Until this week, most Israelis thought of U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry as a naïve nice guy. His ardent enthusiasm for basically impossible peace talks with the Palestinians was viewed as stop-gap diplomacy, at best; a fool's errand, at worst.
But Thursday night, in his joint television interview to Israeli and Palestinian television, we "discovered" a different Kerry: nasty,
threatening, one-sided, blind to the malfeasance and unreliability of
Palestinian leaders, and dangerously oblique to the explosive situation
he himself is creating.
Channeling the Palestinian line, Kerry showed no appreciation whatsoever for Israel's positions and concerns (aside from the usual throw-away vague protestations of concern for Israel's "security").
His warnings about the coming isolation of Israel and of a third intifada unless Israel
quickly allows the emergence of a "whole Palestine" and ends it
"perpetual military occupation" of Judea and Samaria amount to
unfriendly pressure. Worse still, Kerry is trading treacherously in ugly self-fulfilling prophecy.
There was always a high
probability that the Palestinians would eventually use the predictable
collapse of the talks as an excuse for more violence and renewal of
their lawfare against Israel in international forums. Now they have John Kerry's seal of approval for doing so.
Kerry has basically laid out the Obama administration's understanding (dare I say, acceptance) of the campaign to delegitimize and isolate Israel -- unless
Israel succumbs to Palestinian and international dictates for almost
complete Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank and Jerusalem.
Kerry is effectively telling the Palestinians that they should make sure the talks fail, and then Israel will be forced to give in.
So now the Palestinians know clearly what to do.
They don't really want a circumscribed, hemmed-in, mini-state of the
like that Israel could agree too. They have never wanted the "sovereign
cage" of a Palestinian state that Israel can contemplate (as Ahmad
Khalidi and Saeb Erekat have categorized the generous Barak and Olmert
proposals). What they have always wanted is "runaway" statehood,
and the total delegitimization of Israel, alongside an ongoing campaign
to swamp Israel demographically and overwhelm Israel diplomatically.
Strategically then, there is no good reason for Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas to agree to any negotiated accord with Israel.
An accord will hem in Palestinian ambitions. An accord will grant
Israel the legitimacy that Kerry warns we are losing. An accord will
grant Israel the legitimacy "to act in order to protect its security
needs," as Tzipi Livni keeps on saying.
Obviously then, Abbas knows what to do. By stiffing Israel and holding to his maximalist demands, Abbas pushes Israel into Kerry's punishment corner. He spurs on the isolation of Israel that Mr. Kerry is oh-so-worried-about. He creates ever-greater pressure on Israel to concede ever more to Palestinian ambitions.
In short, Kerry's onslaught last night only encourages Palestinian obduracy, and strips the peace process of any realism.
Over the past 30 years, Israelis have shifted their views tremendously. They've gone from denying the existence of a Palestinian people to recognition of Palestinian peoplehood and national aspirations;
and from insisting on exclusive Israeli sovereignty and control of
Judea, Samaria and Gaza to acceptance of a demilitarized Palestinian
state in these areas. Israel has even withdrawn all-together from Gaza,
and allowed a Palestinian government to assume authority over 95 percent
of West Bank residents. Israel has made the Palestinian Authority three
concrete offers for Palestinian statehood over more than 90 percent of
West Bank territory plus Gaza.
Palestinians have made no even remotely comparable moves toward Israel.
What Kerry should be doing
is disabusing the Palestinians of the notion that they can fall back on
bogus, maximalist demands as their uncompromising bottom line. He should be dialing down Palestinian expectations and bringing Palestinians toward compromise, no less than Israelis.
He should be pressing them to close the "peace gap" by accepting the
historic ties of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel and the
legitimacy of Israel's existence in the Middle East as a Jewish state
(and that, in principle, includes Judea and Samaria).
He should be calling on
them to renounce the resettlement of Palestinian refugees in pre-1967
Israel, and to end their support for and glorification of Palestinian
suicide-bombers and missile launchers against Israel's civilian population, and to end the anti-Semitic and anti-Israel warlike propaganda that fills the Palestinian airwaves.
Kerry should make clear to the
Palestinians that if they don't compromise with Israel, the world will
stand by Israel, will not isolate Israel, and will not tolerate
Palestinian violence against Israel.
Instead, Kerry chose to launch a
full-bore attack on Netanyahu and on all Israelis who (in Kerry's
words) pig-headedly "feel safe today" and "feel they're doing pretty
well economically." He laid out the consequences for Israel of
disobeying America (no safety and no prosperity). He laid out no similar
consequences for the Palestinians if they remain intransigent.
So much for the notion of honest broker.
So much for the notion of honest broker.
---
| Netanyahu warns: Israel is not bound by any deal with Iran |
Geneva-based
nuclear negotiations explore allowing Tehran to pursue low-grade
uranium enrichment • Kerry: We won't leave ourselves exposed to a
nuclear program • Netanyahu: Israel always reserves the right to defend
itself, by itself, against any threat.
Shlomo Cesana, Dan Lavie, David Baron, Yoni Hirsch, Yori Yalon, Reuters and Israel Hayom Staff | 11/08/2013
|
Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with U.S. Secretary John Kerry Friday
morning and warned, perhaps for the last time before the sanctions on
Iran are relaxed, against the likely implications of such a move.
Netanyahu expressed his dissatisfaction with the ongoing negotiations
between Iran and the West over Tehran's contentious nuclear program, and
declared that Israel would not be bound by any agreement struck between
Iran and the West.
The meeting took place at
Ben-Gurion International Airport, ahead of Kerry's surprise departure to
Geneva, where he will meet with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad
Zarif.
"I understand that the Iranians
are walking around very satisfied in Geneva -- as well they should be
because they got everything and paid nothing," Netanyahu told reporters
Friday morning. "Everything they wanted; they wanted relief of sanctions
after years of a grueling sanctions regime, they got that. They are
paying nothing because they are not reducing in any way their nuclear
enrichment capability."
Netanyahu said that "the international community got a bad deal," while Iran "got the deal of the century."
He
stressed that "Israel utterly rejects [the deal] and what I am saying
is shared by many in the region, whether or not they express that
publicly. Israel is not obliged by this agreement and Israel will do
everything it needs to do to defend itself and the security of its
people."
According to a senior State
Department official, Kerry is committed to doing "anything he can" to
narrow differences with Iran over its nuclear program
"This is a complex process," the official said. "As a
member of the P5+1, he is committed to doing anything he can [to] help
narrow these differences." The official said Kerry had decided to break
from a Middle East visit to go to Geneva at the invitation of European
Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton.
Netanyahu, who met with U.S.
congressmen in Jerusalem Thursday, commented on reports suggesting the
Geneva talks have yielded a breakthrough.
"If the information about the P5+1's offer to Iran is
true," he said, "then this is the deal of the century for Iran, because
Iran will not have to give up anything, but it will take the pressure --
which has taken years to create in the form of sanctions -- off. Under
the best of circumstances, Iran will suspend enrichment for a few days,
but the international sanctions will be deflated."
Netanyahu also addressed the
issue during an address before the conference on joint strategic
dialogue between the government of Israel and world Jewish communities,
held in Jerusalem on Thursday evening.
"Israel understands that there
are proposals on the table in Geneva today that would ease the pressure
on Iran for concessions that are not concessions at all. This proposal
would allow Iran to retain the capabilities to make nuclear weapons.
This proposal will allow Iran to preserve its ability to build a nuclear
weapon. Israel is completely opposed to these proposals. I believe that
adopting them would be a mistake of historic proportions and they
should be completely rejected," he said.
"They must be rejected
outright. The sanctions regime has brought the Iranian economy to the
edge of the abyss and the P5+1 can compel Iran to fully dismantle its
nuclear weapons program. This means ending all enrichment and stopping
all work on the heavy water plutonium reactor. Anything less will make a
peaceful solution less likely. And Israel always reserves the right to
defend itself, by itself, against any threat."
International, Intelligence and
Strategic Affairs Minister Yuval Steinitz said, "We oppose any interim
agreement because if any of the sanctions are lifted than the entire
structure of the sanctions will collapse.
Deal with Iran within reach?
The
second round of nuclear negotiations between Iran and the West was
launched Wednesday in Geneva, and according to Zarif an agreement was
well within reach. "We can conclude [a deal] this week in Geneva, and if
that's not the case it's not a disaster, as long as things are moving
forward," Zarif told the French daily Le Monde.
Iran's Deputy Foreign Minister
Abbas Araqchi, who heads the Iranian delegation to the talks, was quoted
by The Guardian as saying the six world powers had "accepted the
framework of Iran's proposal ... The aim of both sides is to sign the
agreement [but] it's too early to say whether a written agreement could
be made in the next 48 hours."
According to the Telegraph, the
U.S. presented Iran with an offer saying that if it suspends uranium
enrichment for six months, the West would mitigate some of the
sanctions. The offer mandates that Iran would stop enriching uranium to
20 percent fissile purity -- a level after which further refinement to
weapons-grade purity is relatively easy -- but would allow it to pursue
low-grade enrichment to a level of 3.5%, which is required to operate
civilian nuclear reactors.
According to the American plan,
Iran would also have to consent to limiting the number of active
centrifuges, decommission its advanced IR-2 centrifuges, and suspend all
operations in the plutonium facility in Arak.
Speaking to CNN on Thursday,
Zarif negated the latter, saying that Iran would never agree to
completely suspend uranium enrichment.
Kerry
said Thursday that Tehran would need to prove that its atomic
activities were peaceful, and that Washington would not make a "bad
deal, that leaves any of our friends or ourselves exposed to a nuclear
weapons program."
"We're asking them to step up
and provide a complete freeze over where they are today," he said in a
joint interview with Israel's Channel 2 television and Palestinian
Broadcasting Corporation recorded in Jerusalem on Thursday.
A U.S. official in Geneva told
The Washington Post that an Iranian agreement to freeze its program
would result in "limited, targeted and reversible" relief on some
sanctions for about six months.
On Wednesday, U.S. President
Barack Obama said the international community could slightly ease
sanctions against Iran in the early stages of negotiating a
comprehensive deal on Tehran's atomic program.
"There is the possibility of a
phased agreement in which the first phase would be us, you know, halting
any advances on their nuclear program ... and putting in place a way
where we can provide them some very modest relief, but keeping the
sanctions architecture in place," he said in an interview with NBC News.
Also on Thursday, The Wall
Street Journal shed some light on the process that led to the September
phone call between Obama and Iranian counterpart Hasan Rouhani -- a move
which has been lauded as a milestone for American foreign policy.
According to the report, senior
National Security Council officials spent months laying the groundwork
for the call, "holding a series of secret meetings and telephone calls
and convening an assortment of Arab monarchs, Iranian exiles and former
U.S. diplomats to clandestinely ferry messages between Washington and
Tehran."
Obama had also empowered Puneet
Talwar, one of the administration's top Iran specialists to have direct
contact with Iranian Foreign Ministry officials, the report said. The
meetings reportedly took place in Muscat, the capital of Oman.
The Wall Street Journal further said that the White
House reached out to Tehran through other senior Obama aides, including
National Security Adviser Susan Rice, who was directed to nurture ties
with her Iranian counterpart while she was serving as the U.S.
ambassador to the U.N.
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