It's come to this: Saudi editorial blasts Abu Mazen for not responding positively to Netanyahu invitation
It's finally happened. A major Sunni Arab country has told Abu Bluff where to get off. And it's a big one: It's 'our friends, the Saudis.'
The editorial, published Sunday in the Saudi Gazette, a daily published
in Jeddah that has a woman editor-in-chief, seemed to depart in tone
from the widely-held position in the Arab world that Israel is
responsible for the impasse with the Palestinians. It likened
Netanyahu’s proposal that the two leaders address each other’s
parliaments, to Prime Minister Menachem Begin’s 1977 invitation to
Egyptian president Anwar Sadat to visit Israel, and implied it could
also lead to a breakthrough. Begin made the invitation “and the rest is
history,’’ the editorial said.
“For all its shortcomings, Camp
David demonstrated that negotiations with Israel were possible and that
progress could be made through sustained efforts at communication and
cooperation,’’ it added.
As another example of how “official
visits can bend the arc of history’’ the paper cited then-US President
Bill Clinton’s 1998 visit to the Gaza Strip to address the Palestinian
National Council on the day it deleted clauses calling for the
destruction of Israel from the PLO charter.
Well, except that deletion had not legal effect, but let's leave that for now.
The editorial said that Palestinians had rejected overtures from
Netanyahu with the explanation that his hard-line position on all core
issues made dialogue impossible.
“But the Palestinians should note that at that time, Egypt and Israel were mortal enemies having fought three wars.’’
The
editorial went on to second guess the Arab world for rejecting Camp
David, saying “in hindsight if the provisions had been carried out,
Israel and the Palestinians might not be in the impasse they are at
present.’’ Saudi Arabia was a leader of the Arab opposition to Camp
David.
'Moderate' 'Palestinian' President Mahmoud AbbasAbu Mazen sent 'Palestinian' Christian mouthpiece Hanan Ashrawi out to respond.
‘’Whoever wrote this editorial is totally unaware of the reality of
this so-called invitation,’’ said PLO spokeswoman Hanan Ashrawi. “It is
a very obvious public relations trick that’s been overused. If
Netanyahu wants peace, let him abide by the requirements of
international law, the two-state solution and the 1967 boundaries.’’
...
Ashrawi took issue with the analogy to Egyptian-Israeli peacemaking.
“It’s not a question of Egypt and Israel, two countries that wanted to
make peace, it’s a question of an occupying force that is destroying the
other state and it’s about people under occupation who have no right
and no power.’’
Funny. I don't recall Begin or Sadat imposing any preconditions... and I am old enough to remember.
Ashrawi said she thinks that “below the surface there are contacts
[between Israel and Saudi Arabia] and all sorts of security
considerations and Israel is positioning itself to be a regional
power.’’ But she added: “No matter what happens, they won’t recognize or
normalize with Israel because it hasn’t respected Palestinian rights
and international law. Once the Palestinian issue is resolved things
can move. Before that they might have secret contacts, but they can’t
afford to lose their own constituency.’’
Except that the 'Palestinians' have made the 'Palestinian issue' impossible to resolve by rejecting any form of compromise.
Here's betting that Abu Mazen and Ashrawi go to their graves without seeing any kind of compromise or 'Palestinian state.'
Defense establishment kept Golda Meir in the dark in the lead-up to Yom Kippur War
This was one of the posts I had planned to run on Friday, but did not get to run it.
This past week, some of Golda Meir's testimony to the Agranat Commission (which investigated the government's and the IDF's failure in the Yom Kippur War) was released for the first time. While the headline was that Golda told the Commission that had Israel pre-empted we might not have been resupplied by the US, this is the piece that is truly shocking.
"At the time that this
telegram was sent by you, did the intelligence services or anyone else
bother you with anything urgent? Any other information? The problem here
is that they [in the report] claim that it is only an exercise."
"...I would like to read to you what the
Military Intelligence Directorate received that day: 'We learned that
Syria has evacuated Soviet experts, and that planes have begun taking
them from Damascus to Moscow. The same sources informed us that even the
families of the Soviet diplomats have begun arriving in Moscow from
Damascus. The sources added that the Syrians explained the evacuation by
saying that Egypt and Syria were planning to wage a war against Israel.
For your information."
Meir: "I don't know."
Yadin: "The IDF chief of staff and the defense
minister told us that on Friday evening they had not received such a
telegram. Did you not get one?"
Meir: "No."
Later in that meeting, the commission
discusses certain intelligence information that was not handed over to
the Prime Minister's Office.
Meir: "It may be that the Military
Intelligence Directorate did not feel obligated to share information
with us, but it is very hard for me to understand how it wasn't shared
with the chief of staff."
...
"...Until the very last minute we were still trying to
follow Military Intelligence's conception, that everything that was
happening on the northern and southern fronts was a result of their fear
of an attack by us. To try at the last minute through the Americans to
tell the Russians, and have the Russians tell the Egyptians that we have
no such intention. ... We thought that at the last minute maybe we
could still save. ... For some reason based on what Keating told us
[Kenneth Keating, who was, for a time, the U.S. ambassador to Israel],
it would be at 6 p.m. At one point I said, maybe it was a misprint?
Maybe he meant that it would be at 16:00 [4 p.m.]. ... We thought that
they would still have time to get the message to the Russians and
subsequently to the Egyptians and Syrians, that we are not planning to
attack."
...
Agranat: "I am just trying to
understand the frame of mind. ... I understand that one consideration,
maybe the main one, was that they were afraid of us and therefore we
wanted to communicate the message: know that we have no intention of
launching an attack. But shouldn't the other consideration have been not
that they are afraid of us, but that they want to attack us and they
want to take us by surprise? Or was the assessment that there was a 'low
likelihood' as Military Intelligence calls it, meaning that it wouldn't
happen?"
Meir: "No, because though the Military
Intelligence assessment was as it was -- the conception. I am wary of
speaking in front of two former chiefs of staff, but I think that the
conception was that if the conscription army was on full alert, that
means the air force, and additional units were called up and are there
to assist -- that is enough force to stave off ..."
"On the day of October 5, the chief of staff said, and I
quote: 'We have taken all the preparatory measures. Over this holiday,
the IDF has declared a state of high alert; all vacations have been
cancelled on the lines.' ... That means that the conception was that
blocking [the enemy] is a conscription army on high alert."
It was also disclosed last week that Israel had listening devices on the Egyptian side of the Suez canal. Astoundingly, military intelligence chief Eli Zeirarefused to activate them (while leaving his superiors and the political echelon with the impression that they had been activated).
The week prior to the war was
critical. On October 1, a Monday, the Egyptian army began the "Tahrir
41" exercise, concealing their preparations for an actual attack.
According to Bar Joseph, the Military Intelligence echelon directly
subordinate to Zeira, including the head of research Brig. Gen. Aryeh
Shalev, collection department director Col. Menachem Digli and Unit 848
commander Ben Porat, demanded that the devices be activated and made
operational. But Zeira refused "both because he was afraid of what would
happen to them (the listening devices) and because he was convinced
that no war would break out."
For example, upon discovering that the Soviet
Union was evacuating nationals on the day before the war, Zeira
confessed that "in my view, the Soviet thing is the most problematic and
serious." But he still concluded by saying "I don't see the Egyptians
and the Syrians attacking us."
Col. (res.) Yossi Langotsky, who served as the
commander of the Military Intelligence Directorate's operational
technology unit (in charge of operating the listening devices) confirms
Bar Joseph's sentiments. "I can personally attest to the fact that
during the week prior to the war Digli and Ben Porat approached Zeira
several times and asked for his authorization to activate the devices,
but to no avail. To assuage Zeira's concerns over the safety of the
devices, Digli told him that 'after all, it is for emergency situations
and times of uncertainty like this that these devices were designed.'
There are no words to describe the height of Zeira's arrogance. Despite
the terrible implications of a possible surprise attack, he stuck to his
misguided conception and avoided activating the devices that were
designed precisely to protect against such a surprise," Langotsky says
angrily.
On the other hand, the officials to whom Zeira
was himself subordinate -- the IDF chief of staff and the defense
minister -- were convinced that the assessment indicating a low
likelihood of war relied entirely on intelligence collected by the
special devices.
"Hanoch Bartov, Elazar's biographer, said that
the IDF chief of staff was convinced, up until the start of the war,
and even shortly afterward, that Zeira had activated the special means
of collection," says Adam Raz, a doctoral student in the Political
Science Department of Tel Aviv University, who researched the topic.
"Ben Porat recounted a conversation he had with Elazar, in which he said
that between October 1 and 6 he had asked the Military Intelligence
chief twice if all the sources were being utilized, and the answer was
affirmative. Digli has also said in the past that Elazar had told him
after the war that 'when I asked Eli (Zeira) if, when he says that there
is a low likelihood, he is relying on those sources (the listening
devices) as well, and his answer was affirmative.'"
Later, Elazar explained to Ben Porat: "the
false information that I received about the activation of the means
confused me even more, because I knew what they were capable of. If
there was no intelligence of impending war coming from them (the
devices), that means that everything is okay. It is now very clear to me
that I was not told the truth."
When facing the Agranat commission, Elazar
testified that "the incident (failure to activate the listening devices)
was not decided by me nor was it brought to my knowledge… I learned
only after the war that the […] was not turned on in those days. That is
precisely what it was made for -- to give us warning. That was its sole
function, and in essence I did not know that it was turned off."
...
Zeira was asked by the Agranat
commission why he had decided on his own accord not to use the devices
rather than consulting with the chief of staff, while "his superiors
were led to mistakenly believe that the topic had been incorporated into
his assessments." Zeira's reply was that "it is not my nature to
delegate authority upward…I don't bring things that are under my
authority to my superiors, usually, and I don't tell them 'I know it is
my responsibility, but I am handing off the responsibility to you. You
decide.'"
Bar Joseph argues that the decision makers'
faith that the devices were operational but providing no indication that
a war was imminent carried fateful weight in the decisions that were
made. It is the reason they did not rush to deploy the army along the
Sinai and Golan Heights fronts and why they did not recruit the
necessary reserves units. That faith also painted the rest of the
intelligence that came in from the region in a different light.
"During the week before the war broke out, the
decision makers are confident that the listening devices are fully
operational. They don't ask if the devices are working but rather what
information they are yielding. They say so in their Agranat commission
testimonies very clearly, and explain that their confidence that they
would receive notice 48 hours in advance relied on them. Zeira knows
that they think the devices are working, and for reasons known only to
him he does not correct them. That is the most terrible part of this
story. In my opinion, it was not a mistake. It was calculated," Bar
Joseph says.
According to Langotsky, "Zeira first gave the
green light to activate the devices only on Thursday afternoon, and only
for a technical check. The check began overnight between Thursday
October 4 and Friday October 5. His instructions were to complete the
test and report the findings to him personally at his house no later
than 6 a.m. Friday morning, Yom Kippur eve." In other words, when Zeira
says to Dayan that it is "totally quiet" in the "chatter on the Egyptian
lines" it is, according to Langotsky, at least three hours after the
devices were shut off, following a mere technical check. Bar Joseph
claims that due to a malfunction, one of the devices continued to work
for several hours more, but since it was just a technical check and not
full operational eavesdropping, it did not really help.
But Dr. Haim Shine (whom I think I knew in the 1960's), who was seriously wounded in the Yom Kippur War, urges readers not to let Golda Meir off so easily.
For
many years I have refrained from using the word "failure" in regard to
the army's lack of preparedness for that war and the way the country's
leaders made decisions during those days. Immediately after I was
released from a long hospital stay, where I was treated for a serious
war injury, I told the late Menachem Begin what I had seen in battle. He
asked me never to use the word "failure" because mothers had lost their
children in the war, and we mustn't compound their pain with the term
"failure." When I read Meir's Agranat commission testimony, it became
clear to me that it was not a failure at all -- it was in fact a true
crime.
The writing was on the
wall, written in huge red letters, and the irresponsible and
shortsighted leaders simply refused to read. The writing is now written
in small black letters on gravestones in various military cemeteries.
Meir was never fit to
serve as prime minister in the first place. She didn't understand the
first thing about the most fundamental, existential issues facing the
State of Israel. She was a representative of the Mapai establishment
that ruled the country for generations, and refused to step aside. Meir
lacked the ability to stand up to the heads of the defense
establishment. Her opinion did not matter to them, and when it came to
classified information, they didn't even bother informing her.
Then-Defense Minister Moshe Dayan's well-publicized heroism and
then-Military Intelligence Director Eli Zeira's arrogance and
overconfidence turned Meir into a marginal character in the mechanism
that made fateful decisions.
After the war, efforts
were made to be lenient with her, in many ways due to pity or other
external considerations. I feel suspicion mixed with contempt toward all
the embarrassing arguments that we must give her credit for her conduct
in the days after the initial surprise of the war. Unfortunately, as
someone who was seriously wounded in that war, giving her credit feels
to me as artificial, worthless and dishonest.
That reminds me of another Prime Minister and Defense Minister we had more recently.... Isn't it sad that 40 years later we have learned nothing?
Director Harry Hunkele has made a full-length documentary about the negotiations that led to the Camp David treaty between Egypt and Israel. The movie is called Back Door Channels and it will be opening in theaters in the fall of 2011.
Hunkele is an American who believes that what happened in 1979 can happen again. A 'peace agreement' can be reached.
"It’s my great hope that people will view the film and realize that what once happened can happen again," Hunkele says in an interview to Ynet. "All it takes is courageous politicians, but sadly I think that’s the key ingredient missing in today’s world.
"Carter, Begin and, of course, Sadat, paid a terrible price for peace. Politicians take notice of such things and no one since, with the exception of Rabin, has dared to push for peace."
I don't know what terrible price Carter paid for the peace treaty. For that matter, I'm not sure Begin paid a terrible price either, although Israel paid an economic price for it, and may yet - God forbid - have to fight another war because of it. Sadat paid a terrible price - he was murdered.
And as to the claim that Rabin is 'the only one who pushed for peace' since, I believe that depends on how you define 'push for peace.' Had Rabin lived, I do not believe that he would have continued with the Oslo Accords. I believe that he saw where the 'Palestinians' were heading. In his last speech in the Knesset, Rabin said he would never agree to a 'Palestinian state.' And by the way, Rabin was dragged into the Oslo Accords by Shimon Peres and his poodles. So did they 'push for peace'?
Here's the opening scene of the movie. Let's go to the videotape.
And here's the trailer. Let's go to the videotape.
'Palestinian' who holds Jordanian passport: Jordan is 'Palestine'
Here's an interview with a spokeswoman for a 'Palestinian' 'cultural' organization in Dearbornistan, Michigan. We learn from her that Jordan is 'Palestine,' that Anwar Sadat was a traitor who deserved to die, and that there will never be peace between Israel and its Arab neighbors who would God forbid destroy her.
Poor Menachem: Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory
Israel's leadership has a long and painful history of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. Here are some examples.
Thus, the sweeping strategic advantages, won in victories of the Six Day War, have been foolishly squandered.
The Sinai Peninsula with its strategic depth, mineral wealth and economic potential is now deteriorating into a lawless “no-go” region, rapidly falling under the control of the most ruthless extremists on the face of the globe. In the wake of the “Tahrir tsunami,” Israel is facing an emerging lose-lose strategic predicament which will soon force it to decide between:
• Allowing Sinai to degenerate into an Afghanistan-like haven for al-Qaida and other jihadi organizations,
• Allowing a Muslim Brotherhood-controlled Egypt to remilitarize the area in order to reestablish law and order, and
• Reasserting Israeli control of Sinai, effectively repudiating the peace agreement.
Admittedly, the three decades of Egyptian prickly nonbelligerence provided Israel with significant benefits – in return for considerable strategic sacrifices. But from here on in, the challenges will be daunting to say the least. All options are gravely menacing... After all, all poor Menachem got was “a piece of paper.”
This was neither unpredictable nor unpredicted.
However, the sober voices who warned against the wisdom of or the need to make such sweeping concessions to the depleted and disintegrating regime in Cairo were dismissed as deranged warmongers. It seems that future generations will yet be called on to pay the price of this strategic myopia, a price, which could far outweigh the temporary benefits of the acrimonious and relatively brief interbellum.
...
If it took about a generation for the folly of relinquishing Sinai to become tangibly evident, with 2005’s disengagement it took a matter of weeks.
In a stunning triumph of irrationality over reason, Israel six years ago surrendered all for nothing, erasing 30 years of Zionist endeavor in Gaza in a fortnight. With dizzying speed all ominous warnings of dangers came true; all promises of benefits proved false. But worse of all, it conveyed an unmistakable strategic message to the Arabs: With the Jews, no concessions are necessary! If confronted with adequate resolve and violence, they will capitulate unconditionally.
In a stroke, Ariel Sharon’s mendacious promise that “the fate of Netzarim will be the fate of Tel Aviv” was inverted. Now the Arabs had every reason to believe that “the fate Tel Aviv will be the fate of Netzarim.”
There are three other areas today where Israel could still snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. One - the Golan Heights - is on hold right now due to the uprising in Syria. But the government is on the verge of capitulating in two other areas: Our dealings with the 'Palestinians' and our economy, which is one of the strongest in the world.
I'd like to conclude with a quote from Anwar Sadat that I had never heard before.
"Poor Menachem [Begin]... I got back... the Sinai and the Alma oil fields, and what has Menachem got? A piece of paper” – Anwar Sadat on the Peace Agreement with Israel, The New York Times, October 19, 1980.
Having now completed Yehuda Avner's The Prime Ministers, it is clear to me that the Begins and the Sadats liked each other personally. Yet Sadat understood that he was getting the far better end of the deal. No one else in Egypt accepted Israel, and therefore what is happening now was readily foreseeable albeit it took a little longer than expected. Why does Israel keep giving away its assets for paper?
What Anwar Sadat thought of the Muslim Brotherhood
How dangerous is the Muslim Brotherhood? Anwar Sadat - who was murdered by them - ought to know. Here's Sadat (who legalized them in Egypt for the first time in two decades) talking about them.
The 'new' Egypt has decided to release two of the terrorists who were convicted for participating in the murder of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat in 1982 (Hat Tip: Shy Guy).
The two, Aboud and Tarek el-Zomor, have served their sentences. They were kept in jail after their sentences were over for security reasons.
They were convicted in 1984 of plotting Sadat's murder, and of belonging to Islamic Jihad, an outlawed group. Both were also convicted of resisting arrest.
They were not convicted of carrying out the murder. Five people convicted of the assassination itself were put to death.
Islamic Jihad had been angered by Sadat's treaty with Israel.
Egypt's military rulers yesterday ordered the release of two cousins jailed for their role in the assassination of president Anwar Sadat in 1981.
Abboud and Tarek el-Zomor served multiple sentences for their role in the shooting during a Cairo military parade. Despite the order, they have not yet been freed.
They were convicted in 1984 of plotting the assassination and of belonging to the outlawed Islamic Jihad group -- but not of actually killing Sadat. The five prime suspects, including the shooter, were captured and executed.
The two were sentenced to 20 years in prison, the maximum term under Egyptian law.
They have both seen out their terms but were not set free because of the Interior Ministry's discretionary power to hold a prisoner for up to five more years on security grounds.
About 60 other prisoners who have served their terms are to be freed under the same order.
An insider's account of the Mubarak government's last days
Mohamed Abdellah was one of the founders of Egypt's National Democratic Party (NDP), and was a confidant of both Anwar Sadat and Hosni Mubarak. He gives an insider's account of what happened in the last days of Mubarak's rule in Egypt. The bottom line is that Mubarak isolated himself with a small group of advisers (led by an overeager son named Gamal) who told him only what he wanted to hear. Does that sound familiar?
This interview is with Anwar Sadat's nephew, who is actually an opposition party leader, who defends Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. I'll have a comment after the video.
Let's go to the videotape.
If the Egyptians had retreated - as Mubarak refused to do - they would not have ended up with their Third Army surrounded by Ariel Sharon's troops in the Sinai. That was how the war ended. Unfortunately, Sharon didn't finish them off.
As a reminder of just unhelpful the Mubarak reimge has been in discouraging anti-Semitism, here's an Eli Lake column from the New York Sun that was written in 2005. You will note that the United States has not been very helpful in encouraging the Egyptians to do things differently.
Hisham Abd al-Rauf, the foreign editor of Egypt's largest-circulation afternoon paper, would like the readers of The New York Sun to know that he does not hate all Jewish people. But that nonetheless, he is entitled to his opinions that the Holocaust never happened, that the Romans did not destroy the Second Temple in Jerusalem because it was never built, and that Jews ordered President Bush to unseat Saddam Hussein.
But as for the Jews, Mr. al-Rauf grew up with many in his Cairo neighborhood before the Six-Day War. His father's jeweler was Jewish. In 1993, he met many more Jews, whom he claims to genuinely like, on an American government program to train foreign journalists in Boston. "I have even met some rabbis. I liked them," he said in an interview yesterday where he defended a recent column praising the Iranian president's recent remarks questioning the historical truth of the Holocaust.
Mr. al-Rauf's column, titled "Israel's Lies," argued that the gas chambers were actually rooms to disinfect clothing, and that Adolf Hitler was "not against the Jews," he even allowed 120,000 of them to immigrate to Israel. At the end of this screed, Mr. al-Rauf scolded the Europeans who have expressed outrage at the comments of Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. "If you feel sorry for the poor Jews, why don't you establish their country on your lands?" he wrote, according a translation by the Middle East Media Research Institute.
The column appeared on December 12 in al-Masaa, a government funded paper that has 200,000 daily readers.
One might think these sorts of assertions would draw controversy. But not here in Egypt. Mr. al-Rauf and al-Masaa's editor in chief, Khaled Imam, say they have received no letters to the editor.
...
The journalist exchange program in which Mr. al-Rauf participated in 1993 was funded by American taxpayers.
...
"I saw Jackson, Miss.; New Orleans; Washington; New York, and of course Boston," the foreign editor said. "It's a very good country with very good people, but a very bad government." When asked his thoughts on President Bush, he said, "He is turning America into the Soviet Union," an odd comment for the foreign editor of a state-funded newspaper that nearly every day features an above-the-fold photo of President Mubarak.
I'm beginning to reconsider my comments about the abrogation of the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty being inevitable. I'm old enough to remember that when Anwar Sadat was assassinated in 1981, everyone thought that the treaty would be abrogated. Hosni Mubarak has - nominally - adhered to the treaty for the last 30 years. But obviously, Mubarak is not a lover of Jews.
The reason Mubarak has adhered to the treaty is all that American aid money. Will the US support Mubarak's successor? Obviously, that depends who it is. But if Mubarak's successor is a garden variety anti-Semite and not something like the Muslim Brotherhood that is dead set on turning Egypt and the entire world into a Caliphate, then there is a chance that if US aid continues, the treaty will remain in effect.
Leslie Gelb does a great job of explaining a theory of why President Obama is so hung up on making peace break out between Israel and the 'Palestinians' and what's totally wrong about Obama's approach to it.
From the earliest days of his tenure, Obama has appeared mesmerized by the dream of creating harmony between Muslims and Americans. His speeches and private musings testify to this. Somehow, he’s got it in his head that the key to nirvana is to make peace between Israelis and Palestinians. In other words, he seems to believe that the main reason for Muslim hatred or dislike of America is its support for Israel and, in turn, Israel’s denial of a Palestinian homeland. Fix those problems, Obama seems to feel, and the walls of Muslim hatred will come tumbling down.
Without doubt, these feelings are part of the anti-American, anti-Israeli story among Muslims. But more important is Washington’s long history of support for people like the shah of Iran, the kings of Saudi Arabia, and the authoritarian presidents of Egypt. Personally, I don’t think American leaders have had much choice but to back these leaders. The alternatives were always far worse, far more extremist. But a price had to be paid for this realism, and America has been paying it. Also, whatever Americans may feel about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, America’s role is extremely unpopular among Muslims. These attitudes will not disappear, no matter what happens between the Israelis and Palestinians. That is one among many irritants.
Based on my reading of this torturous history, I would not try to start negotiating between Israel and Palestine by leaning on or bribing Israel for the umpteenth time. It hasn’t worked. It won’t work. What might succeed is a dramatic step not by the Israelis, but by the Palestinians. Their leaders should be emulating Anwar Sadat, the great Egyptian president who went to Jerusalem in 1977. His nation had been defeated in the 1973 war, and Israel occupied the entire Sinai Peninsula, a historic Egyptian territory. There was no prospect that Israel would return this land after Egypt had attacked Israel in 1973. But President Sadat took his pride and his great dream for peace with Israel and stood before the Israeli Knesset. In effect, he put his life, not to mention his popularity at home, on the line and conferred recognition and legitimacy upon the state of Israel. In return, Israel returned the Sinai to Egypt, every square inch.
But we all know Abu Bluff will never do this, and even if he did, no one would believe him unless he said it in Arabic. Of course, if he said it in Arabic, he might have a small chance of living out the month, depending how much of the month was left.
No, the 'Palestinians' don't want peace. The Egyptians didn't want peace either, but Sadat was a strong leader who forced it on them, and Mubarak has made it stick if quite coldly. Whether the Egyptian peace will survive Mubarak is far from certain. But Abu Mazen is no Mubarak.
I am an Orthodox Jew - some would even call me 'ultra-Orthodox.' Born in Boston, I was a corporate and securities attorney in New York City for seven years before making aliya to Israel in 1991 (I don't look it but I really am that old :-). I have been happily married to the same woman for thirty-five years, and we have eight children (bli ayin hara) ranging in age from 13 to 33 years and nine grandchildren. Four of our children are married! Before I started blogging I was a heavy contributor on a number of email lists and ran an email list called the Matzav from 2000-2004. You can contact me at: IsraelMatzav at gmail dot com
