Topic: Palestinians

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Trouble on the Golan: Rabin’s Prescience

Seth Mandel 04.12.2013 - 5:10 PM

Former U.S. Ambassador to Israel Martin Indyk begins his book on the Clinton administration’s Mideast diplomacy with the initial focus on brokering peace between Israel and Syria, then led by Bashar al-Assad’s father Hafez. Assad’s demand was a full Israeli withdrawal from the Golan Heights in exchange for a full peace. The Israeli prime minister at the time, Yitzhak Rabin, was open to it both because he wanted real peace with Syria–Israel already had a longstanding peace agreement with Egypt, a certain level of cooperation with Lebanese officials and armed forces, and a relationship with Jordan that was a peace agreement in all but name, which was finally signed in 1994–and because he thought it would encourage the Palestinians to want peace as well.

He was right about the latter point, though the Palestinians would end up hijacking the entire process and peace with Syria never happened. But ahead of a trip to Washington to meet with Clinton, Rabin wanted to know how the U.S. would guarantee the peace, as Indyk phrases it, “especially in the event of Asad’s death.” Would Clinton put American troops on the Golan, if it came to that and Israel was proscribed by the peace agreement from sending its own troops? Clinton asked Colin Powell for his advice. Indyk recounts the exchange:

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Two Lessons of the Two-State Solution

Rick Richman 04.11.2013 - 8:35 AM

As Secretary of State Kerry proceeds to gin up yet another peace process, armed with the Israel Policy Forum letter urging more “confidence-building steps” from Israel, it might be worthwhile to reflect on two things we have learned about the “two-state solution” from the repeated failures over two decades to effectuate it.

First, the Palestinians have shown that they are unable to form a peaceful democratic state. They have a “president” who next week enters the 100th month of his 48-month term; he has now been “out of office” longer than he was in it. The person who held the office before him served 107 months of his own 48-month term, until he had to leave office on account of death. Between them, the two presidents rejected three offers of a state (in 2000, 2001 and 2008). The current president has not been able to set foot in half his putative state for more than five years; he cannot arrange a new election, even in the half-state where he resides. There is no functioning legislature, so he rules by decree; those who would criticize him for this are best advised not to put their thoughts on Facebook. He is 78 years old, in uncertain health, with no known successor, and has long said he wants to retire; he continues to serve as “president” because peace processors need someone to play one on TV.

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Obama Embraces Bibi’s “Economic Peace”

Seth Mandel 04.10.2013 - 5:35 PM

The cycle of Western involvement in the peace process usually involves Benjamin Netanyahu proposing an idea, the West rejecting it, trying and failing its own way, and then quietly proposing Netanyahu’s idea while pretending they came up with it. It was certainly that way with the concept of a peace deal built around a land-swap–which Netanyahu proposed in his first premiership during the Clinton administration only to have Clinton ignore him. The land-swap idea eventually became central to final-status negotiations.

The Obama administration may be about to repeat the pattern with regard to Netanyahu’s commonsense–and therefore much maligned–“economic peace.” The concept centers on the fact that since the two sides have not been able to make much progress on the traditional negotiating track, steps could be taken to go around official channels and improve the daily lives of Palestinians. Netanyahu hadn’t received any help from the Obama administration or the government of Mahmoud Abbas to take such action, so he reached out to the Jordanians and worked to encourage foreign investment in the West Bank on his own. It wasn’t just a theory, either; as Daniel Doron wrote in 2011, the concept of “economic peace” is the only strategy with a proven track record of success:

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Everyone Still Doesn’t Know What Everyone Supposedly Knows

Rick Richman 04.04.2013 - 8:00 AM

Earlier this week, the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PCPSR) released a new poll of 1,270 Palestinians. The Jerusalem Post highlighted one of the findings: “poll finds 55% support two-state solution.” The PCPSR has been releasing these polls since 2003, and they always lead to misleading headlines such as the one in the Jerusalem Post–because a “two-state solution” as used in the polls doesn’t mean what you think it means.

In addition to polling whether Palestinians support a two-state solution in general, the PCPSR polls the support for a two-state solution modeled on the Clinton Parameters, described by the PCPSR as involving the following:

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Is Norway a State Sponsor of Terrorism?

Michael Rubin 04.03.2013 - 5:10 PM

While I ask that with tongue in cheek, the question really is not so far-fetched, according to the latest report from the inestimable Palestinian Media Watch:

Recently, Palestinian Media Watch reported that Norway’s Foreign Minister, Espen Barth Eide, admitted that the Foreign Ministry had given Parliament “imprecise” information ”obtained from the PA” and from PM Salam Fayyad, denying the PA’s use of donor money to pay salaries to security prisoners imprisoned in Israel, among them terrorists.

PMW exposed these salary payments for the first time in 2011, but Norway’s Foreign Minister had told Parliament that these payments were social welfare to the families, based on the false information supplied by the PA… MP Anders Anundsen, the Head of the Parliamentary Committee on Scrutiny and Constitutional Affairs, stated to NRK TV that he was not satisfied with the Foreign Minister’s answer, specifically questioning when the Foreign Minister became aware that it had passed on false information from the PA to Parliament.

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Qatar’s Apartheid Fund

Seth Mandel 03.28.2013 - 5:40 PM

As Jews in America were preparing for their second seder (or perhaps recovering from the first), during which they sang “next year in Jerusalem,” representatives of the states that make up the Arab League were trying to figure out how to prevent that from occurring. Specifically, Mahmoud Abbas–the man some people still fancifully claim is a brave man of peace–was pleading for help from the Arab states to stop Jews from being able to live in their eternal capital and the spiritual center of their universe.

His hateful speechifying was not in vain. Qatar–a country on a singular mission to empower jihadists throughout the region–pledged to establish a special apartheid fund in the hopes of raising $1 billion. It won’t be called an apartheid fund, obviously, but its beneficiaries speak the language of bigotry. The Jerusalem Post reports:

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Obama in Israel: Hope over Experience?

Max Boot 03.25.2013 - 2:30 PM

I was traveling last week, so have not had an opportunity until now to comment on President Obama’s speech in Jerusalem and his visit to Israel in general. I only now read the speech and, like many of Obama’s speeches, it is a rhetorical masterpiece. It is also a tacit repudiation of his entire first term, which began, as far as Middle East policy was concerned, with his speech at Cairo University on June 4, 2009.

This was a conscious attempt by Obama to hit the “reset button” on U.S. relations with the Muslim world, which he thought had been harmed by George W. Bush’s hawkish ways. Obama went so far to ingratiate himself with the Arabs that he even seemed to equate Jewish suffering in the Holocaust with Palestinian suffering “in pursuit of a homeland”–as if the Palestinians had been the victims of genocide too. Obama pointedly did not visit Israel on that swing through the Middle East and subsequently he put unprecedented pressure on the government of Israel to halt all construction in the West Bank–not as the ending point of talks with the Palestinians but as a precondition for such talks.

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The Most Important Paragraph of Obama’s Entire Israel Trip

Seth Mandel 03.22.2013 - 12:15 PM

Yesterday, former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon received two significant mentions in the press. The first was from President Obama, who quoted Sharon in his speech to Israeli youth. “If we insist on fulfilling the dream in its entirety, we are liable to lose it all,” Obama said in Sharon’s name, telling the crowd to make peace with the Palestinians and warning against the quest for a Greater Israel. Quoting Sharon was a wise choice to express this sentiment. It isn’t just American presidents, Obama was saying, who believe in the necessity of the two-state solution; King Arik–once the architect of a sovereign Greater Israel–said so too.

But the other instance of Sharon’s name cropping up again yesterday was far less laudatory of the man still in a coma. The Times of Israel posted a video released by the Palestinians in Gaza, in which Palestinian women, under the proud, smiling gaze of Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, used Sharon’s face as target practice on a public shooting range. This is relevant to Obama’s speech as well. The address, which was well written and well delivered, had passages everyone could agree with. But no paragraph was more observant or insightful than when Obama said this:

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Palestinians Welcome Obama with Demands and Ultimatums

Seth Mandel 03.20.2013 - 4:50 PM

Israeli leftists may not be excited about President Obama’s trip to Israel, as Jonathan wrote yesterday, but they are taking it a lot better than the Palestinians. The president is not in Israel to try to play Weekend at Bernie’s with the moribund peace process, and that’s not a bad thing. A friendly visit from the American president and a chance to interact with Israelis in person is a fairly low-risk way to try to build some good will, especially for a president who feels he has been misunderstood by Israelis.

But the Palestinians don’t see it that way. The New York Times reports today that the Palestinian leadership is promising to make President Obama regret this trip by punishing him for his lack of interest in pressuring Israel while he’s here. One of the great mistakes made by Obama in his first term was his demand for a Jewish building freeze as a precondition to negotiations–a demand that boxed Mahmoud Abbas in as well. But now Abbas is threatening that if Obama doesn’t repeat this mistake now, Abbas is going to the International Criminal Court:

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Inciting Intifada: A New Low for the Times

Seth Mandel 03.18.2013 - 12:50 PM

The bias against Israel in the press, and especially the New York Times, has become so steady and predictable that it can be difficult to muster outrage. But that doesn’t mean the Times isn’t still trying to make waves. Indeed, since the paper flaunts, rather than attempts to disguise, its hostility to Israel, it can be easy to miss when the Times crosses yet another line. And the paper and its editors have done so again this weekend with its depraved magazine cover article cheerleading a new intifada against Israel.

As Jonathan wrote yesterday, the Times has chosen to greet President Obama’s trip to Israel with the magazine piece on the Palestinian settlement of Nabi Saleh and the story by Jodi Rudoren on the supposed injustice of allowing Jews to live in Jerusalem. Jonathan ably deconstructed the Rudoren piece and explained quite clearly why the author of the magazine piece, Ben Ehrenreich, who trumpets the nobility of anti-Zionism, lacks any credibility on the issue of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It can’t be argued that the Times didn’t know exactly what it was getting with Ehrenreich. And so it should be asked, instead, why the Times’s editors wanted a piece openly supportive of another intifada. After all, the article is crystal clear about its intentions. One key part comes late in the piece, when Ehrenreich writes:

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UN Chutzpah and the Refugee Racket

Seth Mandel 03.14.2013 - 4:35 PM

Between the national security cuts in the sequester and the new scrutiny to which foreign aid is being subjected in a time of budget belt-tightening, those abroad looking for American taxpayer cash have something of a hill to climb. And just like with any foreign affairs issue, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict commands its fair share of attention. With regard to foreign aid to Middle East governments, it can be argued that while such aid should come with strings, those checks should still be signed lest rogue regimes fill the vacuum with their own cash and influence.

This is certainly the argument that usually prevails when it comes to the Palestinian Authority. Though some in Congress considered punishing the PA for its unilateral declaration of statehood at the UN, even Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has argued against cutting their funding, which could risk the collapse of Mahmoud Abbas’s government and speed up the rise of Hamas in the West Bank. But there’s another Palestinian interest group in Washington this week to lobby for taxpayer cash, and it will likely not find nearly so sympathetic an audience: the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), which has worked for decades to keep Palestinians in squalid refugee camps and radicalizing schools while helping to prop up Hamas, provide terrorists with jobs, and fleece American taxpayers–all while utilizing a definition of “refugee” at odds with American law and practice. Josh Rogin reports on his interview with UNRWA commissioner general Filippo Grandi:

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The Misplaced Faith in Abbas

Seth Mandel 03.11.2013 - 6:35 PM

Ben Birnbaum’s thoughtful, well-reported piece on the Israeli peace process is one of those articles that can easily be interpreted as in accordance with anyone’s preexisting worldview: it’s a Rorschach. If you think Mahmoud Abbas is primarily responsible for the lack of peace, that will be confirmed by the description of Ehud Olmert practically begging him to take an incredibly generous deal and Abbas walking away. If you think Olmert is to blame for offering a peace plan on which he could not follow through simply to save his reputation as he prepared to leave office under a cloud of scandal and an approval rating close to zero, you will shake your head at the desperation he showed.

If you think Olmert and Abbas were peacemakers surrounded by petty schemers, you will not be convinced otherwise as you read of Tzipi Livni’s advisors telling Abbas not to take the deal so she could swoop in and claim the glory for herself, or by the same old mindless and manipulative game being played by “advisors” and “negotiators” on the Palestinian side who have been there forever and a day. (The Israeli names change over time, but the Palestinian names are always Mahmoud Abbas, Saeb Erekat, and Hanan Ashrawi.) So that’s the politicians; what about the people? In Israel, the people support peace, Birnbaum reports. The Palestinian people, however–that’s another story. Birnbaum chooses a delicate framing when he references a recent poll that “showed Palestinians preferred Hamas’s approach to ending the Israeli occupation over that of Abbas by a two-to-one margin.” I’m sure everyone can imagine what “Hamas’s approach” would mean, but for the record here’s the actual question from that poll (results, from left to right, are: total, in the West Bank, and in Gaza):

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Waging an “Anti-Segregation” Crusade on the Palestinians’ Backs

Evelyn Gordon 03.07.2013 - 9:30 AM

Here are some of the headlines that appeared in papers worldwide earlier this week: “Israel introduces ‘Palestinians only’ bus lines, following complaints from Jewish settlers”; “Israeli buses for Palestinians spark accusations of segregation”; “‘A Palestinian Rosa Parks is needed’: Israel’s segregated buses spark outrage.” And here’s the headline that didn’t appear: “Palestinians thrilled: Finally, decent bus service for those who work in Israel!” That missing headline speaks volumes about the superficiality of global reporting on Israel–and also reveals, once again, how the Palestinians’ self-proclaimed champions often wind up making their lives worse.

Here are the facts everyone agrees on: Though Israel has barred entry to most Palestinians (for security reasons) ever since the second intifada erupted in 2000, tens of thousands have received permits to work in Israel after being vetted as low security risks. But for years, they had only two ways to get to and from work–take a shared taxi, which is expensive, or ride an Israeli bus, which is inconvenient: Israeli buses don’t serve towns controlled by the Palestinian Authority, so Palestinian workers had to commute to where they could pick up the bus.

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PA: If We Won’t Talk with Israel, Nobody Else Should, Either

Evelyn Gordon 02.21.2013 - 2:10 PM

You couldn’t make this up: The Palestinian Authority is furious that Israel and Hamas are reportedly holding indirect talks in Cairo to firm up their cease-fire, because “only the PLO was authorized to conduct such negotiations in its capacity as the ‘sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people.’” Never mind that the PLO, aka the PA (both are headed by the same man, Mahmoud Abbas, and dominated by the same party, Fatah) has refused to hold talks with Israel for four years now; if Hamas had to wait for the PLO to discuss its pressing concerns with Israel, it might still be waiting when the Messiah comes. In the PA’s world, ordinary Palestinians’ real problems–of which residents of Hamas-run Gaza have plenty–always come a distant second to its own prestige. If it doesn’t feel like talking with Israel, then Gazans should just wait patiently until it does.

But this story also highlights just how irrelevant the PA’s refusal to talk with Israel is making it. Hamas would prefer going through Egypt rather than the PA for many reasons, but one is the simple fact that Egypt can deliver the goods. Egyptian officials are still willing to talk with Israel; that’s how they brokered the Israel-Hamas cease-fire in November, and why they can mediate between the parties now. In contrast, Abbas can’t.

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How Not to Conduct a Peace Process

Rick Richman 02.05.2013 - 4:40 PM

Our colleague Michael Rubin testified this morning before a House Foreign Affairs Committee subcommittee hearing on Fatah-Hamas “reconciliation.” He presented a very valuable short history of the failure to enforce Palestinian “peace process” commitments, worth reading in its entirety. Here is a brief excerpt from his prepared testimony:

After a wave of terrorist attacks followed Palestinian assurances that terror would cease, President George W. Bush had had enough. Engagement for engagement’s sake had failed. He decided to take a zero tolerance approach. … The State Department resisted Bush’s new approach. … Amidst international criticism and resistance from within his own administration … Bush abandoned his principled stand, and the State Department quickly reverted to business as usual. A no-nonsense demand to end terrorism before diplomacy gave way to the Road Map, whose own benchmarks soon fell victim to a desire to keep the Palestinians at the table.

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The Gatekeepers Is a Re-Run

Rick Richman 02.04.2013 - 2:35 PM

Later this month, when the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature is awarded, it will go to Searching for Sugar Man–if it goes to the best documentary feature. The film is the wonderful and moving story of Sixto Rodriguez, a singer/songwriter from the streets of Detroit, who became the voice of a generation in South Africa in the 1970s, and then vanished without a trace. The film is a unique accomplishment–a documentary that is simultaneously a mystery, a morality tale, a little-known story about music, fame, and the movement against apartheid.

More likely, however, the Oscar will go to The Gatekeepers–pushed by publicity materials (and assisted by credulous reviewers) that treat the film as “first time ever” interviews of ex-heads of Israel’s Shin Bet secret service. The message of the movie, ladled out heavily at the end, is that Israel must change course and make more concessions to the Palestinians. But this is not the first time ex-Shin Bet chiefs have been interviewed, nor pushed such a message. The first interview was in 2003; it was widely publicized at the time, in both the Israeli and American media; and it was the cause of the Gaza disengagement that created Hamastan (the full story is here). Nowhere in The Gatekeepers is any of this acknowledged, much less analyzed.

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The UNHRC’s Omissions and Assumptions

Michael Rubin 02.01.2013 - 2:10 PM

Evelyn Gordon rightly highlights the unique treatment Israel receives at the United Nation’s Human Rights Council (UNHRC), and she is right that Western governments should “insist that the council’s systemic denial of Israel’s rights come to an end.”

For those who want to see just how skewed the UNHRC’s report is, this AIJAC analysis of the report should be a must read. The whole thing is worth a read, both as a Cliff’s Notes to the report itself, and a rebuttal to some of the more egregious statements and omissions.

Just a few highlights:

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Linking Obligations with Rights at the UNHRC

Evelyn Gordon 02.01.2013 - 10:15 AM

The UN Human Rights Council yesterday released a predictable report deeming Israeli settlements–including huge Jewish neighborhoods of Jerusalem–a “war crime” and demanding the evacuation of all their hundreds of thousands of residents, thereby throwing every Israeli-Palestinian peace plan ever proposed out the window: All such plans envision Israel retaining parts of East Jerusalem and the settlement blocs. The report would thus seem unhelpful to the “peace process” that Western governments so ardently support. But it’s arousing far less ire among these governments than Israel’s refusal to cooperate with the HRC’s Universal Periodic Review process, under which every country’s human rights record is supposed to be scrutinized every four years. As U.S. ambassador to the council Eileen Chamberlain Donahoe explained, “The United States is absolutely, fully behind the Universal Periodic Review, and we do not want to see the mechanism in any way harmed.”

Yet as Professor Anne Bayefsky pointed out, it’s immensely hypocritical to insist on universality of obligations without universality of rights. And in two important ways, Israel doesn’t enjoy the same rights at the HRC as every other country does. First, it’s the only country whose alleged human-rights abuses are a permanent agenda item: The council has one agenda item for Israel, and one for all the other 192 UN member states. Second, it’s the only country that isn’t a full member of any regional working group. Bayefsky therefore proposed a simple quid pro quo: Israel should promise to uphold the universality of the review process the moment the council upholds the universality of Israel’s rights as a member state.

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Israel Punished in Survey of Press Freedom for Targeting Hamas

Seth Mandel 01.30.2013 - 4:20 PM

In November, New York Times media reporter David Carr wrote about the deaths of three alleged “journalists” in Gaza during Israel’s counteroffensive there. Alana Goodman pointed out here that two of the three were “cameramen” working for a television station owned by Hamas. Both Hamas and the television station itself are designated terrorist organizations. Alana then pointed to stories identifying one of the men as a Hamas military commander and another as an officer in Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

Blogger Elder of Ziyon wrote that the whole episode was “not just an indictment of Carr. This is a systemic problem in the entire profession. The smugness that they are infallible, and the groupthink that they can rely on others’ work without double-checking it, all indicate that there is some significant daylight between how many journalists do their work and what the truth really is.” Carr had defended himself by saying other organizations referred to those killed as journalists. One of the organizations Carr mentioned was Reporters Without Borders, which, having duped Carr into treating terrorists as journalists has just released its rankings of press freedom worldwide–and it has dropped Israel 20 places for killing those terrorists that the organization convinced news outlets to treat as innocent journalists:

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The Qatari Challenge to U.S. Foreign Policy

Seth Mandel 01.17.2013 - 2:05 PM

The evolution of the political power structure across the Mideast has a recent track record of disappointment and unmet expectations. As Turkey sought to take a leadership role in the Middle East, hopes were high for a technically secular, NATO-allied power. But of course Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Putinesque turn and support for terrorist organizations as part of his pan-Islamist ambitions poured cold water on those hopes.

And Egypt’s close relationship with the U.S. and formal peace with Israel didn’t stop a virulently anti-Semitic Islamist from taking power in Cairo and moving closer to his Hamas allies. But perhaps no country’s influence in the region has taken as significant a step up as that of Qatar. Colum Lynch reports that the UN has found a new way to recognize the country’s new standing:

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