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Why Does the U.S. Get All the Tornadoes?
Posted By Stephen M. Walt
Tuesday, April 28, 2009 - 3:47 PM
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In Every War Must End, his classic study of war termination, Fred Iklé coined the term "treason of the hawks" to describe those tragic situations where hardliners stubbornly refuse to make peace and thereby lead their countries to disaster. Iklé, who served as Ronald Reagan’s under secretary of defense and is certainly no dove, recognized that obstinate opposition to making peace is as dangerous to a nation's future as naïve pacifism and potentially as damaging as deliberately selling out to the enemy.
After pointing out that "treason" is a word that carries especially harsh moral connotations, Iklé noted:
[T]he English language is without a word of equally strong opprobrium to designate acts that can lead to the destruction of one’s government and one’s country, not by giving aid and comfort to the enemy, but by making enemies, not by fighting too little, but by fighting too much and too long. 'Adventurism' -- much too weak a word -- is perhaps the best term to describe this 'treason of the hawks.' ... Treason can help our enemies destroy our country by making them stronger; adventurism can destroy our country by making our enemies more numerous."
I was reminded of Iklé’s insights when I read about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ideas for resuming the peace process with the Palestinians. Netanyahu clearly wants to avoid an open rift with the Obama administration, which has forcefully reiterated its commitment to negotiating a two-state solution. To do that, he has to pay lip service to the peace process. But because Netanyahu has long opposed the creation of a viable Palestinian state and instead wants to extend Israel's control of the West Bank, he has to lay out a set of demands that will endlessly delay the process and make it hard for Obama to put meaningful pressure on him.
According to Ha'aretz, Netanyahu will insist that the Palestinians go beyond their prior recognition of Israel's right to exist (as expressed in the 1993 Oslo Accord) and explicitly recognize Israel as a "Jewish state." Furthermore, he wants the United States to agree that a future Palestinian state be barred from possessing its own army and forbidden from making alliances with other countries, while Israel is permitted to monitor its borders, its airspace, and its use of the electromagnetic spectrum, presumably in perpetuity. In the meantime, the expansion of Israeli settlements will surely continue, and in ways that will soon preclude any possibility of a territorially contiguous state on the West Bank. Lastly, Netanyahu wants to link progress toward a two-state solution with an end to Iran's nuclear program. As I've noted before, this condition would allow Tehran -- purposely or inadvertently -- to derail a two-state solution by stonewalling on the nuclear issue. Ironically, this outcome might suit Iran and Netanyahu alike: Israel could keep expanding settlements and the Islamic Republic could continue to play the Palestine card against its Arab rivals.
My question is this: What is Netanyahu thinking? Doesn't he realize that time has nearly run out for the two-state solution, and that failure to achieve it is by far the most serious threat facing Israel? The prime minister and his allies keep harping about an "existential" threat from Iran, but this bogeyman is mostly nonsense. Iran has zero -- repeat, zero -- nuclear weapons today, and even if it were to acquire a few at some point in the future, it could not use them against nuclear-armed Israel without committing national suicide. Let me say that again: national suicide.
And could someone please explain to Netanyahu that a group of devout Muslim clerics aren't likely to fire warheads at a land that contains the third holiest site in Islam? Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has said some remarkably foolish things about the Holocaust and repeatedly questioned Israel's legitimacy (as in his oft-mistranslated statement about Israel "vanishing from the page of time"), but he's never threatened to murder millions of Israelis (and Palestinians) with nuclear weapons. Just last weekend, he even told ABC's George Stephanopolous that if the Palestinians reached an agreement with Israel, then Iran would support it. Moreover, as Roger Cohen has noted, there is no evidence that Ahmadinejad has any particular animus toward Iran's own Jewish community. Despite his many offensive statements, in short, Ahmadinejad is not Adolf Hitler and we are not living in the 1930s.
The real threat to Israel's future is the occupation, and the conflict with the Palestinians that it perpetuates. To see that, all you have to do is look at current demographic trends and poll results and then ponder the consequences for Israel. There are presently about 5.6 million Jews in "Greater Israel," (i.e., the 1967 borders plus the West Bank) and about 5.2 million Arabs (of whom nearly 1.5 million are citizens of Israel). Palestinian birth rates are substantially higher, however, which means they will be a majority of the population in "Greater Israel" in the not-too-distant future. To put it bluntly, it is Palestinian wombs and not Iranian bombs that pose the real threat.
Netanyahu ought to be equally concerned by signs that the Zionist ideal is losing its hold within Israel itself. There are reportedly between 700,000 and one million Israeli citizens now living abroad, and emigration has outpaced immigration since 2007. According to Ian Lustick and John Mueller, only 69 percent of Israeli Jews say they want to remain in the country, and a 2007 poll reported that about one-quarter of Israelis are considering leaving, including almost half of all young people. As Lustick and Mueller note, hyping the threat from Iran may be making this problem worse, especially among the most highly educated (and thus most mobile) Israelis. Israeli society is also becoming more polarized -- which is one reason Netanyahu had such trouble forming a governing coalition -- with the Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox at odds with secular Israelis, to include the more recent immigrants that form the core of Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman's support.
So what are Israel's options? One alternative would be to make the West Bank and Gaza part of Israel, but allow the Palestinians who live there to have full political rights, thereby creating a binational liberal democracy. This idea has been promoted by a handful of Israeli Jews and a growing number of Palestinians, but the objections to it are compelling. It would mean abandoning the Zionist vision of a Jewish state, which makes it anathema to almost all Israeli Jews, who want to live in a Jewish state. The practical obstacles to this outcome are equally daunting, and binational states do not have an encouraging track record. If the choice were between this option and a genuine two-state solution, there can be little doubt about which Netanyahu would prefer.
A second option would be for Israel to retain the West Bank and expel the Palestinians by force, there preserving its Jewish character through an overt act of ethnic cleansing. A few Israeli extremists have proposed something akin to this, but to expel millions of Palestinians in this fashion would be a crime against humanity. The Palestinians would surely resist being driven from their homes, and such a heinous act would take place in full view of a horrified world and damage Israel's reputation far more than the recent carnage in Gaza did. No true friend of Israel could support such a course of action, and one hopes that Netanyahu has the good sense to recognize that it would be a tragic mistake to go down this road.
The only other option to a genuine two-state solution is some form of apartheid, in which the Palestinians are granted limited autonomy in some disconnected and economically crippled enclaves whose borders, airspace, and aquifers are controlled by Israel. The Palestinians' fate, in other words, would remain in Israel's hands, even if some modest efforts were made to improve their living conditions. This outcome seems to be what Netanyahu has in mind, but it is not a viable long-term solution either. The Palestinians are not going to accept being permanent vassals -- especially once they are a majority in the area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean -- and they will continue to demand either a viable state of their own or full political rights within Israel. Over time, this option is going to be an increasingly difficult sell around the world, and especially in the West.
That is why former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told Ha'aretz in 2008, "if the day comes when the two-state solution collapses," Israel will face "a South-African style struggle for voting rights." Once that happened, he warned, "the state of Israel is finished." Despite his long career as a Likud Party stalwart, Olmert finally recognized that if the two-state solution becomes impossible, Israel will be stuck defending a political order that is anathema to prevailing Western and American values. Although lots of other democracies have behaved abominably towards minorities in the past, such behavior is not legitimate in the 21st century. Americans favor self-determination and our own political traditions emphasize liberal values and the virtues of a melting-pot society. Even a lobbying group as powerful as AIPAC will find it hard to defend Israeli apartheid.
A two-state solution is not an ideal outcome; it is merely the best available alternative. If Netanyahu wants to safeguard Israel's future, therefore, he would not spend his time inventing new conditions and doing his best to make the peace process a charade. Instead, he would get on the phone to the White House and urge them to get moving as soon as possible to establish a viable Palestinian state, and he'd ask Obama to commit the resources necessary to make it work. He'd also be on the phone to Abraham Foxman of the ADL, Malcolm Hoenlein of the Conference of Presidents, David Harris of the American Jewish Committee, and Howard Kohr of AIPAC, urging them to pressure the White House and especially Congress to broker a two-state solution before it's too late. While he's at it, he'd denounce false friends like the Reverend John Hagee of Christians United for Israel and he'd invite Jeremy Ben-Ami of J Street to come to Jerusalem and help him map out a strategy to turn the Titanic around before it hits the approaching iceberg.
There would still be lots of hard bargaining to do, of course, and Netanyahu would have to make sure that a final-status agreement protected Israel's legitimate security concerns. But by acting in this way, Netanyahu would be helping preserve Israel's future instead of putting it in jeopardy.
If Netanayahu can't figure this out, then Barack Obama and George Mitchell are going to have to sit him down and explain the situation to him. And if they do, one can only hope that Israel's supporters here in the United States abandon their usual modus operandi and back Obama and Mitchell up. If they don't, they may someday have to explain to their grandchildren why they watched Israel drive itself off a cliff and did nothing to stop it.
Photo: Ammar Awad-pool/Getty Images
Professor Walt,
Please write a detailed post on how you believe Hamas will give up power in Gaza and accept a two state solution.
@Dave123
If there is a viable two state solution then the Fatah faction would be proven right and thus most support for Hamas would evaporate. The only reason Hamas has any support at all is because the so called "peace process" has brought no gains for most Palestinians, only more Jewish settlements and more Israeli control over their movements, trade and resources. Once they have hope for their future then martyrdom will lose its appeal.
The choice now is live in humiliation and poverty OR die a glorious martyr.
With a viable state the choice would be, go to school, get a job and live with dignity OR go kill yourself.
That is the Palestinian perspective. Israeli paranoia and their tendency over exagerate every threat is what I see to be the biggest obstacle to the peace process moving forward.
I have made comparisons between Israel and Pakistan in the past. How 2 nations founded on the idea that a religious community needs its own nation separate from its neighbors, but cannot make peace with them. Just as Pakistan cannot see the internal threat that the Taliban poses to its existence, so Israel cannot see the continued threat of holding onto the West Bank and blockading Gaza into perpetuity. When you define your nation by holding hostility towards your neighbors, well, that is a hard habit to break.
It is also very odd that Israel can demand it maintain nuclear and conventional military superiority in the region, but when its neighbors choose to arm themselves against a country that has a habit of bombing them - they are considered destabilizing.
A decent two-state solution has become impossible
I'll just quote John Whitbeck from the CSMonitor:
http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0914/p09s01-coop.htm?print=true
A decent two-state solution to the 'Palestinian problem' has become impossible.
By John V. Whitbeck
[...]
If this problem is ever to be solved, it must be redefined. Those who truly seek justice and peace in the Middle East must dare to speak openly and honestly of the "Zionism problem" – and then to draw the moral, ethical, and practical conclusions that follow.
When South Africa was under a racial-supremacist, settler-colonial regime, the world recognized that the problem was the ideology and political system of the state. Anyone outside the country who referred to the "black problem" or the "native problem" (or, for that matter, to the "white problem") would instantly have been branded a racist.
The world also recognized that the solution to that problem could not be found either in "separation" (apartheid in Afrikaans) and scattered native reservations (called "independent states" by the South African regime and Bantustans by the rest of the world) or in driving the settler-colonial group in power into the sea. Rather, the solution had to be found – and to almost universal satisfaction was found – in democracy, in white South Africans growing out of their racial-supremacist ideology and political system and accepting that their interests and their children's futures would be best served in a democratic, non-racist state with equal rights for all who live there.
The solution for the land which, until it was literally wiped off the map in 1948, was called Palestine is the same. It can only be democracy.
The ever-receding "political horizon" for a decent two-state solution, which, on the ground, becomes less practical with each passing year of expanding settlements, bypass roads, and walls, is weighed down by a multitude of excruciatingly difficult "final status" issues. Israeli governments have consistently refused to discuss these final-status issues seriously, preferring to postpone them to the end of a road which is never reached – and which, almost certainly, is intended never to be reached.
Just as marriage is vastly less complicated than divorce, democracy is vastly less complicated than partition. A democratic post-Zionist solution would not require any borders to be agreed, any division of Jerusalem, anyone to move from his current home, or any assets to be evaluated and apportioned. Full rights of citizenship would simply be extended to all the surviving natives still living in the country, as happened in the United States in the early 20th century and in South Africa in the late 20th century.
The obstacle to such a simple – and morally unimpeachable – solution is, of course, intellectual and psychological. Traumatized by the Holocaust and perceived insecurity as a Jewish island in an Arab sea, Israelis have immense psychological problems in coming to grips with the practical impossibility of sustaining forever what most of mankind views as a racial-supremacist, settler-colonial regime founded upon the ethnic cleansing of an indigenous population.
Indeed, Israelis have placed themselves in a virtually impossible situation. To taste its bitter essence, Americans might try to imagine what life in their country would be like if the European settlers had not virtually exterminated the indigenous population and if almost half of today's American population were Indians, without basic human rights, impoverished, smoldering with resentment, and visible every day as the inescapable living evidence of the injustice inflicted on their ancestors.
This would not be a pleasant society in which to live. Both colonizers and colonized would be progressively degraded and dehumanized. The colonizers could, rationally, conclude that they could never be forgiven by those they had dispossessed and that no "solution" was imaginable. So it has been, and continues to be, in the lands under Israeli rule.
Perhaps the coming "meeting" or "conference" will be the last gasp of the fruitless pursuit of a separation-based solution. Perhaps those who care about justice and peace and believe in democracy can then find ways to stimulate Israelis to move beyond Zionist ideology toward a more humane, hopeful, and democratic view of present realities and future possibilities.
No one would suggest that the moral, ethical, and intellectual transformation necessary to achieve a decent one-state solution will be easy. However, more and more people now recognize that a decent two-state solution has become impossible.
It is surely time for concerned people everywhere – and particularly for Americans – to imagine a better way, to encourage Israelis to imagine a better way, and to help both Israelis and Palestinians to achieve it. It is surely time to seriously consider democracy and to give it a chance.
• John V. Whitbeck, an international lawyer who has advised the Palestinian negotiating team in negotiations with Israel, is author of "The World According to Whitbeck."
seriously consider democracy and to give it a chance.
Clint, the State of Israel is not going to buy one-state democracy or two-state solution, but Jews may buy my proposal:
Jews give up the State of Israel with all her weapons including WMDs, in return the EUS recognizes Jews' right to law as an SPEE named the Greater Israel. Jews settle nothing more and nothing less than that.
Grand Sen~or.
A second option would be for Israel to retain the West Bank and expel the Palestinians by force, there preserving its Jewish character through an overt act of ethnic cleansing. A few Israeli extremists have proposed something akin to this, but to expel millions of Palestinians in this fashion would be a crime against humanity. The Palestinians would surely resist being driven from their homes, and such a heinous act would take place in full view of a horrified world and damage Israel's reputation far more than the recent carnage in Gaza did.
But you're forgetting that this is precisely how Israel was founded and not only did the West allow this ethnic cleansing, since then the US has agreed to finance the ethnic cleansing, and apartheid bantustan setup already in the occupied territories.
Is it any wonder that Netanyahu and Lieberman actually believe that ethnic cleansing and apartheid are legitimate solutions to the Palestinian problem?
The ludicrousness of people like Avigdor Lieberman (real name: Evet Lieberman), who is from Moldova, proposing to kick out indigenous inhabitants of the lands (Palestinians) would be mind-bendingly farcical if not for the fact that the fascist was elected.
For a view from the Palestinian side see the article by this Israel knesset member:
"This government, particularly with Lieberman as foreign minister, should be boycotted by the international community, just as it once boycotted Jörg Haider, the late Austrian far-right politician who won global notoriety for his anti-immigrant views.
Lieberman, in one of many outrageous comments, declared in May 2004 that 90 percent of Israel’s Palestinian citizens “have no place here. They can take their bundles and get lost.”
But my family and I were on this land centuries before Lieberman arrived here in 1978 from Moldova. We are among the minority who managed to remain when some 700,000 Palestinians were forced out by Israel in 1948."
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/07/opinion/07iht-edtibi.html?scp=1&sq=israeli%20arab%20knesset&st=cse
Op-Ed Contributor
A Harsh Reality for Palestinians
By AHMAD TIBI
Published: April 6, 2009
JERUSALEM — The right-wing coalition of the new Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, does not bode well for Palestinians in Israel. With the appointment of Avigdor Lieberman as foreign minister, the extremists are going after the indigenous population and threatening us with loyalty tests and the possibility of “transfer” into an area nominally controlled by the Palestinian Authority.
Netanyahu’s intransigence vis-à-vis Palestinians in the occupied territories is certainly cause for concern. No less concerning is what the Netanyahu-Lieberman combination may mean to Palestinian citizens of Israel.
This government, particularly with Lieberman as foreign minister, should be boycotted by the international community, just as it once boycotted Jörg Haider, the late Austrian far-right politician who won global notoriety for his anti-immigrant views.
Lieberman, in one of many outrageous comments, declared in May 2004 that 90 percent of Israel’s Palestinian citizens “have no place here. They can take their bundles and get lost.”
But my family and I were on this land centuries before Lieberman arrived here in 1978 from Moldova. We are among the minority who managed to remain when some 700,000 Palestinians were forced out by Israel in 1948.
Today, Lieberman stokes anti-Palestinian sentiment with his threat of “transfer” — a euphemism for renewed ethnic cleansing. Henry Kissinger, too, has called for a territorial swap, and Lieberman cites Kissinger to give his noxious idea a more sophisticated sheen. Lieberman and Kissinger envision exchanging a portion of Israel for a portion of the occupied West Bank seized illegally by Jewish settlers.
But Israel has no legal right to any of the occupied Palestinian territories. And Lieberman has no right to offer the land my home is on in exchange for incorporating Jewish settlers into newly defined Israeli state borders. We are citizens of the state of Israel and do not want to exchange our second-class citizenship in our homeland — subject as we are to numerous laws that discriminate against us — for life in a Palestinian Bantustan.
We take our citizenship seriously and struggle daily to improve our lot and overcome discriminatory laws and practices.
We face discrimination in all fields of life. Arab citizens are 20 percent of the population, but only 6 percent of the employees in the public sector. Not one Arab employee is working in the central bank of Israel. Imagine if there was not one African-American citizen employed in the central bank of the United States.
Israel is simultaneously running three systems of government. The first is full democracy toward its Jewish citizens — ethnocracy. The second is racial discrimination toward the Palestinian minority — creeping Jim Crowism. And the third is occupation of the Palestinian territories with one set of laws for Palestinians and another for Jewish settlers — apartheid.
A few weeks ago, Lieberman’s Yisrael Beiteinu Party led the charge in the Israeli Knesset to ban my party — the Arab Movement for Renewal — from participating in the elections. Netanyahu’s Likud also supported the action. The Supreme Court overturned the maneuvers of the politicians. But their attempt to ban our participation should expose Israel’s democracy to the world as fraudulent.
Lieberman’s inveighing against Palestinian citizens of Israel is not new. Less than three years ago, he called for my death and the death of some of my Palestinian Knesset colleagues for daring to meet with democratically elected Palestinian leaders. Speaking before the Knesset plenum, Lieberman stated: “World War II ended with the Nuremberg trials. The heads of the Nazi regime, along with their collaborators, were executed. I hope this will be the fate of the collaborators in this house.” Lieberman now has the power to put his vile views into practice.
We call for more attention from the Obama administration toward the Palestinian minority in Israel. It is a repressed minority suffering from inadequately shared state resources. The enormous annual American aid package to Israel fails almost entirely to reach our community.
Between Netanyahu and Lieberman, the Obama administration will have its hands full. Make no mistake that Netanyahu and Lieberman will press the new administration hard to accept Israeli actions in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem — as well as discriminatory anti-Palestinian actions in Israel itself. Settlements will grow and discrimination deepen. American backbone will be crucial in the months ahead.
Ahmad Tibi is a Palestinian citizen of Israel and a member of the Knesset, Israel’s Parliament.
A Political Economic Overview of Zionism
There has to be something wrong with the intellectual environment in the USA when academics do not draw the obvious conclusions from their own scholarship.
As long as the State of Israel and the Israel Lobby continue to exist, not only Palestinians but all Americans outside the Zionist system are under threat: Jewish Financial Aggression, Worldwide Economic Nakba.
But you're forgetting that this is precisely how Israel was founded and not only did the West allow this ethnic cleansing, since then the US has agreed to finance the ethnic cleansing, and apartheid bantustan setup already in the occupied territories.
The large-scale expulsion and migration (back in the 1949 War) happened in an era without widespread television and audiovisual, and when (to put it bluntly) norms were different. This was the immediate post-colonial period, remember? Not to mention it was still in the middle of the Segregation Era in the US, so that made it easy to justify this type of stuff, particularly if the Israelis were "heroic pioneers" like those of American history.
But decades since 1948 - take just the last 15 years since Oslo, for example - over a quarter of a million Jewish immigrants have been settled into the occupied territories. These are Jewish-ONLY settlements - taken from non-Jewish inhabitants, joined by Jewish-ONLY roads. Palestinian roads have check points at every turn, where they are searched and humiliated should they try to leave their ever shrinking non-Jewish bantustans.
This arrangement has become a reality just in the last 15 years, and largely financed by the US. Over 9,000 new Jews were settled into the occupied territories just since Olmert took the reins.
If you're Israeli, why would you believe that Netanyahu and Lieberman's solution is really much different than any of their predecessors? They are merely acknowledging what has been going on all along.
The only difference that I can see is that Netanyahu and Lieberman are vocal about their intentions. The others - all of them - paid lip service to peace out of the left side of their mouth, while they whispered apartheid out of the right side. They spoke peace, they delivered apartheid. And America financed it.
Now Lieberman is pulling back the curtain, and we can see that he's been Oz all along.
Why would the Palestinians want a two state solution?
Given Prof. Walt's analysis, it is even more difficult to see why the Palestinians would want a two state solution. Israel will never agree to a Palestinian state that is more than a glorified bantustan. For perfectly understandable reasons Israel will want to control its borders and limit its armed forces. Israel will also demand the right to intervene on the ground, or from the air, to protect its own security. After seeing what happened to Gaza what Palestinian in their right mind would agree to that? The alternative is to keep stalling for long enough and Israel will cease to exist in a single state solution.
There is no reason for Palestinians to accept a state next to Israel anymore. The land and resources have been seized by Israel, and Palestinians would receive worthless exchanges in return. If Israel had given a state to Arafat early on, they would be in posession of a secure Jewish state today. Ironically, their maximal positions through the years have eliminated(rather than just shrinking) the carrot that they offer, while their need for it to be accepted has grown desperate. Were Begin and Shamir unaware of the impending population bomb? That can be the only explanation.
Were Begin and Shamir unaware of the impending population bomb? That can be the only explanation.
They were aware, but they had a "something will happen to save us" attitude coupled with extremely short-sighted political thinking.
Israel managed to delay the population bomb back at the end of the Cold War when the million or so Russians immigrated there - maybe that's given them over-confidence now.
"And could someone please explain to Netanyahu that a group of devout Muslim clerics aren't likely to fire warheads at a land that contains the third holiest site in Islam?"
And that's stopped Muslims from setting off repeated suicide bombs at the equally sacred shrines and mosques in Najaf (Imam Ali Mosque), Karbala (Shrine of Husayn ibn ‘Al?) , Samarra (Al-Askari Mosque), and in Baghdad (Al-Kadhimiya Mosque)?
Or perhaps he has forgotten about the 1979 Grand Mosque Seizure in Mecca by Juhayman al-Otaibi, or the 1987 riots by Iranian pilgrams?
I guess FP's resident 'realist' prefers the reality down the rabbit hole.
"And could someone please explain to Netanyahu that a group of devout Muslim clerics aren't likely to fire warheads at a land that contains the third holiest site in Islam?"
Yes I'll explain: because if they did that, Israel and U.S. would fire warheads back.
It is called deterrence.
Israel is the only middle east nation with nukes. It started the cycle of stupidity by stealing nuclear material and know how from the US.
Letter in FT re. Iran and Israel and nukes....
....You don't find this in the US press for some reason:
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/2725a9fc-a467-11dc-a28d-0000779fd2ac.html
We need to overhaul what is a flawed non-proliferation treaty
Published: December 7 2007 02:00 | Last updated: December 7 2007 02:00
From Dr Yousaf Mahmood Butt.
Sir, David Miliband (“Why we must not take the pressure off Iran” December 5) is correct to point out that the Iranian uranium enrichment programme remains a concern despite the just-released US National Intelligence Estimate suggesting that Iran suspended its nuclear weapons programme in 2003.
However, no amount of “diplomacy with teeth” can compensate for what is fundamentally a flaw in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT): signatory nations (such as Iran) are allowed by law to enrich uranium – ostensibly for peaceful uses – and thus collect the raw material needed, should they wish, for a bomb.
Instead of the selective application of United Nations sanctions to nations perceived to be unfriendly or unco-operative by the west (eg, No to Iran, Yes to Brazil for uranium enrichment), it would make more sense to overhaul the 1970 NPT; and, while at it, also make sure that the new treaty punishes more aggressively those (predominantly western) nations that do not abide by their arms-reduction obligations in the current NPT.
“If someone asks me to disarm and keep a slingshot while he comes at me with a cannon, what good does that do?” Brazillian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has said of the NPT; but it could well be said by the Iranian government in reference to Israel, which is openly allowed by the west to stockpile 200 or so nuclear warheads in the region.
It is telling that President Ford, in 1976, encouraged Iran (then under the US-backed shah) to build both uranium enrichment as well as plutonium processing plants. How is it that what was permissible then under the 1970 NPT, has now become forbidden – under the very same treaty – to the point that there are cries for further UN sanctions against Iran?
The answer is to be found in Mr Miliband’s article: we don’t trust Iran and it is not our friend. Unfortunately, if international law is to be taken seriously, it must be blind.
Yousaf Mahmood Butt,
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics,
Cambridge, MA 02138, US
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009
"Although lots of other democracies have behaved abominably towards minorities in the past, such behavior is not legitimate in the 21st century."
Really on which earth?
Sudan? Lebanon? Egypt? Iraq? Syria? Turkey? Thailand? Indonesia (East Timor)? Iran itself?
There is a laundry list of states that continue to act horribly towards their minority groups.
But ask yourself this professor, In a world where Gaza must be Jew free, and HAMAS has declared that its ultimate goal is to turn the rest of Israel into the same, how on earth you're going to declare that Israel is the one with the apartheid policy.
...we don't give Iran $3billion per year in aid.
We ACTIVELY SUPPORT Israel acting horribly with its minority.
Get it?
What has Israel done for me lately besides make me a target for terrorists that I should give them my tax dollars?
I want my $$$ back.
The current $3 billion in military is only one item in a list of ways that Israel receives aid from the USA. Total aid, subsidies, etc. per year is probably at least $30 billion. Yet this number really does not capture the level at which Jewish Zionist racists are really ripping off the American people for the total cost of Israel to the USA is well over half the national debt and is probably closer to 75%.
how on earth you're going to declare that Israel is the one with the apartheid policy.
Because it is the one with the Apartheid policy. Israel is the state that is slowly imprisoning the Palestinian inhabitants of the Occupied Territories into strictly bordered and controlled cantons, while treating its own Arab citizens as second-class. That's the very image of Apartheid in the South Africa-style, and regardless of what Hamas is doing, that won't change.
I'm sick of pro-Israel supporters pointing out the bad antics of their neighbors as an excuse for abominable behavior on the part of Israel. Guess what? Israel is not a dictatorship, or a violent militia - they're a so-called first-world democracy. That means you get held to higher standards, particularly if you start making claims that you're some type of bastion of Western Civilization in a dark land of Islam.
This would be the same Roger Cohen that had to later declare that yes, Iran is an 'unfree state', something that Iranians declare is an understatement.
Meanwhile American journalists are being convicted of espionage for buying bottles of wine and placed in a prison notorious for its prisoner abuses, including torturing them to death.
But you're going to use Mr. Cohen as the source to place on a pedestal.
Israel is an "unfree state" if you are a Palestinian in the Israeli concentration camp called Gaza.
Roger Cohen is a hero.
Mandatory reading for Palestine Israel and the US
"The treason of the hawks" by Stephen Walt today, is the most rational description of the alterantives facing those interested in a Middle East solution and should be read and digested by all, particularly the Israelis. Not only does he quote Fred Ickle from his study 'treason of the hawks', an apt description, but he also outlines the rational options available for that part of the world.
In my opinion, going one step further, the people who use all their economic influence through bribery and corruption, and there are no other words for such actions, are just as treasonous and I have stated this many times before. If they live in the US, many with the convenience of dual passports, their actions are not in support of a reasonable solution and even worse, they are not acting in the interests of the US. Free speech is all very well but the underlying basis for having that right is to put forward ideas that are truly in the interests of the country to which you feel you belong. You must make a choice....one or the other. Now there's the rub. So many Jewish people living in the US have the interests of the US as secondary and that is treasonous. Every person of Israeli background should be forced to swear an oath of allegiance to the US. That's the first step. Then all lobby groups who target weak and malleable Senators and Representatives with 'donations' should be charges with corruption and the recipients forced to publicly account for their actions. Then perhaps all the interested parties would be able to vote on such matters affecting the welfare of the Middle East and the US, free from insidious influences, threats and financial incentives. For too long this climate has existed and has now become the norm. It is undemocratic and evil.
While the opportunity exists and it appears acceptable for 'treason' to occur on a daily basis, particularly with the lawmakers in the Congress, the rational analysis by Stephen Walt and all people of good intent are just so many words.
However, I doubt if anyone can add to the analysis from Professor Walt in today's offering. Let us all hope that decent, honest people everywhere use such writings as a basis for some form of agreement and discard the outlandish and one-sided conditions that Netanyahu and his hawks have placed on the continuation of peace talks. He should realise that he is now, in 2009, not talking from a position of strength any more as very few people in the world support Israel and its apartheid, ethnic cleansing policies. More importantly, he is fast losing support from the US as well.
It really is time for Israel to be realistic and to stop using the spectre of Iran as part of their misinformation campaign. The world is tired of their irrational words and warlike actions.
My question is this: What is Netanyahu thinking? Doesn't he realize that time has nearly run out for the two-state solution, and that failure to achieve it is by far the most serious threat facing Israel?
For the same reason you have the refugees from pre-1949 boundaries still fantasizing and talking about the day when they can finally return "home", and demanding it as part of any solution. Fantasies are a powerful thing, especially in that part of the world.
I imagine part of the hope on the Israeli government's part is that if they can constrict the West Bank enough, force the Palestinians there into a situation where they are reduced to utter penury and despair - they'll leave. They'll have to leave, or starve. At the same time, the Israeli government is driven heavily by short-term security concerns, so they're constantly being pushed towards this type of thing.
George Washington on Israel
“A passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils. Sympathy for the favorite nation, facilitating the illusion of an imaginary common interest in cases where no real common interest exists, and infusing into one the enmities of the other, betrays the former into a participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter without adequate inducement or justification.” ~George Washington Farewell Address
“The nation which indulges toward another habitual hatred or habitual fondness is in some degree a slave. It is a slave to its animosity or to its affection, either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and its interests." ~ George Washington
"Peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations; entangling alliances with none." ~ Thomas Jefferson
Mr. Walt, you're not talking to Israelis.
Israelis want peace, are willing to give up almost all post-1967 territories in order to achieve it, and make their decisions based not on "Greater Israel" ideology but on calculations of national security. So why, Mr. Walt, are you unwilling to address Israelis' concerns? Articles like this one are insulting and infuriating to people who care deeply about the conflict (because they're part of it) and who think about it literally every day. Do you really think that Israelis have not heard these shallow arguments before? Do you think Israelis don't have their own answers to them, and their own further questions?
You consistently refuse even to acknowledge criticisms of your arguments, much less make any effort to address them. I don't think you understand. Israelis want to be persuaded by you. They want to believe that a solution to the conflict involving the evacuation of the Territories is possible. They'd be happy even to be convinced they could evacuate territories without ending the conflict, if they could do so without paying a price in increased attacks and bloodshed. They're waiting to hear somebody on your side actually address their questions and criticisms.
Why don't the occupiers address this behaviour first?
Please see this 60 minutes episode on how the fascist occupiers behave and let's talk in 15 minutes:
http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=4752349n
Israelis want peace, are willing to give up almost all post-1967 territories in order to achieve it, and make their decisions based not on "Greater Israel" ideology but on calculations of national security.
Walt's not so sure that Netanyahu means it, considering where he's coming from in Likud - and I don't blame him. For that matter, if it's merely a security concern, then why do Prime Ministers from both parties look the other way when more people migrate to the West Bank and start sucking down subsidies? The roadblocks and special roads, that I can understand, but the additional settlers are just more people that need to be protected, and more people to be re-located when/if the Two-State Solution ever gets off the ground.
I know, it's a political concern and a bone thrown to them, but that's Walt's point - he doesn't think the Israeli leadership is really willing or able to actually part with the West Bank at this point of time, and their tactics for securing it is putting the idea of the "Jewish state" in long-term jeopardy.
Do you really think that Israelis have not heard these shallow arguments before? Do you think Israelis don't have their own answers to them, and their own further questions?
What's so shallow about it? He's criticizing Netanyahu for being in complete public denial over what the consequences of holding on to the West Bank will be for Israel in the long-term, and being evasive towards the only solution that will avoid that short of mass ethnic cleansing. At least Olmert had the balls to say what it would mean - Netanyahu, no doubt to keep his religious party coalition partners in line, has to spout off that "economic peace" bullshit.
They want to believe that a solution to the conflict involving the evacuation of the Territories is possible. They'd be happy even to be convinced they could evacuate territories without ending the conflict, if they could do so without paying a price in increased attacks and bloodshed.
If it's any consolation, the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank has gotten at least marginally better at keeping public order, considering how . . . understated the reactions were there when the Gaza War happened. You might try actually throwing them a bone in the form of at least going through motions of withdrawing settlers - it's either them, Hamas, or something worse (Al-Qaeda's been trying to get into that neck of the woods for years, remember?).
"To put it bluntly, it is Palestinian wombs and not Iranian bombs that pose the real threat."
Now suppose that someone said that "Black women's wombs are the real threat in the American inner city," or that "It's the Mexican womb that's ruining California." Wouldn't most people consider these statements racist? So can someone please explain why zionism isn't a form of racism?
Unless you count "Jewish" as a race (and I don't), it's more a type of sectarianism blurring into ethno-religious nationalism, which is why I've never considered Zionism a form a racism.
If you had taken the trouble to actually speak to Israelis and also to listen to Palestinians you might have come to a different conclusion. Who is supposed to setup the Palestinian state? Read the Hamas charter. Nowhere does it say anything about a Palestinian state. It talks about how the Jews are responsible for every calamity known to mankind and the need to wipe out the Jews and establish Islamic rule, but no mention of a Palestinian state. But let's see what is going on in reality. Israel left Gaza more than 2 years ago and what has Hamas done to set up a state? Fire thousands of rockets into Israeli civilian communities, kill anyone opposed to it and beg for charity from the West. And please don't tell me who the "blockade" has prevented them from setting up a state. Israel established itself as a state under much worse conditions.
Most Israelis would love to get rid of the West Bank, they just aren't willing to commit suicide in the process. Meanwhile life goes on here, and the hypocrites in the US living on stolen Native American land in a country built on slave labor, and who have killed tens of thousand of civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the Europeans living in houses that once belonged to their Jewish neighbors who they helped load into the gas chambers continue to preach to us about what is best for us.
If you had taken the trouble to actually speak to Israelis and also to listen to Palestinians you might have come to a different conclusion. Who is supposed to setup the Palestinian state?
How about the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank? You know, those guys saying silly stuff like "Israel has a right to exist" and trying to keep order even though the Israeli government is constantly undermining their credibility?
And please don't tell me who the "blockade" has prevented them from setting up a state. Israel established itself as a state under much worse conditions.
Don't make me laugh. After the 1949 war, Israel was under no type of international sanctions, had aid from France, was recognized by many countries (including both of the Cold War giants, the Soviet Union and the United States), and had free trade. Are you seriously comparing that to being under a constant blockade with only occasional humanitarian aid coming and the occasional medical patient going out the Israeli side, with the Israeli military occasionally flying in here and there to try and assassinate some Hamas figure?
Israel left Gaza more than 2 years ago and what has Hamas done to set up a state?
I didn't realize states grew on trees, in the absence of functional economies and even reliable sources of water, with the occasional military assassination to spice things up a bit.
Most Israelis would love to get rid of the West Bank, they just aren't willing to commit suicide in the process.
Not enough to stop and/or reverse the flow of settlers heading there, apparently, which is the real killer of the Two-State Solution. Enjoy the Arab state of Isratine in the next fifty years, my friend.
the hypocrites in the US living on stolen Native American land in a country built on slave labor,
Funny, I don't see anyone defending what the US did to the native americans, or to the slaves. Even if there were, that wouldn't excuse what is being done in the West Bank; you don't wipe out one bout of ethnic cleansing and repression with another.
Europeans living in houses that once belonged to their Jewish neighbors who they helped load into the gas chambers continue to preach to us about what is best for us.
Oh, cry me a fucking river. The Holocaust happened sixty-three years ago, which means that most of Europe that is alive today never took part in it, whereas the bullshit that's going on the West Bank is happening now.
Dr. Walt is right as rain, of course. But my worry is the grass-roots majority of American voters who have been indoctinated by Abe Foxman's goon squads throughout America's synagogues to reflexively mistrust anyone like me (who shares Walt's views) as a "Jew-hater". Perhaps the average ill-informed US voter would appreciate the totality of degradation of humanity that bespeaks of today's Israel, when shown one of the "1 shot, 2 kills" T-shirts printed for members of the IDF's Givati Infantry Brigade. The T-shirt depicts a pregnant Palestinian woman with a bull's-eye superimposed on her belly, with the slogan "1 shot, 2 kills.". This is a quick and memorable lesson to even the most dull American of the homicidal sickness of Israel. Arab wombs...no problem, just fire away!
"Disolution" for Israel/Hood the Hawks
It seems to me that Israel is about as legitimate as Slavery.
It's a presumed legal entity founded on an extremely immoral action taken after WWII which punished the Palestinians for the sins of the Europeans and the prejudices of the non-Jewish Western World and most likely unsupportable claims that Palestine was a divinely destined Jewish homeland. The only just solution, at this point there can never be a fair one since too much damage has already been done and is getting worse, is to cancel the UN mandate and create a single state based one democratic-republican principles but governed decreasingly by an international body, for example the World Court, in a manner often used to resolve racial segregation issues in the US (bringing us back to the Slavery analogy). The Jews-Zionists-Israelis have created an extremely failed state hiding behind an elaborate propaganda scheme. A world without the current Israel would be a welcome relief.
Why support apartheid and racism?
Agreed -- and this begs the question of why we should support the immoral, militant, racist, apartheid state of Israel?
Chomsky's views are instructive:
http://www.chomsky.info/articles/20090124.htm
Barack Obama is recognized to be a person of acute intelligence, a legal scholar, careful with his choice of words. He deserves to be taken seriously -- both what he says, and what he omits. Particularly significant is his first substantive statement on foreign affairs, on January 22, at the State Department, when introducing George Mitchell to serve as his special envoy for Middle East peace.
Mitchell is to focus his attention on the Israel-Palestine problem, in the wake of the recent US-Israeli invasion of Gaza. During the murderous assault, Obama remained silent apart from a few platitudes, because, he said, there is only one president -- a fact that did not silence him on many other issues. His campaign did, however, repeat his statement that "if missiles were falling where my two daughters sleep, I would do everything in order to stop that." He was referring to Israeli children, not the hundreds of Palestinian children being butchered by US arms, about whom he could not speak, because there was only one president.
On January 22, however, the one president was Barack Obama, so he could speak freely about these matters -- avoiding, however, the attack on Gaza, which had, conveniently, been called off just before the inauguration.
Obama's talk emphasized his commitment to a peaceful settlement. He left its contours vague, apart from one specific proposal: "the Arab peace initiative," Obama said, "contains constructive elements that could help advance these efforts. Now is the time for Arab states to act on the initiative's promise by supporting the Palestinian government under President Abbas and Prime Minister Fayyad, taking steps towards normalizing relations with Israel, and by standing up to extremism that threatens us all."
Obama is not directly falsifying the Arab League proposal, but the carefully framed deceit is instructive.
The Arab League peace proposal does indeed call for normalization of relations with Israel -- in the context -- repeat, in the context of a two-state settlement in terms of the longstanding international consensus, which the US and Israel have blocked for over 30 years, in international isolation, and still do. The core of the Arab League proposal, as Obama and his Mideast advisers know very well, is its call for a peaceful political settlement in these terms, which are well-known, and recognized to be the only basis for the peaceful settlement to which Obama professes to be committed. The omission of that crucial fact can hardly be accidental, and signals clearly that Obama envisions no departure from US rejectionism. His call for the Arab states to act on a corollary to their proposal, while the US ignores even the existence of its central content, which is the precondition for the corollary, surpasses cynicism.
The most significant acts to undermine a peaceful settlement are the daily US-backed actions in the occupied territories, all recognized to be criminal: taking over valuable land and resources and constructing what the leading architect of the plan, Ariel Sharon, called "Bantustans" for Palestinians -- an unfair comparison because the Bantustans were far more viable than the fragments left to Palestinians under Sharon's conception, now being realized. But the US and Israel even continue to oppose a political settlement in words, most recently in December 2008, when the US and Israel (and a few Pacific islands) voted against a UN resolution supporting "the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination" (passed 173 to 5, US-Israel opposed, with evasive pretexts).
Obama had not one word to say about the settlement and infrastructure developments in the West Bank, and the complex measures to control Palestinian existence, designed to undermine the prospects for a peaceful two-state settlement. His silence is a grim refutation of his oratorical flourishes about how "I will sustain an active commitment to seek two states living side by side in peace and security."
Also unmentioned is Israel's use of US arms in Gaza, in violation not only of international but also US law. Or Washington's shipment of new arms to Israel right at the peak of the US-Israeli attack, surely not unknown to Obama's Middle East advisers.
Obama was firm, however, that smuggling of arms to Gaza must be stopped. He endorses the agreement of Condoleeza Rice and Israeli foreign minister Tzipi Livni that the Egyptian-Gaza border must be closed -- a remarkable exercise of imperial arrogance, as the Financial Times observed: "as they stood in Washington congratulating each other, both officials seemed oblivious to the fact that they were making a deal about an illegal trade on someone else's border -- Egypt in this case. The next day, an Egyptian official described the memorandum as `fictional'." Egypt's objections were ignored.
Returning to Obama's reference to the "constructive" Arab League proposal, as the wording indicates, Obama persists in restricting support to the defeated party in the January 2006 election, the only free election in the Arab world, to which the US and Israel reacted, instantly and overtly, by severely punishing Palestinians for opposing the will of the masters. A minor technicality is that Abbas's term ran out on January 9, and that Fayyad was appointed without confirmation by the Palestinian parliament (many of them kidnapped and in Israeli prisons). Ha'aretz describes Fayyad as "a strange bird in Palestinian politics. On the one hand, he is the Palestinian politician most esteemed by Israel and the West. However, on the other hand, he has no electoral power whatsoever in Gaza or the West Bank." The report also notes Fayyad's "close relationship with the Israeli establishment," notably his friendship with Sharon's extremist adviser Dov Weiglass. Though lacking popular support, he is regarded as competent and honest, not the norm in the US-backed political sectors.
Obama's insistence that only Abbas and Fayyad exist conforms to the consistent Western contempt for democracy unless it is under control.
Obama provided the usual reasons for ignoring the elected government led by Hamas. "To be a genuine party to peace," Obama declared, "the quartet [US, EU, Russia, UN] has made it clear that Hamas must meet clear conditions: recognize Israel's right to exist; renounce violence; and abide by past agreements." Unmentioned, also as usual, is the inconvenient fact that the US and Israel firmly reject all three conditions. In international isolation, they bar a two-state settlement including a Palestinian state; they of course do not renounce violence; and they reject the quartet's central proposal, the "road map." Israel formally accepted it, but with 14 reservations that effectively eliminate its contents (tacitly backed by the US). It is the great merit of Jimmy Carter's Palestine: Peace not Apartheid, to have brought these facts to public attention for the first time -- and in the mainstream, the only time.
It follows, by elementary reasoning, that neither the US nor Israel is a "genuine party to peace." But that cannot be. It is not even a phrase in the English language.
It is perhaps unfair to criticize Obama for this further exercise of cynicism, because it is close to universal, unlike his scrupulous evisceration of the core component of the Arab League proposal, which is his own novel contribution.
Also near universal are the standard references to Hamas: a terrorist organization, dedicated to the destruction of Israel (or maybe all Jews). Omitted are the inconvenient facts that the US-Israel are not only dedicated to the destruction of any viable Palestinian state, but are steadily implementing those policies. Or that unlike the two rejectionist states, Hamas has called for a two-state settlement in terms of the international consensus: publicly, repeatedly, explicitly.
Obama began his remarks by saying: "Let me be clear: America is committed to Israel's security. And we will always support Israel's right to defend itself against legitimate threats."
There was nothing about the right of Palestinians to defend themselves against far more extreme threats, such as those occurring daily, with US support, in the occupied territories. But that again is the norm.
Also normal is the enunciation of the principle that Israel has the right to defend itself. That is correct, but vacuous: so does everyone. But in the context the cliche is worse than vacuous: it is more cynical deceit.
The issue is not whether Israel has the right to defend itself, like everyone else, but whether it has the right to do so by force. No one, including Obama, believes that states enjoy a general right to defend themselves by force: it is first necessary to demonstrate that there are no peaceful alternatives that can be tried. In this case, there surely are.
A narrow alternative would be for Israel to abide by a cease-fire, for example, the cease-fire proposed by Hamas political leader Khaled Mishal a few days before Israel launched its attack on December 27. Mishal called for restoring the 2005 agreement. That agreement called for an end to violence and uninterrupted opening of the borders, along with an Israeli guarantee that goods and people could move freely between the two parts of occupied Palestine, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. The agreement was rejected by the US and Israel a few months later, after the free election of January 2006 turned out "the wrong way." There are many other highly relevant cases.
The broader and more significant alternative would be for the US and Israel to abandon their extreme rejectionism, and join the rest of the world -- including the Arab states and Hamas -- in supporting a two-state settlement in accord with the international consensus. It should be noted that in the past 30 years there has been one departure from US-Israeli rejectionism: the negotiations at Taba in January 2001, which appeared to be close to a peaceful resolution when Israel prematurely called them off. It would not, then, be outlandish for Obama to agree to join the world, even within the framework of US policy, if he were interested in doing so.
In short, Obama's forceful reiteration of Israel's right to defend itself is another exercise of cynical deceit -- though, it must be admitted, not unique to him, but virtually universal.
The deceit is particularly striking in this case because the occasion was the appointment of Mitchell as special envoy. Mitchell's primary achievement was his leading role in the peaceful settlement in northern Ireland. It called for an end to IRA terror and British violence. Implicit is the recognition that while Britain had the right to defend itself from terror, it had no right to do so by force, because there was a peaceful alternative: recognition of the legitimate grievances of the Irish Catholic community that were the roots of IRA terror. When Britain adopted that sensible course, the terror ended. The implications for Mitchell's mission with regard to Israel-Palestine are so obvious that they need not be spelled out. And omission of them is, again, a striking indication of the commitment of the Obama administration to traditional US rejectionism and opposition to peace, except on its extremist terms.
Obama also praised Jordan for its "constructive role in training Palestinian security forces and nurturing its relations with Israel" -- which contrasts strikingly with US-Israeli refusal to deal with the freely elected government of Palestine, while savagely punishing Palestinians for electing it with pretexts which, as noted, do not withstand a moment's scrutiny. It is true that Jordan joined the US in arming and training Palestinian security forces, so that they could violently suppress any manifestation of support for the miserable victims of US-Israeli assault in Gaza, also arresting supporters of Hamas and the prominent journalist Khaled Amayreh, while organizing their own demonstrations in support of Abbas and Fatah, in which most participants "were civil servants and school children who were instructed by the PA to attend the rally," according to the Jerusalem Post. Our kind of democracy.
Obama made one further substantive comment: "As part of a lasting cease-fire, Gaza's border crossings should be open to allow the flow of aid and commerce, with an appropriate monitoring regimeÉ" He did not, of course, mention that the US-Israel had rejected much the same agreement after the January 2006 election, and that Israel had never observed similar subsequent agreements on borders.
Also missing is any reaction to Israel's announcement that it rejected the cease-fire agreement, so that the prospects for it to be "lasting" are not auspicious. As reported at once in the press, "Israeli Cabinet Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, who takes part in security deliberations, told Army Radio on Thursday that Israel wouldn't let border crossings with Gaza reopen without a deal to free [Gilad] Schalit" (AP, Jan 22); ÔIsrael to keep Gaza crossings closed...An official said the government planned to use the issue to bargain for the release of Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier held by the Islamist group since 2006 (Financial Times, Jan. 23); "Earlier this week, Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said that progress on Corporal Shalit's release would be a precondition to opening up the border crossings that have been mostly closed since Hamas wrested control of Gaza from the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority in 2007" (Christian Science Monitor, Jan. 23); "an Israeli official said there would be tough conditions for any lifting of the blockade, which he linked with the release of Gilad Shalit" (FT, Jan. 23); among many others.
Shalit's capture is a prominent issue in the West, another indication of Hamas's criminality. Whatever one thinks about it, it is uncontroversial that capture of a soldier of an attacking army is far less of a crime than kidnapping of civilians, exactly what Israeli forces did the day before the capture of Shalit, invading Gaza city and kidnapping two brothers, then spiriting them across the border where they disappeared into Israel's prison complex. Unlike the much lesser case of Shalit, that crime was virtually unreported and has been forgotten, along with Israel's regular practice for decades of kidnapping civilians in Lebanon and on the high seas and dispatching them to Israeli prisons, often held for many years as hostages. But the capture of Shalit bars a cease-fire.
Obama's State Department talk about the Middle East continued with "the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan and PakistanÉ the central front in our enduring struggle against terrorism and extremism." A few hours later, US planes attacked a remote village in Afghanistan, intending to kill a Taliban commander. "Village elders, though, told provincial officials there were no Taliban in the area, which they described as a hamlet populated mainly by shepherds. Women and children were among the 22 dead, they said, according to Hamididan Abdul Rahmzai, the head of the provincial council" (LA Times, Jan. 24).
Afghan president Karzai's first message to Obama after he was elected in November was a plea to end the bombing of Afghan civilians, reiterated a few hours before Obama was sworn in. This was considered as significant as Karzai's call for a timetable for departure of US and other foreign forces. The rich and powerful have their "responsibilities." Among them, the New York Times reported, is to "provide security" in southern Afghanistan, where "the insurgency is homegrown and self-sustaining." All familiar. From Pravda in the 1980s, for example.
Obama "made in Israel" by Jews from Chicago.
Isn't it true that Obama's successful political career owes much to support of Jews from Chicago. Perhaps they can release him, if they are truly liberals as I have read of them being described.
It is likely that the Palestinian/Israeli conflict is insolvable, at least in any conceivable near-term period. There are just too many hardliners, hard-line positions, extreme bitterness, and instances where injustices have been inflicted by both sides. The Obama administration, like the Clinton administration, will likely produce few results toward its resolution simply because the problem is intractable. As an American, I do not support any party in this conflict, and have sympathies only for the victims, who are numerous. Even there, I find myself growing callous as I listen to the claims and counter claims of both sides and associated appeals for empathy, all of which ring of false piety. I personally do not believe that a two-state solution is viable; even if it were instituted, it probably would quickly be undermined by hardliners on both sides. I suspect that Israel will use ever more stringent police-state tactics to repress the Palestinian population, both within and Israel and the West bank and Gaza. Those who want to live a normal life, free of conflict and extremism, will leave the region for other parts; those left behind will become only more extreme and bitter. Where this goes, I do not know, but I can't believe that it ends well.
"As an American, I do not support any party in this conflict, and have sympathies only for the victims, who are numerous."
Fair enough.
Then, please write to your representatives to stop giving >$3billion per year in MILITARY aid to one side of this conflict. It is immoral and actually illegal by US standards, since the military aid has been used to bomb civilians.
see the only honest voice in our Capitol:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJc4EhzzmOc&feature=related
and
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFO8-h1-_0k
Israel is not interested in either One-State or Two-State, she prefers Limbo-State which pays better, in such a state she gets a lot of funds from the Suckers (the EUS). All Israel has to do is not to make a mistake to fall into the Hell: One-State/Two-State;->
If you ask me this is not Israel's fault, originally Israel designed to play this role to keep the ME in balance/control by the EUS. But now, it looks like they don't need Israel's playing this role any more. Which means Israel is in deep trouble. I show the Jews (not Israelis) the way out of this trouble, I gave them a very good advice and I know they've heard me;->>
Grand Sen~or.
What was your advice?
Clint, I have already posted this as a reply to one of your message on this thread but here I repeat:
Jews give up the State of Israel with all her weapons including WMDs, in return the EUS recognizes Jews' right to law as an SPEE named the Greater Israel. Jews settle nothing more and nothing less than that.
I know that will cause alarm bells to ring in the EUS, but hey, isn't it time to wake up call?!;->
Grand Sen~or.
George Washington on Israel
“A passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils. Sympathy for the favorite nation, facilitating the illusion of an imaginary common interest in cases where no real common interest exists, and infusing into one the enmities of the other, betrays the former into a participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter without adequate inducement or justification.” ~George Washington Farewell Address
“The nation which indulges toward another habitual hatred or habitual fondness is in some degree a slave. It is a slave to its animosity or to its affection, either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and its interests." ~ George Washington
"Peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations; entangling alliances with none." ~ Thomas Jefferson
If they don't, they may someday have to explain to their grandchildren why they watched Israel drive itself off a cliff and did nothing to stop it.
Maybe Professor means:
If they don't, they may oneday have to explain to the G-d why they watched Israel drive itself off a cliff and did nothing to stop it.
Grand Sen~or.
Why can't "Palestinian" Arabs just live somewhere else in the vast Arab world?
Arabs are spread across a landmass the size of North America.
Israelis just want to be left alone in an area the size of Vermont. Why won't Arabs let them be?
What is the urgent need to carve deeply into "Vermont" to create yet another Arab state?
There are 22 already, doesn't seem to be a shortage of them. They are all inhabited primarily or exclusively by Arabic-speaking Arabs with Arab names, who primarily or exclusively practice Islam. Sounds like a pretty good fit for the Arabs given the deeply misleading label "Palestinian" who in an amazingly helpful coincidence, are ALSO Arabic-speaking Arabs with Arab names, who primarily or exclusively practice Islam.
So it's not like you'd have a huge assimilation issue. And it's not like the so-called "Palestinians" (Arabs like any other) have nowhere to go if they are no longer insisting on living within Israel's historic and promised borders in order to undermine and overthrow it. It's not like a "Palestinian" state would satisfy some long denied and otherwise unattainable independence and national aspiration for the Arabs. Again, they already have TWENTY-TWO states.
By contrast, the Israelis have no vast continent sized landmass inhabited primarily or exclusively by Hebrew-speaking, Judaism-practicing Jews to go to.
And just what would this 23rd state accomplish? We've already established that it not needed to satisfy Arab nationalism.
Would it provide some other benefit to the world? Here we can go by two guides: what the 22 other Arab states are like, and what the "Palestinian Authority" is currently like.
Excluding oil, all the Arab world combined, some 300 million people, has less total economic activity than Finland, population 5 million. Since the Industrial Revolution, indeed since the waning of the Renaissance in the early 17th century, it has contributed little of note to world culture or science.
Not a single Arab nation can be called First World, either in economic prosperity; rule of law; basic rights and freedoms; public safety; social tolerance; generally functional, honest, and transparent institutions; or in stable democratic government. Not one adequately and whole heartedly fights and endorses the fight against the scourge of Islamist terrorism.
Far from departing from this pattern, any "Palestinian" state promises to conform to it even more closely, and to be in concentrated form the worst example of all the pathologies of all the rest. And the world needs this because?
Given full independence, every time Israel pursues a lead on a terrorist into "Palestine" it would be committing an act of war. The rocket launchers, car bomb factories, suicide bomber senders, etc., that currently operate with the full support of the authorities there now would be operating under the cover of an internationally recognized sovereign state. In important ways it would be pre 9/11 Afghanistan all over again.
As for access to the Aqsa Mosque, Israel has provided it freely and generously to Muslim visitors since 1967, in dramatic contrast to Jordan's refusal to permit Jews to visit the Wailing/Western Wall. So that's a canard.
So there is NO legitimate reason for a "two state solution" and plenty of sound reasons to reject it.
Why Can't I come in and take over your house?
Why Can't I come in and take over your house, and lock you in the basement? The basement's pretty big, and I can send some food under the door from time to time.
Israelis cannot BECAUSE it is not their land.
Get it? It does not belong to Israel.
Israel is a fiction dreamed up in late 1800s and implemented under a colonial gun in 1948.
Here is what the "FATHER OF ISRAEL" had to say: (he was a terrorist by the way):
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/David_Ben-Gurion
I don't understand your optimism. Why should the Arabs make peace? If I was an Arab leader I would never make terms with Israel. That is natural: we have taken their country. Sure God promised it to us, but what does that matter to them? Our God is not theirs. We come from Israel, but two thousand years ago, and what is that to them? There has been antisemitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They only see one thing: we have come here and stolen their country. Why should they accept that? They may perhaps forget in one or two generations' time, but for the moment there is no chance. So, it's simple: we have to stay strong and maintain a powerful army. Our whole policy is there. Otherwise the Arabs will wipe us out.
* As quoted in The Jewish Paradox : A personal memoir (1978) by Nahum Goldmann (translated by Steve Cox), p. 99.
I can if you were a squatter in it when I returned from a lengthy absence. You have no real right to be even in the basement at all and should be sent home.
In any event it's not really about the rights and wrongs. It's about the most pragmatic solution.
The Arab/Muslim world's unanimous hostility towards Israel does not mean they identify as one people. An old Arab proverb which aptly illustrates their tribal mentality: "Me against my brother; me and my brother against our cousin; and me, my brother and my cousin against the stranger."
Palestinians were expelled from Jordan:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_September_in_Jordan
They were distrusted in Kuwait:
http://www.nytimes.com/1991/03/14/world/after-the-war-kuwait-palestinians-in-kuwait-face-suspicion-and-probable-exile.html
And now they are disliked in Iraq:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/29/AR2005122901360.html
They are discriminated against in Lebanon:
http://www.amnesty.org.au/news/comments/4737/
Plus, the Arab states have a vested interest in keeping the Palestinians in a perpetual state of victimhood, as this diverts attention away from their own corrupt regimes.
Thus, a new Saudi law allowing residents to apply for citizenship after ten years does not apply to Palestinians:
"But Al-Watan Arabic daily reported that the naturalization law would not be applicable to Palestinians living in the Kingdom as the Arab League has instructed that Palestinians living in Arab countries should not be given citizenship to avoid dissolution of their identity and protect their right to return to their homeland."
http://www.arabnews.com/?article=53213
With friends like these...
Perhaps the citizens of Israel could be moved to Germany and the Germans can join their European brethren in one of the many already existing European countries. Or How about to New York, where NYC already has a sizeable Jewish population. After all the US has 49 other States, and transporting populations isn't a big deal, at least according to some in this thread.
Really, it's not the blind selfishness that alienates me from my long support of Israel, or even the stupidity of the arguments that casually endorse massive ethnic cleansing because, hey, there's more arabs elsewhere, so abusing these ones doesn't count in the big scheme. What I can't stomach is the sheer inability to accept the Palestinians are human beings and that, in taking military control of their lands, Israel takes on itself an unshakable responsibility to respect their rights.
As Professor Walt so correctly notes, Israel is already on the path to self-destruction. It must change course or go terribly terribly wrong.
Your parallel scenario, which I already anticipated and refuted, fails, because even NYC isn't primarily let alone exclusively Jewish, nor is Germany. Nor are other European lands inhabited by Germans, except Austria, and we don't want to go there, do we?
Nobody is denying the humanity of any Arabs. The issue here is what state a subset of them should live in and where.
I note you did not, because you could not, refute my points about what an independent "Palestine" would be like.
Stephen M. Walt is the Robert and Renée Belfer professor of international relations at Harvard University.
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