No doubt there are those who disagree with Netanyahu as to whether Israel should be called a Jewish state. However, since one of the premises of Palestinian nationalism is the denial of the historical connection between Israel and the Jews, the demand is of utmost importance. If the Palestinians cannot accept Israel as a Jewish state, they are not serious about peace.

It’s ironic. During Netanyahu’s first term in office he withdrew Israel from most of Chevron. He took a concrete step for peace. But even the most basic steps of showing acceptance of Israel are too much to ask of the Palestinians. As long as the Palestinians don’t repudiate their denial of Jewish history, their commitment to peace is nonexistent. It makes their various “special sessions” moot.

As Jeff Jacoby recently wrote:

And yet to Israel’s enemies, Jewish sovereignty is as intolerable today as it was in 1948, when five Arab armies invaded the newborn Jewish state, vowing “a war of extermination and a momentous massacre.” Endless rounds of talks and countless invocations of the “peace process” have not changed the underlying reality of the Arab-Israeli conflict, which is not about settlements or borders or Jerusalem or the rights of Palestinians. The root of the hostility is the refusal to recognize the immutable right of the Jewish people to a sovereign state in its historic homeland. Until that changes, no lasting peace is possible.

But instead of questioning the Palestinian commitment to peace the New York Times does what’s comfortable: pretends that Israel is being unreasonable.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

President Obama will begin his one-year effort to achieve Middle East peace on Wednesday, joining a long list of his predecessors who have tried to achieve a comprehensive peace between Israelis and Palestinians.

But unlike the presidents before him, Mr. Obama will know within three weeks whether the two sides are serious this time about reaching a deal.

Really? I would have thought that he already knows that. For one thing Barry Rubin pointed out:

It is amusing to see articles claiming that this is a victory for the Obama Administration. If the U.S. government had been doing such a good job it would have been able to announce the resumption of elections in April 2009, after the visit of Abbas to Washington. The president did indeed announce the resumption of negotiations in September 2009 and nothing has happened in a year.

Moreover, it is amusing to read accounts of the resumption of talks without any mention of the fact that the sole reason it has taken so long has been the PA’s resistance to negotiations.

Cooper doesn’t claim that the upcoming talks will be a victory for the administration, but she hypes the idea that there will be clarity. But she doesn’t acknowledge that the delay in the resumption of talks was due to a calculated fit of pique by Mahmoud Abbas, who wouldn’t even go back to the negotiating table after Netanyahu agreed to a freeze on building Jewish communiites in Judea and Samaria. I would think that alone shows who’s unserious.

Yet Cooper casts things like this:

Mr. Obama, administration officials said, will call on the four leaders to do all they can to settle, within a year, the final status issues: the fate of Jerusalem, the borders of a Palestinian state, the right of return for Palestinian refugees who fled their homes and the issue of Israeli security.

But on Sept. 26, Israel’s 10-month moratorium on settlement construction will expire. Mr. Netanyahu appears unlikely to extend it, Israeli and American officials said. And Mr. Abbas has said that he will withdraw from negotiations if settlement activity resumes.

In other words, she has Israel up for failure. A failure to resume the freeze will lead to a collapse of the talks.

According to Ha’aretz it does not seem that Netanyahu is likely to extend it. (via memeorandum).

So what to do?

Those officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the delicacy of the talks, said that discussions were under way on a number of possible solutions. They include trying to get a promise from Mr. Netanyahu that Israel will exercise restraint in settlement construction, perhaps allowing construction only within existing West Bank settlement blocks, but no housing starts beyond those blocks.

Such a plan could also include early “confidence building” concessions from Israel on a few additional issues of concern to the Palestinians, officials said, including agreeing to limit Israeli Army incursions into Palestinian-controlled areas in the West Bank, and transferring key areas in the West Bank to Palestinian control before a final agreement is reached.

Of course! It always works, Israeli “confidence building measures.” It’s amazing how often we hear about “Israeli confidence building measures.” (From now on “cbm” for short.) If Israel won’t sweeten their offer, the Palestinians will be within their rights to walk away. Of course this failure for Israel to toss out new cbm’s will be regarded as a sign of Israel’s intransigence.

Did Israel withdraw from Gaza? From most of Hevron? From most of Judea and Samaria? Did Israel regard the PLO as a partner for peace even when the PLO was disregarding every single commitment it made? Does the PA/PLO still engage in incitement against Israel? Do its leaders still deny the legitimacy of Israel as a Jewish state?

I can see why we need more Israeli cbm’s. The peace process is so one-sided in Israel’s favor, why would the Palestinians participate? Oh wait, they want a state of their own? If their own state is so important why don’t they just make a deal? Or is it simply more important to wring concessions out of Israel in exchange for nothing?

So while Israel is introducing Arabic as a second language in many of its schools, the PA continues to deny Israel’s history.

I can see why cbm’s are needed. And I’m not surprised that the New York Times insists they’re needed, where they really aren’t.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Abuminah writes:

Mr. Mitchell’s comparison is misleading at best. Success in the Irish talks was the result not just of determination and time, but also a very different United States approach to diplomacy.

The conflict in Northern Ireland had been intractable for decades. Unionists backed by the British government saw any political compromise with Irish nationalists as a danger, one that would lead to a united Ireland in which a Catholic majority would dominate minority Protestant unionists. The British government also refused to deal with the Irish nationalist party Sinn Fein, despite its significant electoral mandate, because of its close ties to the Irish Republican Army, which had carried out violent acts in the United Kingdom.

A parallel can be seen with the American refusal to speak to the Palestinian party Hamas, which decisively won elections in the West Bank and Gaza in 2006. Asked what role Hamas would have in the renewed talks, Mr. Mitchell answered with one word: “None.” No serious analyst believes that peace can be made between Palestinians and Israelis without Hamas on board, any more than could have been the case in Northern Ireland without Sinn Fein and the I.R.A.

This is the heart of his specious claim: Hamas is just like the IRA and just like the IRA was convinced to make peace by being engaged instead of shunned, so too Hamas must be engaged in order to make peace in the Middle East.

Well for this analysis to hold, for one thing, Hamas and the I.R.A. ought to be comparable. They’re not.

All these contrasts come back to the one major difference between the IRA and Hamas — religion. For the Irish, religion is not rooted in all facets of life as it is in with Israelis and Palestinians. Religion in Northern Ireland is understood as a cultural and historical force, while in the Middle East it ties Israelis and Palestinians to the same land. Furthermore, Hamas being a religious organization claims religious justifications for attempting to wipe out Israel. This factor is what differentiates the two groups and will ultimately prove how futile Hamas’ reform efforts are.

Z-Word lays out how the concession to Gerry Addams would translate into terms of the Arab-Israeli conflict:

The concession of the visa to Adams, for a trip which involved nothing more than glad handing Irish American supporters of the Provisional Republican movement, may well have improved the mood of certain sectors of Sinn Féin – IRA with regard to calling a ceasefire. If the concession of US visa to Ismail Haniye for a trip that would allow him some tea drinking and back slapping with Arab American supporters were likely to lead to a complete Hamas ceasefire leading to something like a Good Friday deal between Israel and Hamas, I’d be all for it.

Let’s just remind ourselves what Sinn Féin – IRA settled for in the Good Friday Agreement. They recognized Northern as an integral part of the UK, decommissioned their weapons and dissolved the military structure of the IRA. In return they got the early release of their prisoners (on license, any return to violence by the main Provisional Republican movement and they’ll be straight back in the can), some policing reforms, a couple of cross border talking shops and an autonomous local assembly.

I’ll try to translate that into the situation of the Israel-Palestine conflict. Hamas accepts that the West Bank and Gaza (why not?) form part of Greater Israel, a Jewish state. Hamas abandons the armed struggle and hands over its weapons to UN monitors. Israel sets up an autonomous Palestine parliament to rule the territories. As well as representative to that assembly Palestinians also get to elect some members to take care of their interests in the Knesset. In return, Israel releases Hamas’s prisoners on parole, guarantees that a larger percentage of Magav recruits will be Arabs and promises to make greater efforts to promote the Arabic language and Arab culture in Israel.

Abuminah argues that John Hume – a negotiator of the peace accord for Northern Ireland – wrote an op-ed advocating for Israeli recognition of Hamas. However, that isn’t the unanimous position of all those involved. David Trimble, also Nobel Lauereate for his efforts wrote:

If there is one lesson to learn from the Northern Ireland experience, it is that preconditions are crucial in ending violence and producing a settlement. Being overgenerous to extremist groups is like giving sweets to a spoilt child in the hope that it will improve its behaviour – it usually results in worse actions. Our experience suggests that while some flexibility is desirable, there have to be clear principles and boundaries. A failure to recognise this risks drawing the wrong conclusions from the recent history of Northern Ireland and fundamentally misunderstanding the peace process.

This is also the view of former British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw (h/t Daled Amos):

Could I just add one thing to that, if I may? Of course, negotiation is far, far better — infinitely better — than military action. As far as Northern Ireland is concerned, we welcome hugely the progress that has been made following the Good Friday Agreement. It also has to be said that before that happened, there had to be a change of approach by those who saw terrorism as the answer. And that approach partly changed because of the firmness of the military and police response to that terrorism. And if there had not been that firm response by successive British governments and others to the terrorist threat that was posed on both sides, we would not have been able to get some of those people into negotiations. We would not be marking what is a satisfactory day in the history of Northern Ireland today.

Fresno Zionism attacks Abuminah’s claim of the sanctity of the Palestinian right of return.

You must give Abumimah and his friends credit for chutzpah: first, they invent a ‘right’ — the repatriation of the descendants of refugees from a war that their own leaders caused — that has never existed in history, then they breed a whole population in misery for years to make a demographic weapon of mass destruction out of them, and finally they demand that they be allowed to use it to end the Jewish state. What will remain for them to ‘recognize’?

Naturally, he believes that the reason the US was tough on the British but will not get tough on Israel is the nefarious Jewish (OK, he says ‘Israel’) Lobby. Hamas knew about the Jewish Lobby all along.

Balfour Street makes a similar argument.

Elder of Ziyon gets to the heart of the matter with a single rhetorical question:

So according to Abunimah, for Israel to ask its negotiating partners to not demand its violent destruction is “unworkable”?

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

President Obama and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel satisfied their short-term political goals with an Oval Office meeting on Tuesday. It is less clear that they achieved much of substance.

So what now?

Mr. Obama is going to have to keep working hard to persuade Mr. Netanyahu that a peace deal with the Palestinians is also essential for Israel’s long-term security, the health of its democracy and its international standing — and not just something he has to try to mollify Washington.

This is funny, because before Netanyahu became Prime Minister, Mahmoud Abbas rejected a peace deal from then PM Olmert, just as Arafat rejected a peace deal from then PM Barak. If peace is so essential, why the do Palestinian leaders reject offers out of hand? Even if they think that the Israeli offers aren’t sufficient, why are they simply rejecting them rather than bringing counteroffers?

Might it be because they (Abbas and Arafat) view the lack of a peace deal to be to Israel’s detriment (and their advantage)? Certainly if the Times insists that despite Palestinian rejections, Israel is the party needing the deal, they are encouraging the Palestinians to reject future deals too.

The Palestinians need a peace process not peace. The peace process keeps them in the news and makes them indispensible. Peace means that they actually have to govern themselves and stay out of the news. Apparently the editors of the Times are happy to encourage further Palestinian rejectionism.

Finally we get to this paragraph:

President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority and his government also must do their part, doing more to discourage incitement against Israel — and seriously preparing to make the hard choices that peace will inevitably require.

“[D]oing more to discourage incitement against Israel?” Like the smoker who claims that he’s experienced at quitting because he’s already quit smoking five times, Abbas is expected to “discourage incitement” by the editors of the New York Times. Where exactly have they been these past (nearly) 17 years? Daniel Pipes asks:

Under Yasir Arafat, the Palestine Liberation Organization notoriously said one thing to Arab/Muslim audiences and the opposite to Israeli/Western ones, speaking venomously to the former and in dulcet tones to the latter. What about Arafat’s mild-mannered successor, Mahmoud Abbas? Did he break from this pattern of duplicity or continue it?

and answers:

Abbas and Fayyad spoke in English to Americans and Israelis, Erekat spoke in Arabic to Palestinians. Both statements cannot be true; one must be a lie. Which one, I wonder?

Palestinians play this transparent and simple-minded double game because it works. Israeli, American, and others too often accept the dulcet tones they hear directly and dismiss reports of harsh words they only hear about. The Palestinian Authority will blithely continue to spew its lies until the world heeds and rejects, for rewarding bad behavior invariably brings on more bad behavior.

Incitement is the official language of the PA. Blithely asking Abbas at this late date to stop incitement is a sign of unseriousness. This probably ought to be one of the major demands of anyone who truly wants peace.

I understand that the editors of the Times don’t trust Netanyahu. During his first term in office he withdrew Israeli forces from most of Hebron. That was a concrete action undertaken in the name of peace. Other than mouthing the right words in English, can the editors of the Times point to any action that Abbas has taken to promote peace?

By their willful ignorance it is clear that the editors of the Times don’t much care about peace, just about pressuring Israel.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

There is a bigger question that Israel — and the United States — must be asking: Is the blockade working? Is it weakening Hamas? Or just punishing Gaza’s 1.4 million residents — and diverting attention away from abuses by Hamas, including its shelling of Israeli cities and its refusal to accept Israel’s right to exist?

At this point, it should be clear that the blockade is unjust and against Israel’s long-term security.

After Hamas seized control of the Gaza Strip in 2007, Israel — with Egypt’s help — imposed a blockade on many goods and most people going into and out of the territory. The goal was to quickly turn residents against their new government. Three years later, Hamas is still in charge — and the blockade has become an excuse for any and all of the government’s failures.

The situation in Gaza is grim. Eight out of 10 people depend on international aid agencies to survive. Basic foodstuffs are available, but medical supplies and construction materials are severely lacking. The desperation could be seen on Tuesday when Egypt lifted the blockade and several thousand Gazans rushed the border but were later sent home after police officers said they did not know when the crossing would be opened.

It is ironic that like their star columnist the editors of the Times seem to have forgotten that Israel withdrew from Gaza only to have it turned into a mini terrror state. For some reason the liberal editors of the New York Times think that it’s good for Israel to keep Hamas in power.

But Barry Rubin recently wrote:

Hamas has oppressed the people of the Gaza Strip, murdered Palestinian Authority supporters in hospitals and thrown them off roofs; driven the Christians out; taken relief supplies for its own soldiers; launched a war on Israel in December 2008 that caused avoidable death and destruction; used civilians as human shields and mosques for ammunition dumps; indoctrinated children to be suicide bombers; are putting women into a Taliban-like situation; and repeatedly announces its antisemitic views and intention to wipe out Israel and massacre its people.

For some, none of this makes any difference though–to be fair–the media they get information from may not have presented these facts. For those on the left, Hamas should be considered as a fascist organization which they passionately oppose. For those sympathetic to human rights or women’s rights, or many other good causes, Hamas should be anathema.

What should be paramount, then, is an international determination to overthrow the Hamas regime. After all, while it had earlier come in first in elections, it staged a coup and overthrew what was perceived as the rightful government of the Gaza Strip, the Palestinian Authority. To do such a thing would—to paraphrase the Carnegie report—reduce regional tensions and aid the peace process lead to an independent Palestinian state. Yet this rather obvious idea simply does not seem to have occurred to any Western government or elite.

So instead there is a policy, albeit an eroding one, of isolating Hamas and denying it at least some supplies and money, demanding that it accept the idea of real peace with Israel and cease the use of terrorism. Even this seems too much for many people and, increasingly, for some governments.

The editors of the Times pretend that it’s only Israeli actions and shortsightedness that prevent peace and cause the people of Gaza to suffer. They (and many other likeminded people) don’t acknowledge the evil of Hamas.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

No subject arouses reader passion more consistently than the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and The Times navigates a semantic minefield with almost every story on the subject. When Cooper wrote this month about a lunch that Obama had with Elie Wiesel, the Nobel laureate and Holocaust survivor, she said the president was trying to mend fences with American Jews upset at the administration’s stance against construction of “Jewish settlements in East Jerusalem.”

Nathan Dodell of Rockville, Md., said it was “tendentious and arrogant” to use the word “settlements” four times in the article when the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has explicitly rejected it in relation to East Jerusalem. Obama has used the term himself to refer to construction in East Jerusalem, and Cooper told me, “I called them settlements because that’s the heart of the dispute between the Israelis and the United States: settlement construction in Arab East Jerusalem, which the Palestinians want for an eventual Palestinian state.”

But to Dodell, she was taking sides. He asked why she didn’t use a neutral term like “housing construction.”

Hoyt immediately starts with condscension. His “arouses reader passion” is a way of saying, “people who are offended don’t appreciate our professional reporting have an agenda.” But then Cooper’s defense isn’t exactly right.

Barry Rubin recently wrote:

But any freeze on Jerusalem won’t be made too explicit for a number of reasons. First, ever since the Oslo agreement was originally made in 1993, Israeli leaders have maintained that they interpret it as permitting construction on existing settlements and Jerusalem. For 17 years, the PA accepted this position. It never refused to talk on the basis that such construction was happening. Only when President Barack Obama raised the issue in 2009, it became apparent that the PA couldn’t be less militant than the American president.

Israeli construction in Jerusalem has always been accepted as legitimate. It’s Cooper who’s rewriting history. ( Geography too. What the hell is the “Arab East Jerusalem” that Cooper refers anyway? Ramat Shlomo is in the north of Jerusalem.)

Hoyt continues:

Settlement is a charged word in this context, because it suggests something less than permanent on someone else’s land. Israel argues that all of Jerusalem is its undivided capital, a claim not recognized by the United States and most of the world. Articles by Times reporters in Jerusalem do generally use words like “housing” instead of “settlement.” Still, Ethan Bronner, the bureau chief, said it would be unwise to adopt a hard and fast rule, because some areas of the city taken by Israel in 1967 had long been Jewish neighborhoods while others, built more recently, had the feeling of settlements.

Gee talk about using loaded terms. Frankly, I think that a description of Shiloh should be a Jewish city or community not a settlement. But how would Hoyt say his reporters should refer to Gush Etzion (the Etzion Bloc)? After all it was Jewish territory prior to Israel’s War of Independence, so when Jews build there it isn’t exactly built on “someone else’s land.” And remember that the Times has a habit of referring to residents of places in Israel where they don’t think Jews should live as “settlers” as if they were somehow less than people.

I do wonder about Bronner’s response. My guess is that Bronner might be referring to Sheikh Jarrah rather than Ramat Shlomo. It’s a distinction that Hoyt wouldn’t get. (Nor is it one that is justified. I’m just addressing Bronner’s likely intent.)

In general though, the Times has been careful not to refer to Jewish construction in Jerusalem as a settlement and has corrected itself when it has done so. Not every media organization takes such care.

But then there’s another issue. How does the Times refer to Hamas? Here are two recent examples.

Hamas executes 2 accused of aiding Israel:

Israel and Egypt have maintained a strict economic embargo on Gaza. Israel also refuses any direct contact with Hamas, which is classified as a terrorist organization by Israel, the United States and the European Union.

Gaza Rocket Attack Into Israel Kills a Thai Worker

The European Union, like the United States and Israel, classifies Hamas as a terrorist organization, and Lady Ashton — formally Baroness Ashton of Upholland — was not planning to meet with Hamas representatives in Gaza.

Note, Hamas is not a terrorist organization but is “classified” as one. This doesn’t appear in every article about Hamas, but it occurs with some frequency. Hamas, however clearly targets civilians, so by definition it is a terrorist organization. Yet the Times seems to take care not to hedge its description of Hamas on a regular basis. The corresponding language regarding Israel would be to describe Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria as “classifed as settlements by the Palestinian Authority” and not to use the term “settlements” as a judgment of the paper.

Of course that would assume that bias against Israel was a concern to the New York Times. But I’ve recently shown quantitatively (if not conclusively) that Israel doesn’t get a fair hearing on the Times’s opinion pages. It’s not surprising that it doesn’t get fair treatment in the news section either.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

I know that doesn’t include unsigned editorials. Nor does it include an op-ed by Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren. But it also doesn’t include a vicious article by Robert Wright.

My samplng leaves us with 6 articles from February, and 5 each from March and April. Follow the links as I have excerpted these articles, offered comments on each and summaries.

Of those 16 articles only two could possible be described as pro-Israel and one of those was from an Israeli ambassador! Seven of the articles were contributed by Times columnists, Roger Cohen and Thomas Friedman.

Truly it’s incredible. Apparently it’s not fashionable at the Times to give supporters of Israel a voice.

The reason I went to this trouble is because of an argument made by the NYT’s current ombudsman, Clark Hoyt, titled “The danger of one-sided debate.” The issue addressed by Hoyt was a column written by Ahmed Youssef a spokesman for Hamas. Here’s Hoyt’s argument:

Op-ed pages should be open especially to controversial ideas, because that’s the way a free society decides what’s right and what’s wrong for itself. Good ideas prosper in the sunshine of healthy debate, and the bad ones wither. Left hidden out of sight and unchallenged, the bad ones can grow like poisonous mushrooms.

Rosenthal and Shipley said that, over time, they try to publish a variety of voices on the most important issues. Regular op-ed readers have seen a wide range of views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and have a lot of other information to help judge Yousef’s statements.

Now the argument about allowing Yousef an op-ed column really wasn’t about whether one should be exposed to the views of Hamas as Hoyt misrepresents it. There are plenty of fellow travelers around who would be happy to promote the views of Hamas. The question was whether a newspaper should allow the member of a terrorist organization – and one that doesn’t appreciate the finer points of the first amendment – prime journalistic real estate space. Hoyt avoided the real question, but his answer is revealing. It showed that he (and his newspaper) see fit to debase themselves in the name of “healthy debate.”

The reality that my little exercise shows that regarding Israel, there is no real debate at the New York Times.

The Times would rather give Israel’s enemies the freedom they deny their own people – the freedom of the press. But to Israel, a true democracy, the Times becomes rather stingy in allowing its defenders a voice.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad

But the administration also is guilty of missteps. Rather than pocketing Mr. Netanyahu’s initial concessions — he gave a speech on Palestinian statehood and suggested parameters for curtailing settlements accepted by previous U.S. administrations — Mr. Obama chose to insist on an absolutist demand for a settlement “freeze.” Palestinian and Arab leaders who had accepted previous compromises immediately hardened their positions; they also balked at delivering the “confidence-building” concessions to Israel that the administration seeks. Israeli public opinion, which normally leans against the settler movement, has rallied behind Mr. Netanyahu. And Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations, which were active during the Bush administration’s final year, have yet to resume.

Naturally J-Street’s MJ Rosenberg (via memeorandum) started name calling:

Of course, the Washington Post is not an Israeli paper so its defense of even the most indefensible Israeli policy — the refusal to freeze settlements — is just weird. Fred Hiatt (the editorial page editor), neocon hero Charles Krauthammer and columnist Bill Kristol consistently defend Israeli policies with a zealousness they last demonstrated when pushing for war with Iraq.

Where was Rosenberg six months ago when the same Hiatt was questioning whether Israel ought to be fighting a war of self defense or giving op-ed space to Hamas apologists? I realize that Rosenberg considers anyone who isn’t as reflexively anti-Israel as he is to be pro-Israel and out of the mainstream. However the Post’s measured criticism of the President can hardly be considered a sign of it’s being pro-Israel.

If the Post’s editors are taking this stand, I think that a lot of it has goes back to their meeting Mahmoud Abbas two months ago. AS Jonathan Tobin recalls:

As Mahmoud Abbas, the supposedly moderate head of the Palestinian Authority, recently told the Washington Post, he has no intention of dealing with Israel. Instead, he will sit back and wait for Obama to keep applying the screws to America’s only democratic ally in the region.

Jennifer Rubin extrapolates:

Well, that wasn’t so hard, was it? Perhaps others in Congress and those still spinning so furiously for Obama (Alan Dershowitz included) can at least concede that whatever Obama thought he might be able to achieve by alienating our ally has proven to be counterproductive. He has lost the trust of the Israelis and encouraged intransigence among Palestinians and Arab states.

Israel Matzav adds that the President has lived down to expectations.

The editors of the New York Times, though, are all in favor of President Obama’s approach. Though initially concerned with Abbas’s performance, they seem to have gotten over it. Today they applaud the President’s pressure and beg him to keep it up in The Settlements Issue.

Mr. Obama and his negotiator, George Mitchell, have focused on settlements after prying loose a commitment — highly caveated — from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to a two-state solution. The Palestinians insist they won’t return to talks until all construction halts. The Americans have decided that a freeze is needed to show Palestinians and other Arabs that Israel’s conservative government is serious about peace.

Given the makeup of the “moderate” Fatah party that Israel is supposed to make peace with, focusing on whether PM Netanyahu said the magic words seems to be a bit of misdirection. The following paragraph lets us know how dishonest the editors of the Times are:

Less visibly, but we hope just as assertively, the administration is pressing the Palestinians and other Arab leaders to take concrete steps to demonstrate their commitment to a peace deal. Those must clearly contribute to Israel’s sense of security.

“[W]e hope just as assertively…” If the pressure was “visible,” it could be just as assertive. The fact that it’s being applied privately (if at all) shows that it is clearly not as assertive. And as the editorial itself acknowledges towards the end, it hasn’t been effective at all.

President Obama and Mr. Mitchell claim they are making progress, but so far there is little sign of it. Saudi Arabia, which has pushed Washington hard to revive negotiations, has been especially resistant. Mr. Mitchell would do well to remind them that a prolonged stalemate will only feed extremism across the region.

So the Times supports the President’s “visible” pressure on Israel even though it acknowledges that the policy is yielding no diplomatic benefits. The editorial conclude:

Israeli leaders do not often risk being at odds with an American president, but polls show broad support for Mr. Netanyahu’s resistance. President Obama, a skilled communicator, has started a constructive dialogue with the Islamic world. Now he needs to explain to Israelis why freezing settlements and reviving peace talks is clearly in their interest.

The broad support is for PM Netanyahu’s policies so far which represent the views of the majority of the Israeli electorate.

Obama is a skilled (if overrated) orator. He is not a skilled communicator as he often does not listen to others. He hasn’t started a “constructive dialogue with the Islamic world,” as much as he as assured them and demonstrated to them that he intends to pressure Israel to accommodate their demands, while paying only lip service to the demands he makes on them. Naturally that has led to a hardening of their positions.

President Obama doesn’t need to explain to Israel why “freezing settlements and reviving peace talks is to Israel’s benefit. Plenty of diplomats, politicians, journalists and academics have been explaining things to Israel for the past 40 years. Since 1993 has heeded most of this advice only to see its security undermined and its diplomatic position in no way enhanced.

Perhaps what the President needs to do is to use his vaunted communication skills to convince the Arabs that they have more to gain by making peace with Israel even if Israel doesn’t accede to every demand of the Palestinians.

We’ve just seen a “teachable moment” in the history of Middle East diplomacy. The editors of the Washington Post seem to have learned something; the editors of the New York Times and the President seem not to.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

We’d call this week’s White House meeting between President Obama and the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, a draw. Mr. Netanyahu promised to promote Palestinian independence as a basis for a state. Whether or not he mentioned “two state solution” is really irrelevant as even the moderate leaders of Fatah, can’t bring themselves to acknowledge the right of a Jewish state to exist in the Middle East. Mr. Obama promised that his patience with Iran, and its nuclear ambitions, was limited, but aside from promising harsh sanctions if Iran doesn’t restrain its ambitions promised no teeth to prevent Iran from developing these dangerous weapons.

A draw was probably the best that could be hoped for — and far less than is needed. But it is unserious to classify the meeting as a draw. It reflects narrow thinking, which believes that diplomacy is simply a matter of who scored the most points, rather than who presented the best way forward. It’s not clear that the President has done that.

Mr. Obama has concluded that to succeed in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, the United States must repair its relations with the Muslim world. This is putting the cart before the horse. For too long the Muslim world has used the Arab-Israeli conflict as an excuse for acting against American interests and as a cover for its own failings.

The Israeli leader is not likely to make that easy. His coalition government — which reflects a broad consensus of Israeli society — must be respected. If the Muslim world refuses to acknowledge our democratic ally we must stand by Israel.That will not be politically popular in the Muslim world, but it is in its best interest.

Mr. Obama also needs to rally Arab states to treat Israel appropriately. We don’t agree with every Israeli policy and don’t expect them to. However, whatever mistakes Israel makes, do not render it illegitimate. The Arab world must normalize relations with Israel, and rejecting those who refuse to accept Israel’s right to exist. It’s hypocritical to hold Israel responsible for the Palestinian failure to build the institutions of governance, while denying the right to vote their own populations. Palestinians must do more to prove that they are capable of self-government.

Mr. Netanyahu is, not surprisingly, uncomfortable with Mr. Obama’s decision to test Tehran with an offer of negotiations. The Israelis are right that time is clearly on Iran’s side.

The current plan is for the United States to join the Europeans and Russia in talks with Iran, right after Iran’s June presidential elections. There is the possibility of bilateral talks to follow. Mr. Obama said he would assess progress by year’s end. If diplomacy is moving forward, he should resist pressure to shut it down prematurely. We hope he is using the time now to prepare Europe and Russia for the necessity of military action if this effort fails.

Mr. Obama is scheduled to meet with Mr. Abbas at the White House next week and to give a major speech in Cairo on June 4. Aides are discouraging rumors that he will use that speech to lay out an American peace plan. With so many watching, he must speak honestly and bluntly with the Muslim world, and encourage it to embrace freedom and reject antisemitism as official state ideologies.

George W. Bush, the first president to outline the responsibilities the Palestinians and the Arab world had for creating a state of Palestine never followed through sufficiently. Mr. Obama must do better.

Well, no. That wasn’t the editorial. I kept some of the same words, but this is what they really wrote.

NOTE: I’ve made a few changes to correct the grammar and improve clarity from the original.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

If Mr. Netanyahu is serious about being a partner for peace, he will not get in the way of the militant group Hamas entering a Palestinian unity government with the rival Fatah faction — as long as that government is committed to preventing terrorism and accepts past agreements between Israel and the Palestinians. He will recognize that the United States has its own interests in diplomacy with Syria, Iran and the Palestinians — and allow the Obama administration the freedom to pursue them. He also will not start a preventive war with Iran.

So that’s it, in order to prove that he’s committed to peace, according to the Times, Netanyahu must trust a terrorist organization committed in word and deed to Israel’s destruction to join a governemt with Fatah, which, at least, doesn’t openly call for Israel’s destruction. Why in there world is Hamas assumed to be a “partner for peace?” Does “qassam” mean “peace” in Arabic?

And the absurdity of the rest of the paragraph is unbelievable. Netanyahu would dictate to America? Who wrote this? Chas Freeman? And while the editors of the Times object to Israel starting a “preventive war” against Iran, they apparently don’t object to Iran launching a war of any sort against Israel.

Despite the Times portrayal of Netanyahu’s first term as Prime Minister he withdrew Israel from most of Hebron while Arafat collected foreign aid, arms, organized terror and incited his population against Israel. But somehow it’s Netanyahu who has to prove his commitment to peace?

My Right Word dismisses the editorial with:

If peace is truly the goal and not some unadulterated anti-Israel agenda, well, who cares about the sanctity of a process?

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.