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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