Israel Matzav

The Dersh slams Obama

Alan Dershowitz - a long time Obama supporter - says based on a speech that President Obama made in England that President Obama just doesn't get the Middle East.

This recent statement clearly reveals the underlying flaw in Obama's thinking about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. There is no way that Israel can agree to borders without the Palestinians also agreeing to give up any claim to a "right of return." As Palestinian Prime Minister Fayyad Salaam once told me: each side has a major card to play and a major compromise to make; for Israel, that card is the West Bank, and the compromise is returning to the 1967 lines with agreed-upon adjustments and land swaps; for the Palestinians, that card is "the right of return," and the compromise is an agreement that the Palestinian refugees will be settled in Palestine and not in Israel; in other words, that there will be no right to "return" to Israel.

President Obama's formulation requires Israel to give up its card and to make a "wrenching compromise" by dismantling most of the West Bank settlements and ending its occupation of the West Bank. But it does not require the Palestinians to give up their card and to compromise on the right of return. That "extraordinarily emotional" issue is to be left to further negotiations only after the borders have been agreed to.

This temporal ordering — requiring Israel to give up the "territorial" card before the Palestinians even have to negotiate about the "return" card — is a non-starter for Israel and it is more than the Palestinians have privately asked for. Once again, President Obama, by giving the Palestinians more than they asked for, has made it difficult, if not impossible, for the Palestinians to compromise. Earlier in his administration, Obama insisted that Israel freeze all settlement building, despite the fact that the Palestinians had not demanded such action as a precondition to negotiating. He forced the Palestinians to impose that as a precondition, because no Palestinian leader could be seen as less pro-Palestinian than the American President. Now he's done it again, by not demanding that the Palestinians give up their right of return as a quid for Israel's quo of returning to the 1967 borders with agreed-upon land swaps.

Yes, that's true. But Dershowitz also suggests a 'right of return' for the 'Palestinians' to 'Palestine.' If that were to happen, what makes him think that the 'Palestinians' wouldn't 'spill' over the border into Israel?

What's worse is that Dershowitz says it's not too late for Obama to explain what he 'really meant.' Dershowitz doesn't understand: Obama intended to degrade Israel's position. All those years of Jeremiah Wright and Rashid Khalidi and Louis Farrakhan and Ali Abunimah solidified Obama's previous predilection to be anti-Israel. He's a man on a mission.

What could go wrong?

Labels: 1949 armistice lines, Alan Dershowitz, Barack Hussein Obama, Palestinian refugees, right of return, two-state solution

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 7:03 PM