By controlling the Jordan Valley,
(and the Samarian and Hebron mountain ranges), Israel is capable of
defending the country from invasion from the east. It can also prevent
penetration of irregular enemy forces, and on the other hand, maintain
the stability of the Hashemite regime in Jordan. Without control over
the areas, Israel can do none of these things.
Facing
these undeniable facts, Kerry and his supporters have two main
challenges. First they need to present themselves as credible actors.
And
second they have to give Israel reason to trust the Palestinians. If
Israel trusts the US, then it can consider allowing the US to defend it
from foreign aggression. If the Palestinians are real peace partners,
then Israel can surrender its ability to defend itself more easily,
because it will face a benign neighbor along its indefensible border.
Unfortunately,
Israel cannot trust the US. Kerry and the Obama administration as a
whole lost all credibility when they negotiated the deal with Iran last
month.
After spending five years promising they
had Israel’s back only to stab Israel in the back in relation to the
most acute threat facing the Jewish state, nothing Kerry or US President
Barack Obama says in relation to their commitment to Israel’s security
can be trusted. The fact that Kerry had the nerve to show up here with
“security guarantees” regarding the Palestinians two weeks after he
agreed to effectively unravel the sanctions regime against Iran in
exchange for no concrete Iranian concessions on its nuclear arms program
shows that he holds Israel in contempt.
But
then, even if Kerry had all the credibility in the world it wouldn’t
make a difference. The real problem with the notion of an Israeli
withdrawal to indefensible borders is that those indefensible borders
will be insecure. Both the PLO and Hamas remain committed to Israel’s
destruction.
They will never agree to Israel’s
continued existence in any borders. So the whole peace process is
doomed. Kerry’s attempt to dictate security arrangements is a waste of
time.
This much was again made clear last
Friday by the PLO’s chief negotiator Saeb Erekat. Speaking to foreign
supporters, Erekat said that the Palestinians will never accept Israel’s
right to exist.
Their entire existence as a
people is predicated on denying Jewish rights and nationhood. And, as
Erekat put it, “I cannot change my narrative.”
The
people who should be most upset both about Obama and Kerry’s
destruction of US strategic credibility and about the utter absence of
Palestinian good faith should be the Israelis wedded to the two-state
paradigm. Former prime minister Ehud Olmert, former Shin Bet director
Yuval Diskin, Justice Minister Tzipi Livni and Labor Party leader Issac
Herzog among others, should be so vocal in their opposition to the deal
with Iran that they make Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu look like a
pushover.
It is they, not Netanyahu and his
voters, who have insisted that Israel can make massive concessions to
the PLO and sit on the sidelines with regard to Iran because the US will
defend us. For the past generation it was they, not the political
Right, that preached strategic dependency rather than strategic
sovereignty.
These peaceniks, rather than Likud
supporters should also be the ones leading the charge against PLO
support for terrorism, incitement against Israel and rejection of
Israel’s right to exist. The Right never wanted a Palestinian state to
begin with. That’s the Left’s policy. If Netanyahu abandoned his support
for Palestinian statehood, he would become more popular, not less so.
And unless Palestinian society and the Palestinian leadership
fundamentally transform their position on Israel, there is no way that
Israel can be expected to surrender its ability to defend itself.
There
is no way that Israel can consider the PLO’s territorial demands. And
there is no way a Palestinian state can be established.
But the peaceniks don’t seem to care about these things.
Olmert uses every open microphone to attack Netanyahu.
Last
week Olmert went so far as to say that Netanyahu, “declared war on the
American government,” by openly criticizing the deal with Iran.
Despite
the fact that PLO chief Mahmoud Abbas didn’t even respond to Olmert’s
peace offer in 2008, Olmert places all the blame for the absence of
peace on Netanyahu and his government.
For his part, on the eve of Kerry’s visit Diskin launched an equally unhinged attack on the government.
Speaking
to the European funded pro-Palestinian Geneva Initiative, Diskin
claimed wildly that Israel is more at risk from not surrendering to PLO
demands than from an Iranian nuclear arsenal.
Last
month Livni attacked Netanyahu for criticizing Obama’s deal with Iran
and then claimed vapidly that Israel will protect itself from Iran by
giving away its land to the PLO. Ignoring the fact that the Arab world
is already siding with Israel against Iran, Livni said, “Solving the
conflict with the Palestinians would enable a united front with Arab
countries against Iran.”
This week newly elected Labor Party chief Issac Herzog went to Ramallah and chastised the government.
Praising
Abbas for his “real desire to achieve peace,” while remaining silent
about Abbas’s daily statements in support of terrorism, Herzog pledged
“to try to put pressure on the Israeli government to take brave
positions to achieve peace and security for our children.”
As
for the deal with Iran, shortly after his election to head the Labor
Party last month, Herzog lashed out not at the deal, and not at Obama
for betraying his pledge to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power,
but at Netanyahu. Netanyahu, he claimed, “has harmed our relations with
the US and hasn’t brought about an improved agreement.”
Ignoring
the fact that the Obama administration negotiated with Iran behind
Israel’s back and then lied about the contents of what it had agreed to,
Herzog seethed, Netanyahu “has created a total lack of trust between us
and Obama rather than a trusting relationship.”
As
polls taken over the past 20 years have shown, a majority of Israelis
would be happy to make peace with the Palestinians, and pay a price in
territory for doing so. But those polls have also shown that the public
believes the Palestinians when they say they want to destroy the Jewish
state. The Israeli public does not think people like Abbas, who praise
mass murderers of Jews as national heroes, have “a real desire to
achieve peace.”
And, as recent polls show,
following the US deal with Iran, while the public continues to prize
Israel’s alliance with the US, it no longer trusts the US government.
The
fact that the likes of Olmert, Livni, Diskin and Herzog and their
followers are not at the forefront pressuring the Palestinians to change
their ways and demanding that the Obama administration demonstrate its
trustworthiness, but rather have directed all their energies to
attacking the government, indicates that peace with the Palestinians is
not their primary concern.
Rather it would appear that their main concern is their personal power and prestige.
By
siding with the Americans against the government, these senior figures
seek to exploit the public’s support for the US. By presenting Netanyahu
as anti-American, and claiming that he is responsible for Obama’s
abusive behavior, they hope to convince the public to embrace them as
guarantors of the strategic alliance. Certainly that is Olmert’s goal as
he looks past his criminal prosecutions and begins to plot his course
back to the center of power.
As for their support for the Palestinians against their government, here the motivation is external.
Israelis
do not trust the Palestinians. And they certainly do not trust Abbas.
But the Americans and Europeans have made Palestinian statehood the
centerpiece of their foreign policies and view Abbas as the
indispensable man.
Livni had no political future after she lost the Kadima party primary to Shaul Mofaz last year.
Her
hopes of becoming prime minister had ended. But then she went to
Washington, met with Hillary Clinton, and announced she was forming a
new party and running on a pro-Palestinian, pro-Obama platform. She won a
paltry six seats, which she took from other leftist parties.
But
that was enough. Bowing to US pressure to prove he was serious about
appeasing the Palestinians, Netanyahu appointed Livni justice minister
and put her in charge of the talks with the PLO. If Livni had been less
supportive of Obama or of the PLO, she would not be where she is today.
If
the behavior of these people were just a matter of shameless jockeying
for political power their actions would be bad enough. But they cause
immeasurable damage to the country.
By accusing
Netanyahu of blocking peace between Israel and the Palestinians, they
embolden the Palestinians to escalate their political warfare against
Israel, and maintain their steady anti-Semitic incitement. Indeed they
lay the moral groundwork for justifying terrorism against Israel.
Livni,
Olmert, Diskin, Herzog and their allies also give political cover to
outside forces to adopt anti-Israel positions and policies. Why
shouldn’t the European Union boycott Israeli goods when the former prime
minister claims that Israel is the reason there is no peace? Why should
Obama care what Netanyahu tells Congress when Olmert says Netanyahu is
at war with the US? How can Israel justify attacking Iran’s nuclear
installations when Olmert says it is strategically idiotic to even train
for such an attack and Diskin says that we need a PLO state more than
we need to block Iran’s nuclear ambitions? Diskin’s unhinged attack
against Netanyahu on the eve of Kerry’s visit was hardly coincidental.
And we should expect more such displays as Obama becomes more open in his hostility towards Israel.
As
long as we have a seemingly endless supply of senior officials willing
to harm the country to advance their personal goals, domestic subversion
will remain a key weapon in the international arsenal against us.
caroline@carolineglick.com
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