Capturing the MidEast in short soundbites: poignant
reflections by people who understand the complexities of the Middle East. My philosophy is: "less is more."
You won't agree with everything that's here, but I'm confident you will find it interesting!
Excepting the titles, my own comments are minimal. Instead I rely on news sources to string together what I hope is an interesting, politically challenging, non-partisan, non-ideological narrative.
UN Security Council Resolution 2334 was the first prong of outgoing President Barack Obama’s lame duck campaign against Israel.
US Secretary of State John Kerry’s speech on Wednesday was the second.
On January 15, stage 3 will commence in Paris.
At France’s lame duck President François Hollande’s international conference, the foreign ministers of some 50 states are expected to adopt as their own Kerry’s anti-Israel principles. [Jerusalem Post via JWR]
It's incomprehensible - except as a parting shot of personal revenge on Benjamin Netanyahu. Or perhaps as a revelation of a deep-seated antipathy to Israel that simply awaited a safe political interval for public expression.
Another legacy moment for Barack Obama. And his most shameful.
Most of his speech focused on Israel, and he said the two-state solution was "now in serious jeopardy." Yet he offered fewer details about how to get to such a deal, given the failure of so many previous attempts, including his own nine-month effort that collapsed in 2014. (AP-Washington Post)
Kerry Denounced by Lawmakers in Both Parties- Jonathan Martin Secretary of State John Kerry's rebuke of the Israeli government set off a wave of criticism from lawmakers in both parties. Republicans denounced what they said was the Obama administration's harsh treatment of a steadfast ally and Democrats signaled that they were uneasy with Kerry's pressure on Israel. (New York Times)
It's Not the Settlements- Rick Richman Immediately after the UN voted last week to vilify Israel, Ben Rhodes, the White House deputy national security advisor, held a conference call to argue that the Obama administration was motivated by its "grave concerns" about "the continued pace" of Israeli settlement activities.
Rhodes said, "Since 2009, the number of Israeli settlers in the West Bank has increased by more than 100,000."
The figure of 100,000 sounds significant until you realize that 80% of it has been in the settlement blocs "everyone knows" Israel will retain in any conceivable peace agreement.
The 20,000 person increase east of the separation barrier translates into less than 1% of the population in the disputed territories over a period of eight years. The vast majority of Israeli settlement activity has been within settlement blocs that no one can realistically expect Israel to dismantle.
During the Bush administration, the U.S. and Israel agreed on a formula for settlements: building could continue within the boundaries of existing settlements, but not outside them, so that construction would not affect the amount of land available for a Palestinian state, which was more than 90% of the disputed territories.
It was the Obama administration that reneged on that agreement in 2009 and made an issue out of something that had already been resolved. (Commentary)
Israelis remember that they elected leaders - Yitzhak Rabin in 1992, Ehud Barak in 1999, Ehud Olmert in 2006 - who made repeated peace overtures to the Palestinians, only to be met with violence and rejection. Israelis also remember that Netanyahu ordered a settlement freeze, and that also brought peace no closer.
The lesson is that Jewish settlements are not the main obstacle to peace. If they were, Gaza would be on its way to becoming the Costa Rica of the Mediterranean. The obstacle is Palestinian rejection of Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state in any borders. A Secretary of State who wishes to resolve the conflict could have started from that premise, while admonishing the Palestinians that they will never get a state so long as its primary purpose is the destruction of its neighbor. (Wall Street Journal)
Fortunately, the bipartisan uproar sparked by Obama's UN decision provides an opportunity for Democrats and Republicans to rally around a more constructive policy. They should start by agreeing to move the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. That would provide a powerful reaffirmation to Israel of the U.S.' enduring commitment. In the choice between terror and peace, and democracy and repression, there can be no room for impartiality, let alone abstention. (Bloomberg) *
Just weeks before leaving office, President Obama could not resist the opportunity to take one more swipe at Israel - and to do real harm.
Obama has done us one favor, which is to settle the long argument about his attitude toward Israel.
No partisan of his can henceforth say with a straight face, as Thomas Friedman wrote in the New York Times in 2012: "The only question I have when it comes to President Obama and Israel is whether he is the most pro-Israel president in history or just one of the most." When the crunch came, Israelis had to turn to Egypt to try to postpone a UN vote.
Think about that: there is more trust between Israel and Egypt today than between either of them and the U.S. (Weekly Standard)
New Zealand introduced the resolution in the UN Security Council that pronounced settlements to be illegal.
New Zealanders are no strangers to settlements. In 1831, there were fewer than 1,000 Europeans living in New Zealand among the local Maori tribes. These Europeans had neither historical attachment nor any legal claim to the land.
Eventually, Maori sovereignty in their ancestral homeland was effectively eliminated. (Tablet)
Votes in favor of the anti-Israel UN resolution were cast by Russia, which has occupied Konigsberg since 1945, after capturing that ancient German city, ethnically cleansing its population, and bringing in hundreds of thousands of Russian settlers; China, which has occupied Tibet and brought in thousands of Chinese settlers; France, which occupied and settled Algeria for many years; and Great Britain, which has occupied and colonized a significant portion of the globe. (Gatestone Institute)
Egyptian Report Reveals Obama's Collaboration with Palestinian Authority in UN Ambush of Israel - Yochanan Visser Israel's Channel 1 broadcast a report quoting Egyptian media that published the secret protocol of a meeting between U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, National Security Adviser Susan Rice, and two top Palestinian Authority officials in Washington on Dec. 15. Oded Granot, an Arabic-speaking Middle East expert, said the protocol was iron-clad evidence that the procedure that led to the ambush against Israel in the Security Council on Friday was coordinated between Kerry, Rice, PA Chief Negotiator Saeb Erekat, and Ryad Mansour, the PA envoy to the United Nations.
Kerry and Rice told the two PA officials that the Obama administration was ready to cooperate with a Palestinian action at the Security Council on condition that the resolution would be "balanced." Kerry also reportedly suggested to Erekat that the PA could bring up ideas to set the parameters for a forced permanent solution to the conflict.
Granot said the Egyptians most likely published the protocol to express their frustration with the attitude of the Obama administration in orchestrating the move behind the back of Egyptian President el-Sisi. (Western Journalism)
Columnist Charles Krauthammer discussed the recent UN resolution on Fox News, saying, "Does anybody think that Venezuela and New Zealand spent nights slaving over the wording of this resolution? (They were the ones who introduced it.) Of course not. This was a U.S. operation all the way."
"The pernicious part is the inclusion in the resolution of the term 'east Jerusalem.' That was totally unnecessary, and it's completely illogical. It turns the holiest site in Judaism - the Temple Mount, the Western Wall - into foreign territory. People say, 'it's the third holiest shrine in Islam.' It's the first holiest shrine of Judaism. It's as if the UN passed a resolution declaring Mecca and Medina to be sovereign Jewish or Christian territory. It's absurd, it's an insult to the intelligence of the world, and it is supremely damaging to the Israeli claim to its own holy places." (National Review)
While previous resolutions unfairly criticized the Jewish state, none of them specifically labeled the Jewish presence in territory Israel took control of in the 1967 Six-Day War as illegal. It means that hundreds of thousands of Jews living in decades-old Jewish neighborhoods in the city of Jerusalem or in settlement blocs that even Obama has conceded would remain inside Israel in the event of a peace treaty are now international outlaws.
It will put air in the sails of an anti-Semitic BDS (boycott, divest, sanction) movement that had seemed to be losing ground in recent years. Now, for the first time, it can claim to have the backing of the UN. Under the terms of this resolution, Jewish holy places in Jerusalem are considered to be Palestinian. This is an endorsement of the vicious Palestinian campaign at UNESCO and other UN bodies to deny Jewish history and religion by claiming Jerusalem's holy places are exclusively Muslim.
Moreover, it removes any incentive for the Palestinian Authority to budge from its refusal to negotiate peace with Israel. In effect, Obama, who has claimed to be a champion of the peace process, has effectively killed it. (Commentary) *
Barack Obama ’s decision to abstain from, and therefore
allow, last week’s vote to censure Israel at the U.N. Security Council is a
fitting capstone for what’s left of his foreign policy. Strategic
half-measures, underhanded tactics and moralizing gestures have been the
president’s style from the beginning. Israelis aren’t the only people to feel
betrayed by the results.
Also betrayed: Iranians, whose 2009 Green Revolution in
heroic protest of a stolen election Mr. Obama conspicuously failed to endorse
for fear of offending the ruling theocracy.
Iraqis, who were assured of a diplomatic surge to
consolidate the gains of the military surge, but who ceased to be of any
interest to Mr. Obama the moment U.S. troops were withdrawn, and only concerned
him again when ISIS neared the gates of Baghdad.
Syrians, whose initially peaceful uprising against
anti-American dictator Bashar Assad Mr. Obama refused to embrace, and whose
initially moderate-led uprising Mr. Obama failed to support, and whose sarin-
and chlorine-gassed children Mr. Obama refused to rescue, his own red lines
notwithstanding.
Ukrainians, who gave up their nuclear weapons in 1994 with
formal U.S. assurances that their “existing borders” would be guaranteed, only
to see Mr. Obama refuse to supply them with defensive weapons when Vladimir
Putin invaded their territory 20 years later.
Pro-American Arab leaders, who expected better than to be
given ultimatums from Washington to step down, and who didn’t anticipate the
administration’s tilt toward the Muslim Brotherhood as a legitimate political
opposition, and toward Tehran as a responsible negotiating partner.
Most betrayed: Americans.
Mr. Obama promised a responsible end to the war in Iraq. We
are again fighting in Iraq. He promised victory in Afghanistan. The Taliban are
winning. He promised a reset with Russia. We are enemies again. He promised the
containment of Iran. We are witnessing its ascendancy in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon
and Yemen. He promised a world free of nuclear weapons. We are stumbling into
another age of nuclear proliferation. He promised al Qaeda on a path to defeat.
Jihad has never been so rampant and deadly.
[T]he administration is likely being deceptive about last
week’s U.N. vote, claiming it did not promote, craft or orchestrate a
resolution that treats the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City as a
settlement in illegally occupied territory. Yet in November, John Kerry had a
long talk on the subject with the foreign minister of New Zealand, one of the
resolution’s sponsors.
Even this might be excusable, if Mr. Obama at least had the
courage of his mistaken convictions, or if his deception were in the service of
a worthier end. Instead, we have the spectacle of the U.S. government hiding
behind the skirts of the foreign minister of New Zealand—along with eminent
co-sponsors, Venezuela, Malaysia and Senegal—in order to embarrass and endanger
a democratic ally in a forum where that ally is already isolated and bullied.
In the catalog of low points in American diplomacy, this one ranks high.
After the Carter administration pulled a similar stunt
against Israel at the Security Council in December 1980, the Washington Post
published an editorial that does the paper honor today.
“It cannot be denied,” the editors wrote, “that there is a
pack and that it hounds Israel shamelessly and that this makes it very serious
when the United States joins it.” The editorial was titled “Joining the
Jackals.”
Unlike Mr. Carter, Mr. Obama hasn’t joined the jackals. He
has merely opened the door wide to them, whether at the U.N. or in the skies
over Syria or in the killing fields in Ukraine. The United States abstains:
What a fitting finish to this ruinous presidency. [Wall Street Journal]
By leading the gang rape of Israel, Obama undermined the rationale for American power. If US agrees that Israel is committing a crime by respecting the civil and human rights of its citizens to live in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria, then how can America claim that it has the right to defend its own rights and interests, when those clash with the views of the vast majority of state members of the UN?
Following Obama’s assault on Israel, Senators Lindsay Graham and Ted Cruz called for the US to end its financial support for the UN at least until the Security Council abrogates Resolution 2334. They are correct. [Jerusalem Post]
[O]n the eve of Hanukkah and Christmas, Barack Obama stabbed Israel in the front.
Mr. Obama’s refusal to use Washington’s veto was more than a graceless parting gesture. Its consequences pose major challenges for American interests.
Mr. Obama argues that Resolution 2334 continues a bipartisan American policy toward the Middle East. It does precisely the opposite. The White House has abandoned any pretense that the actual parties to the conflict must resolve their differences. Instead, the president has essentially endorsed the Palestinian politico-legal narrative.
Mr. Trump should unambiguously reject Mr. Obama’s view that Resolution 2334 is justified to save the “two-state solution.” That goal, at best, has been on life-support for years. After Mr. Obama’s provocation, its life expectancy might now be only until Jan. 20. And good riddance. This dead-end vision, by conjuring an imaginary state with zero economic viability, has harmed not only Israel but also the Palestinians, the principal intended beneficiaries.
Far better to essay a “three-state solution,” returning Gaza to Egypt and giving those parts of the West Bank that Israel is prepared to cede to Jordan. By attaching Palestinian lands to real economies (not a make-believe one), average Palestinians (not their political elite), will have a true chance for a better future. Other alternatives to the two-state approach should also be considered.
Mr. Obama loves using the word “pivot” for his ever-changing priorities. It is now up to Mr. Trump to pivot away from his predecessor’s disastrous policies on Israel. Taking up the challenge will be difficult, but well worth the effort for America and its friends world-wide. [Wall Street Journal] **
The Obama administration's decision to abstain from a UN Security Council vote on Israeli settlements was the subject of intense opposition from lawmakers in the president's own party. House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said that the UN resolution "seeks to place responsibility for continued conflict fully on Israel and ignores violence and incitement by Palestinians and the Palestinian Authority and Hamas leaderships. Any workable and long-lasting solution to this conflict must come about through direct, bilateral negotiations, and this resolution undermines that effort." Rep. Eliot Engel (D-NY), the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said that "the UN should stop wasting its time trying to embarrass Israel, and the United States should continue the policy of vetoing anti-Israel resolutions."
The ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.), said, "This resolution is one-sided and unfairly calls out Israel without assigning any blame for the Palestinian role in the current impasse." Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) warned that the "resolution would undermine, if not undo, the chances for productive discussions between the two sides." Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) called the resolution "unconstructive." Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) stressed that "any lasting peace must be negotiated between Israelis and Palestinians, not imposed by the international community." (The Tower) Democrats Scorch Obama over UN Vote- Jeremy Berke Congressional Democrats issued scathing statements aimed at the Obama administration over the U.S. abstention on [the]UN Security Council vote. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) said he was "deeply disappointed" that the Obama administration allowed such a "one-sided" resolution to pass. "Actions like this will only take us further from the peace we all want to see." Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) said, "I am dismayed that the administration departed from decades of U.S. policy by not vetoing the UN resolution." (AOL News) Netanyahu: UN Resolution a Call to Arms for Israel's Friends Prime Minister Netanyahu said: "The resolution determines that the Jewish Quarter [in the Old City of Jerusalem] is "occupied territory." This is delusional. The resolution determines that the Western Wall is "occupied territory." This too is delusional....There is also an attempt here, which will not succeed, to impose permanent settlement terms on Israel."
"All American presidents since Carter upheld the American commitment not to try to dictate permanent settlement terms to Israel at the Security Council. And yesterday, in complete contradiction of this commitment, including an explicit commitment by President Obama himself in 2011, the Obama administration carried out a shameful anti-Israel ploy at the UN."
"Last night's resolution is a call to arms for all of our many friends in the U.S. and elsewhere around the world, friends who are sick of the UN's hostility toward Israel, and they intend to bring about a fundamental change in the UN. Therefore, this evening I tell you in the language of our sources, the sweet will yet come forth from the bitter, and those who come to curse will yet bless." (Prime Minister's Office)
Obama's Anti-Israel Tantrum- Editorial The decision by the U.S. to abstain from a UN Security Council resolution condemning Israel over its settlements on the West Bank reveals clearly the Obama Administration's animus against the State of Israel itself. No longer needing Jewish votes, Mr. Obama was free, finally, to punish the Jewish state in a way no previous President has done. The resolution will offer support in every European capital, international institution and U.S. university campus to bully Israel. (Wall Street Journal)
UN Resolution Lets Palestinians Think They Can Bypass Israel Talks - Alan M. Dershowitz It is now illegal for Jews to pray at the Western Wall or live in certain Jewish neighborhoods in Jerusalem. These actions require Israelis to enter areas that were captured from Jordan during Israel's defensive war of 1967. According to the Security Council resolution that the U.S. did not veto, any area that was not part of Israel before June of 1967 is now illegally occupied.
This resolution also encourages boycotts of Israeli products manufactured beyond the so-called Green Line, and pressures the International Criminal Court to prosecute Israeli officials. In addition, the resolution makes illegal Israel's security barrier, which has saved numerous lives.
But the most dangerous consequence of this resolution is that it makes peace much more difficult to achieve because it sends a false message to the Palestinians that they can achieve a state through the UN rather than through direct negotiations with Israel. The Palestinian leadership's refusal to accept Prime Minister Netanyahu's offer to negotiate without preconditions has now been rewarded. They will continue in their rejectionist mode, fortified by this one-sided resolution.
Why did President Obama, in his parting days, tie the hands of his successor? He was certainly not reflecting the will of the people or of Congress. Nor is this an issue on which Israelis are divided. There is no Israeli leader who supports this resolution. This is a sad day for America, for Israel and for the prospects of peace in the Middle East. The writer is professor emeritus at Harvard Law School. (New York Daily News)
Video - Israeli Ambassador to the UN "While thousands are being massacred in Syria, this Council wasted valuable time and effort condemning the democratic State of Israel for building homes in the historic homeland of the Jewish people." "We overcame those decrees during the time of the Maccabees and we will overcome this evil decree today. We have full confidence in the justice of our cause and in the righteousness of our path. We will continue to be a democratic state based on the rule of law and full civil and human rights for all our citizens, and we will continue to be a Jewish state proudly reclaiming the land of our forefathers, where the Maccabees fought their oppressors and King David ruled from Jerusalem." (Facebook) *
Reform Rabbis: Abstention "Leaves Us Dismayed, Disappointed and Angry"- David Suissa The Central Conference of American Rabbis (CCAR), the principal organization of Reform rabbis in the U.S., in a statement signed by President Rabbi Denise Eger and Chief Executive Rabbi Steven A. Fox, expressed "strong disagreement" with the UN Security Council resolution, saying that the U.S. abstention "leaves us dismayed, disappointed and angry."
The CCAR concurred with many others that "peace negotiations belong between the two parties involved" and that "the United Nations is not the arena in which to address these complex issues," adding that "the UN's obsessive and relentless criticism of Israel, while ignoring the unspeakable repression committed by illegitimate regimes and terrorist organizations worldwide, falsely and maliciously labels Israel uniquely as a pariah state." (Los Angeles Jewish Journal) We Are Not Occupiers in Our Own Land- Nadav Shragai As Simon the Hasmonean put it some 2,200 years ago: "We have not taken foreign territory or any alien property, but have occupied our ancestral heritage, for some time unjustly wrested from us by our enemies; now that we have a favorable opportunity, we are merely recovering our ancestral heritage" (Maccabees 1, 15:33-34).
Our friends must finally hear that we are not occupiers in our own land, and that we are connected to it with bonds of love, the Bible, heritage and nature; that the settlements in Judea and Samaria, as elsewhere in the Land of Israel, are the realization of justice and natural rights. The writer, a journalist and commentator at Ha'aretz and Israel Hayom, has documented the dispute over Jerusalem for thirty years. (Israel Hayom)
Rejecting the False Notion that Israel Is an "Occupier"- Alan Clemmons "Occupier" is nothing more than a polite way of calling Israel a thief, suggesting that Jewish invaders colonized territory belonging to the Arabs, which therefore must be restored to its rightful, victimized owners.
To suggest that the Jews are occupiers in a region that has been known as Judea for over 3,000 years is no less ridiculous than to suggest that Arabs are occupiers in Arabia.The writer, a member of the South Carolina House of Representatives, was the originating sponsor of the first state anti-BDS legislation in the U.S. in 2015. (Jerusalem Post) From an International Law Perspective, This Is Not an Occupation - Mark Goldfeder The president's decision to support the UN resolution was wrong as a matter of law. Article 6 of the 1922 League of Nations Mandate for Palestine explicitly encouraged "close settlement by Jews on the land." Legal scholars such as Eugene Kontorovich and Abraham Bell have noted that international law clearly dictates that Israel inherited the boundaries of the Mandate of Palestine as they existed in May 1948. Israel thus has title to the land.
If there was ever an occupation of territory, it happened in 1948 when two invading Arab armies, Jordan (in the West Bank) and Egypt (in Gaza), occupied territory that they had taken through aggressive action that is forbidden under international law. Thus to give meaning to the "pre-67 lines" is to retroactively ratify aggression and support occupation.
In short, Israel was given land under a Mandate that was never repealed, two other countries attacked Israel and squatted on the land for a while, and then, when they attacked Israel again and lost, Israel regained the land it had originally been given. Israel has exclusive title and sovereignty; from an international law perspective, this is not an occupation.
So long as institutions like the UN continue to issue one-sided statements that ignore foundational concepts in international law - pressuring the Israeli leadership to concede more and more while ignoring their previous concessions and failing to hold the Palestinian leadership accountable for their actions - real peace cannot happen. The writer is a senior lecturer at Emory Law School and a senior fellow at the Center for the Study of Law and Religion. (CNN)
Contemplating the extermination of Aleppo and its people, I was reminded of a sentence that I read this summer. It appeared in an encomium to Elie Wiesel shortly after his death. It was a sterling sentence. It declared: “We must never be bystanders to injustice or indifferent to suffering.” That was Wiesel’s teaching, exactly. The problem with the sentence is that it was issued by the White House and attributed to President Obama. And so the sentence was not at all sterling. It was outrageously hypocritical.
How dare Obama, and members of his administration, speak this way? After five years and more in which the United States’ inaction in Syria has transformed our country into nothing other than a bystander to the greatest atrocity of our time, they have forfeited the right to this language. Their angry and anguished utterances are merely the manipulation of the rhetoric of conscience on behalf of a policy without a trace of conscience. You cannot be cold-hearted and high-minded at the same time. Historians will record — they will not have to dig deeply or interpret wildly to conclude — that all through the excruciations of Aleppo, and more generally of Syria, the United States watched. As we watched, we made excuses, and occasionally we ornamented our excuses with eloquence. The president is enamored of his eloquence. But eloquence is precisely what the wrenching circumstances do not require of him. In circumstances of moral (and strategic) emergency, his responsibility is not to move us. It is to pick up the phone. “Elie did more than just bear witness,” Obama said in his eulogy, “he acted.” And he added: “Just imagine the peace and justice that would be possible in our world if more people lived a little more like Elie Wiesel.”
Just imagine.
[I]t is a shameful and incontrovertible fact of our history that during the past eight years the values of rescue, assistance, protection, humanitarianism and democracy have been demoted in our foreign policy and in many instances banished altogether. The ruins of the finest traditions of American internationalism, of American leadership in a darkening world, may be found in the ruins of Aleppo. Our ostentatious passivity is a primary cause of that darkening. When they go low, we go home. The Obama legacy in foreign policy is vacuum-creation, which his addled America-First successor will happily ratify. Aleppo was not destroyed by the Syrian army. It was destroyed by a savage coalition led and protected by Russia. While they massacred innocent men, women and children, we anxiously pondered scenarios of “deconfliction.”
It was no different from the obligation to act against the evil in Auschwitz. And we scorned the obligation. We learned nothing. We forgot everything. We failed. We did not even try.
As a direct or indirect consequence of our refusal to respond forcefully to the Syrian crisis, we have beheld secular tyranny, religious tyranny, genocide, chemical warfare, barrel bombs and cluster bombs, the torture and murder of children, the displacement of 11 million people, the destabilization of Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan, the ascendancy of Iran in the region, the emergence of Russia as a global power, the diminishment of the American position in the world, the refugee crisis in Europe, the resurgence of fascism in Europe and a significant new threat to the security of the United States. It is amazing how much doing nothing can do, especially when it is we who do nothing.
Not long after he mourned Wiesel, the president engaged in another one of his exercises in empathy without consequence. At the U.N. Summit for Refugees and Migrants, he spoke of Alan Kurdi, the Syrian boy who washed up dead on a beach in Turkey. “That little boy on the beach could be our son or our grandson,” the president moistly said. “We cannot avert our eyes or turn our backs.” And then we proceeded to avert our eyes and turn our backs. The people who had the power to prevent, stop or even mitigate this catastrophe should now bow their heads and fall silent and reflect on how it is that they brought us so low. Aleppo is no more, and we are weakened and disgraced. [Washington Post] *
Syrian President Assad's victory in the battle for Aleppo is a victory for Russian President Vladimir Putin, Iran's Revolutionary Guard, and Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hizbullah. All three joined to form an unholy alliance, which assured Moscow a triumphant return to the Middle East stage, and Iran the status of regional power with considerable influence.
Aside from several limp condemnations or expressions of grief from leaders in Europe and the U.S., the world is silent. For Israel, the lessons to be learned from the fighting in Syria are clear: It must never pin its hopes and stake its future on help from the international community.
The world supports the strong and the victorious. Therefore, it would behoove Israel to strengthen itself in earnest, as a necessary guarantee of its ongoing existence and growth in our region. (Israel Hayom) *
The Way to Peace: Israeli Victory, Palestinian Defeat- Daniel Pipes, PhD Israeli-Palestinian diplomacy sadly fits the classic description of insanity: "doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." The identical assumptions – land-for-peace and the two-state solution, with the burden primarily on Israel – stay permanently in place, no matter how often they fail. Decades of what insiders call "peace processing" has left matters worse than when they started, yet the great powers persist, sending diplomat after diplomat to Jerusalem and Ramallah, ever hoping that the next round of negotiations will lead to the elusive breakthrough. [T]oday's Palestinian Authority, Hamas, Labor, and Likud are lineal descendants of Husseini, Ben-Gurion, and Jabotinsky. Varying ideologies, objectives, tactics, strategies, and actors mean that details have varied, even as the fundamentals remained remarkably in place. Wars and treaties came and went, leading to only minor shifts. The many rounds of fighting had surprisingly little impact on ultimate goals, while formal agreements (such as the Oslo Accords of 1993) only increase hostility to Israel's existence and so were counterproductive. Contrary to [Yitzhak] Rabin's slogan, one does not "make [peace] with very unsavory enemies" but rather with former very unsavory enemies. The time is ripe for a new approach, a basic re-thinking of the problem. This brings us to the key concept of my approach, which is victory, or imposing one's will on the enemy, compelling him through loss to give up his war ambitions. Wars end, the historical record shows, not through goodwill but through defeat. He who does not win loses.Wars usually end when failure causes one side to despair, when that side has abandoned its war aims and accepted defeat, and when that defeat has exhausted its will to fight. Conversely, so long as both combatants still hope to achieve their war objectives, fighting either goes on or it potentially will resume. Th[e] historical pattern implies that Israel has just one option to win Palestinian acceptance: a return to its old policy of deterrence, punishing Palestinians when they aggress. Deterrence amounts to more than tough tactics, which every Israeli government pursues; it requires systemic policies that encourage Palestinians to accept Israel and discourage rejectionism. It requires a long-term strategy that promotes a change of heart. Inducing a change of heart is not a pretty or pleasant process but is based on a policy of commensurate and graduated response. If Palestinians transgress moderately, they should pay moderately; and so on. Of course, these steps run exactly counter to the consensus view in Israel today, which seeks above all to keep Palestinians quiescent. But this myopic viewpoint formed under unremitting pressure from the outside world, and the U.S. government especially, to accommodate the PA. The removal of such pressure will undoubtedly encourage Israelis to adopt the more assertive tactics outlined here. True peacemaking means finding ways to coerce Palestinians to undergo a change of heart, giving up rejectionism, accepting Jews, Zionism, and Israel. When enough Palestinians abandon the dream of eliminating Israel, they will make concessions needed to end the conflict. To end the conflict, Israel must convince 50 percent and more of the Palestinians that they have lost. The goal here is not Palestinian love of Zion, but closing down the apparatus of war: shuttering suicide factories, removing the demonization of Jews and Israel, recognizing Jewish ties to Jerusalem, and "normalizing" relations with Israelis. Palestinian acceptance of Israel will be achieved when, over a protracted period and with complete consistency, the violence ends, replaced by sharply worded démarches and letters to the editor. Symbolically, the conflict will be over when Jews living in Hebron (in the West Bank) have no more need for security than Palestinians living in Nazareth (in Israel). An Israel victory liberates Palestinians. Defeat compels them to come to terms with their irredentist fantasies and the empty rhetoric of revolution. Defeat also frees them to improve their own lives. Unleashed from a genocidal obsession against Israel, Palestinians can become a normal people and develop its polity, economy, society, and culture. Negotiations could finally begin in earnest. In all, given their far lower starting point, Palestinians would, ironically, gain even more from their defeat than the Israelis from their victory. [Commentary Magazine] *
