Determining the real threat to peace in the Middle East | The Daily Caller – Breaking News, Opinion, Research, and Entertainment.

As Israel marked its 62nd anniversary on May 15, a familiar rift was occurring with a U.S. administration over the settlements issue. This time, the matter involved Jerusalem, specifically Israel’s expansion of existing settlement in the Old City.

Most Americans may be forgiven for wondering why Israel’s people should be told where they can or cannot build in their own ancient capital. They would also be surprised to learn that Washington doesn’t recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s modern capital. While the U.S. has long been Israel’s most steadfast ally, when it comes to Jerusalem, America stands with most nations in declining to locate its embassy there.

The rationale for this refrain is this: East Jerusalem was part of the real estate taken by Israel during the Six-Day War in 1967. Like other territory gained in that conflict, it is viewed as an obstacle to peace so long as Israel holds it.

Is it?

One way to find out is to look at the pre-1967 Middle East. Even a cursory examination suggests that the problem isn’t Israel’s reluctance to relinquish land, but her enemies’ refusal to recognize a Jewish state on any land, no matter how minuscule.

Unfortunately, this was true from the beginning. In 1917, Britain’s Balfour Declaration declared the right of the Jews to a homeland in what was then called Palestine. When the Arabs protested, London considered abandoning the Declaration. In 1922, it broke off nearly 80 percent of Palestine, setting it aside as a new Arab homeland called Transjordan. Jewish settlement there was banned.

This left the Jews with only 20 percent of original Palestine. Yet they accepted this outcome, while the Arabs did not. The massacre of Jewish civilians in Hebron in 1929 was a grisly display of the refusal to countenance Zionist settlement in what was left of Palestine. This readiness to endorse mass violence was embodied by the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, an Arab Muslim leader in Palestine who spent World War II in Nazi Germany cheerleading the Holocaust and urging its extension into the Middle East.

After World War II, in 1947, the United Nations voted for a Partition Plan that took part of the 20 percent and gave it to the Arabs. Once again, the Jews embraced the plan, while the Arabs rejected it.

In his book, “The Cause for Peace,” Trygve Lie, the UN Secretary General, wrote that having opposed the Partition Plan, the Arabs “seemed determined to drive that point home by assaults upon the Jewish community of Palestine.” Some of these assaults included bombing apartment buildings in Jerusalem, killing students at Hebrew University near Jerusalem, and massacring 78 Jewish doctors, scientists, and nurses on the road to Hadassah Hospital.

Arab leaders did not dispute this charge. In April 1948, Jamal Husseini told the U.N. Security Council that in response to the charge that the Arabs had begun the fighting, “we did not deny this. We told the whole world we were going to fight.”

On May 15, 1948, the State of Israel was declared. The Arabs’ response was to try to strangle it in its cradle. Armies from six Arab nations invaded. That same day, Azzam Pasha, Secretary General of the Arab League, proclaimed, “This will be a war of extermination…”

It wasn’t. Israel prevailed, repelling the invasions.

This was the first of many times in which the Jewish state’s foes launched a “heads-we-win-tails-you lose” campaign. From direct wars on Israel to terrorist strikes against its populace, Israel’s enemies knew that if they won, Israel would be destroyed but that if Israel prevailed, the international community would make sure there would be no price to pay.

That changed with the 1967 war.

On May 15, 1967, the forces of Egyptian strongman Gamal Abdul Nasser moved into the Sinai. On May 17, Cairo Radio’s Voice of the Arabs proclaimed, “All Egypt is now prepared to plunge into total war which will put an end to Israel.” The following day, it promised “the extermination of Zionist existence.” On May 20, Syria’s Defense Minister and its future leader, Hafez Assad, proclaimed that “the time has come to enter into the battle of liberation.” On May 27, Nasser proclaimed, “Our basic objective will be the destruction of Israel.” The following day, he said there would be no “co-existence with Israel.” adding that “the war with Israel has been in effect since 1948.” Then on May 30, Jordan, formerly Transjordan, signed a military pact with Nasser.

Rather than wait to absorb the impending attack, Israel struck first, defeating its would-be invaders. This time, a cost was extracted from her enemies. Israel took territory, including the Golan Heights from Syria, which had been used to fire on Israelis, the Sinai and Gaza from Egypt, and the West Bank and East Jerusalem from Jordan.

Both Egypt and Jordan eventually decided to recognize Israel and received land back in return. Moreover, Israel has unilaterally left Gaza.

As for the long-standing issue of Arabs displaced during the 1948 war, Israel offered Yasir Arafat a Palestinian state in 2000 in return for full recognition of its right to exist. Arafat responded by launching a multi-year terror campaign against Israel’s civilians.

In short, history dispels the notion that Israel’s occupation of additional land since the 1967 war is the cause of Arab/Israel hostilities. Rather, it is the refusal to recognize Israel’s right to exist that drives the conflict. Were it not so, there would have been no conflict before 1967.

Indeed, it is ironic that as the world remains fixated on a mythical obstacle to peace, the prospect of real and unprecedented war looms as Iran, another foe of Israel and opponent of the West, moves closer to realizing its nuclear ambitions. This would be the culmination of nearly three decades of its regime’s fanning terrorism’s flames, from its role in the creation and support of Hezbollah in Lebanon to its actively aiding Hamas in the West Bank and Gaza.

Which is the real threat to peace: Israelis building houses or Iranian mullahs building a bomb? That is the question for today.

Paul Liben has worked in New York City and Washington, DC as a speechwriter for the past 15 years.   He served as a speechwriter for New York Governor George Pataki and then as director of speechwriting for U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff.   A published writer, he has written op-eds for more than 100 publications, including the Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, Washington Times, Baltimore Sun, Philadelphia Inquirer and Houston Chronicle.

DEBKAfile, Political Analysis, Espionage, Terrorism, Security.

Tags: Emanuel Netanyau Obama

The start of a new friendship?

After more than a year, US president Barack Obama has suddenly stepped back form his icy treatment of Israel and its prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu, debkafile‘s Washington sources report. In an effort to make amends, he sent his top advisers, including his chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, with a public apology (of a kind) to leading American rabbis.
Our sources add that under new White House guidelines, US Middle East envoy George Mitchell should not try and extract from Israel more concessions that it is willing to offer, when he leads the proximity talks with the Palestinians starting this week.
The Obama U-turn dashes Palestinian hopes of the US president holding his own solution ready to impose on Israel in the event of the talks foundering or winding down in September without progress.
Political and Jewish circles see the change as an attempt win back Jewish voter support for the Democrats, eroded over the downturn in US-Israel relations, for the forthcoming midterm elections.
debkafile‘s Washington sources stress that the context is a lot wider. The US president knows the time has come to count his assets in the face of the dramatic big power realignment in the Middle East and the diplomatic impasse over Iran’s drive for a nuclear bomb.
After fourteen months in the White House, Barack Obama has suddenly discovered that he has no other strategic ally in the region to rely on except for Israel.
Netanyahu may be justified in crowing over his critics at home. His decision to stand up to the US president’s cold shoulder, insults and pressure, has been vindicated, whereas defense minister Ehud Barak and opposition leader Tzipi Liivni have been confounded in their dire warnings that refusal to surrender in a big way to the Palestinians would gravely jeopardize US-Israel relations.
A senior source in Washington told debkafile Sunday, May 16, that the Israeli prime minister has chalked up an impressive achievement; he can expect warmth and friendship from the administration in the foreseeable future in place of the coolness hitherto.

This does not mean Obama has given up on his objective of a two-state solution of the conflict with the Palestinians, but the arm-twisting tactics have been set aside for now.

Obama’s new look on Israel was manifested in the words of Rahm Emanuel, when he met a carefully selected  group of 15 rabbis from across the United States Thursday, May 13 along with fellow White House officials, including Dennis Ross, senior presidential adviser on Iran and Dan Shapiro, head of Middle East desk at the National Security Council.
Emanuel was the most outspoken when he said the Obama administration had “screwed up the messaging” about his support for Israel over the past 14 months. He promised the White House would work to undo the damage, but said it would take “more than one month to make up for 14 months.”

Whether or not the Netanyahu government will be satisfied with this crudely-worded White House “apology” -addressed to American Jewish rabbis rather than Jerusalem – remains to be seen. Much will depend on the actions the Obama administration takes to undo the damage to which it has now owned up.

Iran agrees to uranium exchange.

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Emanuel to rabbis: US ‘screwed up’.

DEBKAfile, Political Analysis, Espionage, Terrorism, Security.

Tags: Fortified wall Hizballah Syria

Syria deepens its footprint in Lebanon

Hizballah and Syria are building a massive fortified wall, running from Rashaya Al-Wadi on the western, Lebanese slopes of Mt. Hermon (85 kilometers southeast of Beirut) in the south, to the Lebanese Beqaa Valley town of Aita el-Foukhar, in the north, debkafile‘s military sources reveal.
The structure, 22 kilometers long in parallel to the Lebanese-Syrian border promises to be one of the biggest fortified structures in the Middle East. It is designed as an obstacle against any Israeli tank forces heading through Lebanon toward the Syrian capital, Damascus. When it is finished, the barrier will isolate a key Lebanese border region – 14 kilometers wide and 22 kilometers long – from the rest of the country and place it under Hizballah-Syrian military control.

This region is inhabited most by Druzes and Christians.
The project became possible in the last year, after Lebanon’s Druze leader, Walid Jumblatt, turned away from his pro-Western allegiance and threw in his lot with the pro-Syrian camp, lining up with Syrian president Bashar Assad and Hizballah’s secretary Hassan Nasrallah and buying into the military alliance headed by Iran.
Behind the rising wall, Hizballah and Syria can freely smuggle weapons across concealed from outside surveillance, while deepening Syria’s footprint in Lebanon.
In any case, as debkafile has disclosed, they pulled off their subterfuge for getting the Scuds across by stationing two Hizballah brigades on the Syrian side of the border for training in the new missiles. When Israeli failed to make good on its threat to strike those missiles if they reached Hizballah hands, Damascus and Hizballah felt free to go forward with Part Two of their plan for Lebanon’s militarization – first the Hizballah militia’s transformation into a modern army with sophisticated weapons, and now the raising of a fortified wall and creating a Syrian-controlled buffer region inside Lebanon, 55 kilometers east of Beirut and 35 kilometers north of South Lebanon and the Israeli border.
According to our military sources, Syria intends to keep that region off-limits to Lebanese military access -except for Hizballah. Syrian troops, officers and arms stores are to be based there and maintained in a state of war readiness.

Syria stands to gain another prime strategic asset with its control of Rashaya Al-Wadi, at the southernmost point of the new wall: This scenic village commands the Taim valley, whence flow a number of water courses that feed the River Jordan and the Sea of Galilee; for the first time in many years, Damascus will be placing a hand on one of Israel’s primary water sources.
Satisfied that the Netanyahu government will continue to sit on its hands, Syria and Hizballah are not hiding the massive barrier project’s progress. Long convoys of trucks crossing in from Syria can be seen converging on the site, loaded with cement and other building materials.
Our Middle East sources report that the project is so immense and the work so intensive, that shops in Damascus have run out of cement, forcing many other construction works in Syria to a standstill.

Fatemeh Keshavarz: The Goals of Ahmadinejad.

The Latest Charade
By FATEMEH KESHAVARZ

Mr. Ahmadinejad was here again last week with nothing new to add to his old line. Upon arrival in the U.S. on May 3rd, he said in a Persian interview that the purpose of his trip was not to attract the trust and goodwill of anyone. That same evening he said in an interview with Charlie Rose “Iran is not worried about US sanctions; it is used to 30 years of sanctions.” Later he added “Sanctions are meaningless in the world of free trade.” Both these claims are open to debate. Certainly, Iranians who already live in harsh economic conditions would beg to differ with their “President.” Nonetheless, Mr. Ahmadinejad is telling the truth, when he says defending the Iranian nuclear agenda, or avoiding sanctions, are not the goals of his trip.

His main objectives I believe are two, one international and one domestic. On the international scene he requires a smoke screen to hide the horrendous executions (the latest figure, 4 young men and 1 woman yesterday including a young teacher called Farzad Kamangar) and human right abuses that are intensifying as the anniversary of the disputed June 2009 election approaches. The nuclear issue, and Mr. Ahmadinejad’s headline grabbing dismissive attitude provides this coverage by diverting attention from these actions to the fear of a nuclear Holocaust. On the domestic side, he needs to project the image of a confident, legitimate and internationally recognized President for the country. Upon return to Iran, his state-run television will use carefully selected excerpts from the trip to piece together a heroic Ahmadinejad embarrassing western reporters and winning the hearts and minds of those oppressed by the west. In the process it deals a demoralizing blow to the seekers of reform in Iran by highlighting the fact that he gets the attention of the U.S./ the world not them. He represents the country.  The central message: the post election painful and bloody struggle for social justice is already a thing of the past.

His dismissive smirk notwithstanding, Mr. Ahmadinejad has always cared deeply about the world opinion. He uses his security forces to prevent the reformist opposition leaders from getting any international attention. Weeks before his unnecessary trip of May 3rd, his police force prevented the former Iranian President Mohamad Khatami from leaving the country. Parleman News, the official website of the minority faction of the Iranian parliament, reported that on April 15 former President Mohammad Khatami, about to leave Iran for Japan to attend a summit on nuclear disarmament, was turned back from Tehran airport. There are no legal charges against Mr. Khatami and he is unlikely to have been able to do any damage to the current government besides being received respectfully by some of the world leaders and Iranians living aboard. Weeks before that, Simin Behbahani, the Iranian Poet Laureate and Head of the Iranian Writers Association, was also prevented from leaving the country. Behbahani, a deeply respected national figure, is an 83 year-old poet twice-nominated for the Noble prize. She could have caused no harm to the current regime except through attracting the respect and the attention of the western media and the Iranians living abroad for her outspoken defense of a democratic Iran.

Back in Iran, as the heroic basher of the U.S. Media, Mr. Ahmadinejad has the most disdainful remarks for these reporters and the questions they usually ask him. May be, after all, he has a point in not thinking highly of a media which fails to take him to task for the kind of criminal government he is presiding over. Lending him, instead, its publicity tools, unwittingly, by showcasing his trip and by interviewing him on outdated and irresolvable issues such as “Is Secretary Clinton a friend of Iran?” and “Is Iran afraid of sanctions?”, “The current location of Osama Ben Laden” and the like. Mr. Stephanopoulos must be totally unaware of the long term animosity between Al-Qaeda and Iran. Even so, does he really think that if Ahmadinejad were to hide Ben Laden in Iran, he would confess to it on ABC?  In these interviews, which are carried out in conditions of near zero expertise on the realty of life in present Iran, Mr. Ahmadinejad comes across as confident and brave and the interviewer as irritated, skeptical, and frequently subjected to the interviewee’s ridicule.  In the process, the criminal behavior of Mr. Ahmadinejad’s government, including the total silencing of journalism, the continued arrests, assassinations, and executions, the re-opening of the Karizak Prison, and the like, are not even brought up.

If a well-informed reporter ever interviewed Mr. Ahmadinejad, s/he might ask how could he have run on the platform of fighting corruption when the most recent investigations – even though real investigations are close to dreams in present day Iran – have described his government as “the most corrupt” among all governments following the 1979 revolution. According to this report, prepared by the country’s top investigator Mr. Mustafa Pourmohammadi, submitted to the Supreme Leader and leaked to the press, 27 officials appointed by Mr. Ahmadinejad are under investigation for embezzlement.

Other informed questions would include, if his government had 63% of the vote, why ten months after the election is the number of those kept in jail still in the thousands (most without a stated crime and without a lawyer), why are there new arrests on a daily basis, why are the university dorms across the country continue to be raided injuring and arresting more students.  Why does Iran have the largest number of official reporters in jail (67 to be precise)? Why do eight out of the eleven highest ranking Iranian clerics refuse to even meet and speak with Mr. Ahmadinejad? Why did the workers who on May first demonstrated in at least five major cities in Iran claimed their management to be corrupt and their wages unpaid.  The list could go on with the latest item on it being the assassination of progressive academics by unknown individuals who miraculously find their way through the maze of the security forces into their offices and attack them for “personal” reasons. Could these attacks which are carried out only against the supporters of the Green Movement be aiming at terrorizing the student and faculty opposition crucial historically to the survival of social justice movements in Iran?  Could it be because they are still refusing to acknowledge the legitimacy of Mr. Ahmadinejad’s government?

Iran is a large and complex country. It is not easy to set a clear timetable for the collapse of its current brutal government. What is clear, however, is that its condition is far from stable and the opposition to it far from quelled. The government keeps the lid on things by walking an extremely fine line. On May first, The teachers and the workers day in Iran, Mr. Ahmadinejad crossed this line by using his usual trick of trying to get into Tehran University from the back door to speak to a group of handpicked students – so a film of the event could put his victory on national display. In a matter of minutes, thousands of students had gathered to protest his presence on the university campus. He left the way he always has, quietly and through the back door http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rxq4gOhNTCc .

Neither Charlie Rose nor George Stephanopoulos who interviewed Ahmadinejad seem to be aware of any of the above facts or even more recent events such as workers and student demonstrations in a dozen Iranian cities on May 1st. Worse still, they did not seem to know that Professor Motamedi, President of Amirkabir Polytechnic University in Tehran, and a supporter of the Green Movement was stabbed in his office on the same day that Mr. Ahmadinejad was assuring Charlie Rose and millions of American viewers that life in Iran had returned to normal. In fact the situation at the universities is so grave that the world academics have created an online initiative appealing to the international community for its support of academics in Iran: http://digilander.libero.it/university4iran/

Despite the sensors, the filters, and the punishments, educated Iranians (whose rate of literacy at age 15-25 is above 92%) continue to view themselves as citizens of the world. They follow the reactions of the world in the hope of recognition for their struggle in one of the harshest conditions of suppression. They know that Ahmadinejad’s government has moved its violence to student dorms, interrogation rooms, and prisons to prevent them from showing their wounds to the world. He prevents them from making headlines by generating his own headlines built around Israel bashing and nuclear sensationalism to persuade them that the U.S. / world media has abandoned them. There is a “wiping off the map” going on here and that is wiping the struggle of Iranians for social justice off the world’s consciousness by hiding them under a smoke screen.

Mr. Ahmadinejad will take any opportunity to visit the U.S. even when heads of states are not invited and he has nothing new to add to his old lines. While here, he will promote his creative version of life in Iran: free, strong, and unafraid of war or sanctions. And, he will reiterate his old uncompromising position on the Iranian nuclear industry to encourage his opponents to repeat their threats including the unrealistic threats of a military strike against the Iranian nuclear facilities. The renewal of verbal threats of military attack against Iran justifies more sensor and more executions.

In the meantime, Iranians are watching…and enduring bravely. One can only hope that their endurance will outlast the Iranian government’s ability to maintain its charade of legitimacy.

Fatemeh Keshavarz is Chair of the Department of Asian and Near Eastern Languages and Literature at Washington University and the author of Jasmine and Stars: Reading More Than Lolita in Tehran.

The new Lebanon battlefield – Israel Opinion, Ynetnews.

Israelis don’t fully realize scope of military threat posed by Hezbollah

Alex Fishman

Clinton: We won’t get a serious response from Iran without sanctions – Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News.

• Published 22:54 14.05.10
• Latest update 22:54 14.05.10

Secretary of State also said Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva faces an uphill climb in trying to persuade Iran to curb its nuclear ambitions.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Friday that Iran still refuses to discuss its nuclear program with the international community and is unlikely to do so until the United Nations imposes new sanctions on the Islamic republic.

	U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
	Photo by: AP

“I have told my counterparts in many capitals around the world that I believe that we will not get any serious response out of the Iranians until after the Security Council acts,” Clinton told reporters after a meeting with new British Foreign Secretary William Hague.

Clinton also said that Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva faces an uphill climb in trying to persuade Iran to curb its nuclear ambitions.

Lula plans to press Iran’s leaders to revive a stalled proposal under which Iran would send low-enriched uranium abroad and receive a higher grade uranium in return – a plan that has gone nowhere since it was floated in October.

The United States and some of its allies accuse Iran of seeking to use its civilian nuclear program as a cover for pursuing nuclear weapons. Iran denies this, saying its program is solely to generate electricity.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev told Lula in Moscow that he had a 30 percent chance at best. Lula, in contrast, put his own odds of success at 9.9 on a scale of one to 10.

“The interchange between President Lula and President Medvedev in Moscow today illustrated the hill that the Brazilians are attempting to climb,” Clinton told reporters.