On the Jay Leno show, Leno joked about Obama's efforts to return Israel to pre-war 1967. He said that Native Americans, hearing about this, asked if America could please return to pre-1492. Also, Leno said that on Obama's trip to England, the Queen asked if America could please return to pre-1776. On the Internet, someone circulated a call to return America to pre-1959, to before Hawaii was a state, so that Obama would not be a citizen of the U.S.
Unfortunately, it's no joking matter that Obama is serious about turning the clock back to pre-war 1967. Mr. Obama works in phases, and the maximal pressure on Israel to return to pre-war 1967 will come after the November 2012 election that gives Obama a second term, when he will no longer care what any voter or donor thinks about what he is doing. For now, he is setting the stage for that pressure.
Obama has adapted the territorial plan of the Palestinians. Here is a description of the positions of the Israeli government and the position of the Palestinians, as described in a joint U.S.-Israel statement after a November 11, 2010 meeting between Israel's Prime Minister Netanyahu and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton:
"The Prime Minister and the Secretary agreed on the importance of continuing direct negotiations to achieve our goals. The Secretary reiterated that 'The United States believes that through good-faith negotiations, the parties can mutually agree on an outcome which ends the conflict and reconciles the Palestinian goal of an independent and viable state, based on the 1967 lines, with agreed swaps, and the Israeli goal of a Jewish state with secure and recognized borders that reflect subsequent developments and meet Israeli security requirements.' Those requirements will be fully taken into account in any future peace agreement."
What Obama did in his State Department speech is trash the Israeli position, which he did not mention, and set U.S. policy to push the Palestinian position, which he legitimized, and gave cover to by proclaiming it as the U.S. position. He said nothing about Pres. George W. Bush's letter to then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, supporting Israel's negotiating position on settlement blocs. Nor did he mention Bush's letter's support for solving the Arab refugee problem outside of Israel's final borders. Instead he repeated the Palestinian position as being the U.S. position.
Some deceivers like David Harris are seeking to fool the Jewish community into believing that Obama is not pushing for return to the pre-war 1967 lines, because, like the Palestinian position he included a reference to permitting agreed swaps. But that is a distinction without a difference, because all that stands in the way of a return to the pre-war 1967 lines, in this formulation, is a shake of the head by Abbas, turning down any offer of a swap that Israel proposes. If Israel accepted the Abbas-Obama formulation, then if there is a deadlock, as is certain, the situation would not revert to the present situation; it would revert to a return to the pre-war 1967 situation.
The Abbas-Obama plan to return to pre-war 1967 is based on trashing of the Jewish state's claims in Eretz Yisrael such as the Western Wall, the Jewish Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem, the Temple Mount, liberated Jerusalem, and territories of Judea and Samaria. Under the Abbas-Obama plan all of these, including the Western Wall and the Jewish Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem would be put in the care of the Hamas violent aggressive jihadists and their Fatah partners. Just as the Jordanians did when they controlled these, the Jews would be denied access to the Western Wall, the synagogues in the Old City would be destroyed and the Jews expelled.
The Abbas-Obama plan to return to pre-war 1967 is also based on rewarding the aggression of the Arab states. On May 15, 1948, the day 5 Arab armies invaded the new state of Israel, Arab League Sec. Gen. Azzam Pasha said: "This will be a war of extermination and a momentous massacre which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacres and the Crusades." Among the invading armies, the army of the Hashemite Kingdom of Transjordan, with its British officers, and commanded by Britain's John Glubb, crossed the River Jordan to invade. They captured the Jewish Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem and massacred the Jewish residents there, expelled the survivors, and exiled the Jews from a place that has been inhabited by Jews for centuries. The occupation by Transjordan (which then changed its name to Jordan) lasted from 1948 to the war of 1967. The Abbas-Obama plan is based on rewarding this aggression and massacre, making the Hamas and Fatah terrorists the beneficiaries of Transjordan's aggression and occupation from 1948-1967.
The Abbas-Obama plan to return to pre-war 1967 is also based on replacing the idea of territorial compromise with the idea of unilateral concessions by Israel. UN Security Council Resolution 242 of Nov. 22, 1967, calls for "Withdrawal of Israel armed forces from territories", not from "the" territories, and it calls for "secure and recognized borders". But the Abbas-Obama plan is for maximum Israeli territorial concessions, and no compromise at all to give secure borders to Israel. The borders to which the Abbas-Obama plan would force Israel would be only 9 miles wide, and indefensible.
Mr. Obama's plan also guarantees that there will be no resolution of the Arab "refugee" problem, which has been the casus belli of the wars and violence since 1948, and which is a continuing pretext for endless war against Israel. Israel cannot admit the millions of foreign Arabs who claim to be great-grandchildren of Arab refugees of 1948, or it will end its existence as a Jewish state and become the 23rd Arab state after the Palestinians have the 22nd Arab state. That is not what is meant by the "two-state solution", having two more Arab states and the end of the one Jewish state. Pres. George W. Bush's letter to then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon assured Israel that the Arab refugee problem would be settled outside the final borders of Israel, but Pres. Barack Obama refuses to confirm Bush's promise. Instead, he has trashed the agreements and understandings reached between the US and Israel, and his Secretary of State has asserted that these agreements and understandings don't exist. The letter, which was endorsed by Congress, also doesn't exist in the parallel universe of Mr. Obama. In order to further prevent any progress on this crucial issue of the Arab refugee problem, Obama has also taken the issue off the table for the discussions about territory, so that Israel would not be permitted to trade Israeli concessions on territory for a Palestinian resolution of the Arab refugee problem. This was done by Mr. Obama to make sure that Israeli territorial concessions were unilateral, with no significant measurable concessions by the Palestinians on the crucial Arab refugee problem. This trick by Obama guarantees that the Arab refugee issue will not be resolved, the war against Israel will not be settled, there will be an effort to slice and dice Israel for the sake of future wars but there will not be any peace, no resolution of the Arabs' infinite grievance against Israel. Likewise, when Israel concedes territory according to the Abbas-Obama plan, the crucial-for-Israel issue of recognizing the right of Israel to exist as a Jewish state will be off the table, and therefore never addressed since the Abbas-Obama plan involves stripping Israel of all its negotiating chips before such important-for-Israel matters are addressed.
In 1948, the leader of the Palestinians, the Mufti of Jerusalem (who was an ally of Adolf Hitler during WWII), declared: "I declare a holy war, my Moslem brothers! Murder the Jews! Murder them all!" The genocidal incitement against the Jews has continued ever since, and that is a reason why the war against the Jews continues and will continue. But Obama's trick is to take the matter of incitement off the table when Israel makes territorial concessions, so that this issue of incitement cannot be brought up at the time when Israel makes the concessions. So it will not be brought up at all, since by Obama's trick Israel would be stripped of its negotiating chips before this issue and other critical issues for Israel are discussed.
