Poor Menachem: Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory
Israel's leadership has a long and painful history of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.
Here are some examples.
Thus, the sweeping strategic advantages, won in victories of the Six Day War, have been foolishly squandered.
The Sinai Peninsula with its strategic depth, mineral wealth and economic potential is now deteriorating into a lawless “no-go” region, rapidly falling under the control of the most ruthless extremists on the face of the globe. In the wake of the “Tahrir tsunami,” Israel is facing an emerging lose-lose strategic predicament which will soon force it to decide between:
• Allowing Sinai to degenerate into an Afghanistan-like haven for al-Qaida and other jihadi organizations,
• Allowing a Muslim Brotherhood-controlled Egypt to remilitarize the area in order to reestablish law and order, and
• Reasserting Israeli control of Sinai, effectively repudiating the peace agreement.
Admittedly, the three decades of Egyptian prickly nonbelligerence provided Israel with significant benefits – in return for considerable strategic sacrifices. But from here on in, the challenges will be daunting to say the least. All options are gravely menacing... After all, all poor Menachem got was “a piece of paper.”
This was neither unpredictable nor unpredicted.
However, the sober voices who warned against the wisdom of or the need to make such sweeping concessions to the depleted and disintegrating regime in Cairo were dismissed as deranged warmongers. It seems that future generations will yet be called on to pay the price of this strategic myopia, a price, which could far outweigh the temporary benefits of the acrimonious and relatively brief interbellum.
...
If it took about a generation for the folly of relinquishing Sinai to become tangibly evident, with 2005’s disengagement it took a matter of weeks.
In a stunning triumph of irrationality over reason, Israel six years ago surrendered all for nothing, erasing 30 years of Zionist endeavor in Gaza in a fortnight. With dizzying speed all ominous warnings of dangers came true; all promises of benefits proved false. But worse of all, it conveyed an unmistakable strategic message to the Arabs: With the Jews, no concessions are necessary! If confronted with adequate resolve and violence, they will capitulate unconditionally.
In a stroke, Ariel Sharon’s mendacious promise that “the fate of Netzarim will be the fate of Tel Aviv” was inverted. Now the Arabs had every reason to believe that “the fate Tel Aviv will be the fate of Netzarim.”
There are three other areas today where Israel could still snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. One - the Golan Heights - is on hold right now due to the uprising in Syria. But the government is on the verge of capitulating in two other areas: Our dealings with the 'Palestinians' and our economy, which is one of the strongest in the world.
Read the whole thing.
I'd like to conclude with a quote from Anwar Sadat that I had never heard before.
"Poor Menachem [Begin]... I got back... the Sinai and the Alma oil fields, and what has Menachem got? A piece of paper” – Anwar Sadat on the Peace Agreement with Israel, The New York Times, October 19, 1980.
Having now completed Yehuda Avner's
The Prime Ministers, it is clear to me that the Begins and the Sadats liked each other personally. Yet Sadat understood that he was getting the far better end of the deal. No one else in Egypt accepted Israel, and therefore what is happening now was readily foreseeable albeit it took a little longer than expected. Why does Israel keep giving away its assets for paper?
Read the whole thing.
Labels: Anwar Sadat, Gaza expulsion, Menachem Begin, Yehuda Avner
A surprising source admits Obama has broken with past support of Israel
A surprising source - JTA's Ron Kampeas - has admitted that President
Obama has broken with past American support of Israel.
I believe it represents a substantive -- if subtle -- break with his recent predecessors. The way I've put it as that while Obama's predecessors have recognized the 1967 lines as a Palestinian aspiration, Obama has embraced those lines (again, with swaps) as U.S. policy.
Now, recognizing the 1967 lines as a Palestinian aspiration -- as President George W. Bush did -- is not nothing, so I have some sympathy for the view that Republicans have overblown to a degree Obama's shift.
It is not nothing because Palestinians have plenty of aspirations, but the ones recognized by the world's single remaining superpower accrue legitimacy. Neither Bush nor Obama nor any of their predecessors (with the possible exception of -- of all presidents -- Harry Truman) recognized a Palestinian "right of return," for instance.
So Obama's embrace of "1967 lines with swaps" is substantive, it matters -- but it doesn't come out of nowhere. It should also be said that some of the parameters he embraced as U.S. policy favor Israeli positions, including a non-militarized Palestinian state and recognizing Israel as a Jewish state.
Recognizing what 'Palestinian' aspirations are is a statement of fact and is not agreeing with those aspirations, let alone making them US policy.
Kampeas goes on - after being prodded by the Jewish Democrats who hang on his every word - to point out that a Republican also called for a similar formulation: William Rogers, who was Richard Nixon's first Secretary of State.
We believe that while recognized political boundaries must be established, and agreed upon by the parties, any change in the pre-existing lines should not reflect the weight of conquest and should be confined to insubstantial alterations required for mutual security. We do not support expansionism. We believe troops must be withdrawn as the Resolution provides. We support Israel's security and the security of the Arab States as well. We are for a lasting peace that requires security for both.
Well, yes, but that's the Secretary of State and not the President. And Yehuda Avner reports in
The Prime Ministers that Nixon disagreed with the Rogers Plan and urged then-Israeli ambassador to the US to work directly with the White House rather than through Rogers.
Labels: Barack Hussein Obama, Ron Kampeas, William Rogers, Yehuda Avner, Yitzchak Rabin
When Israel's Prime Ministers believed in God
As many of you know, I am currently reading Yehuda Avner's
The Prime Ministers. I'm now up to Menachem Begin, and just read Avner's description of the negotiations over the communique that was issued at the conclusion of Begin's first trip to the US to meet with Jimmy Carter in July 1977.
Begin asked that two sentences be removed. First, the sentence that said that the United States affirms Israel's inherent right to exist. Carter's National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski protested that every Israeli Prime Minister wanted that sentence. But Begin stood firm. Israel's right to exist come from God and the Torah, and not from the US or any other power.
The second sentence Begin wanted removed was the sentence where the US reaffirmed its commitment to Israel's survival. Begin said that only the Jewish people were responsible for Israel's survival. (Well, not quite. I think God has that under control as well).
No, he wasn't perfect, but he was quite firm about not turning over any of Judea or Samaria (or Gaza for that matter) to the 'Palestinians' and about not negotiating with Arafat or the PLO. In fact, the thing I find so striking about this book (which I highly recommend) is the sense of deja vu - the issues are the same now as they were 34 years ago. Carter wanted to do the same thing that Obama wants to do but he was a bit more genteel about it.
Labels: Barack Obama, Jimmy Carter, Menachem Begin, The Prime Ministers, Yehuda Avner, Zbigniew Brzezinski
Israel's leadership has a long and painful history of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. Here are some examples. 
