By Ted Belman
Rahm Emanuel says Obama doesn’t mean return to 1967 lines
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“[Obama] reminded us that every president and many Israeli elected leaders have recognized that the borders are one starting point for negotiations, not the end point. That statement does not mean a return to 1967 borders.”
“No workable solution envisions that. Land swaps offer the flexibility necessary to ensure secure and defensible borders and address the issue of settlements.”
They both avoid the real issues.
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1. Can the ’67 lines even with swaps be defensible.
2. Do they support the Saudi Plan requiring the retreat from all territories or Res 242 requiring retreat from some of the territories.
There is no question in my mind that swaps won’t make the borders defensible and that they agree with Saudi Arabia that Israel must retreat from the equivant of 100% of the territories.
Like Obama, he resorts to fear mongering.
- Obama, understands that “the shifting sands of demography… are working against the two-state solution needed to end generations of bloodshed.”
Increase in the Palestinian population, unilateral attempts for statehood, advances in weapons and recent Arab unrest puts “Israel’s survival as a Jewish, democratic state is at stake,” he said
No knowlegeable person would accept any of this crap.
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1. There is no demographic threat.
2. If you want to end the bloodshed, end the peace process. Stop weakening Israel.
3. As for the unilateral attemps at statehood, we have nothing to fear but fear itself. Israel should not give any concessions to avoid such a declaration. We have issued threats of our own, do it and its the end of the PA and we will annex most of the territories.
4. As for the unrest, I submit that’s a reason to stand firm and not rush to capitulate. Israel is not the cause of the unrest.
Who are they to lecture Israelis what our needs are. Its our necks on the chopping bloc not theirs.
This “dead fish” would be the last one (after ahmadinejad) I would listen to. He sold his Jewish soul for dirty ambitious. Total waste of Jewish life.
They aren’t slaves but if they were, they’d be willing slaves.
Some nations and peoples choose slavery over responsibility of choice like Russia.
LT COL HOWARD says:
How about: Get lost? Take a Hike? Butt-out? WE don’t need or want your interference! Your incessant meddling!
Price of American involvement should be:
We need a token of American good will like, cease supplying, financing and training all of our enemies from the Egyptians to the Palis. Stop selling the Saudis $50 billion of the best you got at least almost the best! In other words stop promoting for fun and profit the worlds most prolific arms race and then say you want to be a Peace Arbiter among your best and most profitable clients. That’s duplicitous and disingenuous, some might call it devilish.
Lets settle right of return and Jerusalem first:
Not a single Arab will be allowed in Israel with not a cent pd to compensate them from Israel. Jerusalem DC (Davids Capital): not a single inch of municipal Jerusalem will be given to the Arabs. Give them Washington DC instead. I think they’d like that and I wouldn’t care.
So then there will be no PEACE? 🙂 We already have Peace now more or less why make it worse. Intifada? I hope the next one Israel will throw all restraint to the shitter and then we’ll have Peace. Arabs who ran to Jordan, Lebanon or Sinai or are enjoying their Muslim Paradise.
The Obama/Netanyahu White House meeting must be evaluated as much more than theatrics. The consequences of the words used by Pres. Obama have tremendous impact on the future of the entire Middle East and on the United States.
This is what Pres. Obama ,without warning unleashed on Prime Minister Netanyahu (quoting Charles Krauthammer):Every Arab-Israeli negotiation contains a fundamental asymmetry: Israel gives up land, which is tangible; the Arabs make promises, which are ephemeral. The long-standing American solution has been to nonetheless urge Israel to take risks for peace while America balances things by giving assurances of U.S. support for Israel’s security and diplomatic needs.
It’s on the basis of such solemn assurances that Israel undertook, for example, the Gaza withdrawal. In order to mitigate this risk, President George W. Bush gave a written commitment that America supported Israel absorbing major settlement blocs in any peace agreement, opposed any return to the 1967 lines and stood firm against the so-called Palestinian right of return to Israel.
For two and a half years, the Obama administration has refused to recognize and reaffirm these assurances. (First denying that the agreement existed, and then stating that its terms were no longer binding) Then last week in his State Department speech, President Obama definitively trashed them. He declared that the Arab-Israeli conflict should indeed be resolved along “the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps.”
Walter Russell Mead a prominent historian, a Democrat, and a voter for Barack Obama in 2008 evaluated president Obama’s white house address and his meeting with Prime Minister Netanyahu at the White House as follows:
President Obama’s new Middle East policy, intended to liquidate the wreckage resulting from his old policy and get the President somehow onto firmer ground, lies in ruins even before it could be launched. He had dropped the George Mitchell approach, refused to lay out his own set of parameters for settling the conflict, and accepted some important Israeli red lines — but for some reason he chose not to follow through with the logic of these decisions and offer Netanyahu a reset button.
As so often in the past, but catastrophically this time, he found the “sour spot”: the position that angers everyone and pleases none. He moved close enough to the Israelis to infuriate the Palestinians while keeping the Israelis at too great a distance to earn their trust. One can argue (correctly in my view) that US policy must at some level distance itself from the agendas of both parties to help bring peace. But that has to be done carefully, and to make it work one first needs to win their trust. Obama lost the trust of the Israelis early in the administration and never earned it back; he lost the Palestinians when he was unable to deliver Israeli concessions he led them to expect.
To summarize, president Obama indeed made a radical change. Wall Street Journal (5/21/11 p A8) traces US policy and shows Obama’s “shifting stance”. Right of return and Jerusalem must be settled first. In land for peace -if you first give up the land you will get nothing else settled – and will not get peace. It was that daunting challenge that Prime Minister Netanyahu faced and by most impartial accounts acquitted himself admirably.
Rahm is apparently something of a knucklehead. Just about everyone knows that the starting point in 2011, for negotiations over ANYTHING, are the 2011 lines. Duh!
There is no satisfying those who will be satisfied with nothing but your complete annihilation. This is the charter of hamas (sic, and it has not been repudiated by them. Were Israel the size of a postage stamp, hamas (sic) would not accept it. Israel doesn’t seek to cause harm to civilian palistinians (sic). They don’t have to, hamas keeps the people down. The people of Gaza are hungry? Does hamas provide work for them? No, they buy guns and missiles to attack Israel. I cannot recall any country since WWII that has notified the civilian population to ‘Get out of Dodge because we’re coming in’ before an attack. And what does hamas do? Hide behind women and children. Gazians complain about their childrens’ education? Stop teaching them that Jews are apes and pigs. Math and science work much better to make your lives better.
There will be no peace until the people of Gaza and the West Bank want it bad enough to overthrow those who would keep them enslaved. And it’s not Israel enslaving them.