Paying in Advance

Israel could have refused the prisoner release. The result would have been endless discussions in which Kerry tries to get them to reverse. Who knows what assurances or “gestures” it might have been able to get. But it choose to say yes. Now it has one more chance to avoid the concessions and demands and that is to hold firmly to its own demands and to demand all of Area C. Time to be more assertive and play offense. Israel must set the agenda. Ted Belman

By Shoshana Bryen, AMERICAN THINKER

Like the dog that finally caught the bus he chased, Secretary of State John Kerry now has to figure out what to do with what he’s got. He induced, bribed, cajoled, and threatened Israelis and Palestinians to return to the “negotiating table.” The Palestinians were promised up to $4 billion in “investment” and aid, and up to 104 Palestinian prisoners held by Israel from the pre-Oslo era; terrorists with blood on their hands and previously thought to be unreleasable.

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What the Palestinians paid, if anything, is unclear, but they are trumpeting a victory — that Israel will release prisoners and that the prisoners cannot be banished to Gaza; that Israel will not be able to seek an interim agreement, but must to go “final status” issues; and that Kerry agreed with them that the 1949 lines (the so-called 1967 border) are the starting point. Almost as a throwaway line, Mahmoud Abbas said he was committed to a “two state solution” and Kerry has referred vaguely to the promise that that Arab States might make peace with Israel if the Palestinians were satisfied (more on that later).

So, Mr. Kerry has put his bribe on the table and Israel has paid in advance.
The core question arises, what will they negotiate? It will not be “peace,” which is not a negotiable property. Machiavelli called peace, “the condition imposed by the winner on the loser of the last war.” It can be a “cold peace,” a “warm peace,” or the “peace of the dead.” The “peace” of Versailles contained the seeds of WWII; the “peace” following WWII contained the seeds of a democratic Germany and Japan, but consigned millions to almost a half-century of Soviet-dominated communism. Peace emerges, if at all, only after the resolution of competing claims, whether through negotiation or war. WWII ended when the allies were in Berlin and Hitler was dead in the bunker; the Cold War ended when the Soviet satellites were freed from Moscow’s grip and communism died.

What are the competing claims between Israel and the Palestinians, and can they resolved such that a peace of some sort can emerge? In barest form, Israel’s essential requirements are:

    Recognition of the State of Israel as a permanent, legitimate part of the region; the “secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force,” that is the promise of UN Resolution 242.

    “End of conflict/end of claims.” The Israelis expect this agreement to be the last Palestinian claim on additional territory or rights.

    Israel’s capital in Jerusalem.

For the Palestinians, the requirements are:

    International recognition of an independent Palestinian state, while preserving the right to claim/restore more or all of “Palestine.”

    The right of Palestinian refugees and their descendants to live in Israel if they wish, or to take compensation; the decision will be theirs, not Israel’s.

    Jerusalem as Palestine’s capital

The positions are incompatible and this, not the lack of pressure or lack of bribes, prevents the present creation of the mythical “two-state solution” embedded in the Oslo Accords of 1993. From the Israeli and American sides, Oslo had three underlying — and mistaken — assumptions that have returned to haunt all negotiations:

    That Palestinian nationalism could be understood as the mirror image of Jewish nationalism. (Zionism was determined to “normalize” stateless Jews by giving them a state.)

    That Palestinian nationalism could find its full expression in a split rump state squeezed between a hostile Israel and a more hostile Jordan.

    That there was a price Israel, the United States (and maybe Europe) could pay the Palestinians to overcome any remaining objection to Jewish sovereignty on any part of the land.

But Palestinian nationalism is precisely about the restoration of “Palestinian land” usurped by the establishment of Israel in 1948, which it perceives to be a mistake by an international community in the throes of Holocaust guilt. The Palestinian Naqba refers to the original error of Israel’s birth, exacerbated by its acquisition of more territory in 1967. To assume the Palestinians desire no more than the bits left after Israel’s War of Independence, somewhat smaller than what the Arabs were offered in the unacceptable 1947 UN Partition Plan, ignores the Palestinian view of its own future as taught now to a generation of post-Oslo Palestinian children. On this and perhaps on this alone, Hamas and Fatah are in complete agreement.
Mr. Kerry might more usefully take two steps back. First, he should insist that the Palestinians live up to the commitments they have already made to end incitement against Israel and Jews.

Second, rather than accepting a vague Arab League promise that would recognize Israel after Palestinian claims are satisfied, Mr. Kerry should remember that the obligations of UN Resolution 242 for “termination of all claims or states of belligerency” accrue to the Arab States themselves, not to the Palestinians. It was they, not the Palestinians, who went to war against Israel in 1967.

(Note here that Israel’s corresponding obligation, “Withdrawal of the Israeli armed forces from territory occupied in the recent conflict,” was largely fulfilled by withdrawal from 90-plus percent of the territory under the 1979 Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty; the UN-certified withdrawal from all Lebanese territory in 2000; withdrawal of the Israeli military and civilians from Gaza in 2005; and the withdrawal of the IDF from parts of the West Bank.)

This should not be taken to mean there should never be a Palestinian state, or that Israel should resign itself to permanent occupation. It simply recognizes that Secretary Kerry has repeated the mistakes of a mistakenly named “peace process.” No peace can emerge from the framework of a “two-state solution” that assumes one side or both will give up their deeply-held core principles. It behooves the parties — particularly the outside parties — to be honest about the futility of alchemy when they persist in demanding that the existing dross be turned into gold. And, having paid in advance, there parties are likely to find an empty coffer when the next installment of gold comes due.

Shoshana Bryen is Senior Director of The Jewish Policy Center

July 30, 2013 | 9 Comments »

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9 Comments / 9 Comments

  1. “Israel is in unique position to take Arab hostages, with charges against them trumped up, for all I care, and then to be traded back to their families, communities or terrorist gangs in return for whatever their negotiation value may be”.

    Please understand the Arab mind: Israel can take hostages by the hundreds any time it wants. The captives would be delighted to be kidnapped by Israel. They would be hailed as martyrs. The value of kidnapping will accrue to the Arabs. The captive’s value in a trade is zero. Think rationally, not as an Arab.

    Mr. Harris, pardon me for picking up on this side point when there was so much of more import on your comment.

    The fact is I was irritated and I’m getting fed up with Israel. Their stupidity is a constant source of amazement.

    Israel was fooled once, how many times does Israel need to be fooled before it sees itself as the fool?

    Shame on Israel!

  2. The Pal (proxy for the Muslims world) will use preconditions and blackmail to try to achieve their goals, the destruction of IL. They count on the historical and traditional political (US, Fr. and British foreign policies) and social Western anti-Semitism as well as the “non-aligned anti-Il Governments (ex-3rd world) and NGOs”. All this is a reflection of the deep fear of the West and the Muslims towards the Jews’ “power” (power for good I would say, but power any way).

  3. In June 1967, responding to a request from President Johnson, the Joint Chiefs of Staff determined what land Israel would need to retain to have defensible borders. The Joint Chiefs believed that Israel would need to retain 60+% of Yehuda and Shomron (sorry, west bank is an ahistoric term of our enemies) to have a defensible border. (JCSM 373-67, 29 JUN 1967). WHY AREN’T ISRAEL’S LEADERS LOUDLY AND FORCEFULLY PUBLICIZING THE UNITED STATES’ OWN MAP THAT SHOWS ISRAEL CANNOT RETURN TO THE AUSCHWITZ BOUNDARY OF 1949?

  4. @ raysap1291:
    I fear that this will not be a replay of past negotiations. With Kerry and Obama we now have leaders who may be much more willing than their predecessors to come down hard on Israel and even implement Samantha Powers’ concept of RTP, i.e. Responsibility to Protect. Recall that she advocated placing U.S. and EU troops inside the West Back to “protect” the Palestinians. I already heard talk among U.S. leftists of encouraging Arabs inside Israel and the territories to engage in massive civil disobedience to make life in Israel a living hell. This might provide the bloody images to mobilize world outrage against the Israeli ‘apartheid’ racist regime to finally expel the Jews by force and end the “illegal occupation”.
    In the midst of all this we have a Netanyahu government that is inept, fearful and untrustworthy. Not a good combination.

  5. Israel has already paid in advance a very high price for the “Piss Process” which started in 1993.

    What about the 1,550 Jews who were killed? What about the 1,600 Jews who were injured? What about the hundreds of thousands of Jews who have been traumatized?

    How many orphans and widows did Israel get as an award for the “Piss Process”?

    How many millions of dollars did all the terror attacks cost to the Israeli government in terms of health care for the “Piss Process”?

    If the aftermath of the Oslo Accords was a nightmare for Israel and the Jewish People worldwide, one can only anticipate the horrendous hell which will prevail following the implementation of this new “Piss Process”.

    The Israeli government intends once again to sentence to death our brothers and sisters.

  6. I can’t help but wonder if Kerry and Obama have something up their sleeves that we are not seeing or considering. Surely they know that Abbas doesn’t have any real, legal authorization to sign any agreements in the name of the Palestinians, since his term as president expired years ago. Surely they know that Abbas can never agree to dispose of the “right of return”, and that Israel can never accept that claim. Surely they know that Hamas will never accept any agreement signed by Abbas. In spite of these conditions, Obama and Kerry have invested a lot of political capital in getting the negotiation about negotiations to begin, so what is their end game?

  7. I must be one of the very few Jews in the world who have no interest whatsoever either in the concepts or realities of the pursuit of justice. Therefore, by my standards, keeping prisoners in the name of justice is, in itself, meaningless. But hostage-taking is another matter. Arabs routinely kidnap hostages, whom, as is clearly understood, are taken for purposes of negotiation with an enemy family, tribe, or country. Israel is in unique position to take Arab hostages, with charges against them trumped up, for all I care, and then to be traded back to their families, communities or terrorist gangs in return for wheatever their negotiation value may be.

    In general, in the situation faced both by the State of Israel and the Jewish nation, justice counts for nothing but the lands of Eretz-Yiusrael and its adjoining territories counts for everything.

    Remember just that, and try to act accordingly.

    Arnold Harris
    Mount Horeb WI

  8. Peace is impossible.

    The maximum Israel can offer is less than any Palestinian Arab leader can accept and hope to stay alive in office.

    Arab culture with its violence and political instability reflected in the all-too tenuous hold on power Arab dictators have today means the current regime is here today and gone tomorrow.

    Netanyahu and Livni are both dumb and dumberer if they have really convinced themselves that obtaining Abu Bluff’s signature on agreement is worth writing home about.

  9. Kerry is trying to save face. The U.S. admin look like fools for making promises they haven’t been able to keep. When will they realize that you can’t negotiate with terrorists?