic exploded at a rate of 8x inside israel (120.000 arabs in 1948 compared with 1.200.000 today) and in westbank and gaza.
just to show the ugly face of modern antisemits, this example should be enough for normal people which should use their own brain instead of eating muslim/nazi/leftist anti-jewish propaganda.
one more example to expose antisemits like kassandra is the fact that there was no pali-state in the history while there existed a jewish state named israel long before christians or muslims invaded the holy land.
and a pali-ethnic exists since 1960s when arafat invented them. before that there were just normal arabs with the same culture and language like the ones in lebanon, syria, egypt….
mehdrdad, The “chosen people” should at least be capable of learning how to spell, what? Why leave that ability to the “antisemits”?
well, i can speak persian and german very well and english isnt my first language. you should point at my poor english spelling when you also can speak 3 languages.
but thats typical for jew-haters frm left, right and the muslim corner. because they have no facts and can not answer to facts, they try the “spelling trick”.
you have simply nothing to say to defend your useless and laughable comments about the palestine state or the genocide at the palis…like göbbels or julius stricher, you lack facts.
@kassandra, you’re wrong again. Talk about delusional comments!
“1. History has proven Israel’s continuous genocide against the Palestinians.”
If Israel is committing “genocide” as you claim, then its genocide program is the most inept in history. In 1967, the Arab population of the Gaza was 280,000. Today it is over 1,500,000.
In 1967, when Egypt controlled Gaza, the life expectancy in Gaza Arabs was 52 years. During Israel’s control of Gaza, including the first intifadah, average life expectancy for Gaza Arabs shot up by 20 years to 72 years (better than the life expectancy of Sinai Egyptians). Only when the PA took over did life expectancy stagnate (but did not drop).
Do you know what a genocide looks like? Ask the people of Darfur. Ask the Tutsis of Rwanda. Ask the survivors of the Holocaust.
Stop appropriating terms that you don’t understand to deceive the ignorant.
“2. The jews that cannot accept the one-state solution can all return to their respective other homes. A majority of Israelis are dual-citizens. Most of them treat Israel as a version of summer camp where they sometimes go to live out their Zionist machismo, just like the White Supremacists in the US who strap on their guns and boo Obama and feel mucho macho. No difference between the two.”
The vast majority of Israelis have lived there since birth and have never lived abroad. A recent (2009) poll indicated that more than half of Israelis don’t even believe that people born abroad could be considered to be “true Israelis.” As for their politics, you simply have no clue but continue to make up bizarre claims anyway, evidently for shock value. Says more about you than about them.
More than half of today’s Jewish Israelis are descended from Jews who fled ethnic cleansing in Arab/Muslim countries. Sderot, which has received so much attention because of Hamas’ rocket attacks, was originally a Jewish refugee camp housing Iraqi and Persian Jews, until Israel integrated that wave of refugees. 1,000,000 Jews from the “Arab/Muslim world” fled to Israel, and their descendants, like those of the vast majority of Ashkenazi Jews, etc., simply live there. No “summer camp.” No “other homes.” They can’t (and wouldn’t) “go back” to the countries that drove out their grandparents or parents, the countries whose exploding Arab Muslim populations have overrun all the formerly Jewish areas. Baghdad was 40% Jewish before WW2; and the Iraqi Jews of Israel will never be able to go back and claim any of that.
Which is fine; Iraq’s Jewish refugees were allowed into Israel and were absorbed, and are an integral part of the country.
The Arab world can make a reciprocal absorption work, with reparations to the refugees. That, with a 2-state solution, makes sense and could work, if the Arab world and the other so-called “supporters” of the Palestinians magically become more interested in building a real Palestinian state than they are in savaging Israel.
@ Steve Connors
Makes sense. Thanks.