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News item:

[Fredric C. Hof, a] top aide to George Mitchell, US President Barack Obama’s Middle East envoy, held talks with Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moallem on Thursday in Damascus, in what could potentially be a bid to revive stalled peace talks between Syria and Israel…

Hof arrived in the region Sunday, and has met a host of senior military and defense officials in Israel, including Defense Minister Ehud Barak, Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon, and National Security Adviser Uzi Arad. He is also expected to meet with Syrian President Bashar Assad later in his trip.

Syria has insisted that the promise of an Israeli withdrawal from the Golan Heights be a precursor to any renewed peace negotiations between the two countries. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has vehemently rejected the notion of a withdrawal.

More US ‘engagement’.

Do not think for a moment that this is in any way something that Israel wants or needs. Syria, today a satellite of Iran, served as the conduit for arms to Hezbollah before, during and after the 2006 war. With Iranian help, it has accumulated several tens of thousands of missiles, some with chemical warheads, which are pointed at Israel. In 2008, Syria even tried to build a nuclear reactor from North Korean components to produce weapons-grade plutonium, which Israel bombed. Syria is a major sponsor of Hezbollah an of Iraqi insurgents who are fighting US troops in that country.

Syria has a huge investment in war. If Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad or his late father had wanted the Golan back and had been prepared to make a peace agreement with Israel, they could have had it numerous times in the last two or three decades. Peace is not what they are looking for.

The Golan is highly strategic. Before 1967 Israeli towns and kibbutzim in the upper Jordan Valley were often bombarded from the heights. I personally saw a thick, pockmarked concrete wall in front of a kindergarten at Kibbutz Tel Katzir. Before it was built, the children were the targets of Syrian snipers on the Golan.

Control of the heights is absolutely vital for the defense of the area, and the key to any counterattack against Syria. If Israel had not held the heights in 1973, it’s likely that the Syrian army would have captured numerous Israeli population centers. To give an idea of what this would mean, in 1973 the bodies of captured Israeli soldiers were returned with their severed genitals stuffed in their mouths.

The return of the Golan to Syrian control under American pressure would be seen by the Arab world and Iran as another victory of the strategy of violent ‘resistance’. In this case the card that is undoubtedly being played is that of Syrian support to Iraqi insurgents, forcing the US to deliver Israel. ‘Success’ here would not lead to peace — the opposite would be true.

In any event, as Barry Rubin has argued, Syria’s eternal state of war with Israel meets important domestic needs for Assad — it helps him maintain repressive control of Islamist and reformist domestic opponents, as well as to keep control of the Syrian economy tightly inside the circle of his associates and relatives.

Part of the US conception is to offer Syria inducements — like the Golan — in return for Syria distancing herself from Iran, ending support for terrorism, etc. But again, these relationships meet important needs for Assad, such as providing influence in Lebanon and keeping the arms flowing — and these are things that the US is not in a position to provide.

Thus the danger is that Syria will get the Golan, seriously damaging Israel’s security, without actually changing its pro-Iranian orientation, ending support for terrorism in Lebanon and Iraq, or actually moving toward peace with Israel.

If I were Fred Hof, I would suggest that a first step for Mr. Assad would be to get rid of the missiles aimed at every part of Israel.

Then we could think about talking.

Wreckage of Syrian tank on Golan heights. The settlement below it is Kibbutz Tel Katzir, mentioned in the text.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Syria, Fred Hof, Golan Heights

Hillary Clinton made a speech to the Council on Foreign relations today (the full text is here).

I really got a kick out of this paragraph. It is one of the best combinations of vacuous buzzwords stitched together seamlessly to say absolutely nothing that I have ever squandered eye-movements on reading. But I didn’t quote it for exercise — at the end of this post you’ll see that there really is something we can learn from it.

President Obama has led us to think outside the usual boundaries. He has launched a new era of engagement based on common interests, shared values, and mutual respect. Going forward, capitalizing on America’s unique strengths, we must advance those interests through partnership, and promote universal values through the power of our example and the empowerment of people. In this way, we can forge the global consensus required to defeat the threats, manage the dangers, and seize the opportunities of the 21st century. America will always be a world leader as long as we remain true to our ideals and embrace strategies that match the times. So we will exercise American leadership to build partnerships and solve problems that no nation can solve on its own, and we will pursue policies to mobilize more partners and deliver results.

Moving on to something very slightly more substantial, here is what she said about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict:

Now I’m well aware that time alone does not heal all wounds; consider the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. That’s why we wasted no time in starting an intensive effort on day one to realize the rights of Palestinians and Israelis to live in peace and security in two states, which is in America’s interests and the world’s. We’ve been working with the Israelis to deal with the issue of settlements, to ease the living conditions of Palestinians, and create circumstances that can lead to the establishment of a viable Palestinian state. For the last few decades, American administrations have held consistent positions on the settlement issue. And while we expect action from Israel, we recognize that these decisions are politically challenging.

Here Clinton referred to some of the concrete concessions that Israel has been asked — ordered — to make: the settlement freeze, removal of checkpoints and roadblocks, etc. She also implies, somewhat disingenuously, that the Obama position on settlements — that is, that there must be no building activity of any kind in the areas occupied by Jordan from 1948-67 — was shared by prior administrations. She continued,

And we know that progress toward peace cannot be the responsibility of the United States – or Israel – alone. Ending the conflict requires action on all sides. The Palestinians have the responsibility to improve and extend the positive actions already taken on security; to act forcefully against incitement; and to refrain from any action that would make meaningful negotiations less likely.

At last an admission from the administration that Palestinians need to make concessions, too. But “act forcefully against incitement”? This seems to imply that someone other than the Palestinian Authority is doing the incitement, and the PA should ‘act’ against it. But in fact, even today the official Palestinian media regularly presents vicious antisemitic material.

Contrast this with the painful actions being demanded of Israel. Better than a vague statement about acting forcefully, the PA should simply be told to stop the incitement, now. After all, the US is paying its bills.

Next she asks the Arab nations to take part of the burden. Will she be tougher on them?

And Arab states have a responsibility to support the Palestinian Authority with words and deeds, to take steps to improve relations with Israel, and to prepare their publics to embrace peace and accept Israel’s place in the region.

The Saudi peace proposal, supported by more than twenty nations, was a positive step. But we believe that more is needed. So we are asking those who embrace the proposal to take meaningful steps now. Anwar Sadat and King Hussein crossed important thresholds, and their boldness and vision mobilized peace constituencies in Israel and paved the way for lasting agreements. By providing support to the Palestinians and offering an opening, however modest, to the Israelis, the Arab states could have the same impact. So I say to all sides: Sending messages of peace is not enough. You must also act against the cultures of hate, intolerance and disrespect that perpetuate conflict.

Clinton begins with the obligatory praise for the Saudi Initiative, which I’ve argued was not positive at all, indeed just another Arab demand for Israel to commit suicide.  But then she mentions Anwar Sadat, the guy that practically defines ‘breakthrough’, and one expects that she will ask them to take real, dangerous but significant steps in the direction of peace.

Imagine the effect — on Israel, the Arabs, and the world –  if she had called for the Arab nations to recognize Israel as the state of the Jewish people.

Instead, having her ducks in a row she fails to pull the trigger, falling back on another lukewarm demand for the perpetrators to “act” against the crime, when instead they should be told to stop committing it.

Another issue of great interest to me, of course, was Iran. She said,

We watched the energy of Iran’s election with great admiration, only to be appalled by the manner in which the government used violence to quell the voices of the Iranian people, and then tried to hide its actions by arresting foreign journalists and nationals, and expelling them, and cutting off access to technology. As we and our G-8 partners have made clear, these actions are deplorable and unacceptable.

But there were no consequences, were there?  One imagines Ahmadinejad asking how many divisions the G-8 has!

We know very well what we inherited with Iran, because we deal with that inheritance every day. We know that refusing to deal with the Islamic Republic has not succeeded in altering the Iranian march toward a nuclear weapon, reducing Iranian support for terror, or improving Iran’s treatment of its citizens.

Neither the President nor I have any illusions that dialogue with the Islamic Republic will guarantee success of any kind, and the prospects have certainly shifted in the weeks following the election. But we also understand the importance of offering to engage Iran and giving its leaders a clear choice: whether to join the international community as a responsible member or to continue down a path to further isolation.

Direct talks provide the best vehicle for presenting and explaining that choice. That is why we offered Iran’s leaders an unmistakable opportunity: Iran does not have a right to nuclear military capacity, and we’re determined to prevent that. But it does have a right to civil nuclear power if it reestablishes the confidence of the international community that it will use its programs exclusively for peaceful purposes.

It seems to me that they already have been given options, by the UN, and they decided that they would rather continue with their nuclear program and let the UN do its worst. But the UN’s worst wasn’t very bad, and its offer of economic incentives wasn’t very good, so Iran decided that they would rather make enriched uranium, thank you.  What, exactly, will Obama do differently?

Iran can become a constructive actor in the region if it stops threatening its neighbors and supporting terrorism. It can assume a responsible position in the international community if it fulfills its obligations on human rights. The choice is clear. We remain ready to engage with Iran, but the time for action is now. The opportunity will not remain open indefinitely.

But why would Iran want to do these things when it is gaining control and influence in the region through its support of Hezbollah and subversion of Iraq, which will become an Iranian satellite as soon as US troops are gone? Why would it want to stop its nuclear program when possession of a bomb would give it even more power, plus the ability to become the great hero of the Muslim world by finally defeating Israel? What inducement can Obama offer it when it can achieve all of its goals by staying on the path it has chosen?

About Afghanistan:

In Afghanistan and Pakistan, our goal is to disrupt, dismantle, and ultimately defeat al-Qaida and its extremist allies, and to prevent their return to either country. Yet Americans often ask, why do we ask our young men and women to risk their lives in Afghanistan when al-Qaida’s leadership is in neighboring Pakistan? And that question deserves a good answer: We and our allies fight in Afghanistan because the Taliban protects al-Qaida and depends on it for support, sometimes coordinating activities. In other words, to eliminate al-Qaida, we must also fight the Taliban.

I think the question is, “why don’t we go after al-Qaeda wherever they are, including Pakistan?”

Now, we understand that not all those who fight with the Taliban support al-Qaida, or believe in the extremist policies the Taliban pursued when in power. And today we and our Afghan allies stand ready to welcome anyone supporting the Taliban who renounces al-Qaida, lays down their arms, and is willing to participate in the free and open society that is enshrined in the Afghan Constitution.

So actually, we are not against the Taliban, as long as they are pacifist, feminist Taliban who go over to our side. It’s really hard to understand why she needed to say this.

Now here is why I quoted that first, apparently meaningless paragraph. It illustrates what I believe is a fundamental problem with this administration:

Mr. Obama, arguably the best American political speaker since JFK and MLK, managed to talk himself into the Presidency. He, Mrs. Clinton and others are therefore dazzled by the power of talk and seem to think that any problem is amenable to it. Of course this is not the case, especially in the Middle East.

Talk and fuzzy platitudes about cooperation, partnerships, empowerment, etc. are cheap and in plentiful supply.

Moral strength and fact-based policies apparently aren’t.

Technorati Tags: Hillary Clinton, Obama Administration, Israel, Iran, Afghanistan, Council on Foreign Relations

Barry Rubin has a genius for spotting the obvious truths that others miss:

The Obama administration had an idea of making the main — or at least initial — specific tactic of its Middle East policy to get a freeze of apartment-building on Israeli settlements on the West Bank. What happened should have been predictable. Israel is in no hurry to comply, giving the administration a choice between looking foolish and being a bully in a game that isn’t worth the candle.

But there’s a more immediate problem. Syria and the Palestinian Authority, which not long before had been–in part to show Obama that they were most cooperative and eager for peace, no matter how hypocritical that was — are now demanding a freeze on construction as a precondition for any further talks. In other words, the minimal chance for negotiations has been frozen due to the U.S. strategy. The ship is dead in the water.

Unintended consequences, indeed. But what were the intended ones?

As many commentators have pointed out, a freeze on construction inside existing settlements can’t possibly have a significant effect on the practical considerations of any peace agreement. Either a settlement will end up in Israel or it won’t. Therefore the point of Obama’s demand is a psychological one.

So what is the message? The Palestinians would probably say that he is agreeing with them that all the land occupied by Jordan in 1948, including East Jerusalem, is ‘Palestinian land’  in which Israel has no sovereignty. As I pointed out recently, this pretty much eviscerates UN resolution 242, which calls for “secure and recognized borders” and which definitely does not require Israel to evacuate all the land occupied in 1967.

Another possibility is that it is a relatively simple issue which Obama can use to show Israeli PM Binyamin Netanyahu quickly how much political damage the US can do to him if he doesn’t play along.

Whatever it means, one implication is that Israel should see the US as its ruler, not partner.  And yesterday it was made clear that the majority of US Jews are not going to object to this treatment. Monday afternoon, Obama hosted a delegation of 16 Jewish ‘leaders’ from the Center and Left for what apparently turned out to be a friendly game of softball:

The two representatives of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, president David Victor and president-elect Lee Rosenberg, asked friendly questions about Saudi Arabia and Iran, respectively, and did not press the settlements issue. Rosenberg and Solow, who are both from the Chicago area, were major fund-raisers for Obama’s presidential run.

Some of Obama’s loudest critics — the Zionist Organization of America and the National Council of Young Israel, among them — were among the notable absences from the list of those invited to the White House.

Rabbi Eric Yoffie, president of the Union of Reform Judaism, delivered a ringing endorsement of Obama’s demands for a settlement freeze, saying that settlement expansion was not in Israel’s interest. — JTA

Unfortunately, pro-Arab interests, anti-Israel NGOs, academics, left-wing Israelis, and  organizations like J Street and Americans for Peace Now — which, for the first time, were invited to a meeting of this type — have created an image of  ‘settlements’ which is highly unattractive to liberal American Jews, who are in the majority here.

The image is of ‘religious fanatics’ — almost any version of Orthodox Judaism is seen as extremist — who actively attack and provoke Arabs while living on land and using water that is in some way stolen from them (no matter how land was obtained, of course, Arabs will claim that it is ‘stolen’ and their supporters will amplify their claims).

And there is the oft-repeated assertion that settlements are ‘illegal’, which seems to have become part of common currency although it is simply false (see Jerold S. Auerbach, “Are settlements illegal?“).

The image is wrong, actually absurd for the majority of settlements. But this is the image that suffuses the media.

This is combined with the almost — dare I say it — religious adulation afforded to Barack Obama by many liberal Jews. Put simply, if it’s between Obama and Israel, they come down on the side of Obama — and I say this as a lifelong Democrat who appreciates the historic importance of a black president for the US.

It’s becoming increasingly clear that Obama and most of his Middle East advisors — and of course the historically Arabist State Department — have decided to finally restore Israel to pre-1967 borders, as Henry Kissinger assured the Arabs that we would do in 1975. They see this as necessary in order to ‘repair’ the relationship with the Arab world which they believe was wrecked by George Bush.

They may also accept the Arab position that the Israeli-Arab conflict is caused by occupation, rather than Arab rejectionism (as I believe), and that shrinking Israel will make peace possible. But I suggest that despite what Obama and his spokespeople say, ending the conflict is secondary to their main goal of reducing Israel’s size.

What has kept this from being implemented by previous administrations has been strong resistance on the part of American supporters of Israel, particularly Jews.

Because of the present situation on the Arab side — a strong, popular, rejectionist, Iranian-funded Hamas and a weak, corrupt (and probably also rejectionist) Palestinian Authority — an Israeli withdrawal today cannot be expected to ‘solve’ the conflict in a peaceful way (imagine the withdrawal from Gaza and its consequences, and then multiply this by at least 10).

Therefore, Obama’s insistence on such a withdrawal contradicts his stated commitment to Israel’s security. So resistance to this idea should be even stronger than in the past.

But then, the acceptance of cognitive dissonance — even the ability to believe contradictory propositions — is one of the hallmarks of true religious belief.

Technorati Tags: Obama, Israel, settlements

News item:

US President Barack Obama will meet on Monday with over a dozen heads of influential American Jewish organizations and is expected to respond to concerns that the White House is pressuring Israel over West Bank settlements while it is soft-pedaling with some of Israel’s worst enemies.

“American Jews more or less agree with the president on settlements, but it’s the focus on criticizing Israel that’s disconcerting,” said an organization leader who will be attending the meeting.

Strictly speaking, the “organization leader” is correct if there is at least one American Jew that agrees, but let’s take the American position as it has been explained by the State Department, express it explicitly, and try it out on some American Jews:

Any Jewish construction activity in the area of historic Palestine that was occupied by Jordan between 1948 and 1967, including areas of East Jerusalem and the West Bank that were inhabited by Jews before 1948, is verboten.

The State Department thereby throws UN resolution 242 under the bus, apparently giving up on the idea that Israel should return land (not all the land) occupied in 1967 in a way which will provide her with “secure and recognized borders” and in return for a peace treaty.

The Obama administration today in effect says that Israel does not have sovereignty over any land beyond the 1949 cease-fire lines. So much for “secure” borders. And since there is no Arab entity capable of making — and keeping — a peace treaty in this area, there will be no meaningful peace either.

What do you think, American Jews? Do you “more or less agree with the president” on this?

What about the contrast between his tough talk on settlements and his willingness to let Iran off with a warning on its nuclear program but  no sanctions?

Will Obama’s famous gift of gab help him keep the Jewish support he so richly does not deserve?

Technorati Tags: Obama, Jews

Abba Eban visits the US in 1957

Abba Eban quite famously said “The Arabs never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity” in 1974 after the Geneva peace conference ended without progress toward a comprehensive Israeli-Arab peace. Eban spoke eloquently at that conference, including this:

Now, we have no trouble or reluctance in understanding what Arab nationalism is all about. It is the moving story of a people’s liberation from external servitudes. It is an effort to build a bridge between past glories and future hopes. The success of the Arab nationalist enterprise is reflected in the existence of 19 States, occupying 12 million square kilometres, in which 100 million Arabs live under their sovereign flags, in command of vast resources. The world, including Israel, has come to terms with Arab nationalism. The unsolved question is whether Arab nationalism will frankly come to terms with the modest rights of another Middle Eastern nation to live securely in its original, and only, home.

For this to happen it will, I suggest, be necessary for political and intellectual leaders in the Arab world to reject the fallacy that Israel is alien to the Middle East. Israel is not alien to the Middle East: it is an organic part of its texture and memory. Take Israel and all that has flowed from Israel out of Middle Eastern history and you evacuate that history of its central experiences. Israel’s historic, religious, national roots in the Land of Israel are a primary element of mankind’s cultural history. Nothing – not even dispersion, exile, martyrdom, long separation – has ever disrupted this connexion. Modern Israel is the resumption of a primary current in the flow of universal history. We ask our neighbours to believe that it is an authentic reality from which most of the other elements in Middle Eastern history take their birth. Israel is no more or less than the Jewish people’s resolve to be itself and to live, renewed, within its own frame of values, and thus to contribute its particular shape of mind to the universal human legacy.

In the 35 years since then, progress in this direction has been non-existent or even negative. Eban argued that peace was in the clear practical interest of both sides.  He called for defensible borders, “an end to hostility, boycott and blockade”,  a formal end to the conflict, what we would call a ‘warm peace’, and a just solution to the refugee problem — for both Jewish and Arab refugees. How hard could it be? He said,

The attainment of peace will make it possible to resolve the problem of refugees by co-operative regional action with international aid. We find it astonishing that States whose revenues from oil exports surpass 15,000 million dollars a year were not able to solve this problem in a spirit of kinship and human solidarity. In the very years when the Arab refugee problem was created by the assault on Israel in 1947 and 1948, 700,000 Jewish refugees from Arab and Moslem lands and from the debris of Hitler’s Europe were received by Israel and integrated in full citizenship and economic dignity. There have been other such solutions in Europe, in the Indian sub-continent, in Africa. The Arab refugee problem is not basically intractable: it has been perpetuated by a conscious decision to perpetuate it. But surely a peace settlement will remove any political incentive which has prevented a solution in the past. At the appropriate stage Israel will define its contribution to an international and regional effort for refugees resettlement. We shall propose compensation for abandoned lands in the context of a general discussion on property abandoned by those who have left countries in the Middle East to seek a new life.

Today his words sound remarkably naive. The combination of the empowerment of the most vicious part of the Palestinian nationalist movement, Arafat’s PLO, by a world — and an Israel — imbued with the New Left ideology of the 1960’s, along with the rise of radical Islamism exemplified by Hamas, has pushed the ideal of peace based on rational interests even farther away, almost to the vanishing point.

Support for extremist movements used to come from the Soviet Union and to some extent Saudi Arabia, but now Iran has been added, introducing an element of  radical theology to the mix. One almost misses the pragmatic Soviets.

From the point of view of the Palestinians today — both the nationalists and the Islamists — the Arabs did not miss any opportunities, because the kind of peace envisioned by Eban would not have been a desired outcome. Certainly his view of Israel as an “organic part” of the Middle East would be greeted with fury by those whose opinion is that Jewish Israel is a cancerous growth in the Arab Middle East.

Today there are few opportunities for peace because the Palestinian leadership, smelling potential victory and encouraged by rejectionists in the Arab and Iranian world, will not move in that direction. For example, the PLO, in the form of the Palestinian Authority (PA) categorically refuses to recognize Israel as a Jewish state.

Thanks to the effective indoctrination campaign paid for by such disparate sources as Saudi and Iranian oil money and the European Union, the rejectionist narrative — both historically and of current events — is accepted as the true account of the conflict everywhere in the Arab world, in Europe and in left-wing and academic circles in the US. So it is not even possible to try to go over the heads of the leadership to the people.

Unfortunately, today opportunities are regularly missed by Israel, not the Arabs. And they are not opportunities to make peace, but rather opportunities to destroy the enemies of peace. So, for example, Israel allowed Yasser Arafat to leave Beirut alive in 1982; failed to destroy the fighting and resupply abilities of Hezbollah in 2006; and of course failed to crush the Hamas army and leadership in 2008-9.

Israel is in a particularly tough spot today because it seems that the Obama Administration has also more or less accepted at least part of the rejectionist narrative, although it nevertheless maintains that it is committed to Israel’s security. This is not a happy situation, because the logical consequence of this pernicious narrative is just what the rejectionists say: that there should not be a Jewish state of Israel.

Supporters of Israel in the US should understand the tension faced by the administration, the tension between its distorted view of history — which Barack Obama expressed clearly in his Cairo speech when he obscenely equated the Holocaust to the Palestinian “pursuit of a homeland” — and the administration’s concern for American public opinion, which still tends to favor Israel.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Arabs, Israeli-Arab conflict, Abba Eban