June 5, 2009

If Only Israel Were Smaller...

A couple of things on Israel's settlements being at the root of the Arab-Israeli conflict, if not of all Islamic grievance. The new Commentary features several pieces on the theme of "no more peace plans", instead offering essays promoting other ideas, including Caroline Glick's Stabilization Plan (NAWS). Her piece is much broader in scope than the so-called settlements issue, but if I may borrow a slice of subscriber content, here she notes some of the false assumptions that have helped to foil the seven previous attempts at imposing a 'two-state solution' just since 1993...

First, they assume that the Middle East conflict as a whole is a function of the Palestinian conflict with Israel, and consequently, once the Palestinian conflict with Israel is solved, the wider Middle East conflict in all its disparate aspects will be resolved.

Second, they all assume that the root of the Palestinian conflict with Israel is the absence of a Palestinian state west of the Jordan River that must include Judea and Samaria (otherwise known as the West Bank), Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip—areas Israel took control over in the 1967 Six Day War.

Third, they presume that it is Israel’s refusal to cede all of these lands to the Palestinians that stands at the root of the Palestinian conflict with Israel and forms the basis of the Arab-Israel conflict and the Islamic-Israel conflict. So long as Israel maintains even a residual presence in any of these areas, it is to blame for the absence of peace in the region. That is, from the Iranian mullahs to al Qaeda, from the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood to the Saudi-financed mosques in London, Israel’s size is the cause of angst, frustration, violence, and hatred. Stemming from this view, the two-state solution’s fourth assumption is that the internal pathologies of the Palestinians, the Arab world, and the larger Islamic world are largely irrelevant. The only thing that matters is that Israel is too big.

As Glick goes on to point out, Israel has never been unwilling to negotiate on its size, from the Golan to Gaza to the Sinai, and the suggestion that their communities in the West Bank areas are the obstacle to peace rather than the refusal of Palestinians and their patrons and sponsors to recognize Israel's right to exist is, well...a canard.

Krauthammer's The Settlements Canard

The entire "natural growth" issue is a concoction. It's farcical to suggest that the peace process is moribund because a teacher in the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem is making an addition to her house to accommodate new grandchildren -- when Gaza is run by Hamas terrorists dedicated to permanent war with Israel and when Mahmoud Abbas, having turned down every one of Ehud Olmert's peace offers, brazenly declares that he is in a waiting mode -- waiting for Hamas to become moderate and for Israel to cave -- before he'll do anything to advance peace.

In his much-heralded "Muslim world" address in Cairo Thursday, Obama declared that the Palestinian people's "situation" is "intolerable." Indeed it is, the result of 60 years of Palestinian leadership that gave its people corruption, tyranny, religious intolerance and forced militarization; leadership that for three generations -- Haj Amin al-Husseini in 1947, Yasser Arafat in 2000, Abbas in December 2008 -- rejected every offer of independence and dignity, choosing destitution and despair rather than accept any settlement not accompanied by the extinction of Israel.

As they say, read the whole thing.

Glick's says the Palestinians must be made to pay a price for their ongoing intransigence, or it will never end. As long as institutions like UNRWA thrive, she says, they will continue to radicalize Palestinians (like this?), and make stability impossible.

Peter Wehner says Obama's words will soon be forgotten, but what he said about Israeli settlements will survive...

....to insist that Israel do what Obama wants even before negotiations begin will have unintended consequences. It will reinforce Arab intransigence. Arab nations will (understandably, from their perspective) wait for America to force concessions from Israel on a range of issues rather than give up anything to win them. Good feelings mean very little unless they can be translated into tangible, concrete progress. In this case, the results of Obama’s speech will, in my estimation, take us further down the wrong path.

Jonathan Tobin comments on Obama's interview with Tom Brokaw in Dresden

Posted by dan at June 5, 2009 4:44 PM