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Moshe Ami, z'l, murdered by Islamic Jihad rocket in Ashkelon. They call him a "settler Zionist."

On Thursday, we read the following:

In a departure from previous policy, the government has agreed to put forward a comprehensive proposal on borders within three months, according to a Quartet communiqué issued on Thursday.

The statement, put out following separate meetings the Quartet envoys and Quartet representative Tony Blair held in Jerusalem with Israeli and Palestinian officials on Wednesday, said the parties agreed with the Quartet to “come forward with comprehensive proposals on territory and security within three months.”

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has been reluctant to present a detailed map of where he envisions a future Palestinian state, wary of revealing a key negotiating card before knowing what he can expect in return from the Palestinians on issues such as refugees, Jerusalem and recognition of a Jewish state.

As I write this, rockets are falling into Israeli cities from Gaza, at least one Israeli civilian, a 56-year old father of 4 named Moshe Ami (Elder of Ziyon notes that Islamic Jihad calls him a ‘settler Zionist’) has been murdered and tens injured. The IDF has killed at least 9 terrorists, in strikes on military targets. A million Israelis spent the night in shelters.

So, back to diplomacy: the ‘proposal’ that Netanyahu will deliver should be something like this:

Dear Quartet (which is composed of three anti-Israel parties plus the least friendly American administration since 1948, and which has no authority other than ‘might makes right’ to determine the borders of the state of Israel),

You may (or may not, if you listen to the BBC) have noticed that Palestinian Arabs are presently committing acts of war against Israel. Please don’t tell me that it is a different faction from the one that I am negotiating with, because the hero’s welcome received by freed murderers of all factions shows that they all approve of murdering Jews.

Be that as it may, I am making the following comprehensive proposal:

The state of Israel will not talk to the Palestinian Arabs about anything, nor will it continue to collect taxes for the PA nor supply water and electricity to Gaza, until

• They agree that Israel is the nation state of the Jewish people,
• They agree that there is no ‘right of return’ to Israel in principle or practice for descendents of Arab refugees,
• They agree that a final agreement will end all their claims against Israel,
• Armed factions will give up all weapons and military equipment over and above those needed for legitimate police duties.

Then we’ll talk. Meanwhile, we’ll go after terrorists wherever they are, in Gaza, Judea/Samaria, Jerusalem, etc. Acts of war will be responded to appropriately.

Your friend, Bibi

I’m entirely serious.

First, Israel should not be required to negotiate with those who do not accept her existence. If the Arabs aren’t capable of at least this, then any concession by Israel would be irrational, wouldn’t it? So why talk under those circumstances?

Second, the Kafka-esque situation in which Arabs are allowed to kill Jews and at the same time make demands is unacceptable. Acts of aggression against another state are forbidden by the charter of the UN that the PLO has been asking for statehood, and deliberately targeting civilians is a war crime. One would think that they would be required to stop these activities before the borders of their future state are drawn!

Israel is prepared to give up some territory for peace. But under no circumstances should she be required to negotiate under fire. If the Arabs cannot control their militias, then Israel will have to wage war with the militias first, until they are no longer capable of inflicting damage.

If there are, somewhere, real moderates among the Palestinians who honestly desire to live alongside Israel in peace, then they will do their best to suppress the militant factions. And they will put an end to the vicious incitement that flows continuously from all Palestinian Arab factions. So far there is no evidence at all of this.

To paraphrase kohelet, there is a time to talk and a time to fight. The Palestinian Arabs are telling us by their actions that now is not the time to negotiate.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Palestinians

One of Israel's Dolphin-class submarines

News item:

Germany is “reconsidering” its decision to sell Israel a sixth Dolphin class submarine, Yedioth Ahronoth reported on Wednesday.

According to the report, the move was prompted by the tensions between German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Merkel’s frustration over the new housing plans approved in east Jerusalem.

Top political sources said that Merkel was irked with Netanyahu, who “gave her the impression that he would be willing to suspend settlement expansion in order to push the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.”

Israel’s recent approval of 1,100 housing units in the Gilo neighborhood in Jerusalem led Merkel to announce that Netanyahu “cannot be taken seriously and has no intention of complying with the basic terms needed to renew the negotiations with the Palestinian.” [my emphasis]

If I may elucidate the boldfaced phrase, Merkel means that Bibi refuses to submit to Palestinian preconditions for negotiations, which include a freeze on all construction outside the Green line, agreement on pre-1967 lines plus swaps as borders, and several other things.

It is quite remarkable: the Arabs demand — and Europe supports them — that Israel agree to their desired outcome before starting to talk. Keep in mind, of course, that even if there were negotiations they could not possibly succeed, because the Palestinians have made it clear that they will never recognize Israel as the state of the Jewish people or give up the so-called ‘right’ of return.

So the whole ‘negotiation’ ploy is just an attempt to squeeze concessions out of Israel.

I’ve discussed the Gilo project before:

…this is what all the fuss is about: a few more apartments in an existing Jewish neighborhood where 40,000 Jews already live, located 100 yards from the Green Line, adjoining other Jewish neighborhoods and empty space.

Is it not 100% certain that if Israel and the Palestinians were to reach an agreement to create a Palestinian state that Gilo would end up on the Israeli side of the border? Let me put it another way: what imaginable Israeli government would agree to a treaty that would not place Gilo in Israel?

Palestinian Arab fantasies that the UN or the US is going to declare that everything outside the 1949 armistice line belongs to them so that they can move forward with their plan to expel the Jews are just that — fantasies.

So why do the US and Europe indulge them?

Why indeed?

One reason is that both the EU and the US do not recognize any difference between ‘settlements’ and Jerusalem, and they want to make that point. I also think that they pick on Jerusalem because it is so important to Israelis and Jews — crush us here, and we’ll give up all resistance to walking down the road to the end of the Jewish state (perhaps they got this idea from the PLO’s Abbas Zaki).

The Dolphin submarine is important because the Dolphins, said to be fitted with nuclear-warhead equipped cruise missiles, constitute an important part of Israel’s ‘second-strike’ capability. Iran (or any other nation) understands that even if it devastates Israel, massive retaliation is inevitable. Although this doesn’t entirely solve the problem of Iranian nuclear weapons — they can change the landscape of the region without being used — it is a powerful deterrent against the most horrible scenario.

Nevertheless, Israel can probably live without this sub. It already has 3 Dolphin-class subs with two more under construction. In 2007, analyst Anthony Cordesman estimated that a second strike by Israel on Iran would result in 16 to 28 million dead in that country.

It’s also been suggested that part or all of the problem lies with the price. The deal called for Germany to subsidize $190 million of the estimated $500-$700 million cost. If that’s so, then Merkel should admit that they can’t afford the deal and it can be renegotiated.

But if the sticking point is Jerusalem, my guess is that Israel will tell Merkel that a submarine is not worth giving up sovereignty over part of its capital.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Angela Merkel, Dolphin-class submarines, Jerusalem

Caroline Glick discusses dumping the Oslo paradigm:

The vast majority [of Israelis] love the country, want to defend it, don’t want to surrender, don’t want to establish a Palestinian state that’s going to be the death of the country, and don’t want to be beholden to foreign powers, but this view is never expressed.

One of the reasons we have a situation where we are going back time and time again, beating our heads against the wall with this false paradigm of peace on the basis of the establishment of a Palestinian state, is because the left has discounted any alternative policy. Every time we say it doesn’t work, the left always comes back and says, “What’s your alternative?”

Well, the alternative of course is to annex Judea and Samaria, but we haven’t had any discussion of that possible alternative for the past thirty years. It’s been discredited by the left because they don’t want to discuss it. So most Israelis, because we never talk about it, just assume it’s not a possibility.

The paradigm is even stronger in the US. The recent ‘unity pledge’ for American Jews promoted  by the ADL explicitly calls for a “two-state solution.” Similarly, some time ago a synagogue that I belong to appointed a committee to vet suggested speakers. Some of the members were afraid of pro-Palestinian activists, and others of ‘right-wing extremists’. The compromise that they reached was that an acceptable speaker on Israel had to support the “two-state solution!”

Since Oslo, the ‘centrist’ position has been that the only way to end the conflict is to establish a Palestinian state in essentially all of the territories and re-divide Jerusalem. But this was not always the case. During the 1970’s and 80’s, the moderate point of view was that Israel could trade some — but definitely not all — of the territories for a peace agreement. It was generally thought that Jordan would receive the parts of Judea and Samaria that Israel did not retain, or perhaps some kind of Palestinian autonomous entity would be created. But after the desecrations of the Jordanian occupation, almost nobody imagined splitting Jerusalem again. Few conceived of a sovereign Palestinian state, ruled by the murderous PLO.

Now we’ve had the Second Intifada (some call it ‘the Oslo War’). We’ve had a war with Hamas in Gaza and the Shalit affair. We’ve had some remarkably vicious terrorism like the Fogel murders. Rockets still fall on southern Israel and they are moving north.

Today the PLO demands all of Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem, and unashamedly admits that its goal is not to end the conflict, but to continue it until all of Israel has been replaced by an Arab state. Hamas, which didn’t exist until the late 1980’s, controls 40% of the Palestinian Arab population and is newly flush with weapons from the disintegrated Gadhafi regime.

Meanwhile, our ‘moderates’, following the Obama Administration’s lead along with the cowed Netanyahu government, keep calling for Israel to work together with the PLO in dismantling the Jewish state. But there are other options.

Lots of energy, thought, blood and astronomical amounts of money (mostly from the US) have gone into the futile effort to give life to a fantasy, a two-state solution with the PLO. What if it had gone into a plan that did not include the participation of terrorists? What if the idea that all states in the region, including Israel, need “secure and recognized boundaries” had not somehow fallen by the wayside?

What if the focus of the ‘peace process’ had really been peace and security rather than creating a Palestinian state at any cost?

Technorati Tags: Israel, Oslo process, Palestinians

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and the American Jewish Committee are promoting a “pledge” to be signed by Jewish organizations, elected officials and individuals that “U.S. – Israel friendship should never be used as a political wedge issue.”

I am always suspicious of pledges, especially when they are as vague as this one. Of course a ‘political wedge issue’ sounds like a bad thing, but does the pledge mean that one agrees not to criticize a candidate because of his or her position on Israel? Ron Paul, for example, thinks that the US should cut off all aid to Israel. Shouldn’t this be a reason to publicly oppose him?

The pledge also contains this:

U.S. leadership in the efforts to achieve an agreement resolving the conflict that results in two states—the Jewish state of Israel and a Palestinian state, living side by side in peaceful coexistence—is more critical than ever.

I find this objectionable. The Palestinian leadership has made it clear that its intention is not to “live side by side in peaceful coexistence,” but seeks a sovereign state as a platform to continue to wage war against the Jewish state, in both the diplomatic and military spheres. US ‘leadership’ — that is, pressure — to help them do this is not favorable to Israel’s interests. Support of a “two-state solution” should not be a litmus test for supporting Israel, and it’s time to stop repeating the failed formulas of the Oslo period.

The real motivation for the pledge is apparent from the statement of the ADL’s Abraham Foxman in an accompanying press release:

We want the discourse on U.S. support for Israel to avoid the sometimes polarizing debates and political attacks that have emerged in recent weeks, as candidates have challenged their opponents’ pro-Israel bone fides or questioned the current administration’s foreign policy approach vis-à-vis Israel … The last thing America and Israel need right now is the distractions of having Israel bandied about as a tool for waging political attacks. [my emphasis]

Could anything be more transparently partisan?

As a Democrat who has called the Obama team “the most anti-Israel administration since 1948,” it is very important to me that I be able to hold it to account for its Israel policy — and that Republicans do so as well. How else can we influence our politicians if we refrain from criticizing them at election time?

There is a real danger posed by organizations like the ADL, AJC (and don’t forget the Jewish Federation-supported JCPA and the Union for Reform Judaism (URJ)), which is that they purport to represent large segments of the Jewish public, when they are actually controlled by a small group of activists. Even the URJ’s liberal constituency is not necessarily in agreement with the more radical positions taken by its leadership. Non-Jewish Americans can be excused for being misled about what Jews generally think about Israel (and other things).

The ADL is dominated by one man, Abe Foxman, and it shows. Take for example, his embarrassing faux pas over recognizing the Armenian Genocide, or his vicious attack on opponents of Rabbi Jacobs as URJ President. The ADL could serve a useful function if it stuck to fighting antisemitism, and it should do so.

Technorati Tags: Israel, ADL, Obama Administration

Palestinian Authority 'security' forces. Feel secure yet?

It appears that Israel offered a freeze on government-sponsored construction in Judea and Samaria in return for the Palestinian Authority (PA) returning to talks. The PA rejected the offer, because it did not include eastern Jerusalem and because it only applied to government, not private, construction.

Can we please stop this charade?

Now that the Shalit affair is over, after freed terrorist after freed terrorist has promised to go back to slaughtering Jews, after there has already been at least one attempted terrorist murder in the euphoria inspired by the triumph, it’s time to end the pretense, admit the truth, and begin to implement a completely new approach.

PA officials have made no secret of their admiration for acts of violence and murder against Jewish civilians. They have not stopped inciting their people to do more of them. They have not hidden their program to eliminate the Jewish state. They continue to insist that the world owes them a living and in fact owes them Israel, which they expect to have handed to them on a platter — the sooner the better, thank you.

Israel enables and facilitates this by calling for negotiations with them, allowing them to continue their posturing as a legitimate national entity, indeed, as anything more than a collection of gangs and militias, tolerating the idea that a Palestinian state might be created in the territories, and offering to preemptively surrender Jewish rights.

How many Jews will have to be murdered before the government of Israel can learn the word ‘enemy’ and understand that the PLO and Hamas are the enemies of the state and the Jewish people?

An enemy is someone who wants to kill you. Think of the US and Imperial Japan during WWII. But unlike WWII enemies, Arab enmity does not flow from a particular regime, or geopolitical aspirations thereof. It is pure ethnic/religious hatred which leaves no room for compromise. The relevant difference between the Nazi party and the PLO or Hamas is that the Nazis were better organized and more effective. But there is little difference between their objectives.

Negotiations in this situation can’t bring peace. They are just another part of the complex of military, diplomatic and information weapons that is being deployed against the Jewish state. Talking to the terrorists is in itself a victory for them.

In addition to physically fighting the terrorists, it’s also necessary to explode the false picture of who and what they are and what their goals are. Every time that an Israeli politician takes a Palestinian official seriously, every time Hamas or the PLO are given the slightest legitimacy, it is a victory for them.

Israel should not make any offers to the Palestinians except an offer to help facilitate regime change. Even if such a change did occur, it might be half a century or more before the poison spread initially by Yasser Arafat, who raised an entire generation of creatures corrupted by pathological hate, would lose its potency. And who knows what it would take to attenuate the religious murderousness of Hamas?

Today it’s not realistic to expect peace. The credulous acceptance of the ideas of Oslo, the wishful thinking that replaced simply opening eyes and ears and paying attention to the actions and statements of the PLO, led to the deaths of thousands of innocents. By now, the vocabulary of Oslo has pretty much gone from the conversations of ordinary Israelis, but it still defines (perhaps cynically) the approach of the US and Europe toward Israel.

It is a serious error to humor them. Israeli policy needs to change 180 degrees from the direction of Oslo. Israel cannot survive if it accepts the false premises of the Oslo conceptual scheme, which will bring about a piecemeal surrender to Palestinians who have no intention of letting up on the military and diplomatic pressure. No concession is ever enough, and every rejected Israeli offer becomes the starting point for the next round of demands.

It is remarkable the way the Palestinian Arabs, who have no economy apart from the international dole and no real military power, can successfully chip away at a country like Israel, with its flourishing economy and world-class military. But they are doing it, by combining relatively primitive terrorism with a diplomatic assault that uses the Oslo framework and the language of human rights to leverage the power of the US, the EU, the UN, etc. to squeeze Israel, little by little.

Israel’s government must stop enabling the process. Its diplomacy should send the following message:

• The PLO and Hamas are enemies of the state of Israel. We won’t deal with them except to fight terrorism.
• There is no ‘peace process’ and can be none until the PLO and Hamas are replaced by a regime that ends terrorism and declares that they are prepared to recognize Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people.
• Israel will not cooperate in attempts to ethnically cleanse Jews from areas that were occupied by Jordan in 1948-67. Territorial compromises, if any, will be made in the framework of UNSC resolutions 242/338, which guarantee secure and recognized borders and do not privilege the 1949 armistice lines.
• The Oslo agreements — which were not signed in good faith by Yasser Arafat, whose provisions for modification of the PLO charter and ending terrorism and incitement were never carried out, and which were abrogated by Mahmoud Abbas’ unilateral appeal to the UN — are null and void. The PA that they created is illegitimate.

It might not be possible to change the attitudes of the people in the Obama Administration, for example, who are pushing the one-sided ‘peace process’. But at least Israel can officially end its acquiescence in what some call the ‘piece-by-piece process’.

One of the horrible ironies of Oslo was Israel’s providing weapons to the PA ‘police’, which were then turned against Jews in terrorist attacks. Let’s stop handing them the conceptual weapons — far more dangerous than assault rifles and armored cars  — that they are using in their diplomatic war against the Jewish state.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Palestinians, Oslo accord, diplomacy, terrorism