Unraveling the Middle East Muddle - TIME

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton speaking on Obama's foreign policy at the U.S.-Islamic World Forum

Fadi Al-Assaad / Reuters

On the morning of Valentine's Day, as Dick Cheney was once again calumniating the President on network television, I was in Doha, Qatar, listening to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton attempt to explain Barack Obama's foreign policy to several hundred restive representatives of the Islamic world. The event was the annual U.S.-Islamic World Forum, sponsored by the Brookings Institution, and the mood was a bit more testy than last year's Obama-induced euphoria. There was a universal sense among the Muslim delegates that the President had offered fine words in the past year but not much action. And now, Clinton entertained a question from Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, on behalf of an interfaith group of religious leaders, about the suffering of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip: Why wasn't the U.S. doing more to alleviate it? (See pictures of Obama's diplomacy.)

Good question. In fact, it cut to the heart of the Obama–foreign policy frustrations. Clinton's tough talk on Iran got most of the U.S. headlines, but her position on Gaza was far more important to the Islamic participants at Doha, especially the Arabs. The Israelis have stubbornly maintained a stiff blockade after pounding Gaza into submission in January 2009. Food is allowed in; Gazans aren't starving. But tight restrictions remain on construction materials for rebuilding homes and public buildings and on many of the nonessential necessities of life (Israel recently lifted the ban on cigarettes). Israel has suggested three conditions for lifting the siege to Hamas, which controls Gaza: no more rocket attacks against Israeli civilians, no arms smuggling into Gaza and the release of Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier kidnapped by Hamas in June 2006. The rocket attacks have pretty much stopped and the arms smuggling — I am told — is an issue that can be negotiated, but the fate of Shalit has been an insane sticking point. On the evening before Clinton's speech, Recep Tayyip Erdogan — the Prime Minister of Turkey and an erstwhile ally of Israel's — was cheered when he raged against the conditions in Gaza, calling it "an open-air prison." (See pictures of George W. Bush in the Middle East.)

Clinton's response to McCarrick's question was forceful but inadequate. She reminded the delegates that "violence preceded the suffering," a local coup d'état by Hamas, which then used Gaza "as a launching pad" for wholesale rocket attacks against Israel. She acknowledged the humanitarian suffering and said the U.S. had pressured Israel to increase the flow of essentials like food "from a trickle to a flood," but ultimately, she concluded, the fate of Gaza would have to await a comprehensive settlement between Israel and the Palestinians.

Wrong answer. And not merely because the Islamic participants in Doha were hoping for something more concrete. It was wrong because it demonstrated the chronic weakness of Obama's Middle East strategy. As soon as he was inaugurated, the President went directly for the big prize: a comprehensive two-state solution. But the timing was lousy. The Israelis had just elected a right-wing government led by Benjamin Netanyahu, whose coalition partners were vehemently opposed to negotiations. The Palestinians were fiercely divided between Fatah, which controls the West Bank, and the more militant Hamas. U.S. envoy George Mitchell's slow-moving effort to start talks tanked because of Israel's unwillingness to stop building illegal settlements on Palestinian land. The Administration seems boggled now; the President told me in a January interview that the Middle East had proved tougher than he'd expected. It was not an admission that inspired confidence in the region. (See pictures of heartbreak in the Middle East.)

It might have been more profitable for Obama to have concentrated on trying to fix Gaza first. It was the immediate crisis when he took office, and it remains so. It is difficult to solve, but not impossible. Success would set a predicate: the Administration could be relied upon to work hard, and pragmatically, on vexing issues along the way to an ultimate deal. It could be trusted by all sides. That possibility still exists, although senior Administration officials seem unduly pessimistic about the chances of success. And there is a big obstacle here: the best way to resolve Gaza is for the U.S. to quietly convince Hamas that if it gives up Shalit — a huge issue for the Israelis — the U.S. would work to persuade Israel to lift the siege. The trouble is, the U.S. won't talk to Hamas. But if Obama's policy really is about engaging our enemies, he needs to engage Hamas — and Hamas needs to respond. Quickly. (Joe Klein interviews Obama on his first year in office.)

There are other obstacles. Three of the four interested parties — the Israelis, the West Bank Palestinians and Egypt — are more than happy to let Hamas suffer in perpetuity. That may make political sense in the short term, but it is creating an intractable long-term problem: the rise of a new generation that's even more radical than Hamas and even more angry at Israel.

Which brings us back to Cheney. He and his hard-line allies are rooting for Obama to fail. The leaders of Hamas — and other potential interlocutors, like the Syrians — need to understand that this may be their last best chance for progress. After Obama, the deluge.

See the best pictures of 2009.

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1964775,00.html#ixzz0fx809WtG

_________________________________________

Note: I have presented this biased news article by Times.com, to demonstrate to everyone exactly how the truth is twised in the media, always shedding Israel's position as Darth-Vader.
This article is filled with as much science fiction as the Star Wars movie, with Darth-Vader playing the lead role, as the evil villain. Only, Israel is now portrayed as the villain, while the liberals weep over the fact that one of the most evil TERRORIST organizations in the world has been curtailed (as much as possible) from its on-going rocket attacks into Israel's bordering towns. Yes, Hamas kidnapped a young IDF soldier approximately 3 years ago; they have not allowed the Red Cross or anyone to visit this solider in all the time of his capture. Their demand to Israel included the release of ONE THOUSAND Palestinian terrorist in exchange for the kidnapped Israeli soldier - and such a bargan, Israel cannot afford to agree to, unless she wishes even more blood shed from these same terrorist, upon her innocent civilians.

I love the quote "pounding Gaza"! Did this come out of the Goldstone Report? This is the attitude of most of the world - a world that ignored EIGHT YEARS of Hamas pounding Israel. Hamas had bombed schools, buses, restaurants, and shot rockets into Israel for over EIGHT YEARS - and not a peep out of the UN Humaan Rights organizations; no one wept over the loss of innocent lives. Israeli children, sleeping in their beds, murdered by Hamas terrorists; and the only ones who wept were the families and all of Israel, at the funerals of the innocent.

And yet, there is no mention in this article about the Israeli physicians who treat wounded Palestinians; or the truckloads of food and supplies that Israel donates to the Palestinians living in Gaza, to relieve them of the suffering caused by the Hamas Terrorist government of Gaza! A government, I might add, that was ELECTED by these same Palestinians.

And, there is no mention of the Hamas TERRORISTS that attacked a small church in Gaza on Christmas Day, killing innocent Christians on their holiest day of the year - the same day a would-be Yeman Islamic terrorist tried to blow up a plane filled with over 300 passengers in the United States.

There is no mention of the fact that PLO's i.e. Palestinians is nothing more than a group of Arabs being used by 27 Arab countries, as a ploy to destory Israel from within its borders. No mention of the 27 Arab countries wanting to ease the suffering of their brothers in Gaza, by allowing them to live in any of the 27 Arab countries with enough land available to them for every single Palestinian to live among their own brothers and sisters.

Instead, the continuation of the world wanting to cut up Israel into smaller pieces, with a two-state solution is just another way of robbing the Land of Israel of her right to exist among her own people, within her own borders, without the constant attacks by both the terrorists and the world's opinion - an opinion that Israel builds and grows on illegal land. Who exactly determined that the land within Israel is now "illegal" Israeli land?! The same people who have only one solution for Israel - that solution being "erase her from the map"?!

This article is science fiction; the writers of Time.com have demonstrated their lack of knowledge of the Land of Irsrael; her rights to exist among all nations; the extreme sacrifices her people pay for just being Jews living in their own land.

Let the world continue to pound out their propaganda against tiny Israel; Israel will continue to grow and prosper; continue to help both her enemies and nations needing humanitarian aid; she will do this in silence, because she asks for no acknowledgment for her good deeds; she only asks that you allow her to live in peace.

Finally, I would like to close this with a response to this article's author insunating that those who oppose Obama, wish him to fail. WRONG! Obama failed the moment he took office, due only to the fact that his un-American, un-Constitutional, Muslim-hugging, terrorist-defending, ally-betraying, policies are ALL un-patroitic and not what our founding fathers intended for these United States of America. Ameicans will not allow their country to fail; they will defend it and do, with Justice on her side.

God bless America! God bless her troops in harm's way all over the world, fighting the very terrorists that this news article defends.

Bee Sting

Israel is accused of waging covert war across the Middle East

Times on line.co.uk.com

Sheera Frenkel in Jerusalem

Israel is waging a covert assassination campaign across the Middle East in an effort to stop its key enemies co-ordinating their activities.

Israeli agents have been targeting meetings between members of Hamas and the leadership of the militant Hezbollah group, and the Iranian Revolutionary Guards.

They are also suspected of recent killings in Dubai, Damascus and Beirut. While Israel’s Mossad spy agency has been suspected of staging assassinations across the world since the 1970s, it does not officially acknowledge or admit its activities.

The current spate of killings began in December when a “tourist bus” carrying Iranian officials and Hamas members exploded outside Damascus. The official report by Syria claimed that a tyre had exploded but photographs surfaced showing the charred remains of the vehicle — prompting speculation that a much larger explosion had taken place.

Related Links

• Dead ‘Mossad spy’ was writing exposé

• How Mossad helped Hamas

Several weeks later a meeting between members of Hamas, which controls Gaza, and their counterparts from Hezbollah in its southern Beirut stronghold in Lebanon was also attacked, resulting in several deaths.

Hamas had sought to cover up the incidents because it was embarrassed, a senior Palestinian official in Ramallah told The Times.

“There has been growing co-operation between Gaza and Iran. Israel can read the writing on the wall and they know that with the help of Iran, the Hamas Government in Gaza will become stronger and will fight better.

“But Israel is overstepping their boundaries. Other countries don’t want to become a killing field for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”

Most recently, the top Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Mabhouh was killed in Dubai on January 19, 2010. He is believed to have been poisoned by a woman who visited his room at the Al Bustan Rotana Hotel in Dubai.

Israeli officials said that Mabhouh had been a key figure in procuring Iranian-made longer-range rockets for Hamas that could be fired at targets in central Israel.

The exiled Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal has vowed revenge for Mabhouh’s death. He has also suggested that the current fighting between Hamas and Israel will become more regional. In an interview with the London-based al-Hayat newspaper, Mr Mashaal said that future wars with Israel would not be fought solely in the Gaza Strip.

Under the current Mossad chief, Meir Dagan, Israel is believed to have renewed efforts to kill high-level opponents. Only months after the former paratrooper assumed leadership of the intelligence service in October 2002, senior Hezbollah operatives in Lebanon began to be targeted. He was credited with ordering the killing of two relatively senior Hezbollah members who were killed in southern Beirut in July 2003 and August 2004.

More recently, Israel has been accused of planting a car bomb in Damascus that killed the top Hezbollah leader Imad Mughniyah in February 2008. The Israeli Cabinet minister Daniel Herschkowitz last week praised the Mossad chief as one of the agency’s most successful leaders.

When asked about Mossad’s involvement in the Dubai slaying, Eli Yishai, the Interior Minister, smiled and said: “All the security services make, thank God, great efforts to safeguard the security of the state of Israel.”

While some countries are questioning whether Israel isn’t taking credit to increase the reputation of its defence establishment, other moderate Arab States are now describing the assassinations as a “covert war” between Israel and Hamas.

Diplomats said they were aware that covert Israeli operations had increased. “We watch their comings and goings; we are aware that there is more activity both on our ground and other countries in the region,” said an Egyptian diplomat. “They are trying to embroil us all in their conflict.”

Tensions between Israel and Hamas have remained high, despite the relative quiet that has ensued since the end of Israel’s offensive in Gaza last winter. Israeli troops were placed on alert yesterday after intelligence suggested that Hamas planned to abduct soldiers. Israel said this week that it had foiled a kidnapping in December by arresting the Hamas operative Slaman Abu Atik on the Israeli-Gaza border. He planned to enter Israel via Egypt, said the Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security service.

Obama’s Three Gambles on Iran Which He is Sure to Lose

By Barry Rubin, GLORIA

Two articles today are especially worthy of attention. The Washington Post has a piece about how Iran has been running into technical troubles in building nuclear weapons. This is the kind of thing Israeli analysts have known about for years. Since it is out in public now, please note that the idea that Iran is about to get weapons in the next few months has been often exaggerated. But we are talking about, say, two years roughly, and some more time before they could deliver them by missiles.

More immediately, following up on its editorial, the New York Times has an article, “Obama Takes Several Gambles in Bid to Defuse Nuclear Standoff With Iran,” which is not bad as such but somewhat detached from reality. Indeed, it could have been written six months ago in many respects. It is also interesting to note how on each point the article partly misses the point. Always keep in mind that they way things are worded, defined, and argued reflects the thinking of the foreign policy elite including the government itself.

Basically, the article says that the Obama administration is taking three gambles.

First, the belief that it can get through stronger sanctions, “that are strong enough to convince Iran’s divided leadership that its nuclear ambitions are not worth the price.”

The article doesn’t mention that the administration’s own starting point—even before having to water down sanctions with concessions to get support from others!—is too weak to convince Iran’s leadership to back down. That’s pretty significant.

[Yes, the administration has just put on some new sanctions. If you are a high-ranking official of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps--which is seeking to spread terrorism and Islamist revolution and shouts "Death to America" every day--it will be harder to do business in the United States. That's going to scare them?]

The article continues: “for Mr. Obama, that effort is complicated by the fear that sanctions could crush a resilient antigovernment movement that appears on the verge of taking to the streets again.”

There are circumstances where such concerns would be valid but this isn’t one of them.

Think about it. If Iran does get nuclear weapons it will greatly strengthen the regime at home for several reasons: hysterical enthusiasm at Iran becoming a great power; a show that the regime can easily defy the world (so how can any opposition challenge such a powerful and confident state?); and international gains that will produce material benefits at home. Therefore, if sanctions are too weak it will ensure that the antigovernment movement will be crushed in the not-distant future.

Moreover, those who hate the regime already hate it. They aren’t going to change their mind because America is “bullying” the mullahs. True, in the Arabic-speaking world the idea of rallying around the dictator in the face of foreign pressure is a real possibility. But Iranian history is different. It has never had a strong coherent nationalism and this regime has not ruled on a nationalist basis (though it has used such appeals at times, as in Iran’s war against Iraq).

To be frank, Iran has more of a tradition of deserting to make a deal with powerful foreigners. Nobody knew that better, incidentally, than the leader of the Islamist revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, and he talked about it a lot. Before the seizure of the U.S. embassy in 1979, Iranians were lining up there to ask for visas and to seek support in overthrowing the regime. That’s one of the main reasons the government backed the takeover.

Clearly, Iranians don’t want the United States to invade their country or even attack it militarily (though more than you might think wouldn’t mind so much). But put pressure on that weakens the regime? That’s a different matter.

The second gamble is that he will win over China, which even the Times sees as unlikely. For some peculiar reason they don’t mention Russia which is also a problem. By the way, note that through its friends in Hizballah who are part of Lebanon’s government, Iran now has a foothold in the UN Security Council since Beirut is a member there.

The third gamble is to stop Israel from attacking. This is silly since Israel won’t attack unless Iran is on the verge of getting deliverable nuclear weapons by which time it would be clear that the Obama administration had failed. Moreover, Israel is going to give every chance for sanctions and diplomacy to succeed, both because it would prefer not to attack and to “subvert” these efforts would sabotage Israel’s support in the West, especially the United States.

It is amazing how hard it is for Western elites to understand Israeli interests and policies, perhaps because the mythology is piled higher than a February snowstorm in Washington.

So here we have a trio of straw men. Here’s the real gamble: expecting to achieve anything without strong sanctions (why doesn’t the Times ever mention Congress’s proposal of a refined oil products cut-off which would be far more effective?), building a strong international coalition against the ambitions of the Iran-led Islamist alliance, making a credible threat of toughness, and doing a lot more to support Iran’s opposition.

Here’s an idea: since it is obvious that the administration policy is going to fail, why wait for a year to find that out?

There are two ways to look at it this administration strategy as a gamble: Either this is a gamble that cannot win or the Obama administration is gambling with the future of the Middle East and the survival of some very basic U.S. interests.

Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). His new edited books include Lebanon: Liberation, Conflict and Crisis; Guide to Islamist Movements; Conflict and Insurgency in the Middle East; and The Muslim Brotherhood. To read and subscribe to MERIA, GLORIA articles, or to order books. To see or subscribe to his blog, Rubin Reports.

Unsentimental Education What has Obama learned about peace?

Published on The New Republic (http://www.tnr.com)

• Marty Peretz
• January 29, 2010 | 12:00 am

  “The cruel God of the Jews has you beaten too.”--Racine

  An interview by Joe Klein in Time magazine is hardly a historical event. But, when the interview is with Barack Obama, it lays claim to some newsworthiness. This is especially true when it is ballyhooed as a firstanniversary event. Since, moreover, (right after awarding himself good grades on Al Qaeda in Yemen and Somalia) it’s clear that Obama wanted to make a point: “The other area which I think is worth noting is that the Middle East peace process has not moved forward. And I think it’s fair to say that for all our efforts at early engagement, it is not where I want it to be.”

  Klein then throws the president an easy ball, which Obama hits just outside the third baseline. “I’ll be honest with you. ... This is just really hard. Even for a guy like George Mitchell, who helped bring about peace in Northern Ireland. This is as intractable a problem as you get.” I suppose this is an admission of sorts for the president. But, as he goes on, you find that his understanding of “the problem” is not an understanding at all. It is a disposition, and the disposition is his. Not his alone, mind you. Still, it is his, and that’s what counts.

  How does one characterize this disposition? Of course, you can read the interview. Or let me quote briefly: “Both sides--the Israelis and the Palestinians--have found the political environment, the nature of their coalitions or the divisions within their societies, were such that it was very hard for them to start engaging in a meaningful conversation. ... Moving forward, though, we are going to continue to work with both parties to recognize what I think is ultimately their deep-seated interest in a two-state solution in which Israel is secure and the Palestinians have sovereignty and can start focusing on developing their economy and improving the lives of their children and grandchildren.” One is tempted to ask what Arab model the Arabs of Palestine will use as a prototype for their own prosperity and freedom. Is there such anywhere in the Arab world? Perhaps the president will himself propose one.

  Obama’s confidence in himself on matters that he used to know nothing--or, to be charitable, next to nothing--about leads him astray. But even self-absorbed people tend to have crutches. Frankly, I don’t believe that Rashid Khalidi is his tutor, although he may have lived in his neighborhood. The person he seems to rely on, at least for public fare, is Mitchell. I know that, last month, Mitchell was awarded the ncaa “Teddy” Award, named for Theodore Roosevelt and bestowed on people who played undergraduate athletics, or something like that. Mitchell’s sport was basketball. But even the president’s enchantment with the game can’t explain his enchantment with Mitchell, who, after all, screwed up his own investigation of drug use in the baseball majors.

  I am not being cruel to the ex-senator from Maine. Even that faux Harvard scholar, Stephen Walt, co-author of the noxious The Israel Lobby, believes that the president should put him out to pasture. I, myself, don’t think it makes any difference. If the president believes that George is correct in his views, then the president believes it. I do not know how many frequent-flier miles Mitchell has accrued in his travels to the region. But he is becoming desperate.

  In only the last fortnight, Mitchell allowed himself to be drawn into preposterous discussions with Mahmoud Abbas that revolved around the rais’s proposal that the Obama administration negotiate with Israel on the final boundaries of the Palestinian state. Presumably, Mitchell was not happy with the idea. Of course, he delivered the message to Washington and discussed it with Benjamin Netanyahu. Netanyahu’s response to the Mickey Mouse conditions Abbas has set, particularly the first-time demand of a halt to construction any place in the West Bank and in east Jerusalem, can be summarized: “Stop wasting time talking about how to enter the peace process.”

  On the other hand, Mitchell was almost delirious with the news he found in Beirut and Damascus. Now “delirium” is a clinical description. But it is, in fact, the only way to explain Mitchell’s reading of the Lebanese and Syrian situations, especially vis-à-vis the United States and Israel, individually or together. The cliché about Lebanon used to be that it would be the second state to make peace with Israel. Quite to the contrary: I believe it will be the last state to make peace with Israel, if it ever will.

  Sorry, I don’t know out of which nargileh Mitchell was smoking. But the political alignment in Beirut has never been so hostile to the United States and never been so prepared to make war on Israel. The Saudis--ah, the faithful Saudis who have fooled every single American president since FDR up to the homage-bobbing present one--set upon Prime Minister Saad Hariri, the son of his assassinated father, Rafik, also prime minister, to make peace with Syria’s president, Bashar Al Assad, himself the real killer. These were only formalities. Of course, they despise each other. You have to have sat with enough Arabs swearing their love for brother Arabs to fathom how much they scorn them. If anybody calls me, I’ll give plenty of instances.

  The real power in Lebanon, even benefiting from American blandishments like Mitchell’s, is Hezbollah. This well-rearmed fighting force has been allowed by the state to keep its weapons and, thus, to function as a permanent sedition itself. Hezbollah has now moved more of its civvie-clad soldiers and munitions into the south, forbidden by the so-what Security Council Resolution 1701, Condi Rice’s last testament to her term in office. Hassan Nasrallah has established a more secure and very much armed soldiery in the north. The Shia jihad, which is what Hezbollah truly is, has effective veto authority in the civilian government, and it has exercised this aplenty. Syria is much more cut-and-dried: Al Assad rules, and he finds no reason, not a single reason, to wander away from Iran, the alliance with which is all that makes the United States notice him at all. This is a trio centered in Tehran. But, evidently, the president is wary of making its walls shake. He’s leaving that to the students.

  Of course, Mitchell is not really the president’s tutor. Mitchell, with congenial opinions, is the president’s errand boy; he has been that for just about a year. And, as Obama allows, this year has, more or less, been a waste. Tiens!

  Frankly, the problem lies with the green line. Lines drawn with crayons have always had a bad life after the fact. Palestine has had many lines drawn for it and through it. The Sykes-Picot lines were finally drawn, after about a year of imperial bargaining, in 1916. They were kept secret, however, for at least a year. Britain appropriated to itself what it called Palestine and fought the Turks so that the land “from Dan to Beersheba,” based on a map of the Holy Land “under David and Solomon,” would be its alone. The “lines” and the references would cause troubles everywhere, including Mosul. In fact, the Sykes-Picot lines still make occasional reference--that is, troubles--in Iraq today. And when, or rather if, Israel and Syria ever come to discuss the hydrologics of a settlement, Sykes-Picot will be studied again.

  One could concentrate on the United Nations partition lines of 1947. But, since no Arab country (save now Egypt and Jordan) has ever recognized the legitimacy of the Partition Plan itself, they and the Palestinians, who’d not negotiated with Israel until the early 1990s, and then only in secret, (or, for that matter, with the Zionists before Jewish independence) were stuck with what was called “the green line.” Like the Sykes-Picot lines, the green line was drawn with implements that were, to say the least, imprecise. The fact is that the relevant cartography was charted with the relationship of 1:50,000. It’s just possible that with that ratio, Gilo, which drove Hillary Clinton bananas, would have met the test of the most restrictive maps. But many other settlements would not.

  What is the standing of the green line, so called? Actually, it has none, having been violated by the Jordanians, the Egyptians, and the Syrians, most dramatically in the run-up to the Six-Day War. But the appellation “green line,” that very rough marker, is an invention of commentators. In the absence of political realism, it has taken on historical weight. But each of the four armistice agreements signed at Rhodes in early to mid-1949 have specific provisions, inserted at the insistence of the separate Arab delegations with not a single Palestinian in attendance and with not a single allusion to the Arab state envisioned in the Partition Plan, asserting that the documents are without prejudice to future arrangements of boundaries. There is no mystery as to what that means. That is, already, in 1949, the usurping Egyptian state, the Syrian dictatorship, and the Kingdom of Jordan were contemplating what they attempted in 1967 and (with two of the above) again in 1973.

  It is true that the manifest desire of the Israeli populace for peace was what pushed the political class into all of the risks they took. First of all, in trusting the table at which Yasir Arafat sat, and in more than trusting the impresario of the celebration on the White House lawn. This was Shimon Peres’s finest hour, his scurvy triumph of pushing Yitzhak Rabin and other Israeli realists into a negotiation they did not seek and which they feared. (For the record, as my writings in The New Republic reflected, I felt like a mourner at the wedding feast.) At the tail end of what a deceitful Ha’aretz columnist, Akiva Eldar, called “Clinton time,” Ehud Barak, a brave man in war and during peace negotiations, was also led down the marital path between the Israelis and the Palestinians. The prime minister had already agreed to a cockamamie division of the Armenian Quarter of the Old City, with decorous signs, when Arafat ran out of the negotiations with poor, panting Madeleine Albright, last year’s recipient of the “Teddy,” actually, running after him. End of parley.

  Even the students at Tel Aviv University, the U.C. Berkeley of Israel, are no longer pushing the prime minister to make concessions to what are, really, the president’s fantasies. Now, Netanyahu doesn’t do politics out of caprice. He knows that there will be no “Greater Israel” or anything resembling it. Recall that his mentor, Ariel Sharon, emptied Gaza of all its Jewish settlers and settlements. And then emptied four settlements in Samaria on the West Bank. Nobody sane thinks that these four would suffice, that they were other than the beginnings of a vast and, yes, painful withdrawal from Jewish history. Some of the folk in these communities--and that’s what they really are--happen to be more like homesteaders and pioneers. Everywhere, they are characterized as fanatics. I’d trust the characterizers much more if they could so easily also associate Palestinian true believers with lunacy.

  Here are the realities of Israel today. Everybody understands that 1967 really means 1949. They are silly borders--really, tokens of a fictitious past. The Arabs are lucky that perhaps as many as 100,000 Israelis may be dislodged from their homes. That gives them the hugest proportion of the West Bank--more, candidly, than I believe is safe.

  In the early days of the Jewish state, its enemies were perceived as armies, with, here and there, a terrorist gang or two. Fair and square, so to speak. Now, the Palestinians do “asymmetrical warfare,” terrorism writ large. If they have sovereignty, they will not repair to armies, at least not in the early stages of “peace.” They will, as they have already more than amply shown in Gaza, wage war by rockets and missiles and other projectiles. I will state it simply: The prospect of irregular war requires Israel to man the borders with Jordan, where about 50 to 70 percent of the population is Palestinian, mostly disloyal to the monarchy, restive, and increasingly drawn by the allure of Hamas. A long time ago, my own ideal of an Israeli politician, Yigal Allon, military hero and social idealist, drew a map that was realistic in that it met all the threats (save the nuclear threat) his country could face. It was called the Allon Plan. Anita Shapira has written a biography of this exemplary man, Yigal Allon, Native Son. He died 30 years ago in February. In any case, he understood.

  And, for all my slight disagreements with Bibi (and they are not more than slight), he understands as well. He is stuck trying to teach President Obama the sober facts. Only the sober facts can help him. But he will be angry learning.

  Martin Peretz is the editor-in-chief of The New Republic.

  For more TNR, become a fan on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.

On Palestine and Barack Obama.

Middle East and Terrorism
by Ira Sharkansky

Here is something that President Obama and his advisers should consider before spending any more of their time nudging Israeli and Palestinian leaders to negotiate a peace.

The details are not entirely clear, but reinforce the larger story of corruption in high places of the Palestine Authority, the lack of popular confidence in the Authority among Palestinians, and the likelihood that Hamas would take over the West Bank if Mahmoud Abbas and his people were not propped up by Israel, Jordan, and the United States.

The article resembles what I heard from a lecturer at a Palestinian university who visited me at the Hebrew University. The lecturer's biography featured numerous consulting activities with Palestinian companies and public authorities that had been financed by European and North American governments. When I probed the details and asked if any of the consulting had produced improvements in administration, the answer was negative. My visitor confirmed my impression that a great deal of foreign aid given to Palestine does nothing but provide employment for a few Palestinians. The article in the Jerusalem Post indicates that a fair amount of the aid ends up in the overseas bank accounts of Palestinian officials. It is more public relations for the donors than anything that helps to develop the Authority. "Is the Authority a serious entity?" I asked my visitor. The answer again was negative.

Other news includes revelations from ranking Palestinians of what they claim Ehud Olmert offered close to the end of his service as prime minister, and what the Palestinians rejected. The acceptance of one thousand refugees from 1948 was not enough to justify a response. Neither was what Olmert offered with respect to transferring neighborhoods of Jerusalem to Palestine, and other territorial swaps. The Palestinians were not willing to accept Israel's control of Maale Adumim, a suburb of Jerusalem where 30,000 Jews have made their homes.

We cannot be sure about the above details, insofar as disinformation is as much a part of Israel-Palestine relationships as it is of other political feelers that may be preparing the road for serious negotiations, or preparing the way to avoid negotiations. However, they fit the image of an Authority that is more comic opera, or Greek tragedy, than serious entity.

The best guess is that Palestinians are willing to turn the clock back to 1967, 1948, or 1947--depending on who is talking--but not to engage in their share of concessions in order to end the dispute.

So what should Israel do? And what should be the posture of the Obama administration?
Nothing is the answer appropriate to both questions.

The Palestinian leadership--whether the corrupt figures who claim to be in charge of the West bank or the religious fanatics in Gaza--are not appropriate managers of a state alongside Israel. They may continue to manage what they have, but Israelis do not want them to acquire the authority to import arms and formulate international agreements appropriate to a state.

Doing nothing appears to be the policy of the current Israeli government, learned from the frustrations of negotiations in 2000 and 2008. Israelis do offer lip service about their willingness to negotiate, and to make certain concessions, as befits a supplicant of the United States. Israelis might be gaining a point or two among friendly audiences from the hardening of Palestinian demands as conditions for beginning negotiations.

Insofar as Obama is Obama, we can expect a continuation of efforts, tweaking this way and that, in the hope that something will produce flexibility from Israeli and/or Palestinian leaders. Think of Obama as Sisyphus, and the prospect of getting that rock to the top of the hill.

As far as Israel is concerned, the stand-off is harmless. It is as secure as it has ever been. Iran looms, but no matter what the Iranians claim as their concern for Palestine, their nuclear efforts are beyond the parameters of Israel's dispute with Palestinians. The stand-off is also harmless for most Palestinians of the West Bank. As long as extremists remain quiet, or neutralized, economic development can continue. Gaza is something else, but the people voted for Hamas and many cheered the rockets being sent toward Israel. Neither the German negotiator concerned with Gilad Shalit nor Egyptians concerned to resolve the disputes between Hamas and Fatah have produced any flexibility that is apparent. Egypt is concerned with the spread of Hamas' enthusiasm to its own extremists, and is constructing barriers meant to frustrate smuggling of arms and other material into Gaza.

We remain with the problem of Barack Obama's itch for achievement, and for that there is no solution on the horizon.

Ira Sharkansky(Emeritus) Department of Political Science Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

FreeMiddleEast.com - Article: Obsessive and Compulsive

Obsessive and Compulsive

Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) is a mental disorder that causes repeated unwanted and intrusive thoughts. An OCD sufferer will engage in repetitive behaviors (compulsions) aimed at reducing anxiety caused by these thoughts (obsessions). OCD is a chronic or long-term illness that can take over a person’s life, hurt relationships, and limit the ability to work or go to school[1].

Scientists have proven that OCD is caused by one part of the brain being unable to receive information from the other.

In the past 20 years the 24/7 cable news, internet and social networking sites have revolutionized the way we receive information. In the shadow of this information revolution lays a disease that has surprisingly not yet received an official diagnosis. The cause is also a restriction of information. The disease is called Obsessive Compulsive Israel Disorder or OCID.

For a country that is thousands of miles away, has a population of just 7 million and speaks a completely different language, the world is obsessively and compulsively focused on Israel.

In January 2009, when Israel launched operation Cast Lead, to root out rocket fire from the Gaza strip, the media covered every minute. There was no shortage of information that often presented Israel as the aggressor and perpetrator of all the violence in the region. Just like OCD stops the flow of information from one part of the brain to the other, OCID, stopped the flow of the rest of the important events going in the world.

While a tiny country was trying to secure its borders from rocket attack the world was going through major challenges.

• The Ethiopian military withdrew its troops from the Somalia civil war. This ongoing conflict has killed 300-400 thousand people since 1991.
• Indian Army continued to battle Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed militants in the disputed Kashmir region. This ongoing conflict has seen countless civilian massacres and terror attacks.
• The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), a Sri Lanka terrorist group, launched major offensives around the northern part of the country including the bombing the state department of defense. 80 thousand people have been killed in the country’s civil war, including 8000 this year alone.

In order to try to understand this disease we have isolated 3 factors that could influence the amount of coverage a country could receive:

1. Its population,
2. Its geography; and
3. Its state of conflict.

As stated earlier Israel’s population is about 7 million. It is roughly the same size as Tajikistan, Papa New Guinea and Honduras, none of which have been able to grab the attention of the world, let alone can most people locate these countries on a map.

What about geography? It is true that Israel’s is in the Middle East but so are countries like Bahrain, Qatar and Oman yet these countries also seldom crack the newsreel, let alone can be located on a map.

That leaves the last category, maybe it’s because of the “disputed” territory in the land. If this is the case, ask yourselves how many stories have there been about Tibet, Cyprus, Abkhazia and South Ossetia, and the Western Sahara, all U.N recognized cases of disputed territory. There is no logic in understanding this disease

While the media was predominantly reporting only on the conflict in the Gaza Strip as a prime example, the world was going through universal struggle. Their continual criticism and singling out of Israel is baseless in its logic vis a vis its abnormal media coverage. The larger worldly causes of global warming, hunger, aids and genocide have to take a back seat to feed a news aristocracy that clearly suffers from the sociological disease, Obsessive-Compulsive Israel Disorder.

[1] Web MD, Anxiety and Panic Health Center,www.webmd.com

The US/Israel alliance will take precedents over the “peace process”

Israpundit.com

By Ted Belman

Yoram Ettinger believes that the Obama administration is doing an about face in its mid east policies. See Obama Excludes the Arab-Israel Conflict. According to him,

1. Obama now considers attempting to mediate a solution is a loser’s game. He can’t get agreement and he only creates bad will toward him and the US.

2. “Washington’s international agenda does not consider the Arab-Israeli conflict to be a top priority.” When Obama came into office he was saying the opposite and promising agreement within two years.

3. Obama’s world view and our mutual differences are not enough to overwhelm our relations, “which are based on a much more solid foundation of shared values, joint interests and mutual threats”. One of these differences he refers to is “the unbridgeable US-Israel gap over the Secretary of State Rogers’ 1970 peace plan”.

Obama Excludes the Arab-Israel Conflict

Israpundit.com

January 30, 2010

If Ettinger’s reading is right, it is the best news ever. He is suggesting that Obama is now going to emphasize what binds us and not what divides us, that we are no longer a liability but have been restored to an asset, that the resolution of the Arab/Israel conflict is not the most important issue facing the US, that US mediation efforts can only hurt the Obama administration and so on. By Yoram Ettinger, Executive Director “Second Thought”, YnetNews, The exclusion of the Arab-Israeli conflict from President Obama’s 2010 State of the Union Address reflects a US order of priorities and, possibly, a concern that mediation in the Arab-Israeli conflict does not advance – but undermines – Obama’s domestic standing. In fact, Jerusalem should impress upon the US to reduce its mediation profile, minimize tension between Israel and the American broker, while enhancing strategic cooperation between Israel and its American ally. Obama’s address focused on the US economy in general, and on the 26 year record-unemployment and the 65 year record-budget deficit, in particular. Thus, Obama highlighted a national order of priorities, underlining domestic issues, which preoccupy the public mind and tend to determine the fate of an American President and his political party for success or oblivion. Therefore, the global agenda – and even counterterrorism – were marginalized by Obama’s address. Washington’s international agenda does not consider the Arab-Israeli conflict to be a top priority. Obama devoted the few minutes, which were allotted to the international arena, to his commitments to evacuate Iraq, to reinforce troops in Afghanistan, to constrain the North Korean nuclear threat, to prevent Iran’s nuclearization, to reduce the nuclear arms race, to combat terrorism, to sustain engagement with rivals and enemies and to continue seeking multilateralism in general and with Moslems, in particular. The Avoidance of any reference to the Arab-Israeli conflict was intentional. President Obama’s involvement with the Arab-Israeli conflict has diverted his attention from issues which are much more important to vital US interests. The pressure exerted on Israel has eroded Obama’s support among the American people, which have systematically accorded Israel high levels of support (66%-70%), compared with Obama’s free fall in public opinion polls (from 65% in January, 2009 to 47% in January, 2010). Obama’s pressure on Israel has also complicated his relations with friends of Israel on Capitol Hill, whose support is critical to Obama’s legislative agenda. He realized Israel’s solid support on the Hill when 334 House Members (76% of the House of Representatives) co-singed a letter condemning the “Goldstone Report,” compared with only 57 Members (13%) co-signing a letter calling “to lift the closure on Gaza.” In fact, President Clinton’s precedent suggests that even a live-telecast of Clinton’s participation in signing the Israel-Jordan peace treaty – a week before the November 1994 election – was overshadowed by domestic US politics, which devastated the Democratic Party in the mid-term election. A lowered US profile in mediating the Arab-Israeli conflict would enhance US-Israel relations and the respective interests of both countries. The more involved the US is as a broker, the less involved it is as a unique ally of the Jewish State. The more preoccupied the US is with mediation, the more it is inclined to be swept into disagreements and finger-pointing matches with Israel. The more entangled the US is in attempts to bridge Israeli-Arab gaps, the more attention is paid to that which causes separation between the US and Israel, rather than that which bonds them. These observations are accentuated by the lead mediation role played by the State Department – which opposed the establishment of Israel and systematically supports the Arab position – and the CIA and the National Security Council, which tend to embrace Foggy Bottom’s position on the Arab-Israeli conflict. President Obama’s world view has exacerbated matters, clarifying the direction of US mediation: “Islam has always been part of the American story;” Israel is not a strategic asset and possibly a liability; Israel belongs to the exploiting West and the Arabs belong to the exploited Third World; engagement and not confrontation with rogue regimes; terrorism is primarily a law enforcement challenge; there is no Islamic terrorism, but Taliban and Al-Qaeda terrorism; the UN and Europe are key quarterbacks of international relations; the resolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict consists of a withdrawal to the 1949/67 ceasefire lines, repartitioning of Jerusalem, uprooting of Jewish settlements, negotiating the return of the 1948 Arab refugees and possibly exchanging land. The Arab-Israeli conflict is not the axis of US-Israel relations, which are based on a much more solid foundation of shared values, joint interests and mutual threats. Therefore, the unbridgeable US-Israel gap over the Secretary of State Rogers’ 1970 peace plan could not derail the substantial upgrading of strategic US-Israel cooperation, due to Israel’s deterrence of a pro-Soviet Syrian invasion of pro-US Jordan. Furthermore, the Bush-Baker hostility toward the Jewish State and the severe US-Israel tension over the First Intifada, the Reagan Peace Plan and the First Lebanon War could not stop a series of US-Israel memoranda of strategic understanding and the legislation of a substantially expanded US-Israel strategic cooperation, which were derived from Israel’s unique contribution to the US posture of deterrence and its battle against terrorism and ballistic missiles. The Middle East is a constant source of violently unpredictable challenges, which threaten vital US and Israeli interests. In order to effectively face such critical developments, it behooves the US and the Jewish State to maximize the utility of their mutually beneficial strategic common denominator and minimize involvement – such as US mediation in the Arab-Israeli conflict – which erodes the unique bonds between the two countries.

Obama: U.S. backs Israel, but mindful of Palestinians’ plight

Israpundit.com
by Ted Belman

My biggest complaint with his position is his assumption that we only have security interests. This is in line with his embrace of the Saudi Plan. When he acknowledges our rights to Judea and Samaria and Jerusalem, then I’ll take notice.

By Natasha Mozgovaya, Haaretz

U.S. President Barack Obama said on Thursday he would never waver from support for Israel’s security but that Washington must also pay attention to the plight of the Palestinian people.

“We are working to try to strengthen the ability of both parties to have to sit down across the table,” Obama said at a townhall-style meeting in Tampa. His administration’s efforts to restart Israeli-Palestinian peace talks have made little progress since he took office a year ago.

The president referred to Israel as “one of our strongest allies,” adding that “the Palestinians have to unequivocally renounce violence and recognize Israel. And Israel has to acknowledge legitimate grievances and interests of the Palestinians. We have to realize both the Palestinians and Israelis have legitimate aspirations.”

Obama cautioned both sides against “mutual demonization” that threatens to jeopardize the resumption of peace negotiations.

The president also cited the domestic political constraints that are hindering Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, circumstances which are limiting prospects for peacemaking.

Obama said the Israeli premier “is making some effort to move a little bit further than his coalition wants to go.”

Netanyahu’s right-leaning government includes pro-settler parties strongly opposed to ceding West Bank land to the Palestinians for a future state.

Obama said Abbas “genuinely wants peace” but has to deal with Hamas, a militant group that refuses to recognize Israel’s right to exist. Abbas, a pro-U.S. moderate, is also weakened by Hamas’s control of the Gaza Strip while he governs only in the West Bank.

Saying Israelis and Palestinians both have “legitimate aspirations,” Obama sought to reassert his administration’s ability to act as an even-handed broker.

“Israel is one of our strongest allies,” Obama said. “It’s critical for us, and I will never waver from ensuring Israel’s security.”

But he quickly insisted, “The plight of the Palestinians is something that we have to pay attention to. It is not good for our security and for Israel’s security if you have millions of individuals who feel hopeless.”

Last week, Obama said his administration overestimated its ability to persuade the Israelis and Palestinians to resume meaningful peace talks.

In an interview with Time magazine, Obama said both parties have been unwilling to make the bold gestures needed to move the process forward. If the U.S. had anticipated that earlier, Obama says he might not have raised his expectations so high.

Obama said the U.S. will continue to work toward a two-state solution in which Israel is secure and the Palestinians have sovereignty. His remarks came in an interview with Time Magazine published Thursday.

Note: If ever anyone spoke "double-talk", this is a perfect example of such speech, from Obama! The two-state solution in Israel does NOT make Israel "secure"; his claims that "both parties have been unwilling to make bold gestures" is an outright lie! He fails to mention the refusal of the PA leader, Abbas to recognize Israel's right to exist, or the daily statements and demands made by Abbas, while refusing to acknowledge any of Israel's offer for peace; this article also does not mention Israel's "freeze" of settlements for 10 months as an offer to discuss peace - a freeze demanded by the United States, I might add! Obama has enabled the PA's to dig in their heals, refuse all offers for peace, while they continue to slice up Israel's land. No, Obama, the Palestinians do not want "sovereignty" or "peace" - they have demonstrated this for years, with each refusal to previous offers made by Israel - what they want is "Israel" - period! Not a piece of Israel, like cutting up a pie, they want the whole pie! President Obama continues to lie to the American people, as demonstrated in his State of the Union address, continues to lie to the world, and to Israel. His deception is unacceptable to anyone who honestly wishes "peace" and prosperity for Israel, America's ally. ...........

BeeSting

The Region: F for failure (Middle East - Obama)

JerusalemPost.com
by Barry Rubin
We must now face an extremely unpleasant truth: Even giving the Obama administration every possible break regarding its Iran policy, it is now clear that the US government isn't going to take strong action on the nuclear weapons issue. Note that I didn't even say "effective" action, I'm saying that it isn't even going to make a good show of trying seriously to do anything. Some say that the administration has secretly or implicitly accepted the idea that Iran will get nuclear weapons and is now seeking some longer-term containment policy. I doubt that has happened. It is just not even this close to reality.

From its behavior, it still seems to expect, incredibly, that some kind of deal is possible with Teheran despite everything that has happened. Then, too, it may hope that the opposition - unaided by America - will overthrow the Iranian government and thus solve the problem. And it is too fixated on short-term games about seeking consensus among other powers; two of them - China and Russia - are clearly not going to agree to anything serious. This fact was clear many months ago, but theadministration still doesn't recognize it.

Not only is the Obama administration failing the test but it is doing so in a way that seems to maximize the loss of US credibility in the region and the world. A lot of this comes from theadministration's philosophy of unprecedented concepts of guilt, apology, defeatism and refusal to take leadership never seen before among past liberal Democratic governments from Franklin Roosevelt to Bill Clinton.

Yet the British, French and Germans are ready to get tough on Iran, yearning for leadership and not getting it.

All of this is watered down in media coverage, focused on day-to-day developments and swallowing many of the administration's excuses plus its endlessly repeated rhetoric that action is on the way. When the history of this absurdly failed effort is written, the story will be a shocking one. IT WAS totally predictable that the Iranian government would not make a deal. It was totally predictable that Russia and China weren't going to go along with tougher sanctions. It was totally predictable that a failure by the US to take the leadership on the matter and instead depend on consensus would lead to paralysis. And it is totally predictable that a bungled diplomatic effort will produce an even more aggressive Iranian policy along with crisis and violence.

First, the administration set a September deadline for instituting increased sanctions and then, instead of following a two-track strategy of engagement alongside pressure, postponed doing anything while in talks withIran.

Second, it refused to take advantage of the regime's international unpopularity and growing opposition demonstrations due to the alleged rigged June election for the presidency. On the contrary, it assured the Iranian regime it would not do so.

Third, the administration set a December deadline should engagement fail, then refused to recognize it had failed and did nothing. It is the failure even to try to meet this time limit by implementing some credible action that has crossed the line, triggered the point of no return.

Fourth, the US government kept pretending that it was somehow convincing the Chinese and Russians to participate, while there was never any chance of this happening. Indeed, this was clear from statements repeatedly made by leaders of both countries. Now, this duo has sabotaged the process without any cost inflicted by the US while making clear they will continue doing so.

Fifth, high-ranking US officials still speak of their continued eagerness to engage Iran and mention at least six months more of discussion efforts before anything is done about sanctions.

Sixth, the administration now defines sanctions as overwhelmingly focused on the Revolutionary Guards, who it cannot hurt economically, thus signaling to the Iranian regime that it will do nothing effective to hurt the country's economy. This means that even if and when sanctions are increased, they will be toothless.

All of these steps tell Iran's regime: full speed ahead on building nuclear weapons; repress your opponents brutally and the US will do nothing.

After these six failures, the US is now - in effect - resting. And that is the seventh failure. There are no signs that anything is changing in Washington.

To believe that the administration has learned anything, we would have to see the following: An angry US government which feels that Iran's regime made it look foolish; a calculating administration that believes the American people want it to get tough and gain politically from being seen as decisive; a great power strategy that would make an example ofIran to show what happens to a bunch of repressive dictators who defy the US and spit on its friends and interests; and a diplomatically astute government that understands the uses of threats and pressure to force its opponent into a compromise.

There is not the slightest indication that the Obama administration holds any of these views. On the contrary, without any apparent realization of the absurdity of the situation, high-ranking officials keep repeating in January 2010 as in January 2009 that, some day, the US might do something to put pressure on Iran. Perhaps those in the administration who do understand what's wrong don't have the influence to affect the policy being set in the White House.

This is going to be a case study of how failing to deal with a problem sooner, even if that requires some diplomatic confrontations, will lead to a much bigger and costlier conflict later involving military confrontations.

Palestinians pledge commitment to Obama's Mideast peace plan

Last update - 19:52 24/01/2010
HAARETZ.com

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas told the U.S. special Mideast envoy on Sunday that his people were committed to reaching a peace agreement based on clear negotiations and a complete cessation of Israeli activity in West Bnk settlements, according to the PA leader's aides.

Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said following the president's talks with envoy George Mitchell that the Palestinians were intent on continued cooperation with the Obama administration regarding Midrast peace efforts.

Erekat said that the Palestinians were making every efforts to see President Barack Obama's vision for a peace agreement brought into fruition.He cast blame on Israel for the delay in progress thus far, and urged Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to abandon any precondition for a renewal of negotiations.

Jordanian King Abdullah II, meanwhile, urged Mitchell to intensify efforts to achieve the "needed progress" in relaunching meaningful peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians.

Mitchell briefed the Jordanian head of state on the outcome of his talks over the past two days with Netanyahu and Abbas.

"The monarch stressed the need for continuing U.S. efforts to ensure a resumption of effective negotiations with a view to accomplishing the two-state solution and ensuring that the needed progress is made in the peace process," according to a royal court statement said.

Mitchell and Abdullah discussed "how to surmount the obstacles facing ongoing efforts to ensure the resumption of the Palestinian- Israeli negotiations in accordance with clear criteria and references and within a definite timetable", the statement added.

Abdullah also urged the U.S. to continue its support for the
Palestinian Authority and President Mahmoud Abbas.

Mitchell separate meetings with Netanyahu and Abbas on Sunday, despite the appearance that his efforts to restart talks between the two sides have failed once again.

Top U.S. officials told Haaretz on Saturday that they had low expectations of any major developments. "No breakthrough is expected on the resumption of the negotiations during this visit," a source said. (Good! Now go back to Washington and stop flying back and forth to the Middle East until you have been given a reason to think Abbas wants to discuss/offer peace to Israel! BeeSting)

The senior U.S. officials said they were still working on a formula that could restart talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. They say Mitchell would not be carrying a letter of assurances to Israel and the Palestinians.

"We are frustrated but not disheartened," a senior official said. "No breakthrough is expected but we are continuing with our efforts. There are still things we have not tried."

The Americans said Mitchell would continue in his efforts and did not plan to resign.

On the Israeli side, too, officials have low expectations. Netanyahu stressed to Mitchell during their meeting Thursday that the prime minister would commit to a series of goodwill gestures but would not carry them out unless the Palestinians announce that they are returning to the negotiating table.

"The key to the resumption of talks is not with us but with the Palestinians," said a senior Israeli official familiar with Mitchell's recent talks

It's Annexation Time. (Middle East and Terrorism)

Saturday, January 23, 2010
by Michael Freund

Flu season may be upon us, but it appears that Mahmoud Abbas has come down with a far more serious ailment. Based on his peculiar behavior of late, the Palestinian leader is clearly suffering from political schizophrenia.

Just a few weeks after threatening to resign from his post as chairman of the Palestinian Authority, Abbas has now indicated that he intends to pursue a unilateral declaration of statehood.

"The Palestinian leadership calls on the world to support this step," said chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat on Monday, as Abbas left for Egypt before heading off on a tour of South America to drum up international backing for the move.

And so, the man who barely a month ago was ready to throw in the towel has now decided to throw down the gauntlet. First he vows to sail off into retirement, and then he tries to crown himself president of an independent state, in the process tossing aside any chance of a negotiated peace.

Abbas's volatile and unstable behavior should put to rest once and for all the notion that he is a viable partner with whom Israel can reach a lasting agreement. Despite being 74 years old, he still hasn't decided what he wants to be when he grows up, let alone figured out where he is going.

But the chairman's volatility is more than just a quirky personality issue or an unruly psychological phenomenon. It is a potent and dangerous reminder of the ease with which the Palestinians can generate international pressure on Israel in an attempt to squeeze out further concessions.

Indeed, the Palestinian leader's zigzag has had the effect of casting the spotlight sharply on the contentious issue of the fate of Judea and Samaria. If Abbas succeeds in winning United Nations recognition of a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders, it will further upgrade the perceived illegality of the settlements to an entirely new level in the eyes of the world.

Furthermore, it will mark the end of the peace process as we know it, which has been predicated on the basic assumption that the two sides would negotiate the final outcome with each other rather than predetermine it.

Abbas's attempt to vault towards statehood on his own, with utter disregard for Israel and its position, is a sure enough sign that he wishes to bury any chance of returning to talks.

For far too long, Israel has been overly vulnerable to such machinations and games. By leaving the status of Judea and Samaria open for discussion, the Jewish state has given the Palestinians too much leeway for mischief-making and malice, which they have only been more than happy to exploit.

In light of Abbas's latest charade, it is clear that Israel needs to put an end to this farce, once and for all.

We need to send a clear message to our foes, one that will put them on the defensive and strengthen Israel's hand. And there is no better place to start than with our own unilateral measures, chief among them the annexation of all the Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria.


OVER THE past 16 years, nothing has been gained by keeping the settlements issue on the table. Nor has dangling the possibility of expelling masses of Jews from their homes along the lines of Gush Katif brought the Palestinians any closer to making a deal.

Instead, it has only served to whet the Palestinian appetite for more land, and subjected hundreds of thousands of Israelis to intolerable uncertainty regarding their future.

Hence, Israel should move ahead with steps to formally and legally incorporate all of the Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria into the Jewish state. This will serve as a tangible and reasonable response to the Palestinian attempts to circumvent the bilateral negotiating process.

More importantly, it will at last delineate the Israeli stance on the final disposition of these communities. This will effectively close off the troublesome debate within Israeli society over the future of the settlements, which has bred so much division and disunity, and ultimately enable us to present a more unified stance vis-à-vis the rest of the world.

In recent days, a number of leading Israeli politicians have thankfully begun to voice such proposals. The talented and articulate environment minister, Gilad Erdan of the Likud, told Israel Radio on Tuesday that if the Palestinians adopt a unilateral stance, then Israel should also consider "passing a law to annex some of the settlements."

Likewise, Likud MK Danny Danon called for annexing all of Judea and Samaria with the exception of the Arab-inhabited cities.

Of course, annexation should not merely be viewed as a tit-for-tat response to unilateral Palestinian moves, for that casts it in a negative light, presenting it as merely a punitive or retaliatory measure.

In reality, annexation is justified for the simple reason that this land belongs to us, and to nobody else. The act of asserting Israeli sovereignty over the Jewish communities of Judea and Samaria would mark the closing of a historic circle, reviving our formal dominion over these areas after an interlude of nearly 2,000 years.

These areas are ours by Divine right, and we should not shy away from asserting as much. The Palestinians do not hesitate to invoke their beliefs, so why on earth should we? Just think how refreshing it would be to hear an Israeli leader stand up and declare this most elementary of truths to the world: that the Land of Israel belongs to the people of Israel because the God of Israel said so.

Who knows - maybe if we finally stand on principle and start affirming our faith, then perhaps we will at last begin to earn the respect and support that we so rightly deserve.


Michael Freund writes the Fundamentally Freund column for the Jerusalem Post. He served as deputy director of communications & policy planning in the Israeli Prime Minister's Office under Benjamin Netanyahu from 1996 to 1999. He is founder and chairman of Shavei Israel (www.shavei.org), which reaches out and assists "lost Jews" seeking to return to the Jewish people.

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

All Process, No Peace The Obama administration needs to press the reset button on its Middle East diplomacy.

An Israeli soldier guards the West Bank
settlement of Elon Moreh near Nablus.

WeeklyStandard.com

BY Elliott Abrams

January 25, 2010, Vol. 15, No. 18

Peace in the Middle East has been on the Obama administration’s mind from the beginning. Two days after his inauguration the president traveled to the State Department to announce the appointment of George Mitchell as his Middle East peace negotiator. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton described the administration’s approach as “an intensive effort from day one.” Here was the plan: Israel would freeze construction in all the settlements and in Jerusalem; Arab states would reach out to Israel in tangible ways visible to their own publics and to Israelis; and the Palestinians would do better at building political institutions, ending incitement against Israel and fighting terror. With these achievements in hand the administration would lead the parties into peace negotiations to be concluded within the president’s first term. Nobel Prizes would be the frosting on the cake.

That’s not how it turned out, except for the Nobel Prize. As the Obama administration begins its second year in office, its Middle East peace efforts are widely regarded as a shambles. Its initial goals have all been missed. Israelis, Palestinians, and Arab governments have lost confidence in American leadership. The challenge for Year Two will be how to get out of this mess and on to a more positive track—but that will require some candor inside the administration in assessing what went wrong.

From the start the White House—led by the president himself and his chief of staff Rahm Emanuel—has pushed hardest for Israeli concessions, a reversal of the standard pattern where the legendary Arabists in the State Department’s Near Eastern Affairs bureau criticize Israel while top officials defend her. This time, those at the top—including Mitchell and Clinton—publicly and repeatedly demanded a total Israeli construction freeze. And this time, the experts in the Near Eastern Affairs bureau and in U.S. embassies throughout the Middle East were the voices of caution and realism, for whatever their biases they knew Obama’s approach wouldn’t work. The Arabs would not step forward. Israel’s coalition politics would not permit adoption of a total freeze. What’s more, once we demanded it as a precondition for new negotiations, Palestinians could demand no less. And unlike us, they would not be able to walk away from that demand when Israel predictably said no.

U.S. must now start twisting Israeli and Palestinian arms

Haaretz.com
By Yoel Marcus

Every time disaster strikes anywhere in the world, I am filled anew with admiration at how ready and willing we are to assist, and how speedy, effective, organized and wholehearted that assistance is.

We did not rush aid to Haiti because there is a Jewish community there. We went there for humanitarian reasons. As a nation that has experienced disasters and bereavement for generations, other nations' disasters do not leave us indifferent. Our photographers and reporters hurried over there not to humiliate some Turkish ambassador, but because they want to show - and rightly so - an attractive side of Israel, for a change.

Note: "An attractive side of Israel, for a change"!!! Obama, you are so pompous! You have done more damage to Israel over the past year than the earthquake has done to Haiti! You continue your threats and demands upon Israel, while ignoring the refusal of the Palestinians to discuss peace. Of course, it is difficult to discuss peace when the goal of the Palestinians, including Hamas, Hezibollah in Lebanon, and all Muslims are standing around like vultures, waiting to pounce upon Israel; and Iran wants to wipe her off the face of the map! Rather than give Israel a "photo op" in Haiti, how about assisting her, supporting her in her efforts to protect her State and all civilians from the over-powering terrorists who surround her completely! Bee Sting

It is easier for us to organize rescue operations outside Israel than do all that is necessary to advance peace inside it and thus prevent deadly attacks on our home front. There is no need to wait for an "earthquake," as the Yom Kippur War was dubbed, to achieve a "peace of the brave." Anyone who remembers the Scud missiles from Iraq, the 34 days of missiles and Katyusha rockets on the north during the Second Lebanon War and the eight years of Qassam rockets from the Gaza Strip must do everything possible to prevent any excuse for a new war that could strike our civilian population.

U.S. envoy George Mitchell, who returned to Israel this week, has not achieved anything in his visits so far. Despite the halo he won by his successful mediation in Northern Ireland, he is no James Baker. Nor is he Henry Kissinger. Baker was tough and didn't like our tricks. Kissinger, who was closer to his president, knew how to turn algebra into arithmetic, as Zalman Aran once reportedly said. Mitchell's views on solving the conflict, as he outlined them back when he chaired a presidential commission in 2001, may have been reasonable, but they were unfeasible at that time. He believed Israel had to freeze settlement construction and the Palestinians had to stop the terror attacks. Yet Mitchell's visit this week could be very important, if he abandons his slow mediation and instead puts a more definite and effective presidential plan on the table. After Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu agreed publicly to a two-states-for-two-peoples solution, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas' response was peculiar. Instead of agreeing to begin negotiations, he demanded that Israel first freeze construction in the settlements and added several other conditions. This refusal appeared on the face of it like a continuation of the Palestinian tradition of not missing any opportunity that could be missed. For Netanyahu's approach, at least in theory, marked a dramatic turnabout that put his stand in line with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's formula - the 1967 lines plus territorial swaps. Mitchell said in a television interview that he believed it was possible to reach an agreement within two years. But the truth is that the chances of an agreement are getting smaller - not least due to the settlement-freeze policy adopted by U.S. President Barack Obama, on one hand, and Netanyahu's condition - that the Iranian nuclear issue must be solved first - on the other. In any case, Obama's first year as president was lost as far as a peace settlement is concerned. Obama aspired to obtain too much, too quickly: namely, the pan-Islamic arrangement he presented in his Cairo University speech. Another reason was the administration's loss of confidence in Netanyahu. Netanyahu may have agreed to a solution in principle, but in reality, he is continuing to lead us astray, one Middle East expert said. Yitzhak Rabin had a 15-year time-out between his first term as prime minister and his second, when he returned as a man of peace. Bibi is in no hurry to make peace. He returned to power for the purpose of returning to power. Mitchell has so far been convenient for Netanyahu, as he has focused mainly on being present. This does not stem from Mitchell's weakness, but from Obama's. It is not clear why Obama has not forced Abbas to respond to Bibi's two-state proposal. And it is not clear why Mitchell keeps coming and going but has not yet presented an operative plan for an agreement authorized and sponsored by the president. It is very important that on this visit, Mitchell twist Abbas' arm and put the credibility of Bibi's speech at Bar-Ilan University to the test. No agreement will be reached without a plan, and without starting negotiations. It is important that this time, Mitchell not leave before the white smoke is visible - i.e., without a plan and a timetable both for beginning negotiations and for reaching an agreement. This is essential to keep Iran from getting the bomb, and us from being forced, heaven forbid, to hold onto our disaster survival kits in order to save ourselves.

Obama’s Timid Engagement Policy Endangers Israel

By Shoula Horing

In the tradition of the failed Jimmy Carter administration, Obama’s world travels during which he has apologized, bowed to, and applauded tyrants, kings and emperors have given Obama an appearance of weakness both to America’s allies and foes. The world and especially the Middle East is a dangerous neighborhood housing many of the world most brutal tyrants and regimes. Eventually, Obama's own weakness will be perceived as America’s weakness. A perceived weak and timid US is not good for Israel or the world in general.

After ten months in office , several presumptions seem to emerge as guiding Obama’s foreign policy.

The first is that the reason there is no peace in the Middle East is that US under President Bush has failed to become ” engaged” enough in Middle East diplomacy and was too pro- Israel and not an even handed mediator.

Secondly, Obama believes that the U.S.’s arrogance,, cowboy diplomacy, and lack of engagement, humility and respect are to blame for the anti US hatred and terror in the Muslim and Arab world. Therefore, Obama has set out to improve America’s image in the world by being more liked than feared.

Thirdly, like President Carter during his term, Obama believes that U.S. power is on the decline and therefore the U.S. should abrogate its moral leadership role in the world and resign itself to containing and appeasing evil regimes and tyrants rather than confronting or defeating them.

Immediately after his inauguration, Obama and his senior officials have repeatedly announced that bringing peace to the Arab- Israeli conflict and reaching out to the Arab and Moslem world are the keystones of US policy. As the newly elected leader of the free world, the first international leader Obama contacted was PA leader Mahmoud Abbas, a man who in 1982 wrote his PHD dissertation denying the holocaust and was no 2 to Arafat for 37 years as the leader of PLO, the worlds most notorious terrorist organization.. He then proceeded to embark on his “apology” tour of the Middle East. He first visited Turkey as the showcase of a Pro- Western, moderate Moslem country, and later on in another trip he visited Egypt and Saudi Arabia while, purposely skipping Israel. In Turkey and Egypt he gave two speeches , apologizing to the Moslem world for all the wrongs the US has committed against them, forgetting to mention the thousands of American soldiers whose lives have been lost protecting the Moslem people in Kosovo, Bosnia, Somalia, Iraq and Afghanistan. He then bowed in front of King Abdullah applauding his “great wisdom”, a man who is the leader of a country in which women are not allowed to vote, drive, or go outside without a male relative…

During his second speech in Egypt, Obama began his public confrontation with Israel over his obsession with the mostly mythical controversy of ” settlement freeze”, characterizing settlements as “an obstacle to peace” , while ignoring the fact that Mahmoud Abbas rejected Olmert ’s previous offer of peace and never even gave a counteroffer. In December 2008, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert made Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, in the presence of President Bush, an unprecedented peace proposal, in which the Palestinians would get a state in an area equivalent to 100% of the West Bank and a capital in the demographically Arab neighborhoods of East Jerusalem.

In response to Obama’s speech and to salvage the Israeli-US Relations, Prime Minister Nethanyahu, accepted in a public speech , the two state solution. Even though , no past Israeli Prime Minster of any party, including Rabin and Peres was willing to accept a complete freeze, Nethanyahu accepted a temporary settlement freeze in the major settlement block in the West Bank, following completion of new units in various stages of construction. In response , Obama became more irrationally hostile to Israel.

In the same week in which Obama bowed to the emperor of Japan, and applauded the Chinese tyrants, he treated the democratically elected Israeli Prime Minster with disrespect and humiliation. Since Nethanyahu was already coming to the US to give a speech to the UJC Assembly in Washington, DC, he asked the White House for a meeting to speak with Obama . But Obama, who advocates engaging with enemies, left the leader of an ally twisting in the wind for a few weeks before deciding to grant him an audience. Only when Nethanyahu boarded the airplane to the US was he informed that the meeting would happen. According to the Israeli newspapers, Netanyahu was brought to the White House in the middle of the night in unmarked van instead of a limousine ,and was ushered through a side door, rather than the front door, hardly befitting his status as the leader of an important ally. Moreover, Netanyahu was forbidden to have his picture taken with the President and was ordered to keep the contents of his meeting with the president a secret. Later, he was forced to leave alone through a side exit.

A week later, Obama publicly condemned an Israeli plan to expand Jerusalem’s Gilo neighborhood calling it “a settlement”, and causing an outraged response from such peacenicks as Israeli President Peres who began the Oslo Agreement and Israeli opposition leader Livni. It seems that Obama did not do his homework again. There is a consensus in Israel that Gilo is not a settlement, since it is not in East Jerusalem, Arabs never lived there , and its houses weren’t built on private Arab land.

It seems that Obama’s cold policy toward Israel and warm engagement policies toward the Arab and Moslem world has not only reduced the excellent relations with Israel to levels unmatched since the days of James Baker in 1991 but has also failed to get any actual results or concessions from the Moslem or Arab world in return.

US efforts at restarting negotiations with the Palestinians, were set back by Obama’s exaggerated & unrealistic demand for a settlement freeze. As a result, Mahmoud Abbas who readily and frequently met with Olmert and six other Israeli prime ministers during the last 16 years without a settlement freeze, is playing hard to get and rejecting talks with Nethanyahu, expecting Obama to deliver a broken Israel.. While Abbas met Nethanyahu only once during Obama’s term, in 2008 under Bush, the Palestinian negotiators met 288 times with their Israelis counterparts ,and numerous meetings occurred between Abbas and Olmert. Abbas under Obama has become more radical, inciting against Israel over Jerusalem ,and working to maximize Israel bashing .

Moreover, a request that Obama himself delivered to King Abduallah and other Arab moderates during his Middle East encouraging them to, to reach out to Israel, by allowing over flights of their territories by Israeli planes, or opening trade offices, was rejected immediately and repeatedly.

It seems also that Obama engagement policy has failed in Lebanon, Syria, and Iran.

While the Bush administration regarded the Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon in 2005 as one of its biggest success in the Middle East, the new Obama administration has been less than aggressive in its backing of the pro-US Lebanese government while it tries to appease Syria. Therefore, even though the Pro Western forces won the elections on June 7, they were forced to have a unity government with Hezbolah and give up their decisive majority in the government.

In order to coax Syria away from Iran, Obama reversed Bush policy and ended the policy of Syria’s isolation, despite their military support for Hamas, Hezbolah ,and militants in Iraq. Despite the many visits to Syria by US senior officials as well as Saudis and Europeans, the US’s policy so far is failing. The Syrian president demonstratively visited Iran after the rigged presidential elections and just on Nov 3rd, Israel captured an Iranian vessel with 3000 rockets , heading to Syria with weapons destined to be transferred to Hezbolah. This is because Syria sees that the U.S. is failing in its Iran policy and ignoring Syria’s transgressions.

After the rigged June Iranian presidential elections, Obama was willing to ignore the brutal human rights violations the Iranian regime inflicted against their own people, while waiting for months for them to agree to start talks aimed at getting them to stop their nuclear weapons program. Now after almost two months of negotiations between Iran and the so- called P-5+1 group of U.S., Britain, France, Germany, Russia, and China which produced no results, Iran again has rejected the group’s recent offer to ship most of its low enriched uranium out of the country to be enriched and converted to fuel rods by Russia and France and returned back to Iran after one year to be used peacefully. Further more, on Sunday the Iranian government announced publicly its plan to build 10 new uranium enrichment reactors.

Obama has warned that he intends to seek tougher sanctions early next year if Iran does not compromise, but it seems that Russia and China will not play along. According to German and Israeli Military Intelligence, Iran will have the fuel and knowledge to build two nuclear bombs in early 2010, and the International Energy Atomic Agency recently claimed that Iran has the technology to build nuclear warheads.

Obama must abandon his weak engagement policy and act now or help Israel to act before the nightmare of a nuclear Iran becomes a reality.