President Obama has begun a campaign to push Israel to return to the indefensible 1967 lines. The first step has been Obama's pressure on Israel to agree to start negotiations based on the 1967 lines. These are indefensible lines giving Israel a width of only 9 miles. These lines imply that Israel gives up the Western Wall, gives up the Jewish Quarter of the Old City, gives up half of its capital Jerusalem, gives up all of the Jewish ancestral homeland of Judea and Samaria, and makes more than 500,000 Israelis subject to expulsion from their homes and communities.
The second step in Obama's campaign is to demand that Israel negotiate, after having been deprived of all its negotiating chips. For there to be any chance of peace, Israel needs to have the Arab refugee problem resolved outside of the borders of Israel. But President Obama has removed this topic from the table, while the land changes are discussed. So there is zero chance that this matter will be resolved, and the casus belli will remain, and there will not be any resolution of the conflict. Israel cannot trade territorial concessions for Palestinian concessions on the Arab refugee problem, because (1) Israel would have all its negotiating chips taken away, and (2) the vital topic of Arab refugees was taken off the table by Obama. So the agenda is not land for peace but land for war. Since Israel will have nothing to offer, and the Palestinian side will see no reason for concession or for any form of compromise or reasonableness, there will not be any progress in negotiations, and a deadlock will occur -- at the beginning and throughout the negotiations.
The third step, once there is a deadlock, is for Obama to declare that Israel must retreat to the 1967 lines. After Israel has accepted the Obama demand for making the 1967 lines the starting point of negotiations, Israel will have legitimized this demand for a return to 1967, and it will be more difficult for Israel to refuse to do so. So Obama, with help from the international community, will press Israel to go back to 1967. He may say, for example: "The United States does not recognize the legitimacy of Israel's not going back to the 1967 lines." He may also add the lie that UN Resolution 242 requires Israel to go back to those lines, when in actuality it affirms Israel's "right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force." This maximum pressure by Obama against Israel, to force it to go back to 1967, will likely come during his second term. There will be nothing for Israel to gain by going back to 1967, and everything to lose.
But there has already started some pushback against this.
A bipartisan group of Senators has sponsored a resolution "Declaring that it is the policy of the United States to support and facilitate Israel in maintaining defensible borders and that it is contrary to United States policy and national security to have the borders of Israel return to the armistice lines that existed on June 4, 1967."
The cosponsors of this resolution includes Senators Orrin Hatch of Utah, Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, Marco Rubio of Florida, Ben Nelson of Nebraska, Mike Johanns of Nebraska, Ron Wyden of Oregon,
Jerry Moran of Kansas, Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania, Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma, John Barrasso of Wyoming, Mark Kirk of Illinois, Richard Burr of North Carolina, John Cornyn of Texas, Jon Kyl of Arizona, Mike Lee of Utah, John Thune of South Dakota, Rob Portman of Ohio, Dan Coats of Indiana, Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire, John Boozman of Arkansas, Roy Blunt of Missouri,
Scott Brown of Massachusetts, David Vitter of Louisiana, Pat Roberts of Kansas, Mike Enzi of Wyoming, Johnny Isakson of Oregon, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Roger Wicker of Mississippi, Richard Lugar of Indiana, and Saxby Chambliss of Georgia.
