Here comes Obama’s Plan

Isarpundit

By Ted Belman

In my Dec7/09 article Obama to Impose a Solution, I hit the nail on the head.
[..]
On the heels of Netanyahu’s speech, Sec Clinton made the following statement,

“Today’s announcement by the Government of Israel helps move forward toward resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. We believe that through good-faith negotiations the parties can mutually agree on an outcome which ends the conflict and reconciles the Palestinian goal of an independent and viable state based on the 1967 lines, with agreed swaps, and the Israeli goal of a Jewish state with secure and recognized borders that reflect subsequent developments and meet Israeli security requirements.”

This is little different from Bush’s wording,

“In light of new realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli populations centers, it is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949, and all previous efforts to negotiate a two-state solution have reached the same conclusion. It is realistic to expect that any final status agreement will only be achieved on the basis of mutually agreed changes that reflect these realities.”

Clinton referred to these realities as “subsequent developments”.

Thus the borders probably will be moved to the east of these blocks thereby limiting the number of Jews that have to be uprooted to about 100,000 give or take 20,000 depending on negotiations.

So why did Obama repudiate the Bush letter which his man, Sen Mitchell had two months earlier endorsed in his name?

There are two, and possibly three, major departures from the Bush letter. Bush had written that “Israel must have secure and recognized borders… in accordance with UNSC Resolutions 242 and 338” leaving open the possibility that Res 242 did not require retreat from all territories. Clinton made no mention of 242 and said the borders must be “based on the 1967 lines”. This suggests that all the land is to be ceded, facilitated by mutually agreed swaps.

Whereas Bush had written “and the settling of Palestinian refugees there [Palestine], rather than in Israel.”, Clinton was silent. Is this also a departure? I think so. Obama is clearly trying to stay as close to the Saudi Plan as he can. It requires the settlement of the refugee issue pursuant to UNGA Res 194.

In the scheme of things these differences are of little importance. Why take the heat for so little profit? Especially when Bush had said doing otherwise was “unrealistic”.

Perhaps there was another reason.

Bush had committed in said letter that “the United States will do its utmost to prevent any attempt by anyone to impose any other plan”.

By challenging the whole letter in the first instance and endorsing most of it subsequently, save for this commitment, Obama has succeeded in ridding himself of the commitment. Is Obama thereby reserving the right to impose a plan as many in his administration recommend he do.

In case you haven’t noticed, neither Obama, nor his administration, refer to the Roadmap. That is because the Roadmap precludes an imposed solution.

It would appear that the Obama administration has no confidence that a negotiated solution will be achieved. Most pundits and politicians believe likewise and that includes Netanyahu. [..]

According to todays’s report, Obama plans to release a Plan in the fall. The US always assured Israel that all final status issues would be negotiated. Yet at the same time she limited her negotiating room by narrowing the confines of a “deal”.

Also Netanyahu under great pressure agreed to negotiations without pre-conditions. Obama even agreed. 

In effect for Obama to announce his own plan having regard to what the parties had already agreed to, is his way of keeping the Olmert offer that Netanyahu had rejected.

Also all the offers made that Obama wants as his starting point were made by Kadima or Labour. Thye Right would never make such offers. Obama is trying to circumvent the right.

It’s back to square one in Palestine

The Daily Star.com
By Rami G. Khouri
Commentary by
Saturday, February 13, 2010

The likelihood that Palestinians and Israelis will soon launch indirect negotiations, or “proximity talks” mediated by American officials, sounds positive on the surface, but in reality it is a very bad sign. It provides the illusion of progress toward peace, while in fact it mainly affirms the depressing state of play of the five primary actors in this long Middle Eastern drama – the Palestinians, Israelis, Americans, Arabs and the United Nations. The Europeans do not figure here, because they are now busy ski jumping, and perhaps they will re-enter the picture in spring.

The sudden resort to indirect talks is bizarre because it follows 17 years of on and off efforts in which the two sides met regularly and negotiated directly. They have concluded agreements, implemented parts of them, and established joint mechanisms and close working ties in many fields. The 1993 Oslo Accords never achieved their full potential, as the momentum for a comprehensive peace agreement was halted, then reversed, Israeli colonization and Palestinian resistance persisted, and wars followed in Lebanon and Gaza. Now we are back to square one.

The desperate resort to indirect talks following 17 years of failure makes no sense, other than to provide the illusion of progress where there is only stalemate. The Israelis are the most pleased with this development, because they will feel that they have forced the Palestinians and Americans to play by Zionist rules. Talks will resume while core Israeli activities persist unchanged – colonization, expropriation and theft of occupied Arab lands, slow motion ethnic cleansing of Palestinian Arabs from occupied East Jerusalem, the siege and strangulation of Gaza, and refusal to seriously explore resolving the Palestinian refugee issue through the application of UN resolutions and international law.

The Palestinians, represented by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, have neither credibility nor clout. Abbas has tried several approaches to negotiating with Israel, and all have failed. He has marginalized himself and his Fatah movement by trying to do the impossible: enter into a serious diplomatic negotiation without harnessing his Palestinian national assets, resolving the split with Hamas, or marshalling the support of wider circles of allies in the region and beyond. When he finally did take a principled stand – refusing to negotiate with Israel until it froze all settlement activity – he was unable to maintain this for more than a few months, and ultimately panicked and agreed to the bizarre proximity talks suggestion.

The Americans are the world’s least credible go-between, to judge by their performance during the past four decades. Senator George Mitchell’s personal credibility from his Northern Ireland days is impressive, but the past year has not provided a single shred of evidence that the Obama administration wants to apply the approach that worked in Northern Ireland to the Arab-Israeli conflict. The opposite seems to be the case, as the United States has backed down from demanding an Israeli settlement freeze and still refuses to engage diplomatically with Hamas. Relying on the US to mediate fairly when Israel is involved seems slightly delusional

The Arabs who should provide support for the Palestinians are nowhere to be seen. They have never seriously followed up their 2002 Arab peace plan that offered Israel long-term, comprehensive peace, coexistence and normal relations. Whether this is because of insincerity, incompetence or irresoluteness due to dependency on US (and occasionally Israeli) protection is not clear. What is clear is that the Arabs collectively are on diplomatic vacation.

The United Nations is intriguing as an actor, or, in this case, a non-actor. While it is not a sovereign player, but rather reflects the collective position of the world’s states, it does provide diplomatic mechanisms that states can make use of, and that the secretary general of the UN can trigger as well through his personal initiatives. The organization remains on the sidelines, however, shackled by its odd participation in the American-dominated and Israeli-defined Quartet (with the US, the European Union and Russia), licking the wounds of its own growing irrelevance.

The resort to indirect proximity talks merely highlights the prevailing postures of the five principal actors. None of the five has offered any sign that it will change positions to help move towards a diplomatic breakthrough. With no likelihood of progress, it is not clear why anyone is interested in these proximity talks, other than to perfect their skills in the domain of diplomatic illusion and self-deception.

It is interesting to contrast these moves with this week’s 20th anniversary commemoration of F.W. de Klerk’s release of Nelson Mandela from prison in South Africa, a decisive, bold move that paved the way for justice, peace and reconciliation in that land. The giants who changed South Africa belong to a different world than the thugs, wimps and children who prevail in Israel and Palestine.

Rami G. Khouri is published twice weekly by THE DAILY STAR.

Note: "The Israelis are the most pleased with this development, because they will feel that they have forced the Palestinians and Americans to play by Zionist rules." When anyone makes a bold statement that Israel is playing by "Zionist rules", all credibility of that individual ceases - for it demonstrates antisemitism. Please look at the following:

Zionism Is Not Racism

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In 1975, the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution slandering Zionism by equating it with racism. In his spirited response to the resolution, Israel's Ambassador to the UN, Chaim Herzog noted the irony of the timing, the vote coming exactly 37 years after Kristallnacht.

Zionism is the national liberation movement of the Jewish people, which holds that Jews, like any other nation, are entitled to a homeland.

History has demonstrated the need to ensure Jewish security through a national homeland. Zionism recognizes that Jewishness is defined by shared origin, religion, culture and history.

The realization of the Zionist dream is exemplified by more than four million Jews, from more than 100 countries, including dark-skinned Jews from Ethiopia, Yemen and India, who are Israeli citizens. Approximately 1,000,000 Muslim and Christian Arabs, Druze, Baha'is, Circassians and other ethnic groups also are represented in Israel's population.

Many Christians have traditionally supported the goals and ideals of Zionism. Israel's open and democratic character and its scrupulous protection of the religious and political rights of Christians and Muslims rebut the charge of exclusivity.

The Arab states define citizenship strictly by native parentage. It is almost impossible to become a naturalized citizen in many Arab states, especially Algeria, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. Several Arab nations have laws that facilitate the naturalization of foreign Arabs, with the specific exception of Palestinians. Jordan, on the other hand, instituted its own "law of return" in 1954, according citizenship to all former residents of Palestine, except for Jews.

The presence of thousands of black Jews in Israel is the best refutation of the calumny against Zionism. In a series of historic airlifts, labeled Moses (1984), Joshua (1985) and Solomon (1991), Israel rescued almost 42,000 members of the ancient Ethiopian Jewish community.

To single out Jewish self-determination for condemnation is itself a form of racism. "A world that closed its doors to Jews who sought escape from Hitler's ovens lacks the moral standing to complain about Israel's giving preference to Jews," wrote noted civil rights lawyer Alan Dershowitz.

When approached by a student who attacked Zionism, Martin Luther King responded: "When people criticize Zionists, they mean Jews. You're talking anti-Semitism."

The 1975 UN resolution was part of the Soviet-Arab Cold War anti-Israel campaign. Almost all the former non-Arab supporters of the resolution have apologized and changed their positions. When the General Assembly voted to repeal the resolution in 1991, only some Arab and Muslim states, as well as Cuba, North Korea and Vietnam were opposed.

Zionism Is Not Racism IS FROM the website Jewish Virtual Library,

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Zionism/Zionism_Is_Not_Racism.html

.

The Return of “Defensible Borders”?

Friday, January 29, 2010
MIDDLE EAST AND TERRORISM.com

by Evelyn Gordon

When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told foreign journalists last week that under any peace agreement, Israel would insist on maintaining a presence along the Palestinian-Jordanian border to thwart arms smuggling, he provoked some predictably negative responses. Writing in the Jerusalem Post this week, for instance, Ben-Gurion University Professor David Newman termed this "a return to a way of thinking … thought to have disappeared over a decade ago." Claiming that "most generals" no longer consider this necessary, he accused Netanyahu of simply trying "to hammer the nails even more strongly into the coffin of peace."

In fact, Newman is almost entirely wrong but through no fault of his own — because the one thing he's right about is that Netanyahu's statement "reinserted the defensible border concept into public discourse," whence it had virtually disappeared. And since Israeli premiers stopped talking about it more than a decade ago, how was anyone to know that every prime minister, and the defense establishment, continued to insist on defensible borders in practice?

Two weeks ago, Haaretz's veteran diplomatic correspondent Aluf Benn detailed the security demands that Netanyahu's predecessor Ehud Olmert received from the defense establishment, which Olmert approved, forwarded to then president George Bush, and later asked Bush to pass on to Barack Obama. These demands included "the rights to supervise Palestine's border crossings, to fly in Palestinian airspace, to regulate radio frequencies and to build hilltop warning stations."

And Olmert is the prime minister who offered the most far-reaching concessions in Israel's history, including the equivalent of 100 percent of the West Bank and international Muslim control over the Temple Mount.

Indeed, as Benn noted yesterday, "Netanyahu's political positions, which call for annexing the major West Bank settlement blocs and maintaining military control over the Jordan Valley, are no different from those of his predecessors, Ehud Olmert and Ehud Barak."

This invites an obvious question: if all Israeli prime ministers agreed that Israel needs defensible borders under any agreement, why did they stop saying so — thereby leading the world, and their own citizens, to assume that this demand had been dropped and that the security issue could thus be easily resolved, whereas in fact, as one veteran negotiator told Benn, it's the hardest of all, the one on which "the agreement will stand or fall"? Did they assume the world would oppose these demands and want to avoid opening yet another front of international criticism of Israel? Or did they simply consider it irrelevant, given that Israeli-Palestinian disagreements on other issues show no signs of being resolved anytime soon?

Whatever the reason, it was a disastrous negotiating tactic. If Israel is to have any hope of achieving these demands, it cannot spring them as a surprise at the last minute, when an agreement is otherwise at hand; it must state them upfront — clearly, forcefully, and consistently — both to prepare international public opinion and to make it clear that Israel deems this issue critical.

It is therefore encouraging that Netanyahu has finally started reviving the "defensible borders" concept. Now he must ensure that it remains on the public agenda.

Evelyn Gordon

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

‘PA’s corruption will enable Hamas to take power in W. Bank'

JerusalemPost.com
By KHALED ABU TOAMEH
29/01/2010 03:25

Dramatic warning delivered by Abbas’s former corruption-buster Fahmi Shabaneh; Fatah personnel even stole US money intended to improve its image ahead of 2006 elections. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has surrounded himself with many of the corrupt officials who used to work for his predecessor, Yasser Arafat, and that’s why Hamas will one day take control of the West Bank, Fahmi Shabaneh, who was appointed by Abbas four years ago to root out corruption in the Palestinian Authority, said on Thursday.

In an exclusive interview with The Jerusalem Post, Shabaneh, who until recently was in charge of the Anti-Corruption Department in the PA’s General Intelligence Service (GIS), warned that what happened in the Gaza Strip in the summer of 2007, when Hamas managed to overthrow the Fatah-controlled regime, is likely to recur in the West Bank.

“Had it not been for the presence of the Israeli authorities in the West Bank, Hamas would have done what they did in the Gaza Strip,” Shabaneh told the Post. “It’s hard to find people in the West Bank who support the Palestinian Authority. People are fed up with the financial corruption and mismanagement of the Palestinian Authority.”

Shabaneh said that many Palestinians in the West Bank have lost hope that the PA would one day be reformed. “The Palestinian Authority is very corrupt and needs to be overhauled,” he said.

Shabaneh cited several specific cases of alleged corruption within Fatah and the PA in the course of the interview, including asserting that Fatah personnel stole much of a $3.2 million donation given by the US to Fatah ahead of the 2006 Palestinian parliamentary election, won by Hamas, which had been intended to improve Fatah’s image and boost its chances of winning.

Shabaneh, a resident of east Jerusalem who worked as a lawyer before joining the GIS as its legal adviser after the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993, said he was forced to quit his anti-corruption job several months ago after exposing a sex scandal involving one of Abbas’s top aides in Ramallah in 2009.

Video footage and other documents presented to the Post by Shabaneh show the aide lying naked in bed after being lured to an apartment in Ramallah by an east Jerusalem woman.

The footage shows Shabaneh and other armed security agents storming the bedroom, much to the surprise of the Abbas aide who is heard uttering: “Thank God it’s you and not the Israelis.”

Shabaneh said in the interview, the first of its kind with a high-ranking PA security official, that he and his men had been operating on instructions from their boss, Gen. Tawfik Tirawi, the former head of the GIS. Tirwai, for his part, denied that he had authorized Shabaneh to spy on the Abbas aide.

The top aide, who is one of the closest advisers to Abbas, was caught on tape making derogatory remarks against Abbas and Arafat. “President Abbas has no charisma” and is “not in control,” he was quoted as saying. The aide was also caught on tape denouncing Arafat as one of the biggest dajjals (swindlers).

After the revelations, which were brought to Abbas’s attention and were embarrassing for the PA president, Shabaneh was removed from his anti-corruption post and reassigned as head of the GIS’s internal security force. More recently, he was promoted to overall commander of the GIS in the area.

Shortly afterwards, however, Shabaneh was arrested by Israeli police on suspicion of recruiting east Jerusalem residents to the GIS, spying on Israel, chasing suspected “collaborators” and Arabs involved in real estate deals with Jews, and threatening and blackmailing the senior Abbas aide.

Shabaneh has since been released from prison and most of the charges against him dropped. Today he remains under house arrest and is banned from entering the West Bank. The only charge he faces today is membership in a Palestinian military organization – a charge he claims is absurd given the fact that about 1,200 residents of east Jerusalem serve in the various security branches of the PA.

Shabaneh said that he had no doubt that his arrest by Israel was carried out at the request of “someone high in Abbas’s office to punish me for fighting corruption and exposing sex scandals involving not only the senior aide, but many other officials as well.”

He said that the decision to arrest him and prosecute him was also absurd because was always aware of his work and status in the PA security forces and never did anything to him.


“For many years I worked as legal adviser to the General Intelligence Apparatus and no one ever asked me anything,” Shabaneh noted. “When I was commander of the force in the area the Israelis even used to coordinate a lot with us.”

Shabaneh insisted that the decision to pursue corrupt officials in Abbas’s inner circle was part of the PA president’s declared policy to combat financial corruption. “In his pre-election platform, President Abbas promised to end financial corruption and implement major reforms, but he hasn’t done much since then,” he said. “Unfortunately, Abbas has surrounded himself with many of the thieves and officials who were involved in theft of public funds and who became icons of financial corruption.”

Shabaneh said that as head of the anti-corruption unit he and his men succeeded in exposing dozens of cases involving senior officials who had stolen public funds but were never held accountable.

“Some of the most senior Palestinian officials didn’t have even $3,000 in their pocket when they arrived [after the signing of the Oslo Accords],” Shabaneh said. “Yet we discovered that some of them had tens, if not hundreds, of millions of dollars in their bank accounts.

Until today we didn’t hear about one official who was brought to trial for stealing money from the PA, although we had transferred many of the cases to the Palestinian prosecutor-general.”

Questioned as to why he had decided to go public now, Shabaneh said: “I’m not criticizing the Palestinian Authority simply because I like to criticize, but because I want to see a state of law, one with no room for corruption. I was offered $100,000 not to expose the last sex scandal, but I chose not to accept the bribe. I’m the one who resigned after my arrest, because after all that I’ve seen I no longer believe that Abbas’s authority can be reformed.


Asked whether PA Prime Minister Salam Fayyad is working to establish good government, Shabaneh said: “Salam Fayyad is a good man and I have a lot of respect for him. He’s really working to build professional institutions and good government, but the corrupt Fatah people around Abbas are doing their utmost to thwart his efforts.”

He added: “Even Abbas tried in the beginning, but the corrupt officials working with him didn’t allow him to make progress.”

Shabaneh also said he had managed to track down some of the financial aid that went missing during and after the period of Arafat’s death.

“I discovered, for example, that several senior officials had taken millions of dollars from the Palestinian leadership under the pretext that they wanted to purchase land that would otherwise be confiscated by Israel,” he said.

“Our investigations revealed that many of the purported land deals were fictitious transactions and we even forced one official to return more than $800,000. We had another case where a senior Fatah official and his brother pocketed about $2.5m. which they took from Arafat under the pretext that they wanted to purchase land in the West Bank before Israel lays its hand on it.

Asked whether he believed outside donors should stop channeling funds to Abbas, he said his advice to the donor countries “is to follow up on their donations to examine how and where the money is being spent. We caught some officials who stole about $700,000 from the donors to study the atmosphere in . Why do we need to spend such a huge amount of money on something trivial like this when many people are suffering and have nothing to eat or feed their children?”

Was he serious about Hamas taking over the ? “Yes, no question about that,” he said. “It will happen one day if the state of corruption and anarchy continue in the West Bank .Why do you think Hamas kicked us out of the Gaza Strip? Because the people there were fed up with the corruption and bad government of Fatah. What do you think the people in the Gaza Strip used to think when they saw a colonel in the Palestinian Authority driving in a big motorcade and surrounded by dozens of bodyguards and assistants?”

Did he see no chance that Fatah would reform? “As long as the same corrupt guys are running the show we shouldn’t expect real changes,” said Shabaneh.

“Before the 2006 parliamentary election, the Americans gave Fatah $3.2m. to improve the party’s image and boost its chances of winning. But the Fatah people even stole most of the money that was intended to help them improve their image and reputation. These corrupt officials know no limits. They even used to forge Arafat’s signature to obtain money by fraud,” he said.

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.

Egypt's decision to wall off Gazan tunnels is being condemned across the Arab world.

Middle East and Terrorism

A Middle Eastern country is building a massive thick steel wall as a barrier between themselves and a Palestinian regime. The country is being condemned for its actions across the Arab world, denounced by Islamist figures like Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah, and facing angry demonstrations at its embassies around the world.

Signs with the president’s face daubed with a Star of David are waved, and furious slogans are chanted. The new construction project, written about critically in the world press as “choking” Gaza, has been dubbed the “iron wall” and the “wall of shame.”

Sound familiar? Nothing new? In fact, the situation is very new. The country that is being berated and condemned is not Israel. The wall is being build by the Egyptian government to separate territory controlled by Egypt and the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip.

Israel is routinely charged with inhumanely and heartlessly fencing off Palestinian Gazans in a “prison,” despite the fact that Egypt’s official crossing to Gaza is also clamped shut, with the exception of a few days each month. But with the construction of this new wall, Egypt is taking some powerful hits from within the Arab world.

The wall being constructed is designed to stop the flow of smuggling between Egypt and Gaza through the border town of Rafah, an underground economy that is not limited to — but certainly includes — major weaponry and ammunition being stockpiled for terrorist attacks and to help Hamas rearm for the next war between Gaza and Israel. Along with the weaponry brought in to replace the stockpiles decimated in Operation Cast Lead, millions of dollars worth of other commerce flows through the tunnels on a daily basis. Everything from food, to gasoline, to machinery, to farm animals. The tunnels are a major source of revenue for Hamas, which charges a premium for the construction and use of the tunnels and puts a tariff on any goods that are brought in.

The planned 10 kilometer-long wall will include steel sheets that will reach 60 meters underground — an attempt to cut off the tunnels and the commerce that flourishes there. In addition to weaponry, the tunnels are also a conduit for terrorists, both reasons that the tunnels themselves were targeted in Operation Cast Lead.

Construction of the wall began in early December, with the Egyptian government doing its best to keep news of it quiet for as long as possible. By mid-December, it became impossible to hide such a massive project, and news of the construction broke and began to spread. Even as reports began appearing in the media, Egypt refused to acknowledge its existence.

An AP article dramatically described the construction in the same judgmental terms normally reserved for accounts of Israel’s building of barriers:

A jackhammer pounded large steel beams side by side into the sandy soil on the Egyptian side of Gaza’s border, putting in place an underground wall that could shift the balance of power in this volatile area. Once completed, the steel barrier would cut off blockaded Gaza’s last lifeline.

In the wake of the media attention, demonstrations condemning the Egyptian action have ensued, beginning in Jordan, where an organization of unions and professional associations protested construction of the wall. Some 150 people gathered outside the Egyptian embassy in Amman earlier this month and burned photos of President Hosni Mubarak. The photos depict Mubarak with a Star of David stamped on his forehead.

There was a similar scene at the Egyptian embassy in Lebanon, organized by an Islamist party loyal to Hezbollah and Nasrallah. And like the efforts against Israel’s wall, political activity is spreading to Europe, al-Jazeera reported:

A galaxy of Italian human rights organizations and dignitaries warned that the steel wall being built on the Palestinian-Egyptian borders would equalize Egypt with Israel in its blockade on the Gaza Strip.

In a letter to be handed Thursday to the Egyptian ambassador in Rome, the Italian organizations and figures said that Egypt has the right to take measure to protect its borders, but the blockade and starvation of Gaza people would not lead to stability in the region or give Egypt prestige and dignity.

The letter warned that Egypt’s wall would spread hatred between nations and would serve Israel alone, adding that it would cause a deep pain to the free peoples of the world.

Certainly, Egypt is not taking such a controversial measure out of affection for or a desire to protect Israel from Hamas in Gaza. Clearly, it is doing so out of self-interest. The Hamas regime in Gaza may not be as direct a threat to Egypt as they are to Israel, but tied as closely as they are to those who would destabilize the current regime in Egypt and replace it with a fundamentalist Islamist regime, they are far from trusted allies as far as Egypt is concerned. Gaza would be a conveniently located base for groups to organize and launch attacks. (Currently, Egypt is trying 26 men charged with planning attacks inside their country, linked with Hezbollah.) Therefore, Egypt has no interest in seeing Gaza loaded with powerful weaponry.

The most public battleground that the controversy over the wall is being played in is the Islamic religious world. “Dueling fatwas” are being handed down, as clerics loyal to Hezbollah and Hamas and those connected to the Egyptian government argue as to whether the wall deserves the Islamic stamp of approval, or Islamic condemnation. A group of clerics affiliated with the government, the Islamic Research Council of Al-Azhar University, declared:

It is one of Egypt’s legitimate rights to place a barrier that prevents the harm from the tunnels under Rafah, which are used to smuggle drugs and other (contraband) that threaten Egypt’s stability. … Those who oppose building this wall are violating the commands of Islamic law.

A harsh backlash ensued in the wake of this ruling — led by clerics from inside Al-Azhar itself and then echoed by other Arab clerics. For now, officials like Egypt’s Foreign Minister Ahmad Abu-al-Ghayt are continuing to do their best to avoid addressing the issue when asked by reporters about the steel wall. Sounding defensive, the Egyptian minister declared:

Constructions Egypt is carrying out is to defend itself and defend its national security. This means the right of self-defense. … The secrets of the Egyptian state will not be material discussed on satellite TVs or the press.

The wall critics accuse Egypt of taking the step to placate the United States. Egypt’s blind eye to the smuggling activity has been costly in terms of its relationship with the United States, jeopardizes the millions of dollars in aid received by the regime, and has cast doubt as to whether Egypt can play the broker role it seeks in the Mideast peace process.

Cynics suggest that Egypt is playing for maximum advantage by building a wall to please the Americans and Israelis now. Later, once it is completed, there will be a wink to Hamas as they quickly construct new tunnel routes circumventing the wall, which will presumably silence the criticism in Islamist circles and allow Egypt to continue its tightrope act — balancing Western diplomatic respectability and Middle Eastern street credibility.

Allison Kaplan Sommer

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

Egyptian FM: Bibi agreed to make Arab Jerusalem Palestinian capital

By Haaretz Correspondent and Agencies , By Barak Ravid

Egypt's foreign minister said in Cairo last week that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is ready to discuss making "Arab Jerusalem" the capital of a Palestinian state.

Meanwhile, the Palestinian Authority could abandon its demand for a freeze on construction in East Jerusalem in exchange for an easing of the siege on Gaza and a halt to Israeli assassinations in the West Bank.

Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit met the foreign ministers of Egypt, France, Jordan, Spain and Tunisia in Cairo last week to revive the nascent Mediterranean Union. He briefed them about Netanyahu's talks with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak a few days earlier, Israeli and European officials said. Aboul Gheit reportedly said Israel's willingness to give the Palestinians "100 percent of the West Bank" and the readiness to discuss Arab Jerusalem as the capital of Palestine indicate "openness, goodwill and a change compared to the past." According to the Arab foreign ministers, the Palestinians have agreed to waive their conditions for reopening the negotiations with Israel in exchange for other terms that Netanyahu could accept more easily. The Palestinians previously had demanded a complete freeze on construction in East Jerusalem and resuming talks from the point they left off. Now their conditions are Israel stopping its assassinations and military operations in Palestinian cities; easing the blockade on the Gaza Strip and bringing in construction material to enable Gaza's rehabilitation; rezoning West Bank areas where Palestinians have full authority (A) and where they have only civil authority (B) - meaning, having the Israel Defense Forces withdraw to where it was before the Al-Aqsa intifada in September 2000; releasing certain Palestinian prisoners to the PA; and removing eight specific roadblocks in the West Bank. If Israel agrees to these terms, the Palestinians will return to the negotiations even if the building in East Jerusalem continues and the talks do not pick up where they left off. Aboul Gheit said the United States would issue a statement against Israeli construction in East Jerusalem and expressing its commitment to the territory of the future Palestinian state. The visiting foreign ministers agreed that the difficulty in resuming the talks is due to Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' refusal to announce their new positions publicly.

Jerusalem fumes at Abbas and Fayyad

By HERB KEINON

Israel has complained to the US administration that the Palestinian Authority's President Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Salam Fayyad are engaging in incitement by honoring a woman responsible for the worst terrorist attack in Israel's history, and calling the men who killed Rabbi Meir Avshalom Chai last month martyrs.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.
Photo: AP [file]

Israel's complaint came, ironically, shortly before US Middle East envoy George Mitchell heaped praise on Fayyad and Abbas Wednesday night during a US television interview.

Twice during the interview, on the Charlie Rose show, Mitchell called Fayyad an "impressive leader" and said that he and Abbas represented "strong and effective leadership for the Palestinian people."

Israel, in direct calls from the Prime Minister's Office to the White House and the State Department, has complained about both men.

The complaint against Abbas had to do with his sponsorship in late December of a ceremony celebrating the 50th birthday of Dalal Mughrabi, the terrorist who directed the 1978 Coastal Road Massacre, the worst terrorist attack in the country's history, where gunmen hijacked a bus and murdered 37 people, including 10 children. Mughrabi was killed during the attack.

On her recent birthday, the governor of Ramallah named a town square after her. A huge banner at the ceremony read, "Under the auspices of President Mahmoud Abbas, The Political and National Education Authority Ceremony on the anniversary of the birth of the bride of the cosmos, the shahida [martyr] Dalal Mughrabi."

Israel's complaint against Fayyad stemmed from his visit to the families of the three slain terrorists suspected of killing Chai near Shavei Shomron three weeks ago. The three men were killed by IDF soldiers on a raid meant to apprehend them.

Fayyad, according to what Israel told the Americans, referred to the men as martyrs.

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's policy director, Ron Dermer, said in response that "those Palestinian terrorists are murderers, not martyrs. We expect the PA to prepare the Palestinian people to live in peace with Israel and not glorify killers and name public squares after them."

Mitchell, in the TV interview, also heaped praise on the PA security apparatus, saying its security forces were "outstanding by any measure. The Israelis are very, very open in their praise of the effort that's been made on Palestinian security."

One senior Israeli diplomatic official, however, said that while the PA security apparatus has been effective in apprehending Hamas and Islamic Jihad operatives, because this was in their interest, it has taken a much weaker approach against terrorists coming from within Fatah - such as the three men who killed Chai.

Israelis file lawsuit against Hamas leaders in Belgian court

By JPOST.COM STAFF

The Pro-Israeli lobby European Friends of Israel has filed a lawsuit in Belgium against Hamas leaders, demanding that they be brought to justice for war crimes.

The lawsuit is intended as a response to Palestinian legal warfare against Israel and the various lawsuits filed against Israelis in international courts. It was filed in the name of 15 Israeli citizens who live in the Gaza periphery and who hold Belgian citizenship.

Among the Hamas leaders targeted by the lawsuit are Hamas leader Khlaed Mashaal, Hamas Prime Minister in Gaza Ismail Haniyeh, former Foreign Minister Mahmoud Zahar and Ahmed Jabri who heads the group's military wing.

Another Peace Process in Our Time.

by Rick Richman

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas — currently in the 60th month of his 48-month term, a declared non-candidate for re-election (in the event there is ever another Palestinian election), presently governing only half of the putative Palestinian state — has told Haaretz that a peace agreement could be reached within six months if Israel will make more pre-negotiation concessions.

Peace could be reached not only in our time but with four full months left over to complete Netanyahu’s 10-month settlement freeze. Abbas will hold the football himself.

Not even those on the Left in Israel believe in this process any more. Ari Shavit, writing in today’s Haaretz, notes that:

There’s one small problem: Similar things were said to us when the Beilin-Abbas agreement was formulated in 1995. Similar things were said to us on the eve of Camp David 2000. Similar things were promised us when the Geneva Initiative was signed in 2003. Similar things were promised us when Israel went to Annapolis in 2007.

Six months is in fact exactly what Abbas promised at the beginning of the Annapolis Process in 2007, only to reject still another Israeli offer of a state 12 months later.

Shavit encapsulates in a single paragraph the reason there is currently no prospect of peace, with or without additional Israeli concessions, made before or after negotiations begin:

With Hamas controlling the Gaza Strip, arming itself to the teeth and enjoying the support of about one-third of the Palestinians, it has the right to veto any diplomatic progress. With Fatah unwilling to recognize the Jewish nation-state and objecting to a demilitarized Palestinian state, there is no chance for a peace treaty.

Perhaps one day there will be another Palestinian presidential election, with a candidate campaigning on a platform calling for recognition of a Jewish state and acceptance of a demilitarized Palestinian one. Perhaps one day the Palestinians will elect such a person. But today there is no such candidate, nor even another scheduled election. The Palestinian peace movement consists of recycled interviews with Haaretz.

Rick Richman

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

Most Israelis Demonstrate Extraordinary Self-Restraint.

by Eli E. Hertz

Calls for a freeze on Jewish construction in Judea and Samaria - while Arab construction, which far exceeds Jewish development, continues unfettered - are clearly biased and by itself a violation of international law.

Israel, as a party to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR, 1966) is obligated to use "all appropriate means" to promote and protect the right to housing, including the prohibition on forced evictions.

Arabs claim that Jewish settlements "change the status" of the Territories and represent a distortion of the Oslo Accords. This phrase applies to acts that change the political status of the disputed territory - such as outright Israeli annexation or a Palestinian declaration of statehood. Since Jewish settlements are legal, they should be promoted and supported in accordance of the "Mandate for Palestine" - The historical League of Nations document, that laid down the Jewish legal right to settle anywhere in western Palestine, the area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.

The Oslo Accords do not forbid Israeli or Arab settlement activity. Charges that further Jewish settlement activity preempts final negotiations by establishing realities requires reciprocity. If the West Bank and Gaza were de jure part of the British Mandate, and if the Mandate borders [article 25] are the last legal document concerning this territory; and if Jews were forcibly expelled from the West Bank and Gaza in 1948 during a war of aggression aimed at them - then these Territories must be considered disputed Territories, at the least.

The Israeli-Palestinian border dispute is like every other major and minor boundary dispute around the globe. Since the West Bank and Gaza were redeemed in 1967 in a defensive war and are not "Occupied Territories" gained illegally by a bellicose power; and since this fact is recognized in the wording of UN Resolutions 242 and 338 that call for a settlement to institute "secure and recognized borders," calling for a construction freeze on Jewish settlements should, logically, be paralleled by a freeze on Arab construction in the West Bank.

The Oslo II Agreement recognizes de facto the special status and security needs of Jewish communities in the West Bank.

Rather than negotiate a settlement, as agreed to in September 1993, Palestinians elected to break their commitment and to intensify the use of terrorism as a political vehicle in a low-tech war of aggression.

The status issue has been co-opted and warped by the Palestinians in an attempt to curtail Jewish settlement. Neither the 1993 "Oslo I" (the Declaration of Principles) nor the 1995 Oslo II (Interim Agreement) stipulate that the construction of settlements, neighborhoods, houses, roads or other building projects cease.

According to a former policy planning official, the pace of Arab construction is "more than 10 times the number of buildings under construction [in the Territories] than those approved [by the Israeli government] for the [Jewish] settlers." Calls for a freeze on Jewish construction in the Territories - while Arab construction continues unfettered, are discriminatory- all the more so, in light of the fact that Jews were forcibly expelled in 1948.

Most Israelis living in the Territories demonstrated extraordinary self-restraint in recent years.

Palestinian Arabs create the impression that they are at risk from violent Israelis. A close analysis of realities reveals who is really endangered. All Jewish Israeli schools, both in sensitive areas inside Israel and settlements in the Territories, are surrounded by perimeter fences and alarm systems. Public places from restaurants and banks to wedding halls and hospitals, have armed guards at the entrance. This is not the case in Israeli Arab communities or among Palestinian Arabs in the Territories, who are not exposed to terrorist attacks on civilians.

Settlers as a community attempt systematically to avoid conflict.

Settlers travel on bypass roads built by Israel that detour around Arab villages. They ride in bulletproof buses or wear flak jackets on their commute in their cars. More recently, some settlers have surrounded their villages with security fences. Except in rare instances, Jewish settlers, have not taken wholesale retaliation against Palestinian Arab villages, or attempted to establish a balance of terror.

The late Professor Ehud Sprinzak, a fellow at the Counter-Terrorism Institute in Herzliya, an expert on right-wing extremism, published a study entitled Brother Against Brother: Violence and Extremism in Israeli politics from Altalena to the Rabin Assassination. Professor Sprinzak not only stated that in his estimation, Israelis, including settlers, would not resort to armed resistance if ordered by their government to abandon their homes; he said that had other Western nations faced Israel’s external and internal challenges, their streets would have been flooded with blood." This was said before the quantum leap in levels of violence since September 2000. There were 18,787 (!) incidents where Jews were targeted by Palestinian Arab terrorists between September 2000 and May 2003 alone (with and without casualties) on both sides of the Green Line.

Legalities aside, before 1967 there were no Jewish settlements in the West Bank and for the first ten years of so-called occupation there were almost no Jewish settlers in the West Bank. And still there was no peace with the Palestinian Arabs. The notion that Jewish communities pose an obstacle to peace is a red herring designed to blame Israel for lack of progress in the Peace Process and enable Palestinian leadership to continue to reject any form of compromise and reconciliation.

Eli E. Hertz

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