;
Did Fatah thank 14 countries
for granting it permission to kill Israelis?
Fatah cartoons:
Before UN vote
| After UN vote: "Thank You!" |
 |  |
Itamar Marcus
Yesterday in response to the UN Security Council resolution declaring Israeli settlements illegal, Fatah republished the identical image but added a pool of blood at the bottom, and the words "Thank You" above the image, and the names of the 14 countries that voted in favor of the UN resolution. (Above right)
Is Fatah thanking the 14 countries for their UN vote because they interpret the UN as granting Fatah permission to kill Israelis? Or is Fatah thanking them because now that the UN declared settlements "illegal" it sees itself free to kill more Israelis?
Either way Fatah is saying more Israelis will pay with their lives as a result of the UN resolution.
The 14 countries thanked by Fatah are:
Russia, Angola, Ukraine, Japan, Spain, Egypt, Malaysia, Venezuela, New Zealand, Senegal, Uruguay, France, China, and Britain.
The United States, whose abstention actually enabled the resolution to pass, is not mentioned.
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I have had a several responses to my previous memo regarding Obama's stabbing Israel in the back. Mostly they have been from Christian friends and fellow memo readers suggesting now Liberal Jews should support Trump. I thanked them and replied a few may wake up but most will not because they cannot stomach Trump. Bleeding is just part of their DNA and for whatever, reasons, their ties to Israel are not strong. They favor the J Street Crowd who endorsed Obama's betrayal.
In fact, one good friend and fellow memo reader, who also happens to be a Liberal Jew, stated that perhaps things would have been different had Netanyahu spoke with Obama rather than Trump. Netanyahu pleaded with Obama for months and in desperation turned to Trump but it did no good because Obama had it in for Israel and Netanyahu.
From my own perspective Obama's legacy will be a president with blood not only on his hands but also under his finger nails.
+++
Some sane food for thought. (See 3 below.)
This from a dear friend, fraternity brother and fellow memo reader. (See 3a below.)
===
on Israel
Friday's United Nations resolution is the administration's final swipe at the
Jewish state.
For all eight years of the Obama administration, Democrats have made believe that Barack Obama is a firm and enthusiastic supporter and defender of the Jewish state. Arguments to the contrary were not only dismissed but angrily denounced as the products of nothing more than vicious partisanship. Obama's defenders repeatedly used the trope that "Israel should not be a partisan issue," as if Obama's views and actions were beyond reproach. A whole corps of Jewish leaders, some at the major organizations and many from Chicago, showed far greater loyalty to Obama than to the tradition of true non-partisanship when it came to Middle East policy.
All of those arguments have been ground into dust by Obama's action Friday allowing a nasty and harmful anti-Israel resolution to pass the United Nations Security Council. Just weeks before leaving office, he could not resist the opportunity to take one more swipe at Israel—and to do real harm. So he will leave with his record on Israel in ruins, and he will leave Democrats even worse off.
It's pretty clear that he does not care. Obama has gotten himself elected twice, the second time by a decreased margin (the only time a president has been reelected by fewer votes than in his first term), but he has laid waste to his party. In the House, the Senate, the state governorships, and the state legislatures, the Democrats have suffered loss after loss. Today's anti-Israel action will further damage the Democratic party, by driving some Jews if not toward the Republicans then at least away from the Democrats and toward neutrality. Donald Trump's clear statement on Thursday that he favored a veto, Netanyahu's fervent pleas for one, and the Egyptian action in postponing the vote show where Obama stood: not with Israel, not even with Egypt, but with the Palestinians. Pleas for a veto from Democrats in Congress were ignored by the White House.
Does the resolution matter? It does. The text declares that "the establishment by Israel of settlements in the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, including East Jerusalem, has no legal validity and constitutes a flagrant violation under international law." This may turn both settlers—even those in major blocs like Maale Adumim, that everyone knows Israel will keep in any peace deal—and Israeli officials into criminals in some countries, subject to prosecution there or in the International Criminal Court. The text demands "that Israel immediately and completely cease all settlement activities in the occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem." Now add this wording to the previous line and it means that even construction in the Jewish Quarter of the Old City is "a flagrant violation under international law." The resolution also "calls upon all States, to distinguish, in their relevant dealings, between the territory of the State of Israel and the territories occupied since 1967." This is a call to boycott products of the Golan, the West Bank, and parts of Jerusalem, and support for the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement.
Yet Barack Obama thought this was all fine and refused to veto. Settlements have been an obsession for Obama since the second day of his term in office, January 22, 2009. That day he appointed George Mitchell to be his special peace envoy, and adopted the view that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was the key to peace in the entire region and that freezing construction in settlements was the key to Israeli-Palestinian peace. But even if you believe all that—and looking at the Middle East today, no sensible person can—to allow this resolution to pass goes far beyond a flat demand for a settlement freeze. It is a strike against Israel. The inclusion of the usual language calling upon "both parties" to show "calm and restraint" and avoid "provocative actions" and "incitement" is pablum meant to attract European votes—and perhaps to attract Barack Obama. But in fact, there is no possible way that this resolution will advance the cause of peace between Palestinians and Israelis.
Obama has done us one favor, which is to settle the long argument about his attitude toward Israel. No partisan of his, no apologetic Democrat, can henceforth say with a straight face what we've been hearing for years about him. In 2012, for example, Thomas Friedman wrote in the New York Times: "The only question I have when it comes to President Obama and Israel is whether he is the most pro-Israel president in history or just one of the most."
Sorry, Tom, but statements like that are now simply embarrassing. Obama has done what he could for eight years to undermine Israel's elected government, prevent its action against Iran's nuclear weapons program, and create as much daylight as possible between the United States and Israel. So when the crunch came yesterday, Israelis had to turn to Egypt to postpone a U.N. vote. Think about that: there is more trust between Israel and Egypt today than between either of them and the United States. That's the product of eight years of Obama foreign policy. Israelis can only wish American presidential terms were just four weeks shorter.
Obama has cast a veto, all right: he has vetoed the kind of close relations between Israel and the United States that Bill Clinton and George W. Bush carefully built and maintained. The remaining question is whether Jewish leaders and Democratic politicians who vouched for Obama and defended him for eight years will now tell the truth.
1a) President Barack Obama Takes a Final Swipe at America's Steady Alliance with Israel
By Ron Radosh
By abstaining on the UN’s resolution condemning Israeli settlements, President Barack Obama gave Israel, on the eve of Hanukkah, a parting shot revealing his true views about the Jewish state. Pleas were made to him, by both the Israeli government and by President-elect Donald J. Trump, to continue the long-standing American policy of vetoing such anti-Israel resolutions when they come before the Security Council, thus blocking them from becoming official UN policy.
As one would expect, the resolution’s passage was hailed by so-called “liberal” Jewish groups like J Street, as well as openly pro-left and pro-Hamas groups such as Jewish Voice for Peace. J Street not only endorsed the resolution, but claimed that it “calls for a halt to actions by both sides that serve to undermine the prospects for peace.” The group's statement goes on to equate “Palestinian incitement and terror” with “Israeli settlement expansion and home demolitions.” Jewish Voice for Peace praised the resolution’s adoption by the UN as a step to acknowledging the “need to hold Israel accountable to international law.” There is no attempt on their part to engage in moral equivalence, since they see Israel alone as the one power responsible for the failure of an Israeli-Palestinian agreement.
The truth about the resolution, as Elliott Abrams and Michael Singh point out, is that it does not distinguish between construction in settlement blocs west of Israel’s security barrier where 80 percent of Israeli settlers live, and those built east of the barrier, where controversy exists about their existence. They point out that most settlements are in towns “that no one disputes [Israel] will keep” after a peace settlement. In essence the resolution demands a return to the 1967 lines before Israel’s military victory, which would mean that even the Western Wall as well as most of East Jerusalem would return to Palestinian hands.
By telling U.S. Ambassador Samantha Power to abstain, President Obama made clear that he continues to believe the reason for the failure to create a new Oslo agreement was Israel’s alone. The resolution in effect says that the areas of Jerusalem that were part of the ancient Jewish homeland, as Jonathan Tobin writes in Commentary, are all illegal settlements, thereby making their Jewish inhabitants international outlaws.
In her comments to the UN Security Council, Power argued that Israeli settlements hurt the chances for a two-state solution and that “one has to make a choice between settlements and separation.” She emphasized that the resolution “also addressed counter-productive actions by the Palestinians.” Power is smart enough to know that these words mean nothing, since what the resolution does not ask is for the Palestinians to accept the legitimacy of the Jewish state. It also does not demand movement towards peace on their part by agreeing to give up the “right of return,” which, if it took place, would mean a formal end to Israel’s existence. Rather than make a resolution to the conflict possible, all it accomplishes is to encourage the Palestinians to maintain their intransigence and their refusal to seriously negotiate with Israel.
President Obama does not appear to care that his abstention on the resolution has angered not only Republicans, but Democrat representatives in the House and the Senate. Even before the vote, The Hill reported, Democratic Senators Joe Manchin, Richard Blumenthal, and Chris Coons asked the president to veto the resolution. New York Senator Chuck Schumer also publicly called on the resolution to be blocked, and noted that he had asked the administration numerous times and “in the strongest possible terms” to veto it. "I am strongly opposed to the U.N. putting pressure on Israel through one-sided resolutions. An abstention is not good enough. The Administration must veto this resolution." Schumer well knows that the UN, as he put it, “has long shown its anti-Israel bias.” After the resolution passed, Schumer added that “it is extremely frustrating, disappointing and confounding.”
After the UN Security Council passed the resolution, major Jewish groups condemned Obama’s turn on what had been a bipartisan policy. AIPAC, to which many prominent Democrats belong, stated that Obama “has taken action at odds with the bipartisan consensus in Congress and America’s long history of standing with Israel at the United Nations.” Moreover, it thanked President-elect Trump, “who urged a veto.” The Anti-Defamation League, now headed by a former Obama administration member, said it was “outraged.” The Jewish Federations of North America called it “tragic” that the U.S. administration had chosen “to mar its legacy of support for the Jewish State and set back the prospects for Israeli-Palestinian peace” by abstaining rather than voting no on a resolution it described as “one-sided” and “anti-Israel.”
Speaking for the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, executive vice chairman Malcolm Hoenlein stated the passage of the resolution is shameful” and noted that “it is just going to embolden those who do not want a peace process.”
In effect, Barack Obama doesn’t seem to care about the opinions of prominent Democrat senators or about those Democrats who could lose the support of Jewish voters in their districts. Rather, he has shown that he is more in tune with his party’s left-wing members, among whom anti-Israel sentiment flourishes.
Obama’s actions suggest that rather than lead to peace, the abstention and the resolution’s adoption will only embolden the Palestinian leaders to move away from any actual try at honest negotiations. Now, they will claim the UN, representing the international community, stands behind them. It will also work to give new life to the BDS movement, which seeks to delegitimize Israel.
It is indeed, as Jonathan Tobin wrote, a “lame duck stab in the back of America’s only democratic ally in the Middle East.” It will also provide a stark contrast to President-elect Donald J. Trump, who will restore a firm Israeli-American alliance that, until now, had been bipartisan policy.
1b) Israel's UN Ambassador Danny Danon told the UN Security Council on Friday:
- "While thousands are being massacred in Syria, this Council wasted valuable time and effort condemning the democratic State of Israel for building homes in the historic homeland of the Jewish people....By voting 'yes' in favor of this resolution, you have in fact voted 'no' to negotiations, you voted 'no' to progress and a chance for better lives for Israelis and Palestinians, and you voted 'no' to the possibility of peace."
- "You are sending a message to the Palestinians that they should continue on the path of terrorism and incitement, that they should continue to hold their own people hostage, that they should continue to seek meaningless statements from the international community. The sad truth is that today's vote will be a victory for terror, it will be a victory for hatred and violence."
- "Today this Council, including many of the world's leading democracies, voted to condemn the State of Israel. You voted to condemn the Jewish people for building homes in the Land of Israel. You voted to ban us from building in our historic capital of Jerusalem, the heart and soul of the Jewish people."
- "Tomorrow night, Israel and the entire Jewish community around the world will celebrate the holiday of Hanukkah. Over 2,000 years ago, King Antiochus banished the Jewish people from our Temple in Jerusalem and issued decrees trying to sever us from our religion and our heritage. But we prevailed. The Jewish people fought back. We gained our independence and we lit the menorah candles in the Temple."
- "I ask each and every member of this Council who voted for this resolution: Who gave you the right to issue such a decree denying our eternal rights in Jerusalem? Would this Council have had the nerve to condemn your country for building homes in your capital? Would you ban the French from building in Paris? Would you ban the Russians from building in Moscow? Would you ban the Chinese from building in Beijing? Would you ban the British from building in London? Would you ban Americans from building in Washington?"
- "We overcame those decrees during the time of the Maccabees and we will overcome this evil decree today. We have full confidence in the justice of our cause and in the righteousness of our path. We will continue to be a democratic state based on the rule of law and full civil and human rights for all our citizens, and we will continue to be a Jewish state proudly reclaiming the land of our forefathers, where the Maccabees fought their oppressors and King David ruled from Jerusalem."
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2) Trump Tweets, Liberals Go Nuclear
2) Trump Tweets, Liberals Go Nuclear
A
Donald Trump has done it again. The president-elect has taken to his Twitter account to articulate a shift in American national-security policy with grave geopolitical implications that cannot be understated. At least, that’s what the left would have you believe. This increasingly rote response represents another chapter in the voluminous annals of liberal overreaction to the president-elect’s social-media musings.
“The United States must greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability until such time as the world comes to its senses regarding nukes,” wrote President-elect Trump on Thursday. When it comes to Trump and Twitter, the left is already on edge. Add nuclear weapons to the mix, and you have a recipe for a stage-four meltdown.
Who knows what inspired the tweet or what Trump precisely meant by it? This assertion might have been the result of a meeting Trump took with Pentagon officials on Wednesday, including the Deputy Chief of Staff for Strategic Deterrence and Nuclear Integration. Or it may have been Trump’s response to having been briefed on the results of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s year-end meeting with defense chiefs in which the Russian autocrat pledged a nuclear-modernization push in 2017.
Trump was clearly avoiding specificity and to identify a detailed policy proposal in this tweet requires some divination on the part of individual observers. That didn’t stop the left from both dissecting this tweet and coming to one preordained conclusion: “We’re all going to die.”
“Can a tweet erase 30 years of careful crawling toward peace and stability?” wrote Washington Post columnist and author of a book on anti-nuclear protest movements, Dan Zak. “Is it possible to look death in the face via a tweet?”
“Very scary misunderstanding,” wrote author and physics professor Lawrence Krauss. “As if over 1000 active nukes is not enough?”
“President-elect wants more US nuclear weaponry,” declared CNBC anchor and New York Times reporter John Harwood.
“Trump wants to violate The Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons,” MSNBC producer Kyle Griffin concurred.
Where these and many, many other hysterical liberal policymakers and analysts determined Trump was advocating for the violation of America’s treaty obligations and decades of precedent in this tweet came from is anyone’s guess. Trump’s employment of the phrase “strengthen and expand its nuclear capability” may refer to a lot more than the development of new weapons to add to existing stockpiles. In fact, the need to modernize America’s decaying nuclear deterrent capability is a priority acknowledged by even President Barack Obama.
After entering the White House in 2009 with lofty notions of a world without nuclear weapons, Obama is leaving office having endorsed what may end up being an approximately $1 trillion plan to upgrade America’s nuclear arsenal over three decades. The president’s decision to endorse a modernization effort came only amid sharp and consistent criticism of his obdurate refusal to keep pace with efforts by America’s nuclear peers and geopolitical foes, China and Russia.
While some new systems are being developed, the core objective of any modernization effort will be to enhance the accuracy, targeting options, and survivability of existing nuclear delivery vehicles. Occasionally, some of those deliverable warheads may need to be replaced—for example, switching outdated W78 warheads with newer W87 warheads, which entered service in 1986, making them among the newest nuclear weapons in America’s arsenal. The U.S. Strategic bombing fleet and its arsenal of submarine-launched ballistic missiles also require maintenance, modernization, and life-extension programs. The weapons they are expected to deliver are aging, but they are also projected to remain reliable well into the 21st century with life-extension methods. All this is to say nothing of the crippling brain-drain within the industry of U.S. nuclear weapons specialists or the crumbling maintenance facilities like Pantex or Y-12.
This isn’t destabilizing; quite the opposite. Americans who were justifiably rattled by Donald Trump’s campaign-trail pledge to encourage American allies like Saudi Arabia, Japan, and South Korea to develop their own nuclear arsenals can breathe easy. Continuity and the maintenance of America’s nuclear deterrent should reassure U.S. allies under the “nuclear umbrella” that American defense posture is not going to change radically between today and tomorrow.
Though many objected to this proposal, the left didn’t melt into puddles of anxiety when Barack Obama dismantled fewer nuclear warheads than his last three predecessors in the Oval Office. Rather, Democrats in Congress have objected to the proposal because of its cost and the focus it may take from revitalizing America’s conventional forces—not the need for modernization.
It’s perfectly reasonable to object to the method by which Trump revealed his intention to maintain Barack Obama’s nuclear moderation plan. The language he used may be questionable, but it wouldn’t raise an eyebrow if it had appeared on a white paper instead of a tweet. The frequency with which liberals indulge in unguarded moments of anxiety over Trump’s tweets is, however, starting to detract from their novelty.
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3)Do the Palestinians Really Want a State?
By David Harris
3)Do the Palestinians Really Want a State?
By David Harris
The Huffington Post
December 25, 2016
December 25, 2016
In all the focus on the December 23rd vote at the UN Security Council, when 14 nations supported a resolution critical of Israel and the U.S. broke with longstanding policy and abstained rather than opposed it, the question of underlying Palestinian motives and behavior was not addressed.
It should have been. In fact, it’s key to the whole exercise.
The Palestinians not only have rejected one offer after another for a peaceful settlement in the past nearly 70 years, but also, tragically, their misguided actions now make any chance of an accord going forward still less likely.
Friday’s UN Security Council resolution is a case in point.
If the goal was to increase the chance of Palestinian statehood alongside Israel (and not in its place!), it was an abysmal failure, despite the lopsided vote. Those diplomats who rushed to applaud the outcome - and I’ll set aside thuggish countries like Venezuela that don’t bring a shred of good will to the UN table - should think twice about what they actually achieved.
If they wanted to excoriate Israel, a longstanding vocation of too many UN member states, then they can thump their chests, even if, alas, they habitually reserve such scrutiny for the only democratic nation in the Middle East. But for those truly committed to advancing prospects for peace, they took a big step backwards, once again falling into the Palestinian trap.
Three things should have been abundantly evident by now.
First, while Israeli settlement-building is unquestionably a highly contentious matter, the core issue in the conflict has always been the refusal by the Palestinians and their supporters to recognize Israel’s legitimacy and negotiate in good faith a lasting peace deal. That was true in 1947-8, when a two-state solution was proposed by the UN; in 1967; in 2000-1; in 2008; during the ten-month (2009-10) settlement freeze that Israel adopted under Prime Minister Netanyahu in response to an American request; and in 2013-14, the most recent attempt at direct, bilateral talks facilitated by the U.S.
Evidence abounds for this consistent pattern of rejectionism. One particularly striking comment, as true now as then, came from an unlikely source. In 2003, the Saudi Ambassador to the U.S. was quoted in The New Yorker as saying: “It broke my heart that [PLO Chair] Arafat did not take the offer (of a two-state deal presented by Israel, with American support, in 2001). Since 1948, every time we’ve had something on the table, we say no. Then we say yes. When we say yes, it’s not on the table anymore. Then we have to deal with something less. Isn’t it about time to say yes?”
Instead of obsessively and relentlessly focusing only on Israeli actions, why aren’t UN Security Council members asking the Palestinians to explain seven decades of avoiding a settlement of the conflict on terms satisfactory to both parties?
Second, the Palestinians clearly would rather do diplomatic end-runs, thus avoiding the bargaining table and seeking instead to internationalize the conflict. That may produce some short-term victories, given the numbers game dominated by the Arab League, Organization of Islamic Cooperation, and Non-Aligned Movement, not to mention the art of political expediency practiced by too many UN member states that ought to know better. But where has it gotten the Palestinians? Exactly nowhere - if, that is, the real aim is a Palestinian state alongside Israel.
To the contrary, this approach has only convinced many Israelis that the Palestinian leadership has no real interest in finding a solution, only in waging a struggle. By now, it should be abundantly clear, though, that Israel is strong, and getting stronger, and that any notion Israel will fall to its knees and succumb to the pressure is just a fanciful illusion.
And third, shouldn’t the responsible members of the international community push the pause button and look more closely at how peace might best be attained?
Israel has enduring treaties with Egypt and Jordan. In both cases, they were reached not through the UN, but rather via face-to-face talks. Israel made unprecedented territorial concessions of land it obtained in the 1967 war of self-defense, but did so confident that Egyptian President Sadat and Jordan King Hussein had made sincere decisions to abandon war with the Jewish state.
Every poll in Israel has shown a majority of Israelis supportive of a two-state accord with the Palestinians, but, at the same time, deeply skeptical of Palestinian sincerity. And why shouldn’t Israelis have doubts? Palestinian Authority President Abbas, in the 11th year of his four-year term, talks out of both sides of his mouth, claiming he wants a deal, but then resorting to incitement, refusing to sit down with Israeli leaders, trying to corner Israel diplomatically, and presiding, if that’s the term, over a deeply divided (West Bank-Hamas) polity.
Instead of infantilizing and coddling the Palestinians, succumbing to their every misguided whim, and endorsing their counter-productive behavior, isn’t it high time to see the situation as it is for both parties (and not only for the Palestinians), learn from the past, and help create conditions for tangible progress?
When Palestinian leaders emerge who grasp the legacies of President Sadat and King Hussein, extend the front, not the back, of their hand to Israel, and recognize that the legitimate concerns of Israelis must also be addressed in the process, then, whether it’s Prime Minister Netanyahu or, down the road, another elected Israeli leader, they will find a willing partner. To illustrate, given his hawkish political background, Menachem Begin may have seemed an improbable candidate to evacuate the vast buffer space, oil deposits, and air force bases of Sinai, but he did so to the last grain of sand for the sake of peace with Egypt.
In other words, history lessons abound, even if, at the UN these days, history students don’t appear to be in overabundance. (If they were, they would know, for instance, that no Israeli government will ever acknowledge the absurdity of the Old City of Jerusalem and the Western Wall, containing Judaism’s holiest sites, being depicted as “occupied Palestinian territory.”)
Friday’s vote at the UN Security Council will be remembered as a Pyrrhic victory for the Palestinians - and a step backward in the quest for Israeli-Palestinian peace.
3a)
It should have been. In fact, it’s key to the whole exercise.
The Palestinians not only have rejected one offer after another for a peaceful settlement in the past nearly 70 years, but also, tragically, their misguided actions now make any chance of an accord going forward still less likely.
Friday’s UN Security Council resolution is a case in point.
If the goal was to increase the chance of Palestinian statehood alongside Israel (and not in its place!), it was an abysmal failure, despite the lopsided vote. Those diplomats who rushed to applaud the outcome - and I’ll set aside thuggish countries like Venezuela that don’t bring a shred of good will to the UN table - should think twice about what they actually achieved.
If they wanted to excoriate Israel, a longstanding vocation of too many UN member states, then they can thump their chests, even if, alas, they habitually reserve such scrutiny for the only democratic nation in the Middle East. But for those truly committed to advancing prospects for peace, they took a big step backwards, once again falling into the Palestinian trap.
Three things should have been abundantly evident by now.
First, while Israeli settlement-building is unquestionably a highly contentious matter, the core issue in the conflict has always been the refusal by the Palestinians and their supporters to recognize Israel’s legitimacy and negotiate in good faith a lasting peace deal. That was true in 1947-8, when a two-state solution was proposed by the UN; in 1967; in 2000-1; in 2008; during the ten-month (2009-10) settlement freeze that Israel adopted under Prime Minister Netanyahu in response to an American request; and in 2013-14, the most recent attempt at direct, bilateral talks facilitated by the U.S.
Evidence abounds for this consistent pattern of rejectionism. One particularly striking comment, as true now as then, came from an unlikely source. In 2003, the Saudi Ambassador to the U.S. was quoted in The New Yorker as saying: “It broke my heart that [PLO Chair] Arafat did not take the offer (of a two-state deal presented by Israel, with American support, in 2001). Since 1948, every time we’ve had something on the table, we say no. Then we say yes. When we say yes, it’s not on the table anymore. Then we have to deal with something less. Isn’t it about time to say yes?”
Instead of obsessively and relentlessly focusing only on Israeli actions, why aren’t UN Security Council members asking the Palestinians to explain seven decades of avoiding a settlement of the conflict on terms satisfactory to both parties?
Second, the Palestinians clearly would rather do diplomatic end-runs, thus avoiding the bargaining table and seeking instead to internationalize the conflict. That may produce some short-term victories, given the numbers game dominated by the Arab League, Organization of Islamic Cooperation, and Non-Aligned Movement, not to mention the art of political expediency practiced by too many UN member states that ought to know better. But where has it gotten the Palestinians? Exactly nowhere - if, that is, the real aim is a Palestinian state alongside Israel.
To the contrary, this approach has only convinced many Israelis that the Palestinian leadership has no real interest in finding a solution, only in waging a struggle. By now, it should be abundantly clear, though, that Israel is strong, and getting stronger, and that any notion Israel will fall to its knees and succumb to the pressure is just a fanciful illusion.
And third, shouldn’t the responsible members of the international community push the pause button and look more closely at how peace might best be attained?
Israel has enduring treaties with Egypt and Jordan. In both cases, they were reached not through the UN, but rather via face-to-face talks. Israel made unprecedented territorial concessions of land it obtained in the 1967 war of self-defense, but did so confident that Egyptian President Sadat and Jordan King Hussein had made sincere decisions to abandon war with the Jewish state.
Every poll in Israel has shown a majority of Israelis supportive of a two-state accord with the Palestinians, but, at the same time, deeply skeptical of Palestinian sincerity. And why shouldn’t Israelis have doubts? Palestinian Authority President Abbas, in the 11th year of his four-year term, talks out of both sides of his mouth, claiming he wants a deal, but then resorting to incitement, refusing to sit down with Israeli leaders, trying to corner Israel diplomatically, and presiding, if that’s the term, over a deeply divided (West Bank-Hamas) polity.
Instead of infantilizing and coddling the Palestinians, succumbing to their every misguided whim, and endorsing their counter-productive behavior, isn’t it high time to see the situation as it is for both parties (and not only for the Palestinians), learn from the past, and help create conditions for tangible progress?
When Palestinian leaders emerge who grasp the legacies of President Sadat and King Hussein, extend the front, not the back, of their hand to Israel, and recognize that the legitimate concerns of Israelis must also be addressed in the process, then, whether it’s Prime Minister Netanyahu or, down the road, another elected Israeli leader, they will find a willing partner. To illustrate, given his hawkish political background, Menachem Begin may have seemed an improbable candidate to evacuate the vast buffer space, oil deposits, and air force bases of Sinai, but he did so to the last grain of sand for the sake of peace with Egypt.
In other words, history lessons abound, even if, at the UN these days, history students don’t appear to be in overabundance. (If they were, they would know, for instance, that no Israeli government will ever acknowledge the absurdity of the Old City of Jerusalem and the Western Wall, containing Judaism’s holiest sites, being depicted as “occupied Palestinian territory.”)
Friday’s vote at the UN Security Council will be remembered as a Pyrrhic victory for the Palestinians - and a step backward in the quest for Israeli-Palestinian peace.
3a)
Even Alan Dershowitz was publicly quoted yesterday as saying the U.S. drafted the resolution and gave it to Egypt. The abstention is cowardly and hypocritical, as this was in fact a U.S.-generated initiative, in coordination with the PA. It would not have happened if not for the U.S.
This is the greatest betrayal ever by an American president regarding Israel.
The resolution declares Israeli building beyond the '67 lines "in flagrant violation of international law"....WHICH laws??? These are not specifically cited in the language...BECAUSE THERE AREN'T ANY.
Except for right of return, this gives the Palestinians everything they want without having to negotiate, and without even having to recognize Israel as a Jewish state.
Not only Trump, but his nominees for UN ambassador, Secretary of State, and Ambassador to Israel should declare this resolution itself to be a flagrant violation of international law and all historical precedents, which it is.
Trump and his foreign policy team should categorically reject this resolution, and renew their commitment to move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem at the earliest possible date. Also, to assure Israel of full support in any actions the latter deems necessary for her protection. Since the U.S. under Obama has now precluded any realistic chance whatsoever of a negotiated settlement, Trump should declare his support of aggressive Israeli construction in J&S in order to send a signal to the UN that they have no legal basis for their action in this case, and the U.S. will stand squarely behind Israel in this matter.
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