[James Baker said in 1989]: “Israeli interests in the West Bank and Gaza, security and otherwise, can be accommodated in a settlement based on Resolution 242. Forswear annexation; stop settlement activity.”
Those words make startling but depressing reading: Little has changed in 20 years. After Bush 41 and Baker, we got Clinton’s love affair with Yitzhak Rabin (“I had come to love him as I had rarely loved another man”); the disintegration of Oslo after Rabin’s tragic assassination; and the Israel-can-do-no-wrong policy of Bush 43.
Balance ”” the credential no honest broker can forsake ”” vanished from American diplomacy.
I don’t believe that’s been good for Israel. The Jewish state needs to be challenged by its inseparable ally if it is to achieve the security it craves.
Face reality. The Arabs will only accept Israel when it is completely and utterly destroyed and wiped from the face of the earth. Will this bring peace? No. Something else will take its place.
The failure of Oslo was due to Yassir Arafat. A final deal, with many painful concessions for Israeli’s was put forward, and Arafat refused to sign on. If he had, a Palestinian state would now be celebrating its second decade.
The original agreement to negotiate with the Palestinians toward autonomy and a two state solution was predicated on the Palestinian Authority recognizing Israel’s right to exist and a cessation of hostilities.
The election of Hamas as the new government violated the first premise on which the original negotiations were conditioned. Hamas has no intention of agreeing that Israel has a right to co-exist. The second ground, cessation of hostilities has never occurred, and would still be a much larger issue had Israel not built a security wall to keep suicide bombers out.
Yet, all the media of the world, along with most of the intelligentsia, with some noted exceptions such as Alan Dershowitz, have relentlessly castigated Israel and blamed them for what is essentially the Palestinians’ lack of intestinal fortitude to act as honest brokers for Peace.
I’m not a blind supporter of Israel, for example I feel the continued building and existence of settlements is unecessarily provocative, however, to me that is a small wrong, next to the Palestinians lulling Israel to the negotiations promising peace, while ceaselessly continuing war.