Remember when Haaretz editor-in-chief David Landau asked Condoleeza Rice to rape Israel? Meretz party leader Zany Zehava Gal-On has just asked US Secretary of State John FN Kerry to do the same. Gal-On is afraid that Kerry is giving Israel too much wiggle room.
She focused her criticism on a decision by Kerry to enable both the Israeli and Palestinian sides to express reservations to the framework he intends to present.
"I
think the US is surrendering to rejectionists on both sides by letting
them express reservations," Gal-On said. "A framework with
reservations is a farce. It will allow everything the Americans did so
far to fall by the wayside, while both sides stall without paying a
political price."
Gal-On said Kerry "has good intentions" and has
used the proper resources to advance the diplomatic process. She
expressed sympathy for the criticism he has faced from both the Israeli
Right and the Palestinians but did not refrain from expressing her own
frustration with him, even on personal terms.
"Everyone who
comes thinks he invented the wheel," Gal-On said. "I'm not looking to
attack the Americans. I respect them, but their policies are
incorrect."
Gal-On called on Kerry to put more pressure on both
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority chairman
Mahmoud Abbas.
"Instead of forcing the Israelis and the
Palestinians to make a decision and really obligate themselves, even at
the cost of changing their governments, Kerry is giving Netanyahu and
Abbas the ultimate excuse to continue dragging their feet," she said.
"Virtual negotiations will not lead to an agreement for two peoples, only to political survival at the expense of our future."
More pressure? There hasn't been any pressure put on Abu Bluff yet. While she's at it, why doesn't she just call on Kerry to impose a settlement? In fact, why doesn't she call on him to send in the Marines to expel the 'settlers' from their homes?
This is your ally, Yair Lapid. What could go wrong?
Flashback: Nancy Pelosi leads Dem delegation to Syria over Bush objections
We haven't heard a lot from Nancy Pelosi on Syria. Maybe this has something to do with why (original source here).
Ms. Pelosi was criticized by President Bush for visiting Damascus at a
time when the administration -- rightly or wrongly -- has frozen
high-level contacts with Syria. Mr. Bush said that thanks to the
speaker's freelancing Mr. Assad was getting mixed messages from the
United States. Ms. Pelosi responded by pointing out that Republican
congressmen had visited Syria without drawing presidential censure.
That's true enough -- but those other congressmen didn't try to
introduce a new U.S. diplomatic initiative in the Middle East. "We came
in friendship, hope, and determined that the road to Damascus is a road
to peace," Ms. Pelosi grandly declared.
Never mind that that
statement is ludicrous: As any diplomat with knowledge of the region
could have told Ms. Pelosi, Mr. Assad is a corrupt thug whose overriding
priority at the moment is not peace with Israel but heading off U.N.
charges that he orchestrated the murder of former Lebanese prime
minister Rafiq al-Hariri. The really striking development here is the
attempt by a Democratic congressional leader to substitute her own
foreign policy for that of a sitting Republican president. Two weeks ago
Ms. Pelosi rammed legislation through the House of Representatives that
would strip Mr. Bush of his authority as commander in chief to manage
troop movements in Iraq. Now she is attempting to introduce a new Middle
East policy that directly conflicts with that of the president. We have
found much to criticize in Mr. Bush's military strategy and regional
diplomacy. But Ms. Pelosi's attempt to establish a shadow presidency is
not only counterproductive, it is foolish.
At the time, Pelosi accomplished her goal of rehabilitating Assad. A month later, President Bush's own secretary of state met with Syrian foreign minister Walid Moallem on the sidelines of a conference in Sharm-el-Sheikh. Pelosi played a major role in ending Syria's isolation.
Isn't it strange that she doesn't seem so proud of that anymore?
Olmert offered everything, the 'Palestinians' never answered
In an interview with the Tower over the weekend, former Prime Minister Ehud K. Olmert revealed the stunning details of the sweeping peace offer he made to the 'Palestinians.'
Revealing never before heard details of talks with Palestinian
Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, Olmert was referring to the proposal
for a peace agreement that he presented to Abbas in the afternoon hours
of a Tuesday, September 16, 2008 meeting in the Prime Minister’s
residence in Jerusalem.
“At the end of the meeting” Olmert recalled this week, “we called
Saeb Erekat [chief negotiator for PLO] and Shalom [Shalom Turjeman,
Olmert's diplomatic adviser]. We asked them to meet the following day,
Wednesday, together with map experts, in order to arrive at a final
formula for the border between Palestine and Israel.”
But that Wednesday, Erekat called Turjeman and said they could not
meet to finalize the peace deal because they “had forgotten that Abbas
had to go to Amman!” Erekat said they would meet the following week.
“I’ve been waiting ever since,” Olmert said with a smile.
...
Among the historic concessions, Olmert offered an unprecedented
compromise over the Holy Basin, which includes the Temple Mount, the
holiest place in Judaism. He proposed that in the context of a permanent
peace agreement, a special committee with representatives from five
countries – Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Palestine, the United States, and
Israel – would administer the critical area.
As his advisors gathered around him, Abbas told them that the Israeli
Prime Minister had presented him not only the details of the agreement
but also a large map, which laid out the borders of the future
Palestinian state.
Abbas silenced those present so that he could concentrate. He wanted
to sketch out Olmert’s map from memory. The Israeli Prime Minister had
told him that as long as Abu Mazen did not sign his initials to the map
and endorse it, Olmert would not hand over a copy. Abu Mazen took a
piece of letterhead of the Presidential Office and drew on it the
borders of the Palestinian state as he remembered them.
Abbas marked the settlement blocks that Israel would retain: The
Ariel bloc, the Jerusalem-Maaleh Adumim bloc (including E1), and Gush
Etzion. A total of 6.3% of the West Bank. Then Abbas also drew the
territories that Israel proposed to offer in their place: In the area of
Afula-Tirat Zvi, in the Lachish area, the area close to Har Adar, and
in the Judean desert and the Gaza envelope. A total of 5.8% of the West
Bank. Abu Mazen wrote on the left side of the letterhead the numbers as
he incorrectly remembered them (6.8% and 5.5%), and on the back he wrote
the rest of the details of the proposal: Safe passage between Gaza and
the West Bank via a tunnel, the pentilateral committee to administer the
Holy Basin, the removal of the Israeli presence in the Jordan Valley
and the absorption of 5,000 Palestinian refugees, 1,000 each year over
five years, inside the Green Line.
Abbas’ hand-drawn map, sketched on the stationery of the Palestinian Office of the President and obtained by TheTower.org in the course of this investigative report about the clandestine negotiation between Olmert and Abbas, was published here
yesterday exclusively. The two men met 36 times, mostly in Jerusalem
and once in Jericho, and arrived at a formula that was to be the basis
for a lasting agreement between the two parties. But in the end, peace
accords between Israel and the Palestinians were not signed, despite the
far-reaching proposal made by Olmert. As an official matter, the
Palestinian Authority has not responded.
...
TheTower.org: But between the last meeting and the Gaza Operation there were three months. Why didn’t you answer Olmert during that period?
The official preferred to avoid answering that question. Chief
Palestinian Negotiator Saeb Erekat confirms that these were the details
of the proposal Olmert offered as they were shown to the Palestinian
side. “But Olmert’s memory concerning the last meeting has been rather
foggy,” he insisted. ”We too showed Olmert a map that spoke of handing
over 1.9% only of the West Bank to Israeli sovereignty.
“I know all of their arguments,” said Olmert. “They say that Abu
Mazen agreed with Bush that Erekat would meet with Turjeman in early
January in Washington, but that was a few days before Bush left the
White House and we received no such invitation. They claim that it was
because I was finished politically, so he hesitated. But that is an
excuse after the fact. They [the Palestinians] were very worried. Abu
Mazen is not a big hero. They were afraid. Erekat was worried. In the
end they thought that maybe after the American elections they would get
more from President Obama.”
Indeed, the Palestinian leader wouldn’t even initial the hand-drawn
map of the deal. Nor did he ever dignify this generous offer with a
response. As Olmert puts it, he’s still waiting for a phone call from
Abbas with his answer.
The reason for that is not exactly a secret. Abbas could not say yes
because doing so meant recognizing the legitimacy of the Jewish state
that would remain in the parts of the country Olmert had agreed to give
up. And that is not something he could do and survive in the violent
world of Palestinian politics. Since Palestinian nationalism was founded
out of the desire to reject Zionism, it is simply impossible for it to
make its peace with a Jewish state no matter where its borders might be
drawn.
Olmert’s proposal is vulnerable to criticism because it creates a new
divided Jerusalem that would be an unbearable mess. So, too, would his
limited right of return for Palestinians and the tunnel he wanted to dig
between Gaza and the West Bank. But the real problem is that, like Ehud
Barak, who also tried to give the Palestinians almost everything they
said they wanted, he got nothing in exchange for offers that compromised
Israel’s rights.
In Olmert’s view the only conclusion to be drawn from this failure is
that Abbas is, “no hero.” He’s right about that, but the lesson from
this episode goes deeper than Abbas’s lack of heroism. If a Palestinian
leader couldn’t bring himself to take an offer like that—one, I might
add, that gives up far more in Jerusalem than most Israelis thought
acceptable—than what this shows is that the 36 meetings Olmert had with
Abbas was a charade. The only point of this process for the Palestinians
is to use any concessions they get as the floor for future negotiations
and demands. The result is that Israel continues to abandon its
rights—including not just West Bank settlements but the most sacred
places in Judaism—while getting neither peace nor security.
Olmert says he’s proud of his efforts, but all he really accomplished
was to demonstrate once again that real peace with the Palestinians
remains an illusion for the foreseeable future.
We Israelis can only hope and pray that we never again have a government that is foolish enough to offer anything near what the 'Palestinians' have already rejected.
During a press conference with Palestinian Authority President
Mahmoud Abbas, Obama said young people he'd met on the trip made him
think of his own children.
"Whenever I meet these young people, whether they're Palestinian or
Israeli, I'm reminded of my own daughters, and I know what hopes and
aspirations I have for them," Obama said at the Palestinian headquarters
compound in Ramallah. "And those of us in the United States understand
that change takes time but it is also possible, because there was a time
when my daughters could not expect to have the same opportunities in
their own country as somebody else's daughters."
Obama's comments—which invoked life under Jim Crow in the U.S. or
perhaps even under slavery—seemed to give support to Palestinian
narratives that describe Arabs and Palestinians as second-class citizens
in Israel. That line of criticism deeply angers many Israelis. Some
critics of Israel go so far as to use the word apartheid, a word that
angers Israelis further.
But at stops in Jerusalem later on Thursday, Obama invoked the
history of African-Americans in the U.S. in ways far more pleasing to
Israelis and Jews generally.
During his main speech to the Israeli people, Obama noted how the
bible story of the expulsion of the Jews from Egypt and the drive to
reach the promised land animated African Americans in the U.S. for ages.
He also drew a personal connection to his own life.
"To African Americans, the story of the Exodus was perhaps the
central story, the most powerful image about emerging from the grip of
bondage to reach for liberty and human dignity -- a tale that was
carried from slavery through the Civil Rights Movement into today,"
Obama declared. "For generations, this promise helped people weather
poverty and persecution, while holding on to the hope that a better day
was on the horizon. For me, personally, growing up in far-flung parts
of the world and without firm roots, the story spoke to a yearning
within every human being for a home."
And Thursday night, Obama invoked the history of Jews who worked for
racial justice, in particular the Jewish American activists who joined
the civil rights movement in the 1960s.
"This story—from slavery to salvation, of overcoming even the most
overwhelming odds—is a message that’s inspired the world. And that
includes Jewish Americans but also African Americans, who have so often
had to deal with their own challenges, but with whom you have stood
shoulder to shoulder," Obama said at a State Dinner held at the
residence of Israeli President Shimon Peres.
"African Americans and Jewish Americans marched together at Selma and
Montgomery, with rabbis carrying the Torah as they walked. They
boarded buses for freedom rides together. They bled together. They
gave their lives together -- Jewish Americans like Andrew Goodman and
Michael Schwerner alongside African American, James Chaney," the U.S.
president said.
So which is it? And who is more clueless: Obama or Condi?
What we can learn from Israel's bombing of Syria's nuclear reactor
Elliott Abrams, who was in charge of the Middle East at the National Security Council when it happened, has an insider's look at how Israel destroyed Syria's al-Kibar nuclear reactor. It's a long piece and I urge you to read the whole thing.
Here are his lessons from the incident, and afterward I will give you mine:
First, good “process” and good policy are related but distinct. In
the end what counts is output, not input: the foreign policy we adopt,
not the proposals that are advanced. And that output depends, when it
comes to foreign policy, mostly on one man: the president. That’s the
second lesson. Advisers advise; the president decides. All the books
about how rival bureaucracies or powerful lobbies determine policy are
off the mark; the simpler and truer conclusion is that at any given
moment our foreign policy reflects the views of the president.
Finally, this incident is a reminder that there is no substitute for
military strength and the will to use it. Think of how much more
dangerous to the entire region the Syrian civil war would be today if
Assad had a nuclear reactor, and even perhaps nuclear weapons, in hand.
Israel was right to bomb that reactor before construction was completed,
and President Bush was right to support its decision to do so. Israel
was also right in rejecting fears that the incident would lead to a
larger war and in believing that it, and the United States, would be
better off after this assertion of leadership and determination. That
lesson must be on the minds of Israeli, and American, leaders in 2013.
If only Ariel Sharon had the guts to do the same to Iran in 2003 before its program got quite so far off the ground....
Every argument made in this piece about Syria could be made about Iran - indeed has been made about Iran. We would have been better off not going to the UN or the IAEA, but rather taking care of Iran's nuclear capability a long time ago when the cost would not have been so potentially high.
The way that Condi Clueless (in particular) and Bob Gates were able to influence President Bush to put the 'Palestinians' ahead of dealing with Syria, shows how much influence people in those positions can have and why it's so important that Chuck Hagel be defeated (even if John FN Kerry is already in).
And as much as I don't like him, in this case, Olmert definitely did the right thing. There's a lesson there for Netanyahu: Have courage and do what needs to be done.
The Philadelphi Corridor was a regular topic of discussion on this blog in 2006 and 2007, when Israel was still trying to do something about weapons smuggling into Gaza aside from the blockade. Allowing ourselves to be railroaded into giving it up by Condi Clueless, and handing over control to a group of cowardly European 'peacekeepers' known as EUBAM Rafah was a huge mistake from Day One, and was something that was never envisioned even by the most optimistic architects of the Gaza expulsion. Daniel Mandel argues that the time has come to reverse the mistake and to take back the Philadelphi Corridor.
First, there was never a sound reason to leave the corridor. It occurred purely as an unintended byproduct of a flawed Israeli decision to leave Gaza. This unilateral withdrawal was widely criticized by the most senior military and security figures, including the former and then-serving heads of the Shin Bet (Israel Security Service), the former IDF chief of staff, deputy chief of staff and chief of IDF Intelligence, and two former heads of the Mossad.
Even so, leaving Philadelphi was not part of the original plan. That outcome was due to unexpectedly strong pressure from the George W. Bush administration, secretary of state Condoleezza Rice in particular. In short, even those who supported the unilateral withdrawal did not reckon on relinquishing control of the Gaza/Egypt border.
Second, following the withdrawal, the evidence rapidly accumulated that the system of Egyptian troops, Israeli intelligence and international monitors instituted to replace direct Israeli supervision of the border was no substitute. Instead, there was an exponential increase in the quantity of offensive weaponry entering Gaza from Egypt.
Already in 2006, the former OC Southern Command, Maj.-Gen. Doron Almog, said that “there is a need for a permanent IDF presence in the area,” while the late doyen of military analysts, Zeev Schiff, observed that “even though Israel’s security and intelligence services have given the Egyptians a list of the names of those involved in the gun running... in practice nearly nothing is being done to prevent large-scale smuggling through the Philadelphi Route.”
Third, alterations last year to the security annex of the Egyptian/Israeli peace treaty to enable Egypt to deploy a further 2,500 troops in Sinai, in addition to the 700 already on the border, have achieved nothing. The reason is not hard to find and indeed is even more obvious now than when the annex was altered: the Egyptian forces are too much in sympathy with the terrorists and too loath to clash with Hamas to engage in a thorough- going campaign of terrorist suppression.
Egyptian forces will be brutal on terrorists that attack them, but will not interfere with Hamas and other forces bringing weaponry into Gaza.
It is therefore not a matter of troop numbers but of will. Where the efforts to stamp out the traffic in men and arms are tepid, grudging and spasmodic, large battalions will not avail. And nothing – least of all the change of regime in Cairo – suggests that the willpower that was once lacking has been found.
Fourth, the recent murderous attack on Egyptian soldiers underscores all of the foregoing, while providing Israel with an opportune moment to act. The security threats from Gaza to Israel have multiplied. Terrorism emanating from Sinai has also reared its head. Last August, it claimed Israeli lives; this August, Egyptian lives. Border clashes between Israel and Egypt, once a rare occurrence, look like becoming routine. All such incidents carry the risk of putting the nail in the coffin of Egyptian/Israeli peace treaty and even producing a war.
While I definitely believe that we ought to take back Philadelphi, what is the likelihood that the Egyptians will go along? If not, are we willing to take it back by force? Is this really our top priority in light of Hezbullah and Iran in the waiting? Don't get me wrong - I'm all in favor of doing this. But the timing is somewhat of a concern.
Posting for the next few hours will be a bit less frequent, since I am attending the funeral of my friend R. Yisrael Landsman zt"l (may the memory of the righteous be a blessing). I am setting up posts in advance. The actual funeral is at 6:45 pm (estimated) from the Shamgar funeral home to the Mount of Olives.
**********
The possibility of Condoleeza Rice being Mitt Romney's Vice Presidential candidate was raised last week at the meeting with Ari Fleischer and Matt Brooks, and Fleischer dismissed it out of hand. That was right before I started to hear a lot of talk about it.
We here in Israel don't feel very fond of Condi (hence the name at the top of this post). We have memories of Annapolis and of her comparing the 'Palestinians' to the blacks in the Jim Crow south of the '60's and of her ambivalent (at best) response to the Second Lebanon War. We recall that from the time that she became Secretary of State, George W. Bush seemed a little less pro-Israel right up to his last year in office. And it was she who seemed to be constantly fighting opposite the neocons who seemed so much more on our side.
Then try this Rice comment on for size. She also said when defending Iraq policy that it is the kind of people who "once believed that blacks were unfit for democracy" who say "that the people of the Middle East, perhaps because of their color or their creed or their culture or even perhaps because of their religion, are somehow incapable of democracy."
Now, we know it was Rice's job under George W. Bush to defend his administration's policies, but the above simply was not an intelligent defense. How can you conflate an inborn physical characteristic such as skin color with creed, culture and religion, which involve belief? Does Rice not understand why John Adams stated, "Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other"? If a people's beliefs don't influence its compatibility with democracy, what does?
Following Rice's logic out, we'd have to say that a people imbued with Nazi or communist doctrine couldn't be unfit for democracy, either, as such things are simply "creeds." Translated, her comment means that beliefs simply don't matter. Of course, I don't think this actually is her belief; she surely just didn't think things through. But is it intelligent to make public pronouncements on matter of import without thinking things through?
Add to this the fact that Rice described herself as "mildly pro-choice," wishes the U.S. would have signed on to the global-warming scam treaty the Kyoto Protocol, and was so enthusiastic about Barack Obama's 2008 win that it indicated she might have voted for him, and what kind of profile emerges? She simply is not a conservative -- except maybe in the European sense of the term. And, we have to ask, is this an intelligent political ideology?
Anyway, in the past we did ask the Factor panel a couple of questions about Rice, and the verdict was not very favorable. In 2008, when we asked the panel to identify the better candidates to be “special peace envoy” for the Obama administration, Rice was at the bottom of the list:
And even lower regard was saved for the person now running the peace process - Condoleezza Rice. The view of this panel is quite clear: Those who want a more vigorous process think that she’s just not up for the job, those who think it’s a waste of time will generally consider here to be too much into it. Thus, Rice gets low marks from almost all panelists.
In 2006 and in 2007, when Rice was included in our survey of potential Presidential candidates, her ratings were also not very high, and for similar reasons:
Various panelists gave different answers about what’s bothering them, so there is no alternative but to assume that Rice is just a miserable victim of circumstances. The panelists who are worried by the possibility of American pressure on the Palestinian issue lowered her grade because they believe that some of her statements show she is over-committed to the establishment of a Palestinian state. Others, who really have no diplomatic problem with Rice or with a certain amount of American pressure, lowered her grade because their estimation of President Bush is very low and her loyalty to his policy causes them to doubt her intelligence.
In her book “No Higher Honor” published last year, Rice describes how she traveled to Ramallah in May 2008 and “sketched out the details” of Olmert’s offer, which covered West Bank territorial arrangements, security issues, the division of Jerusalem, and a proposal regarding Palestinian refugees that provided for a very limited number to enter Israel. Abbas started negotiating immediately, she wrote, and she quoted him saying: “I can’t tell four million Palestinians that only five thousand of them can go home.” In an interview broadcast Saturday night on Israel’s Channel 2 news, however, Abbas flatly denied saying anything of the kind. Indeed, he said no such conversation took place. Asked about the “four million” comment, he said, “I absolutely did not say that.”
Furthermore:
Similarly, in the same interview, Abbas denied making another key comment relating to the Olmert proposal, in this case to the Washington Post journalist Jackson Diehl. In a May 2009 interview with Abbas, Diehl quoted the PA leader as saying, of the Olmert offer, that “the gaps were wide.” “I didn’t say that,” Abbas said in the Channel 2 interview.
In November 2008… Let me finish… Olmert, who talked today about his proposal to Abu Mazen, offered the 1967 borders, but said: “We will take 6.5% of the West Bank, and give in return 5.8% from the 1948 lands, and the 0.7% will constitute the safe passage, and East Jerusalem will be the capital, but there is a problem with the Haram and with what they called the Holy Basin.” Abu Mazen too answered with defiance, saying: “I am not in a marketplace or a bazaar. I came to demarcate the borders of Palestine – the June 4, 1967 borders – without detracting a single inch, and without detracting a single stone from Jerusalem, or from the holy Christian and Muslim places. This is why the Palestinian negotiators did not sign…
This would be consistent with what Abbas told Rice.
Yet on Wednesday afternoon, as he prepared for the White House meeting in a suite at the Ritz-Carlton in Pentagon City, Abbas insisted that his only role was to wait. He will wait for Hamas to capitulate to his demand that any Palestinian unity government recognize Israel and swear off violence. And he will wait for the Obama administration to force a recalcitrant Netanyahu to freeze Israeli settlement construction and publicly accept the two-state formula. Until Israel meets his demands, the Palestinian president says, he will refuse to begin negotiations. He won't even agree to help Obama's envoy, George J. Mitchell, persuade Arab states to take small confidence-building measures. "We can't talk to the Arabs until Israel agrees to freeze settlements and recognize the two-state solution," he insisted in an interview. "Until then we can't talk to anyone."
In short, Abbas fully expected pressure to come from the Obama administration to bend Netanyahu to Abbas's will.
Mr. Obama named a high-profile special envoy to the region, George J. Mitchell Jr. He also spoke empathetically about the suffering of the Palestinian people in Gaza after an Israeli military campaign against Hamas there. And the president’s demand of Israel that it freeze settlement construction cheered the Palestinians, who believed that would remove a stubborn hurdle to a peace deal. “We hoped a lot that in his administration, there would be real progress,” said Nabil Shaath, who leads the foreign affairs department of Fatah, the main party of the Palestinian Authority. “But later on, disappointment set in,” Mr. Shaath said in a telephone interview from Ramallah on the West Bank. “He really could not deliver what he promised in terms of a cessation of settlement activity.” When Mr. Netanyahu refused to extend a moratorium on construction, Mr. Abbas felt let down. And he blamed Mr. Obama for leading him on. In an interview with Newsweek in April, Mr. Abbas said: “It was Obama who suggested a full settlement freeze. I said O.K., I accept. We both went up the tree. After that, he came down with a ladder and he removed the ladder and said to me, jump.”
Note especially the third paragraph. It wasn't that Abbas didn't get the moratorium he demanded, it was that Netanyahu did not extend the moratorium; and for that Abbas "felt let down." This is consistent with the Diehl's portrayal of Abbas as waiting for the Obama administration to force Netanyahu to do what he wanted. Given that that aspect of Diehl's portrayal is correct, it's safe to assume the rest of it is correct too.
Today we had the opportunity to meet with Gil Hoffman — the Chief Political Correspondent of the Jerusalem Post. He told us that U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s trip to Israel in a few days is because the “Palestinians are afraid of Mitt” and understand that he has a good chance of winning the election. The Palestinians are worried that a potential President Romney, who is scheduled to visit Israel soon, as well, will be much harder on them, and therefore believe that now is the time to draw as many concessions out of Israel as they can while the equivocating Obama is still in office. Apparently the Palestinians made a gesture to Clinton to get the ball rolling.
This suggests that President Obama's efforts to show his empathy for the Palestinians and pressure Israel, had the opposite effect of the one he assumed it would have.
2) When is a home demolition not a home demolition?
The Gaza government on Sunday began the demolition of several homes in Gaza City, saying they are built on government land. Abu Al-Abed Abu Omra, whose house is threatened with demolition, told Ma'an that police officers arrived late Saturday night and told residents to evacuate their homes in order to facilitate the demolition. He said that there are more than 120 families living in the 15-dunams area under threat, near Gaza's Al-Azhar University, and they have been there since 1948.
The destruction of sixty-year-old residential buildings certainly required the use of bulldozers. Given the obsessive and entirely unconstructive focus by foes of Israeli policies on Caterpillar Inc., would you not think there would be an outcry against the cynical actions of the Hamas regime and their bulldozers, whoever's bulldozers they were? We see no mention on the web of such an outcry. The demolition is said to benefit Paltel. That's an especially interesting connection. Paltel is a subsidiary of a wealthy Virgin Islands holding company called APIC in which Tareq Abbas, son of PA president Mahmoud Abbas, is one of the two senior managers (see APIC's 2010 financial report). APIC's second largest shareholder is Palestine Investment Fund, better known as PIF.
Yes, Arabs who have lived in the same homes for at least 64 years are being threatened with expulsion and their homes destroyed.
These aren't "refugees" - these are "pre-1948" Palestinians whose homes are being demolished by Hamas.
This is too rich.
Will they now be considered "refugees"? Will UNRWA provide aid for them? Will the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions weigh in on this horror, calling it "racist"? Are they being demolished by Caterpillar bulldozers? If a neo-Rachel Corrie would stand in front of a bulldozer, would it stop? Where is the ISM, anyway? Is anyone protesting outside Hamas offices abroad? What about the internationals in Gaza now with the latest Miles of Smiles trip? Does this mean that Hamas recognizes Ottoman and British land laws as far as private ownership goes?
Here's part of an interview from the Steve Gill show with former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice who is on a speaking tour to promote her new book, No Higher Honor. This part of the interview deals with Iran and with the possibility that Israel might strike Iran's nuclear facilities. Note what she says about what we can learn from the fact that a possible Israeli strike not in coordination with the United States is even discussed.
Former US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice has finally gotten around to blasting the Obama administration for its obsession with Jewish 'settlements.'
“When you look at where we are now, we’re a long, long way back from where we were,” Rice said in an interview with AP.
Rice said she had hoped that the Obama administration could revive stalled peace talks quickly when it took office in 2009, but she said she was disappointed by the new administration’s handling of the delicate issue of new Israeli housing construction in the West Bank.
“I do think focusing on settlements in that particular way was a mistake,” Rice said. “The parties then were able to have a reason not to sit down.”
The gulf has only widened, Rice said, “and they’re running out of time.” She did not sound optimistic for a settlement soon, or even for new talks. “When they’re not talking, they’re sliding backward,” Rice said.
...
Rice herself had called settlement building unhelpful and was infuriated when Israel appeared to undercut her by announcing new building licenses hard on the heels of some of her diplomatic visits.
But new Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and her Mideast envoy, George Mitchell, took a much harder line in the spring of 2009, demanding a full freeze on any building.
Obama “wants to see a stop to settlements,” including the expansion of existing developments, Clinton said in May of that year.
With Israelis suspicious of Obama even before he assumed office, the settlement position further unnerved them. The Palestinians, initially encouraged, became disillusioned when the U.S. was unable to persuade Israel to freeze settlement construction.
She's obviously angling to get her old job back in a Republican administration in 2013. Someone please tell me it will be Bolton instead.
How the 'Palestinians' wiggled out of a peace agreement
JPost does a good job of putting together Condoleeza Rice's memoirs and the 'Palestine papers' to present a pretty clear picture of how the 'Palestinians' managed to avoid reaching a 'peace agreement' with Ehud K. Olmert. Recall that Rice described what Olmert offered in a private dinner between the two of them. Here's what happened next.
Rice recalled her incredulity: “Am I really hearing this? I wondered. Is the Israeli prime minister saying that he’ll divide Jerusalem and put an international body in charge of the Holy sites? Concentrate. Write this down. No, don’t write it down. What if it leaks? It can’t leak; it’s just the two of us.”
Rice said that she visited Abbas in Ramallah the next day. “I sketched out the details of Olmert’s proposal and told him how the prime minister wanted to proceed. Abbas started negotiating immediately. “I can’t tell four million Palestinians that only 5,000 of them can go home,” he said.”
While Rice is silent on the ensuing breakdown of talks – missing pieces are actually supplied by the Palestine Papers – documents memorializing 10 years of Palestinian-Israeli negotiations that were stolen from Saeb Erekat’s office and posted on al-Jazeera’s website last January.
Although Palestinian negotiators spoke publicly about compromise on refugees, privately they spoke of the “right of return” as a matter of individual choice that would have to be extended to each of over seven million people and with Palestinians retaining the open-ended right to try to negotiate additional “returns” beyond any number initially agreed upon in a peace treaty.
Abbas was simply unprepared to accept any offer that did not allow for the “right of return.”
Rice recounted how on September 16, 2008 Olmert presented Abbas with a groundbreaking offer for a two-state solution including a map outlining the territory of a Palestinian state. Rice confirmed reports that Olmert insisted that Abbas sign then and there, but that Abbas “demurred, wanting to consult his experts before signing.”
Olmert, Rice said, refused to give Abbas the map – a fact that the Palestinians have said proves that Olmert’s offer was not serious.
But the Palestine Papers indicate that on September 16, the Palestinians drew-up a map that seems to outline with great specificity the offer made by Olmert, in spite of the fact that they complained he would not give them a copy of the map.
Abbas asked for a meeting the next day with his advisers present.
The meeting the next day was never held – Rice did not say why, but Olmert has since said that he received a call from Saeb Erekat requesting that the meeting be postponed.
The US administration seems to have been unaware that in preparation for the September 16 meeting the PA was trying to generate escape plans from reaching a binding agreement with Olmert, while at the same time avoiding being blamed for not reaching a final status agreement.
“SE [PA Negotiator Saeb Erekat] thinks there are three ways [Abbas] could respond: (1) Give [Olmert] our Framework Agreement on Permanent Status, (2) Issue general communique about Annapolis progress, (3) Simply say no to the offer,” one September 9, 2008 memo from Hala Rasheed read.
“He wants us to think up other ways to respond. Whatever we propose, he wants to make sure that: (a) we are not blamed, (b) [negotiations] are uninterrupted, and (c) no submission is made that we cannot retract.”
A memo to other NSU members dated September 16 from Wassim Khazmo, a communications adviser on the PA negotiating team, revealed that Palestinians intended to treat the September 16 meeting as “ceremonial” rather than directed toward advancing negotiations and possibly reaching a peace agreement.
“In order to avoid the blame game, the President today is going with a positive attitude, where he will ask more questions from Olmert on his offer, and he will tell him that the Palestinians will respond later,” Khazmo wrote.
Khazmo was particularly concerned that Abbas avoid what he described as “Olmert’s media stunts.”
There's nothing really new in David Ignatius' Washington Post column on the part of Condoleeza Rice's book that deals with the 'peace process.' After all, the narrative was essentially disclosed by Jackson Diehl of the same newspaper in an article I have linked dozens of times. But it's fascinating to see just how badly Obama messed up whatever opportunity was there by his insistence on being the anti-Bush.
And what happened to this miraculous package? Because it’s the Middle East, you know the answer: It died, with the United States on the sidelines hoping and praying but Olmert and Abbas too weak politically to take the leap.
The collapse came the moment it seemed to become real. In September 2008, Olmert showed Abbas a map charting the boundaries of the new state. According to Rice, he asked Abbas to sign the deal on the spot, but the Palestinian leader balked and asked to consult his experts first. Olmert wouldn’t let him take a copy of the map, and the follow-up meeting never happened.
President Bush tried to revive the deal when the leaders separately visited Washington in November and December, but by then Olmert was under investigation for corruption charges, and Abbas apparently decided he could get a better deal with a Democratic president. “The conditions were almost ripe for a deal on our watch, but not quite,” writes Rice.
What followed this near-miss? That’s the most depressing part of the story. Rice kept mum, but she gave the new administration details of Olmert’s offer, including a State Department version of the map. She hoped the United States would use Olmert’s plan as a building block for negotiations — and perhaps even submit it to the U.N. Security Council.
But in one of President Obama’s biggest mistakes, he decided to start negotiations all over — and to demand an Israeli settlement freeze as a test of wills. What a mistake. He was outfoxed by Benjamin Netanyahu, the new Israeli prime minister. Three years later, the peace process is a lifeless corpse.
I don't think it's fair to say that Obama was 'outfoxed' by Netanyahu. He demanded (and continues to demand) something that no Israeli Prime Minister - not Olmert or Livni either - could ever give him. Netanyahu did the only thing he could have done under the circumstances - fight Obama off.
Moreover, I don't believe that Rice is correct that the deal could have gone through. Even if the parties could have reached an agreement, Olmert did not have the political standing to sell a deal to the public. He was desperate to stay in office and out of jail and everyone here knew it. That's why he was willing to go so far to make a deal. And that's why the public would not have accepted it.
Turning it over to the UN also would not have worked - it would have been a betrayal of Israel. The deal with the 'peace process' since Day One has been "nothing is agreed until everything is agreed." Taking a partial deal like that and demanding that further negotiations start from there violates that rule.
"I’ll give him enough land, maybe something like 94 percent with swaps. I have an idea about Jerusalem. There will be two capitals, one for us in West Jerusalem and one for the Palestinians in East Jerusalem. The mayor of the joint city council will be selected by population percentage. That means an Israeli mayor, so the deputy should be a Palestinian. We will continue to provide security for the holy sites because we can assure access to them,” Olmert said, according to Rice's memoir.
“I’ll accept some Palestinians into Israel, maybe 5,000. I don’t want it to be called family reunification because they have too many cousins; we won’t be able to control it. I’ve been thinking about how to administer the Old City. There should be a committee of people, not officials but wise people, from Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the Palestinians, the United States, and Israel. They will oversee the city but not in a political role," Olmert continued.
Calling her senior adviser Stephen Hadley, Rice said, "'Tell the president he was right about Olmert. He wants a deal. And frankly, he might die trying to get one,' I said, recalling that Yitzhak Rabin had been killed for offering far less. I hung up the phone and looked out my window at the holy city. Maybe, just maybe, we could get this done."
Rice said the Olmert proposal "haunted the president and me."
"In September the prime minister had given Abbas a map outlining the territory of a Palestinian state. Israel would annex 6.3 percent of the West Bank. (Olmert gave Abbas cause to believe that he was willing to reduce that number to 5.8 percent.) All of the other elements were still on the table, including the division of Jerusalem. Olmert had insisted that Abbas sign then and there. When the Palestinian had demurred, wanting to consult his experts before signing, Olmert refused to give him the map. The Israeli leader told me that he and Abbas had agreed to convene their experts the next day. Apparently that meeting never took place," Rice wrote.
Rice continued: "Olmert had announced in the summer that he would step down as prime minister. Israel would hold elections in the first part of the next year. He was a lame duck, and so was the president. Still, I worried that there might never be another chance like this one. Tzipi Livni urged me (and, I believe, Abbas) not to enshrine the Olmert proposal. 'He has no standing in Israel,' she said."
In any case, Abbas refused two further U.S. attempts to get him to sign onto the Olmert plan, Rice wrote.
I'm not aware of any comments from Livni yet, but this is not too surprising given the two posts I linked above.
No, this is not a post about Michele Obama. It's about recently departed Libyan leader Muammar Gadhafi's obsession with former US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice.
“It was weird, but at least it wasn’t raunchy.”
— Condoleezza Rice on Moammar Gaddafi’s “eerie fascination with me” and the video tribute he made (a song called “Black Flower in the White House” played over Condi pics), writes the former secretary of state in her upcoming memoir, “No Higher Honor,” reports the New York Times.
When she visited Libya in 2008, an official on the trip told me, Gadhafi tried to seduce Ms. Rice with a specially made music video, before trying to drag her into his private quarters – apparently thinking the video had sufficiently impressed. State Department officials thought otherwise and grabbed her other hand – and (much to her relief) eventually won the ensuing tug-of-war. When Libyan fighters entered Gadhafi’s Tripoli compound last week they found an album full of pictures of Ms. Rice.
But it's been known for years that Arafat was gay due a book called "Red Horizons" by Lt. Gen. Ion Mihai Pacepa, the former head of Romanian intelligence under Nicolai Ceausescu.
He relates a conversation with Constantin Munteaunu, a general assigned to teach Arafat and the Palestinian Liberation Organization operations in deception and influence designed to fool the West into granting the organization recognition.
"I just called the microphone monitoring center to ask about the 'Fedayee,'" Arafat's code name, explained Munteaunu. "After the meeting with the Comrade, he went directly to the guest house and had dinner. At this very moment, the 'Fedayee' is in his bedroom making love to his bodyguard. The one I knew was his latest lover. He's playing tiger again. The officer monitoring his microphones connected me live with the bedroom, and the squawling almost broke my eardrums. Arafat was roaring like a tiger, and his lover yelping like a hyena."
Munteaunu continued: "I've never before seen so much cleverness, blood and filth all together in one man."
Munteaunu, wrote Pacepa, spent months pulling together secret reports from Egyptian, Jordanian and Syrian intelligence agencies as well as Romanian files.
"I used to think I knew just about everything there was to know about Rahman al-Qudwa," Arafat's real name, "about the construction engineer who made a fortune in Kuwait, about the passionate collector of racing cars, about Abu Amman," Arafat's nom de guerre, "and about my friend Yasser, with all his hysterics," explained Munteaunu, handing Pacepa his final report on the PLO leader. "But I've got to admit that I didn't really know anything about him."
Wrote Pacepa: "The report was indeed an incredible account of fanaticism, of devotion to his cause, of tangled oriental political maneuvers, of lies, of embezzled PLO funds deposited in Swiss banks, and of homosexual relationships, beginning with his teacher when he was a teen-ager and ending with his current bodyguards. After reading the report, I felt a compulsion to take a shower whenever I had been kissed by Arafat, or even just shaken his hand."
I have to wonder why anyone goes on this guy's show. I'm not a Condi Rice fan, but you can't help but feel sorry for her having to deal with this shmuck.
Let's go to the videotape (Hat Tip: Shy Guy via Atlas Shrugs).
What if Gazans broke down the border fence with Egypt again?
On Thursday, riots in Egypt spread to the northern Sinai, blocking the road to Rafah. Rafah is right across the border from Gaza (the town is actually divided in half and has been ever since Israel returned the Sinai to Egypt).
Riots have resumed in the city of Suez in Egypt, Al Jazeera reported Thursday. Protesters torched a building and are hurling stones at police forces. According to the report, police are using tear gas to disperse the protest. Meanwhile, protests have resumed in north Sinai and the road leading to Rafah has been blocked.
Will Gaza riot in sympathy for Egypt? For example, might they try to break down the border fence again as happened three years ago (see picture)? Hmmm.
Aren't you glad we listened to Condi Clueless and let the EUBAM (European forces) 'patrol' the Philadelphi corridor (the border between Egypt and Gaza) until they ran away in 2007? Bigger hmmm.
The 'Palestinians' awoke this morning to discover that Tzipi Livni, probably the most pro-'Palestinian' Jewish MK from a mainstream party in the current Knesset, has a program for them that's similar to Avigdor Lieberman's: She wants to transfer them to a 'Palestinian state' in exchange for Jewish towns in Judea and Samaria remaining part of Israel. I suppose that if you're going to make a 'land swap' (a concept I oppose), it makes sense to improve your demography while you're doing it. It's amazing that the 'Palestinian street' didn't see this coming.
They also awoke to discover that Livni's close friend, then-US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, wanted to transfer some of the 'Palestinian diaspora' to Latin America.
Condoleezza Rice, the Bush administration's secretary of state, wanted to settle displaced Palestinians in Argentina and Chile as an alternative to letting them return to former homes in Israel and the occupied territories. Rice made the proposal in a June 2008 meeting with US, Israeli and Palestinian negotiators in Berlin, according to minutes of the encounter seen by the Guardian.
During a discussion about international funding to compensate refugees – an estimated 5 million Palestinians are scattered around the Middle East – the US diplomat made a startling suggestion.
"Maybe we will be able to find countries that can contribute in kind. Chile, Argentina, etc (ie, give land)."
The minutes, which are not verbatim, have the initials CR before the quote. Rice was the only participant with those initials.
The proposal seems based on the fact that Chile has a large Palestinian community dating back a century and, like Argentina, has large tracts of sparsely populated land.
It flew in the face of Palestinian insistence that the refugees have the right to return to their ancestral land – a demand Israel has resisted since its foundation in 1948. Carving out a new Palestinian homeland 8,000 miles away in the Andes could theoretically reduce pressure on Israel to return land.
Well, they have to go somewhere, and the Arab countries in which they currently live aren't willing to grant them citizenship, so why not Argentina and Chile? Oh wait - you mean they really believed they were coming back to their former villages that don't exist anymore in Israel? I guess that means they didn't see this from the front page of Tuesday's JPost:
In a dramatic comment on the refugee issue, furthermore, at an internal meeting that PA President Mahmoud Abbas had with the Palestinian Negotiations Support Unit on March 29, 2008, Abbas said, “On numbers of refugees, it is illogical to ask Israel to take 5 million, or even 1 million – that would mean the end of Israel.
You just knew that the failure to educate their people for peace would come back to bite the 'Palestinians,' didn't you?
The 'Palestinians' hit back at al-Jazeera on Monday night for articles like this one and for videos like the one I am going to show you below.
The Palestine Papers, then, underscore the seeming impossibility of resolving the status of settlements like Ma’ale Adumim and Ariel: Palestinian negotiators cannot accept them, and Israeli negotiators cannot dismantle them.
There is a third option, which Palestinian negotiators raised in several meetings: those Jewish settlements could be allowed to remain as part of the future Palestinian state. Ahmed Qurei made that suggestion to Tzipi Livni several times in 2008, including this exchange in June:
Qurei: Perhaps Ma’ale Adumim will remain under Palestinian sovereignty, and it could be a model for cooperation and coexistence.
Livni: The matter is not simply giving a passport to settlers.
The Israeli foreign minister refused to entertain the idea. “You know this is not realistic,” she told Qurei in May.
Asked about Qurei’s offer earlier this month, residents in Ma’ale Adumim reacted with a mix of laughter and disbelief. Some wrote it off as a political impossibility; others worried about their safety, claiming that they would be killed.
There is, in other words, seemingly no mutually acceptable policy for Ma’ale Adumim, Ariel, and other major West Bank settlements within a two-state solution – a fact the Bush administration was willing to acknowledge in July 2008.
Rice: I don’t think that any Israeli leader is going to cede Ma’ale Adumim.
Qurei: Or any Palestinian leader.
Rice: Then you won’t have a state!
Rice may prove to be correct: Two and a half years later, the parties are no closer to a solution on settlements, and the Israeli government may be gearing up to issue a “massive” new round of housing permits for illegal settlers in the West Bank.
Let's go to the videotape.
How long did it take you to notice the line that said "reconstruction" in the top left corner?
There are three possibilities here: The documents are true, or the documents are not true and al-Jazeera did this because Qatar has tired of the 'Palestinians,' or the documents are not true and al-Jazeera did this because Qatar wants to see Fatah replaced by Hamas. I'm inclined to the third possibility. I am becoming more and more convinced that Melanie Phillips is right and that these documents don't reflect the real 'Palestinian' position. I find it hard to believe that the sleazy Olmert would have passed on what al-Jazeera claims the 'Palestinians' offered.
But Amjad Atallah, who claims he was there, claims that the documents are real.
I was one of the legal advisors for the Palestinian negotiating team from November 2000 to November 2003 and took my fair share of minutes and notes, though the Taba talks in 2001 were the only formal permanent status negotiations during my stint.
This story is only beginning and it's impossible to predict where it will lead, but I think there are three points that stand out right away from the analysis and revelations in both AJE and the Guardian newspaper (which has also had access to the documents.)
The first is that the documents kill, with great gusto, the myth created by President Bill Clinton that the Palestinians were not a partner at Camp David and that Palestinians were to blame for the lack of a two-state deal. I knew this of course from being there, but apparently 10 years of documents showing Palestinian concessions that would be shocking to the Palestinian public mean that you would have to be ideologically committed to ignoring reality to still think the Palestinians were the problem.
I don't know what the ramifications of this will be in the United States or Europe, but if there is no impact on Western policy it will confirm that a United States deferential only to Israel and a Europe deferential only to the United States cannot be part of the solution.
The second point is that the Palestinian negotiating team, composed of literally a handful of men, will no longer be able to continue with business as usual. Palestinian negotiations were based on three assumptions: The first is that Israel actually wants a two-state deal; the second is that even if Israel did not, the United States would be able to pressure it into acting in its own self-interest (at least as the Americans and Palestinians saw it); and third that Palestinians had no alternative to never-ending negotiations.
It is doubtful that Palestinians will be able to continue maintaining those assumptions.
The third and final point is that the context of these leaks comes at a time when its impact may be amplified. WikiLeaks' data dump of U.S. diplomatic records; the demonstrations in Tunisia, Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, and Yemen; and Hezbollah's success in Lebanon have created an atmosphere of empowerment among a normally dispirited Arab public. Change is no longer impossible -- and the United States no longer needs to be the agent of change.
This means there may be more exhibitions of "people power" with unpredictable consequences. The Arab authoritarian systems (most with the support of the U.S. government) are ill-equipped to deal positively with this type of demand for change.
Different forces in the region will now begin to see how they can take advantage for good or bad from this new reality. Unfortunately, if the United States stays true to form, we'll simply struggle to see whether we can maintain the status quo.
Of course, if Atallah is correct and this is the true position of the 'Palestinian' negotiators perhaps they should have started preparing their 'people' for compromise - something they have not done to this day.
An angry crowd on Monday vandalized the Qatar-based Al-Jazeera's Ramallah office, onlookers said.
Security forces stepped in after a dozen youths broke a security gate at the building before entering it and sprayed graffiti.
Al-Jazeera International correspondent Alan Fisher wrote on his Twitter page that no one was injured before police arrived.
Footage of the incident posted on YouTube later Monday showed a handful of young Palestinians shouting and chanting slogans at Al-Jazeera's staff. One tells a photographer to stop filming.
Let's go to the videotape.
And the 'Palestinian Authority' accused al-Jazeera of making war on them.
“Al-Jazeera has declared war on the Palestinians,” the official told The Jerusalem Post. “This station serves the interests of the enemies of the Palestinians.”
Asked if the PA was now considering measures against Al-Jazeera, the official said he did not see how a TV station that “incites” against the Palestinians would be able to continue operating in the West Bank. However, he said that PA President Mahmoud Abbas, who is currently in Cairo, would decide on the PA’s response to the exposure of the documents in the coming hours.
Wikileaks cable: Israel destroyed Syrian nuke reactor
US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice sent a cable to US embassies around the World informing them that Israel had destroyed Syria's al-Kibar nuclear reactor, according to a cable to be released by Wikileaks.
The cable, which has not yet been published, was reported by the Israeli newspaper Yediot Acharonot before its official publication on the website.
The document sent was sent on April 25, 2008, by Rice, then secretary of state. It read, in part, "On September 6, 2007, Israel destroyed a nuclear reactor Syria was clandestinely constructing, we judge with North Korean assistance."
The cable includes detailed information about the attack and is the first official confirmation of the attack, Yediot reported.
"I want to inform you that the purpose of that Israeli mission was to destroy a clandestine nuclear reactor that Syria was constructing in its eastern desert near a place we call al-Kibar," Rice wrote. "The Israeli mission was successful - the reactor was damaged beyond repair. Syria has completed efforts to clean up the site and destroy evidence of what was really there, constructing a new building on the old site."
The document confirms that Israel and the United States collaborated on intelligence for the mission. "The US intelligence community conducted an intensive, months-long effort to confirm and corroborate the information Israel provided us on the reactor and to gather more details from our own sources and methods," Rice wrote.
How different is Barack Obama from his predecessors (he's pictured here with Bush 41, although I think it's a photoshop)? Caroline Glick says, "not much."
In the midst of all these crises, Obama has maintained faith with his two central foreign policy goals: forcing Israel to withdraw to the indefensible 1949 armistice lines and scaling back the US nuclear arsenal with an eye towards unilateral disarmament. That is, as the forces of mayhem and war escalate their threats and aggression, Obama's central goals remain weakening the US's most powerful regional ally in the Middle East and rendering the US incompetent to deter or defeat rapidly proliferating rogue states that are at war with the US and its allies.
HAVING SAID THAT, the truth is that in advancing these goals, Obama is not out of step with his predecessors. George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton both enacted drastic cuts in the US conventional and nonconventional arsenals. Clinton and George W. Bush adopted appeasement policies towards North Korea. Indeed, Pyongyang owes its nuclear arsenal to both presidents' desire to be deceived and do nothing.
Moreover, North Korea's ability to proliferate nuclear weapons to the likes of Iran, Syria and Venezuela owes in large part to then-secretary of state Condoleezza Rice's insistence that Israel say nothing about North Korea's nuclear ties to Iran and Syria in the wake of Israel's destruction of the North Korean-built and Iranian-financed nuclear reactor in Syria in September 2007.
As for Iran, Obama's attempt to appease the regime is little different from his predecessors' policies. The Bush administration refused to confront the fact that the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are to a large degree Iranian proxy wars.
The Bush administration refused to acknowledge that Syria and Hizbullah are run by Teheran and that the 2006 war against Israel was nothing more than an expansion of the proxy wars Iran is running in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Obama's failed "reset" policy towards Russia is also little different from his predecessors' policies.
Bush did nothing but squawk after Russia invaded US ally Georgia. The Clinton administration set the stage for Vladimir Putin's KGB state by squandering the US's massive influence over post-Soviet Russia and allowing Boris Yeltsin and his cronies to transform the country into an impoverished kleptocracy.
Finally, Obama's obsession with Israeli land giveaways to the PLO was shared by Clinton and by the younger Bush, particularly after 2006. Rice - who compared Israel to the Jim Crow South - was arguably as hostile towards Israel as Obama.
SO IS OBAMA really worse than everyone else or is he just the latest in a line of US presidents who have no idea how to run an effective foreign policy? The short answer is that he is far worse than his predecessors.
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
