A combination of a change in rhetoric and a hold-up in the loan guarantees seems like a good idea - that way, the Israelis and their supporters here couldn't really make the argument that the US was undermining Israel's national security directly.

It's rather risky, though. The first Bush Presidency took a blow for doing the hold-up on the loans, and he had to go kiss-ass to a number of Jewish pro-Israeli groups.

I can commend points 2 and 6 here strongly, and a few of the others with some reservations. The program as a whole, though, won't work politically.

The reason is that the Arabs will undermine it. Arab rhetoric -- unfortunately not just the rhetoric of Palestinian factions -- will continue to present Israel's existence rather than the Jewish state's policies as the problem. The rhetoric will reflect genuine Arab public opinion, but will not be a wholly accurate representation of the policies of Arab governments and will not signify a genuine existential threat to Israel.

The problem is one familiar to anyone who has followed this issue as it is discussed in American politics. Americans will assume that Arab rhetoric is meant to be taken literally. They will of course be encouraged to think this by the Israeli government and pro-Israel groups in the United States, but Americans as a whole tend to be fairly literal about language anyway. The enormous and largely intentional gap between Arab rhetoric and the policies of Arab governments (let alone Palestinian factions) won't track with the American public or their representatives in Congress -- and the idea of a more "evenhanded" American policy toward the Middle East will fall, because the American public will never be indifferent as between Israel and those it thinks are committed to Israel's destruction.

What's wrong with this big picture, in other words, is the big picture. Changes in the American approach to the Israeli-Palestinian quarrel need to be focused tightly on specific issues, not on how friendly America should be to Israel as opposed to Israel's enemies. The specific issue central to a two-state solution is obviously the one involving Jewish settlements on the West Bank. What's wrong with the settlements is that they serve no American interest and undermine the American policy of pursuing Mideast peace through the creation of a viable Palestinian state.

Addressing the issue in these terms would be difficult enough -- political support for Israeli government policy in the United States (or at least in Washington) contains a strong reflexive element, and the settlement question is not widely understood by the public. It certainly isn't widely understood in the context of its relation to American foreign policy objectives, because no recent American administration has ever discussed settlements in this way. Tackling the settlement question directly would generate a firestorm of protest for the Obama administration. I believe, however, that this firestorm is one the administration could withstand, if it is disciplined about addressing the settlement question exclusively as a matter of pursuing American interests, not letting those be subordinated to the internal politics of a foreign country however friendly, and absolutely not presenting its policy in terms of a decision to become less close to the Israelis and more friendly to the unpredictable and unattractive Palestinian leadership and Arab governments.

Incidentally, the idea of bypassing Congressional supporters of Israel with executive orders and Pentagon procurement decisions is just foolish unless one is talking about very temporary steps intended to influence an individual negotiation. Congress has too many ways to require the executive branch to do what Congress wants it to do, and many of these can have the effect of encumbering foreign policy permanently, not just reversing an individual decision.

democratic elections for a new Palestinian assembly and then rejected the results when Hamas won.

Typical Democracy Selling Super-State (DSSS) behaviour;->>

Trying to trim or cut the aid package will trigger an open and undoubtedly ugly confrontation in Congress (where the influence of AIPAC and other hard-line groups in the Israel lobby is greatest).

Professor is desperatly seeking how to save the State;->
Professor, why can't you for a second think that neither two state, nor one state a solution. The only solution is no state, the whole state-damned area has to be declared "sacred/inviolable/consecrated/dedicated/holy" and stripped from all arms, including WMDs, etc. (I can disclose the rest if you wish;->)
And if you catch one with arms export him/her to the state who supplies the arms as an imigrant;->>
If you catch one throwing rocks export him/her to the Rocky Mountains;->
With sticks or bats to India to play cricket;->>
And your main argument will be "The God/G-d/Jupiter of Secularists (I mean State) doesn't allow people to carry arms in sacred places" period. Remember Obama promised "Yes we can! (Not in my Life Time!)". Why wouldn't he start from there? That would save something from the State;->>

Professor! with Sate or without, we love you Mate!

Grand Sen~or.

BTW, Politics is related to Will. So, politicans saying "Yes we can!" is empty/bosh talk. Obama rather than saying "Yes we can, not in my life time!" He should say "I will, unless I die!".

Encourage other U.S. allies to use their influence too.

A European once explained to me that because of the events of 1920-1945, they cannot go there (put pressure on Israel). Now, the EU Parliament's rapporteur on Palestine/Israel affairs issued an extremely frank report on Israeli misdeeds a couple of years ago and that report got buried within 24 hours.

Ehud Barak leaped at joining the Netanyahu/Lieberman skinhead tribe and crowed that he would be the go-to peace guy (wink, wink), thus sanitizing the new government.

I've heard it said that the US has not yet understood the limits of its power and that Israel is a prime example of those limitations (Washington has little influence in Tel Aviv.)

Good points, Prof. Walt, however, I wonder what it would take to push Israel out of our orbit? Are there any acts by the U.S. that would push Israel into another country's orbit? For example, if we were to have a rapport with Iran, and say it's OK for you to make your nukes, would that push Israel to find another patron? Put another way, what is the benefit to the U.S. of such a close relationship to Israel?

I bring this up because of a recent news piece I ran across that Israel is selling its spy satellites to Russia (and it's already the biggest military supplier of India). Perhaps they're seeing the way the wind is blowing and are making contingency plans?

We take it for granted that we can have wide influence over Israel (and many on the left, such as yourself, assume that forcing Israel to make concessions is in our interest). And maybe that's true; I really don't know enough about how strong the links are to judge whether there is something we could do to push them into the arms of another. Certainly, the election and appointment of someone like Lieberman shows a split between the Israeli and US Jewish communities. I'd think that if we were to give the go-ahead for a mortal enemy like Iran to finish their nukes (certainly not an unlikely position at this point), that would force some recalibration on their part as to where to ally. And the money we give them could fairly easily be made up in increased high-tech arms sales to various countries. After all, it's a multipolar world now, and, as many countries are finding out (such as Eastern Europe, S. Korea and Japan), a strong relationship with the U.S. isn't what it once was.

The formation of an Israeli government comprised of Netanyahu/Lieberman/Barak is more difficult for the US, than "to put pressure on both sides to advance the cause of peace".

The current status has to be an effort of containment of the Netanyahu regime, before its incremental settlement construction project reaches a point of genuine no-return, pushing past the point where the most peaceful and just resolution is a consented two-states, to the point that either/or is the only option (in brutal and very intimate war).

And, it must simultaneously include containment of opportunist militia efforts like Hezbollah currently reported to be undertaking staging of proposed attacks on tourist sites in Egypt that are visited by many prominent Israelis.

That is a lot of intervention.

There is one thing that Netanyahu is adept at, and that is dodging political winds.

The measure by which one can address the actual intent of the Israeli government is NOT in incidents, but longer term. That is one failing of the efforts by people like Phil Weiss, that post so frequently and on such limited topics that its readers' attention only rests on frequency of incidents.

Another failing of critics of Israeli policies, even addressing long-term trends, is that what is presented as "fact" is too often nakedly and amateurishly misleading, to the point that the "fact" is easily dismissed.

The most telling measure is over the long term. How does a business person assess whether their significant investment was a success or not? Not, by asking what happened in March, but by establishing long-term benchmarks and milestones that are reliable with record-keeping designed to illuminate what actually occurred, designed to uncover why, and genuinely without prejudice.

My overwhelmingly strong preference in the region is for a genuinely consented resolution that ends at a status of good healthy neighbor to good healthy neighbor.

That status is only possible among parties that desire that. Any other outcome is a tension, but intimate. The stated parallels of Israel to South Africa ignore the intimate nature of the relationships. Israelis and Palestinians war in a region that is the total of the range from Connecticut to Maine. I've taken weeklong bicycling vacations that are as long.

I'm curious as to how Dr. Walt assesses intimate tensions, as distinct from homeostasis of contending relatively remote world powers.

Hold a publicized Oval Office meeting with Brit Tzedek v'Shalom and other similar Israeli and Palestinian groups. And do it soon. This would send a strong message to NetanYahoo! and Lieberman that things have changed in the US.

Releasing classified information on the USS Liberty is a great idea. Threaten to hold the first real inquiry on the attack. This would put The Israel Lobby in the position of attacking the US military and intelligence establishments.

I'm glad the good Professor recognizes that the legal attacks on Islamic charities are political.

All of Prof. Walt's ideas would be good for the US. I don't really see why the US has any dog in the fight at all, though. Instead of urging the US to be more even-handed, why not urge the US to be "neutral in thought as well as deed"? In other words, why not just get the hell out of the region, as long as the countries there are willing to sell their oil?

On Israel's interests, it's nice to see references to such brilliant, deep geopolitical thinkers as Ehud Olmert and the editor of Haaretz (what, no quote from Avrum Burg?). Apparently Israel, which has survived the last three decades as a pariah state condemned almost universally for the 1967 and 1948 occupations, will suddenly wilt like a delicate flower when confronted with calls to implement a South-Africa-style suicide. As far as I can tell, neither Walt nor Mearsheimer nor any other realist in their camp has ever engaged the realistic (if not realist), nonideological reasoning by which the vast majority of Israel's governing elite and electorate has concluded that a two-state solution in the near future will entail more, not less, bloodshed and suffering on both sides.

I know it's kind of obnoxious to psychoanalyze one's interlocutors, but I'll do it anyway. I believe that Prof. Walt et al. are sincere in their concern for Israel's security. They sincerely consider themselves friends of Israel - true friends who are willing to tell the unpleasant truth when necessary. Their view is respectable; it's shared by a minority in Israel (it used to be a majority), but it's not a negligible minority, certainly not a lunatic fringe. What needs analyzing is, frankly, the shallowness of the arguments: "Hamas will need to confront some hard choices," etc. I think what's going on is just plain old cognitive dissonance. It's psychologically hard for Americans who genuinely like Israel to accept how much the interests of Israel and the US really diverge. I know it was hard for me to accept it. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, what's good - truly good - for the US in the Middle East is bad for Israel.

The Israeli spy, Rosen has replied to you Prof. Walt

http://www.meforum.org/blog/obama-mideast-monitor/2009/04/pressure-on-israel-a-users-guide.html

Most importantly, Obama and his aides will need to reach out to Israel’s supporters in the United States, and make it clear to them that pressing Israel to end the occupation is essential for Israel’s long-term survival. He will have to work with the more far-sighted elements in the pro-Israel community -- including groups like J Street, the Israel Policy Forum, Brit Tzedek v'Shalom, and others

That sounds right but still I don't believe it will work with the existing State structure. Before you go into bargaining with those Lobbies you have to recognize the right to law of Jews and by that way legalize those pushed to underground institutions. Otherwise you wouldn't know with whom you are bargaining;->
In other words you have to change your constitution . Don't assume that those Lobbies legally represent Jews. Your Constitution doesn't recognize such a right to Jews.
Always keep in mind that Jewish interests are in the hands of the US National Interests not Israel's National Interets because majority of Jews are the US citizens and their assets are under the protection of the US jurisdiction.
As I have pointed out before, remind those Lobbies that they are behaving as if they are non-Jews, not non-Americans.
Also forget about "Israel’s long-term survival". It is none of your business, it is Jewish business, Jews decide about that. That is another reason to stop patronizing Jews and recognize their right to law to get themselves legally organized as an SPEE.

Grand Sen~or.

From The Jerusalem Post
April 9, 2009

Column One: Surviving in a post-American world

By Caroline Glick

Like it or not, the United States of America is no longer the world's policeman. This was the message of Barack Obama's presidential journey to Britain, France, the Czech Republic, Turkey and Iraq this past week.

Somewhere between apologizing for American history - both distant and recent; genuflecting before the unelected, bigoted king of Saudi Arabia; announcing that he will slash the US's nuclear arsenal, scrap much of America's missile defense programs and emasculate the US Navy; leaving Japan to face North Korea and China alone; telling the Czechs, Poles and their fellow former Soviet colonies, "Don't worry, be happy," as he leaves them to Moscow's tender mercies; humiliating Iraq's leaders while kowtowing to Iran; preparing for an open confrontation with Israel; and thanking Islam for its great contribution to American history, President Obama made clear to the world's aggressors that America will not be confronting them for the foreseeable future.

Whether they are aggressors like Russia, proliferators like North Korea, terror exporters like nuclear-armed Pakistan or would-be genocidal-terror-supporting nuclear states like Iran, today, under the new administration, none of them has any reason to fear Washington.

This news is music to the ears of the American Left and their friends in Europe. Obama's supporters like billionaire George Soros couldn't be more excited at the self-induced demise of the American superpower. CNN's former (anti-)Israel bureau chief Walter Rodgers wrote ecstatically in the Christian Science Monitor on Wednesday, "America's... superpower status, is being downgraded as rapidly as its economy."

The pro-Obama US and European media are so pleased with America's abdication of power that they took the rare step of applauding Obama at his press conference in London. Indeed, the media's enthusiasm for Obama appeared to grow with each presidential statement of contrition for America's past uses of force, each savage attack he leveled against his predecessor George W. Bush, each swipe he took at Israel, and each statement of gratitude for the blessings of Islam he uttered.

But while the media couldn't get enough of the new US leader, America's most stable allies worldwide began a desperate search for a reset button that would cause the administration to take back its abandonment of America's role as the protector of the free world.

Tokyo was distraught by the administration's reaction to North Korea's three-stage ballistic missile test. Japan recognized the betrayal inherent in Defense Secretary Robert Gates's announcement ahead Pyongyang's newest provocation that the US would only shoot the missile down if it targeted US territory. In one sentence, uttered not in secret consultations, but declared to the world on CNN, Gates abrogated America's strategic commitment to Japan's defense.

India, for its part, is concerned by Obama's repeated assertions that its refusal to transfer control over the disputed Jammu and Kashmir provinces to Pakistan inspires Pakistani terror against India. It is equally distressed at the Obama administration's refusal to make ending Pakistan's support for jihadist terror groups attacking India a central component of its strategy for contending with Pakistan and Afghanistan. In general, Indian officials have expressed deep concern over the Obama administration's apparent lack of regard for India as an ally and a significant strategic counterweight to China.

Then there is Iraq. During his brief visit to Baghdad on Tuesday afternoon, Obama didn't even pretend that he would ensure that Iraqi democracy and freedom is secured before US forces are withdrawn next year. The most supportive statement he could muster came during his conversation with Turkish students in Istanbul earlier in the day. There he said, "I have a responsibility to make sure that as we bring troops out, that we do so in a careful enough way that we don't see a complete collapse into violence."

Hearing Obama's statements, and watching him and his advisers make daily declarations of friendship to Iran's mullahs, Iraqi leaders are considering their options for surviving the rapidly approaching storm.

Then there is Europe. Although Obama received enthusiastic applause from his audience in Prague when he announced his intention to destroy the US's nuclear arsenal, drastically scale back its missile defense programs and forge a new alliance with Russia, his words were anything but music to the ears of the leaders of former Soviet satellites threatened by Russia. The Czech, Polish, Georgian and Ukrainian governments were quick to recognize that Obama's strong desire to curry favor with the Kremlin and weaken his own country will imperil their ability to withstand Russian aggression.

It is not a coincidence, for instance, that the day Obama returned to Washington, Georgia's Moscow-sponsored opposition announced its plan to launch massive protests in Tblisi to force the ouster of pro-Western, anti-Russian Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili.

And as for Russia, like Iran, which responded to Obama's latest ode to the mullahs by opening a nuclear fuel plant and announcing it has 7,000 advanced centrifuges in operation, so Moscow reacted to Obama's fig leaf with a machine gun, announcing its refusal to support sanctions against North Korea and repeating its false claim that Iran's nuclear program is nonaggressive.

Finally there is Israel. If Obama's assertions that Israel must support the immediate establishment of a Palestinian state, his declarations of support for the so-called Saudi "peace plan," which requires Israel to commit national suicide in exchange for "peace" with the Arab world, and his continuous and increasingly frantic appeals for Iran to "engage" his administration weren't enough to show Israel that Obama is sacrificing the US's alliance with the Jewish state in a bid to appease the Arabs and Iran, on Tuesday Vice President Joseph Biden made this policy explicit.

When Biden told CNN that Israel would be "ill-advised" to attack Iran's nuclear installations, he made clear that from the administration's perspective, an Israeli strike that prevents Iran from becoming a nuclear power is less acceptable than a nuclear-armed Iran. That is, the Obama administration prefers to see Iran become a nuclear power than to see Israel secure its very existence.

AMERICA'S BETRAYAL of its democratic allies makes each of them more vulnerable to aggression at the hands of their enemies - enemies the Obama administration is now actively attempting to appease. And as the US strengthens their adversaries at their expense, these spurned democracies must consider their options for surviving as free societies in this new, threatening, post-American environment.

For the most part, America's scorned allies lack the ability to defeat their enemies on their own. India cannot easily defeat nuclear-armed Pakistan, which itself is fragmenting into disparate anti-Indian nuclear-wielding Islamist and Islamist-supporting factions.

Japan today cannot face North Korea - which acts as a Chinese proxy - on its own without risking a confrontation with China. Russia's invasion of Georgia last August showed clearly that its former republics and satellites have no way of escaping Moscow's grip alone. This week's Arab League conference at Doha demonstrated to Iraq's leaders that their Arab brethren are incapable and unwilling to confront Iran.

And the Obama administration's intense efforts to woo Iran coupled with its plan to slash the US's missile defense programs - including those in which Israel participates - and reportedly pressure Israel to dismantle its own purported nuclear arsenal - make clear that Israel today stands alone against Iran.

THE RISKS that the newly inaugurated post-American world pose for America's threatened friends are clear. But viable opportunities for survival do exist, and Israel can and must play a central role in developing them. Specifically, Israel must move swiftly to develop active strategic alliances with Japan, Iraq, Poland, and the Czech Republic and it must expand its alliance with India.

With Israel's technological capabilities, its intelligence and military expertise, it can play a vital role in shoring up these countries' capacities to contain the rogue states that threaten them. And by containing the likes of Russia, North Korea and Pakistan, they will make it easier for Israel to contain Iran even in the face of US support for the mullahs.

The possibilities for strategic cooperation between and among all of these states and Israel run the gamut from intelligence sharing to military training, to missile defense, naval development, satellite collaboration, to nuclear cooperation. In addition, of course, expanded economic ties between and among these states can aid each of them in the struggle to stay afloat during the current global economic crisis.

Although far from risk free, these opportunities are realistic because they are founded on stable, shared interests. This is the case despite the fact that none of these potential alliances will likely amount to increased support for Israel in international forums. Dependent as they are on Arab oil, these potential allies cannot be expected to vote with Israel in the UN General Assembly. But this should not concern Jerusalem.

The only thing that should concern Jerusalem today is how to weaken Iran both directly by attacking its nuclear installations, and indirectly by weakening its international partners in Moscow, Pyongyang, Islamabad and beyond in the absence of US support. If Japan is able to contain North Korea and so limit Pyongyang's freedom to proliferate its nuclear weapons and missiles to Iran and Syria and beyond, Israel is better off. So, too, Israel is better off if Russia is contained by democratic governments in Eastern and Central Europe. These nations in turn are better off if Iran is contained and prevented from threatening them both directly and indirectly through its strategic partners in North Korea, Syria and Russia, and its terror affiliates in Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan.

For the past 16 years, successive Israeli governments have wrongly believed that politics trump strategic interests. The notion that informed Israel's decision-makers - not unlike the notion that now informs the Obama
administration - was that Israel's strategic interests would be secured as a consequence of its efforts to appease its enemies by weakening itself. Appreciative of Israel's sacrifices for peace, the nations of the world - and particularly the US, the Arabs and Europe - would come to Israel's defense in its hour of need. Now that the hour of need has arrived, Israel's political strategy for securing itself has been exposed as a complete fiasco.

The good news is that no doubt sooner rather than later, Obama's similarly disastrous bid to denude the US of its military power under the naive assumption that it will be able to use its new stature as a morally pure strategic weakling to win its enemies over to its side will fail spectacularly and America's foreign policy will revert to strategic rationality.

But to survive the current period of American strategic madness, Israel and the US's other unwanted allies must build alliances with one another - covertly if need be - to contain their adversaries in the absence of America. If they do so successfully, then the damage to global security induced by Obama's emasculation of his country will be limited. If on the other hand, they fail, then America's eventual return to its senses will likely come too late for its allies - if not for America itself.

© 1995 - 2009 The Jerusalem Post. All rights reserved.

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1238562949505&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

You say: "the United States will have to pursue a more even-handed policy than it has in the past, and put strong pressure on both sides to come to an agreement".

Can you imagine someone telling the authors of the US Declaration of Independence that they needed to negotiate US statehood with the British?

To be well-governed by a state that genuinely seeks the well-being of its citizens is a basic human right. This was the view of the founders of the US, and before them of European political philosophers at least since the late middle ages.

The Palestinians do not need Israel's permission to exercise a basic human right. Israel never will give permission, if their agreement is sought.

There is another way. The President of the US, without needing Congressional approval, has power to recognise a state. President Obama should recognise Palestine, within the green line borders, subject to certain conditions -- fresh elections, a pledge not to attack Israel, a pledge to respect human rights.

The West Bank settlements would remain unless the settlers voluntarily withdrew: the settlers would become citizens of Palestine.

See my article http://www.realclearworld.com/articles/2009/02/kosovo_model_in_palestine_israel.html

You say: "the United States will have to pursue a more even-handed policy than it has in the past, and put strong pressure on both sides to come to an agreement".

Can you imagine someone telling the authors of the US Declaration of Independence that they needed to negotiate US statehood with the British?

Yeah, but you are forgetting that Israel is just a Client State and is not fighting for her independance from the US, she is happy to be Client;->

Palestine?! It is not a State yet to be client. From the US point of view their struggle against Israel is Israel's internal affair that they can interfere for she is just a Client State of the US. I mean Israel as a Client State doesn't even have power to split herself into two and create and recognize Palestinian State as another Client State to the US. I think you Palestinians are barking at the wrong tree. Israel is as helpless as Palestinians being a Client State. It has been waste of energy and time for Palestinians and Israelis to fight against each other, but it has helped to the National Interest of the US so far. And at the moment, they are not so sure if it is going to help to keep you fighting with each other. That is why they are giving signals to Israel that this fighting became counter productive for the National Interest of the US. Now they say perhaps it will be more productive to have two states for the National Interest of the US. But Israelis are so blindly/deafly involved with those fightings that they forgot that they are Client State fighting for the National Interest of the US, they think that it was all for National Interet of Israel, in fact they think more than that, they think it is all for the "national" Interest of all the Jews;->>

You see it is something like you start dreaming you will rebuild Solomon's Kingdom and you are so much absorbed with your dream-world that you forgot, ignore the realities of the day-to-day life. When someone reminds you them, you don't want to hear about them and you even threaten the people who remind you all the reality with guess what?
Bombing Iran if ...;->>

May G-d wake up Israelis!
and May God wake up Palestinians from their deep-sleeps.

If they listen to me, they have to give back all the weapons and booze and the State to their Suppliers and completely disarm themselves and tell the Suppliers that they are not going to fight for Supplier's National Interest anymore, they had enough and they don't want and need to be their Client States either.

But of course I am dreaming that they will wake up;->>
All the parties are so bewitched by "state"...

Grand Sen~or.

And it depends on if the government is willing to sponsor public broadcasting again on the Israel Palestine problem as he said above.

Obama's administration has shown no appetite to pick a fight with the hardliners at AIPAC, and unless people are openly educated the political will won't even be there.

There needs to be a swift, obvious push for public broadcasting with government funding to educate the masses about the reality of the conflict and soon.

As well, the biggest opportunity to do this would be while the Federal Reserve is under audit or undergoing review.....Because as with all administrations, the Federal Reserve banks have such a dictatorial hold over Washington that the Israel Lobby nearly always gets its demands.
http://forliberty.com

In short it doesn't look good, I expect more of the same in Israel until people decisively challenge the Lobby.

We've not only had no debate we've been under a dictatorship, and to be honest the Lobby's influence was only weakened during depressions.

I read this today, and see it very much in the light of Mr. Ricks post on the logic of the Gaza war.

I find it interesting that few Israelis seem to be concerned with the long term issues of balance of power in their region. I half think the current economic crisis is either a precursor, or a symptom perhaps, of a shift in the global balance of power. Israelis continually point to their minority status in the region as a rational for their strong defense. It is, however, as much a reason for peace. There are many variables that could lead choosing a state of perpetual conflict to very bad results aside from the Apartheid issue.

Balance of power:

Professor Walt comments on the importance of a strong relationship with the United States as being important to Israel security. What about when the Balance of Power shifts and the US is not the same world power? How would that impact Israel if they are still in a state of perpetual war.

Neighboring Regimes:

Right now, Israel has agreements with two major nations on its borders. The others it maintains calm through its military supremacy. That requires a logical reaction from a unified government to respond to that military might. Two thoughts occur to me. One is what happens if Israel, for whatever reason is not the power in that region? Power structures are not permanent. Or, what if the current Arab governments find they can no longer suppress the Islamic movements it has worked so hard to subvert. And, they collapse. How safe is Israel with militant Islamic governments on their borders? Or, just a civil war where there are no accountable parties?

Native Presence:

Despite Mizrahi and Sephardi Jews, Israel is not a native presence in the ME in the sense that it has natural allies. The dynamics of a region change quite a bit in a couple thousand years. Israel's relationships are still predominantly Western through the colonial process it used to re-establish itself. They don't have the population size to change the landscape in their favor, as many colonial efforts did. That means long term survival in a sea of nations unlike Israel will have to depend on forging relationships within that region. It is not logical to think it can be maintained through force alone over centuries.

In the end, I think that despite Professor Walt's arguments, little will be done until Israel itself decides its future in the region is not sustainable through force alone. The only thing that would bring that fact home is the shifting in the power structure of the region. Of all the suggestions, only number one simulates that impact enough to make it comprehensible. At the same time, it is not possible for the reasons the Professor indicates. The others may bring the Israeli's to the table, but they would still bargain as if the BOP will always favor them, which would just open another Pandora's box of issues.

Professor Walt has abandoned all pretensions to academic rationality and has now become a naked propagandist gussied up in a graduation gown. Some examples:

"Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and now Barack Obama have all publicly stated that the United States seeks a "two-state" solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In other words, the United States supports the creation of a viable Palestinian state in virtually all of the West Bank and Gaza. "

"virtually all" is both false and prejudicial. Presidents have repeatedly recognized Israel's need to retain major settlement blocks. What is more, "West Bank" is often code to include East Jerusalem. The status of Jerusalem is widely acknowledged as a separate matter, and it is by no means clear whether internationalization, Israeli control, or Palestinian control will be the outcome of those negotiations.

"The new Israeli government led by Benjamin Netanyahu opposes this goal",

Having lied about the goal--it may be HIS goal, but not that of US policy, Professor Walt proceeds to assume it is, in fact the US goal and that thus the Israeli government is opposed to the US on US policy.

"and Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman has already said that he does not think Israel is bound by its recent commitments on this issue."

Again the distortions of a naked propagandist. Lieberman has said that the road map is accepted by the Israeli government, having been ratified by it. Annapolis is not, since it both has not been so ratified and in any case it has been vitiated by non-performance of Palestinian requirements.

"To advance its own interests, therefore, the United States will have to pursue a more even-handed policy than it has in the past",

Here "even handed" is code for siding with the murderers against the victims. That has never been an American publicly supported value, no matter how much Walt tries to gussy it up in "realist" clothing.

""special relationship" -- where the U.S. gives Israel generous and nearly-unconditional support -- the United States and Israel would have a more normal relationship, akin to U.S. relations with other democracies (where public criticism and overt pressure sometimes occurs)."

I don't hear Walt arguing for abandonment of the "special relationship" with Egypt (look at the aid numbers) or with the Saudis who, while funding the anti-Israel crowd continue to act in ways far more inimical to US interests than Israel has ever done, not only with respect to oil but also with respect to 9/11 investigations and other key matters.

"Several weeks ago, a bipartisan panel of distinguished foreign policy experts headed by Henry Siegman and Brent Scowcroft"

Siegman is a notorious anti-Israeli advocate who has lied publicly about Israel actions and US interests. I write as a fellow member of the Council on Foreign Relations at the time, who was disgusted on substantive grounds with Siegman's biased reports on policy toward Israel. Siegman has been repeatedly proven wrong in the event with respect to the results of Israeli concessions. He is no longer leading the Council's Israel-related projects.

The crypto-Saudi lobby ("follow the money") has a small number of well-known, highly vocal members who do NOT speak for US policy, as much as they would wish to. Although they have a high visibility, their propaganda line is inimical, rather than supportive of US interests, including the extension of democracy and reduction of sectarian murder throughout the world. At bottom, the so-called "realist" position is simply Chamberlains appeasement policy toward Hitler, modernized and cast in polite terms. Let us not forget that there were plenty of US isolationists prior to World War II and many Nazi sympathizers among the US elite and famous. They did not represent America nor American policy.

As for the rest of Walt's diatribe in academic clothing (remember the famous wolf in sheep's clothing?) it is little more than an advocacy for US complicity in the destruction of Israel as the sole Jewish State in a sea of 32 Arab/Moslem States, on the most specious claims and assumptions about "realism". Given the Israeli counterbalance to Arab oligopoly political power, it is pro-US interest, not inimical to US interests, as any serious anti-trust economist or lawyer will be happy to testify.

And in fact that is Walt's fatal flaw; he is a political scientist with an axe to grind, not a serious student of economics. In fact without any need to refer to oligopoly theory, the direct benefits the US has received from Israel in computer, medical, agricultural and other science and technology far exceeds the costs of US aid. The benefits to US economy and society from Intel's Israeli technology alone have been massive and with the Nehalem chips will only grow. It is not for nothing that American science and technology venture capitalists are massively drawn to Israel while largely ignoring the Arab countries, most significantly the "Palestinians".

After following Walt's work in recent years, I have come to the conclusion that he has lost any right to be handled with the respect honest academics deserve. Instead, he uses a variety of propaganda tricks, misstatements of fact, and outright prejudice to forward his anti-Israel and thinly disguised anti-semitic views. The basic notion of the "israel Lobby" argument (since modified somewhat) is, at bottom, anti-semitic. American Jews have the same rights as unions, seniors, and Saudi sympathizers to petition their government individually and in groups as representative of US interests. What is more, most of the so-called Israel Lobby's putative organizations are funded by citizens who DO reflect part of a consensus about US interests; contrast this with the far more inimical to US interests Saudi influence paid for by a foreign government, from which Walt and his friends derive direct or 'once met' indirect financial support.

David Sternlight, Ph.D.
Los Angeles

What is more, most of the so-called Israel Lobby's putative organizations are funded by citizens who DO reflect part of a consensus about US interests;

"the so-called Israel Lobby", yeah, who are those Guys?, they don't have any legal status to represents any group. They cannot represent Jews or any other SPEE for SPEEs right to law is not recognised by the Constitution. In fact the IL and similar structures are by-product of the State.
When the State deny the right to law of SPEEs, some self appointed entities emerge to fill the authority/leadership gap of the SPEEs created by the denial. Therefore, there is no legal way to decide whose interests this type of structures represent. But hey! Maybe they DO reflect part of the consensus about Israel's National Interests as indicated from their name. Only Jupiter knows the best!
But even then who can tell Israel's National Interests are in harmony with the "national" Interests of Jews and the US National Interests?

David Sternlight Mate!, it is no argument to beg for the existence of similar non-legal structures to justify the activities of the so-called IL.

Grand Sen~or.

Why the Oslo Accords Should Be Abrogated by Israel

Louis Rene Beres - Apr 06, 2009
The Freeman Center

Benjamin Netanyahu, the new Prime Minister of Israel, intends to honor those portions of the Oslo Accords that have already become "facts on the ground." Although this intention would appear to support the authoritative expectations of international law, exactly the opposite is true. As the following argument makes clear, international law now requires abrogation, not compliance, with these invalid and illegal agreements.

The Oslo Accords between Israel and the PLO are in violation of international law. Israel, therefore, is now obligated to abrogate these nontreaty agreements. A comparable argument could be made regarding PLO obligations, but this would make little jurisprudential sense in light of that particular nonstate party`s intrinsic incapacity to enter into a legal arrangement with Israel.

Taken by itself, the fact that the Oslo accords do not constitute authentic treaties under the Vienna Convention - because they link a state with a nonstate party - does not call for abrogation. But as the nonstate party in this case just happens to be a terrorist organization whose leaders must be punished for their egregious crimes, any agreement with this party that offers rewards rather than punishments is entirely null and void. Significantly, in view of the peremptory expectation known in law as Nullum crimen sine poena, "No crime without a punishment," the state party in such an agreement - here the State of Israel - violates international law by honoring the agreement.

According to Principle I of the binding Nuremberg Principles: "Any person who commits an act which constitutes a crime under international law is responsible therefore and liable to punishment." It is from this principle, which applies with particular relevance to Hostes humani generis ("Common enemies of humankind") and which originates in three separate passages of the Jewish Torah, that each state`s obligation to seek out and prosecute terrorists derives. Hence, for Israel to honor agreements with terrorists - agreements that require, among other pertinent violations - the release of thousands of other terrorists - is to dishonor the very meaning of international law.

Is Yasser Arafat personally a terrorist? In the U.S. case of Klinghoffer v. Palestine Liberation Organization, the court answered in the affirmative. In the Israeli courts, a petition to charge Yasser Arafat with terrorist crimes was submitted to Israel`s High Court of Justice in May 1994. This petition, filed by Shimon Prachik, an officer in the IDF reserves, and Moshe Lorberaum, who was injured in a 1978 bus bombing carried out by the PLO, called for Arafat`s arrest. The petition noted that Arafat, prima facie, had been responsible for numerous terror attacks in Israel and abroad, including murder, airplane hijacking, hostage-taking, letter-bombing and hijacking of ships on the high seas. The petitioner`s allegation of Arafat`s direct personal responsibility for terrorism was seconded and confirmed by Dr. Ahmad Tibi, Arafat`s most senior adviser: "The person responsible on behalf of the Palestinian people for everything that was done in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is Yasser Arafat," said Dr. Tibi on July 13, 1994, "and this man shook hands with Yitzhak Rabin."

Terrorism is not the only crime in which Arafat and many of the released Palestinian prisoners are complicit. Related Nuremberg-category crimes, including crimes of war and crimes against humanity, were also committed by these persons. In this connection, the new Prime Minister should recall that units of the Palestine Liberation Army (PLA) served with Saddam Hussein`s forces in occupied Kuwait, making them, and Yasser Arafat personally (the legal principle of command responsibility is known as respondeat superior, or "Let the Master Answer") responsible for multiple crimes of extraordinary horror and ferocity. And if these offenses were not enough of an affront to world law, many of the terrorists now being released from Israeli jails in furtherance of the Oslo accords are immediately accepting high positions in the Palestine Authority`s security forces.

Even if the nonstate party to the Oslo accords were not a terrorist organization, Israel would have entered into an agreement of unequal obligations, an agreement where the PLO would not be held under international law to the same standards of accountability. Several recent federal court decisions in the United States reaffirm that agreements between nonstate and state parties impose asymmetrical compliance expectations. For example, in a concurring statement in the case of Tel-Oren v. Libyan Arab Republic, a 1981 civil suit in U.S. federal courts in which the plaintiffs were Israeli survivors and representatives of persons murdered in a terrorist bus attack in Israel in 1978, Circuit Judge Harry T. Edwards stated: "../...I do not believe the law of nations imposes the same responsibility or liability on nonstate actors, such as the PLO, as it does on states and persons acting under color of state law."

The PLO, of course, is a terrorist organization, and Israel has no right to honor the Oslo accords` requirement to release convicted members of that organization. No government, in fact, has the right to lawfully pardon or grant immunity to terrorists with respect to criminally sanctionable violations of international law. In the United States, it is evident from the Constitution that the President`s power to pardon does not encompass violations of international law, and is limited to "Offenses against the United States." This limitation derives from a broader prohibition that binds all states, including Israel, namely the overriding claims of pertinent peremptory rules stemming from Higher Law or the Law of Nature. These claims are identified in Blackstone`s COMMENTARIES, which acknowledge that all law "results from those principles of natural justice, in which all the learned of every nation agree../..../.."

In its apprehension and incarceration of terrorists, Israel acted, however unintentionally, not only for itself, but on behalf of the entire community of states. Moreover, because some of the jailed terrorists had committed crimes against other states as well as against Israel, the government in Jerusalem cannot possibly pardon these offenses against other sovereigns. The Jewish State, therefore, possesses absolutely no right to grant immunity for terrorist violations of international law. No matter what might be permissible under its own Basic Law and the Oslo accords, any freeing of terrorists is legally incorrect. By its freeing of terrorists, Israel is guilty of what is known in law as a "denial of justice."

Israel`s obligation to abrogate the Oslo accords, as we have seen, stems from certain peremptory expectations of international law. Israel, however, has substantial rights of abrogation here apart from such expectations. These rights derive from the doctrine of Rebus sic stantibus. Defined literally as "So long as conditions remain the same," this doctrine of changed circumstances now augments Israel`s obligations to cease compliance with Oslo. This is because Israel`s traditional obligations to the accords ended promptly when a fundamental change occurred in those circumstances that existed at the effective dates of the accords and whose continuance formed a tacit condition of the accords` ongoing validity. This change, of course, involved multiple material breaches by the PLO, especially those concerning control of anti-Israel terrorism and extradition of terrorists. In short, Rebus sic stantibus has become pertinent for Israeli abrogation because of the profound change created by the PLO in the very circumstances that formed the cause, motive and rationale of consent.

According to Oslo expectations, Arafat should be actively committed to control of anti-Israel terrorism. Yet, as THE JERUSALEM POST pointed out correctly in a mid-March 1996 editorial, "Arafat not only shelters terrorists; he lets them incite, recruit, organize, train, arm, raise funds, and launch operations from areas under his control. This is now indisputable."

The "head of the snake," admitted former Prime Minister Shimon Peres, "is in Gaza." And it is in Gaza, PLO-controlled Gaza, that Hamas - allegedly at odds with PLO - has been fomenting much of its terror campaign against Israel. It is the Palestinian security services that sustain this Hamas campaign. In the words of THE JERUSALEM POST:

"It was the Hamas leadership in Gaza which decided on terrorist strikes and issued operational orders for the bus bombings. It was in Gaza that the Hamas military organization trained suicide bombers and assembled explosives. It was in Gaza that "the engineer" Yihye Ayyash found shelter until he was killed, and where his successor Mohammed Dief has been living openly. It was in Gaza that Arafat`s Preventive Security chief was negotiating with Dief - a close friend - both before and after the first bus bombing. He knew of Dief`s involvement in the bombing and did nothing either to detain him or prevent the next outrage."

Israel`s obligation to terminate the Oslo accords stems also from a related principle of national self-preservation. Under this peremptory norm, any agreement may be terminated unilaterally following changes in conditions that make performance of the agreement injurious to fundamental rights, especially the rights of existence and independence. Known in law as "rights of necessity," this norm was explained with particular lucidity by none other than Thomas Jefferson. In his "Opinion on the French Treaties," written on April 28, 1793, Jefferson stated that when performance, in international agreements, "becomes impossible, nonperformance is not immoral. So if performance becomes self- destructive to the party, the law of self-preservation overrules the laws of obligation to others." Later, in that same document, Jefferson wrote: "The nation itself, bound necessarily to whatever its preservation and safety require, cannot enter into engagements contrary to its indispensable obligations." Israel, the reader should recall, has an "indispensable obligation" to endure.

How, exactly, do the Oslo accords impair this obligation? Here is what THE JERUSALEM POST had to say about the expected consequences of Oslo II:

" ../...the implementation of Oslo II signals the relinquishment of Israel`s security control over the territories and the assumption of such control by the PLO. For the first time, there will be a large PLO army on the outskirts of Israel`s major population centers, and it will be in control of strategic areas which dominate Israel`s heartland. Soon, Israel will be able to control neither the influx of Palestinians from refugee camps in neighboring countries nor the importation of arms. To expect such an arrangement to bring anything but unrest, terrorism and ultimately war, is to live in a world of make believe."

To better understand this "world of make believe," it is instructive to consider the Charter of Hamas, another terrorist organization that is central to current difficulties in implementing "peace." According to this Charter:

Peace initiatives, the so-called peaceful solutions, and the international conferences to resolve the Palestinian problem, are all contrary to the beliefs of the Islamic Resistance Movement. For renouncing any part of Palestine means renouncing part of the religion; the nationalism of the Islamic Resistance Movement is part of its faith, the movement educates its members to adhere to its principles and to raise the banner of Allah over their homeland as they fight their Jihad../..../..There is no solution to the Palestinian problem except by Jihad../..../..In order to face the usurpation of Palestine by the Jews, we have no escape from raising the banner of Jihad../..../..We must imprint on the minds of generations of Muslims that the Palestinian problem is a religious one, to be dealt with on this premise../..../.."I swear by that who
holds in His Hands the Soul of Muhammad! I indeed wish to go to war for the sake of Allah! I will assault and kill;, assault and kill, assault and kill.

Regarding relationships with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), the Hamas Charter offers the following: "The PLO is among the closest to the Hamas, for it constitutes a father, a brother, a relative, a friend. Can a Muslim turn away from his father, his brother, his relative of his friend? Our homeland is one, our calamity is one, our destiny is one and our enemy is common to both of us../..../.." On the primacy of hatred toward Judaism, not Israel (i.e., Israel is despised because it is Jewish), the Hamas Charter states: "Israel, by virtue of its being Jewish and of having a Jewish population, defies Islam and the Muslims. `Let the eyes of the cowards not fall asleep.`"

After the assassination of terrorist Yechya Ayyash, known widely as "The Engineer," Yasser Arafat delivered a eulogy in Dura, near Hebron. Speaking before a large crowd of Hamas supporters, Arafat praised all "Palestinian martyrs," including those who had murdered Israeli women and children in schools, buses and homes. Referring to the imminent takeover of Jerusalem from the Jews, Arafat expressed confidence that, "in a few months, we will pray together at the Al-Aksa mosque,:" adding that "those who don`t like it can go and drink the water of the Dead Sea."

At a eulogy given on June 15, 1995, for Abed Al Karim Al Aklok, a former PLO official, Arafat remarked: "We are all seekers of martyrdom in the path of truth and right toward Jerusalem the capital of the State of Palestine../..../..We will continue this difficult Jihad, this long Jihad, this arduous Jihad, in the path of martyrs - via death - the path of sacrifice../..../.." On January 30, 1996, speaking to 40 Arab diplomats at the Grand Hotel in Stockholm, Sweden, Arafat`s topic was: "The Impending Total Collapse of Israel." Said Arafat, "We Palestinians will take over everything, including all of Jerusalem../..../..All the rich Jews who will get compensation will travel to America." Further: "We of the PLO will now concentrate all our efforts on splitting Israel psychologically into two camps. Within five years we will have six to seven million Arabs living on the West Bank and in Jerusalem../..../..You understand that we plan to eliminate the State of Israel and establish a purely Palestinian State../..../..I have no usefor Jews; they are and remain Jews. We now need all the help we can get from you in our battle for a united Palestine under total Arab-Moslem domination."

Regarding the Oslo accords and Israel`s vulnerability to war, Israeli security is now increasingly dependent upon nuclear weapons and strategy. Faced with a codified and substantial loss of territories - a loss that might still be enlarged by transfer to Syria of the Golan Heights - the Jewish State will have to decide on how to compensate for its diminished strategic depth. While this shrinkage does not necessarily increase Israel`s existential vulnerability to unconventional missile attack, it surely does increase that state`s susceptibility to attacking ground forces and to subsequent enemy occupation. And the loss of strategic depth will almost certainly be interpreted by enemy states as a significant weakening of Israel`s overall defense posture, an interpretation that could lead to great enemy incentives to strike first.

Should Israel`s sacrifice of strategic depth occasioned by the Oslo accords result in a Palestinian state, the geostrategic victory of the Islamic world would be complemented by something less tangible but no less critical: an Arab and Iranian perception of an ongoing and unstoppable momentum against the Jewish State, a jihad-centered perception of military inevitability that would reiterate the policies of war. Recognizing such perceptions, Israel could be forced to take its bomb out of the "basement," and/or it could have to accept a greater willingness to launch preemptive strikes against enemy hard targets.

For their part, certain Arab states and/or Iran would respond to such Israeli decisions. Made aware of Israel`s policy shifts - shifts that would stem from both Israel`s Oslo-generated territorial vulnerabilities and from its awareness of enemy perceptions spawned by the Oslo-generated creation of Palestine, these enemy states could respond in more or less parallel fashion. Here, preparing openly for nuclearization and aggression against Israel, these states would illustrate dramatically certain far-reaching results of the Oslo accords - results that are still generally unrecognized and that provide, together with other above-listed rationales, a fully authoritative basis for permissible abrogation.

There is one last point that would need to be emphasized by Israel`s new Government. Contrary to widely disseminated but wholly erroneous allegations, a Palestinian state did not exist before 1967 or 1948. A state of Palestine was not promised by authoritative U.N. Security Council Resolution # 242. Indeed, a state of Palestine has never existed.

As a nonstate legal entity, Palestine ceased to exist in 1948, when Great Britain relinquished its League of Nations mandate. When, during the 1948-49 War of Independence, Judea/Samaria and Gaza came under illegal control of Jordan and Egypt respectively, these aggressor states did not put an end to an already-existing state. Fromn the Biblical Period (ca.1350 BCE to 586 BCE) to the British Mandate (1918-48), the land named by the Romans after the ancient Philistines (a naming intended to punish and demean the Jews) was controlled exclusively by non-Palestinian elements. Significantly, however, a continuous chain of Jewish possession of the land was legally recognized after World War I at the San Remo Conference of April 1920. There, a binding treaty was signed in which Great Britain was given mandatory authority over Palestine (the area had been ruled by the Ottoman Turks since 1516) to prepare it to become the "national home for the Jewish People."

Palestine, according to the treaty, comprised territories encompassing what are now the states of Jordan and Israel, including Judea/Samaria and Gaza. Present-day Israel, including Judea/Samaria and Gaza, comprises only twenty-two percent of Palestine as defined and ratified at the San Remo Peace Conference. In 1922, Great Britain unilaterally and illegally split off 78 percent of the lands promised to the Jews - all of Palestine east of the Jordan River - and gave it to Abdullah, the non-Palestinian son of the Sharif of Mecca. Eastern Palestine now took the name Transjordan, which it retained until April 1949, when it was renamed as Jordan.

From the moment of its creation, Transjordan was closed to all Jewish migration and settlement, a clear betrayal of the British promise in the Balfour Declaration of 1917 and a patent contravention of its Mandatory obligations. On July 20, 1951, a Palestinian assassinated King Abdullah because of his hostility to Palestinian nationalist aspirations. Several years prior to Abdullah`s killing, in 1947, the newly-formed United Nations, rather than designate the entire land west of the Jordan River as the Jewish National Homeland, enacted a second partition. Ironically, because this second fission again gave unfair advantage to the Arabs, Jewish leaders accepted the painful judgment while the Arab states rejected it.

On May 15, 1948, exactly one day after the State of Israel came into existence, Azzam Pasha, Secretary General of the Arab League, declared to the tiny new nation founded upon the ashes of the Holocaust: "This will be a war of extermination and a momentous massacre../..../.." This genocidal declaration has been and remains to this day at the heart of all subsequent Arab orientations toward Israel. In 1967, almost twenty years after Israel`s entry into the community of nations, the Jewish State - as a result of its stunning military victory over Arab aggressor states - gained unintended control over Judea/Samaria and Gaza. Although the idea of the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war is enshrined in the U.N. Charter, there existed no authoritative sovereign to whom the territories could be "returned." Israel could hardly have been expected to transfer these territories back to Jordan and Egypt, which had exercised unauthorized and cruel control since the Arab-initiated war of extermination in 1948-49. Moreover, the idea of Palestinian "self- determination" was only just beginning to emerge after the Six-Day War, and was not even codified in U.N. Security Council Resolution #242, which was adopted on November 22, 1967. For their part, the Arab states convened a summit in Khartoum in August 1967, concluding "No peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel, no negotiations with it../..../.."

Prime Minister Netanyahu, please take heed. International law does not require compliance with the Oslo Accords. It requires abrogation of these illegal agreements.

Louis Rene Beres is Professor of International Law, Department of Political Science, Purdue University.

Prime Minister Netanyahu, please take heed. International law does not require compliance with the Oslo Accords. It requires abrogation of these illegal agreements.

hehhe You Guys are getting real desperate to save the State;->>

Professor! here you go Mate! There are people more enthusiastic than yourself. Why don't you please, please join the Club;->>

On the other hand this Guy is not aware of the SATFP Axiom:

4. There exists no central authority in that arena that can enforce moral or legal constraints.

or he is trying to push it under the carpet begging Mr Yahu to play the Central Authority;->

When people get desperate to save the "State" they are even capable to deny the Axiom 4 and invent a Central Authority - the Ultimate Secularo-fascist Structure;->
Professor beware of this Guy Mate!;->>

I love this Blog, all the way Mate!

Grand Sen~or.

Israel is a legitimate, sovereign state. Describing it as our "client" (something that would apply as much to Egypt and other nations) serves no purpose to de-legitimize it. Moreover, given that virtually all the Arab states in the region are wholly artificial, the creations of the British and French colonial offices with no or little national sentiment and virtually no history, and in no case founded on popular or representative institutions, they are no more and arguably less legitimate than Israel. Similar comments can be made with respect to the issue of losing a war and moving on: the Palestinians have repeatedly lost wars; they should take that advice.

The underlying premise of Professor Walt's article and many of the comments is that our support of Israel and Israeli policy remains the fundamental problem that we have in the Middle East. The problem with this argument is that Arab hostility to Israel dates back to its creation, indeed to the fact of its creation, at a period in which our dependence on Mid-East oil was much less than today, our relative national power far greater, and our relations with the Arab world generally better. So, it wasn't just the current borders and settlement that the Arab world finds unacceptable. This remains true of much of the Arab world today and is explictly stated in Hamas' charter, in Saudi and Egyptian religious teachings, for that matter in the PLO's statements and textbooks. There is no evidence that any of that is going to change. At issue is the refusal of most of the Arab world to accept a non-Muslim state in its midst, something as true today towards a Jewish state as it was during the Crusades towards a Christian state, even though virtually the entire Arab world originally belonged to non-Arabs from whom it was conquered. It seems to me that what the Arab world holds to and we are urged to accept is something akin to the Brezhnev doctrine except that in this case what is Muslim remains so and what isn't is subject to discussion.

An even-handed approach would be more forceful on the issue of Muslim attitudes towards non-Muslims, not just pressuring Israel. In other words, requiring the Saudis to allow non-Muslim religious institutions on Saudi soil, non-Muslims to visit Mecca, full citizenship rights for non-Muslims in all neighboring countries etc. None of that comes into Professor Walt's approach, this despite the fact that the Saudis are active and in many cases at the root of all the radicalization currently going on throughout the Muslim world, something made possible by their oil wealth (which they stole from the British and US companies that discovered it). A more rational US approach would focus on breaking up OPEC and compelling the Arab world to accept a more religiously pluralistic policy.

With respect to the general issue of the two-state solution, I'm curious as to why this can't be achieved in Jordan? Jordan was part of the original British mandate, in fact by far the larger part. Jewish settlement in this region was long ago stopped by the British. Jordan is almost 90% Palestinian. Its monarchy owes its existence to British policy. Historically, there has never been a state called Jordan. A two-state approach on these lines, with religious freedom and access to Jerusalem guaranteed, would satisfy Israel's security concerns and create a viable Palestinian state on territory to which the Palestinians actually have some claim. Why is that unacceptable?

And yes the Israel Lobby does control policy and is a dictator, once again not allowing any other view to be heard.

Why can't it be Jordan? Because that's not the way its supposed to work, genius.
http://www.irmep.org

Some of you sound like the same christain sionists who brought us this mess to begin with!!

Do me a favor thugs. Go here and see what your state really is, and what it does, as its a failing state.
http://desertpeace.wordpress.com

Zionism is nothing less than a failure. The sooner all people throw off this failure and with it the monarchy, the better for everyone who's left.

Prof. Walt has outlined many mechanisms for the application of power by the US but has not explored all the possible reasons for doing so.

HUMAN RIGHTS: THE OCCUPATION SHOULD BE CONDUCTED LAWFULLY

The occupation has lasted 42 years and may well last another 42 years. The US should insist (and use all the methods Prof. Walt listed to enforce this insistence) that Israel conduct the occupation lawfully. This is not an issue of "peace" or "justice" or "National Rights" of either people. It is an issue of "Human Rights" for those Palestinians (and Golanis) who live under occupation.

Following the ICJ's July 9, 2004, advisory opinion, the US should begin (but not end) its pressure toward lawfulness by insisting that Israel remove the wall and remove the settlers. There are many more points of legality, but the US should start here.

Such insistence would not advance "peace" except to the extent that Israel would see that, to a certain extent, the "game is up." It would not infringe Israeli sovereignty in any way.

Such insistence could be described (especially to the US Congress) as a move to support the "Rule of Law" while not threatening Israel's security in any way, the wall being relocatable to pre-1967 Israel with equivalent security to pre-1967 Israel and the settlers being no security help whatever.

In fact, TEACHING should be a large part of the president's arsenal of techniques. Both the US public and Congress need to learn as much about the Israel/Palestine history as Prof. Walt knows. Maintaining the US's support for the unlawful and anti-Human Rights occupation will grow difficult through "cognitive dissonance" in public and Congress.

Even if the US's ultimate intention were to apply pressure on Israel to make a satisfactory peace, it would be helpful to establish a "right" (as against the Congressional/AIPAC axis) to apply pressure against Israel "at all", and a project to promote the Rule of Law would be a good "training ground" for developing such a "right."

THE PRESENT ONE-STATE "SOLUTION"

Right now, Israel is presiding over its hard-liners' second-favorite "solution", the single, confessional, undemocratic, apartheid state which has existed since June 1967. Israel may be presumed to be prepared to live with this one-state solution for a very long time.

The best alternative, from a hard-line Israeli perspective is complete removal of all Palestinians from whatever land Israel ultimately chooses to declare to be its territory, and that removal will necessarily be at least violent and to some extent deadly, just as in 1948 and 1967.

The US should declare that both "transfer" ("ethnic cleansing") and continued "apartheid" are unsatisfactory not only in the long run but in the short run. Ideally, the US should say something about the unacceptability of the results of the "ethnic cleansings" of 1948 and 1967, also known as the refugee problem.

"While reaffirming America’s commitment to Israel’s existence as a Jewish-majority state . . . "

Israel cannot maintain itself as a Jewish-majority state without anti-democratic and racist means. For the US to countenance such is to maintain the rank hypocrisy that has made us hated throughout the ME and fueled violence against Israel. What are to tell the nearly 30% of the Israeli population that is not Jewish - if indeed a viable Palestine ever emerges? Sorry, for the sake of political convenience we've decided you should remain a third-class citizen? Or perhaps should we allow Israel to shove them from their own country?

The United States should not be in the business of affirming ethnic cleansing and religious discrimination. We should affirm only that we believe all men to be created equal and that true democracies are those that are states of all their citizens. Contrary to the assertions of Walt and Mearsheimer there is not moral argument for the existence of a state that depends on discrimination for its survival.

The Proposed Palestinian State: A Deal-Maker or a Deal-Breaker?

Yoram Ettinger - Apr 10, 2009
Straight from the Jerusalem Cloakroom, Issue #223

1. The Palestinian issue was a deal-breaker during Israel-Egypt peace negotiation. In defiance of Carter and Brzezinski – the "Palestine Firsters" – and in spite of Palestinian terrorist threats - Begin and Sadat introduced a Palestinian-bypass, thus concluding a peace accord. Their determination to overcome White House and Foggy Bottom preoccupation with the Palestinian issue as, supposedly, the root core of the Arab-Israeli conflict and Mideast violence, produced a peace treaty. It has lowered the prospect of an Arab-Israeli war, has decreased regional tension and has advanced US interests.

2. The Israel-Egypt precedent documents that the road to peace goes through Arab capitals and not through Ramallah or Gaza, that the Palestinian issue does not constitute the crown-jewel of Arab politics, that the Palestinians do not possess veto power over Arab policy-making, that the Palestinian issue has not been the cause to the Arab-Israeli conflict and that the Palestinian issue has been employed by Mideast radicals as a fuel – and not as water – to the Mideast fire.

3. During the October 1998 Israel-Jordan peace ceremony, Jordan`s top military command impressed upon their Israeli colleagues to oppose the establishment of a Palestinian state west of the Jordan River, since "it would constitute a death-sentence to the Hashemite regime." They expressed their disillusionment with Palestinian commitments, "which are signed in the morning and violated in the evening."

4. Israel-Jordan, as well as Israel-Egypt, peace treaties have withstood Palestinian opposition and have prevailed despite an on-going Israeli war against Palestinian PLO and Hamas terrorism.

5. A dramatic departure from the Road Map of the Israel-Egypt and Israel-Jordan peace treaties has been committed by the 1993 Oslo Accord and its derivatives: Hebron and Wye Accords, 2nd Camp David and Sharem A-Sheikh conferences, the "Disengagement," Zinni and Mitchell Plans and the Road Map toward a Two States solution. Never has "peace process" yielded so much failure, hate-education, terrorism and bloodshed and no success. Oslo and its by-products have subordinated the Road Map to an Israel-Arab Peace, Israel`s national security and US vital interests to the resolution of the Palestinian issue. Switching focus from the Israel-Arab path to the Israel-Palestinian path, and irrespective of Western and Israeli good intentions, the Oslo Accord and its off-springs have played into the hands of Mideast rogue regimes and terrorists.

6. The "Palestine First" approach has produced dozens of initiatives, conferences, summits, agreements and cease fire episodes, which have yielded a series of short-lived illusions of peace and false sense of security. It has been promptly and systematically violated and crashed - since Oslo 1993 - by an unprecedented wave of Palestinian hate-education, the manufacturing line of generic terrorism and homicide bombing.

7. The Two States solution is based on a series of erroneous assumptions, ignoring documented precedents, and therefore constituting an erroneous policy. "Israel and Palestine living side-by-side in peace," while the PLO and Hamas have been engaged in a horrific civil war, while there has not been inter-Arab peace during the last 1,400 years, while there has not been inter-Arab compliance with most inter-Arab agreements during the last 1,400 years, while there has not been a single Arab democracy during the last 1,400 years??? The Two States solution has exacerbated regional turbulence, has fueled terrorism, has promoted war and has reduced the prospects for peace, thus undermining the national security of both the US and Israel.

8. Drafting demography to the cause of the Two States solution constitutes either a dramatic mistake or an outrageous act of misleading (please see http://yoramettinger.newsnet.co.il/Front/Newsnet/reports.asp?reportId=266030).

Funny, last time I checked Israel was a sovereign nation. Hold your dimes and nickels if you must, but do not patronize Israel on the issue of its security. The notion that Jews are responsible for the turmoil in Israel is exactly the reason there is a Jewish homeland. If left to the likes of the Europeans who already abandoned Jews, there would be no Jew left standing.

Walt reminds me of the drunk who lost his keys and was looking under a street light far from where he dropped them, because "the light is better here".

"Dr. Ismail Radwan, a senior political leader of Hamas, stated that Hamas will not deal with or be part of any government which recognizes the occupation, and will not accept the demands of the Quartet."

Israel is not the problem; Hamas is. Since they de facto govern Gaza and they are the problem (being both intransigent and rocketing neighboring civilians indiscriminately) it would be a simple act to transfer Gazan aid from UNRWA (a status quo maintenance organization) to UNHCR (a refugee resettlement organization). Then aid to Hamas could be stopped and the existing UN funds used largely for resettlement to places willing to take Gazans. That would remove the bulk of Hamas' political base, aid peace, and long-term have high international benefit to cost ratio. Such a transfer of aid supervision, with its threat alone, might compel more rationality in Hamas; if not, then population transfer should be facilitated.

The demographic, economic, and density problem in Gaza alone, created originally by the Arab States keeping Palestinians in refugee camps as a bargaining chip against Israel, should be enough to motivate most Gazans seeking a better life to resettle voluntarily out of their own self-interest. That would have the side benefit of reducing population density in Gaza to a more "normal" level and thus improving living conditions there as well.

Another way of pressuring Israel is by the US declaring that it will abandon the two state solution, and that it will call for one state for all of its citizens if a two states solution is not implemented within 2 years?

Then Israel will have to choose between:

1- Accept a two states solution based on international law.
2- Become a normal country that treats its citizens equally regardless of race or religion and therefore cease to be a Jewish state.