Obama versus security for Israel?

A plan put forward by Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, and seconded by President Barack Obama, for Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, was described in a speech by Obama at the State Department. The basis of negotiations would be a return to "1967" (pre-war) lines -- that is, the 1949 Armistice Lines -- and then, after Israel accepts this disastrous situation as the basis, there could be negotiations. This plan would give Israel indefensible borders, and a territorial width of merely 8 miles. Also, the post-1967 settlement enterprise would be wiped out completely, the Jewish cities, towns, and villages in Judea and Samaria and even half of Jerusalem being turned into areas for the placement of rocket launchers and missile launchers as happened in the Gaza Strip, with the eviction of over 500,000 Jewish residents, about 2/3 of them children. In Obama's speech, he seems to have ruled out Israel's very important security requirement of having a long-term security envelope around the Palestinian entity, including a long-term military presence in the Jordan River Valley. Obama does this, as a lawyer might, by setting up a series of barriers to this. He proclaimed that security would be left in the hands of the Palestinians (so no Israeli security envelope), that the Palestinian entity would border Israel, Jordan and Egypt while Israel would border the Palestinian entity (so no border between Israel and Jordan and no security envelope), and that there would be a total withdrawal of Israeli military forces, to be carried out during a defined and agreed interval of time (so no long term military presence anywhere, including the Jordan River Valley). This was inserted to guide the Palestinians so that in the unlikely event that they might agree to Israel's security envelope needs, Obama overrules them and decrees that it cannot take place.

How this would work out can be seen by considering the effect on different types of warfare that would result. Rocket and missile attacks would be made relatively easy, since Israel's population centers would be in easy range of the rockets and missiles. So would airplanes landing or taking off from Israel's airport be in easy range.

The security envelope that Israel needs, and that Obama seems to have said "no" to, is needed to prevent the smuggling of weapons, including rockets and missiles, from outside into the Palestinian entity. It is also needed to prevent the infiltration of jihadis into the territory controlled by the Palestinian entity. Also, with events unpredictable in the Middle East in Arab countries, and revolution in the air, there is no way to predict what Islamist forces will gain power in revolutions there and what armies will try to conquer an Israel with a territorial width of merely 8 miles. An Israeli military presence in the Jordan River Valley would be able to resist and delay and armed invasion across the Jordan River, to gain time for Israel's reserve army to mobilize and fight against the armed invasion. Also, an Israeli military presence in the Jordan River Valley could prevent jihadis from crossing in the other direction, into Jordan, to destabilize that country and lead it to becoming a radically-controlled state, which would be a danger to Israel.

It is unthinkable for Israelis to have to consider what would happen in case of a nuclear attack, say an atomic bomb being dropped on Tel Aviv by Iran. But it would be irresponsible if there were not anyone at all in the government of Israel that is willing to consider what might happen. Think about it. If a nuclear bomb were dropped on Tel Aviv, the blast and fire and enormous radiation would kill large numbers of people outright. But further from ground zero of the bomb, there would be people who survive, but who would have to be brought away from the site to a safer place away from the radiation hazard. Where could they go? The Jewish communities in Samaria would eagerly welcome them. Also, it would provide a place that is highly unlikely to be hit by an Iranian nuclear weapons, because the Jewish communities are distributed over a broad region, and because they are close to Jerusalem which is unlikely to be a nuclear target by Islamic Iran since it is a holy site in the eyes of Muslims, and because there are large numbers of Palestinian residents in the area. In fact, it has already been reported that there was at least one drill in which communities in Samaria pretended to admit Jewish refugees from some unnamed calamity. Likewise, there is room in Judea for receiving Jewish refugees from the nuclear attack. Certainly Jerusalem itself would welcome Jewish refugees, including the half of Jerusalem that Abbas and Obama want to make Judenrein in their ill-conceived plan. This shows two problems of the Abbas-Obama Judenrein plan for half of Jerusalem and all of Judea and Samaria. One is that the more than 500,000 Jewish residents would be expelled from there, and many would wind up in the Tel Aviv area where they would have the threat of an Iranian nuclear bomb hanging over their heads. The other is that these regions, becoming Judenrein, would no more be amenable to accepting Jewish refugees than were many of the countries of the world during the Holocaust years -- and even worse, since the Palestinians have been at war with Israel and hate has been drummed into their heads for generations. The Abbas-Obama plan, then, is a plan for decreasing the number of survivors from a nuclear attack. Also, by making Israel a more tempting target, since an attack would do more damage, the Abbas-Obama plan also makes an attack more likely, since the mullahs and ayatollahs of Iran would see a greater "reward" in lives for their nuclear attack.

The Abbas-Obama plan would result in indefensible boundaries for Israel with a territory merely 8 miles wide, without the essential security envelope including a long-term military presence in the Jordan River Valley, with Israel unable to stop the rocket and missile attacks and unable to control the flow of rockets and missiles to the launchers, the situation would be that of the "Auschwitz borders" that Abba Eban spoke about years ago, there would be instability caused by Israel's enemies being aware of the precariousness of Israel's situation, and there would be more fatalities and more casualties from an Iranian nuclear attack on Tel Aviv, bringing about a greater likelihood that such an attack would occur.

Obama's mostly incoherent foreign policy, plus his obsessive-compulsive Terroristan land fetish

Look at any newspaper covering foreign events, and you will see evidence of President Obama's incoherence in his foreign policy -- for most of it, anyhow. You will see how Obama is waging a war in Libya, based on the possibility that Gadaffi might kill somebody, and putting the opinion of the UN above Constitutional requirements to consult with Congress, and ignoring the War Powers Act as if he is above the law. He obviously has total contempt for Congress, and for him what happens at the UN is supreme. But even there, he never got any authorization from the UN either, to carry out a 3 month long botched attempt to assassinate Gadaffi. On the other hand, Bashar Assad, the Butcher of Damascus, has actually been slaughtering his own people, having killed already some 1500 of his people, and President Obama is unable to even say: "Let me be perfectly clear. Assad has lost his legitimacy." The Butcher has already driven thousands of his people into neighboring Turkey, and there is no knowing what else he will do, in massacring and driving out his own people. Yet Obama gives the Butcher a pass. The incoherence of Obama's policy is obvious for all to see.

Recently he showed some more of his incoherence. He recognized the jihadist Muslim Brotherhood, the Ikhwan, of Egypt, giving it legitimacy in the next Egyptian government, and, like President Jimmy Carter did, helping to assure that Egypt is going to become an Islamist state with the Muslim Brotherhood calling the shots. The Obama administration asked for dialog with the Muslim Brotherhood, of which Hamas claims to be the Palestinian branch. Obama's  people also put Israel on the terrorist watch list.

Apart from Obama's incoherence in foreign affairs, he has one obsessive-compulsive project in the foreign affairs sphere: to create a Palestinian reichlet, ruled by a confederation of terrorist gangs, mainly the genocidal Hamas terrorist gang, and its Fatah kleptocrat partners, but also the other terrorist gangs: Palestine Islamic Jihad, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and the other more minor terrorist gangs. He wants land for this confederation of terrorist gangs, and he wants to take as much land as possible from Israel. I would not say that he hates Israel, but he certainly does not have the love for Israel that President Bill Clinton had, nor the love for Israel that President George W. Bush had. He just doesn't care about Israel, he has a love for his Palestinian reichlet project, and for him Israel is a land cow that can provide all of the land that the Palestinians may demand at this time. Never mind that Israel is of the order of one hundredth of one percent of the land of the Muslim land-mass -- that is, of the order of 10 thousand times smaller than the territory of the Organization of the Islamic Conference. To Obama, Israel is a resource that will yield its land for his Palestinian reichlet project, no matter how much pain it causes Israel.

Can you imagine Obama telling the Saudis that before they can negotiate with Israel, they have to give up to Israel the Kaaba at Mecca? Impossible. But his basis of negotiations, that he has dictated for the reward of his beneficiaries, the Palestinians, and to blazes with Israel according to Obama, starts by having Israel give up the Western Wall, the Kotel, the holiest place of prayer for Jews for centuries, to the terrorists. That's what his back-to-(pre-war)-1967 implies. A poll of Israelis, a couple of years ago, showed that 96% of those polled would rather keep the Western Wall than have peace. But then Obama is not capable of being moderate in his compulsive-obsessive plan. Some of his supporters point to the undefined mutually agreed swaps that Obama mentioned. That means that Israel would then have to try to ransom back the Western Wall, by offering all or part of pre-1967 Israel. Obama's plan is not  based on analyzing the situation, nor on calculating the consequences of what he proposes. Rather, he is in a time warp of the 1960s and 1970s, regurgitating the sound bites of leftist circles of that time, without regard to what troubles and pains and bad consequences these sound bites would produce if they are policy. There is no justice at all in his idea of stealing the Western Wall for the terrorists, and having Israel try to ransom it back, but that's Obama.

Same for the Jewish Quarter of the Old City. Except for the 18 years of Jordanian conquest and occupation, from 1948 to pre-war 1967, Jews have lived in Jewish Quarter for the past thousand years. Just as Obama's father and step-father, if they prayed in public, prayed toward Mecca, Jews have for the past three thousand years prayed toward Jerusalem. Obama's edict would not only take away the Jewish Quarter of the Old City for the terrorists, but also take away half of Israel's capital Jerusalem, and turn its 250,000 Jewish residents into displaced persons. Oh yes, Israel could try to ransom back what is rightly Israel's, by offering all or part of pre-1967 Israel. In that case, Obama's plan is to slice and dice Israel, for the benefit of his Palestinian reichlet project.

Obama's basis-of-negotiation plan, by going back to pre-war 1967, knows no moderation. All of the disputed territories, all of territory A, all of territory B, and even all of territory C of the Oslo Accords, would go to the terrorists at the start of the negotiations, in return for nothing at all. Also, all of Israel's negotiating chips, including the whole West Bank (Judea and Samaria), would go to the terrorists, in return for nothing. Nothing in the way of Palestinian concessions to produce reconciliation, by recognizing the Jewish state, and nothing to end the casus belli, as President George W. Bush wrote in his letter to then Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, to solve the Arab refugee problem outside the borders of Israel. All that is off the table, so Israel cannot get such concessions when it is making the maximum concessions of territory according to Obama's edict. The undefined mutually agreed swaps means that more of pre-war Israel is on the table, to be offered to the terrorists to ransom back what Obama has taken for the terrorists.

Obama has offered the terrorists even more. His edict is that contiguity -- meaning connectedness -- is for the Palestinian reichlet (but not for Israel, of course). Apparently he wants to grab a swath of additional territory from Israel for his Palestinian reichlet, by taking territory from Israel to join together the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, which are separate areas. The slicing and dicing of Israel by Obama continues in his plan.

Obama has security for Israel only in his meaningless words about how he loves the idea of security for Israel. In fact, he has ruled out any possibility of security by excluding the essentials of security: a long-term Israeli security envelope around the Palestinian reichlet, including a long-term Israeli military presence in the Jordan River Valley. This is absolutely essential to prevent the smuggling of weapons (including rockets and missiles) into the area ruled by the confederation of terrorists, and to prevent jihadis from getting across the Jordan River into that terrorist-ruled area. But Obama, never knowing any moderation in his project to create Terroristan (the Palestinian reichlet ruled by the confederation of terrorists), has ruled that out in his speech at the State Department, with his words demanding a total Israeli military withdrawal over a defined period of time. That would cause a situation where if you flied into Israel's airport, you would have to worry about terrorists shooting missiles at your airplane. That would insure that all of Israel's population centers would have to worry about rocket and missile fire, not knowing when the next rocket or missile would hit. Obama waxes almost poetical about how he loves for Israel to have security, but in the actual deeds, he rules out security for Israel by ruling out a long-term security envelope. Not that he hates Israel. He just doesn't care enough to give Israel anything it needs, when he is busy giving his beneficiaries, the Palestinian terrorists, everything.

Obama's back to 1967 plan would bully Israel to give up its right to defensible borders, and bully Israel to withdraw to territory a mere 9 miles wide with indefensible borders. Not that he hates Israel. It's just that Israel's rights and needs don't exist for Obama, except in meaningless poetic words that he has about his love for Israel's security;but  in actual facts according to his edicts, he takes away Israel's security in order to give more land to his beneficiaries, the Palestinian terrorists, according to his obsessive-compulsive land project. Terroristan is created by Obama, not because he hates Israel, but because he sees everything through a prism, in which everything is for the Palestinian terrorists, and nothing is for Israel.

Then there are the Obama victims, the roughly 600,000 people who would be displaced according to Obama's back-to-1967 plan, for the crime of being Jewish. Obama speaks of the legitimate aspirations of the Palestinian people, the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people, and the needs of the Palestinian people, including the people of the Gaza Strip. As for the 600,000 victims of Obama according to his back-to-1967 plan, he does not speak of them as people at all, and certainly he doesn't speak about their aspirations, their rights, and their needs. Not that he hates them. They are simply not on his mind as actual people. They are just bumps on the road, as he travels in his car in reverse seeking to obtain the utopia that never existed in the unstable and dangerous times of pre-war 1967. These bumps on the road are, you might say, like road kill, as far as Obama is concerned. And nobody worries about or takes into account the aspirations, the rights, and the needs of road kill. He doesn't hate them. They pretty much don't exist as people, real people with aspirations, rights and needs, in Obama's words and thoughts.

When it comes to Obama's number one project, Terroristan, Obama doesn't hate Israel. He simply tunes Israel out, and does all that he can for his beneficiaries the Terroristanians, and never looks or thinks about what he is doing to Israel.

And he is dead serious about his obsessive-compulsive project. Even at the recent G-8 conference, which was supposed to be an economic summit, he introduced his back-to-1967 plan to seize Israel's land for his beneficiaries the Terroristanians. Canada toned down his proposal, but he got something through anyhow, carefully working on organizing a lynch mob to pressure Israel to give up its right to defensible borders. Not because he hates Israel. But because he will do anything for his Terroristanians, and cannot even think about things from the view of Israel's aspirations, rights and needs, when he is indulging his obsessive-compulsive passion.

Obama makes precise demands against Israel, but no measurable demands on Palestinians

One of the peculiarities of President Obama's interventions in the Israel-Palestinian situation is that he makes precise demands against Israel, but no measurable demands on the Palestinians. His recent back-to-1967 speech at the State Department illustrates this.

The basis of negotiations, according to President Obama, will involve a return to 1967, with mutually agreed swaps. The mutually agreed swaps do not impose any measurable demands on the Palestinians. Regarding mutually agreed swaps, the Palestinians are free to just say no.

However the return to pre-war 1967 (meaning a return to the 1949 Armistice Lines) means something very precise in terms of territory -- and it involves Israel giving up all that it won in the 1967 war. The Palestinians give up nothing in return.

This implies that before the negotiations even begin, Israel would lose all of its negotiating chips. Then Israel would be free to throw itself on the mercy of the Palestinians, led by the Hamas terrorists and their Fatah partners, to see if they would want to help Israel out. The chance of this happening is about zero.

Since Israel would not have any negotiating chips when the real negotiations begin, it is clear that the starting position, the basis of negotiations, will be very important. This brings up the fact that in the basis of negotiations, according to President Obama, there are no measurable demands on the Palestinians.

Some things that are missing from the basis of negotiations:
If Israel is to have security, it needs a long-term security envelope around the Palestinian entity, including a long term military presence in the Jordan Valley. This is so basic, it should be part of the basis of negotiations.
Unfortunately, President Obama's speech appears to exclude this, since he spoke of complete withdrawals by Israel with defined time limits for the withdrawal to take place. So this essential need of Israel has been taken off the table completely by President Obama. The long-term security envelope would be mainly to prevent the smuggling of weapons into the Palestinian entity. Otherwise, planes landing at Israel's airport would be threatened by the firing of rockets and missiles, and Israel's population centers would be threatened by rockets and missiles. The security envelope would also prevent the infiltration of jihadis across the Jordan River. It would also delay a military invasion from across the Jordan River, if the present Hashemite regime fell or was compelled to allow such an invasion from another country, and this would give Israel time to mobilize its reserves.

Also missing from the basis of negotiations is Israel's need for the Palestinians to clearly recognize the right of the Jewish people to a Jewish state in its historic homeland, that state being Israel. The refusal of the Palestinians to accept this -- even to simply say, "I will accept a Jewish state" -- has been at the root of the Palestinians' endless war against Israel. Without this, and without this being taught to 2 or 3 generations of Palestinian school children, and in the mosques and in the media, there is no hope for peace since there will be no effort to end the radicalization which is at the root of the war against Israel.
 
Also missing from the basis of negotiations is Israel's need for the Palestinians to agree that the Arab refugee problem must be settled outside the boundaries of Israel. A letter from then-President George W. Bush to then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon spells this out.Otherwise, the Palestinian demand that millions of great grandchildren of Arab refugees and their relatives be allowed to immigrate into Israel, to end the Jewish state, will continue. This has been the pretext for war against Israel, and it would continue.

Without addressing these issues of a security envelope and reconciliation, and putting them into the basis of negotiations, this process is clearly a process of land-for-war.

When the referee in a game is playing for one of the teams, and scoring all its goals

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.

virtual harakiri gentlemen's jihad

President Barack Hussein Obama seems to have invented a new kind of jihad. I call it the virtual harakiri gentlemen's jihad. This is Obama's back-to-1967 plan for the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.

First of all, before the negotiations actually get underway, Israel is required to agree to: give up the Western Wall, the holiest place of prayer for Jews, to the Hamas jihadist terrorists and their temporary Fatah frontmen; give up the Jewish Quarter of the Old City, which has had a Jewish presence for the past 1000 years apart from the 18-year Jordanian massacre, expulsion, and exile, to the same gang; give up half of Israel's capital city Jerusalem to the same gang; give up Judea and Samaria to the same gang; expel more than 500,000 residents of Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria for the crime of being Jewish; give up all of the Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria and the half of Jerusalem that an army of soldiers crossing the Jordan River from Transjordan grabbed in 1948 and kept until 1967. So this transformation involving great Israeli losses can be viewed as a kind of jihad.

But it isn't a jihad that involves even a single extra suicide bombing. It's all done as white collar work by the President. So it might be called a virtual jihad.

But it cannot be done, according to Obama's plan, without the cooperation of the government of Israel. The victims, the Israelis, have to partake of this according to Obama, and do this voluntarily. Obama may say: repeat these words after me, and afterward I will explain to you what they mean, and what you have committed to. (Obama's formula then follows.) Since it involves the victim's own hand in cooperating with this jihad, it might be called a harakiri (suicidal) jihad.

But that doesn't end the strangeness of this jihad. Afterward, Israel is invited to ransom back the people, territory, and rights it has had snatched away from it, by giving up pieces of territory of pre-1967 Israel. This is supposed to be an amicable ransom, because the President seeks to sell it to Israel as a great feature of his plan, although the Hamas jihadist terrorists, who are committed to ending the life of Israel, ending Judaism, and genocide (their charter says when you meet a Jew kill him), and their temporary Fatah frontmen, are not going to do anything that Israel wants.

The scariest part, however, is yet to come -- that is, that Obama has been ahead of the Palestinians in making demands on Israel and thereby ratcheting up the Palestinians' demands.

As the Jerusalem Post's Caroline Glick has written: "Not only has Obama adopted the Palestinians' increasingly hostile policies toward Israel. He has led them to those policies. It was Obama, not Fatah chief Mahmoud Abbas, who first demanded that Israel cease respecting Jewish property rights in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria. It was Obama, not Abbas, who first called for the establishment of a Palestinian state by the end of 2011. It was Obama, not Abbas, who first stipulated that future 'peace' negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians must be predicated on Israel's prior acceptance of the indefensible 1949 armistice lines as a starting point for talks."

If Obama continues on that path of clueing the Palestinians to ratchet up their demands, the efforts of Israel to ransom back its people, territory and rights will be more effectively an even greater disaster for Israel than without his help, with Israel having to give up large amounts of its pre-1967 territory to ransom back what is most precious, of all that is lost in the virtual harakiri jihad. What is likely to happen next is that Obama will be busy effectively slicing and dicing Israel, all the while becoming almost poetic about how he is committed to Israel's security.

Masterpiece of Bias

The plan announced by President Barack Hussein Obama for the negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians is a masterpiece of bias.

According to his plan, from the get-go, before negotiations are even to be allowed, he puts Israel into a great hole, by requiring Israel to base negotiations on a return to 1967.

That means, before negotiations begin, Israel has to give up the Western Wall, the holiest place that Jews have for their prayers. Apart from Mr. Obama's extreme bias, by any logic the Western Wall would be Israel's. He indicated that the negotiations would address the non-emotional issues. Yet a poll a few years ago showed that 96% of Israelis that were polled would rather that Israel keep the Western Wall than have peace. Non-emotional for whom?

That means, before negotiations begin, Israel has to give up the Jewish Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem. Does Obama know that for the past 1000 years, except for the period of the 18 years from 1948 to 1967, when forces led by Britain's John Glubb, involving British officers and troops of the Hashemite Kingdom of Transjordan, carried out an aggression by crossing over the Jordan River, and conquering the Jewish Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem, and massacring its residents, expelling the survivors, and exiling the Jews, and occupying the land -- except for that interval of 18 nightmare years Jews have lived in the Jewish Quarter of the Old City for the past thousand years? By what logic, other than Mr. Obama's bias, does that belong to the Palestinian Arab Muslims led by the Hamas terrorists and their Fatah partners? Is it a legitimization, celebration, and reward for the massacre that occurred and the expulsion of the Jews that occurred, which seems to be preferred over the liberation?

That means, before negotiations begin, Israel has to give up half of its capital city, Jerusalem. And expel the 250,000 Jewish residents who are living in the chunk of the city that was conquered in 1948 by John Glubb and his army of Transjordanian soldiers and held for 18 years before the liberation and re-unification of the city. These Jerusalemites that Obama would turn into illegal aliens and expel, are citizens of Israel, living in the capital of the Jewish state, and expelled from their homes and communities for the crime of being Jewish. These victims of Obama are never addressed by the president as actual people, with aspirations (as the Palestinians have aspirations), with rights (as the Palestinians have rights), and with needs (as the Palestinians have needs, and as Obama has spoken of the needs of the people of Gaza). No, the ObamaVictims are dehumanized, and treated as abstractions, not as actual people. This is the opposite of Obama's policy in the US of giving amnesty to illegal aliens, giving them a path to citizenship, and allowing them to stay in this country, for humanitarian reasons. Rather, for inhumanitarian reasons Mr. Obama's plan is to take 250,000 citizens of a foreign country Israel, who are legal residents of its capital city, and turn them into illegal aliens and expel them. By what logic is he driving to do this injustice and inhumanitarian deed, apart from his extreme bias?

That means that before negotiations begin, Israel has to give up all of Judea and Samaria. This used to be called disputed territory. Apparently now it's no longer disputed, but all of Israel's claims are rejected by Mr. Obama, and all of the Palestinian claims are granted by Mr. Obama.This has no logic except for his extreme bias. And it means that 320,000 residents of Judea and Samaria are to be expelled for the crime of being Jewish. Again, this is the reverse of Obama's program of amnesty for US illegal aliens for humanitarian reasons, turning citizens of a country into illegal aliens and expelling them for inhumanitarian reasons. There is no logic to this apart from his extreme bias. They join the 250,000 people to be expelled from Jerusalem because they are Jewish, to form the more than 500,000 ObamaVictims driven from their homes and communities for the crime of being Jewish.

Mr. Obama has made it plain that he has great love for the Palestinians. For Israel, he offers only one word: "security". Not actual security, but the word "security", just the lip service. For his plan is that before the negotiations begin, Israel has to go back to pre-war 1967, to indefensible boundaries, with territory merely 9 miles wide. The territory is indefensible, and Mr. Obama's plan is indefensible, and  utterly inconsistent with his word that he offers the Israelis, "security". There is no offer of security when they are offered a forced retreat to indefensible boundaries only 9 miles wide. There is no logic behind it except Mr. Obama's extreme bias.

But not only is Israel required to give up its most valuable rights and assets, and defensible boundaries. Before the negotiations start, Obama's demand that Israel promise to return to 1967 for the start of the negotiations means that Israel also gives up all of its negotiating chips before the negotiations. These are the chips that Israel would have liked to exchange for Palestinian concessions for peace, but if Israel has to give up these chips in advance of negotiations, it cannot use them to draw out Palestinian concessions for peace. For example, then-President George W. Bush sent a letter to then-Prime Minister of Israel Ariel Sharon, indicating that US policy is for Israel to retain the settlement blocs, and the Jewish neighborhoods of Jerusalem, and that the solution of the Arab refugee problem has to be found outside of Israel. But Obama has trashed all of that policy of his predecessor. His Secretary of State has even claimed that the agreements and understandings (and even the letter?) don't really exist at all! Under Obama's plan, since Israel is required to give up all of its negotiating chips in advance of the start of negotiations, there will not be any Palestinian concessions for peace. There will not be any Palestinian agreement to solve the Arab refugee problem outside the boundaries of Israel. There will not be any Palestinian agreement that they accept a Jewish state. There will not be any Palestinian agreement that a treaty will end the dispute. There will not be any Palestinian agreement that they will teach their children in their schools, and in the mosques and in the media, that the war is over, that Israel has a right to exist as the nation-state of the Jewish people in the Jewish people's homeland, and that the Arab refugee problem has to be solved outside the boundaries of Israel. No, there will not be any elimination of the pretext for war, and the indoctrination for war will continue. This plan of Obama's will not lead to Land for Peace, but rather to Land for War.

Obama's plan for a peace process is all process and no peace. Not a chance for peace. Nor will there be in place the most important requirement for Israel's security -- a security envelope around the Palestinian entity, including a long-term Israeli military presence in the Jordan River Valley for the indefinite future as long as there is the threat of war and terrorism and rocket and missile fire. Without this security envelope, there will be an unchecked deluge of weapons flowing into the Palestinian entity, including rockets and missiles, including missiles that could knock out planes landing at Israel's airport coming from the US and elsewhere. How would Americans who may want to some day fly to Israel to see the holy land like to fly into an airport where there is the threat of being shot down by terrorists armed with shoulder-fired missiles? The rockets and missiles would also threaten all of Israel's population centers. From time to time, when the problem becomes unbearable, Israeli forces would have to enter the Arab towns in the West Bank and look for the stored rockets and missiles, but that would be like looking for needles in a haystack. Much better to block their entry into the Palestinian entity in the first place, by having a security envelope, including an Israeli military presence in the Jordan River Valley, to prevent the smuggling of advanced weapons into the Palestinian entity.

Yes, Obama has promised to provide Israel with more Iron Dome missiles. This is a plan to knock out incoming rockets and missiles out of the sky before they can do damage. But if the Palestinian IED-type Qassam rockets cost only a few bucks, say 5 or 10 bucks apiece, it is unsustainable to knock them out with missiles at a million dollars a pop. No matter how many missiles Israel has to defend itself, the Palestinians can easily acquire more than that, and therefore exhaust the supply of defensive missiles. And when the flood gates are opened to more advanced offensive missiles, by taking away Israel's security envelope, the Palestinians can acquire advanced weaponry in massive numbers. Hizbollah has some 50,000 missiles at present, because nobody is stopping them except the joke that is the United Nations. If the Palestinians acquired 100,000 or 200,000 missiles, it would be impossible for Israel to acquire the defensive missiles necessary to shoot these out of the sky at a million dollars a pop. Better to stop these right at the border, with an Israeli security envelope, including an Israeli military presence in the Jordan River Valley.

But Obama's plan has ruled out a long-term Israeli military presence in a security envelope. Not in exchange for Israeli concessions of any kind, and not for any deal under the sun. Obama's plan doubly kills Israeli security also by requiring Israel to give up its negotiating chips in advance of all negotiation. So according to Obama's plan, the essential requirement that Israel has for a security envelope is off the table and the subject cannot even be raised, and Israel's negotiating chips are taken away prior to the negotiations anyhow. This plan for a peace process is all process but no peace. It is a plan for a rocket and missile nightmare, shot at planes coming into Israel's airport from the US and elsewhere, and at Israel's population centers. When the warnings go off, Israelis will have a few seconds to find shelter from the missiles. Is that any way to live? That's what Obama offers in his peace process, which is all process, with a process stacked against Israel and stacked against peace, and no peace at all. It is not land for peace, but land for war.

Rigged

The best single word to describe the latest idea for Israeli-Palestinian negotiations proposed originally by Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas and endorsed recently by President Obama is "rigged".


First, Israel would be required to accept negotiations based on the pre-war 1967 lines. That means that before the negotiations actually begin, Israel would have to promise to reset the clock to pre-war 1967, and accept that as the situation for the start of the negotiations, as the goal for the final result, and as the mediator's accepted position for mediating the negotiations. If Israel did this, it would mean that Israel is put into a deep hole, without the means for getting out, and would be required to negotiate after first giving up its negotiating chips.

Israel's basic negotiating position concerning territory is that "the settlement blocs will remain within the state of Israel and Jerusalem will remain its united capital", summarizing the territorial part of Netanyahu's speech to the Israeli Knesset, in the words of correspondent Elad Benari of Israel National News. This is a position that the entire Israeli coalition government agrees on, and that the main opposition party, Kadima, also agrees on. It is the Israeli position. There is a letter from then-President George W. Bush affirming support for Israel keeping the settlement blocs. There is a congressional resolution affirming the unity of Jerusalem under Israeli control. There is a congressional resolution affirming support for Bush's letter.

But the Abbas-Obama demand is that before the negotiations even begin, Israel must agree to the 1967 lines. That means Israel gives up the Western Wall, gives up the Jewish Quarter of the Old City, gives up half of its capital Jerusalem, and gives up all of the settlement blocs. The demand is for Israel to retreat to indefensible borders only 9 miles wide. But it gets even worse: the Abbas-Obama demand is for Israel to give up all of its negotiating chips before the negotiations start. Israel's plan is for some of the territory that Israel gained in the 1967 war in Judea and Samaria be given up by Israel as negotiating chips, but since the Abbas-Obama demand is for Israel to agree to lose all of this territory in advance of the negotiations, Israel would be losing its negotiating chips before negotiations start.That is the first way that the negotiations are rigged.

The second way the negotiations are rigged is that Israel's basic demand for security requires an Israeli long term presence along the Jordan River. When this would end cannot be predicted in advance, because that depends on the state of relations between Israel and its neighbors. This is necessary in order to prevent the smuggling of arms, including rockets and missiles, into areas of Judea and Samaria that would be controlled by the Palestinians. It would be necessary also in order to prevent the infiltration of terrorists and other jihadis into areas of Judea and Samaria that would be controlled by the Palestinians. It is not possible to know now which regimes are going to survive in the long term, and when regime change will take place. The Muslim Brotherhood is growing in strength in the region. Al Qaida is also determined to overthrow what it considers to be "apostate" regimes that are not governing according to Sharia. There have been Arab-Israeli wars in the past, and they could happen in the future also. An Israeli long term presence is needed along the Jordan River in order to delay an incoming invasion from across the Jordan River, if the friendly regime across the river is ever overthrown by Islamist forces, or if an invasionary force uses Jordan's territory to carry out its intended invasion into Israel. But Obama's speech, which he wants to make the basis of negotiations, rules out such an Israeli long-term presence along the Jordan River. It doesn't say that this is even negotiable. It just rules it out.

Obama's decision on the final result of the negotiations states: "The full and phased withdrawal of Israeli military forces should be coordinated with the assumption of Palestinian security responsibility in a sovereign, non-militarized state. And the duration of this transition period must be agreed, and the effectiveness of security arrangements must be demonstrated."  Full withdrawal with a defined period of transition, as Obama requires of the final result of the negotiations, means that if Israel agrees to Obama's terms for the final result of the negotiations, it would be denied a long-term military presence on the Jordan River, and denied effective means of stopping the smuggling of weapons including rockets into the Palestinian entity, denied effective means of stopping the infiltration of jihadis and terrorists, and denied effective means of holding up an invasionary force that crosses the Jordan River. That is a denial of Israel's basic security needs, and it does not allow Israel to even negotiate for this necessity. That is the second way the negotiations are rigged.

The third way that the proposed negotiations have been rigged is for Israel's essential requirements for ending the conflict to be taken off the table at the time Israel makes its territorial concessions. That means that these will not even be discussed. These requirements are, according to Israel's Prime Minister Netanyahu (in the summary words of correspondent Elad Benari):
1. "The Palestinians must recognize Israel as the Jewish nation's state."
2. "The treaty must be an end to the conflict."
3. "The Arab refugee problem must be solved outside of Israel's borders."

But these will not even be considered when Israel makes territorial concessions, because Obama has taken them off the table.


They are essential for ending the conflict, but they will not be addressed, certainly not with the needed concessions by the  Palestinians, because Israel will be deprived of negotiating chips long before they are discussed, if ever.

The conflict goes on for a root cause reason that Obama has never acknowledged. The Muslim states, the states of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, to which Obama has sent a US ambassador, has territory that sweeps from the Atlantic Ocean, across north Africa, and to the Persian Gulf and beyond the Persian Gulf. This Islamic territory has in its midst a small piece of territory controlled by infidels, the Jews, who have no desire to convert to Islam, and have the desire and need to keep the Jewish state. This is a part of the Dar al Harb that is within the territory that the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamists consider to be Islamic. For example, Hamas, the terrorist Palestinian branch of the Brotherhood, considers all of the territory of Israel, whatever its dimensions now or in the future, to be part of an Islamic trust, that must be ruled by Sharia. Plainly, it is clear that there will not be peace with the Palestinians until they change their approach by recognizing Israel as the Jewish nation's state, and take on the task of educating their children that Israel is the Jewish nation's state and is entitled to exist. But this issue has been taken off the table by Obama while Israel makes territorial concessions, so the root cause of the endless war will not be resolved.

There are millions of descendants of the 1948 Arab refugees, including great-grandchildren, and the mass of people that the Palestinians consider to be "Arab refugees" includes these descendants and other relatives. If they were to inundate Israel, the country would cease to be a Jewish state. If there is a 22nd Arab state of Palestine, and if these millions of foreign Arabs who are hostile to Israel were to immigrate to Israel, that would turn it into the 23rd Arab state. That is not what is meant by a "2 state solution", both Arab states. It would mark the end of the aspirations, rights, and needs of the Jewish state of Israel. And yet Obama has decreed in his speech that this issue would be taken off the table while Israel was making territorial concessions. That means that the necessary concessions that the Palestinians need to make to end this Arab refugee issue, which has been a cassus belli or pretext for war, would not be made. The pretext for war would continue, and the wars and terrorism would continue, and this whole matter would not be resolved.

Israel's requirement for peace is that the process results in a treaty that is the end to the conflict. But this has not been put on the table for the time that Israel makes territorial concessions. So it will not be addressed, and the Palestinians, who have wanted to have endless war (as the Hamas charter makes clear, and even the Fatah charter, and the PLO charter), will not make the necessary concession to even state in the treaty that the conflict is ended (let alone carry it out). Therefore, there is no chance that this will lead to anything but irredentist war, war continuing indefinitely.

The Abbas-Obama plan for negotiations rigs the negotiations so that right at the start, before negotiations start, Israel loses its rights and its valuable assets, and loses defensible borders, and in the final result loses the essential ingredient for security -- a long term presence along the Jordan River (which was blocked by Obama), and doesn't address the issues necessary for ending the war. It is a formula for slicing and dicing Israel, to make it even more attractive for war against it by the Islamists, and its result, just as the Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip turned out to be, is a land-for-war result.

Obama negotiating plan would be a disaster for Israel

A plan for Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, originally put forward by Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas and now endorsed by President Obama would be a disaster for Israel for several reasons.

First, Israel would be required to accept negotiations "based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps". The return-to-1967 idea is itself a disaster for Israel. It means that Israel loses the Western Wall, it loses the Jewish Quarter of the Old City, it loses half of its capital Jerusalem and has to expel the 250,000 Jewish residents of the targeted area of Jerusalem, it loses all of Judea and Samaria and has to expel its 320,000 Jewish residents, and Israel would be reduced to having a territorial width that is 9 miles wide with indefensible borders.

Secondly, Israel would not be permitted to negotiate until it agreed to this back-to-1967 plan, which means that it would not be permitted to negotiate until it agreed to give up all of its negotiating chips.

Thirdly, when the negotiations become deadlocked, Israel would be required to return to the indefensible 1967 lines.

Fourthly, the most important matter that Israel needs to trade for its negotiating chips, solving the Arab refugee problem outside of Israel's borders, would be kept off the table according to President Obama. But that is the Palestinians' casus belli, their pretext for continued war. That assures that Israel will neither have any negotiating chips nor will the issue even get to the table, so the problem will certainly not be solved, and the pretext for Palestinian war against Israel will continue indefinitely.

All in all, this is not a preparation for peace, but a preparation for indefinite war. It involves an assault against the rights of pilgrims, creating an unstable situation with indefensible Israeli borders that will tempt jihadist terrorists, rocketeers, and armies to attack Israel, and that won't get to address the casus belli of the Palestinians.

Nor will there be any effort to get to the heart of the matter, which is that the Muslims have control over a stretch of land from the Atlantic Ocean to beyond the Persian Gulf, save for a bit of mostly sand called Israel and ruled by infidels -- the Jews. The followers of political Islam cannot accept this, and want to wipe out this infidel-ruled piece of land in their midst. Obama's plan to slice and dice Israel by shrinking Israel's borders to those of 1967 and giving the jihadists the Jewish holy places will not make the Islamists less desirous of wiping out Israel. Just the opposite, the weaker Israel is and appears, the more they will smell blood, and the more they will be emboldened to try  to wipe out Israel. Obama's plan is land-for-war.

Obama's poison pill

Obama has offered a formula to Israel, for land changes "based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps", which is a poison pill for Israel.

The part that becomes deadly afterward is that before the negotiations start, Obama wants Israel to agree to the 1967 lines as a basis for negotiation. In effect he is saying:  "Accept this formula, and some time later I will explain to you what your obligations are according to this formula".

The Jordanians have no interest in returning to claim the territory that they conquered and held from 1948-1967, so it means turning over the territory to the Hamas-Fatah partnership. That is, promising to give up the Western Wall, the Jewish Quarter of the Old City, the Temple Mount, half of Jerusalem, expelling the 250,000 Jews living in Jerusalem in the area targeted by the ethnic cleansers and their helpers, all of Judea and Samaria, and the 320,000 Jews living in Judea and Samaria. It means indefensible borders reducing Israel to 9 miles in width. It means that Israel gives up a military presence along the Jordan River, which was demanded in Obama's statement about a complete withdrawal of Israeli forces. It means a disastrous, perilous situation for Israel, and a demand for that will be coming when that phase of the poison pill takes effect.

After Israel agrees to the poison pill formula, the negotiations will become deadlocked, because it profits the Palestinians to produce a deadlock which will reward them with the 1967 lines. For example, the jihadists of Hamas will welcome obtaining the Western Wall from Israel, the Jewish Quarter of the Old City (with its Jewish residents expelled), and complete control over the Temple Mount. Even if Israel offered half of pre-1967 Israel in an effort to ransom the holy places, this will not be good enough for Hamas (although it would be a disaster in itself for Israel to offer such a ransom). The deadlock will cause Obama to spring into action, and accuse Israel of reneging on its promise, unless it agrees to go to the 1967 indefensible borders. He will say something like: "The United States does not accept the legitimacy of Israel's refusal to go back to the 1967 borders." He will get the international community to back his threat that Israel will be isolated in the world if it doesn't go back to the 1967 borders. He will say that Israel has reneged on its promise, and is therefore in violation of international law. He will say that this behavior by Israel is an insult to the U.S. He will say that this behavior is causing instability in the world, and causing American deaths.

Mr. Obama tries to move into his plan gradually, not all at once. But once Israel agrees to accepting a return to the 1967 lines as a basis for negotiation, Israel will have legitimized this concept of returning to the 1967 lines, and will open itself for the next phase, which will come when there is a deadlock. That phase is the demand, backed by threats by Obama and the international community, for Israel to go back to the 1967 lines.

The maximum pressure on Israel will come during Obama's second term. He will not exert maximum pressure during his first term, because Jews contribute more than 50% of the donations received by Democrats running for political office (even though they are nationally a small percentage of the total number of voters). He will not exert maximum pressure during his first term, because in the key battleground state of Florida, with 29 electoral votes and a history of switching between the parties in different elections, the significant Jewish vote there could make a difference that affects which presidential candidate wins Florida's 29 electoral votes, a sizable amount. But after the November 2012 election, he will feel free to exert all the pressure he likes against Israel. And that's when the poison aspect of the poison pill will start to be felt.

Accepting, and therefore legitimizing, a plan involving a return to 1967, whether as a goal for negotiations, or as the starting point of negotiations, or as the official mediator's position, or as a basis for negotiations, would be an invitation to disaster for Israel. When a deadlock in the negotiations occurs, that 1967 situation would become the default, and it would be demanded that Israel go back to 1967.

Abbas-Obama plan: First Israel capitulates then it may negotiate

The plan put forward by President Obama, which copies the territorial demands made by the Palestinians and trashes Israel's demand for a long term military presence along the Jordan, is that first Israel capitulates by agreeing to accept the pre-war 1967 lines, and then it may negotiate with the Palestinians.

In the first phase, Israel capitulates by agreeing to: hand over the Western Wall, the holiest prayer site of all Jews, to the Hamas jihadists and their Fatah partners; hand over to the genocidal jihadists Hamas the Jewish Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem, which has been a residence of devout Jews for centuries (apart from the 1948-1967 Jordanian conquest and occupation); hand over the Temple Mount, which has been the holiest of places for the Jews since even centuries before the birth of Mohammed; make 250,000 people living in Israel's capital to have the status of illegal aliens subject to expulsion or worse whims of the Hamas genocidal jihadists, for the crime of living in Jerusalem while being Jewish; slice Israel's capital city and take half of it away; make 320,000 people living in Judea and Samaria illegal aliens subject to expulsion or worse for the crime of being Jewish while living in the Jewish ancestral homeland; force Israel to the indefensible "1967 lines", the armistice lines of 1949 that lasted until the war of 1967, which give Israel a width of 9 miles and are an invitation to warfare by Israel's neighbors; give up Israel's military presence along the Jordan River, which is essential to prevent smuggling of rockets and jihadis, and to engage any invading military force to give Israel time to call up its reserve army. This demand by Obama, to prevent Israel from any hope of security by eliminating the possibility of a  long-term Israeli military force along the Jordan River, was not even mentioned by the Palestinians, but now it is part of the US demand to really crush Israel's security before it is even allowed to negotiate.

There may be other demands that would be part of the required Israeli capitulation before it is allowed to negotiate. Obama mentioned contiguity for a Palestinian state. But the Gaza Strip does not abut the West Bank, so from what we have already seen from Obama, it appears that he would interpret this as Israel consenting to split Israel in half in order to join the Gaza Strip and the West Bank

The Palestinians have also added another demand that they want from Israel before they would allow negotiation. This would be to remove property rights and any building for their needs in the areas where the more than 500,000 victims of the ethnic cleansers are living -- that is, in Judea and Samaria, and northern, southern, and eastern Jerusalem, which would apply only against Jews. Obama has already delegitimized the rights of these victims, so he may also interpret this Palestinian demand as part of his own demands before Israel is allowed to negotiate.

What Obama will, in effect, say to the Israelis is: agree to say the following words (and he will have prepared the words that he wants the prime minister of Israel to say), and later I will tell you what you have committed to.

Obama has a special relationship with matters legal. For example, he got his start in politics by entering a large field of Democratic candidates for a position in the Illinois legislature, and then challenging the signatures of all of his rivals on their nominating petitions. He got all of the candidates except himself to be ruled as disqualified, including even the incumbent (who had been his mentor), and he ran without any opposition.

He participated in the delegitimization campaign against Israel, by deciding to trash the property rights of Jews living in Judea, Samaria, and northern, southern, and eastern Jerusalem. He didn't bother to give any reason for this, instead proclaiming that the United States does not accept the legitimacy (of what he interpreted to be any building activity whatsoever by these victims, or in the designated areas to be ethnically cleansed).
Perhaps he decided that once Netanyahu agreed to give a try to a 10-month building moratorium, that was an admission that property rights were illegitimate, and never mind that there was a time limit, and never mind that it was conditioned on the expectation that the Palestinians would negotiate.

On the other hand, regarding the US war in Libya, he tells Congress that Le loi, c'est moi, the law is me. No going to Congress to satisfy the Constitution or the War Powers Act. He decides the law.

Having seen what Obama does, my guess is that once Israel agrees to Obama's formula -- say, accepting a return to 1967 lines as the basis of negotiations, with mutually agreed swaps -- and if, as expected a deadlock arises regarding agreed swaps and any further negotiations come to a stand still, then Obama will say that Israel must return to the 1967 lines or it is in violation of its own promises and therefore in violation of international law. He is collecting international support for doing this to Israel, and he will threaten Israel with international isolation if it does not go to the indefensible 1967 lines. The maximum pressure on Israel from  Obama will come during his second term in office, or even right after the November 2012 election, when he is no longer seeking votes or donations, and feels free to do to Israel whatever he likes.

dropping the mask?

The position of Israel regarding drawing a map is that too much is at stake to risk its security, so its borders have to be defensible. The position of the Palestinians is that, apart from some minor and mutually agreeable swaps, the boundaries of Israel would be those of the 1949 Armistice Lines drawn between Israeli forces and the forces of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. That's what they mean by the "1967 lines" when in reality there were never any lines agreed upon for mutual recognition between Israel and a Palestinian Arab state. President Barack Hussein Obama came down fully on the side of the Palestinian territorial demands, and threw away Israel's needs for secure boundaries.

This is contrary to the wishes of most Americans, who generally side with Israel rather than the Hamas and Fatah terrorists seeking to put Israel in indefensible borders. Nevertheless, Obama is a True Believer in making the maximum possible gift to the Hamas-Fatah terrorist partnership, and he doesn't really care one iota that the gift he wants to give will come at the expense of Israel's security.

The return to the lines of the 1949 Armistice Agreement would give Israel a width of only about 9 miles. There have been attempts to slice Israel, and a return to those lines would be a constant temptation to continue such efforts. It is not possible for Israelis to agree to such a suicidal plan. For it to be the basis of negotiations would be to bias the negotiations so that Israel appears as a supplicant that has lost all of its negotiating cards. This tilting of the negotiations seems to be the main objective of President Barack Hussein Obama, because he has also not mentioned resolving the Casus Beli of the Palestinian Arabs, which is their demand for millions of hostile Arabs to flood into Israel. This is a no brainer for anybody who understands the consequences of such a flood of hostile immigration: there would be a civil war, the millions of hostile Arabs would multiply, and the result would be the death of the Jewish state.

So the mask has been dropped. Mr. Obama has given his endorsement, essentially, to preparing the way for the jihad of the sword, while keeping his silence and thereby giving his tacit approval of the jihad of immigration and the jihad of the womb.

In addition, he has called for a contiguous Palestinian state, which would come at the expense of Israel's contiguity. There is no land connection between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. To provide one would split Israel, which apparently is what he wants to do. Also, he said that Egypt and Jordan would be borders of the Palestinian state, but he only mentioned that Israel would border Palestine. Therefore, he envisions Israel giving up its vital presence, both in terms of population and in terms of soldiers, at the River Jordan, to prevent an infiltration of rockets, missiles, mujahadeen, and even an invasion of tanks. So he has given formulas for dicing and slicing Israel, while not addressing the Casus Beli, and not providing any situation that would allow for Palestinian concessions, nor for Israeli security (except of meaningless words that he is all for Israel's security while giving formulas to gravely harm Israel's security and means of defending its borders and its population. 
 
Obama has thrown away the promises made to Israel by the previous administration, the administration of President George W. Bush, that Israel would not return to the 1949 Armistice Lines, that a solution to the Arab refugee problem would be found outside the boundaries of Israel, and that the major settlement blocs that have formed during the demographic changes that took place over the last 44 years would be part of Israel while other settlements would be part of the negotiation.

Territorially, he has not allowed any daylight between his position and the position of the Palestinian Arabs, and of course by doing this he is encouraging countries and groups and individuals around the world to support that position and put pressure on Israel. Might this be fairly described as his portraying himself as a mentor and leader and agent of the Palestinian Arabs? He did this with his advocacy of the Palestinian Arab desire to have 500,000 Jews living in Judea and Samaria and northern, southern and eastern Jerusalem to be deprived of their property rights and of their right to pursue their needs by building for their needs just as all people in the world are able to do. The result of that was that the Palestinian Arabs ratcheted up their demands, and refused to negotiate until Israel met the demands of Obama. Now he has escalated his diplomatic assault on Israel by ignoring Israel's needs, and calling for the basis of negotiations to be the Arab demand for Israel to return to the 1949 Armistice Lines, and the result of this of course will be a new ratcheting up of Palestinian demands. This is not rocket science. The more Obama escalates his demands on Israel, the more other countries will follow his lead, and even go further since they cannot be seen to be less "pro-Palestinian" than the US, and the more the Palestinian Arabs will escalate their own demands. For how can the Palestinians be less pro-Palestinian than the US?

Do you remember the antics of Milton Berle on TV, when his audience gave him applause? With one arm he would hold up a hand to say "stop", and with the other arm he would enthusiastically wave his hand to encourage the applause to continue. He would send out this mixed message, and it would be funny to see. Mr. Obama does the same thing. He raised the demand of stopping Jews living in Judea, Samaria, and northern, southern, and eastern Jerusalem from building -- anything -- to deprive them of their property rights and to take away their right to build for their needs. He said it was illegal for Jews to be doing building, in lands that had been conquered and occupied from 1948 to 1967 by the Hashemite Kingdom of Transjordan. The Palestinian Arabs took up his demands, and so did the international community. But when countries brought their demand to declare the settlements illegal to the UN Security Council, he did two things, a la Milton Berle. He vetoed their intended resolution at the UN Security Council, while simultaneously he had his ambassador vigorously denounce any building by Jews in the failed 1948-1967 Jordanian jihad territory as illegal.

It seems that he might be contemplating another such Milton Berle two-armed mixed message. His wants Israel to return to the "Auschwitz lines" (as Abba Eban eloquently called them) of 1949 and made a speech to give it much publicity. But he has indicated that when the matter comes to the UN Security Council he will veto it. If he follows through with Milton Berle, he will also have his ambassador give another speech supporting such a return to the Auschwitz lines.

It appears that Obama supports the goals of the ethnic cleansers, but wants to be on record as opposing their methods. And his Milton Berle antics of encouraging other countries to pressure Israel while he vetoes their efforts at the UN Security Council are his method of "leading from behind", to get other countries to do his dirtiest work of putting pressure on Israel while he claims innocence-per-veto.

Mahmoud Abbas' legacy and the PLO's June 8 1974 Ten Points for War

The leader of the PLO and Fatah and the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, was born in 1935. He is 76 years old at this time, he has some issues involving his heart, and he has taken Jordanian citizenship.  He will not run for president in the coming Palestinian elections, he said. Soon he will be bowing out of leadership of Palestinian politics, and he is anxious to leave a legacy in accordance with the PLO's June 8, 1974 Ten Points for War.

In the book Myths and Facts 1982, edited by Davis and Decter, there is the documentation of this important strategic plan produced in 1974 by the deliberative body of the PLO, the Palestine National Council. You can see how Abbas' recent actions show his adherence to this strategic plan. The timing of his actions show that he intends for this to be his legacy.

Davis & Decter: On June 8, 1974, the Palestine National Council met in Cairo to draft the political principles to be followed by the PLO. Following is the text of the Ten Point Program (in italics) interspersed with comments.

Preamble: 
Proceeding from the Palestinian National Charter and the PLO's political program which was approved during the 11th session of the PNC held from 3 to 12 January 1973, believing in the impossibility of the establishment of a durable and just peace in the area without the restoration to our Palestinian people of all their national rights, foremost of which is their right to return to and determine their fate on all their national soil, and in the light of the study of the political circumstances which arose during the period between the Council's previous and current sessions, the Council decides the following:

Davis & Decter: Note the use of the word all -- "all their national soil"...

The Ten Points
1. The assertion of the PLO position regarding Resolution 242 is that it obliterates the patriotic and national rights of our people and deals with our people's cause as a refugee problem. Therefore, dealing with this resolution on this basis is rejected on any level of Arab and international dealings, including the Geneva conference.

Davis & Decter: The PLO has always rejected Security Council Resolution 242...


2. The PLO will struggle by all means, foremost of which is armed struggle, to liberate Palestinian land and to establish the people's national, independent and fighting authority on every part of Palestinian land to be liberated. This necessitates making more changes in the balance of power in favor of our people and their struggle.


3. The PLO will struggle against any plan for the establishment of a Palestinian entity, the price of which is recognition, conciliation, secure borders, renunciation of the national right, and our people's deprivation of their right to return and their right to determine the fate of their national soil.


Davis & Decter: Articles 2 and 3 are the heart of the document. The PLO is determined to continue the armed struggle to liberate every part of the "Palestinian land" -- a threat to both Israel and Jordan.


...
5. To struggle with the Jordanian national forces for the establishment of a Jordanian-Palestinian national front whose aim is the establishment of a national democratic government in Jordan -- a government that will cohere with the Palestinian entity to be established as a result of the struggle.

Davis & Decter: The PLO swears not only to liquidate Israel but also to overthrow King Hussein. The Council debated this article language for 10 days...


...
8. The Palestinian national authority, after its establishment, will struggle for the unity of the confrontation states for the sake of completing the liberation of all Palestinian soil and as a step on the path of comprehensive Arab unity.

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My comments: Article 3 shines a light on what is necessary for an actual peace, and not merely a piece of paper.

Recognition: The Palestinians need to recognize the right of the Jewish people to a state in their national ancestral homeland, The State of Israel, and to recognize its right to exist. This requires not only a pretense and delusionary statements by the international community that the Palestinians have in effect given this recognition (with smoke and mirrors), but to explicitly teach this continually to Palestinian Arab schoolchildren for two or three generations, so that the Palestinian Arab population becomes denazified. This includes the cooperation of Fatah and Hamas in giving this recognition and implementing the re-education of Palestinian Arab schoolchildren, as well as the other terrorist organizations such as Islamic Jihad, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, as well as the individuals constituting the leadership of the Palestinians. Also, there can be none of the "hat trick" nonsense, with individuals stating that they agreed to recognition while wearing the Palestinian Authority hat, but not as individuals, and not wearing the hat of Fatah or Hamas etc.

Conciliation: There has to be a real conciliation, a sulh, and not merely a hudna (a pause in hostilities), and not merely a salaam ( peace without conciliation).

Secure borders: Israel has to have secure borders, because whatever "peace" arrangements are made can fail. This includes a military presence by Israel along the Jordan River, to interrupt the flow of weapons and mujahadeen into an armed hostile Palestinian entity.

Demilitarized Palestinian entity: The "peace" arrangements can fail, and air travelers to Israel's airport should not be fired upon while in flight or while landing or taking off. Not providing for, and enforcing demilitarization of a Palestinian entity would be very reckless, and would be disregarding the right to life of residents and visitors to Israel.

No "right of return" of Arabs who have never set foot on the land that they are claiming: This is just a way of flooding Israel with millions of hostile Arabs, radicalized for generations in refugee camps, and raised to make war against Israelis. They will cause a civil war in Israel, and they will multiply and quickly end the Jewish state. This is the jihad of the womb, which is another means of seeking to destroy the Jewish state.

Jewish rights in the Jewish national soil cannot be disregarded -- it is not up to the Palestinians to remove these rights and give all rights to themselves. In addition, there are rights of religious pilgrims, of people of all faiths who have holy places in Jerusalem and elsewhere, and these rights cannot be torn up, but must be honored by whoever is in charge.

Are proposed disabilities Nuremberg Lite law or is this Dhimmitude law?

The leader of the Fatah Palestinians, Mahmoud Abbas, insists that Jews living in Judea, Samaria, and northern, southern and eastern Jerusalem be denied the right to build for their needs. On the one hand, this reminds me of earlier efforts, during the 20th century, to deprive Jews of their rights, which was carried out under the Nuremberg laws.

Here is part of a Wikipedia article on the Nuremberg laws that the Nazis enacted.

"The Nuremberg Laws or Nürnberg Laws (German: Nürnberger Gesetze) of 1935 were antisemitic laws in Nazi Germany introduced at the annual Nuremberg Rally of the Nazi Party. After the takeover of power in 1933 by Hitler, Nazism became an official ideology incorporating scientific racism and antisemitism. There was a rapid growth in German legislation directed at Jews.
The lack of a clear legal method of defining who was Jewish had, however, allowed some Jews to escape some forms of discrimination aimed at them. The enactment of laws identifying who was Jewish made it easier for the Nazis to enforce legislation restricting the basic rights of German Jews.
The Nuremberg Laws classified people with four German grandparents as "German or kindred blood", while people were classified as Jews if they descended from three or four Jewish grandparents. A person with one or two Jewish grandparents was a Mischling, a crossbreed, of "mixed blood".^[1] These laws deprived Jews of German citizenship and prohibited marriage between Jews and other Germans.^[2]
The Nuremberg Laws also included a ban on sexual intercourse between people defined as "Jews" and non-Jewish Germans and prevented "Jews" from participating in German civic life. These laws were, to some extent, an attempt to return the Jews of 20^th century Germany to the position that Jews had held before their emancipation in the 19^th century.
The laws were a legal embodiment of an already existing anti-Jewish boycott movement. See Nazi boycott of Jewish businesses."

Today, there is an anti-Jewish boycott movement, known as the BDS movement, which is carried out by antisemites throughout the world, and is directed against the Jewish state.

In areas controlled by Mahmoud Abbas' Palestinian Authority, it is against the law for Jews to buy or rent property. Abbas has stated many times that no Jew will be allowed to live in a Palestinian state under his control.In areas controlled by the Palestinian Authority, it is a capital offense to sell land to a Jew -- somebody convicted of selling land to a Jew is subject to the death penalty.

Abbas' demand that the Jews living in Judea, Samaria, and even in Israel's capital city in the northern, southern, and eastern parts of the city, not be permitted to build can be viewed as a continuation, in a lighter way, of the Nuremberg laws that the Nazis enacted. For example, while an Arab living in Jerusalem can exercise his property rights, according to Abbas a Jew may not. If Jews are living in an area that was conquered and occupied by the Hashemite Kingdom of Transjordan from 1948-1967, Abbas wants the Jews to not be permitted to build any extensions to their homes, not to build playgrounds for the kids, not to build prompt care medical facilities for their children, not to build any kindergardens or classrooms of any kind, not to build any security facilities such as fences or bomb shelters, not to be able to build anything at all that they need.

In a different analogy, it's as if he wants the Jews to be living in dhimmitude, with their rights and freedoms limited as if they were conquered by the Palestinian Arab Muslims. In that analogy, the jizya payment corresponds to the demand that Israel do revenue-sharing with the hostile regime, which soon will be a Hamas-Fatah regime. The humiliation that accompanies dhimmitude will come from the UN. And best of all from Abbas' point of view, none of the dhimmitude will be imposed by a conquering force, but will be done voluntarily by the Jews' own government, according to the demands of Abbas. Self-imposed dhimmitude.

Some of the humiliation specific to this may have already begun. For example, President Barack Hussein Obama has already declared that it is illegal for Jews to build anything at all in lands that were conquered and occupied by the Hashemite Kingdom of Transjordan from 1948 to 1967. What is the precedent for this? Is it Nuremberg Lite, or is it Dhimmitude?

This is very different from domestic law, which has to actually be passed by Congress. For international law, it's different, it doesn't have to be legislation actually passed by a body elected by the governed. Apparently you just have to say "it's international law", and presto, it's law. That's what Obama did -- he proclaimed it to be international law, citing nothing at all.

This seems to be Obama's giving his retroactive blessing to the defunct 1948-1967 occupation by Transjordan (which renamed itself Jordan after this conquest), and the defunct expulsion of the Jews by Jordan after some Jordanian massacres (e.g, in the Jewish Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem). That exile ended, but can it be that in the mind of Obama, that horror, in which the Jews were forced into exile and were banned from their ancestral homeland in Judea, Samaria, and northern, southern, and eastern Jerusalem, and had their synagogues destroyed, and holy gravestones turned into latrines for the Jordanian forces, can have a rebirth of sorts through this proposed imposition of disabilities on the Jews? And the remarkable thing is that it won't be forced upon the Jews by foreigners, but it is supposed to be forced upon the Jews by their own government of Israel.

Is this a version of  Nuremberg Lite law, or is it a version of the law of Dhimmitude?

Arab leaders urged Palestinians to leave

Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) wrote an article recently that was published as an op-ed piece by The New York Times. One of his distortions was that he neglected to point out that Israel accepted the UN partition plan, but the Arab states did not, and the Palestinian leadership did not. After the British pull-out from the land, Israel declared itself an independent state, and the Arab League states declared war on Israel and threatened genocide. The media today do not mention that May 15, the Naqba Day, is the anniversary of the Arab League's threat of genocide: "This will be a war of extermination and a momentous massacre which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacres and the Crusades." -- Arab League Sec. Gen. Azzam Pasha, May 15, 1948, the day five Arab armies invaded the new state of Israel. [Source: Myths and Facts 1982, edited by Davis and Decter.]

To facilitate this genocide, without causing casualties among the Palestinians, the Arab leaders urged Palestinians to leave.

The organization Stand With Us has provided a collection of quotations from Arab and independent sources documenting that Arab leaders urged Palestinian Arabs to leave, which can be found at:
http://www.standwithus.com/pdfs/flyers/biglies06.pdf

"The fact that there are these refugees is the direct consequence of the act of the Arab states in opposing partition and the Jewish state. The Arab states agreed upon this policy unanimously and they must share in the solution of the problem."--- Emile Ghoury, secretary of the Palestinian Arab Higher Committee, in an interview with the Beirut Telegraph September 6, 1948 (sae appeared in The London Telegraph, August 1948).

"The most potent factor [in the flight of Palestinians] was the announcements made over the air by the Arab-Palestinian Higher Executive, urging all Haifa Arabs to quit... It was clearly intimated that Arabs who remained in Haifa and accepted Jewish protection would be regarded as renegades." -- London Economist October 2, 1948.

"It must not be forgotten that the Arab Higher Committee encouraged the refugees' flight from their homes in Jaffa, Haifa, and Jerusalem." -- Near East Arabic Broadcasting Station, Cyprus, April 3, 1949.

"Every effort is being made by the Jews to persuade the Arab populace to stay and carry on with their normal lives, to get their shops and businesses open and to be assured that their lives and interests will be safe." -- Haifa District HQ of the British Police, April 26, 1948 (quoted in Battleground by Samuel Katz).

"The mass evacuation, prompted partly by fear, partly by order of Arab leaders, left the Arab quarter of Haifa a ghost city... By withdrawing Arab workers their leaders hoped to paralyze Haifa." -- Time Magazine, May 3, 1948, page 25.

"The Arab civilians panicked and fled ignominiously. Villages were frequently abandoned before they were threatened by the progress of war." -- General John Glubb [commander of the invading military forces from the Hashemite Kingdom of Transjordan], The London Daily Mail, August 12, 1948.

...

"The Arab states which had encouraged the Palestine Arabs to leave their homes temporarily in order to be out of the way of the Arab invasion armies, have failed to keep their promise to help these refugees." -- The Jordanian daily newspaper Falastin, February 19, 1949.
Source of above quotes: BIG LIES: Demolishing the Myths of the Propaganda War Against Israel, by David Meir-Levi.

Read the rest. One quote is especially illuminating, because it comes from Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) himself, whose op-ed in The New York Times suggests that he seems to have forgotten or deliberately omitted what he said earlier. "Abu Mazen Charges that the Arab States Are the Cause of the Palestinian Refugee Problem" (Wall Street Journal, June 5, 2003): "Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) wrote an article in March 1976 in Falastin al-Thawra, the official journal of the PLO in Beirut: 'The Arab armies entered Palestine to protect the Palestinians from the Zioinist tyranny, but instead they abandoned them, forced them to emigrate and to leave their homeland, imposed upon them a political and ideological blockade and threw them into prisons similar to the ghettos in which the Jews used to live in Eastern Europe."
Source: BIG LIES: Demolishing the Myths of the Propaganda War Against Israel, by David Meir-Levi.

what peace means for Israel

On Feb. 11, 1980, Mahmud Abbas' mentor, then PLO-Chairman Yasir Arafat, explained to the Caracas, Venezuela newspaper El Mundo what peace means to him and his cohorts: "Peace for us means the destruction of Israel. We are preparing for an all-out war, a war which will last for generations."

Likewise, the Fatah constitution calls for the destruction of Israel.
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Similarly, Hamas' charter calls for the destruction of Israel. For Hamas, the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, peace means the end of the Dar al Harb, and the entire world becomes the Dar al Islam with everyone ruled by Sharia. There is no place in Hamas' concept of "peace" for the existence of Israel, and they have shown by their terrorist actions in bombing buses full of women shopping  during the holidays that they are genocidal. They quote their scripture calling for genocide against the Jews, and their actions show that they mean it.

Recently, Israel's Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu explained what peace means to Israel, giving a vision of peace held by a majority of Israelis. The requirements for peace, according to the Israelis, are:

1. The Palestinians must recognize Israel as the nation state of the Jews.
2. Any peace agreement with the Palestinians should end the conflict and all future Palestinian claims on land.
3. The Arab refugee problem must be solved outside of Israel's borders. No Arab refugees in Israeli territory.
4. A Palestinian state will have to be demilitarized, and a peace treaty must safeguard Israel's security. This must include a continued Israeli military presence along the Jordan River.
5. The settlement blocs will remain within the state of Israel. Jerusalem will remain the united, undivided capital of Israel.

Israel's Prime Minister Netanyahu also said that the majority of Israeli were united in their belief that Israel's borders must be defended, that the peace agreements with Egypt and Jordan must be kept intact, and Iran's nuclear weapons program must be kept in check.

The reasons for these should be obvious.

First, the Palestinians must recognize Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people. This is the first step toward ending the hatred and judeophobic incitement that has been going on among the Palestinians, as well as in the Arab world, and as well in the Muslim world, for a long time. Their leaders have spread the lie that the Jews have no historic connection with the Land of Israel. They have spread the lie that there is no Jewish people. Although international bodies have long called for a Jewish state, the leaders of the Palestinians have sought to abort the present Jewish state, and to even pretend that a Jewish state doesn't exist, in order to better set the stage and arrange excuses for killing the Jewish state. This is now recognized by Israelis as a key reason why past efforts at peace have failed: because the Palestinians refuse to recognize Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people.

Secondly, a peace agreement must end the conflict, and terminate all territorial claims. When Arafat met with Israeli leaders at the White House Rose Garden, and promised peace, he also went before the Arabs and explained, in Arabic, that this was like the Treaty of Hudaybiya. That meant to them that it was a temporary deal, to allow the Arabs to strengthen themselves in preparation for future war and terrorism. It was merely a hudna. Hamas wants a hudna, in order to consolidate their gains, to prepare themselves for future war against Israel, so that they can better choose their time for their next attack. Hamas' goal is the destruction of Israel, and Israel of course does not share that goal. So it has no reason to cooperate with Hamas' efforts to realize that goal, including a hudna. Israelis want a peace agreement to end the conflict, not merely to give Hamas (or Fatah for that matter) time to build armaments for a more deadly war against Israel in the future.

Thirdly, the Arab "refugee" problem must be solved outside Israel's borders. I put "refugee" in quotes, because a special definition is used for refugees here to include people who have never set foot in Israel. These are descendants of refugees, and descendants of descendants, and descendants of descendants of refugees. They have been brutalized for generations by the Arab states, to have warriors to meet their goal of destroying Israel. If these millions of hostile Arabs were allowed into Israel, they would produce a civil war that would make Lebanon's civil war seem a frolic by comparison. They would also wage the jihad of the womb, and before long Israel would cease to exist as the Jewish state, and would cease to exist as any functioning state. This just becomes another method to destroy the Jewish state. Destroying Israel may have been Arafat's definition of "peace", but it is in fact completely contrary to the aspirations, rights and needs of Israelis. What sort of "peace" would this give -- the peace of the graveyard? It's not for Israel.

Fourth, there needs to be demilitarization of a Palestinian state, there need to be safeguards for Israel's security, and there needs to be an continued Israeli military presence along the Jordan River. Tawfik Hamad wrote about the Jew-hatred in the Muslim world, including the Arab world, and including the Palestinian Arabs. He wrote: "Pro-Palestinian Muslim demonstrators across the world repeatedly use the chant 'Khyber Khyber Ya Yahood.. Gaish Muhammad Sawfa Yaood,' which reminds the Jews that the army of Muhammad is coming back for a repeat of what was done to the Jewish Khyber tribe. According to authentic Islamic history books, the Islamic army, let by Muhammad, annihilated the Jewish tribe of Khyber, raping its women and killing all its men." It will take generations of re-education to repair the damage done by the continual anti-Jewish incitement by the Palestinian leaders, and to repair the damage done by the Jew-hatred in the Muslim world. The de-nazification will take generations, if it ever gets done. Until that time, if it ever gets done, Israelis need to be safe. So there has to be demilitarization of a Palestinian state, and safeguards for Israel's security. The examples of Hamas in the Gaza Strip, and of Hizbollah in Lebanon, show the danger of allowing a hostile entity to receive smuggled rockets and missiles, which they will launch against Israelis. So of course Israel has to maintain a military presence along the Jordan River, to prevent weapons, missiles, and mujahadeen from reaching a hostile entity in Israel's heartland, in Judea and Samaria. And, of course, to also be able to put up a defense in case there is conventional war due to some regime change in the Arab states to the east of Israel.As the revolts in Arab states have shown, no regime can be assumed to be invulnerable to revolution and regime change.

Fifth, the settlement blocs will remain within the state of Israel, and united Jerusalem, undivided, will remain Israel's capital. The settlement blocs are population centers in the ancestral homeland of the Jewish people, where Jewish kings ruled and where Jewish prophets gave their immortal messages. I hear of the inalienable rights of the Palestinians, of the legitimate aspirations of the Palestinians, and President Obama has reminded everyone of the needs of the people of Gaza. But, maybe I missed it, but I have never heard President Obama recognize that the 500,000 Jews living in what he calls "settlements" -- in Judea and Samaria, and in northern, southern, and eastern neighborhoods of Jerusalem -- are also people, with their own inalienable rights, legitimate aspirations, and needs. Those rights, aspirations, and needs do not include being massacred, being expelled from their homes and communities, nor being denied basic freedoms such as having property rights and the right to build for their needs. As President George W. Bush understood, in a letter to then-prime minister of Israel Ariel Sharon, the U.S. expects Israel to insist on recognizing that history has produced centers of Jewish population in the land once occupied for 18 years -- 1948-1967 -- by the Hashemite Kingdom of Transjordan, and that Israel will insist on keeping that territory. Israel will not abandon 500,000 of its citizens to the fate that would be dealt them by the ethnic cleansers.

As for Jerusalem, as everyone knows, the Muslim prays toward Mecca, while the Jew prays toward Jerusalem. Jerusalem has been the capital of the Jewish people for 3000 years, since King David made it his capital city. As long as Jerusalem is under the sovereignty of Israel, people of all faiths will continue to be able to exercise freedom of religion, including the right to make pilgrimage to holy places of Jerusalem. But when it was occupied by the Hashemite Kingdom of Transjordan for 18 years, Jewish synagogues were destroyed, the Jews were not allowed to visit the Temple Mount, nor allowed to visit the Western Wall, and holy gravestones were taken by Jordanian soldiers and used for latrines. Under Israeli sovereignty, all the residents of Jerusalem can live where they wish, and can build on their property. But under the laws of Mahmoud Abbas's Palestinian Authority, it is a capital offense -- punishable by death -- to sell land to a Jew. Holy Jerusalem is no place where such bigotry can be allowed to flourish, and to avoid that situation of anti-Jewish bigotry, of destroying synagogues, of desecrating tombstones, of preventing pilgrimages to holy places, Israel must continue to have sovereignty over united, undivided Jerusalem.