I watched the president speak to AIPAC today, and I heard him set out terms of surrender for Israel to agree to. He spoke about this topic as if he were selling the idea of "surrender now" to an audience of fools and cowards. He told them how powerful the Arab world and the Muslim world was becoming, how numerous the Arabs were becoming in the West Bank, how the acquiring of peace is becoming more and more difficult for Israel because now there is not one autocrat per country to convince but millions of people who will have a voice in the Arab governments (he assumes they will become democracies), and how the other countries of the world were all lining up against Israel. He told them that peace would be a wonderful thing. He told them that if the terms of surrender were not agreed to by Israel now, they would only get more difficult for Israel as time went on. As a good salesman, he said, in effect, buy now, because what is being bought is a wonderful product and later the price will get higher.
He didn't address the question of whether Israel actually has a peace partner. These terms were set down by President Obama days after Mahmoud Abbas announced that Fatah would be partners with Hamas, and would seek to be internationally recognized as a state of Palestine, on 1967 lines (meaning on the lines of the 1949 Armistice Agreement between Israel and Jordan). Hamas is a terrorist organization, and has been recognized as such by the US State Department. Its charter calls for the destruction of Israel. Its charter is judeophobic, calling the Jews responsible for all of the evils of the world for all time, reading as if it were a part of Hitler's Mein Kampf in its slanders of the Jews. Its charter also features a statement saying that in the end of days, the Jews will all be killed; but it doesn't treat this as some sort of allegory, the context of the charter's hostility to the Jews and calls to kill the Jews show that this is offered as support for a genocidal program against the Jews. While Fatah's constitution also calls for the destruction of Israel, and the PLO's charter also calls for the destruction of Israel, Abbas was thought to be a moderate because he kept his distance from Hamas. That is no more, with the Hamas-Fatah partnership. And Hamas brings a religious zeal to their calls for Israel's destruction, appealing to religious reasons for doing so, so they turn the dispute into a religious war, a jihad. Israel is faced with genocidal terrorist jihadists, who are not offering any peace, but only a hudna, a temporary cease fire until they are strong enough militarily to wage warfare.
Israel does not have a peace partner, so it cannot consider terms supposedly of peace, when there isn't going to be any peace.
What President Obama offered is a chance to define the end result of the negotiations, as far as territory is concerned, before the negotiations begin. Then what is the point of the negotiations, when the end result, according to President Obama, would be a return, essentially, to the Armistice Lines of 1949 (which held only until 1967, and he calls them the 1967 lines). Yes, there could be some slight modifications, but only if agreed upon (and the Palestinians are not interested in any modifications), and only with Israel as a supplicant deprived of its negotiating cards, and forced to slice and dice the country to try to get some relief. The Armistice Lines would give Israel a width, for its populous region along the Mediterranean, only 9 miles wide. For the entire Mediterranean coastal region, the average width would hardly be any more than this, roughly around 10 miles average width.
This would be dangerous for Israel. As P. David Hornik pointed out on the blog at www.frontpagemag.com on May 21 (yesterday):
"gravest of all would be Israel's radical strategic vulnerability in the situation envisaged by Obama. Even a Palestinian state that more or less complied with 'nonmilitarization' could allow -- or be forced to allow -- Arab armies from the east to traverse the short distance to Israel's coastal plain, where a mere nine-mile push by tank force would suffice to sunder Israel and put an end to Jewish sovereignty. Would Israel's large, capable army be able to stop the invasion? Very likely not -- because the bulk of that army consists of reserve forces, which require 48 hours for a full mobilization. An Arab force could cross the West Bank in much less time. Meanwhile the reserve forces rushing along exposed arteries to exposed mobilization centers would be subject to various forms of debilitating fire -- very likely including missile barrages from states and terror enclaves bordering Israel."
What is being offered is not peace that Israelis can live with at all. It is a situation that could lead to the direst situation for Israel, even the end of Israel, the end of the Jewish state. The product that Obama is selling is not the peace of life, but the peace of the grave.
Also, Obama has not mentioned the casus beli of the Palestinians, their demand for millions of Arabs who claim to be grandchildren and great-grandchildren of Arab refugees to immigrate into Israel. These would produce a civil war in Israel, and would multiply, and would end the existence of the Jewish state. It is conquest by immigration, which the Arabs have kept as another approach to ending the existence of Israel. Obama would have Israel make suicidal concessions on territory, without calling for negotiations at the same time or earlier on the casus beli, so that having obtained territorial concessions the Palestinians would not see the need to make any concessions on their casus beli. This would preserve the state of war, and the reason for the endless warfare. In effect, this would take away Israel's ability to have any leverage for negotiation. That is why Israel requires that all topics be open for negotiation, not merely the ones that Israel is expected to make concessions on, but also those that clearly require Palestinians concession like the demand for a "right of return" of millions of those claiming to be descendants of Arab refugees. This omission tilts the balance entirely away from Israel and makes it a supplicant at the negotiating table, with everything stacked against it.
There would not be any relenting on the part of the Palestinians in such a situation.
In other words, Obama is setting up conditions for defenseless boundaries leading to the conquest by the sword, plus conditions for massive immigration of millions of hostile Arabs into Israel setting up conditions for conquest by immigration. This is not a good product that Obama is selling, or trying to sell to Israel and to its supporters in America.
He claims that there is nothing different about it from what has gone on in the past. But in the past there were negotiations that were not restricted to Israeli concessions at the start. And to prove that this is a vast change from what came from the previous administration, Obama has so far refused to endorse the letter that then-President George W. Bush sent to then-prime minister Ariel Sharon. So much for pretend-continuity., a pretense made to lower resistance to this plan for Israel to take the gravest of risks with an enemy that is tied to genocidal terrorist jihad -- Hamas -- that makes it clear it does not even want to recognize the Jewish state's right to exist.
Obama spoke to the AIPAC audience as if they were an audience of fools and cowards, telling them that his product is "peace", that it is great, and that the price will go up if Israel doesn't accept it. He told them that countries of the world are getting more hostile to Israel, so Israel has to surrender now or the price will go up. And he will be leaving on a trip abroad, soon. The purpose of this is to get other countries to sign on to his plan, to get them to pile onto Israel, to try to force a surrender of Israel on these very bad terms that would lead to the gravest of risks.
As Netanyahu pointed out, Israel cannot afford to take risks on which the existence of the Jewish state depends. History will not offer the Jews a second chance.
And what about the fate of the more than 500,000 Jews living in land which the Arab ethnic cleansers want to be made judenrein, and who under Obama's plan would find themselves in a foreign country surrounded by genocidal terrorist jihadists?Why hasn't said a word about the situation of these people, including some 300,000 children? This is a plan that is suitable for the dustbin of history.
Obama said that Jerusalem would not be discussed at this time. But his plan would divide Jerusalem along the 1949 Armistice Lines, which would leave 200,000 Jews of northern, southern, and eastern Jerusalem, a sizable chunk of the 500,000 mentioned above, in a new country, with the Temple Mount in a foreign country, and the Western Wall in a foreign country, and the Jewish Quarter of the Old City in a foreign country.
Obama said that he wants to give congruity to the new Palestinian state he is seeking to create. But the Gaza Strip does not abut the West Bank. That means he wants to take congruity away from Israel, by slicing it and dicing it further, to end Israel's congruity and give congruity to the Palestinian state.
This is not a plan that will in any way benefit Israel, as it promotes war, produces exile and humanitarian crisis for 500,000 Jews targeted for ethnic cleansing, ends the religious rights of Jewish pilgrims to ancient Jewish holy sites, and slices and dices the country -- without even having a peace partner. This is a plan for the dustbin of history, and that is where it deserves to remain. And why is a supposed "progressive" trying to get up an international mob to pressure Israel to accept a reactionary plan that seeks to return to the bad old days of 44 years to 63 years ago, when Israel faced maximum danger and disability, and then make it worse for Israel by slicing and dicing some more?
