Watching President Barack Obama mediate the Palestinian-Israeli negotiations gives me the feeling that I am watching a sports event between two teams, and the referee is also playing for one of the teams, and actually scoring all its goals.
The basis of negotiations, according to Obama, is a return to pre-war 1967. Here is what that means. Israel gives up the Western Wall, and Jews give up the right to pray at their holiest place of prayer. What do the Palestinians give up? Israel gives up the Jewish Quarter of the Old City, where Jews have lived for the past 1000 years except for the 18 years of Jordanian occupation from 1948-1967, and Jews give up the right to live in their holiest place of residence. What do the Palestinians give up? It means that Israel gives up half of its capital city Jerusalem. What do the Palestinians give up? It means that Israel gives up all of Judea and Samaria. What do the Palestinians give up? It means that more than 500,000 Jews give up their right to live in their homes and communities and become evicted, they become displaced persons, refugees. On Obama's road trip to appeasing and pandering to certain groups in the world, these 500,000 Jews become Obama's road kill. What do the Palestinians give up? Can you see the imbalance here? Can you see how this resembles a referee who is playing for one of the teams and scoring all of its goals?
Of course, all the while Obama is scoring goals for the Palestinians, he is proclaiming his love for Israel's security, becoming almost poetic in his love songs to Israel's security. His back-to-1967 basis for negotiations gives Israel indefensible borders with territory merely 9 miles wide. Apart from the indefensible boundaries that Obama demands Israel accept as a basis for negotiations, let's look at what Israel most needs for security. To prevent a Palestinian entity from becoming a rocket base, as has been happening with the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, and Hizballah-ruled south Lebanon, Israel needs a long-term security envelope around the Palestinian entity, including a long-term military presence in the Jordan River Valley. But in Obama's speech at the State Department, he appears to be against allowing Israel to have a long-term security envelope. Not in the front-loading of the negotiations. But also not in the intermediate or back end of the negotiations. Not at all. He appears to have removed this from the table completely, so that there is nothing that Israel can offer the Palestinians to have this essential security need met. But apart from taking this off the table completely, he has insisted, in his back-to-1967 plan, that Israel is stripped of all its negotiating chips before the negotiations even start. So Israel would be stripped of its negotiating chips, and its main security need would be off the table -- at the beginning, in the middle, and at the end. He can sing romantic love songs about how he loves security for Israel, but his actions in removing a long-term security envelope for Israel speak much louder, and that is what I hear, not the distracting conning nonsense.
If Obama wanted to give the impression of balance, instead of his playing for one of the teams, he should include in his front-loading for the negotiations not merely the Palestinian demands, but also Israel's essential requirements.
First of all, if this is to be a peace process, and not merely a war process, the pretexts for war need to end, and the basis for negotiations needs to include 3 principles:
1. The Palestinians must recognize Israel as the Jewish nation's state.
2. The treaty to be signed must be an end to the conflict.
3. The Arab refugee problem must be solved outside of Israel's borders.
Why was Obama's basis of negotiations merely a return to the dangerous situation of pre-war 1967, and not the inclusion of these 3 principles for actually ending the pretexts for war? Is Obama willing to actually stop playing for one side, and include the basis for ending the war pretexts as the basis of negotiations?
Secondly, it has to be recognized that any effort at peace must be defended, and provision must be made in case the peace fails. To do this, the basis for negotiations needs to include these principles.
4. A Palestinian state will have to be demilitarized and a peace treaty must safeguard Israel's security.
5. Israel cannot return to the situation of pre-war 1967, and must have defensible borders, not territory 9 miles wide.
6. Israel must have a long-term security envelope around the Palestinian entity, including a long-term military presence in the Jordan River Valley that can prevent the smuggling of weapons, prevent the infiltration of jihadis, and resist an invasion from across the Jordan River by armies to provide sufficient time for Israel to mobilize its reserves and get to the front.
Thirdly, Israel cannot create a humanitarian catastrophe by not taking into account the vast demographic changes that have occurred over the past 44 years, that is over the past two generations. The basis for negotiations needs to include this principle:
7. The settlement blocs will remain within the state of Israel and Jerusalem will remain its united capital.
After this basis of negotiations is agreed to by the Palestinians and the Israelis, as well as the Obama administration, the Palestinian-Israeli negotiations can begin.
