WarSclerotic

Alan Dershowitz: President Obama’s Mistake.

President Obama should be commended for his emphasis on Israel’s security and his concern about Hamas joining the Palestinian Authority without renouncing its violent charter. But he made one serious mistake that tilts the balance against Israel in any future negotiations. Without insisting that the Palestinians give up their absurd claim to have millions of supposed refugees “return” to Israel as a matter of right, he insisted that Israel must surrender all of the areas captured in its defensive war of 1967, subject only to land swaps. This formulation undercuts Security Council Resolution 242 (which I played a very small role in helping to draft). Resolution 242, passed unanimously by the Security Council in the wake of Israel’s 1967 victory, contemplated some territorial adjustments necessary to assure Israel’s security against future attacks. It also contemplated that Israel would hold on to the Western Wall, the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem and the access roads to Hebrew University, without the need for any land swaps. Land swaps would only be required to make up for any areas beyond those contemplated by Resolution 242. The Obama formulation would seem to require land swaps even for the Western Wall.

Any proposed peace agreement will require the Palestinians to give up the so-called right of return, which is designed not for family reunification, but rather to turn Israel into another Palestinian state with an Arab majority. As all reasonable people know, the right of return is a non-starter. It is used as a “card” by the Palestinian leadership who fully understand that they will have to give it up if they want real peace. The Israelis also know that they will have to end their occupation of most of the West Bank (as they ended their occupation of Gaza) if they want real peace. Obama’s mistake was to insist that Israel give up its card without demanding that the Palestinians give up theirs.

Obama’s mistake is a continuation of a serious mistake he made early in his administration. That first mistake was to demand that Israel freeze all settlements. The Palestinian Authority had not demanded that as a condition to negotiations. But once the president of the United States issued such a demand, the Palestinian leadership could not be seen by its followers as being less Palestinian than the president. In other words, President Obama made it more difficult for the Palestinian leadership to be reasonable. Most objective observers now recognize Obama’s serious mistake in this regard. What is shocking is that he has done it again. By demanding that Israel surrender all the territories it captured in the 1967 war (subject only to land swaps) without insisting that the Palestinians surrender their right of return, the president has gone further than Palestinian negotiators had during various prior negotiations. This makes it more difficult for the Palestinian leadership to be reasonable in their negotiations with the Israelis.

It is not too late for the president to “clarify” his remarks so that all sides understand that there must be quid for quo — that the Palestinians must surrender any right to return if the Israelis are expected to seriously consider going back to the 1967 lines (which Abba Eban called “the Auschwitz lines” because they denied Israel real security).

If President Obama is to play a positive role in bringing the Palestinians and the Israelis to the negotiating table, he should insist that there be no preconditions to negotiation. This would mean the Palestinians no longer insisting on a settlement freeze before they will even sit down to try to negotiate realistic borders. The president did not even ask the Palestinians to return to the negotiating table. Nor did he ask them to drop the condition that he, in effect, made them adopt when he earlier insisted on the freeze.

The president missed an important opportunity in delivering his highly anticipated speech. We are no closer to negotiations now than we were before the speech. My fear is that we may be a bit further away as a result of the president’s one-sided insistence that Israel surrender territories without the Palestinians giving up the right of return. I hope that Prime Minister Netanyahu’s visit to Washington may increase the chances of meaningful negotiations. I wish I could be more optimistic but the president’s speech gave no cause for optimism. I wish it had been different because I strongly support a two-state solution based on a willingness by Israel to surrender territories captured in 1967 coupled with a willingness of the Palestinians to recognize Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people, to renounce the use of violence and terrorism and to give up any right of return.

At least 10 dead after forces fire at crow… JPost – Middle East.

  AMMAN – At least ten protesters were killed when Syrian security forces fired on Friday at a pro-democracy demonstration in the town of Sanamin south of the capital Damascus, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Syrian security forces fired live rounds into crowds gathered for at least two protests in the central city of Homs, an activist in the city said, as pro-democracy demonstrations erupted across the country earlier Friday.

The Syrian rights group said the coastal city of Banias, which was stormed by the army this month, witnessed the largest demonstration since the uprising began in southern Syria nine weeks ago.

Thousands joined protests in Banias, , the capital Damascus and Homs, witnesses and activists said, defying heavy troop and security deployment to quell street protests against the autocractic rule of President Bashar Assad.

The renewed protests come a fay after Syria condemned sanctions imposed by Washington on Assad and other officials in response to the crackdown on protests.

An official source on Syrian state television said the sanctions were targeting the Syrian people and served Israeli interests. “The sanctions have not and will not affect Syria’s independent will,” the source was quoted as saying.

Analysis: What rankled Netanyahu … JPost – Diplomacy & Politics.

  In 2004, US President George Bush, in exchange for then Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s plan to withdraw from the Gaza Strip, wrote a letter saying in any future agreement between Israel and the Palestinians it would be “unrealistic” to expect a full Israeli withdrawal to the 1949 Armistice lines (the 1967 lines), and that a just and fair solution to the Palestinian refugee issue would be their absorption in a future Palestinian state, rather than Israel.

What prompted Prime Minister Netanyahu to issue a surprisingly harsh response to President Barack Obama’s speech Thursday night was the sense that Obama had essentially thrown that letter out the window.

There were three elements in the Obama speech — a speech which was not without some “sweeteners” for Israel — that particularly irritated and surprised Netanyahu.

The first had to do with the President using, for the first time, the 1967 lines as a baseline for an agreement, saying in his speech that “We believe the borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps, so that secure and recognized borders are established for both states.”

Using the 1967 lines as a baseline, and saying that land will have to be swapped from inside Israel, has never before been US policy.

In 2009, in a carefully worded statement, US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton said the following: “We believe that through good faith negotiations the parties can mutually agree on an outcome which ends the conflict and reconciles the Palestinian goal of an independent and viable state based on the 1967 lines, with agreed swaps, and the Israeli goal of a Jewish state with secure and recognized borders that reflect subsequent developments and meet Israeli security requirements.”

What Obama did in his speech was make the Palestinian goals of a “viable state based on the 1967 lines, with agreed swaps,” the American goal as well.

Although the 1967 lines may have been the implied baseline in the Bush letter, there was no hint there of a need for Israel to compensate the Palestinians fully for all territory taken in the Six Day War. In fact, Bush wrote that Israel must have “secure and recognized borders” emerging from negotiations based on UN Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338. UNSC Resolution 242 famously calls for an Israeli withdrawal from territories taken during the war, but not all the territories.

In Netanyahu’s mind Obama is charting new and dangerous territory, something that cannot be ignored or whitewashed. Or, as he said as his plane was just about to land in Washington Friday morning a few hours before his planned meeting with the President, “some things cannot be swept under the rug.”

The second issue that perturbed Netanyahu was the refugee issue.

While Bush in his letter said clearly that the Palestinian refugees should return to a Palestinian state, Obama made no mention of that position and instead actually said that the refugee issue would have to be negotiated down the line. In the Israeli view, Obama simply ignored the American policy articulated by Bush on the refugees.

With Palestinian “refugees” storming the border fence in the north demanding the “right of return,” the concern inside the PMO is that Obama’s failure to take a firm stand on the issue only reinforces the Palestinian belief that there is actually something to talk about on this issue. “This is a basic misunderstanding of the reality,” one PMO source said.

And the third issue that rankled Netanyahu had to do with Hamas. While Obama said the Hamas-Fatah reconciliation raised “profound and legitimate questions for Israel,” for Netanyahu this was simply not a strong enough statement. The PMO saw Obama as “wishy-washy” on Hamas, and at the very least wanted to hear Obama reiterate the Quartet’s three conditions for engagement with Hamas as part of a PA unity government: forswearing terrorism, recognizing Israel and accepting previous agreements.

That Obama made no mention of these conditions, and that he did not clearly and unequivocally reject Hamas’ participation in a PA government, sent — at least in Netanyahu’s mind — exactly the wrong message.

An Analysis Of Obama’s Middle East Speech | The New Republic.

What Obama got right, and wrong, in his Middle East speech.

Yossi Kline HaLevy

At odds with Washington – JPost – Opinion – Editorials.

  In sharp contrast to his 2009 Cairo speech, President Barack Obama made it abundantly clear during his speech in Washington on Thursday precisely who the good guys are and who the bad guys are in the Muslim world.

The good guys are Mohammed Bouazizi, the Tunisian fruit and vegetable vendor who sparked a revolution that brought down president Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali by setting himself on fire; Wael Ghonim, the Egyptian Google executive involved in the Tahrir Square protests that doomed president Hosni Mubarak; and the millions of others in Syria, Bahrain, Iran and elsewhere demanding basic human rights, economic opportunity and freedom of expression.

Obama also identified the bad guys. Basher Assad is a bad guy who has chosen to answer his own people’s cries for reform with brutal murders and imprisonment. Obama’s message to Assad was to either help with the reforms or move out of the way. Yet after witnessing Assad’s military forces mow down peaceful protesters with tanks and artillery in Homs, Deraa, Baniyas and other Syrian cities for several weeks now, Obama said nothing that modified the stance presented at the end of April by US Defense Secretary Robert Gates, that there was no room for direct US intervention in Syria. Nor was it clear why the rationale behind interfering in Libya – the prevention of the massacre of thousands – did not apply to the Syrian scenario.

Obama also spoke out strongly against Bahrain’s brutal crackdown against the Shi’ite opposition, and against Iran’s repression of its citizens and its “illicit nuclear program.” But in neither case did he elucidate any concrete steps he felt the US should take against these regimes. Nor did he say how he would help strengthen opposition movements there.

His disinclination in 2009 to extend aid to brave Iranian activists who were behind that year’s Green Revolution is a painful reminder of the administration’s failure to take action at critical moments. Judging from the US’s ongoing reaction to Syria, it is not entirely clear whether that lesson has been learned.

THE US president was a great deal more specific on his vision for an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal. He made it clear that his country would not cooperate with the Palestinian push for a UN General Assembly declaration recognizing a Palestinian state along the pre-1967 lines – a predictable US position but still a partial relief. Negotiation with Israel, not UN recognition, is the only route to Palestinian statehood, Obama said, reflecting consistent US policy.

However, while there were no signs that he was threatening or pressuring Israel, Obama did say that a two-state solution should be based on the 1967 lines, a clear endorsement of Palestinian demands, and terminology that for many Israelis will bring fears of escalating pressure to return to positions similar to those from which a vulnerable Israel was repeatedly attacked between 1948 and 1967. He mentioned “land swaps” but, as in the past, was silent on the issue of an Israeli right to maintain the settlement blocs, in stark contrast to his predecessor George W. Bush, who endorsed such territorial adjustments in a letter to Ariel Sharon.

Obama also dissented outright with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s reading of the geopolitical map, claiming that the Arab Spring offered a unique opportunity to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In contrast, Netanyahu has presented what is in our opinion a more sober, realistic assessment of the situation. The instability running rampant in the region illustrates how easily regimes, including a newly founded Palestinian state, can suddenly be toppled and potentially taken over by Islamic extremists like Hamas.

Problematic, too, was Obama’s declaration that the sides should relaunch talks focusing initially on borders and security, leaving the “emotional” issues of Jerusalem and Palestinian refugees for later. Israel’s position has long been that such an order of business could enable the Palestinians to “pocket” the Israeli territorial concessions involved in border agreements without withdrawing their demand for a “right of return” for millions of Palestinians – which is the destruction of the Jewish state by demographic means. Disturbingly, he did not specify that the Palestinian refugee problem must be solved within a new “Palestine,” not in Israel.

A positive point in Obama’s speech was his recognition of the “bad guy” in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He wondered how Israel was to conduct negotiations with a Palestinian leadership that included Hamas in its national unity government, as long as the terrorist organization was bent on Israel’s destruction. Strikingly, however, he did not reiterate the imperative for Hamas to recognize Israel and abandon terrorism as a precondition for such talks. Here, of all untenable places, he was vague, declaring only that “In the weeks and months to come, Palestinian leaders will have to provide a credible answer to that question.”

It’s that question that goes to the root of whether the Palestinian leadership is truly prepared to reconcile itself to the fact of Jewish sovereign rights in the Middle East. And it is the differing assessments of Obama and Netanyahu on that most central of issues that explains why the president’s speech was received so coldly by the prime minister as he set out for what now seems certain to be a highly troubling visit to Washington.