[I dealt with this subject also in Will President Palin end the futile “peace process?]
A unilateral declaration of a Palestinian state. Does President Obama not see that it leads to a minefield?
Clifford May, NRO
Last week, not for the first time, Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas said he was considering declaring a Palestinian state and asking the United Nations to recognize it. In the past, it went without saying that the United States, which holds a permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council, would veto any such proposal that did not come about as the result of a negotiated agreement between Palestinians and Israelis. But there is now speculation that President Barack Obama might break with that precedent.
He might do this because he believes in a “two-state solution” and would like to achieve it while he’s in the White House and sooner rather than later. This is not unlike Obama’s approach to health-care reform. He was willing to use whatever means were necessary to get a law passed. The outcome has not been as he anticipated — the midterm elections are testimony to that. Should Obama support a Palestinian state birthed through the “unilateral option,” that, too, would bring unintended consequences.
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Unlike many Americans and Europeans, Abbas knows that any deal he could conceivably strike with the Israelis would be unacceptable to most members of the Arab League and the Organization of the Islamic Conference — not exactly a half-a-loaf kind of crowd. To them, peace may be preferable to defeat, but it’s no substitute for victory. Many define victory as Israel’s destruction.
From that perspective, it makes sense for Abbas to cut Israel out of the peace process. No Israel, no concessions. No concessions, no backlash from Abbas’s friends and neighbors. But a politician as savvy as Abbas must see the risks that such a strategy entails. In the great poker game of the Levant, Palestinian leaders win by playing the “stateless card.” Don’t all peoples have the right to self-determination? And aren’t the Palestinians a people? (Never mind that the rulers of most Arab and Muslim-majority countries answer in the negative when it comes to the Jewish people.)
Once a Palestinian state is established, the stateless-Palestinian card disappears from the deck: The conflict is transformed from a fight for Palestinian independence to a border dispute. Abbas would then have to decide whether to pursue territorial claims through violence or ask the Israelis to start up new talks. The former would destroy the security and prosperity achieved on the West Bank in recent years; the latter would leave him in a weaker negotiating position than he holds right now.
But the most important stumbling block may be this: Since 2007, Abbas and his Fatah movement have been engaged in a low-intensity civil war against the Islamist Hamas organization. Hamas has jailed, tortured, and killed large numbers of Fatah members in Gaza, which it controls. Fatah has treated Hamas members almost as roughly in the West Bank, which it governs.
Is there anyone who seriously believes that the establishment of a Palestinian state at this moment would not escalate the conflict? And is there anyone who seriously believes that Abbas and Fatah would come out as winners without substantial help from Israel? Which raises the question: Will the Israelis provide such security assistance — as they do now, albeit quietly — if Abbas, against their wishes, takes the U.N. route?
On the one hand, Israelis cannot want ‘Hamastans’ on two of their borders. On the other hand, the Israelis might make the strategic decision to sit back and let Hamas win, knowing that the “international community,” anti-Israeli though much of it is, will be uncomfortable backing a terrorist organization openly and unequivocally committed to Israel’s extermination, and guided by the jihadi rulers of Iran.
With Hamas at the helm, the West Bank would soon resemble Gaza — a ward of the “donor community,” its people subject to an increasingly fundamentalist interpretation of Islamic law. Eventually, Hamas would feel compelled to “resist” Israel’s existence through missile attacks or terrorism. Israel would have little choice but to respond forcefully.
What happens then? Will Syria and Iran come to Hamas’s aid? Will Hezbollah launch the thousands of missiles it has deployed while U.N. “peacekeepers” looked the other way? What role will Turkey — a NATO member that now sees itself as a leader of the “Muslim world” — choose to play?
And what will Obama do as the conflict spreads and escalates? If the president does not have a good answer to this and related questions, he should not wait much longer before making absolutely clear that he does not want Abbas to bypass negotiations and head down a road leading to a minefield.
— Clifford D. May is president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a policy institute focusing on terrorism and Islamism.
JR, please don’t be a putz. You cannot invoke God’s name in vain. Others would then be able to accuse the same God of causing the Arabs to try and wipe Israel off the map.
Let’s hope the American Jews don’t vote for him again in the numbers they did the last time.
I did not say anything about not questioning him or reversing him as soon as possible, whether he is in office or not. As a civilized society we are required to do this constitutionally.
So, the Zionist patriots who founded Israel were “commies”? That’s interesting. Commies or not, if the Palestinians had accepted Israel in 1947 the 2-state solution would have been a fait accompli. Anyone with more than half a brain would know that. Today’s elected officials in Israel have all accepted the concept of a 2-state solution and have been willing to negotiate on this basis. Only the Palestinians are standing in the way of this by their failure to accept Israel as a Jewish state and their insistence on wiping Israel off the map.
You cannot have a Tea Party without tea bags. What does that have to do with the derogatory pornographic term?
Would you like to be called the wrong end of the alimentary canal rather than just misinformed? LOL.
If you mean G-d, I agree.
He might not be booted out you know.
Ours then were not elected and yours are. Hmmm?
Yet you agree because he is official then what he does is to be accepted, not to be questioned or is reversible until he leaves office? But Israel must live and abide by what some unelected Commies did 63 years ago but a popularly democratically elected leaders decisions and acts in your opinion do not?
I think you have some confusing ideas, why not try again but do better next time. Maybe you adhere to the concept of do what I say not as I do?
Thanks for the update re: Tea Bagger but correct me if I’m wrong, for a long time they used the tea bags as a symbol of their movement. Has that now changed and they Maybe are using instant coffee instead or some other visible symbol? Maybe Beef Jerky? LOL
It always amazes me when people are ungrateful towards those who help them, especially when there is only one real helper.
Poppycock. I disapprove of almost everything that Obama says or does. However, he is still the President until we boot him, and 78% of American Jews voted for him as you well know by now along with a bunch of other pinheads – 53% of the voters. Similarly, your opinion of what Israeli leaders have done through the years is simply that – your opinion. It means nothing except to you and those who think like you and your own wet dreams. What the elected leaders decided to do is what is official. For example, the Zionist founders, who were all far more patriotic and committed to Israel than you will ever be, accepted the original 2-state solution to end the conflict, and if the Palestinians had gone along, that would have been it.
The correct term for the movement I belong to is Tea Party. The term Tea Bagger is an offensive pornographic term only used by people like you and your colleagues among the anti-Israel and anti-American George Soros funded far left wing.
I’d say about 60% do think like me. After Obama it might go up to 80%.
You are the type that every dictator has wet dreams about. Therefore according to you Everything Obama does is what counts, your opinion or the peoples Zip? I thought you were a Tea Bagger? In this context Obama has more legitimacy because at least he got over 66 million votes our Zionist leaders got Zero. They were picked by the British because they could be controlled and they were to a large extent.
This is as patently false as saying that it gets dark during the daytime or light at night.
The “mainstream” is not the leadership. It is the official leadership whose opinions count in a civilized society, not some guy bloviating on the internet 63 years later.
No they didn’t. They had no way of knowing for sure. The partition of 1947 was a solution to everything that had gone on previously.
Nonsense. If what I said was meaningless we wouldn’t be seeing the Kobuki dance going on between Abu Mazen, Obama and Bibi, without the acceptance by the Palestinians or any renunciation of violence.
I would be able to if I didn’t read so much poppycock and bogus propaganda here, which is costing my habitat BILLIONS on top of the BILLIONS we have sunk into Israel’s survival over the years.
No we don’t. Nothing we cannot handle. You must have us confused with Israel.
Once again, you have it arse backwards. Parasites do not use their resources to subsidize an ally like Israel year in and year out for decades while guarantying its survival.
All these BILLIONS of our hard earned money and all the help in terms of sophisticated arms and UNSC vetoes and we still have some ungrateful Israelis like Yamit, whose sorry behind we have been protecting for decades. Thank Allah that 99% of Israelis are not like this one ingrate.
Who you calling a Putz HWSNBN? What’s with 150.bil? Peanuts for a country that has a national indebtedness of between 63 -200 trillion dollars.
Since our stipend is relatively the same in nominal amt. as it was in 1982 due to inflation it’s worth in today’s dollars 2/3rds less or we are receiving in 82′ dollars about 1.2 billion. Even with a push the UJA could come up with that to cover the shortfall of 1.2 Bil.
The Bank of Israel is now holding 57 billion of Dollars in foreign currency reserves and I don’t know how much in other currencies or howe much gold or silver and you are throwing 1,3 bil at us? It isn’t money that binds us it’s fear by our cowardly leaders. We have the only leadership in the world afraid of Obama and America. Jews are a very dysfunctional race.
Wrong Judaism is Zionism, there were always Jews living in the Land of Israel and Jews always came back to the Land whenever they had an opportunity to do so. In modern terms Zionism became the political National Liberation movement of the Jewish People.
Putting any attributable context to the Jewish Zionist leaderships agreement to partition they had in my opinion no religious right yo do so and maybe even no Jewish Legal right as well. The leadership did not represent the mainstream of either religious or secular Jews of that time and all were appointed by the Imperialist occupiers of the Land of Israel. A sovereign state would have eventually come into being probably through conquest which is the normal way states come into being.
Many if not most did; certainly the revisionists did and probably most of the Sefardim who lived here did. Those that didn’t should have after the the pogroms of the 20’s and 30’s and the almost daily acts of terror.
Totally meaningless: They already agreed to that in the Oslo accords reiterated again in the Wye.
No agreement between states is worth the paper it’s written on in the long run and certainly none with an Arab or Muslim.
There will be peace when there are no Arabs and Muslims to disturb the peace. For sure not due to any illusory agreements.
Worry about your own habitat. You have more serious problems than we do. You think being a parasite is an admirable quality and an American right. Well the chickens are coming home to roost. Think Yen and Swiss Franks if you can’t afford Silver or gold. The Dollar is beginning to cease being the Global reserve currency, do you have any idea what that will do to the American economy? Leave BB the putz to the Jews. put your own decaying house in order first before advising what we should do.
The problem is Bibi is listening to all the putzes and forgetting who is buttering his bread ($150.bil worth).
Americans have been operating on what the original Zionists agreed on – a 2-state solution. Obama has simply taken the anti-Semitism he learned from Rashid Khalidi, Jeremiah Wright and Louis Farrakhan, to another level by combining it with his apologies and appeasement towards the Muslim dictators and put more pressure on Israel than anyone since Bill Clinton, who had a special room at the White House for Yasser Arafat.
My advice to Israel is based on the fact that the acceptance by the founding Zionists was based on assumptions that Israel would be accepted as a Jewish state. They also had no idea that the Arabs would try and wipe Israel off the map by force and continue trying for 63 years with no end in sight. None of these assumptions came to pass.
Thus, based on what the Palestinians have done since day one, Israel has every right to refuse to waste time on futile “talks” which cannot be serious in the circumstances. They have done enough damage to their own interests already based on the circumstances by their concessions over the years without any concessions in return.
My point is that Israel should take their case – NO MORE UNILATERAL CONCESSIONS WITHOUT PRIOR WRITTEN ACCEPTANCE AS A JEWISH STATE AND AN AGREEMENT OF NON-VIOLENCE – to the American public which overwhelmingly supports Israel. Obama, whom you mind-numbed liberal American Jews helped elect when you took a complete leave of your senses in 2008, would not have a leg to stand on if Israel took a stand on this basis.
Tell Bibi not to be a putz. Tell him to call me and I’ll tell him what he needs to do.
AMEAGLE: In terms of moral imperative you are perfectly correct, in terms of the real imperative, all you are doing is pissing against the wind.
What Israel SHOULD do and what Israel is NOW doing and WILL be doing are quite different matters. Israelis feel insecure without being under the cover of America’s might and power. That is the way things stand now.
If that were not case, Israel would have attacked Iran, reoccupied the Gaza, occupied Syria, reoccupied Lebanon. They haven’t done any of these tasks because of America’s insistence that they not do so.
Sorry AMEAGLE, this is not the fault of liberals, or leftists. It is all a matter of realpolitique.
Here you go. Call Abu Mazen’s bluff and stop wasting time on bogus “talks”.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/nov/21/abbas-no-negotiations-without-jerusalem-freeze/
The original solution of 1947, which was accepted by the Zionist founders of Israel was a 2-state solution. It did not come to pass simply because the Arabs did not accept it then and have not accepted it since. The dominant Arab groups like Hamas, Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad have no intentions of living alongside Israel. Their founding charters require that Israel be eliminated. Even the PA has refused to accept Israel as a Jewish state.
This is why I say that Israel should not have given up any land acquired in self-defence, and should now refuse to agree to any talks until the Arab’s get their act together and accept Israel as a Jewish state and renounce violence, no matter how long that takes, which may be until hell freezes over. Why? Because such talks cannot be serious and are only intended to work against Israel’s interests.
The American public will understand and support such a position. The “world” may not like it but will accept it because it makes more sense that fruitless talks that can lead nowhere.
NO ACCEPTANCE, NO RENUNCIATION OF VIOLENCE, NO TALKS. Case closed.
The Arabs and Obamaites will piss and moan, but there is nothing they can do in tangible terms if they were faced with such a demand as a pre-condition. The status quo will prevail, but the status quo will prevail anyway because there is no way that Israel can accede to the current demands.
Not true. Israel has been in a position to win a decisive victory numerous times since 1948. They have also given up territory they have captured, in S. Lebanon and Gaza for example, with nothing in return, and accepted the proposition that J&S is “negotiable”.
Regardless of what America – the government – wants, there can be no stable peace as long as the Arabs do not recognize Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state and renounce violence. Everyone with more than half a brain understands that. Israel should use this to their advantage and refuse to even agree to talk to the Palestinians without acceptance and non-violence as a pre-condition, regardless of what the US administration may say, because the American public will support such an Israeli position.
You are out of the loop for sure. Ron may at times be light on specifics but his understanding is light years ahead and above yours. Since you admit to knowing nothing why are you here and why do you comment? Your opinions are worthless as you are out of the loop and don’t understand or have the information to make any valuable contribution to this forum.
May I recommend Fruit Loops. That might get you into the correct loop.
Rongrand:
Ron as you are a self professed non expert- which can be translated to mean, I really know little of what I write, but I would like to follow the parade, may I respectfully suggest you wait and see how things develop. We really are all out of the loop and we all are guessing. Nothing more, nothing less.
Bottom line as I see it and by no stretch of the imagination am I an expert but, I don’t believe the two state solution will do it. The Arab world will never be satisfied. One thing will lead to another.
Israel needs to maintain a strong defense and if attacked they need to respond with decisiveness. They need to continue to build communities in Jerusalem and likewise in all of Israel.
They need to stand up to the US administration and they need (I said it a hundred times) a good PR program to inform Americans and our elective officials the truth to overcome the lies and attacks against Israel and her people.
The Palestinians are nothing more than an anti-Semitic tool used by the Arab world against the Jews and Israel.
The Palestinians are not a nation and never were, they are ex-Jordanians and rejects from other Arab nations.
G-d led the Jewish people back to the Holy Land and trust me the Palestinians were not on the manifest.
America wants a stable mideast. Not a mideast frought with belligerence and hatred. American policy recognizes that a never ending occupation whether in Iraq, Afghanistan, or Israel is not compatible with stability.
ameagle:
If Israel was in a position to win a totally decisive war,it would certainly do so. The major problem, so long as it remains under the American umbrella, receiving U.S. arms, and cash in the billions, it is subject to the will of its American sponsors.
What we know is that there are backroom negotiations. We don’t know anything other than what is leaked to the media. We don’t know the authenticity of these leaks. We know that the in the past the negotiations were utterly futile, but we also know past experience is not necessarily a guarantee of what may transpire in the future.
Sheer speculation. No one but the participants to the negotiations know for sure.
I don’t believe that Abbas will make a deal of the ’67 borders and no right of return.
So Fatah and Hamas are no different.
Belman:
That applies to Hamas, not to the PA
What you are missing is thatg the Arabs want all or nothing. The jews will settle for keeping 10% of Judea and Samaria. There is no equivalence here.
Thast war is comming. I hope that I am in Israel or already dead when it happens. Th9id id whne the world will really start to suck, until we the righteous win.
As a lifelong defender of Israel “at any cost” there are still some things that I don’t get about the objections of some Israelis to a 2-state solution, in the context of seeking a peaceful solution to the conflict in the middle-east, as well as the precedents and agreements by successive Israeli governments since 1967. I am assuming there cannot be such a 2-state solution unless it is based on areas currently under Israeli control unless the Palestinians accept Israel as a Jewish state and renounces violence. In the absence of that Israel doesn’t have to go along with whatever the Palestinians choose to declare and whatever the feckless UN decides to accept, even if Imam Obama does not veto it.
Please remember when you read this that I am a non-Jew who believes that Israel has lost several opportunities to achieve a one-state solution the old fashioned Attila-the-Hun way, the latest in 1967, which they should have done, in my opinion, because it was justified by the hostile actions of the Arabs and their manifest objective to wipe Israel off the map. I don’t buy the Arab population dilemma because I believe most of the Arabs would have dispersed into Syria, Lebanon and Jordan if Israel had conquered the entire area now under conflict.
1. In 1947 the Brits devised a 2-state solution to the competing claims by both sides, which was about as “fair” or “unfair” as the similar partition of the Indian subcontinent, other than in the middle-east it was Jews who were seeking a safe haven of their own by asking for Israel and in India it was Muslims who were doing so by asking for Pakistan.
2. The Zionist patriots who founded Israel accepted the 2-state solution, as did India and Pakistan. Only the Arabs did not. The subsequent conflict between India and Pakistan is over Kashmir which is a whole different story which does have some similarities with the middle-east in that Pakistan tried to annex Kashmir by force just like the Arabs tried to annex Israel by force. Trying to impose their will by force seems to be a part of Muslim culture.
3. Had the Arabs accepted their side of the partition of 1947, the 2-state solution would be a fait accompli today, perhaps even a Semitic economic union which would have been an oasis of prosperity in the heart of the retrograde Islamic dictatorships in the middle-east.
4. So, how can some people on both sides now go back to their own self-serving part of pre-1947 history to claim a one-state solution on their opposing terms – the Jews wanting a Jewish one-state, and the Palestinians wanting a Muslim one-state.
5. The only solution to such opposing and immovable claims throughout history have only been settled by a dscisive war where the winner takes all.
What am I missing? Now, please be nice in explaining this to me. Please no frothing at the mouth.