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The “Two-State Delusion”
by Arnold M. Soloway
Following
the U.S. lead, the near universal consensus appears to be that the Arab-Israel
conflict can be resolved only by the establishment of a Palestinian State in
Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) and Gaza, providing a “Two-State Solution”.
There is, however, a fundamental problem
inherent in the “Two-State Solution” that is clearly reflected in the
controversy surrounding the proposed Ground Zero Mosque. Those sharing an Arab
Muslim mindset that insists on building a multi-storied Mosque only at Ground
Zero, also share that mindset with Arab Muslims who are intent on gaining
exclusive control of all of Palestine, including Jordan. Those who deny that extremist Ground Zero
mindset do a disservice to the Muslim community that truly seeks reciprocal
mutual accommodation in the American tradition.[1]
The singularity of the Arab Muslim mindset
was made clear when Imam Rauf, leader of the Ground Zero Mosque project,
refused to admit that Hamas, as labeled by the U.S. State Department, is a
terrorist organization, challenged that America “was an accessory to the crime
of 9/11”, Osama Bin Laden “was made in America”, and by his pursuit of U.S.
compliance with Shariah law. And that mindset was distinctly confirmed when he
stated: “…my own personal analysis tells me that a one-state solution is a more
coherent one than a two-state solution”. This
is familiar code for challenging Israel’s very right to exist as a sovereign
state.
There now is little doubt that a new
Palestinian Arab state would ally itself with and become a client of despotisms
like Iran and Syria, and other forces hostile to America; it would directly
threaten Jordan’s survival and put Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and other Gulf states
in peril. This would make the region more combustible than it already is –
hardly in U.S. or Israel’s interest.
Against this background the “Two-State
Solution”, as proposed, inevitably would constitute an unwarranted threat to
vital American national security interests and to Israel’s survival, a danger
manifestly detrimental to U.S. credibility and its security interests in a true
and lasting Arab-Israel peace.
All of this stems from that same religious,
political Arab Muslim mindset writ large: the resolve to restore Arab Muslim
influence, prestige, control and power to their glory of ages past. On that
ultimate goal they will not compromise. Nor can we, who are committed to
freedom, the civil, political and religious rights of all people, succumb to
the immorality of not facing the reality of a great divide.
The Two State Delusion II
What Right Do The Jews Have To A
Sovereign State In
Palestine?
Brief
History
In 1922, following the Allied victory in
World War I, the organized international community of the time, the League of
Nations, with the special concurrence of the U.S. (not a member), established
the Palestine Mandate as a matter of binding international law, based on
the “historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine”. It intended to
establish “a National Home for the Jewish people”, specifically including all
the territory of what later became Jordan and Israel, explicitly designated in
Article 6, for “close settlement by Jews on the land” of Palestine. (The league
similarly established French mandates for territories that became Syria and
Lebanon, and another British mandate for Mesopotamia-Iraq.)
In 1923, however, for her own imperial
interests, Britain cut off 78% of the original Mandate territory to establish
the Arab Emirate of Trans Jordan and installed as Emir a World War I ally,
Abdullah, whose forces had been expelled from Arabia by the Wahabi Saudis.
Abdullah, with some 2,000 Hashemite troops, took control of the territory in
Palestine where Jews were no longer permitted to live. The territory for the Jewish national home in
Palestine was thus reduced to a mere 22% of the original Mandate.
But Haj Amin El Husseini, Mufti of
Jerusalem, (who later collaborated with Hitler in World War II) and other Arab
elites belligerently opposed opening any part of Palestine for Jewish
development. Their political theology dictates that Palestine, like other
territory once conquered by Muslim forces, is “Holy Land”, never again to be
controlled by non-Muslims. Accordingly, despite conclusive archeological
evidence supporting volumes of probative testimony, they minimalized or denied
the multi-millennial connection of the Jews with the land of Palestine.
In 1937, concerned by escalating Arab
violence, the British created the Peel Commission to investigate the Palestine
problem. The Peel Commission
subsequently called for further subdivision of the remaining 22% of the
original Mandate territory into two states, one Arab, one Jewish, as “a chance
for ultimate peace”. The Arabs emphatically rejected the two state proposal.
In 1946, with British support, Abdullah
converted the Emirate of Trans-Jordan into the Kingdom of Jordan, an Arab state
within the Palestine Mandate, with himself as King.
Israel
and the Wars that Followed
In 1947, after Britain had surrendered its
Mandate, it was transferred as a “sacred trust” to the United Nations,
successor to the League of Nations. The U.N. General Assembly adopted Resolution
181, calling for partition of the remaining 22% of the Palestine Mandate. This
“Two-State Solution” provided for a second Arab state in Palestine
(Jordan being the first). Although disappointed by the reduced portion of
territory they would receive, the U.N. proposal was accepted by the Jews as
“Israelis”. It was rejected forcefully by the Arabs.
The U.N vote was timely and critical, and
it affirmed Israel’s legal and historic right to statehood. But the U.N. could not create the State:
Britain opposed the U.N. plan and the U.S., France, and others failed in an
attempt to have the U.N. General Assembly rescind the Partition
Resolution. Contrary to hostile
propaganda, Israel was neither created by nor imposed by the West, but arose in
spite of obstruction, opposition, or inaction by most of the great Western
powers. It was created by Jews who had settled the land, organized and built a
functioning economy, society and governmental structure and demanded
sovereignty for themselves and for their fellow Jews in Europe and in Moslem
lands seeking security and dignity in the historic home of the Jewish people.
In 1948, five Arab armies undertook an
avowed “War of Extermination” against the greatly outnumbered nascent Jewish
State. To world-wide surprise, the Arabs were defeated. Under the subsequent
armistice agreement when combat ceased, Jordan controlled the West Bank and
Egypt controlled Gaza as “belligerent occupiers”, but Israel had distinctly
established its presence as a sovereign state in the Middle East.
The Two-State
Delusion III
The “Strategy of
Stages” and a Concocted Arab Narrative
After 1948, when five Arab armies were
defeated in their avowed “War of Extermination” against the greatly outnumbered
nascent Jewish State, Jordan controlled Judea and Samaria, the West Bank, and
Egypt controlled Gaza. But Israel had successfully defended its right to
sovereign statehood.
(Zuheir Mohsen, head of
military operations for the PLO and a member of its Supreme Council as
interviewed by James Dorsey in the Dutch daily Trouw, March 31, 1977.) (Emphasis supplied)
In 1974, after another Arab defeat, the
nine-year old P.L.O., at its Twelfth National Convention, adopted “The Strategy
of Stages”. This was designed to create an impression of “moderation” –
primarily for Western consumption – by agreeing to set up a Palestinian Arab
state in any West Bank and Gaza territory vacated by Israel as Stage I, without recognizing the State of Israel. Stage II, was to be resumption and
intensification of the “armed struggle” from the greatly enhanced power base,
which would ensure the destruction of Israel and allow Arabs to take the rest
of Palestine in Stage III.
At the same time, the P.L.O. began
advancing a narrative according to which “Arab people were engaged in farming
and building, spreading culture throughout the land for thousands of years,
setting an example in the practice of freedom of worship, acting as faithful
guardians of the holy places of all religions.” (Arafat’s speech in the U.N., N.Y.Times,
11/11/74)
It is hard to imagine a description that
stands in harsher contrast to the facts. For while archeological evidence
suggests that Palestine possessed one of the largest populations and most
varied economies in its history during the sixth century, the Arab invasion of
the seventh century inaugurated a period of over a thousand years, where except
for brief breathing spells, Palestine settled into a period of deep decline
punctuated by periodic massacres of its remaining population.
(As late as 1867, on his visit to
Palestine, Mark Twain wrote of “A silent mournful expanse…a desolation…not even
imagination can grace…never saw a human being on the whole route (from
Jerusalem to Tabor)…even the olive and the cactus, those fast friends of a
worthless soil, had almost deserted the
country.” Innocents Abroad)
The plain fact, documented in a wide range
of unimpeachable sources, is that the regeneration of Palestine, the growth of
its population and economy, came only after an increasing and consistent flow
of Jews had begun returning in the last decades of the 19th century.
And after them came Arabs from Transjordan, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Egypt, the
Sudan, Iraq and even far away Yemen, seeking a share in Palestine’s emerging
prosperity. It is estimated that at least 300,000 Arabs migrated into Palestine
during the period of the Mandate.
The Two State
Delusion IV
Oslo’s
Aftermath
In 1993, the Oslo Accords were signed by
Arafat of the P.L.O. and Prime Minister Rabin of Israel at the White House,
supposedly to allow for the development and growth of mutual trust and respect
- leading to the establishment of a Palesttinian State.
The event was widely hailed as a harbinger
of the long-sought peace, and friends of Israel, willing to place hope before
experience, indulged in a paroxysm of joy and optimism. But other friends of Israel, mindful of the
underlying realities of the Arab-Israel conflict and the problematic details of
the accord, were not bemused by the euphoria of the time. One observer described the event as marking
“The Delusion of a People Under Siege”.[2]
(Arafat
himself soon confirmed the delusion speaking to his own people when he
reaffirmed the P.L.O. commitment to the “Strategy of Stages” for Israel’s
destruction, and equated the Oslo Accords with Mohammed’s Treaty of Hudabya
with the Koreish tribe, which the Prophet maintained for two years – until his
forces grew strong enough to crush the Koreish.)
The Israeli government, driven by its
intense desire for peace, and trusting that Arafat would honor his commitment
to eliminate Palestinian terrorism and anti-Israel hate indoctrination, placed
significant territory under P.L.O. control and without consideration of vital
security issues gave arms to it’s “Police”. However, rather than moderating the
Palestinians (PLO and Hamas alike), the Oslo Accords produced an unprecedented
level of hate-education, resulting in a vast wave of anti-Israeli Palestinian
terrorism, a gross violation of Palestinian commitments made to Israel and to
the U.S.
Oslo might have led to a Palestinian state
in a “Two-State Solution”, but Arafat rejected that option. Instead, he
launched the first bloody “Intifada” and intensified vitriolic anti-Israel hate
indoctrination in programs that continue to this day. The “Hate Jews and
Israel” mantra, heard every day in their Mosques and media, resonates
powerfully among the Palestinian Arabs, unwitting recipients of gross
historical revisionism. It is especially aimed at the young, even in programs
designed for early school age children.
In 2000, with no regard for this very
dismal experience, President Clinton, joined by Ehud Barak, then Israel’s Prime
Minister, offered to Arafat and the Palestinian Arabs a sovereign state with
97% of the West Bank and Gaza, its capital in East Jerusalem and large sums of
money in compensation to Palestinian refugees. Arafat again rejected a “Two
State Solution” and responded with the “Second Intifada”, including the
bloodiest sustained terrorist attacks in Israel’s history that also devastated
the economy of the corrupt, repressive P.L.A. regime.
Nevertheless, international politicos,
including the Obama administration, still focus almost exclusively on a
“Two-State Solution”. They ignore the fact that over a period of more than
seven decades at least five distinct international diplomatic initiatives for
such a “solution” could have created a Palestinian state. But Arafat would not accept the concept of
two states, Arab and Jewish, permanently “living side-by-side in peace”. His goal was never peace with Israel, but its
destruction and a single Arab Muslim state from the Jordan River to the
Mediterranean Sea.
[1]A multi-storied mosque at Ground Zero would be seen in the Middle East and
beyond as a triumphal testament to the terrorist success on 9/11, The name
“Cordoba House” recalls the Arab triumph in Cordoba, Spain, and the quick
conversion of its church to a mosque, just as the two mosques built on the
Jews’ Holy Temple Mount signaled their conquest of Jerusalem.
The
Two State Delusion V
Critical
Realities
Quite apart from the intrinsically
contradictory fundamental approach that would beset any Arab-Israel
negotiations for a “Two-State Solution”, there is another basic problem. The
Arabs are divided in two hostile camps. Fatah (P.L.O.) controls territory in
the West Bank while Hamas maintains control of Gaza which it seized by force
from Fatah.
The hostility between Fatah and Hamas
encompasses a range of important political and ideological differences. But
they share the same ultimate goal: the destruction of the State of Israel. In
both the P.L.O.-Fatah and Hamas covenants that goal is specific, clearly
stated, and glorifies “armed struggle” – all having been substantiated by both
terrorist actions and repeated declarations.
Following Yasser Arafat’s death, Abu Mazen,
the P.L.O.’s second-in-command, who, at Arafat’s side, was directly involved in
many deadly terrorist acts over the years, now has the title of “President
Abbas”. He has taken over command of Palestinian Arab governance (P.L.A.) and has
attempted to transform his and the P.L.O.’s image by adopting a pretense of
moderation to gain favor in the U.S. and the West. Unlike Arafat, he speaks,
dresses and acts in a more “Western” fashion.
This has allowed current U.S. policy–makers to ignore his terrorist
past, to portray him now as a “moderate”, and to accept him as a partner in the
pursuit of Arab-Israeli peace through a “Two-State Solution”.
These policy-makers also evade reference to
the fact that despite Abbas’ supposed “moderation” as Arafat’s First Deputy, it
was he who instituted hate-education in the Palestinian Authority in 1994, and
has sustained hate-education as Arafat’s successor. His “Strategy of Stages” and the articles in
the P.L.O. covenant specifically calling for Israel’s destruction by “armed
struggle” remain unchanged. In addition, Abbas and the P.L.O. still will not
even acknowledge Israel’s right to exist; they insist on the expulsions of all
Jews from half of Jerusalem and territories the Arabs lost in the 1967 war, and
they claim “the right of return” for millions of Arabs to a reduced Israel
within its 1967 armistice lines, which in itself would mean the end of the
Jewish national home.
The ultimate
Abbas-P.L.O. goal remains the same as Arafat’s: the elimination of the Jewish
State.
Seeing the true face of Fatah, what can
be expected of the even more extreme Hamas?
Unequivocally
committed to Israel’s destruction and still continuing terrorist actions, a
“transformation” is hardly credible.
Nevertheless, Hamas has been pursued avidly by U.S. ex-officials and
public figures implicitly representing the Obama administration, urging
reconciliation of Hamas and Fatah, so that they can appear as a single
Palestinian entity for negotiations with Israel. Presumably for humanitarian
aid, but in part at least to encourage that reconciliation, on June 9, 2010
President Obama granted $400,000,000 to be shared by Fatah and Hamas. How the total sum is to be divided and
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who
will control its actual disposition was not disclosed. However, with Hamas now receiving significant
support and arms from Iran and Syria, “reconciliation” of Fatah and Hamas, it
is unlikely and at best would be a very temporary affair, but it would open the
door for even more U.S. pressure on Israel to make further hazardous territorial
“concessions” toward the “Two-State Solution” – and to its Jihadist opponents
when the conflict clearly is not about territory.
The Two
State Delusion VI
Jerusalem:
Forgotten History and a U.S. Policy Charade
Three Thousand years ago, King David made Jerusalem his capital and Jews
have aspired to live in Jerusalem ever since.
Since the 1840’s, Jews have comprised the largest single group of
Jerusalem’s inhabitants. Moreover, since
the 1880’s, Jews have been a majority of its population. Jerusalem has never been the capital of any
nation other than ancient and modern Israel.
Jerusalem always has played the
central role in Jewish religious and political life. The “Western Wall” was
part of the Jewish Temple built more than 2,000 years ago. Jerusalem has been
an integral feature in daily Jewish prayer, and when Jews pray anywhere in the
world, they still face Jerusalem. (Muslims face Mecca.) To the Jewish people,
“Jerusalem” is a synonym for all of Israel, their ancestral homeland.
Jerusalem has long been a city of people
from diverse backgrounds. There were fairly distinct Jewish, Arab, Christian
and other neighborhoods, but in all its history the city was never divided –
until the Jordanian occupation in 1948, which forcefully drove all Jews out of
East Jerusalem, including the Jewish Quarter of the Old City.
“Only from 1948-1967 – during the Jordanian occupation – was the eastern
part of Israel’s capital ‘Arab territory’. Palestinians have no more claim to sovereignty there than Russia does in formerly occupied
Eastern Berlin."1
President
Obama’s “Two-State” proposal calls for a divided
Jerusalem. The Arabs will accept a portion of Jerusalem for their state only as
a tactical component in their Strategy of Stages for Israel’s destruction. But
aware of what that portends and the fact that “East Jerusalem” contains the
Jewish quarter of the Old City with the “Western Wall” of the sacred Temple,
Israel could not yield to such a “solution”.
Bi-Partisan Congressional Resolutions in
1990 and 1992 strongly affirmed the conviction that “Jerusalem should remain an
undivided city and recognized as the capital of the State of Israel.”
In 1995, the Jerusalem Embassy Act, S.1322,
was passed. Among it’s cosponsors: Joseph Biden, Ted Kennedy, John McCain,
Harry Reid, John Kerry, Joseph Lieberman, Strom Thurmond, Bob Dole. It was
termed a “Statement of the Policy of the United States”:
“(1) Jerusalem should remain an undivided city
in which the rights of every ethnic and religious group are protected;
(2) Jerusalem should be recognized as the
capital of the State of Israel.”
In 2007,
Hillary Clinton, now Secretary of State, issued a paper stating: “Hillary
Clinton believes that Israel’s right to exist in safety as a Jewish State, with
defensive borders and an undivided Jerusalem as its capital, secure from
violence and terrorism, must never be questioned”.
In 2008, Barak
Obama stated: “Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain
undivided”. But the very next day, Obama explained that he actually
supported dividing Jerusalem, and said: “The point we were simply making is
that we don’t want barbed wire running through Jerusalem, similar to the way it
was prior to the 1967 War, that it is possible for us to create a Jerusalem
that is cohesive and coherent”. (Ital. added)2
Is it “possible for us to create a
Jerusalem that is cohesive and coherent” – and divided? What, if anything, does a “cohesive and
coherent” divided Jerusalem really mean?
The point is that in his push for a “Two-State Solution”, even before
any Arab-Israel negotiations, President Obama unilaterally rejected the
idea that Jerusalem should remain undivided. And signaled thereby that he,
President Obama, already has determined what the outcome must be on other
critical issues in the Arab-Israel “negotiations”. This is consistent with his
apparent presumption that the cause of Arab bitterness and hostility originates
from injustices committed against them by Israel (and America). And that presumption implies unjustifiable apologetic
deference to the political and religious based Arab hostility to Israel’s very
existence.
[1]“Jerusalem – One City Undivided”, editorial column in The Boston Globe,
July 22, 2009
Outpost, May, 2010
Why Speak Peace When Peace Is Not In Sight?
Since 1937, when Great Britain’s Peel Commission vainly proposed a
“Two-State Solution” as “a chance for ultimate peace”, Arab-Israel
“peace plans” have been advanced in predictably futile succession,
among them:
- The U.N.’s “Partition Plan of 1947”
- John Foster Dulles’ Baghdad Pact of the 1950’s
- The U.S. State Department’s “Rogers Plan” of 1969
- The 1970 “Quaker Plan” of the American Friends Service Committee
-
The 1975 Report of the Brookings Institute Middle East
Study Group
- President Reagan’s plan of 1982
- The Clinton-Barack proposal to Arafat in 2000
- President Bush’s “Road Map for Peace” in 2002
- President Obama’s current “Two-State Solution”.
Their
titles, origins, dates and details vary, but all these “peace plans”,
including President Obama’s “Two-State Solution”, were doomed to fail:
They misperceived or willfully misrepresented the core conflict as
being about territory, that if Israel would trade enough
“Land for Peace” the conflict could be resolved.
Seven decades of failed “peace plans” should have alerted our policy
makers to the reality that this conflict is not about a division of
territory. Israel’s offers to trade“Land for Peace” in 1949, 1967,
1993, 2000, and 2002, all met a consistent Arab response: No
“Peace for Land”. But using “peace negotiations” to acquire Judea
and Samaria, the West Bank, is critical to the PLO’s “Strategy of
Stages”: Establish a Palestinian State in territory acquired by
negotiations without recognizing Israel as Stage I, and intensified
“armed struggle” in Stages II and III from advanced positions, easing
the way to Israel’s annihilation.
This established Arafat PLO doctrine, distinctly reaffirmed by P.L.A.
President Abbas in March, manifests that the basic conflict is not
about “settlements” or territorial division. Such could be resolved by
reasonable compromise - - but no compromise is possible when the root
cause of the conflict is the rigid Jihadist Arab Muslim political
theology that prohibits recognition of Israel, denies the Jewish
people’s multi-millennial bond with the land, insists that all of
Palestine is their exclusive “Holy Land”, its governance never to be
shared with others.
Forcing Israel to withdraw from territories in Judea and Samaria would
inspire the Jihadists to immediately intensify the “Armed
Struggle”. Moreover, such territorial “compromise” would
perversely ignore the considered judgment of American military and
diplomatic authorities:
On June 29, 1967, General Earl Wheeler, Chairman of the Joint
Chiefs-of-Staff, submitted to President Johnson a document on “The
Minimum Requirements for Israel’s Defense”, noting the historical,
geographic, topographic, political and military reality of the Middle
East that behooves Israel to control the mountain ridges of Judea,
Samaria and the Golan Heights.
In April, 1978, Major General George J. Keegan Jr. (Ret.), former
Chief, U.S. Air Force Intelligence, Admiral E.R. Zumwalt, Jr.
U.S.N. (Ret.), former Chief of Naval Operations, Hon. Eugene A. Foley,
President, National Committee on American Foreign Policy, and others,
wrote:
“Israel is a matchless strategic asset for the West (indeed for the few
genuinely moderate forces in the region) against threats emanating from
extreme Arab and non-Arab elements…If our present self-defeating policy
continues, the danger is that we might no longer have a strategically
viable Israel…” (1978 - 2010 redux?).
In January 1979, 183 Generals and Admirals (Ret.) publicly declared
that “…the ability of the U.S. to protect its security interests in the
Middle East is closely linked, if not dependent on, the maintenance of
a potent Israeli military capability in the area.” The late Admiral
“Bud” Nance, on July 29, 1991, defined Judea and Samaria’s eastern
mountain ridge dominating the Jordan Valley, as “the most effective
tank barrier “and the western mountain ridge overpowering Jerusalem and
Tel Aviv as a “dream platform for invasion to the narrow coastal
plain.” (While radical Islam has replaced the Soviet Union as the prime
Middle East threat, Israel’s defense needs remain essentially
unchanged.)
The “Two-State Solution” is strategically and morally wrong. Requiring
Israel to withdraw from these critical territories as part of the
“Two-State Solution” clearly would advance the promised Jihadist end
game: Israel’s total extinction. Given the facts, fair-minded
observers realize that peace will become possible only when Jihadist
Arab Muslims no longer dominate in Israel’s neighborhood, and the Arab
people and their leaders are reconciled to Israel’s permanent sovereign
presence in Palestine.
That time is not yet in sight. But it is being delayed by President
Obama and others, still pushing the delusive “Two-State Solution” while
the Arabs refuse to resume negotiations unless Israel again halts all
West Bank construction. Pressing hard to induce Israel’s submission to
that Arab demand, the U.S. has offered twenty stealth bombers - - and a
promised veto of hostile U.N. action: pointedly, recognition of a
self-declared Palestinian State. But the U.S. offer also contains a
shameful implied threat: To not veto hostile U.N. action unless Israel
submits to the Arab demand.
Significantly, such manipulation by the U.S. marks again an obstinate
refusal to recognize and confront the underlying reality: there can be
no durable Arab-Israel peace until the Arabs totally cancel the state
of War they declared in 1948, disarm and dismantle Jihadist terrorist
cells, clearing the way toward peace and the prospects it offers.
Until that time comes, as long as it takes, Israel’s unavoidable choice
is either survival of the Jewish State, defended by sustained,
convincing, deterrent armed strength, -- or surrender to ruthless
Jihadists and their sponsors who threaten Israel’s annihilation,
another Holocaust..
Nor will U.S. and Western security interests or credibility benefit
from a continuation of their feckless failure to confrontMiddle East
reality. Moreover, that failure undermines the many Muslims who
courageously are challenging Jihadist political theology and seek only
reciprocal respect, accommodation and accord with others. But our
Middle East policy still does not appear willing to recognize that
they, and we who are committed to freedom and human rights, stand at a
great divide--opposing Islamic forces of intolerance, hatred, terrorism
and war.
The Two State Delusion VII
Changing Arab Perspectives: Iran
The Obama
administration argues the extreme urgency of achieving the “Two-State
Solution” as necessary to gain support from the Arab states in our
conflict with the Taliban and Al Qaeda. Certainly we want any
intelligence and support we can gain from the Arab states, but long
experience demonstrates that the factor that really determines the
policies and actions of Arab leaders concerns threats to their survival
in power. Despite their often impassioned rhetoric, largely for
domestic purposes, regional, and global factors impact inter-Arab,
Arab-Western and Arab-Israel relations much more than the Palestinian
issues.
Today, a
number of Arab regimes are increasingly apprehensive about Jihadist
domestic challenges from forces like Hamas, and the “Two-State
Solution” is viewed as a direct threat by Jordan. Arab hostility
toward Israel certainly persists. But because the Arab-Israel conflict
in Palestine is not really their most vital concern, the support we
want to gain from the Arab leaders depends less than ever on the degree
of pressure the U.S. puts on Israel and more on their assessment of
what power will prevail in the turbulent Middle East.
Obviously,
that critical assessment will be profoundly influenced by Iran’s
prospective emergence as a nuclear power. The Arab states know that
Israel poses no threat to them, while Egypt, Jordan, the Arab Emirates,
Saudi Arabia and other Arab states do fear the prospect that a
nuclear-armed Iran would pursue regional hegemony.
“The world’s most open secret is that the Arab countries of the Middle
East fear a nuclear Iran as much, and perhaps more, than Israel
does…the comments this week by United Arab Emirates Ambassador to the
U.S. Yousef Al-Otaiba are worth noting…asked if he wanted the U.S. to
stop the Iranian bomb program by force”, he answered: ‘Absolutely,
absolutely. I think we are at risk of an Iranian nuclear program far
more than you are at risk’. Mr. Otaiba’s other comments leave no doubt
what he and most Arab officials think about the prospect of a nuclear
revolutionary Shiite state. They desperately want someone, and that
means the U.S. or Israel, to stop it, using force if need be.”
The Arab
states that are inclined to offer U.S. intelligence and other support
recognize tacitly that Israel today constitutes a force for stability
in the region and may be their best hope for security against a
hegemonistic Iran, particularly as they witness the lack of American
resolve to face the challenge of Iran.
[1] The Wall Street Journal, July 8, 2010
The Two-State Delusion VIII
The New Middle East Paradigm: Wavering U.S. Resolve?
President Obama’s publicly stated opposition to a united Jerusalem
logically concentrates attention on other positions and actions he has
taken that ominously diminish the U.S.-Israel relationship: His
eloquent Cairo apology to and effusive praise for the Muslim world,
while implicitly criticizing Israel; his very deferential attitude in
various encounters with Arab leaders, contrasted with the utter disdain
and disrespect he publicly showed Israel’s Prime Minister, Netanyahu;
his endorsement of a Ground Zero mosque; his repeated acerbic demands
on Israel alone, while courting terrorists that Israel must contend
with every day. President Obama also seems to ignore the grim prospect
that the “Two-State Solution” would effectively advance the P.L.O.’s
“Strategy of Stages” for the destruction of Israel.
Most disconcerting: President Obama’s diplomatic outreach to Iran has
proven an abject failure; all the U.N. and U.S. sanctions will not
bring Iran to give up its pursuit of nuclear weaponry, leaving us
dependent on “containment”. But it will be very difficult, if not
impossible, to contain a nuclear-powered Iran, the dominant power in
the Middle East with growing influence beyond. And from its past
experience of simply ignoring successive U.N. resolutions and U.S.
opprobrium with no fear-inspiring reprisal, it will have no great fear
of a U.S. or international community response to any of its future
actions.
The portents of a nuclear Iran are obvious, ominous, and far-reaching.
Israel, the “Little Satan” has been targeted for prompt annihilation,
but the repeatedly announced threat goes beyond the Middle East, by one
means or another to extend its lethal reach to the “Big Satan”, the U.S.
Although giving occasional rhetorical assurance that “the
American-Israel bond is unbreakable”, judged by his actions, President
Obama has shown little concern for the existential threat to Israel
from a nuclear-powered Iran and how that would affect our own security
interests. Rather, he has warned Israel against taking preventive
defensive action to thwart Iran. But permitting Iran to go nuclear and
pandering to terrorists and their state sponsors, while disavowing
America’s exceptional commitment to protect and advance freedom in the
world, is strategically and morally unacceptable.
Taken together, these negative perceptions are troubling to all who are
concerned about our own security and future as well as that of Israel.
They lead to a most disturbing conclusion. Despite a long, mutually
beneficial relationship, and the rhetorical assurances, Israel’s
security and survival appear less important to President Obama than his
ardent cultivation of Arab-Muslim favor.
This paradigm is perceived in the Middle East and in other regions as
yet another sign of America’s wavering resolve and abandonment of its
historic role as a powerful moral and strategic force. That
perception emboldens not just Israel’s enemies, but our own: Al
Qaeda, the Taliban, Iran, and the formidable network of radical
Islamist terrorists who have declared war on us to advance their own
theocratic and political ambitions.
These unpleasant realities challenge the sanctimonious pretentions of
the “Two State Solution”. They signal the dangers inherent in attempts
at a quick, simple “fix” for a conflict that is rooted in Arab Muslim
political theology, and is not simply about territory. In our own
security interest, the realities instead call for a renewed, resolute
American commitment to strategic and moral leadership in the war
against Islamist terrorism and the threat of a nuclear-armed
Iran. This still is the best hope for essential stability, and
ultimately a true and lasting peace in that much troubled region and
the world at large.
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