http://jewishworldreview.com/cols/krauthammer052711.php3
May 27, 2011 / 23 Iyar, 5771
What Obama did to Israel
By Charles Krauthammer
http://pumapac.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/obama-smirk.jpg
Arab-Israeli negotiation contains a fundamental asymmetry: Israel gives up
land, which is tangible; the Arabs make promises, which are ephemeral. The
long-standing American solution has been to nonetheless urge Israel to take
risks for peace while America balances things by giving assurances of U.S.
support for Israel's security and diplomatic needs.
It's on the basis of such solemn assurances that Israel undertook, for
example, the Gaza withdrawal. In order to mitigate this risk, President
George W.Bush gave a written commitment that America supported Israel
absorbing major settlement blocs in any peace agreement, opposed any return
to the 1967 lines and stood firm against the so-called Palestinian right of
return to Israel.
For 21 / 2 years, the Obama administration has refused to recognize and
reaffirm these assurances. Then last week in his State Department speech,
President Obama definitively trashed them. He declared that the Arab-Israeli
conflict should indeed be resolved along "the 1967 lines with mutually
agreed swaps."
Nothing new here, said Obama three days later. "By definition, it means that
the parties themselves - Israelis and Palestinians - will negotiate a border
that is different" from 1967.
It means nothing of the sort. "Mutually" means both parties have to agree.
And if one side doesn't? Then, by definition, you're back to the 1967 lines.
Nor is this merely a theoretical proposition. Three times the Palestinians
have been offered exactly that formula, 1967 plus swaps - at Camp David
2000, Taba 2001, and the 2008 Olmert-Abbas negotiations. Every time, the
Palestinians said no and walked away.
And that remains their position today: The 1967 lines. Period. Indeed, in
September the Palestinians are going to the United Nations to get the world
to ratify precisely that - a Palestinian state on the '67 lines. No swaps.
Note how Obama has undermined Israel's negotiating position. He is demanding
that Israel go into peace talks having already forfeited its claim to the
territory won in the '67 war - its only bargaining chip. Remember: That '67
line runs right through Jerusalem. Thus the starting point of negotiations
would be that the Western Wall and even Jerusalem's Jewish Quarter are
Palestinian - alien territory for which Israel must now bargain.
The very idea that Judaism's holiest shrine is alien or that Jerusalem's
Jewish Quarter is rightfully or historically or demographically Arab is an
absurdity. And the idea that, in order to retain them, Israel has to give up
parts of itself is a travesty.
Obama didn't just move the goal posts on borders. He also did so on the
so-called right of return. Flooding Israel with millions of Arabs would
destroy the world's only Jewish state while creating a 23rd Arab state and a
second Palestinian state - not exactly what we mean when we speak of a
"two-state solution." That's why it has been the policy of the United States
to adamantly oppose this "right."
Yet in his State Department speech, Obama refused to simply restate this
position - and refused again in a supposedly corrective speech three days
later. Instead, he told Israel it must negotiate the right of return with
the Palestinians after having given every inch of territory. Bargaining with
what, pray tell?
No matter. "The status quo is unsustainable," declared Obama, "and Israel
too must act boldly to advance a lasting peace."
Israel too ? Exactly what bold steps for peace have the Palestinians taken?
Israel made three radically conciliatory offers to establish a Palestinian
state, withdrew from Gaza and has been trying to renew negotiations for more
than two years. Meanwhile, the Gaza Palestinians have been firing rockets at
Israeli towns and villages. And on the West Bank, Palestinian President
Mahmoud Abbas turns down then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's offer,
walks out of negotiations with Binyamin Netanyahu and now defies the United
States by seeking not peace talks but instant statehood - without peace,
without recognizing Israel - at the United Nations. And to make unmistakable
this spurning of any peace process, Abbas agrees to join the openly
genocidal Hamas in a unity government, which even Obama acknowledges makes
negotiations impossible.
Obama's response to this relentless Palestinian intransigence? To reward it
- by abandoning the Bush assurances, legitimizing the '67 borders and
refusing to reaffirm America's rejection of the right of return.
The only remaining question is whether this perverse and ultimately
self-defeating policy is born of genuine antipathy toward Israel or of the
arrogance of a blundering amateur who refuses to see that he is undermining
not just peace but the very possibility of negotiations.
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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Brooks Isoldi, editor
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http://www.intellnet.org
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