How Israeli Leaders Should Solve the Peace Negotiation

With the appointment by President Obama of Samantha Power to replace Susan Rice as the United States Ambassador to the United Nations; the Israeli leadership has been put on notice that they no longer have a friend in the leadership of the United States. There is no reason for anybody who supports Israel to be comfortable with this appointment. Ms. Samantha Power has been quoted responding on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that it may necessitate using armed military forces, “a mammoth protection force” and an “external intervention”, to impose a settlement between Israel and the Palestinians. This was to be implemented even if it would result in “alienating a domestic constituency of tremendous political and financial import…or investing…billions of dollars, not in servicing Israel’s military, but actually investing in the new State of Palestine.” Where Samantha Power has not actually called directly for the use of troops to force Israel to remit their control and forcefully remove all Jewish influences from the West Bank in order to fully complete founding of a Palestinian state, this has been the heavily implied and many have taken the collective body of her commentary on this subject and concluded she would be supportive of such a policy and be pleased with such an outcome. This appointment of Samantha Power as United Nations Ambassador is a perfect complement to having John Kerry as Secretary of State and tasking him to mold a final settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by any means necessary. It has been made perfectly clear that President Obama and his entire Administration favors the formation of a Palestinian State utilizing all of the West Bank as the basis for the State’s borders with Eastern Jerusalem, including the entirety of the Old City and Temple Mount, to serve as the Capital City for said State. The recent moves, appointments, press releases and comments by President Obama and members of the foreign policy departments of his Administration with the new changes made for his second term should give the Israeli leadership sufficient warning that they will need to take actions to resolve the impasse with the Palestinians using whatever political force and capital necessary.

 

There will be those who will support Samantha Power explaining that she is not anti-Semitic, anti-Zionist or anti-Israel but simply stands up for the Palestinians’ rights to their own State and respect for their human rights. Ms. Power is a well-respected human rights activist and a leader in that movement. As such she takes the ‘human rights record’ of Israel as a habitual offender as factual. This goes a long way to explaining why after the United States had withdrawn most of its diplomatic participation from the noxious United Nations’ World Conference Against Racism in Durban, South Africa, better known as Durban I, Ms. Power remained to participate in the discussions. This was the conference which transformed from a conference to discuss and address problems relating to racism, xenophobia, and hatred but almost immediately broke down and wallowed in the fetid swamps of anti-Zionist, anti-Israel anti-Semitic blood libels and hatreds while ignoring every other human rights ills anywhere else in the world. The conference was chaired by Samantha Power’s friend Mary Robinson who had no difficulty allowing the laser focus on the purported human rights violations by Israel on the Palestinians, Arabs, and all non-Jews worldwide. With her background and track record displaying such a deep seated disdain and contempt for the State of Israel, how is it going to be possible for the United States to continue to support the Israelis in the United Nations Security Council when a United States veto is politically desired, or even convince Israeli leadership that the United States still presents a credible supporter? The new reality taking shape in President Obama’s second term administration should give Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and his coalition pause and question exactly what steps Israel needs to initiate to avoid being overrun by an adjusted, pro-Palestinian United States Middle East policy.

 

There will most certainly be some who profess to be pro-Israel and pro-Zionist who will claim that Ms. Power’s promotion gives Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu the perfect opportunity to finally prove that Israel truly wishes for peace. They will point out that should Netanyahu make some unilateral compromises that then President Obama along with Secretary Kerry and Ambassador Power would work with him to bring Palestinian President Abbas to the negotiation’s table and the Two State Solution would finally be achieved. One group which is suspected to take such a position would be J Street. Backing them in the media one might expect that Tom Friedman of the New York Times and Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic would pen flowing and glowing editorials exclaiming that a Palestinian-Israeli peace is at hand if Prime Minister Netanyahu would just grab the opportunity that would bring Secretary Kerry and Ambassador Power to Israel’s side and force Palestinian President Abbas to finally negotiate honestly yielding a resultant Two State Solution with peace and security guaranteed for both peoples. Unfortunately, such optimism ignores the one truth which nobody seems willing to identify; the truth that President Abbas cannot make peace. The Palestinian population, especially those under thirty years of age, has been raised on a visceral hatred for Israelis and Jews. They have been finely tuned to accept only a one Palestinian State solution in which the Jews are either second class Dhimmis or killed. Should Abbas ever sign a peace treaty with Israel which does not include a complete Israeli surrender his life would be forfeit in less time than Egyptian President Sadat lived after making peace before being assassinated by one of his military guard. Further, as long as the world continues to demand that Israel and Israel alone must continuously make unilateral sacrifices and surrender territory and other negotiation points, why would Abbas ever make any move towards negotiating a real peace as all he needs to do is agree to appear once every few years before the media cameras with the Israeli Prime Minister, whomever it may be, and then refuse to return to negotiate and wait for the world to force Israel to surrender everything piecemeal one unilateral concession at a time.

 

There is another path that would actually be productive and make Abbas and the Palestinians anxious and truly eager to negotiate and make a real and possibly lasting peace. This path demands that Israel make unilateral moves but not giving anything, especially land, to the Palestinians to bribe them to come and negotiate but to take concessions they might desire from the Palestinians, especially territory. Perhaps the first step Prime Minister Netanyahu might take to signal with a minor move would be to replace the Muslim Waqf from their supervisory role over the Temple Mount and limit their jurisdiction to the actual Islamic buildings while placing the Israeli Antiquities Authority to supervise the everyday activities and visitation to the Temple Mount. The Israeli Antiquities Authority could be tasked to form a Temple Mount Security Force in conjunction with the Shin Bet and new rules would need to be enacted allowing freedom to pray and freedom to wear religious symbols and universal access for all peoples of all religions to the Temple Mount with allowances made for major religious holy days. This would end the odious limitations currently enforced which limit prayers or other actions deemed to be of a suspected religious nature forbidden to all except Muslims. This condemnable religious stranglehold by Islam and the Waqf has been tolerated and accepted as equal religious rights under the current arrangement. Cancelling this oppressive and hateful arrangement would bring a fresh and liberating transformation to a place that is of primary religious importance to three of the world’s major religions and should never have been allowed to be restricted such that only one sole religion had rights to these holy grounds.

 

Should this reassignment of responsibility over policing the Temple Mount and granting equality to all to visit, pray and enjoy these hallowed grounds and religious shrines not get President Abbas and the rest of the Palestinian leadership’s undivided attention, then Israel should take a second step towards further limiting what Israel would be willing to consider to be negotiable. Annexing permanently a half dozen of the major and closest to the Green Line Jewish residential communities and the industrial, commercial, educational areas etc. would hopefully awaken the Palestinian leadership to realize that the rules have changed and they can negotiate in good faith or find Israel eventually annexing Area C and whatever locations in Area B or even Area A that are desired. Eventually Israel could inform the Palestinian leadership that Israel has annexed all the areas Israel wishes to retain as part of Israel and they have two choices, either form a demilitarized state on what remains or if they still refuse to negotiate then Israel will consider the remaining areas to be under Israeli security control while allowing it to be a semi-autonomous area within which the Palestinians living there have limited self-rule but they will not be granted Israeli citizenship. Meanwhile, whenever Israel annexed lands they would grant the Palestinians residing within a temporary status placing them on a path towards full Israeli citizenship. They would receive new identification cards which would be different from Israeli or Palestinian identification cards currently in use. They would be eligible for full citizenship in five years provided they did not support, participate, harbor, commit or allow the occurrence of any terror related activities. It has become obvious that as long as Israel is forced to give concessions there will be no peace so perhaps it is time to attempt a new approach where Israel no longer surrenders in small unilateral steps but rather takes a positive step establishing a new pro-Israel fact on the ground one annexation at a time. When you are running out of carrots and it has become obvious that carrots are not working, then it is time to try a few sticks and save whatever remaining carrots you have for when the other side truly and honestly desires to negotiate a permanent peace with security and tranquility for both peoples living side-by-side or together in the lands between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Looming Disaster in American-Israeli Relations

What would be a faster way to turn the American public against Israel than to have United States troops returning in caskets from Judea and Samaria, also known as the West Bank, where they were serving as peacekeepers presumably protecting the Palestinians from the Israelis and vice versa. If such a thing exists we have been unable to think what it might take. The problem is that the path that President Obama and Secretary of State Kerry may be taking in order to force a peace between the Palestinians and the Israelis includes American troops placed within the new Arab State of Palestine as a guarantee to Israel to prevent terrorism and a guarantee to the Palestinians against any Israeli interferences and guarding against IDF responses even if somehow a terrorist event should be committed. This idea is fraught with potential calamities and disasters beyond all imagination. Judging from the current situation in Iraq one can easily envision exactly how useless American troops would be in preventing all terrorist attacks while also being committed to performing their tasks while obeying all restrictions and limitations placed upon them by the Palestinian leadership. Add that the main function of American troops as peacekeepers would soon be realized that they are actually just potential hostages held whenever such were needed to make demands for concessions from either Israel or the United States. The best bet is that American peacekeepers stationed in Palestine to act as a deterrent against terrorism and to be guarantors of peace while enforcing the agreed upon border would be pulled either at the insistence of the American public or the demands of the Palestinians within the first year.

 

The path leading to this catastrophe waiting to happen will occur quickly and be in place before anybody either in Israel, the United States or the Arab World has time to react and prevent such idiocy. The most likely scenario will go something like this. Secretary of State Kerry will convince Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to forgo his litany of preconditions in return for a guarantee that the 1949 Armistice Lines, also called the 1967 Lines, will be the basis for the borders and that the Palestinians will have their Capital in East Jerusalem with complete control over the Temple Mount. Secretary of State Kerry will coerce Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu to come to the talks by guaranteeing that the United States will enforce Israeli access to all Jewish Holy Sites especially in Jerusalem and that the United States will be the guarantor preventing any future terrorist attacks including rocket attacks. There will be a great meeting very likely in Washington on the East Lawn or the Oval Office with a signing ceremony where a tentative peace agreement will be signed. The agreement will spell out a proposed solution to such final issues as borders, Palestine being a non-military State defended by the United States, a solution to the Palestinian refugee resettlement with some ten to twenty thousand who have provable claims to lands lost within Israel being accepted by Israel with the remainder being absorbed by Palestine and possibly some remaining in the countries where they have resided with some having lived there over sixty years. And the cherry on top of this peace of cake will be American peacekeepers placed in the State of Palestine as the guarantors of all the implementations, peace, safety, and security for both sides. Presto, instant Americans placed in harms’ way under what will be the worst possible of conditions.

 

In order to appease the Palestinians, the American troops will answer to the Palestinian leadership operating under similar restriction as the UNIFIL (United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon), who operate in a nearly complete ineffectiveness in containing Hezballah in Lebanon from rebuilding south of the Litany River, having to request permission in order to operate outside of their bases and perform any of their supposed duties. The American troops will find that their service will be utilized in such a manner that they will only have the effect of preventing any Israeli response to terrorism. The ability of the American forces to control or prevent terrorism will be virtually nullified by restrictions placed on them by the Palestinian government. They will become a protective force for the terrorist functions by blunting any operational abilities of Israel in anti-terror operations within Palestine, the only thing restricting terrorism on a massive scale currently. Eventually there will be American soldiers kidnapped by such groups as Hamas, Islamic Jihad, al-Qaeda, Salafists or even al-Aksa Brigades, who are part of Abbas’s Fatah Organization, should the Americans actually manage to hold any terrorists from any of these groups or simply to make demands for any purpose from freeing terrorists held by Israel or any country worldwide or any other purpose where a hostage would give sufficient leverage. The American troops would also be living day and night wearing a virtual target on their backs and be targeted by any terror groups or individuals who are not supporters of Mahmoud Abbas; this is a very large and possibly majority of the Palestinian Arab population. Once Americans are taken hostage or murdered while presumably making Israel safe from the Palestinians, and this is how it will be played in the press and across the media, the relations between the American public and Israel will begin to grow strained. At some point Israel will likely ask that the Americans cut their losses and return to the United States as the price of American troops being harmed would be too high a price that Israel would rather the United States not pay. Israel has, in their entire history, never requested for American troops to come to their aid. Israel has always preferred to be responsible for the security of her people and country and have been consistently reluctant to allow others to be placed in harm’s way preferring to take such risks for their security themselves. This idea of injecting American troops into the Israeli-Palestinian peace process is an awful idea whose time must be avoided and seen as poisonous to Israeli-American relations. Nothing positive can come from such a mistaken idea, such an abhorrent and noxious idea.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Israel in Need of New Approach to Peace Negotiations

To even the most casual of observers the Israel Palestinian peace negotiation under the Oslo Accords, Roadmap, Saudi Plan, or whatever metric one uses to measure the progress the entire peace process is a dismal failure which has become moribund in a coma for at least two years if not much more, even possibly more than a decade. Since the Oslo Accords were first introduced the formula for peace has not changed despite that with each incoming new Presidential Administration the name of each rendition of the plan has changed. In every case the general theme was for Israel to make concessions in order to entice the Palestinians to rejoin the talks followed by a televised and highly photographed meeting, often with a White House backdrop, where the sitting Israeli Prime Minister would shake hands with either Yasser Arafat or Mahmoud Abbas after Arafat’s death, the United States President would take credit for the great accomplishment of restarting the peace process and praise the sacrifices taken for peace by both sides and a subsequent meeting schedule was announced. The schedule collapsed after one or two meetings or even without any further meetings taking place. Then the arm twisting would begin in efforts to get Israel to make concessions and the cycle would repeat. The Palestinians make ever changing demands for preconditions pocketing Israeli concessions as they slowly advanced their positions one concession at a time while the only concessions offered by the Palestinians were the exact same as their initial promises, to work to disarm terrorists, remove anti-Zionist and anti-Israel lessons from their education system, act to prevent further terror attacks, and act to end incitement of terror. These intended promises by the Palestinians have never been met, and truth be told, have never even been attempted to implement and thus allowing for these same concessions to become the permanent promise offered by the Palestinians. Since everybody acknowledges that the Palestinian promises are not being made in good faith, their constantly ignoring and reneging on their promises has become accepted as unalterable and thus no further demands are ever made upon the Palestinians. Instead of forcing the Palestinians to actually make any sacrifice or adjustment towards coexistence, the world simply accepts the Palestinian deceit as unavoidable and beyond any chance for change and thus all pressures are placed upon Israel to make concessions until Israel has reached well beyond the point where concessions have become a dangerous threat against the continued existence of the State of Israel. Despite this known fact the world still demands that the Israelis offer just one more round of concessions, for now, and then they will ask for one more the next time, and the next time. The modus operandi has been established but perhaps it is time for a change.

 

To date the assessment of the peace process has taken for granted that the Israelis desire for peace will drive them to make compromises and concessions while the Palestinians are seen to have a dysfunctional society incapable of change thus unable to make compromise or concessions so no such demands are made of the Palestinians. This has led to a stalemate where Israel has given to the point where there is nothing left for them to compromise on if the Israelis expect to receive anything remotely resembling a compromise. The Palestinians through intransigence have moved the debate over borders to the point where Israel returning to the 1949 Armistice Lines and dividing Jerusalem has become the initial starting-point for further negotiations, some form of ‘right of return’ for Palestinian refugees has begun to be accepted by even some Israelis, and there are supporters in the world for including Hamas in the negotiations. The time has certainly come for a change in the going trends and presumptions. The concept that Israel wanting peace must surrender on every front constantly until they surrender themselves out of existence must be declared dead and buried before it reaches the obvious conclusion. It is time for Israel to take the initiative and reinstate the original concepts of UNSC Resolution 242 which guaranteed that Israel had only to return some of the lands gained in the Six Day War in June of 1967 and retain all lands Israel found necessary to provide them with secure and defendable borders. Israel need take the position that her return of the Sinai Peninsula and the Gaza Strip was sufficient land returned to meet the requirements of UNSC Res. 242 and that Israel requires all of Judea and Samaria up to the Jordan River as their eastern border in order to provide Israel with defensible borders. Make this the eventual target for all negotiations with the Palestinians and before each offer presented to the Palestinians take one step towards that finality. The slow and inexorable reclaiming of lands of Judea and Samaria as time passes will act as a much better stimulus to bring the Palestinian to the negotiating table to honestly reach a real peace with mutual stability, recognition, security and peace. It has become obvious that making concessions will never lead to honest negotiations from the Palestinians because as the metric currently sits they get rewarded for not negotiating. It is well past time to make a new metric where not honestly negotiating will cost the Palestinians instead of rewarding them.

 

Many make the false premise that Israel cannot take such steps because they would lose their Jewish majority if they annexed all of what the world dishonestly calls the West Bank because of the large numbers of Arabs residing within. There are a number of falsehoods hidden in such claims. The first is that even should Israel grant all of those residing west of the Jordan River Israeli citizenship they would remain with a two to one Jewish majority. Furthermore, there is no requirement in International Law which requires Israel to grant any of the Palestinian Arabs who were Jordanian citizens prior to the Six Day War Israeli citizenship. Israel would be within their rights to declare them as resident aliens continuing to view these refugees as remaining to be Jordanian Citizens and could even generously offer to compensate them for any properties they may wish to sell and aid them in returning to their country of origin, Jordan. Such is the default from many previous examples of similar situations such as India and Pakistan where Muslims emigrated into Pakistan and Buddhists and Hindus emigrated in the opposite direction into India. Not all of these peoples chose to relocate, but the vast majority did so. It is well past the time that Israel must demand that they be treated no differently than other nations of the world and that they be permitted the same options, rights, and privileges as are granted without even a second thought to every other nation on Earth. The world demanding a different metric with which to measure Israel and a unique set of rules be applied to Israel while denying Israel the comforts, rights, definitions and pleasures allocated to every other nation must be brought to an end as to allow such to continue is to formalize anti-Semitism on an international scale. Time to end the charade, the injustices, the separate and unequal treatment and demand that Israel be accepted as an equal among nations and an end of all traces of bigotry and hatred concerning Israel resultant from anti-Semitism, anti-Zionism and anti-Israelism once and forever.

 

Beyond the Cusp