Remember the scene in Fiddler on the Roof, where Tevye is debating whether to let his eldest daughter marry. "On the one hand... on the other hand..." as he can't make up his mind. Meet Tevye Netanyahu.
Netanyahu acknowledges the reality that our conflict with the 'Palestinians' is existential. It's not about land.
"The root of the conflict is not territorial," he said at the
meeting, his first with the Foreign Ministry since the elections and his
assumption of the foreign ministerial mantle until the fate of Avigdor
Liberman is determined in court.
"It started long before 1967. You
saw what happened when we left Gaza. We uprooted the last settler, and
what did we get in return? Missiles," he said.
Netanyahu's
comments came just days after the Arab League officials indicated, after
meetings in the US with Vice President Joe Biden and US Secretary of
State John Kerry, that they would accept in their Arab Peace Initiative a
slight modification to the 1967 lines as part of an Israel-Palestinian
peace accord.
"The unwillingness of the Palestinians to recognize
Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people is the root of the
conflict," he said. "If we reach an agreement I want to know that the
conflict does not continue, that there are no other Palestinian claims
afterward."
Netanyahu urged the Foreign Ministry workers to stress
that the root of the conflict is Acre, Jaffa, and Ashkelon. "You need
to say that," he said. "There is no need to apologize, you need to tell
the truth."
But on the other hand....
Israel needs to reach peace with the Palestinians to prevent becoming a
bi-national state, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said Wednesday,
stressing – however – that that the core of Israel's conflict with the
Palestinians is not territory, but a Palestinian unwillingness to
recognize Israel's legitimacy within any boundaries.
Hey Bibi - when someone doesn't accept your legitimacy within any boundaries, there is no 'other hand.' Even Tevye eventually figured that out.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad arrived in Egypt on Tuesday on
the first trip by an Iranian head of state since the 1979 revolution,
underlining the thaw in relations since Egyptians elected an Islamist
head of state.
President Mohamed Morsi, the Muslim Brotherhood
politician elected in June, kissed Ahmadinejad as he disembarked from
his plane at Cairo airport. The leaders walked down a red carpet,
Ahmadinejad smiling as he shook hands with waiting dignitaries.
Visiting Cairo to attend an Islamic summit that begins on Wednesday,
the president of the Shi'ite Islamist republic is due to meet later on
Tuesday with the grand sheikh of al-Azhar, one of the oldest seats of
learning in the Sunni world.
Such a visit would have been
unthinkable during the rule of Hosni Mubarak, the military-backed
autocrat who preserved Egypt's peace treaty with Israel during his 30
years in power and deepened ties between Cairo and the West.
But full ties between Egypt and Iran are unlikely to be restored anytime soon. It's a matter of money.
The Morsi administration also wants to safeguard relations with Gulf
Arab states that are supporting Cairo's battered state finances and are
deeply suspicious of Iran. Morsi wants to preserve ties with the United
States, the source of $1.3 billion in aid each year to the influential
Egyptian military.
Morsi's government has established close ties
with Hamas, a movement backed by Iran and shunned by the West because of
its hostility to Israel, but its priority is addressing Egypt's deep
economic problems.
"The restoration of full relations with Iran in
this period is difficult, despite the warmth in ties ... because of
many problems including the Syrian crisis and Cairo's links with the
Gulf states, Israel and the United States," said one former Egyptian
diplomat.
Egypt was a very strong supporter of the Shah of Iran before 1979. I'll bet a lot of you didn't know this little tidbit.
Egypt gave asylum and a state funeral to Iran's exiled Shah Reza
Pahlavi, who was overthrown by the 1979 Iranian revolution. He is buried
in a medieval Cairo mosque alongside his ex-brother-in-law, Egypt's
last king, Farouk.
Aren't you glad that the Obama administration continues to give the Egyptians arms and $1.3 billion in annual aid? What is the US getting in return for all that?
I'll answer that last question for you: The US is buying the myth that there is an Arab country that made peace with Israel which is intended to last permanently. The US is paying $1.3 billion plus per year for the myth that 'land for peace' works. Unfortunately, the puncturing of this myth is well on the way. Ahmadinejad's visit to Egypt proves it.
Daniel Gordis argues that Israel has already given peace (more than one) chance. According to Gordis, after the elections, it would be time to have conversation about what will replace the discredited land for peace paradigm. That conversation would be helped by acknowledgement by the 'international community' and American Jews that land for peace just isn't going to happen.
ISRAELIS LIVE in a world of utter cognitive dissonance. On the one hand,
our region is becoming ever more dangerous and our foes ever more
honest about their desire to destroy the Jewish state. And on the other
hand, much of the world insists that "land for peace" simply must work;
some American Jewish leaders actually urged Israel, even in the midst of
the Gaza conflict, to return to the negotiating table. It would be
funny were it not so sad and so dangerous.
That is why the
upcoming election, sobering though it is, may actually prove important.
Israelis across the spectrum are acknowledging what they used to only
whisper: the old paradigm is dying.
Naftali Bennett of the Bayit
Yehudi party explicitly states that "land for peace" is dead and
advocates annexing the portion of the West Bank known as Area C. Yair
Shamir of Yisrael Beytenu says that regardless of Netanyahu's Bar- Ilan
speech, the Likud never endorsed a Palestinian state. Yair Lapid's Yesh
Atid party's website makes no mention of going back to the negotiating
table.
Neither does the Labor Party platform.
Even Meretz recently acknowledged that Oslo is dead.
To give up hope for peace is not to choose war. Egypt's present and
Jordan's future indicate how little is guaranteed by a treaty; the
Palestinian present shows that we can have quiet even in the face of
stalemate. What Israelis now want is quiet, and a future. Nothing more,
nothing less. And most importantly, no more illusions.
The demise
of the peace addiction is no cause for celebration; it is merely cause
for relief. There is something exhausting about living a life of
pretense; with the death of illusion comes the possibility of shaping a
future. After a new government is formed, a genuine leader could
actually lead Israelis into a "what next" conversation. Deciding what
comes next, now that we sadly know that the idea of "land for peace" is
dead, will not be easy. Israel could make wise decisions or terrible
mistakes.
But if, as a result of this election, we begin to have a
conversation about a future that we can actually have, the Jewish state
will be much better off.
Israel, though, is likely to make much
better choices if it is joined in its hardearned realism by forces
outside the country too. Now that Israelis are getting honest, the
question is whether the international community - and then American Jews
- will follow suit. On the former front, there are occasional causes
for optimism. The Washington Post, for example, recently acknowledged
that the international community's rhetoric has become an obstacle
rather than a help. "Mr. Netanyahu's zoning approval is hardly the
'almost fatal blow' to a twostate solution that UN Secretary General Ban
Ki-moon described... If Security Council members are really interested
in progress toward Palestinian statehood, they will press Mr. Abbas to
stop using settlements as an excuse for intransigence - and cool their
own overheated rhetoric."
Amen to that. But what about American
Jewish leaders? They will likely find admitting that "land for peace" is
dying no less difficult than anyone else. Will they listen carefully to
what the Israeli electorate, across the spectrum, is saying? I hope so.
Because loving someone means helping them to fashion a future that is
possible, not harboring an exhausted illusion that can only yield pain
and disappointment. The same is true with loving Israel.
By the way, if you go through the parties he listed there, the only party left that is still promoting land for peace is HaBdicha, the Tzipi Livni party. Old ideas die hard.
If Egypt 'reviews' Camp David, the 'land for peace' paradigm will be over
There is only one working example of the 'land for peace' paradigm, and that's Israel's treaty with Egypt. Evelyn Gordon writes that if the Camp David treaty is 'reviewed' (or worse), Israel will never take the risk again.
Territorial handovers to the Palestinians under the Oslo Accords in the 1990s, for instance, produced not peace, but a massive increase in terror. In the first two and a half years after Oslo was signed in1993, Palestinians killed more Israelis than in the entire preceding decade, while the first four years of the second intifada (2000-2004) produced more terror-related casualties than the entire preceding 53 years.
In May 2000, Israelis expected their UN-certified pullout from every inch of Lebanon to eliminate Hezbollah's motivation for war. Instead, Hezbollah escalated, committing its first ever cross-border kidnapping just five months later. In 2006, another such kidnapping sparked the Second Lebanon War.
And while the peace with Jordan has held, that treaty was not a land-for-peace deal. Since Jordan had previously relinquished all claim to the West Bank, it entailed no Israeli territorial concessions. Rather, it merely formalized a de facto peace that had existed for two decades already.
But through all this, the treaty with Egypt served as the shining counterexample - the proof that land for peace could work, given the right partners and the right conditions. Though never more than a cold peace, it consistently provided Israel with the one great good it promised, a secure southern border. And it survived despite repeated tensions, including two Palestinian intifadas and two Israeli-Lebanese wars.
Now, however, it looks increasingly likely that what made the Egyptian peace succeed was not any intrinsic merit in the land-for-peace paradigm, but merely the remarkable longevity in office of one man, former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, whose 30-year tenure encompassed most of the treaty's lifespan.
And that in turn is leading a growing number of Israelis who previously supported land-for-peace to wonder whether it may not be an inherently unworkable paradigm, due to the fatal flaw encapsulated in its very name. In any land-for-peace deal, only one party actually considers "peace" a value worth trading for. What interests the other party is not peace, but gaining strategic assets such as land.
But perhaps the greatest indicator of how little there is to appreciate about the Israel - Egypt treaty comes from Egyptians themselves. This comes from the Egyptian blogger Sandmonkey and I quoted from it here and here. Sandmonkey is a very straight shooter.
But then I rememebrd that we- the majority of us anyway- don't want peace with Israel, and are not interested in any real dialogue with them. We weren't then and we are not now. The Entire peace process has always been about getting the land back, not establishing better relations. Even when we do get the land back, it's not enough. People in Egypt lament daily the Camp David treaty that prevents us from fighting. In Gaza they never stopped trying to attack Israel. In Lebanon Hezbollah continued attacking even after the Israeli withdrawel. And the people- the majority of the arab population- support it. Very few of us are really interested in having any lasting Peace or co-existance. I mean, if our left is asking for war, what do you think the rest of the population is thinking?
I think that the Israeli want peace with us because they don't want their lives disrupted. They don't want to have the IDF soldiers fighting in Gaza, rockets coming into their towns from Hamas or having to go to wars against Hezbollah to get their soldiers back. I think they want peace because they want their peace of mind. They view us as if we were a headache. We view them as if they are a cancer.
Caroline Glick wonders whether the United States and the European Union will demand that Egypt return the Sinai to Israel, once its newly installed Islamist government abrogates the Camp David treaty (no, of course they won't!). Caroline then suggests that Israel keep what's going on in Egypt in mind as it faces pressure from the Obama administration and the Europeans to make a deal with the powerless 'moderate' 'Palestinian' President Mahmoud AbbasAbu Mazen. Let's face it: Land for peace is a hoax.
It is important to keep this sorry state of affairs in mind when we assess the prospects for a land-for-peace deal between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. This week, following months of intense pressure from the US and the EU, Israeli and Palestinian negotiators met face to face for the first time in 16 months. According to Jordanian Foreign Minister Nasser Judeh, who hosted the meeting, the Palestinians submitted their proposal on security and border issues to Israel. The sides are supposed to meet again next week and Israel is expected to present its proposals on these issues.
There are several reasons that these talks are doomed to failure. The most important reason they will fail is that even if they lead to an agreement, no agreement between Israel and the Palestinians is sustainable. Assuming for a moment that PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas goes against everything he has said for the past three years and signs a peace deal with Israel in which he promises Israel peace in exchange for Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria, this agreement will have little impact on the Palestinians' view of Israel. Abbas today represents no one. His term of office ended three years ago. Hamas won the last Palestinian elections in 2006.
And Hamas's leaders - like their counterparts in the Muslim Brotherhood - make no bones about their intention to destroy Israel. Two weeks ago at a speech in Gaza, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh proclaimed, "We say today explicitly so it cannot be explained otherwise, that the armed resistance and the armed struggle are the path and the strategic choice for liberating the Palestinian land, from the [Mediterranean] sea to the [Jordan] river, and for the expulsion of the invaders and usurpers [Israel]... We won't relinquish one inch of the land of Palestine."
In his visit with his Muslim Brotherhood counterpart, Mohammad Badie, in Cairo this week Haniyeh said, "The Islamic resistance movement of Hamas by definition is a jihadist movement by the Muslim Brotherhood, Palestinian on the surface, Islamic at its core, and its goal is liberation."
In an earlier post, I reported that moderate Elliot Jager has declared the 'land for peace' formula dead. But Evelyn Gordon reports that Jager is just one of several commentators on the center-left who have now declared that 'land for peace' is dead.
Guy Bechor, a regular columnist for the mass-circulation daily Yedioth Ahronoth, bluntly declared the land-for-peace formula “dead” last week. Even Akiva Eldar of Haaretz, a diehard leftist who still wants an Israeli withdrawal to the pre-1967 lines, admitted despairingly after last month’s cross-border terror attacks from Sinai that “When the border between Israel and Egypt is open to murderers, it’s harder to condemn Israel’s leaders for refusing to utter the words ‘negotiation on the basis of the ’67 borders.’”
As Bechor noted, the land-for-peace approach has several inherent problems. First, it encourages the Arabs to view peace as a concession Israel must pay for rather than something of value to them. Second, it trades an easily-reversed asset (peace) for an almost irreversible one (land), which undermines deterrence: The Arabs can abrogate their side of the bargain without fear of losing the quid pro quo they received. I’d also add a third: It encourages war by making aggression cost-free. After all, the land in question was captured in a defensive war against three Arab states in 1967; agreeing to return every last inch – as Israel did in Sinai and Gaza and is now expected to do in the West Bank – thus sends the message Arabs risk no permanent territorial losses by attacking Israel.
All these evils are obviously compounded when territory is given to people who loathe Israel (as both Egyptians and Palestinians do). Many Westerners seem to think this hostility would disappear if Israel would just “end the occupation.” Prize-winning reporter Anthony Shadid, for instance, assertedin the New York Times last month Egypt’s current hostility stems from “deep popular resentment over the plight of Palestinians,” thus implying it would vanish were this plight alleviated.
There’s only one problem with this theory: As a 2007 Pew Global Attitudes poll found, fully 80 percent of Egyptians think “Palestinians’ rights cannot be taken care of if Israel exists.” In short, their problem isn’t Israel’s “occupation” of the West Bank, it’s Israel’s very existence. And 77 percent of Palestinians say the same.
Hmmm. And the Obama administration thinks this is the time to cut a deal? What could go wrong?
Fate of Camp David accords shows why 'land for peace' is not viable
Menachem Begin made one big mistake when he entered into a peace treaty with Egypt - he made peace with the Egyptian leader, Anwar Sadat, and not with the Egyptian people. While Sadat's successor, Hosni Mubarak, continued to abide by the treaty (and Begin went through with the bargain by giving the Sinai to Egypt after Sadat's death), Mubarak allowed his state-controlled media to continue to stir the anti-Semitic pot against Israel for the last 30 years. Now that Egypt stands on the verge of democracy, the only thing that continues to hold them to the treaty is the billions of dollars in US aid that they would stand to lose if they abrogated it altogether and if the US government of the day decided to respond in kind.
Elliot Jager, whom I would characterize as a moderate. argues cogently that what is happening today with the Egyptian treaty calls into question whether 'land for peace' is viable at all, precisely at the moment that Israel is being pressured to extend it to the 'Palestinians.'
Egyptians say they view the need to obtain Israeli approval for shifting troops into Sinai an affront to their national pride and their country's sovereignty. Egypt's Supreme Military Council has been pushing hard to amend the peace treaty, arguing that new security threats demand permanently lifting the ceiling on the number of troops allowed into the Peninsula. The treaty does contain a clause that allows security arrangements to be amended by mutual agreement — though both Cairo and Jerusalem agree that ad hoc solutions have been exhausted. Israel's Haaretz newspaper supports official Egyptian demands to amend the treaty; Egypt's Al Ahram said what Egyptians really want is to have it abrogated altogether. Indeed, leading Egyptian figures have repeatedly emphasized that the peace treaty is not "sacrosanct."
Thus, in advance of anticipated presidential elections in Egypt this winter, Barak has been floating the idea of holding a strategic dialogue with Cairo. The goal would be to find ways to make the treaty more palatable to Egyptian voters indoctrinated against Israel by the venomous cant of their media. Barak hopes that the treaty can be salvaged by amending the demilitarization clauses — which probably would result in Israel losing its veto over how many Egyptian troops can be stationed in Sinai. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is opposed to changing the treaty but said that he would bring any proposed changes to the Cabinet.
Hosni Mubarak, while in power, did nothing to foster support for the peace treaty and occasionally diverted attention away from Egypt's domestic woes by playing the anti-Israel card. Egypt's de facto ruler, Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi, has followed a similar line. Still, if Tantawi or one of his henchmen continues to rule, the bare bones of the treaty are likely to be preserved, in return for continued U.S. military aid ($40 billion since the 1970's). On the other hand, virtually all of Egypt's declared presidential candidates from across the political spectrum have staked out positions that put into question the long-term viability of the treaty.
But modifying the treaty to appease popular anti-Israel sentiment could open a Pandora's box of demands on Israel. If today's limit on the number of soldiers is an "affront" to Egyptian sensibilities, who's to say forbidding the Egyptian Air Force from holding maneuvers over Sinai won't be the next "affront" to be overcome? The Jordan-Israel peace treaty is no less unpopular. Wouldn't amending the treaty with Egypt put pressure on King Abdullah II to push for similar amends? Moreover, any viable Israeli deal with the Palestinian faction led by Abbas would require the demilitarization of the West Bank. What signal would backtracking on the demilitarization of Sinai send to the Palestinians?
If the treaty with Egypt must be gutted in order to save it, something may be terribly wrong with the underlying land-for-peace approach.
The biggest problem with 'land for peace' is not the exchange itself (which is unreasonable in any event - why should parties who lost wars of aggression be able to get the land they forfeited back for a piece of paper, and where else in the world other than Israel has that happened), but the fact that the 'peace' has always been made with the leaders and not with the people. While some people may not have considered the possibility that some day the Arabs would demand democracy, they - including Israel's leadership - most certainly should have considered it.
In the New York Post, Abby Wisse Schachter argues that the end of the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty should mean the end of 'land for peace,' and the end of 'land for peace' would be a good thing.
Consider how the agreement with Egypt worked out. Because of its military success in 1967 and 1973, Israel actually had the entire Sinai Peninsula with which to bargain and that piece of land represented a massive physical buffer between the two countries. Then, after having relinquished the territory and removed hundreds of Israelis from their homes in Yamit (no they were not crazy religious "settlers"), the Israelis got a cold, even belligerent, peace with Egypt that never prevented Egypt from remaining the greatest producer of anti-semitic literature in the world. The agreement did not require that Egypt stop teaching its children to hate Jews or to recognize Israel's right to exist. The agreement did not lead to trade, cultural exchanges, tourism of Egyptians into Israel or Israelis into Egypt proper. And finally, 30 years later, the agreement still rests in the hands of one man, the dictator of Egypt. If Mubarak had been assasinated as his predecessor Sadat was, the accord might have been cancelled years ago.
The negotiations with the Palestinian also rest on this same flawed theory that if the Isaelis just give up land - and they have much less of it to give now -- there can be peace with the Palestinans. But that hasn't exactly worked out has it? Even when Israel gives up territory unilaterally it works out badly for the Jewish State.
One more point: There is a peace agreement with Jordan that seems to be holding, even in the face of political unrest there, and that agreement did include a land component to it. But the central tenet was suing for a cessation of hostilities. And the truth is that Jordan wanted very much to be rid of its Palestinian problem (the population of the kingdom is 70 percent Palestinian) by essentially making the Palestinians on the West Bank Israel's problem.
There is still hope that Egypt will not be taken over by the anti-Semitic, Islamist, murderous Muslim Brotherhood. While we wait and pray for Egypt's future, perhaps it is time for Israelis to rethink whether sticking to such a failed theory of peacemaking is really in the country's best interests. Land for peace is dead, please God.
The monthly 'peace index' for January has been released and what it shows is that most Israelis are awakening to the reality that peace is not on the horizon (Hat Tip: IMRA).
Peace with Syria? The degree of the Jewish public’s readiness for a full peace with Syria in return for all of the Golan Heights, combined with its (dis)belief in the chances of this in the foreseeable future, is amazingly consistent over time: ever since 1994, about two-thirds oppose giving up the Golan for peace, and about the same percentage does not believe in the chances for peace with Damascus or in the sincerity of Assad’s declarations that he is interested in peace. In the Arab public, the majority is prepared for peace in return for the Golan and believes in Assad’s sincerity; as in the Jewish public, however, only a third believe in the chances that this will happen.
And with the Palestinians? A clear majority (68%) of the Jewish public thinks that the Palestinians do not see the two-state solution as the end of the road, and that even if a peace agreement is signed, the Palestinians will continue the struggle to create a Palestinian state in the entire Land of Israel. A recent survey in the territories, which was conducted by and American team, found that the majority of Palestinians indeed view the two-state formula as an interim stage, and believe the conflict will only end when a Palestinian state is established in all the area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.
Is there a possibility of a unilateral Palestinian declaration of independence? Fifty percent of the Jewish public thinks that, notwithstanding the stalled negotiations, the chances for a unilateral Palestinian declaration of independence are low, but a large minority (44%) sees the chances as high (this in contrast to the Arab public, in which only 28% estimate the chances as high). The Jewish public is split (48% for each side) on whether Israel can count on an American veto in the United Nations to prevent an overall recognition of the Palestinian state without a peace agreement (a majority of the Arabs expect a U.S. veto). This is apparently one of the reasons that a Jewish plurality (47% as opposed to 39%) views the present situation, in which there is no progress in negotiations, as bad for Israel’s national interests. Among the Arabs two-thirds see it that way.
Should organizations’ funding sources be investigated? A majority of the Jewish public (66.5%) and a small majority of the Arab public (53%) favors investigating the funding sources of the human rights and peace organizations. However, a much larger Jewish majority (84%, and a 62% majority of the Arabs) considers that, if it is decided to investigate the foreign funding, all the organizations should be investigated whatever their political positions. Seventy-two percent of the Jewish public think the investigation should be conducted by the legal authorities rather than by the Knesset, while only 14.5% say the opposite.
There were a number of articles in the weekend newspapers that warn that what's important about Palileaks is not the documents themselves but the motivations for publishing them and the reactions to them. David Horovitz wrote a long piece in the JPost asking what would happen if the 'Palestinians' actually said, "yes, this is what we said and it's time to realize that we have to compromise." But even Horovitz admits that's fanciful.
Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri is about to find himself facing Hezbullah alone in Lebanon, as the United States heads for the exits.
Now comes the next phase of this prolonged race between a legal process and an armed resistance. If the indictments so long in coming go long unfulfilled, if they leave untouched those widely believed to have instigated the assassination, then the region will conclude that the victims and their friends have little will left for this fight.
This will mark the final success of the perpetrators’ strategy. They will have understood well the lands against which they plotted. Pursuing these indictments will bring violence, or even civil war, Western experts on the politics of the Levant say, adding with knowing resignation that few there want more violence now. That, as far as it goes, may be true enough. But the judgments of the democrats in Beirut are based on the forces they have come to know for six bloody years. They have no cause to suspect that those who killed in 2005 have abandoned their goals. By contrast, Western support will seem to have brought but temporary solace to our friends; the Cedar Revolution, which began with a bang, may leave only smoke.
The finely tuned ears in the region have not failed to catch the sounds of Washington edging toward the door. Just last week, before sealed indictments were filed, Secretary Clinton, echoed by the State Department spokesman, already pronounced our readiness to treat charges as limited to “individuals,” not “the groups to which they belong.” This must strike oddly Middle Easterners, who have long heard us call Hezbollah a “terrorist organization” and repeatedly proclaim that the U.S. is determined to end impunity for political murder in Lebanon.
Ironically, even as the Saad Hariri government fell, Secretary Clinton lectured the region on the virtues of political courage and the strength of American will. In Doha, she urged Arab leaders “to put away plans that are timid and gradual” and make bold, democratic reforms. “This is a test of leadership for all of us,” said Clinton. “I am here to pledge my country’s support for those who step up to solve the problems that we and you face.” Did some in the chamber think, “Lebanon?”
The Hezbollah leader, in his first public comments since toppling the government, mocked America’s empty promises of support. He publicly warned Hariri that the West had promptly turned on its former ally, the recently toppled leader of Tunisia, by denying him sanctuary.
In days to come, the region will recall Hariri’s fate, much as the assassins intended. If your friends can neither protect you nor deter attacks to come, then you best curb your course or face your fate. There is nothing exotic in this wisdom of Beirut; it sounds the same coming from the streets of old Chicago.
I hope all those Israelis who want to give all our strategic depth to the 'Palestinians' based upon American guarantees are listening.
I would say that this is a fair description of our current predicament.
There was a time when the "land for peace" formula made some sense. There was a time when the peace camp promised that its solutions would actually bring peace. I don't know if you've noticed, but after Lebanon and Gaza, no one is making such promises to the people of Israel - not the human rights groups, not the Israeli government, not the Palestinian Authority and not the American president. A nation already at the limit of its tolerance for violence is being asked to double down on a policy which no one can guarantee will bring peace, and may in fact instigate a new round of bloodshed. It's either that or invite the very people who would shoot rockets at your home and riddle your family with bullets into having a say over how your country should be run. Lastly, should you choose to do neither, you're an anti-democratic racist. Enjoy.
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
