August 16, 2011, 11:16 AM
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The Palestinians' decision to place the issue of the establishment of a Palestinian state before the United Nations for a vote next month repudiates the principles of the 1993 Oslo peace framework, through which the Palestinian Authority was formed out of the PLO. The Oslo framework dictated that the final status of Judea, Samaria, Gaza and Jerusalem would be determined through direct negotiations between the PLO and Israel.
While brazen, the Palestinians' UN gambit is not the first time that Israel has been confronted with unequivocal proof that the Palestinians have been operating in bad faith. From the outset, PLO leaders from Yassir Arafat down have made statements and taken actions that have demonstrated that from the PLO's perspective, the entire "two-state paradigm," of peacemaking upon which the Oslo process is predicated was nothing more than a ploy.
For instance, after coming under heavy pressure from then opposition leader Binyamin Netanyahu, in early 1996, then prime minister Shimon Peres was forced to ask Arafat to convene the PLO's governing council in order to cancel the PLO Charter. The Charter repeated calls for Israel's destruction.
Recognizing that Peres's government was on the line, then US president Bill Clinton flew to Gaza to "oversee" the Palestinian National Council's conference and its cancellation of the charter.
Despite Clinton's presence, the charter was never abrogated or even amended. Yet the empty pageantry was enough to convince the leftist Israeli media that Israel had a credible partner for peace in Arafat and so the show went on.
Arafat ended all pretence of good faith in the summer of 2000 when he rejected then prime minister Ehud Barak's offer of Palestinian statehood and instigated the Palestinian terror war. Ever since Arafat chose terror war over peace, his followers' willingness to admit they reject Israel's right to exists has grown.
For instance, on July 13, Fatah's foreign relations boss Nabil Shaath gave an interview to a Lebanese television station in which he stated point blank that the PLO will never accept Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state. As he put it, only the Palestinians have a right to a nation state. The Jews of Israel must be subsumed into a "state of all its citizens" that would be dominated by Israeli Arabs and millions of foreign Arabs that would immigrate into the formerly Jewish state.
Shaath's statements, like similar recent statements made by Fatah Chairman Mahmoud Abbas and chief "negotiator" Saeb Erekat were completely ignored by the Israeli Left. As opposition leader Tzipi Livni makes clear every time she has access to a microphone, the Left insists the full blame for the absence of so-called peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians rests on the shoulders of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.
Three weeks after Shaath gave his interview, Livni had a chance to respond to his statements in an interview with the Atlantic Monthly. Asked whether she is certain "there's no plan on the part of seemingly moderate Palestinians to try to take apart Israel in stages," Livni responded that even if there is, it is Netanyahu's fault.
By asserting Israel's right to be recognized as a Jewish state, Netanyahu is weakening Israel, she said. In her words, "Israel is being weakened now by the way Netanyahu speaks. The stronger he speaks, the weaker Israel is."
Livni also claimed the best thing that can happen is for US President Barak Obama to put even more pressure on Netanyahu to make concessions to the Palestinians. As she put it, Obama's pressure made the government understand "that maintaining the status quo with the Palestinians means that there is no status quo with the United States. They understood that there is a price for not negotiating, or for not saying the right words. So this is the brighter perspective."
When Livni gave her interview on Aug. 5, Netanyahu had reportedly agreed to participate in negotiations predicated on the Palestinian-US demand to base the talks on the indefensible 1949 armistice lines. Netanyahu reportedly stipulated however that the Palestinians must recognize Israel's right to exist.
By placing the blame for the absence of negotiations on Netanyahu, like the Palestinians, Livni rejected Netanyahu's demand. That is, the leader of Israel's opposition effectively dismissed her government's demand that Israel's "peace partner" recognize its right to exist. Moreover she asked a foreign power to coerce her government into setting that right aside.
Livni's position is consistent with the position the Israeli Left has adopted since Arafat destroyed the Oslo peace process 11 years ago. Whereas in 1995 the Left still expected the Palestinians to pay lip service to peace with Israel, after Arafat destroyed the peace process, the Left that had embraced the PLO needed to make a choice. Its leaders could either admit they were wrong to embrace the PLO, or they could adopt the PLO's position against Israel. They chose the latter.
The results of this choice have been devastating. For the past 11 years, the Israeli Left has been divorcing itself from Zionism. This began in the wake of the violent riots in the Arab sector in October 2000 when the Barak government formed the Orr Commission of Inquiry. The Orr Commission for the first time conferred extralegal communal rights on radicalized Israeli Arabs, and so denied the police the right to enforce laws equally on all Israelis.
Since then, the trend towards undermining Israeli democracy and the rights of the Jewish majority has been most pronounced in the leftist-dominated Supreme Court. From denying the right of Israeli Jews to develop Jewish communities within the 1949 armistice lines on Jewish privately owned land, to protecting Arab traitors from charges of treason, to striking down the government's legal right to determine immigration policies, the Supreme Court has led the charge in ending Israel's right to assert its right to exist as a Jewish state.
Many of these post-Zionist Court decisions were authored by retired Supreme Court president Aharon Barak. In June 2009 Barak admitted, "I'm a big believer in 'a state of all its citizens.'"
In Leftist activist circles this trend of joining the Palestinians in rejecting Israel's right to exist has led to foreign-funded local NGOs and activist networks instigating domestic and international campaigns to delegitimize Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state.
On university campuses, expressions of Zionism and patriotism are increasingly demonized as racist or insensitive. For instance, at its recent graduation ceremony, Haifa University decided not to sing Hatikva out of concern for the feelings of the university's Arab students.
Recently, several leading politicians have argued that Israel should respond to the PLO's UN initiative by abrogating its commitment to the Oslo peace accords and applying Israeli law to Judea and Samaria. This is certainly a reasonable response to the Palestinians' clear bad faith.
Far more difficult than responding to the Palestinians' bad faith however is conceiving and implementing a strategy for contending with the Israeli Left's decision to side with the Palestinians against their own country's right to exist.
Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.
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As in an echo chamber, the hardly audible opinions of a negligible minority of population is maginified into deafeningly shrill shrieks by the omnipotent media. It's the latter that needs to be divested if the people want to be represented in a true democracy and not swallowed by its orwellian substitute.
'Far more difficult than responding to the Palestinians' bad faith however is conceiving and implementing a strategy for contending with the Israeli Left's decision to side with the Palestinians against their own country's right to exist.'
In modern day Israel treason is chic and championed by a large segment of the ruling rebels and public.
The only reason I can see for this terminal suicidal bent is their desire to appease the demands of the enemy and the world.
It's as if they confess their guilt for being Jews and accept the penalty in the hope they are permitted to live.
The sane right who don't think like the suicidal left but are too weak to deal with this treason from their fellow Jews.
They don't have the moral clarity to arrest and imprison the traitors and stop the downward fall of Israel by EVIL forces within.
Democracy has failed in Israel as the tolerance and freedom for the destroyers is quickly destroying the Country.
The best the apologetic and feeble right can do is bail some water out of the sinking ship one cup at a time for fear of angering a world already insanely mad and angry at Israel for being there and living and of course building homes.
'the Palestinians have been operating in bad faith.'
'he stated point blank that the PLO will never accept Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state.'
After all of this the IDF has gone insane and suicidal to please the Global pimps of nopeace by assisting the murderer of Jews.
Only God can save Israel from herself !
The IDF's recommendations include allowing several mitigations vis-à-vis the Palestinian Authority and its security forces, mainly allowing more weapons into the West Bank from Jordan.
I see zionism 2011 as nothing less than a welcome, legitimate and - within the current context - necessary aim to establish a secular democratic Israeli society amid the growing islamic darkness. Saeb Erekat visited Holland just a month ago and was told that the Dutch government will not support any unilateral decision. I do not recognize the palestinian authority of B. Clinton. I support Geert Wilders idea that the arabs in gaza & westbank are held hostage by islam and should be liberated and settled in Jordan. When the Eurozone, the Euro, the EU parliament goes down and Turkeye dropped from NATO were Ottoman atavism will be provocated by Iran to develop its own nuclear device .. the Anglo-American powers have to recognize the right on self determination of secular Kurds in Turkeye and Syria and Greece should be suppported to liberate Constantinopel from the islamic claws ! Theo Prinse
Caroline, a most terrifying assessment of the evil that men do. Not only have we Jews suffered terribly at the hands of people who only wanted to destroy us because of our Jewishness, but now our own Jewish brothers and sisters are looking to complete the job. Obviously Livni and the Left refuse to realize that they will not be exempt. HaShem Yerachem.
In democracies, whether parliamentarian (like Israel) or republican (like the United States), sovereignty is invested in the citizenry, not in the chief executive.
As Caroline may recall, the Constitution of the United States restricts punishment for official misdeeds while in office to removal from office as the sole remedy, whether for HIGH CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS, or for TREASON (further defined as 'providing aid and comfort to an enemy'). But it specifically permits arrest and prosecution for crimes committed while in office, once removal has been completed. Whether Leftist members of Congress honor the Oath of Office, or ignore it for perceived political gain, their duty remains clear. History will be their Judge, as will HaShem.
Leftist MK's, like their U.S. counterparts, threaten Israel's continued existence when they provide aid and comfort to Israel's enemies.
Is the Israeli system a more effective solution?
Caroline,
Extending Israeli law to J&S is a terrible idea. It is worse than doing nothing. It is impossible to extend Israeli law to Judea and Samaria ( aka annexation of the West Bank ) without eventually facing the demand for citizenship from the 1.5 million Palestinians there.
Let's suppose that in 10 years a left-wing government comes into being that gradually starts granting citizenship to Arabs in the West Bank. How long would it be before a right-wing government would have significantly lower chances of being elected in the future? How long before a family reunification program gradually brings more Arabs to Israel? How long before the Jewish state is dumped and replaced by some kind of multicultural hodgepodge that gradually collapses into anarchy and civil war [ again ]? How long before the state drops its anthem and changes its name from Israel to something else? If you are concerned by the current trend towards a post-Zionist left imagine what would happen if 35% of the country was Muslim Arab.
I am just hoping for a bit of pragmatism rather than any ideological capitulation on your part and those that think like you. I don't oppose Israel staying in all of Judea and Samaria as long as that is a viable option, but there is a lot of value in having the flexibility and ambiguity that is provided by the current state of the area. In the current situation Israel can build settlements while holding out hope for a peace deal with the Palestinians. This softens international condemnation while allowing for the extremely unlikely scenario where the Palestinians actually come to their senses and start responding rationally to Israeli offers.
The alternative of annexation will leave Israel isolated, facing calls for equal rights for Palestinians and eventually either becoming a binational state, being labeled an apartheid state or being forced into committing ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians. These are not great options to be faced with 20 years down the line. In the long term, annexation is by far the worst option for a pragmatic Zionism devoted to the continued existence of a Jewish state.
AK
So brilliant Caroline. I certainly agree with you that in light of the Palestinians' bad faith it is reasonable for Israel to abrogate its commitment to the Oslo peace accords and apply Israeli law to Judea and Samaria. However, you end with a truth that strikes even harder and rings true in America: indeed, it is more difficult to implement a strategy for contending with a Jewish problem of self-suicide (e.g. not taking a stand for righteous government and God's holy land of Israel).
The Left, and in particular the Israeli Left is very, very sick indeed, and if not for the memory of those Jews/Israelis who gave their blood and energy in order to build a Jewish State, I would wholeheartedly wish the arab hordes on the Israeli Left, who like sheep led to slaughter, would have their throats cut. God have mercy on Israel, for the arabs won't.
As long as nobody is willing to confront Palestinian Nationalism as a fake front, then it will be respectable to treat this conspiracy against Israel's existence as an innocent struggle. Palestinian Nationalism is an anti-Semetic cult and has never been anything but that. Even if Israel was destroyed and all the Jews driven away, there would be no Palestinian state.
If the right insists on dignifying Palestinian Nationalism by demanding reason and good faith from it, who is the left to argue?
Eventually, when facing united and mobilised 'Muslim Brotherhood' forces, Israel will respond with greater force and to hell with the world's opinion.
In such a time of national survival, internal dissent will be swept aside and crushed if necessary, and the world's clamour will not be heard.
Read Psalm 83
You know, Caroline, that part of the solution is changing the make-up of the Supreme Court. Actually, the current judges should be removed & the entire system changed so that, perhaps, the PM nominates candidates & the Knesset confirms their appointment, sort of like in the US. Yet, where is the political will to do this?
With our current political system & our crap politicians, most of them low-quality political hacks & spineless jobniks, we can never change.
Netanyahu has agreed with the Faustuan bargain, he just wants to do it more slowly by making sure Jewish life in Jerusalem is impossible because they can't so much as replace a toilet.
Lieberman also agrees with the Faustian bargain since he agrees that any Arab can come into his home and throw him out.
Both also agree that Israel has no real souvreignty over the Negev since a swath of it can be given to the Palestinian State so that it can be contiguous with Gaza. They both also agree that in any Palestinian state, Jews cannot be residents like the Israeli arabs are in Israel. Netanyahu and Lieberman want to implement the bargain slowly so that they can keep their ministries.
Therefore all the elected politicians are part of the Left's Faustian bargain and unless they are all thrown out of office the Israeli citizenry are part of the Faustian bargain as well. If Zionists comprise a minority in Israel then Israel really doesn't have the right to exist.
We can't help people who won't help themselves. G-d won't help people who won't help themselves.
Will Israelis help themselves? Hard to say. The Jews' record of self-help is not very encouraging.
Who are the Palestinians we hear so much about?
This whole debate in its entirety - what should be the relationship between Israel and the Palestinians demanding statehood assumes that the people demanding statehood are, in the current understanding of the term, Palestinians.
It assumes, in other words, some kind of historic continuity between the formation of the state of Israel and a byproduct of their wars that has dislocated Arabs, and those Arabs are the Palestinians we know of today.
When Israel was formed about 50,000 Arabs were dislocated from their land. Then as an aftermath of the Arab Ways against Israel many more refugees were created. (Whose fault this is is immaterial. Remember our question is who are these Palestinians.)
But at Wars end the refugees settled in Jordan, Eqypt, Syria and this episode, then, is closed vis-a-vis who are the Palestinians.
The 1967 War was different. Here Israel seizes Jordanian property and the Sinai. Now we have real refugees, Jordanians, living on land seized by Israel. Most go back to into Jordan, many stay.
But we have refugees, no doubt, but are they Palestinians? No, they are Jordanians.
Now comes the 1972 War. It is from this War and its aftermath, that will come the Palestinians.
Into the aftermath of this War come Black September and a morphed identity of Al Fatah. These organization are not Arabist, they are the Left. The go to Jordan, enlist followers, try to overthrow the Jordanian Kingdom and are thrown out. The same in Syria, Kuwait and other states.
We have now refugees under the control of the left. And as a true left entity, a popular front effort is launched and the concept of the Palestinians is born. And the Left fights Israel, just as it have never stopped attacking America, and the battle cry, a complete historical fiction - but a powerful one - if Rights for the Palestinians.
Israel had the same amount of oil as Saudi-Arabia !
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8QVAAFfcRg&feature=player_embedded
Haifa university doesn't say the hatikva. What a crime. This type of israeli weakness assists the plo and terrorist enemies and gives them hope that someday they can push us out.