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Go Home Obama Is Finally Doing the Right Thing on Israel—For Now,...

POLITICS SEPTEMBER 24, 2011

Obama Is Finally Doing the Right Thing on Israel—For Now, At Least

BY MARTIN PERETZ

Not yet two months into his presidency, Barack Obama designated Chas Freeman as chair of the National Intelligence Council. It wasn’t the first indication that the United States would likely embark on a new and what was at best a jejune and shallow foreign policy. But the appointment was disturbing all the same. Altogether aside from some raw anti-Jewish biases, Freeman had done a good deal of time in the foreign service, stationed in venues where the instincts of his hosts were especially appreciated by this oh, so cooperative Washington emissary. His two major postings were in Beijing and Riyadh. He would later actually criticize the red regime over how late and weak its suppression of the Tiananmen Square democracy demonstrations had been. When it came to Saudi Arabia, he was simply what the kids call a “suck-up.” He renamed the Saudi monarch “Abdullah the Great.” Yuck. Oh, yes, and he despised Israel. He later became chairman of the Middle East Policy Council, succeeding George McGovern who also despises Israel. (Both of them are, of course, completely now out to pasture, daffy in the head.) If you like, you can read what I wrote on the Freeman appointment here. Alas, Freeman withdrew his name even before his designation could be vetted by the Senate. He complained that folks like me had jettisoned his appointment. It would have been nice to see Democrats and Republicans question him and then pummel him a bit. Still, the nomination itself was a signal as to what Obama intended for the Jewish state.

The very surprising words in Obama’s address to the General Assembly on Wednesday assured Israelis, Jews, Zionists, and literally millions and millions of Christians (along with other religious humanists) whose beliefs ally them with Jewish civilization that America had not actually turned its back on the very nation that was the first in history to define and give content to the idea of peoplehood.

Read these words carefully:

Let us be honest with ourselves: Israel is surrounded by neighbors that have waged repeated wars against it. Israel’s citizens have been killed by rockets fired at their houses and suicide bombs on their buses. Israel’s children come of age knowing that throughout the region, other children are taught to hate them. Israel, a small country of less than eight million people, looks out at a world where leaders of much larger nations threaten to wipe it off of the map. The Jewish people carry the burden of centuries of exile and persecution, and fresh memories of knowing that six million people were killed simply because of who they are. Those are facts. They cannot be denied.

The Jewish people have forged a successful state in their historic homeland. Israel deserves recognition. It deserves normal relations with its neighbors. And friends of the Palestinians do them no favors by ignoring this truth, just as friends of Israel must recognize the need to pursue a two-state solution with a secure Israel next to an independent Palestine.

Well, for the first time the president had actually been honest with himself, not totally honest, to be sure, but honest enough, giving him the undeserved benefit of the doubt. Had he spoken like this in any one of the venues where he had previously addressed crowds actually concerned about a peace settlement in the region he would have first of all assured the State of Israel that he understood its history, its security needs, and its very realistic anxieties about the mercurial neighborhood in which it lives. Had Obama done something like this before he would have reassured the lovers of Zion, the many tens of millions in America, and similar numbers elsewhere that all of his talk about statehood for the Palestinians was not just about satisfying their grievances but also calming the deep foreboding of the Jewish commonwealth that practical arrangements will not be made to balance the obvious instability of Arab countries and present Muslim civilization. This would not be easy to achieve.

I don’t imagine that the president cottoned lightly to the tactics and strategy of his own U.N. speech. It was not his natural bearing or disposition. But the raw fact is that Mohammed Abbas refused to compromise on his insistence that America be the party that negotiates with Israel over settlements in the West Bank and about the myriad issues surrounding Jerusalem. By his anger and his ongoing reproaches to Netanyahu (and the almost day-in-day-out cuts at the Israeli prime minister) the president seemed to oblige the Palestinians. The administration also mounted a campaign among fashionable media to demonize Bibi, a campaign taken up irrationally by nearly the whole salient staff of The New York Times: Helene Cooper, Tom Friedman, Ethan Bronner, Nick Kristof, Isabel Kershner, and the anonymous but consistent writers of almost identical cliches on the editorial page. Even New York magazine has mounted its own campaign against Israel and its prime minister, a virtually fact-less campaign beginning with cover art of the back of Obama’s head covered by a kippah.What is Netanyahu’s sin? He would not permit the Obama administration to negotiate on Israel’s behalf. Which self-respecting country would have parlayed with an intermediary, even one so crucial to its own security like America, over such defining matters? That Obama somehow felt that he could force Israel to participate in such an unrealistic gambit shows how innocent he is or how malevolent he was. Indeed, both his innocence and his malevolence were bolstered by his essential sympathies with the Palestinian cause. But I suspect that Obama will not indulge the Arabs in such dangerous fantasies again.

Obama’s shift is actually a reproach to Israel’s desperate and declining peace lefties. They had counted on him to turn the tide against Bibi, whose center of gravity is, alas, the right. But as the American administration now stands, willy nilly, with Netanyahu, it can count on a shift in the Israeli populace to be more open to risk. This means testing the Palestinians so long as the testing is gradual and the risks not life-threatening. My guess is that the authoritarian foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman, from the ultra-nationalist party “Israel Our House,” would have preferred Obama to adhere to his traditional punitive approach to Israel so that he—Lieberman—could push further with what is nearly a fascist disposition.

As it happens, almost none of the cognoscenti have pointed out that Abbas has now refused to negotiate with Israel at all for a year and a half. Sainted man, he has served as president of the Palestinian Authority two years past the expiration of his term. In insisting on going to the Security Council for what he will not in any case get, Abbas has undercut many of the accomplishments of his premier, Salaam Fayyad, which include deep cooperation with Israel on security, economic development, and urban expansion, particularly in Ramallah and Jenin. You are also invited to forget that the power of the P.A. does not extend to Gaza, which is controlled by Hamas, a terrorist group that also portends to be a real government. The U.N. is being courted to establish a state. Any state established will be two warring states—unless, of course, Israel keeps them apart. Which, if I were it, I wouldn’t. Who will keep them apart? Maybe Turkey.

Turkey is the big new actor over Palestine. I’ve written that Obama may have inspired Erdogan to involve himself and his country in the resolution of the “Palestine question.” Perhaps, yes; perhaps, no. If yes, it was another one of Obama’s infatuations. In any case, Erdogan is obsessed with the mischievous flotilla which he launched against the perfectly legal Israeli blockade against Gaza. Nine Turks were killed by the Israel Defense Forces in a confrontation on the high seas. All of them understood the danger to their lives.

As soon as Obama made clear that the U.S. will not countenance a state invented by the United Nations but without real borders, the European Union fantasy intruded itself on the General Assembly in the person of Nicolas Sarkozy. Of course, the E.U. barely exists—what with its monetary troubles already threatened by the insolvency or coming insolvency of Greece, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Ireland, and maybe Iceland. And what about Belgium? It hasn’t had a government for almost two years. This is silly, portentous, and unreal. 

Robert Satloff, the brilliant analyst of Middle Eastern matters, has written a short paper for the Washington Institute for Near East Policy on “Obama’s Focus at the U.N.: Getting Passionate About Israel.” My analysis above and his coincide in many material details, especially about the consequences for the Jewish state of the turn in the president’s rhetoric.

Aside from the president’s objections to the Palestinian Authority not shelving what he calls Abbas’s “U.N. gambit” for Palestinian statehood, Satloff writes:

Obama’s statement was not, one should point out, the unvarnished, chapter-and-verse recitation of Israel-friendly policy views on substantive issues. He could have noted that only one of the two parties—the Palestinians—has refused to negotiate since last September. He might have specifically underscored the reality of a divided Palestine, in which a sizable part of the state seeking UN recognition is under the control of a terrorist movement committed to Israel’s (and the Palestinian Authority’s) destruction. He did not take the opportunity to clarify certain aspects of his parameters for peacemaking that he sidestepped in his May remarks, such as the eminently logical principle that Palestinian refugees will return to Palestine, not Israel, or the urgency of an agreement that ends the conflict and terminates all claims once and for all. He could have scolded many in the room, especially Arab states and their all-talk-but-no-action approach to the Palestinian state-building project. And he should have called specifically on rulers and peoples in countries that already have treaties with Israel (i.e., Egypt and Jordan) to strengthen the regional environment for peace by defending their strategic choice for peace, rather than letting it be the preferred pinata for discontent over domestic issues.

Still, those deficiencies only marginally detract from the declaratory power of his speech. Many factors may have motivated the president to make his passionate statement opposing Palestinian UN recognition, but whether it was born of high policy, moral conviction, or crass politics, it will be compared in the annals of America’s lonely defense of Israel at the United Nations alongside Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s castigation of the Zionism-is-Racism resolution during the Ford administration, and John Negroponte’s declaration during the George W. Bush administration that the United States would veto any Security Council resolution on the Middle East conflict that failed to condemn terrorism against Israel.

Beyond the peace process, the more substantial critiques of the president’s speech concern the following:

● On Iran, the president could spare just one bland sentence; he passed on the opportunity of linking Iran’s atrocious human rights record with the equally atrocious repression of Iran’s only Arab ally, Syria; and he offered no specific suggestion on ways to impose what he called “greater pressure and isolation” on their nuclear program. The rhetorical sidelining of the multifaceted challenge posed by Iran was the most disappointing—and worrying—aspect of the speech.

● On Syria, the president talked of the need for rhetorical measures—“we must speak with one voice... [and] stand with the Syrian people”—but he offered no glimpse of U.S. commitment to take practical measures to protect innocent Syrians from the brutality of their government, such as the creation of internationally protected humanitarian zones on Syria’s borders or the formation of a formal contact group to engage with the Syrian opposition.

● On support for Arab transitions to democracy, Obama confirmed that America’s cupboard is bare and there is little to spare. Whereas he spoke in May 2011 of supporting Egypt and Tunisia with “trade, not just aid,” there was no mention of aid at all in yesterday’s remarks, just “greater trade and investment.”

● As is now customary in the president’s speeches on the Middle East, he boldly affirmed America’s commitment to a range of “universal rights” (about women, religious tolerance, etc.) but never mentioned a country in which these rights are routinely and legally denied—Washington’s premier Arab ally, Saudi Arabia.

● And in the a-bit-too-much category, the president could not restrain himself from three specific references to Usama bin Laden, as if the assembled gathering needed multiple reminders that he was the commander-in-chief who ordered the raid on the compound in Abbottabad.

Taken together, the president’s words on the broader Middle East lacked both the power and the import of his passionate statement on behalf of Israel. That is almost surely the way he planned it.

We shall see what we shall see. Will Obama’s sudden counter-instinctive respect for Israel’s predicament be long-lasting? Will Israel see Obama’s shift as both grave and truthful? Will it, can it aim to reinforce that change? How does he deal with his own sensibility and his many anti-Semitic allies so at odds with the millennial journey of Zion to the State of the Jews?

Martin Peretz is editor-in-chief emeritus of The New Republic.

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124 comments

Hmmm... See, I think the issue here is that you seem to think that Obama should give a fuck about what you think. Someone should check your diapers.

- bunthorne

September 24, 2011 at 12:22am

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"Let us be honest with ourselves: Israel is surrounded by neighbors that have waged repeated wars against it. Israel’s citizens have been killed by rockets fired at their houses and suicide bombs on their buses. Israel’s children come of age knowing that throughout the region, other children are taught to hate them. Israel, a small country of less than eight million people, looks out at a world where leaders of much larger nations threaten to wipe it off of the map. The Jewish people carry the burden of centuries of exile and persecution, and fresh memories of knowing that six million people were killed simply because of who they are. Those are facts. They cannot be denied. The Jewish people have forged a successful state in their historic homeland. Israel deserves recognition. It deserves normal relations with its neighbors. And friends of the Palestinians do them no favors by ignoring this truth, just as friends of Israel must recognize the need to pursue a two-state solution with a secure Israel next to an independent Palestine." Could Marty find another speech like it that not only supports the Jewish nation, but was delivered in an international forum by a President of the US? I doubt it. Yet Peretz goes on to cast doubt on his sincerity: "Well, for the first time the president had actually been honest with himself, not totally honest, to be sure, but honest enough, giving him the undeserved benefit of the doubt." It must have been very, very, painful for Peretz to admit that he was wrong about Obama. What a pusillanimous spirit he has.

- arnon

September 24, 2011 at 12:26am

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Turkey just announced an arms embargo on Syria.

- K2K

September 24, 2011 at 12:30am

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Peretz has not been wrong about Obama past two years. Obama should have made THIS speech in 2009. Long overdue. Maybe he finally noticed that Israel is really close to the Suez Canal. (sarcasm intended)

- K2K

September 24, 2011 at 12:34am

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This is a very catty article, that takes snide shots at Obama in the same sentences as it offers support. Frankly, it needed an editor. Who vetted this piece, anyway? You're not doing Marty any favors by letting him put himself out like this. There's nothing explosive here, but this sort of petty-sounding writing is how he got himself in trouble not so long ago. I agree, though, with the insight that things would've gone rather better if Obama had made this speech two years earlier. It's sad.

- Curran1

September 24, 2011 at 2:35am

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Yup, best thing for Israel is to stand in the way of Palestinian statehood as long as possible with only the US supporting it. Then wait until the international pressure becomes overwhelming and the US grows tired of the cost and will no longer exercise its veto. Or the international consensus becomes strong enough to move against Israel without waiting on the US. Fools believe that time is on Israel's side and that anything that induces or eases Israeli procrastination is good, as long as blame can be laid, however persuasively or unpersuasively, at the feet of the Palestinians. Have we seen any fools around here? Just back from Israel this week where I attended my nephew's wedding. My sister, who made aliya to help found a kibbutz in the desert 34 years ago, with three kibbutz-raised children, one a decorated officer, the third about to leave the army, grandmother to two, doesn't bother any longer to discuss much with regard to the occupation, the settlements, the behavior of Netanyahu et alia. She just says this, "This country is fucked." I live in Manhattan at the moment, having lived in Paris before that. There seem to be more Israelis living here and in Paris than in Tel Aviv. I wonder why.

- roidubouloi

September 24, 2011 at 7:58am

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I remember reading somewhere that Obama adamantly refused to include in his Cairo speech a statement that referred to Jewish connection to the land. This was not just an oversight. It was a deliberate omission. Shades of Rashid Khalidi, from whom Obama got his main understanding of the I/P conflict. Like Peretz, I'm sceptical about Obama's intention of staying the course charted in the UN speech. He has not had a change of heart. He has advisers worried about his second term election. But I don't agree that malevolence. played a role in his comportment with Israel. He really dislikes Netanyahu (as many here on TNR do, maybe because it is the fashionable thing to do) and he doesn't have a spontaneous and intuitive good will towards the Jewish state. I don't think he really gets it. In Israel there was an outpouring of gratitude towards him after his intervention on behalf of the besieged embassy personnel, who were facing very real danger of being lynched. Now this speech and the just published information that he approved the sale of bunker busters to Israel's air force seem to have yielded more admiration for the president. See this: http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0911/A_different_image_of_Obama_in_Israel.html

- noga1

September 24, 2011 at 8:08am

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Here is what my favourite Israeli journalist, Ben-Dror Yemini, writes: http://www.nrg.co.il/online/1/ART2/289/314.html אלא שאבו מאזן התעקש. הוא דחה את כל הצעות הפשרה. נתניהו אמר כן. אולי מאוחר, אבל עדיף מאוחר מאשר אף פעם לא. זו הסיבה האמיתית לנאום הפרו-ישראלי משהו של אובמה. כי זה היה הסיפור תמיד. עשרות שנים אמרה ישראל כן, והפלסטינים אמרו לא. ישראל שגשגה. הפלסטינים הנחיתו על עצמם נכבה ועוד נכבה. בשנתיים האחרונות, צריך להזכיר, הגיעו הפלסטינים להישגים די רציניים בזירה הבינלאומית. נתניהו הצטייר כסרבן. הצמד אבו מאזן וסלאם פיאד הצטיירו כרודפי שלום. היה פער אדיר בין מה שהצטייר בזירה הבינלאומית לבין המציאות. אבל אבו מאזן היה חכם יותר. הוא סמך על נתניהו שיאמר לא. זה קרה יותר מדי פעמים בשנתיים האחרונות. לא בשבועיים האחרונים. גם אבו מאזן וגם נתניהו שינו כיוון. אבו מאזן הפך לסרבן. נתניהו גילה גמישות. Abu Mazen insisted. He rejected any proposal for compromise. Netanyahu said Yes, maybe a bit late but better too late than never. That's the real reason behind Obama's somewhat pro-Israeli speech. This has always been the case: For decades Israel said yes and the Palestinians said no. Israel thrived, while Palestinians brought upon themselves one disaster after another. In the last two years, it must be mentioned, Palestinians have made some very impressive gains in the international arena. Netanyahu was perceived to be a rejectionist while the duo abu-Mazen and Sallem Fayad were seen as peace lovers. There was a huge gap between this international perception and the reality, but Abu Mazen was the wiser one. He relied on Netanyahu to say No. This happened repeatedly in the last two years. Not in the last two weeks, though. Both Abu Mazen and Netanyahu changed course. Abu Mazen became the rejectionist. Netanyahu projected flexibility. (Hastily translated by Noga)

- noga1

September 24, 2011 at 8:28am

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We will see before long how successfully Netanyahu's illusion of flexibility has persuaded the world.

- roidubouloi

September 24, 2011 at 9:27am

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Everything that Obama said at the UN, he has, at one time or the other, said in different forums before, albeit not in one speech. I remember him talking long ago about the danger posed to Israeli children by Hamas rockets, and he noted his own daughters and how intolerable it would be for him to live under such conditions. Perhaps someone on this board remembers. The fact remains that aside from his magnified pressures on Bibi to relent on Settlements, and his hard push for movement on peace negotiation, this president has been, quietly, very steady and resolute in support of Israel on security matters, much so than the Israeli-beloved W Bush, of whom should be noted as having dragged his feet on selling Israel those bunker-buster bombs mentioned by noga. Obama approved the sale as soon as he took office. But then Bush, unlike Obama, had a special and secret wink-and-nod agreement that allowed Sharon and succeeding Israeli prime ministers to do whatever they wanted with regard to the Palestinians. That, of course, trumps anything in the eyes of Obama haters.

- scrubby

September 24, 2011 at 9:50am

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"I remember him talking long ago about the danger posed to Israeli children by Hamas rockets, and he noted his own daughters and how intolerable it would be for him to live under such conditions. Perhaps someone on this board remembers. " That was during his visit to Israel as a presidential candidate, when he was trying to reassure American Jews or Jewish Americans, that he cared for Israel in the gut level. It was a nice thing to hear but his more sincere gut levels emerged in his Cairo speech and the demand to stop building "settlements" in Jerusalem.

- noga1

September 24, 2011 at 10:08am

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and doing the wrong thing for America

- MSA70

September 24, 2011 at 10:25am

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The antipathy to Netanyahu is fully warranted. Like many politicians, his main objective appears to be staying in power, which puts him in hock to Avigdor Lieberman, one of whose prices is the continuation of the settlement policy. The option of exploring a more benign coalition with Tippi Livni is unthinkable, and so the deadlock abides. Peretz does not discuss the toxic impact of Netanyahu's political alliance to the execrable Lieberman other than referring to the latter as "fascist". Does he think a coalition government with a "fascist" and the consequent continuation of the expansion of settlements are no big deal?

- JackR

September 24, 2011 at 11:06am

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"The antipathy to Netanyahu is fully warranted. Like many politicians, his main objective appears to be staying in power,..." Absolutely; Netanyahu's policies revolve around his need to keep his coalition alive. This is more important to him than the long term safety and security of Israel.

- arnon

September 24, 2011 at 11:30am

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The first thing I thought of, when I saw a part of Obama's U.N. speech, was Marty. Then I saw Netanyahu personally give Obama a "badge of honor." At least Mr. Peretz kinda sorta admitted he was wrong--a bit. Progress is progress. But progress in the Middle East is in the two-steps-backward phase. Abbas tried to circumvent negotiations with the U.S. and Israel for statehood by going directly to the mostly anti-Semitic U.N. And the West Bank settlers continue to dig a twelve-mile-deep line in the sand. I saw a documentary about the settlers a while back and their religious fanaticism makes the Christian Right in America look like the Voice of Reason. Only radical Islamists are kookier. Of course, it would make you kooky to insist on staying where you are threatened on two sides, front and rear.

- magboy47.

September 24, 2011 at 11:32am

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it is important to note that BHO has no strong feelings about anything. He fits the person described by a previous president of Mexico Luis Echeverria Alvarez in the 1970's, he said: " We are neither of the left nor of the right but all the contrary". BHO has carried the status quo inherited from the Bush administration, has done nothing but nothing to make any changes. On the economy and on foreign relations he has been surrounded by Bill Clinton's people. On Nethanyauh he followed Bill Clintons animosity. At that time Nethanyauh was voted down by the Israeli people for mainly domestic reasons reasons. This time the policy has failed since Nethanyauh is quite popular in Israel . As recent as this week Bill Clinton declared that Nethanyauh is responsible for the failures of achieving peace with the Palestinians. The question is who should be president in 2012. The Chicago Tribune has come out asking BHO to step aside and offers Hillary Rodham Clinton to take the leadership of the democratic party. It is mainly based on the poor economic situation. However HRC will bring the same failed advisors of Bill Clinton. On the republican side Mitt Romney sound the best, independents are giving him the thumbs up. It would be a disaster if the republicans choose Perry and the tea party philosophy. Look at how nefarious are John Bonner and Eric Cantor and Mitch McConnell true enemies of the middle class. My favorite people are Bill Bradley the previous senator of New Jersey or Condoleezza Rice the former secretary of state. But this is wishful thinking. The bottom line is we need a change for the better.

- JAIMECHUCH

September 24, 2011 at 11:40am

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It is only because of relentless Israeli propaganda, abetted by the US, that a large group of people has come to believe that Palestinian statehood ought properly to be negotiated with Israel. Why would that be? The land in which Palestinian wishes to declare a state recognized by the world is land given to the Arabs in the UN Partition. They have the same right as the Palestinian Jews to declare their state there. Did Israel negotiate its statehood with the Arabs? It is the Arab position that Israel was created without their consent and hence is illegitimate. Is this really the Israeli view now? Beyond that, Israel and the US have so far perverted rational discourse in the service of Israeli colonial ambition that it is now regarded by them as illegitimate that the Palestinians seek to use the machinery of international law, created by the world as an alternative to violence. Obama says it is the wrong forum. To the contrary, it is precisely the right forum being used for its very intended purpose. It is none of Israel's business whether the Palestinians declare a state that is recognized by the world, and if Israel really desires peace it should welcome this development, except that Israel fears that the Palestinians will then have access to the machinery of international law to remove Israel's illegal settlement of Palestinian land. So be it. That is why we have law as an alternative to violence and military power. But if you are in the wrong, you cannot be confident of succeeding before the law. Israel holds Palestine hostage in the effort to force the Palestinians to relinquish their claims west of the Green Line and to legitimize Israel's illegal settlements. When the Palestinians go to the legal authorities for relief, Israel cries foul. Israel wants to be given a free hand to extract what it will in exchange for releasing the hostages. This has nothing to do with security and everything to do with Israel's ambitions to take pieces of Palestine east of the Green Line while excluding Palestinians from returning to land they left west of the Green Line. Does it really seem plausible that Israel can have it both ways, forcibly returning Jews to the east in the Arab partition while excluding Arab returnees from the Jewish partition in the west? Only if Israel can succeed in holding the Palestinians hostage. I don't think they will. The handwriting is on the wall despite bold speeches. It should not be forgotten that in the early days of settlement, when they were questioned as a violation of international law, Israel said they were not because not permanent, subject to removal in the context of settlement. Now Israel refuses to negotiate turning back to the Palestinians land that is indubitably theirs. The Arab accusations of Israel perfidy were right all along. The bill is coming due. With the support of the US, Israel resists settling up. It won't last, and it is a shameful position for the Jewish people to be taking with regard to others.

- roidubouloi

September 24, 2011 at 12:40pm

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Is no one at TNR mortified to have something this poorly written appear under the magazine's masthead? Some highlights: 1) "Turkey is the big new actor over Palestine." ["Big new actor over", huh? It that what "actor"s do? They "over"?] 2) "I don’t imagine that the president cottoned lightly to the tactics and strategy of his own U.N. speech. It was not his natural bearing or disposition." [This is typical of Peretz' problem using antecedents at, oh say, the 10th grade level. The singular "it" and its attendant verb "was" can only refer to the singular "speech", but Peretz means "tactics and strategy." A grammar horror show. It still would be an awful sentence if you attempted to fix it - it still wouldn't work! - as Peretz is making no effort to connect the words of one sentence to the words of the previous one via the conventions of the language! Rather he's just free associating! This is just embarrassing.] "Had Obama done something like this before he would have reassured the lovers of Zion, the many tens of millions in America, and similar numbers elsewhere that all of his talk about statehood for the Palestinians was not just about satisfying their grievances but also calming the deep foreboding of the Jewish commonwealth that practical arrangements will not be made to balance the obvious instability of Arab countries and present Muslim civilization." [Another horror.] GET MARTY AN EDITOR!!!! GET MARTY AN EDITOR!!! GET MARTY AN EDITOR!!! Trust me, this kind of illiterate affected rambling does not help Israel or the magazine.

- mtinora@me.com

September 24, 2011 at 1:50pm

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since the map of Abbas' "State of Palestine" includes all of Israel, perhaps Israel should go on offense and formally annex Judea and Samaria - then the map duel, sans Gaza because no one wants Gaza, can begin anew. The NASA satellite debris apparently fell over the Pacific Ocean. Too bad - I was hoping G-d would have sent at least one big piece directly into Abbas' house in Ramallah :) as for those bunker buster bombs? Bush43 had deployed them to US base on Diego Garcia. I am not sure I trust what the NYT publishes anymore, especially when it has anything remotely connected to Israel.

- K2K

September 24, 2011 at 2:04pm

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“It is only because of relentless Israeli propaganda, abetted by the US, that a large group of people has come to believe that Palestinian statehood ought properly to be negotiated with Israel. Why would that be? The land in which Palestinian wishes to declare a state recognized by the world is land given to the Arabs in the UN Partition.” The Arabs rejection of the UN plan and attacks on the new Jewish State made the origin UN plan null and void. Subsequent to the events of 48 the world recognized Israel while the Arabs occupied the West Bank and Gaza. To suggest that Israel go back to the 1948 formula is like suggesting that Europe go back to its post WW1 Status. War always changes maps and the aggressor have no claims on territories they lost because of aggression. This is why the PA needs to negotiate with Israel its borders before it declares itself a State. It’s true though that the Netanyahu government has been placing obstacles to such negotiations, but so have the Palestinians. The Quartet need to be more assertive and force the parties to start negotiations; they did make such a declaration yesterday but I am skeptical that they will press the parties too hard. It’s in Israel’s long term interest to have a stable Palestinian State as a neighbor.

- arnon

September 24, 2011 at 2:05pm

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Grimes, stop kvetching. If you don't like TNR, quit reading it.

- arnon

September 24, 2011 at 2:08pm

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Anon, If you don't like my comments stop reading them. How's that for advice?

- mtinora@me.com

September 24, 2011 at 2:16pm

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Except that the days in which war always changes boundaries are behind us. We have the UN and the UN charter. Resolution 242 recites the "inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war." Although its occupation of the West Bank is legitimate, Israel has no right to settle the West Bank because it can make no unilateral claim to that territory under resolution 242. Settlement of territory not its own, occupied territory, is a violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention. Israel thus has no right to demand the legitimation of its settlement as a condition for its withdrawal. We do not live in the same world in which we lived in 1948. Resolution 242 left open the possibility of negotiated borders other than along the Green Line for the purposes of security. It did not allow Israel to claim any part of the West Bank for any other purpose. There is no plausible argument that the amoeba-like intrusions of the settlements into the West Bank are necessary for Israel's security. There is a good argument that some sort of control over the Jordan is. Israel can maintain its occupation until its neighbor accepts a peace and there are acceptable security arrangements in place. It cannot maintain its occupation until such time, if any, as the Palestinians legitimate the settlements or concede their claimed right of return. The potential for that claim to be a problem for Israel is precisely why Israel needs peace and needs to use the opportunity of negotiations to extinguish that claim. Trading the settlements for the abandonment of that claim would be smart. The Palestinians will have to get something to abandon their claims. Netanyahu, with his "recognize the Jewish state" formula, deludes himself and Israel that it can be had for nothing. He likewise deludes himself that "agreed upon land swaps" can mean Israel gets the settlements it wants in exchange for land that the Palestinians don't want. To get the settlements, Israel has to offer something that the Palestinians want. That's what negotiation means. Bargain for exchange. It is because he will not offer any bargain for exchange, anything the Palestinians want, that Netanyahu sabotages negotiations. Instead, he hopes to bargain their statehood for what he wants. That has been rejected three times and the machinery of international law will render it impossible. In the meantime, Netanyahu gets nothing that Israel needs. He dithers and preaches justification back to the time of the pharaohs as if that were relevant. All for a few apartments in the West Bank.

- roidubouloi

September 24, 2011 at 2:58pm

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Roi, unfortunately, it's not just a few apartments in the West Bank. There are now 500,000 Israelis living over the 67 borders. I agree with you absolutely, but how Netanyahu can make this bargain without civil war is beyond me. You realize there are religious/right wing soldiers who will simply not remove settlers from their homes if it comes to that. What could Israel possibly offer at this time that the Palestinians would accept? Also, bringing up The United Nations is laughable, as far as the Israelis are concerned. Their very anti-Semitic history makes it too easy for Israelis to write them off, even if right is on the UN's side.

- MOLLYSIMON

September 24, 2011 at 3:33pm

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It is not acceptable to say that Israel cannot make peace without civil war being waged by right-wing fanatics any more than it is acceptable to say that the Palestinians cannot make peace because there will be civil war among them. This holds peace hostage to whatever the most extreme elements in each society will accept. Can the Palestinians refuse to make peace on any terms not acceptable to Hamas? Just as the Palestinian refugees must in the end bear the burden of the illegal acts of Arab governments, so too the settlers must in the end bear the burden of the illegal acts of Israel. The difficulty posed by the settlers and refugees has a very obvious solution, however. So obvious that I continue to believe it will in the end be the solution however long it takes to get there. Israel can agree to accept a number of returnees equal to the number of settlers that Palestine will accept as permanent residents there. Why should there not be a Jewish majority in Palestine as there is an Arab minority in Israel? The claim is made that they could never be secure. I doubt that. If the settlements maintained were close to the border, a physical threat to them could be met by the IDF, only a few miles away, with the implicit understanding that the consequence of reinvasion would be permanent annexation. I think the Palestinians would not be willing to let that happen. As to Jerusalem, an Arab East Jerusalem that is an enclave surrounded by Israeli territory would allow the city as a whole to be open. Necessary border control would be exercised beyond the city therefore allowing its existing residents and admitted guests to move freely within Israel as they can today. For the Jewish inhabitants of Hebron, I would demand a sovereign enclave analogous to that of East Jerusalem. If either the settlers or the Hebron enclave were threatened, not only would Israel by in a position quickly to annex the settlements but could effectively annex East Jerusalem by closing its border. Again, I don't think the Palestinians would willingly allow that to happen. Perhaps the settlers would then stay. Perhaps they would choose to leave rather than live as a minority. Their plight deserves no more sympathy than that of the Palestinian refugees. The did not move from homes in Israel proper under threat. There are minority populations all over the former Yugoslavia. We expect them to be protected. We did not allow the borders of the states that emerged to be drawn based on purely ethnic lines.

- roidubouloi

September 24, 2011 at 4:47pm

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Laughing at the UN is fine, but the geopolitical realities are what they are regardless of such laughter. That includes the reality of the UN.

- roidubouloi

September 24, 2011 at 4:48pm

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I am not talking about acquiring territory through war. 242 also states that Israel should withdraw from territories conquered in the 67 war. Adjustments are permissible. many US presidents and others have recognized this. The land on which most of the settlers live can be exchanged for Israeli land. I don't see the settlers as an obstacle to peace. Most of them are not there for ideological reasons. Moreover the Labor party though a minority at the moment has chosen a new leader, a woman, who has spoken of the settlers not as enemies of peace but as partners in a peace process. She came out against boycotts of settlements. She is treating them like fellow Israelis an human beings. This is long overdue in leftists circles in Israel. I have a hunch that the next election in Israel will produce radical changes, but this is in the future.

- arnon

September 24, 2011 at 4:53pm

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The land on which most of the settlers live can be exchanged for Israeli land if Israel were to offer land that the Palestinians want. Instead Israel offers bits of desert that no one wants. That is not "mutually agreed land swaps." Israel is not prepared to offer anything that anyone wants, only what neither it nor the Palestinians want so long as the square footage comes out the same. Do you think you could trade a piece of a slum in Brooklyn for an apartment on Park Avenue of equal area? Adjustments to accommodate illegal settlement were not contemplated by 242. The settlements have always been regarded as illegal by the entire world, including the US until Ronnie Ouiji-board Reagan decided we should stop expressing an opinion on the legalities.

- roidubouloi

September 24, 2011 at 5:17pm

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Yom Kippur came two weeks early for BHO.

- SFergessen

September 24, 2011 at 5:22pm

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the 1948 armistice line aka 1967 green line can NOT apply to Jerusalem, yet Abbas was very clear in his UN speech yesterday that Jerusalem only has historical links for muslims and, um, christians. Jerusalem is NOT a settlement.

- K2K

September 24, 2011 at 7:36pm

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...The antipathy to Netanyahu is fully warranted. Like many politicians, his main objective appears to be staying in power, which puts him in hock to Avigdor Lieberman, one of whose prices is the continuation of the settlement policy. The option of exploring a more benign coalition with Tippi Livni is unthinkable, and so the deadlock abides... Jack, why is that option unthinkable? Was it not Livni who refused, for reasons of her own political agenda, to form a coaltion with Netanyahu when he approached her to do that, thus pushing him into Lieberman's arms? What the dynamics between Netanyahu and Livni in this regard are now, I do not know.

- basman

September 24, 2011 at 7:51pm

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Livni got more seats in the 09 elections than Netanyahu's party did. Still she wasn't able to form a coalition as she refused to allow some of the right wing parties that joined the Netanyahu led government. There were too many disagreements in policy for her to join his government with some of the other parties.

- arnon

September 24, 2011 at 10:36pm

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The following reflects on what really matters: http://www.hudson-ny.org/2362/us-eu-funding-palestinian-repression Roid: when you engage in your lawfare against Israel, you are helping the forces of the Palestinian national movement against those who like Majdoleen Hassouneh only seek to uncover the truth about what is happening in their society. With Arab societies casting off the yoke of dictatorial regimes, why do you seek to put one Arab society under the dictatorial thumb of a new regime? With Mubarak rightly being called out for outlawing all opposition except the Muslim Brotherhood so that he could say to the West that if he falls the Muslim Brotherhood would take over, why is it that no one utters a peep when Arafat and Abbas do the exact same thing? Don't give any of your "it's not good that the PA does this, but it doesn't excuse Israel's occupation." The solution you want to impose would exacerbate what I describe, any notion otherwise is fantasy.

- sighthnd

September 25, 2011 at 12:32am

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Jerusalem was also not in the Arab partition, K2K, as it was not in the Jewish partition. I really have no idea what you are talking about sighthnd. International political and legal institutions are the alternative to war. That is why they were created. That is what they offer, however imperfectly, while preserving the right to self defense, not the right to colonize another people. As for what helps or hurts Israel, it is my conscientiously held opinion that those who cling to the execrable settlement policy are in the process of destroying Israel. The regime in the West Bank, in which different citizens enjoy different law and different rights based on who they are, is in truth much too close to apartheid now and on its way fully there. Becoming the next apartheid regime in the world will be a disaster for Israel. Any notion otherwise is a fantasy.

- roidubouloi

September 25, 2011 at 1:07am

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The issue at the time Netanyahu declined to form a coalition with Kadima, in favor of the right-wing extremists with whom he is more comfortable, is that Netanyahu was still publicly resisting a two-state solution that he now claims to have advocated all along. How soon we forget.

- roidubouloi

September 25, 2011 at 1:11am

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Netanyahu could form a coalition but Livni wanted to the top job for herself, uncompromisingly. As i said repeatedly here, Livni is well liked in Israel but she does not enjoy their trust. She occupies the same spot that Peres used to before he gave up on his hope to ever be elected PM. The Israelis respect him and owe him a debt for serving but they won't trust him with the leadership of the nation. Livni is not trusted. Netanyahu is not well liked as far as affection goes but he is trusted; that is why he could form a coalition and a pretty stable one, at that - no mean feat in Israeli politics. Livni should have been less greedy. She should have put Israel's national interests before her personal ambition. I do not see her gaining enough power to form a coalition. She could of course try to form a coalition by including the Far-Leftist parties but then, you see why Israelis do not trust her if they even think that this is a possibility ...

- noga1

September 25, 2011 at 7:07am

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Here is an account of the failure to form a coalition in 2009, from a right-wing journal. Mentions the disagreement over the two-state solution, stating that Netanyahu opposed. No mention of disagreement over who would be PM. http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/feb/28/livni-shuns-netanyahu-coalition-offer/

- roidubouloi

September 25, 2011 at 8:52am

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Center-right? So what? A Democrat trying to lead as a warmed over Republican is a certain failure. Given a choice between a Republican and a Republican, the country will choose the Republican. So said Harry Truman. There is plenty of room between center-right and full-throated left or whatever it is you dislike. You prefer the wacko demonstrated failure of supply-side libertarian economics too. Got us into this problem and is making the hole deeper. You can't be popular with policies destined for visible failure unless the visibility is off in the indefinite future.

- roidubouloi

September 25, 2011 at 9:00am

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Oops. Sandbagged by TNR. Wrong thread. :-)

- roidubouloi

September 25, 2011 at 9:01am

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"Here is an account of the failure to form a coalition in 2009, from a right-wing journal. Mentions the disagreement over the two-state solution, stating that Netanyahu opposed. No mention of disagreement over who would be PM." Yes, it was a question of principle and not just a "desire for power."

- arnon

September 25, 2011 at 9:58am

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"... but then, you see why Israelis do not trust her...." odd, she got more seats in the Knesset in the last election than did Netanyahu.

- arnon

September 25, 2011 at 10:01am

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The right wing has been trying to discredit any political party that isn't right wing: http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/the-incredible-shrinking-israeli-labor-party/?utm_medium=twitter Strange article since the Begin's party Herut was even more marginal than labor at one time. It wasn't till after the Yom Kippur war that Herut after consolidating with other small partied and formed the Likud bloc that they started making gains and eventually took power. In a parliamentary system small partied can become large ones and larger parties shrink to a couple of seats. That article on the Labor party today is trying to reassure its readers that Labor is irrelevant because they have a new leader who might attract new voters in the next election.

- arnon

September 25, 2011 at 10:11am

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Here is what I wrote at the time: As usual, personal ambition trumps national interest. The important thing was to form a government of national unity. The difference between Livni and Netanyahu is rather minuscule (she articulates in voice what is still only whispered in his mind) . But without her, he will have to form a government much more "rightist"and stiff-necked with Lieberman's party, about which I don't much know except what most people are saying (suspicion at best, loathing and fear at worst). It means too much leaning towards the Right and away from the Center, which is what Likkud and Kadima (and even Labour) voters indicated with their choice. I find it hard to believe that she can be so irresponsible at this juncture. To me it means that the general wish of the Israeli public for unity, centrism and accommodation will be ignored*. Without Kadima's pull to the Center/Left, Netanyahu will have much tougher time dealing with YB's demands. And here are two reports: http://www.cfr.org/israel/prospects-centrist-grand-coalition-israel/p18585 "At this moment, if Netanyahu had his choice, what would his government look like, do you think? I'm guessing that he would like to have a broad, centrist-based coalition. If he can form a centrist-based coalition, first of all that means he gets twenty eight seats from Kadima. With his twenty- seven, right there that's fifty-five, so he would have many choices to get the extra two or three seats. But in fact, with that kind of foundation, he might be able to get at least some of the thirteen Labor seats, and that would put him way over the seventy mark. So he wouldn't even need any other right-wing parties. He wouldn't need any other right-wing, or secular, or religious, or any other parties. If he had the three centrist parties together, that would be the strongest coalition, and most Israelis like that in terms of stability." http://www.voanews.com/english/news/a-13-2009-02-20-voa55-68715112.html "Livni, who had hoped to become prime minister herself, has shown little interest in joining Mr. Netanyahu's government. Officials say the two rivals may meet on Sunday to discuss the situation."

- noga1

September 25, 2011 at 11:08am

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Funny how we always run back to our past love affairs. Mr. Peretz is swooning at President Obama after a few flirty comments. The President has not done anything as Mr. Peretz claims, he has talked about doing something. And his 'Speech' came after he fouled up the Palestinain problem so badly. There should never had been the Palestinians submiting an application for Statehood. Imagine if they pulled a stunt like this on President Bush, he would have pulled the plug on those guys so fast it would have left them starving in Ramallah. On top of the fumbling of the Palestinians, this news came about two weeks after the New York debacle where the Democrats lost a solidly Democratic seat. The President has lost the Jewish voter and no one knows this better than Madame Clinton. The Secretary of State represented these voters as a Senator from New York and knows there are cetain expectations. While her foreign policy has not been effective, her experience on Domestic politics certainly came into play here with Obama's speech and outreach to the Jewish Community. Mr. Peretz may be fooled, but I am not. The Obama Administration does not consider Israel a priority right now. They are trying to fix their other middle eastern problems right now and Israel will be left to flounder.

- CRS9TNR

September 25, 2011 at 11:14am

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This is what LIvni had in mind when she refused to join a coalition with Netanyahu: http://www.cfr.org/israel/prospects-centrist-grand-coalition-israel/p18585 "For Livni, it's somewhat similar. She argues that Netanyahu will fail and we don't want to be part of that failure. If we're out of it, in fact he'll fail more quickly. A right-wing government led by Netanyahu with Lieberman as a necessary part of that coalition will not be able to last very long; it will get itself into conflicts with the United States, there will be increased pressure on Israel, and the government will not be able to manage the economy. And in the next election, they argue, Kadima under Tzipi Livni will come back and will have a larger margin of victory, and will be able to form the government." It should be noted that she miscalculated in a major way: The coalition is strong, Netanyahu has the trust of the people, the economy is doing well, and relationship with the US, though bumpy, is basically strong. If she had joined, perhaps the situation would have been even better. People should not forget that Livni is a Likud "princess" (both she and Netanyahu were raised on the myths and aspirations of Etzel. )

- noga1

September 25, 2011 at 11:23am

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CRS9TNR, Peretz is being sceptical, he is not swooning by any stretch of the imagination. But he gives credit when it is due. I happen to be just as sceptical. But no one can look into the seeds of time and see which grain will grow and which will not ...

- noga1

September 25, 2011 at 11:31am

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Before 1967 Arab Palestine was part of Jordan. It's important to recall that there was no incipient Palestinian state and none envisioned. Then Jordan, Egypt, and Syria invaded Israel and were routed in six days. A few years later the Arab League took negotiating rights away from Jordan and awarded them to the PLO, which was widely regarded as a terrorist organization. Might it have been easier for Jordan to negotiate an end to the occupation? The Abbas government is the successor to the PLO and inheritor of its dream of a Great Return, driving Israel and Israelis into the sea and reclaiming lost lands. Add to that, Palestinians have twice rejected credible offers of a two-state deal ("...never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity"). Granting roid's point that the ever-increasing expansion of the settlements is a bad idea for Israel, is it still not clear why Israel must err on the side of caution with concerns for its survival and security outweighing everything else? Israel's existential situation is a little like Paschal's wager: if you believe in God and you turn out to be mistaken, it's an intellectual loss but no big deal; whereas if you disbelieve in God and you are mistaken, you could be in big trouble. If Israel errs on the side of credulousness and misplaced trust, it and all Israelis could likewise be in big trouble. Until Palestinian leaders understand this, they will never get their state. And if you think, as I do, that they will never get it, or that politically they cannot afford to get it, then you agree with the Israeli who told me in 1986: "You Americans have a bias: you think all problems have a solution. This one doesn't."

- JackR

September 25, 2011 at 11:38am

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Not all problems have a solution. That does not mean that matters cannot be made worse. Israel makes matters worse and worse still less stable than they might be. That may yet prove very costly.

- roidubouloi

September 25, 2011 at 12:13pm

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""You Americans have a bias: " Not so much a bias as a sense of inviolable safety. Orwell criticized those pacifists in England who could be pacifists only because they had the sense of safety that comes from living on an island with a strong navy. Something somewhat similar with Americans who reside in a continent flanked by two harmless neighbours, oceans on each side and the strongest military in the world.

- noga1

September 25, 2011 at 12:25pm

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Jack R, your comment is right on. Being enthusiastic about Obama's speech at the UN doesn’t mean that one approves of everything Obama does or did. Obama has two problems, one is that he believes in compromise (sometime at any cost). This led him to a naive conviction that the Arabs if the US showed a willingness to push Israel would come accept Israel. On domestic issues it led him to believe that he could work with the Tea Party. The situations are analogous in that both the Arab rulers and especially masses (after years of indoctrination) are inflexible about compromising their own views. The same is true with the Tea party Republicans: they don’t want compromise they want to defeat Obama. The second problem is that Obama hs never held political power and he had to learn on the job the power and limits of anyone in an executive position. Had he been a CEO of a company or the Principal of a High School he would have had a better sense of what it means to be in charge. Still, I think he is learning. How well he can go against his ingrained desire for compromise is another matter. Time will tell. There is another issue to keep in mind. A President when he speaks for his country isn’t just speaking for himself. At the UN speech Obama committed the US to fight against antisemitism in the Arab world. So far it’s been words, it’s up to us to make sure that he shapes a policy that takes his commitment into consideration.

- arnon

September 25, 2011 at 12:56pm

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Finally, I agree with Roid when he says that Netanyahu has made things much worse by his own intransigence and unwillingness to compromise. What would happen if Netanyahu called Abbas’ bluff and decided yes I’ll stop construction in the settlements (no time limit) and see what the Palestinian chief liar does? The Quartet’s latest proposal which Israel accepted asked for immediate negotiations. Abbas rejected that saying that as long as Israel continues construction it will not sit down and negotiate. So let’s see what Abbas does if Netanyahu agrees? The Israeli PM wont’ lose much since if Abbas rejects restarting negotiations he would have exposed Abbas for the liar he is. And if he agrees the settlements will be one of the issues they will be negotiating about.

- arnon

September 25, 2011 at 12:58pm

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"This is what LIvni had in mind when she refused to join a coalition with Netanyahu" As is usual with this poster the link is irrelevant and doesn't tell what Livni "had i mind" when she rejected Netanyahu's offer. The link offers us an interview with a University Professor and not with Livni herself. This poster is quite the "mind reader."

- arnon

September 25, 2011 at 1:04pm

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Roi, I found nothing on the web supporting the idea that Livni wouldn't compromise for policiy reasons: From the New York Times: "Although Mr. Netanyahu launched an appeal around forming a government of national unity, Ms. Livni signaled that she was uninterested in joining any government that she did not head. Later in February, Kadima became the opposition party."

- MOLLYSIMON

September 25, 2011 at 1:24pm

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"This poster is quite the "mind reader." Anyone who was not braindead during the 2009 elections and their aftermath would know that the interviewed professor's assessments were perfectly accurate. But it would be too much to expect arnon to know this; he still thinks that Mapam and Mapai are active political parties today. It is pretty amazing to have someone try to rewrite past events in accordance with their current perceptions.

- noga1

September 25, 2011 at 1:31pm

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"... he still thinks that Mapam and Mapai are active political parties today." No more than you think that the Herut is an active party today. But to anyone like, Madame Noga, who "reads minds," facts don't matter.

- arnon

September 25, 2011 at 2:18pm

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" From the New York Times: "Although Mr. Netanyahu launched an appeal around forming a government of national unity, Ms. Livni signaled that she was uninterested in joining any government that she did not head. Later in February, Kadima became the opposition party."" The New York Times sometimes gets it right oftentimes they don't. Would be interesting to find out if they got it right this time.

- arnon

September 25, 2011 at 2:21pm

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"No more than you think that the Herut is an active party today." Wasn't it you, that explained your outlandish response to the suggestion that Obama was a Likkudnik that you would not have been so outlandish if the suggestion had been that Obama was a Mapamnik, or whatever. To me it meant that you probably do not differentiate among a few parties, past and present and still think in terms of Herut - Mapai. That is to say, quite passé, out of sinc with present realities and sensibilities, irrelevant, etc. This is getting very tedious and a waste of time.

- noga1

September 25, 2011 at 2:36pm

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Even if it were true that Livni would not join a government if she were not head, it would appear that the same could be said of Netanyahu, who won fewer seats than Kadima but was willing to cast his lot with the extreme right to be Prime Minister. Why isn't Netanyahu expected to act for the good of the nation, or is it simply understood that he won't? Here is quite a different account of Netanyahu's cynicism in terminating the negotiations for a coalition with Kadima. Nothing at all about Livni insisting on being the prime minister. http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Op-EdContributors/Article.aspx?id=196213

- roidubouloi

September 25, 2011 at 2:38pm

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http://www.sefardies.org/news-international/19581-as-netanyahu-faces-world-no-solidarity-from-livni "Netanyahu made extended overtures to Livni after he was elected in attempts to persuade her to join his coalition. She refused to do so unless he agreed to let her be prime minister as well, in a rotation agreement."

- noga1

September 25, 2011 at 3:15pm

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"Wasn't it you, that explained your outlandish response to the suggestion that Obama was a Likkudnik that you would not have been so outlandish if the suggestion had been that Obama was a Mapamnik, or whatever." As usual you drew the wrong conclusion from what was said. But never mind, Noga, you are never on my mind and I couldn't care less what is on yours.

- arnon

September 25, 2011 at 3:43pm

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"Noga, you are never on my mind " ?? What's that supposed to mean?

- noga1

September 25, 2011 at 4:02pm

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I think Livni did calculate wrongly. She could have joined the government, revealed that Netanyahu wasn't serious about peace or a two-state solution, then dropped out. But she looks bad for not even trying. And she certainly miscalculated about whether Netanyahu's government would hold up. Roi, I agree with you on what Israel should do. But Netanyahu is popular in Israel, so clearly the Israelis don't agree. When the Israelis protested this summer, it was about the economy. Nobody seemed to give a shit about the Palestinian question. And that was my earlier point--that politically speaking, what should happen is an impossibility. It's very easy for Livni to criticize the current the powers that be. She's not in office. Just like it's very easy for Repugs here to criticize the health care act, medicare, social security. If they really had power, I highly doubt that they'd fuck with any of the above. They really don't have the mandate. One could argue that Net. merely represents the country's political will. The polls may say that Israelis want a two-state solution, but when it comes down to it, the polls also reveal they're not willing to give much up for the solution. Could a true leader, an Ari Sharon, have done differently? Would he have done differently? I honestly don't know. And I'm not so convinced he would have gotten any further. The Pals refused the last offer. And it was a pretty good one. They could have had East Jerusalem as their capital. Under their own sovereignty. So one could argue that Abbas is also intransigent. Didn't Abbas fail to make any counter-offer to Israel the last round of negotiations? He could have said the Israelis weren't offering enough land in exchange. What stopped him from pushing? I really doubt the Pals want peace. This in no way means I think Israel should keep building. They shouldn't. And I'm not so sure we know what's going to happen should the Palestinians get their UN recognition. They may be just as fucked as before. Especially because Israel doesn't seem to mind being a pariah state. And in the meantime, Net. can keep building. With what army will the Pals. stop them? Yeah, eventually one day, the US may poop out on them. But it's not happening any time soon, and that's because of the political reality here. It ain't just some of the Jews who are pushing for Greater Israel. It's millions of Christian fundies.

- MOLLYSIMON

September 25, 2011 at 4:47pm

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"As for what helps or hurts Israel" My issue is what helps or hurts ordinary Palestinians who care more about their own well-being than about causing harm to Jews. Case in point, the journalist Majdoleen Hassouneh who sought to uncover what is happening to Palestinians in PA prisons, she became a target for disappearing. When she fled to avoid that fate, the PA arrested her brothers as hostages. What helps the PA against Israel hurts the likes of Hassouneh, and helping the PA against Hassouneh would only serve to create another regime like the ones that were toppled in the Arab spring. Apparently your view of what justice demands of Israel is so rigid that you don't care what actually happens to the Palestinians just so long as Abbas gets to put the Jews in their place.

- sighthnd

September 25, 2011 at 4:58pm

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I'm curious as to why some people always describe Netanyahu as politician who cares only about staying in power rather than as a patriot who tries to serve his country to the best of his abilities? Is it just a simple way of smearing his coalition and his politics and letting people know you're on the right side? After all, that great whore, the NYT, always describes him in this way. While we're at it, perhaps someone can explain why it's okay for Arabs to live west of the Green Line, but it's not okay for Jews to live east of the Green Line. Simple enough question, isn't it? Why is it that those who believe that Jews have a right to live in Hebron, for example, are considered "right-wing extremists"? Wouldn't it be more reasonable to describe those who believe a future Palestinian state should be free of Jews as "left-wing dopes, dupes, dummies and self-servicing dildoes?" When Abbas states as clearly as humanly possible that his future Palestinian state will not admit a single Jew, what's not to understand? When Netanyahu asks him repeatedly to say that he will accept a Jewish state living peacefully next door—and he repeatedly refuses—is it right-wing and racist for Israelis to recognize a hostile intent? What is it about ignoring past history and present reality that makes certain people feel so morally superior?

- willjames77

September 25, 2011 at 5:08pm

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Caroline Glick writes: From Israel's perspective, the best possible outcome of the current standoff at the U.N. is for the Palestinians to present their resolution for statehood to the Security Council and for the U.S. to immediately veto it. Such a move would provide closure to this particular round of anti-Israel aggression. But it certainly wouldn't end the danger. The Palestinians can renew their request as often as they please. And given the sympathetic -- indeed enthusiastic -- reception they have received at the U.N., there is little reason to doubt that they will do so. The worse scenario from Israel's perspective is quickly becoming the more likely one. That scenario is that the Security Council will not bring the Palestinian-statehood resolution to an immediate vote but will instead delay voting on it for an indeterminate period. During that period, the U.S. and the EU will exert massive pressure on Israel to capitulate to whatever Palestinian preconditions for renewing negotiations are on hand. Israel will face the prospect that if it fails to surrender to all the Palestinian demands, the U.N. will retaliate by passing the Palestinian-statehood resolution. At a minimum, Israel will find itself under a constant barrage of criticism blaming it for the Palestinian decision to abandon the peace process and ask the U.N. to grant them what they refuse to negotiate with Israel. All of this could have been averted or at least mitigated if the Obama administration had behaved differently. If the White House had announced at an early date that it would automatically veto any resolution calling for Palestinian U.N. membership and would end all U.S. financial and political support for the Palestinian Authority if it went through with its stated aim of applying for U.N. membership as a state, the Palestinians would likely have set aside their plans. But still today President Obama has refused to take any punitive action against the PA and, according to the New York Times, forced Israel to lobby Congress not to cut off foreign aid to the PA. http://www.onejerusalem.org/2011/09/caroline-glick-israel-loses-at.php

- willjames77

September 25, 2011 at 5:23pm

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"The Pals refused the last offer. And it was a pretty good one." I disagree. I think Abbas would have been a fool to accept Olmert's offer. The core of it remains this: Israel gets to keep its illegal settlements and landgrab east of the Green Line in what is unambiguously a part, but not all, of the Arab partition; the Palestinians extinguish their claimed right of refugees to return west of the Green Line. What makes that a good deal for the Palestinians? I wouldn't even consider accepting such a deal in their shoes. It is only Israelis who keep telling themselves what a generous offer this is because it in fact gives Israel everything it could hope to get from the situation given that a one-state solution is unacceptable. Such generosity. "Abbas states as clearly as humanly possible that his future Palestinian state will not admit a single Jew." And Netanyahu states as clearly as possible that his state will neither admit a Palestinian returnee nor abandon the bulk of the illegal settlements. What's not to understand? Perhaps a bargain for exchange in which the right of some Jews to live east of the Green Line in a Palestinian state is bartered for the right of some Palestinians to return west of the Green Line to the Jewish state actually makes sense, no? It would allow both sides to claim that they had compromised (painfully of course) but only in order to win one of their core demands not otherwise obtainable. The essence of a bargain. Trade a Palestinian East Jerusalem enclave for Israeli military control of the Jordan and the airspace in a demilitarized Palestine and you are done. What's not to understand? If one is interested in paying attention to history, one does have to acknowledge that there was an existing Arab population in Palestine when large numbers of Jews began to migrate in with the purpose of establishing both a Jewish homeland and a Jewish state. That is not without consequences. Or was ethnic cleansing an acceptable solution to that problem even before the Holocaust? "The country is theirs, because they inhabit it, whereas we want to come here and settle down, and in their view we want to take away from them their country, while we are still outside." David Ben Gurion I think that on balance the Arabs are on the wrong side of this argument because of the UN mandate and partition. The world has moved to a regime of law, if imperfectly. Thus, the Arabs must yield to the decision of the UN. But if Israel is founded in international law, then it must acknowledge the legitimacy of international law, or it is nothing more than a usurpation of the existing population that would be perfectly justified in resisting indefinitely its colonization. As or more important, while law and international institutions are the foundation of the stronger Jewish claim to a part of Palestine, peace remains impossible so long as Israelis refuse to recognize, as Ben Gurion did repeatedly, that the Arab grievance is not without foundation. Peace will not come by requiring the Palestinians to humiliate themselves and eat their grievance in its entirety, accepting both the extinguishment of their human rights claims in the west and their effective and final colonization in the east.

- roidubouloi

September 25, 2011 at 5:30pm

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Yes, of course. From Caroline Glick's point of view, the United States exists to be at the disposal of Israel. Who cares?

- roidubouloi

September 25, 2011 at 5:31pm

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What I care about, sighthnd, is the future of Israel. What offends me even more than Netanyahu's scummy dishonesty is his incredible stupidity. Ariel Sharon, who surely takes no back seat to Benjamin Netanyahu as a creator and defender of the State of Israel, was a big enough man both to see the truth and to act to reverse his own handiwork in order to save the state. He loved Israel more than he loved his own petty ego. Netanyahu is both too shallow and too stupid, a clod if there ever was one. That the Israeli electorate supports him is its shame to bear, as it was our shame to have allowed George W. Bush to steal an election and then to have voted for him. It is not primarily the burden of Israel or of the United States to create liberal democracy in Moslem nations. Their responsibilities are to their own peoples without behaving unjustly towards others to secure the well-being of their peoples. If in the process, they are an example for the world to emulate, good. But that too is not their principal responsibility.

- roidubouloi

September 25, 2011 at 5:37pm

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"But Netanyahu is popular in Israel, so clearly the Israelis don't agree. When the Israelis protested this summer, it was about the economy." Yes, the economy is going to be his Achilles' heel. People voted for Netanyahu because of his reputation as an economic wizard. In the past he was instrumental in a process of deregulation which freed the economy and created a kind of boom, especially in high tech. Still, as we are finding out in the US deregulation will only go so far. The effect of deregulation are a kind of stimulus but it's a one time event. Once you deregulate there is nothing more to deregulate. (Hence conservatives fanatics of the tea party kind fall back on deregulating social security and other government programs.) Now Netanyahu's as an economic wizard has been questioned by voters. The next election he will not have that card to play anymore. If in addition there occurs another intifada (which I hope it won't) Netanyahu will never get re-elected. As it is his chances for getting the votes he got last time are not good. I think Netanyahu knows that which is why he is holding on to his coalition. As to joining his government, Livni was wise not to. Does anyone here think that Lyndon Johnson would have joined a Goldwater administration? Or in more up to date terms would a Bush have joined a Gore administration? Their policy differences are to great for them to work together.

- arnon

September 25, 2011 at 6:13pm

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The above was addressed to Molly.

- arnon

September 25, 2011 at 6:13pm

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Super posting by Roi, as always on this issue. Such sound conviction, rooted in a wise Israeli family, is a credit to Israel.

- IggyPop

September 25, 2011 at 6:27pm

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Yes, Arnon, but Israel's is a coalition government. They've got one going on now in the United Kingdom--two very different parties working together. I'm not convinced as convinced of Livni's motivations, we'll just have to kind of disagree there. And I'm not convinced she'd be making any other kinds of deals. Israelis may want economic reform, but he got a huge bounce when he thumbed his nose at Obama last spring.

- MOLLYSIMON

September 25, 2011 at 6:33pm

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Yes, we'll disagree, Molly. Still, "Yes, Arnon, but Israel's is a coalition government. They've got one going on now in the United Kingdom--two very different parties working together." In economic terms the Liberals in Great Britain (they are classic liberals, not American type liberals) and the Conservatives are not that far apart. And sure, Netanyahu got a bounce. But when you bounce you still have to come down to earth. Bounces are only productive before an election.

- arnon

September 25, 2011 at 6:46pm

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Somehow, this got posted to another thread. Weird. Roi, my point is simply that Abbas failed to counter. And he continues to do so. Also, maybe the bargain wasn't so bad, from his P.O.V. Didn't I read that Wikileaks had some documentation that Abbas was going to sign? Not sure why he didn't, in the end, but there was clearly some willingness. As for anybody having a problem with the rhetoric of Juden-rein Palestine. I don't know how seriously that should be taken. On top of which, can anybody really blame them at this point? With this latest, very deep incursion into the West Bank? They are really powerless at this point.

- MOLLYSIMON

September 25, 2011 at 8:10pm

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I had the same weird problem earlier, Molly. Shanah tovah!

- roidubouloi

September 25, 2011 at 8:45pm

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Shanah Tova, to you, my friend.

- MOLLYSIMON

September 25, 2011 at 11:24pm

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As I think I asked not long ago, how can we expect the countries of the Middle East to live in peace in the real world, if we superior comment posters at TNR cannot post respectful comments to each other? Posted with great respect to all my fellow TNR subscribers.

- skahn

September 26, 2011 at 12:30am

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Framing one's opposition to Palestinian statehood purely on the grounds that it circumvents negotiations avoids the problem of its underlying morality, just as attacking Israel solely on the basis of international law sidesteps the morality of the settlements. Abbas is merely pursuing his parents' dream of a Jew-free Palestine, which is no less odious today than it was in the 1930s. For starters, let's consider the fate of ethnic minorities throughout the region who self-identify neither as Jewish nor Muslim, and who possess neither the numbers nor the clout to attain statehood. Take a group like the Samaritans, who number fewer than 800, most living outside Nablus. Like both the Israelis and the Palestinians, the Samaritans maintain they are contiguous descendants of the Israelites. They have a history of conflict with both Jews and Arabs, though for now they co-exist peacefully. Nevertheless, someone murderous and powerful enough could easily wipe all of them out. Obliteration is for them a greater possibility than for Arabs or Jews. I see no greater proof of the moral bankruptcy of Europe, and much of academia, than the widespread eagerness to confer statehood upon a regime with genocidal designs toward its neighbors. Instead of making recognition of Israel or Palestine a precondition for talks, let's talk about recognition of fundamental human rights, like the freedom to practice the religion of one's choice, or the freedom to be openly gay. What have the Palestinians done to merit statehood ahead of, say, the Kurds, the Uyghurs, the Tibetans, or the Taiwanese? Anyone who rationalizes a Judenfrei Palestine on the basis of settlements is saying, in effect, that discrimination against all Jewish people is permissible because of the behavior of certain Jewish people.

- drheingold

September 26, 2011 at 6:09am

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"When Abbas states as clearly as humanly possible that his future Palestinian state will not admit a single Jew, what's not to understand? When Netanyahu asks him repeatedly to say that he will accept a Jewish state living peacefully next door—and he repeatedly refuses—is it right-wing and racist for Israelis to recognize a hostile intent? " "Don't say these things to the world. Keep it to yourself." http://simplyjews.blogspot.com/2011/09/greater-goal.html

- noga1

September 26, 2011 at 8:12am

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"Don't say these things to the world. Keep it to yourself." And who said this? "I also want to mention a very difficult subject before you here, completely openly. It should be discussed amongst us, and yet, nevertheless, we will never speak about it in public."

- noga1

September 26, 2011 at 8:18am

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The Palestinians have already recognized Israel and its right to live in peace within secure boundaries. Abbas says that Israel can call itself whatever it wants, including "a Jewish state". The fact is at Israelnisna Jewish majority state. Also, it grows olives, people speak Hebrew, and it is hot. Must Abbas recognize Israel as a hot, olive-growing state where Hebrew is spoken? Must he join in the racist intentions of Netanyahu when there is a large Arab minority in Israel that is not Jewish? Is the US a "Christian state" because it has a majority Christian population? The response of American Jews to the periodic declarations of our religious rightwing crypto fascists at the US is a Christian state is to scream and publicly deplore, for very goodmreason. Beyond that, Michael Oren explained in the NYT in no uncertain terms that Netanyahu's demand, nonexistent in diplomatic practice, means that the Palestinians must concede their claimed right of return whereas Israel has already agreed that these claims are to be resolved as part of a finalmsettlement. Netanyahu is a crooknand a liar. No reason at all for Abbas to dance to the tune of this bum. He should continue to pursue hisnation's interests by any and all lawful means, ignoring the disgraceful claims of Israel's apologists thatbthisnis "law-fare". Law-fare created the State of Israel.

- roidubouloi

September 26, 2011 at 11:13am

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"What I care about, sighthnd, is the future of Israel." Then why do you insist on empowering someone who is intent on destroying Israel under the guise to the West of merely creating a state for his own people. We can debate that assessment, but if it is true, is it Israel's interests to accommodate Abbas? It might help Israel to defuse international pressure by creating a Palestinian state. But you have to weigh that against giving Abbas a tool by which to carry out his aims. You claim that Israel only has to grant the right of return because of the settlements. The Arabs don't say this. Their demand is for 100% of Jordan's 1949 conquests AND the right of return. "It is not primarily the burden of Israel or of the United States to create liberal democracy in Moslem nations." Is that a license to actively snuff it out? Further, it IS the role of Israel and the United States to empower members of the Muslim polity who accept basic notions of international liberalism such as the right of all peoples, Jews included, to enforce their rights of self-determination by means of having a state. "Their responsibilities are to their own peoples without behaving unjustly towards others to secure the well-being of their peoples." Empowering Palestinians who accept on principle the right of Jewish self-determination helps secure the well-being of Israel. If the means of doing so involves suppressing their co-nationalists who in addition to rejecting such rights whenever westerners are not around are also modeled on the tyrannical regimes overthrown in the Arab spring, then is that acting unjust to the other in advancing one's interest? "The Palestinians have already recognized Israel and its right to live in peace within secure boundaries" Have they done so in Arabic? If they recognize Israel's right to live in peace, why teach their people that the Jews' connection to the land is a lie? Why teach that the length of Palestine's coast is the distance from Rafah to Rosh Hanikra? You also ignore the reason why it is necessary to recognize Israel as a Jewish state, even though no other state is formally recognized in ethnic terms in international diplomacy. No one questions the right of the Chinese people to enforce their self-determination by means of a state. No one questions the right the Pakistani Muslims to enforce their self-determination by means of a state. Only the Jews have their right to enforce their self-determination questioned. That is why the Jews need the protection of an official agreement that they have that right.

- sighthnd

September 26, 2011 at 12:08pm

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"Law-fare created the State of Israel." "Law-fare" didn't create the State of Israel. The Jews did that who from the first aliyah in the late 19c to 1948 and subsequent aliyahs worked the land they bought, built cities on it and set up a civilian infrastructure and a legal system. By the time the UN voted for partition there already was a de-facto State in place. All the UN did is to legitimate what was already in place. Without all the prior work no declaration would have created a "Jewish State."

- arnon

September 26, 2011 at 12:13pm

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"The Palestinians have already recognized Israel and its right to live in peace within secure boundaries." Is this what you mean? http://israelseen.com/2011/09/26/palestinian-authority-map-at-un-erases-all-of-israel/

- sighthnd

September 26, 2011 at 12:32pm

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"What have the Palestinians done to merit statehood ahead of, say, the Kurds, the Uyghurs, the Tibetans, or the Taiwanese?" That's easy, doc, nothing. But statehood is not obtained or granted because the people who live in a particular place have passed a test of moral probity. It is gained by establishing a functioning polity and gaining recognition by neighbors and by international institutions of the real social and political situation on the ground. South Sudan made itself a nation-state by way of a struggle of many years, in which neither side could claim unsullied virtue, that eventually came to the moment at which statehood was the only real resolution. Croatia and Bosnia came into being because the hitherto existing polity collapsed into violence and could not be restored. One can point to the many actual and potential evils of a Palestinian nation-state, but they do not per se invalidate the Palestinian claim to that status, which is both part of the original 1948 UN resolution and the only universal form that marries identity and sovereignty. And yes, for some nations like the Kurds, the deck is stacked against them, unfortunately.

- ironyroad

September 26, 2011 at 1:32pm

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BFD, sighthnd. Jews also lay claim to all of the territory shown on that Palestinian map. Look right here: http://israelinsider.net/photo/albums/israels-story-in-maps-focus-on No sign of Palestine anywhere on those maps. If there is to be peace, must religious Jews first stop referring to Judea and Samaria? If either of the Koreas publishes a map that calls the whole Korean peninsula Korea, does either North or South Korea therefore no longer exist as a polity and a full member of the United Nations? Long after two-states are established, Arabs will continue to refer to all of the area between the Mediterranean and the Jordan as "Palestine" based on their version of history. And zealous Jews will continue to refer to the same area as Israel, or Judea and Samaria, or whatever suits their fancy based on their version of history. Big deal. This is quite on a par with the Israeli narrative that the land was essentially empty when Jews arrived, worked the land, built cities, created a state (which would not have come into being without the legal authority of the UN, the sovereign in that region). Contrary to your convenient narrative, there are lots of states whose legitimacy is questioned on ethnic and historical grounds of some sort. See for example all of the former Yugoslavia. No one thinks it necessary that all inhabitants of the former Yugoslavia agree on a shared historical narrative as a precondition to remaining there in peace. They are expected to accept the internationally recognized boundaries and comport themselves accordingly.

- roidubouloi

September 26, 2011 at 1:42pm

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"You claim that Israel only has to grant the right of return because of the settlements. The Arabs don't say this. Their demand is for 100% of Jordan's 1949 conquests AND the right of return." Not what I said at all. What I said is that Israel cannot expect the Palestinians to agree to abandon their refugee claims in exchange for nothing. The logical, obvious thing to trade is some acceptance of settlements in exchange for some acceptance of returnees. What they demand is what they demand. Doesn't mean they get it. Netanyahu et alia demand that the Arabs completely surrender their claimed RoR AND legitimize illegal settlements. Fine as a demand, but stupid if one imagines that peace can be made on this basis, in both cases. Netanyahu and Israel say that the Arabs will not make peace because thus far they have refused to accept Israel's overbearing and completely one-sided demands. But Israel won't offer real compromise on the core issues and does its best to create obstacles to negotiations. Israel doesn't want peace. Israel wants land and thinks it has enough power to enforce its landgrab. As, slowly, its power to do so erodes, it shrieks, tears it hair, points the finger at the Arabs, the world, Obama, recites the tragic history of the Jews. All so much bullshit to cover up the reality that Israel is much more interested in grabbing land it is not entitled to than making peace and thus far will only accept a peace that legitimizes its land grab.

- roidubouloi

September 26, 2011 at 1:51pm

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Really, sighthnd, would you have accepted the claim by the government of apartheid South Africa that it only wants peace if its idea of peace necessarily included the maintenance in perpetuity of the illegitimate status quo? If Netanyahu were as certain as you are that the Arabs would not accept peace based on either the abandonment of settlements in exchange for the abandonment of the Palestinian claimed RoR, or the acceptance of some for some, why doesn't he just go ahead and make the offer? Why doesn't he call a halt to construction in contested territory to put the Arabs to the test? You know why as well as I do. He is worried that they might accept.

- roidubouloi

September 26, 2011 at 1:54pm

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"Law-fare created the State of Israel." " Um-shmum" was "... coined by David Ben-Gurion on 29 March 1955 during a debate within his cabinet, as a scorning utterance towards the United Nations and an expression that reflects, even as to date, the way many Israelis feel about the institution. In that very same debate, he also famously said, "What matters is not what the Gentiles will say, but what the Jews will do."[citation needed]. The original expression was uttered after Moshe Sharett responded to Ben-Gurion saying that there was a need to drive the Egyptians out of Gaza due to the Palestinian fedayeen's attacks from there. Moshe Sharett claimed that the U.N "should be treated with respect, since without it, the state of Israel would not have been established"; to which Ben-Gurion replied, "Only the daring of the Jews founded this country, not the resolutions of the U.N."[citation needed]." (wiki) "In 1998, Kofi Annan quoted this phrase while visiting the Knesset (Israeli Parliament), and made a rebutting pun himself by saying that in the world that we live in today, "without the UM we will all have klum." (Klum is part of expressions that mean "nothing" in Hebrew.)[1]"

- noga1

September 26, 2011 at 5:02pm

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Oh really? Interesting alternative history. One wonders why Israel was hanging on the UN partition vote in a state of high anxiety. Given the irrelevance of the legal regime of the UN Charter, why exactly should the world concern itself about Moslem warfare against Israel? Um-shmum. We should sit back and see whose daring prevails, no?

- roidubouloi

September 26, 2011 at 5:11pm

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Gee, roi, I thought you were an admirer of Ben Gurion. Or was it just a convenient momentary ploy in your war against the Jewish State? There is nothing alternative about this record. It's what Ben Gurion stated. Perhaps Ben-Gurion didn't really know how Israel came to be created.

- noga1

September 26, 2011 at 5:55pm

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"Really, sighthnd, would you have accepted the claim by the government of apartheid South Africa that it only wants peace if its idea of peace necessarily included the maintenance in perpetuity of the illegitimate status quo?" Call them Nazis, call them South Africa. The tactic is the same morally. Time to update Godwin's Law.

- sighthnd

September 26, 2011 at 6:25pm

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"Jews also lay claim to all of the territory shown on that Palestinian map." Is that what is taught in government schools? Is that what is propagated in official communications? I am aware of what the Jewish extremists are like. But they are not in control. Their mirror image IS in control on the other side, though they are craftier in concealing their true objectives to outsiders.

- sighthnd

September 26, 2011 at 6:30pm

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"What I said is that Israel cannot expect the Palestinians to agree to abandon their refugee claims in exchange for nothing." And you expect giving up the settlements would get the Palestinians to give up on RoR? RoR is the prime issue for Abbas because it means that eventually Israel will be majority Arab and they can then vote Israel out of existence from the inside. The end result, the cessation of Israel's existence, is what really matters to Abbas. They can't demand that in public, but they can make demands that they know Israel will never accept in order to get what they really want.

- sighthnd

September 26, 2011 at 6:37pm

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Palestinians have already declared that Palestine will not be home to the "refugees", not even those who live in the West Bank today. They are saying it, in Arabic, outloud. http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Politics/2011/Sep-15/148791-interview-refugees-will-not-be-citizens-of-new-state.ashx#axzz1Y3VXb5pU "The ambassador unequivocally says that Palestinian refugees would not become citizens of the sought for U.N.-recognized Palestinian state, an issue that has been much discussed. “They are Palestinians, that’s their identity,” he says. “But … they are not automatically citizens.” This would not only apply to refugees in countries such as Lebanon, Egypt, Syria and Jordan or the other 132 countries where Abdullah says Palestinians reside. Abdullah said that “even Palestinian refugees who are living in [refugee camps] inside the [Palestinian] state, they are still refugees. They will not be considered citizens.” Abdullah said that the new Palestinian state would “absolutely not” be issuing Palestinian passports to refugees."

- noga1

September 26, 2011 at 8:40pm

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No, sighthnd. What I expect is that eventually Israel will decide that it would rather accept some returnees than liquidate the settlements. A deal in which the Palestinians surrender their claims AND Israel takes pieces of their land is implausible. Although rejected by the Palestinians three times already, Israelis delude themselves that their land grab is "the obvious and generous outcome." As for maps, while the Palestinians draw on paper, Israel is in the process of actually taking their land and colonizing them, in real life, in real time. In the face of this, you complain about apocalyptic maps? Eretz Israel HaShlema was a foundational principal of the Likud. Its constitution apparently still says this: "Article 2: General purposes b. Safeguarding the right of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel as an eternal, inalienable right, working diligently to settle and develop all parts of the land of Israel, and extending national sovereignty to them." Shall we say that Netanyahu says one thing to the West and something else completely different in Hebrew to his domestic audience? The website of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs describes offers made for a "Palestinian state in most of Judea and Samaria." No mention of a land of Palestine. Perhaps the Palestinians consider Israel "a state established in the greater part of Palestine" and draw maps accordingly. This is all nonsense, sighthnd. If the Palestinians make peace with adequate security guarantees and arrangements, then the do. If they don't, they don't. But the fantasy that peace can be obtained based on both Israel's colonization of the Arabs AND their final abandonment of the claims of former inhabitants of what is now Israel is just that, a fantasy.

- roidubouloi

September 26, 2011 at 9:22pm

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Don't be silly, noga. Ben Gurion was making a hyperbolic rhetorical claim. It happens in political life. In reality, Israel was desperate to see the UN partition plan adopted. There was dancing in the streets at the UN vote. Ben Gurion was hardly of the view that the decisions of the UN were irrelevant and that daring alone would determine the outcome. But do enjoy your alternative history in which Israel determines its future without regard to any other powers or interests in the world based on pluck, daring (and pleading with the US to defend its interests). It must be fun for a tiny nation to imagine itself a superpower. Very useful too.

- roidubouloi

September 26, 2011 at 9:29pm

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"What I expect is that eventually Israel will decide that it would rather accept some returnees than liquidate the settlements." That's just plain fantasy. Even if Israel were willing, the Palestinian national movement is not willing to limit the returnees for any price Israel would pay, why else would they not offer Palestinian citizenship to those who come from pre-1967 Israel? The main thing is that their objective is to eliminate Israel. Whether that happens via a new Arab state swallowing it whole, some other entity taking it or the land disappearing, the objective of resubjugating the Jews will be achieved. However, they can't say that to the West, and they know they can't say that to the West, so they claim they only want a state for the Palestinian people, who actually did not exist as a distinct people until the 1920's though they are politically distinct now, and insist that that state's honor requires that it have what just happens to be tools that would give it the ability to swallow up Israel. "Although rejected by the Palestinians three times already" It's been rejected by the PNM. Until there is opposition in Palestine other than rejection of even pretending to compromise, with advocates of greater accommodation with Israel free to advocate their position over all media, I attach no moral weight to that. "Shall we say that Netanyahu says one thing to the West and something else completely different in Hebrew to his domestic audience? The website of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs describes offers made for a "Palestinian state in most of Judea and Samaria." No mention of a land of Palestine." They don't talk about destroying Palestine. The PNM does talk about destroying Israel. How many squares in Israel are named after Baruch Goldstein? There is simply no equivalence.

- sighthnd

September 26, 2011 at 10:40pm

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Netanyahu disagrees with you, sighthnd. If he were as confident as you that the Palestinians would refuse anything short of their maximal goals, he would be offering these tradeoffs in order to demonstrate Palestinian intransigence. He won't lest they accept. With all the prognostication of what the Palestinians will or won't do, the fact remains that Israel won't put it to the test. And for all the moral weight you attach to one thing or another, you are might put out by Palestinian chest-thumping in the absence of any power and completely blithe that Israel, with the power, is not merely thumping its chest but actively colonizing the Arabs in violation of international law. You are offended by words but cannot understand why the Arabs would be offended by very concrete deeds that subjugate them. You expect them to end their hostility and beatifically greet Israeli demands to legitimize their own subjugation even while it is ongoing. But you have no thought that Israel, if it really wants peace, something it quite evidently does not if you merely look at its behavior, should end its provocative behavior. Israel has the power. It therefore has the heavier burden to move forward. I should say you have a problem of where you do and do not put moral weight. Given Israel's military power and actual occupation of the Palestinians, why should they believe Netanyahu's pretensions to peace when he heads a party the mission of which is sovereignty and settlement of all of what it calls "the Land of Israel," with no mention of Palestine or Palestinians who live there. You see exactly what you want to see sighthnd. All the justice lies on one side. You certainly would never make peace.

- roidubouloi

September 26, 2011 at 11:54pm

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There are number of towns in the United States named after Lord Jeffrey Amherst who practiced biological warfare against Native Americans, selling them infected blankets to decimate them. What shall we make of this? Menachem Begin was a terrorist in his day. What shall we make of that? If you are an Arab and believe that the Jews came to your country and took it from you, what should you make of the demand that you not only recognize the State of Israel but recognize it as a Jewish state in your land? How much clearer could Netanyahu's demand be that the Palestinians accept humiliation at his hands? What a disgrace to the Jewish people. A bunch of liars and racists violating solemn international agreements to which they are a party and carrying on about how victimized they are.

- roidubouloi

September 27, 2011 at 12:00am

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Menachem Begin did not blow up children n buses. So, it is "humiliation" for the Palestinians to accept a Jewish state, is it? "A bunch of liars and racists" ?? Have you got to the stage where you fetishize the Palestinians to this degree? Next you'll be quoting Ilan Pappe, no doubt. sighthnd, I commend your patience in this discussion. You have neatly dealt with every point roi was making and a sure sign of that is the intensification of his hateful rhetoric against Israelis. A thought occurs to me that roi expresses himself in even more extreme ways than Tea Partiers do, vis a vis Obama, when it comes to the Israeli Right which is now in power.

- noga1

September 27, 2011 at 6:48am

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The Israeli right is fully as execrable as the American right. Compared to their depredations and the threat they pose to the well-being of the world, I am quite restrained. It is a humiliation to demand that the Palestinians surrender their historical narrative and adopt that of the Jews as a condition for making peace. It is sufficient if they make peaxe and keep it. It is not necessary that they adopt the Israeli world-view. Racists can never understand that. Their complete inability to empathize with other people is the very reason they are racists. Sighthnd deals with nothing. He repeats endlessly the same tired tropes of Israeli propaganda. Shooting it full of objective holes is trivially easy. But for the ideologically/religiously convinced, objective reality, including the objective reality of how other people can be expected to behave based on the general experience of humanity, is quite unimportant. If Israel insists that its proposal to take only "corners" of Palestinian land is "generous," why then it is, no? Many more Arab children have been blown up by Israel than the other way around. The metric of children blown up is not adequate to the task of determining either what is just or what is necessary. No matter. For zealots, only propaganda value matters. Justice is quite irrelevant.

- roidubouloi

September 27, 2011 at 9:26am

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"Many more Arab children have been blown up by Israel than the other way around. " Are you saying in this statement that that the IDF is a terrorist army?

- noga1

September 27, 2011 at 12:08pm

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Lest there will be some attempt to distract, here is how the exchange went: Roi: "Menachem Begin was a terrorist in his day." Noga: "Menachem Begin did not blow up children in buses. " Roi: "Many more Arab children have been blown up by Israel than the other way around" Noga: "Are you saying in this statement that that the IDF is a terrorist army?"

- noga1

September 27, 2011 at 12:13pm

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Menachem Begin blew up whomever he thought it necessary to blow up. Armies, even Western armies, blow up children, sometimes in droves, under the doctrine of military necessity. That is their moral justification: We don't target them, but if our necessity happens to result in their deaths by the thousands, we have no choice. The moral calculus cannot therefore begin and end with what is claimed to be terrorism at any moment in history. The Allied bombing campaign in Europe might well fit that definition. There must of necessity be consideration of the ends to which military force is being used. Israel uses military force to sustain not merely an occupation of the West Bank needed for its own security but the active colonization and usurpation of the people to whom it belongs, by prior settlement and by decision of the UN. That there were previously Jews is hardly an argument when a vastly larger number of Arab refugees are begin excluded from their former homes in Israel. The IDF is being used for an illegitimate, illegal purpose. Even if the Arabs will not make peace, Israel is still entitled to do only what is reasonably, or at least plausibly, necessary for its own security. The Fourth Geneva Convention prohibits the colonization of occupied territory, whether that territory is legitimately or illegitimately occupied. It also prohibits burdening the economic and political life of the occupied people more than is necessary for purposes of security. As occupation in the service of colonization perpetuates violent conflict, Israel cannot wash its hands of the moral responsibility for killing children (in considerably greater numbers than Israeli children have been killed) by relying on the shifting distinction between what is and is not terrorism. So too if it refuses to accept peace unless it can achieve its illegal designs on Palestinian land.

- roidubouloi

September 27, 2011 at 12:38pm

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roi: In other words, the IDF is a terrorist army because it kills Palestinians children at the service of a racist government. Does that mean that you will support a move by Turkey to haul Israeli soldiers in front of the ICC on the charge that they were enacting state terrorism? Are you an admirer of Israeli soldiers who refuse to serve in the army for the same reason? Do you expect Israeli soldiers to refuse to obey orders given by Netanyahu's government?

- noga1

September 27, 2011 at 12:49pm

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Chas Freeman! Whatever happened to HIM? Thanks for the memories, Marty.

- wildboy

September 27, 2011 at 1:32pm

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"Chas Freeman! Whatever happened to HIM?" http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=105085 "Chas Freeman, a former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia, told the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, another Washington think tank, Monday that there will be "a war of attrition by the international community… against the U.S. effort to protect Israel from the consequences of its own actions in the occupied territories. [-] Freeman said the relationship [with Saudi Arabia] had become "transactional", with each issue dealt with on a case-by-case basis. While Saudi Arabia continues to rely on the United States for its security and cooperates closely on counterterrorism, it looks to Asia for most of its trade and has profound disagreements with Washington over the introduction of democracy in countries such as Bahrain and Syria, he said. Quoting an old Chinese proverb, Freeman added, "We are sleeping in the same bed but dreaming different dreams." Freeman was commended Mearsheimer's theory of the Israeli Lobby. It was debated by some that it was not an antisemitic concept. But in the fullness of time, truth has a way of breaking out. Mearsheimer gravitates towards antisemites, and his recent endorsement of a book by Gilad Atzmon, a notorious "ex-Jew" with some extremely distasteful ideas about Judaism, has clinched the matter. I'm waiting to see him trying to extricate himself from this tub of sticky molasses.

- noga1

September 27, 2011 at 3:48pm

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http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2011/09/mearsheimer-and-the-jewish-anti-semite-ctd.html

- noga1

September 27, 2011 at 4:02pm

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I expect Netanyahu's government to abide by the Fourth Geneva Convention and at the very least stop additional construction in the West Bank. Is the IDF being used in the service of racist designs of a racist government? Yes, it is. Does this make it guilty of terrorism? I doubt it. That is not the current meaning of terrorism. But Israeli society must take responsibility for its actions, including the actions of its government, just as we demand of all societies. It also means that justified outrage is not the exclusive province of Israelis in this conflict. There is plenty of ground for justified outrage on the other side, as there almost always is in war. The constant resort by Israel and Israelis to their justified outrage, going back in time anywhere from yesterday to 1967 to 1948 to the Second World War to the Middle Ages to ancient Rome, to justify present illicit behavior and the refusal to make peace is itself unjustified and very counter-productive. It is not possible to make peace while constantly stacking up the list of grievances of both sides. Israel, an existing, organized state, is engaged in the continuing, ongoing violation of the human rights of Palestinians, in violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention, the Oslo accords, and the Road Map. It should stop. If it doesn't, no thoughtful person should take seriously Israel's claims that it wants peace. That this is politically difficult is no excuse. It is politically difficult for Palestinians to suppress terrorism. No one accepts that as an excuse.

- roidubouloi

September 27, 2011 at 4:31pm

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"Does this make it guilty of terrorism? I doubt it." That's not the impression a reader would get from your argument: Roi: "Menachem Begin was a terrorist in his day." Noga: "Menachem Begin did not blow up children in buses. " Roi: "Many more Arab children have been blown up by Israel than the other way around" Noga: "Are you saying in this statement that that the IDF is a terrorist army?" roi: " The IDF is being used for an illegitimate, illegal purpose." Noga: "In other words, the IDF is a terrorist army because it kills Palestinians children at the service of a racist government" _____________ You did not answer my question: In view of the positions you assert above, will you will a move by Turkey to haul Israeli soldiers in front of the ICC on the charge that they were enacting state terrorism? Do you support Israeli soldiers who refuse to serve in the army for the same reason? Do you expect Israeli soldiers to refuse to obey orders given by Netanyahu's government?

- noga1

September 27, 2011 at 5:28pm

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Why has Netanyahu decided to allow the building of 1,100 new housing units in east Jerusalem, at this time? Whether it has a right to build these apartments is distinct from the wisdom of doing so now. Again, it seems to me that Netanyahu's government is giving the PA every excuse to stay away from talks.

- arnon

September 27, 2011 at 7:18pm

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Arnon, didin't the building start at roughly the same time Israel agreed to a freeze?

- MOLLYSIMON

September 27, 2011 at 8:47pm

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Gilo is in SOUTH Jerusalem and happens to be east of the 1949 armistice line. NYT published a very good map of Jerusalem on March 23, 2010 when the NORTH Jerusalem neighborhood of Ramat Shlomo was turned into a public diplomatic rift by Obama. Here we go again with Obama making Jerusalem a "settlement". Obama must be having nightmares about his lousy 3Q fundraising. Wait for the Knesset vote on formally annexing Judea and Samaria...

- K2K

September 27, 2011 at 9:00pm

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"Wait for the Knesset vote on formally annexing Judea and Samaria..." Do you seriously believe this is the plan?

- noga1

September 27, 2011 at 9:41pm

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"Arnon, didin't the building start at roughly the same time Israel agreed to a freeze?" From I read in the JPost and elsewhere these constructions permits were just issued.

- arnon

September 27, 2011 at 9:53pm

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Sorry, I missed that question. I don't believe there is any legal basis at all for accusing of war crimes an ordinary soldier who does not commit directly any heinous act because the actions of the state in making war are illegal. So, there is no basis for bringing ordinary soldiers before the ICC, and I would not expect it to entertain jurisdiction. The rule might well be different for the most senior commanders. However, illegal settlement is not a war crime under the Fourth Geneva Convention although it is a human rights violation. So, I do not think there is any basis for bringing even senior government officials before the ICC on the basis of the settlements. None of that changes the fact that the settlements are a human rights violation and that Israel bears moral responsibility for the provocation and, even moreso, for refusing to make peace unless its illegal acts are legitimized. I think any Israeli soldier who refused to serve in the West Bank would have a very conscientious basis for doing so. I have no idea what Israeli law is with regard to conscientious objection. On the other hand, I don't think an ordinary soldier is obliged to refuse so to serve.

- roidubouloi

September 27, 2011 at 9:56pm

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"US: Gilo construction is 'counterproductive'" "WASHINGTON - The United States said on Tuesday that Israel's decision to approve construction of 1,100 homes in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Gilo - located past the Green Line - was "counterproductive" and urged both Israel and the Palestinians not to take steps which could complicate resumption of direct peace talks." http://www.jpost.com/Headlines/Article.aspx?id=239775

- arnon

September 27, 2011 at 10:00pm

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Another interesting story: "Post’ poll finds surge in Obama popularity in Israel" By GIL HOFFMAN "54% call US president’s policies pro-Israel, 19% say they were more pro- Palestinian; Likud would gain 32 seats, Labor 26 if elections held now; 50% view Netanyahu favorably." http://www.jpost.com/DiplomacyAndPolitics/Article.aspx?id=239816 I am not surprise by Labor's surge.

- arnon

September 27, 2011 at 10:03pm

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http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2011/09/27/yachimovich-labor-kadima-israel/ Israel's Labor Party has a new leader, Shelly Yachimovich, and will draw seats from Kadima. Tzipi Livni is the loser (finally!). Apparently Ms. Yachimovich wants to increase housing as part of "social justice". noga: I am not following the Knesset proposal to annex Judea and Samaria, and I doubt it would pass, but my "gut instinct" is that there is a serious effort by the Israeli government to emphatically divorce building apartments in Jerusalem (Gilo) from the "settlements" in Judea and Samaria since Abbas' UN speech wherein he denied any Jewish historical connection to Jerusalem. I watched/listened to Obama's UN speech again yesterday, and he implied without saying the words that he still wants the "1967 borders", which are the 1948 armistice line, to be the starting point for new direct talks. No one in Israel is going to support giving up what Jordan illegally occupied in 1948 (Wailing Wall, Old Jewish quarter, etc), and both Ramat Shlomo in NORTH Jerusalem and Gilo in SOUTH Jerusalem were built on previously vacant land. NOT like Israel is talking about Maale Adummin, which is outside the formal Jerusalem boundary since Israel's annexation of Jerusalem. and now US State and Hillary have announced that no American citizen born in Jerusalem can have a US passport that says Jerusalem, Israel. I wonder if former NYC mayor Ed Koch realizes he was played by Obama - not that Koch is such a big influence anymore, but the whole point of Koch's endorsement of Turner in NY9 and the ECI campaign was over Obama's obsession with dividing Jerusalem, breaking his 2008 campaign promise on "UNDIVIDED Jerusalem". If Obama manages to win re-election, I expect him to wear a kefiyah to his inauguration, he is so in love with the PLO's victimhood whinin' - oh, sorry, Obama only drops his g's when he is speakin' to African-American members of congress.

- K2K

September 28, 2011 at 9:45am

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K2K: When you say "West Bank" I assume it refers to the WB, not Jerusalem, nor gilo, nor Ramot, nor Mount Scopus, nor Talpiot Mizrah. nor a few other Jewish neigborhoods. Those are not settlements. Shana tova u metuka :)

- noga1

September 28, 2011 at 1:32pm

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Whether or not illegally occupied by Jordan, the West Bank cannot be legally settled by Israel. The sovereign of that land is the United Nations. It will make its disposition in time if Israel does not reach agreement with the Palestinians. The annexation of Jerusalem has never been recognized by the rest of the world. It was not a part of the Jewish partition. The UN will eventually make that disposition too if Israel does not reach agreement with the Palestinians. Given those realities, a wise government of Israel would want to reach agreement with the Palestinians, not avoid reaching such an agreement under the delusion that that will enable it to keep what it cannot claim against the sovereignty of the UN. The UN will accept what the Palestinians agree to. But there is no wise government in Israel. Shanah tovah.

- roidubouloi

September 28, 2011 at 5:10pm

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noga: I try to be consistent in distinguishing between Jerusalem as annexed by Israel (I spit on the "rest of the world if they do not like that annexation), and use the geographic place names of Judea and Samaria. I try to avoid the term "West Bank", just like I try to NOT give "east" Jerusalem any standing other than that part of Jerusalem that is east of the 1948 armistice line, which includes the Western Wall. Shana tova u metuka :) am having a very bad reaction to Jew hatred since Abbas' speech, and not helping by being online after sundown.

- K2K

September 28, 2011 at 7:41pm

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Way to start the new year - learn how to dip your apple in honey: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29-4KKWcU_U&feature=player_embedded

- noga1

September 28, 2011 at 11:14pm

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