THERE WAS never any chance for peace because the Palestinians have no interest in making peace with Israel. As the West's favorite Palestinian "moderate," Fatah leader and Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas said in an interview with Egypt's Dream TV on October 23, "I've said it before and I'll say it again. I will never recognize the 'Jewishness' of the State [of Israel] or a 'Jewish state.'" That is, Abbas will never make peace with Israel.

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So why do the likes of Sarkozy and Obama hate Netanyahu? Why is he "a liar?" Why don't they pour out their venom on Abbas, who really does lie to them on a regular basis? The answer is because they prefer to blame Israel rather than acknowledge that their positive assessments of the Palestinians are nothing more than fantasy.

And they are not alone. The Western preference for fantasy over reality was given explicit expression by former US president Bill Clinton in September.

In the first place, although some Palestinian negotiators have given the impression that they would accept Israeli retention of the large settlement blocs in return for the surrender of some Israeli territory elsewhere, the official Palestinian and Arab position has remained that Israel must withdraw to the 1949 armistice lines, which are invariably referred to as the “1967 borders.” When the Palestinians ask individual countries to declare their support for the unilateral declaration of a Palestinian state, the boundaries of that state are always described as the “1967 borders.” All this creates the impression that one of the main reasons why the Palestinians are not interested in a negotiated settlement is precisely because they are not willing to accept the existence of any Israeli settlements, whether big or small, beyond the 1949 armistice lines. This impression is further reinforced by the repeated statements by Abbas and other Palestinian leaders that they do not intend to accept the presence of even one single Jew within the territory of their new Palestinian state. 

In the second place, even if the Palestinians were willing to accept some Israeli settlements while insisting that others be dismantled, Israeli agreement to this demand would not in fact represent a compromise but rather a capitulation to Palestinian antisemitism. In return for voluntarily evicting tens of thousands of Jews from their homes, with all the attendant strife and dislocation which such a step would engender within Israeli society, Israel would receive nothing in return save a meaningless promise of future peaceful intentions. A genuine compromise on the issue of the settlements would see some placed under Israeli sovereignty and some under Palestinian sovereignty, but no one thinks in these terms because everyone knows that the Palestinians would immediately move to attack any Jewish settlements placed under their authority. While the supporters of the Palestinians rave and rant against Israel as an “apartheid state,” the Palestinians themselves loudly proclaim their refusal to permit any Jews to live under their rule. And this stance is not unique to the Palestinians but is true of the entire Arab world, where hardly any Jews now remain from what were once large communities dating back literally thousands of years.

In the third place, even if a genuine compromise on the issue of the settlements were possible, there are so many other issues on which the Palestinians are not willing to compromise that no peace agreement between them and Israel is conceivable any time soon. In particular, for 20 years the Palestinians have not budged one inch from their demand for the “right of return” of millions of Palestinians to “Israel proper.” They have also continued to demand full sovereignty over the Temple Mount, plus a corridor under their exclusive jurisdiction between Gaza and the “West Bank,” plus sufficient control over their borders and air space to enable them to import offensive weapons. It would be suicidal for Israel to agree to these demands, nor do the Palestinians expect Israeli agreement. For the Palestinians, the whole point of persisting with impossible demands is to validate their strategy of trying to secure United Nations approval of the unilateral declaration of a Palestinian state. Such approval would not actually give the Palestinians physical control over the territory which they claim, but what it would do is create the basis for a political, diplomatic and military offensive against the Jewish settlements. Eradication of these settlements is the Palestinian short term goal, which means that for Israel as well as for the Palestinians, the settlements are indeed the issue.

I was just browsing through the newly released "CableGate" collection on WikiLeaks, and came across a cable written by someone in the US Embassy in Tehran in 1979, making observations about the Persian (Iranian) psyche, and how understanding this should change the way in which you negotiate with them.

The conclusion was:

THERE ARE SEVERAL LESSONS FOR THOSE WHO WOULD NEGOTIATE WITH PERSIANS IN ALL THIS:

- --FIRST, ONE SHOULD NEVER ASSUME THAT HIS SIDE OF THE ISSUE WILL BE RECOGNIZED, LET ALONE THAT IT WILL BE CONCEDED TO HAVE MERITS. PERSIAN PREOCCUPATION WITH SELF PRECLUDES THIS. A NEGOTIATOR MUST FORCE RECOGNITION OF HIS POSITION UPON HIS PERSIAN OPPOSITE NUMBER.

- --SECOND, ONE SHOULD NOT EXPECT AN IRANIAN READILY TO PERCEIVE THE ADVANTAGES OF A LONG-TERM RELATIONSHIP BASED ON TRUST. HE WILL ASSUME THAT HIS OPPOSITE NUMBER IS ESSENTIALLY AN ADVERSARY. IN DEALING WITH HIM HE WILL ATTEMPT TO MAXIMIZE THE BENEFITS TO HIMSELF THAT ARE IMMEDIATELY OBTAINABLE. HE WILL BE PREPARED TO GO TO GREAT LENGTHS TO ACHIEVE THIS GOAL, INCLUDING RUNNING THE RISK OF SO ALIENATING WHOEVER HE IS DEALING WITH THAT FUTURE BUSINESS WOULD BE UNTHINKABLE, AT LEAST TO THE LATTER.

- --THIRD, INTERLOCKING RELATIONSHIPS OF ALL ASPECTS OF AN ISSUE MUST BE PAINSTAKINGLY, FORCEFULLY AND REPEATEDLY DEVELOPED. LINKAGES WILL BE NEITHER READILY COMPREHENDED NOR ACCEPTED BY PERSIAN NEGOTIATORS.

- --FOURTH, ONE SHOULD INSIST ON PERFORMANCE AS THE SINE QUA NON AT EACH STAGE OF NEGOTIATIONS. STATEMENTS OF INTENTION COUNT FOR ALMOST NOTHING.

- --FIFTH, CULTIVATION OF GOODWILL FOR GOODWILL'S SAKE IS A WASTE OF EFFORT. THE OVERRIDING OBJECTIVE AT ALL TIMES SHOULD BE IMPRESSING UPON THE PERSIAN ACROSS THE TABLE THE MUTUALITY OF THE PROPOSED UNDERTAKINGS, HE MUST BE MADE TO KNOW THAT A QUID PRO QUO IS INVOLVED ON BOTH SIDES.

- --FINALLY, ONE SHOULD BE PREPARED FOR THE THREAT OF BREAKDOWN IN NEGOTIATIONS AT ANY GIVEN MOMENT AND NOT BE COWED BY THE POSSIBILITY. GIVEN THE PERSIAN NEGOTIATOR'S CULTURAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL LIMITATIONS, HE IS GOING TO RESIST THE VERY CONCEPT OF A RATIONAL (FROM THE WESTERN POINT OF VIEW) NEGOTIATING PROCESS.

Reading these points (I added the emphases) it is really striking how if you replace the word "Persian/Iranian" with "Palestinian" you have a very good synopsis of everything that has been going wrong with the negotiations between Israel and the PLO over the past nearly 20 years. Imagine how different things would be if the Israeli negotiators and respective Prime Ministers over the years had:

• Insisted on forcing recognition of the Israeli position as a prerequisite for talking, ever
• No assumed that the PLO would ever perceive the advantage of a long-term relationship with Israel based on trust, and rather, assumed that the PLO would always try to maximize their own benefits, and would go to great lengths (starting wars and intafadas) in order to achieve their goals
• Insisted on performance and following up on obligations, and not being satisfied by PLO statements of intent (which count for almost nothing)
• Recognized that giving away things to the PLO merely for the cultivation of goodwill will never get you anywhere, and that if they get something, they must give something tangible back in return (and a statement of intention is not tangible)
• Been prepared for threats of a breakdown in negotiations at any moment (indeed, these threats happen nearly every day, and are most likely to be found on the day after Israel makes a goodwill gesture)

Of course, it would be good for the current US administration to reread this memo a few times before the next time that they attempt to "negotiate" with Ahmadinejad (not to mention before the next time that they pressure Israel into making more good-will gestures in response to threats of a breakdown in negotiations, before the other side has even recognized Israel's right to exist).

But there is a solution could be made possible that works within the historical rights of the Jewish people and recognizes the justice of our claim to our small stretch of land.

Enter "Lease for Peace"

Israel, as the rightful and historical owner and holder of the land of Israel could lease sections of our land to the "Palestinians" for their newly created self-determined Palestinians autonomous entity ("state" if you must).

A Palestinian state could be created (where none has ever existed before) on the leased land.

As long as they behave civilized and by the rules of the lease, they could even have an automatic renewal on their lease and their state could continue to exist.

The point is that the 1967 lines are coming back as a common reference point when many officials and commentators talk about a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In August 2010, the Quartet, that diplomatic body that is comprised of the U.S. EU, the UN and Russia, has been discussing the 1967 line for a joint declaration intended to pull Abbas into direct negotiations with Israel.

Unfortunately, it is increasingly assumed that there once was a recognized international border between the West Bank and Israel in 1967 and what is necessary now is to restore it.

Yet this entire discussion is based on a completely mistaken understanding of the 1967 line, given the fact that in the West Bank, it was not an international border at all.

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President Lyndon Johnson made this very point in September 1968: "It is clear, however, that a return to the situation of 4 June 1967 will not bring peace. There must be secure and there must be recognized borders."

It is for this reason that Resolution 242 did not call for a full withdrawal from all the territories that Israel captured in the Six Day War; the 1949 Armistice lines were no longer to be a reference point for a future peace process.

Yet in recent years a reverse process has been underway to re-establish the 1949 Armistice line, calling it the 1967 border and sanctifying it as a legitimate international boundary. This is one of the side effects of the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative, which talks about the 1967 lines.

Obama said, "As part of the United Nations Security Council, we were very clear in condemning the acts that led to this crisis and have called for a full investigation." What does this mean? Which acts? The acts of provocation and attacks on Israeli soldiers or is he blaming Israel? Who knows? The president of the United States is not supposed to be inscrutable.

Moreover, the president of the United States shouldn't hide behind the UN. What is his policy? Where is the leadership?

And then he repeated something he has done before--claimed that Israelis backed his policy-- which is blatantly untrue as polls show. ""What we also know is that the situation in Gaza is unsustainable. I think increasingly you're seeing debates within Israel, recognizing the problems with the status quo." The truth is that Obama understands nothing about Israel. He should leave the choice of Israel's government to its people and the setting of policies to its government.

Aside from all this, Obama displays no strategic sense. He should make clear that the United States does not want an Iranian client, a revolutionary jihadists Taliban-like regime on the Mediterranean Sea. It should be the goal of U.S. policy to avoid this. Instead he deals with this as a "humanitarian" issue and makes no effort to get across what should be the main point.

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Note that Obama did not mention the conditions for easing the blockade--that Hamas abandon terrorism and accept Israel's existence--nor did he say that anything the Palestinian Authority or Hamas is doing is "unsustainable." Only Western and Israeli policy are said to be unsustainable. In effect, Obama is saying that the policies of Hamas, Iran, Hizballah, and Syria, among others, are infinitely sustainable, especially because of his reluctance to do things to make them unsustainable.

And thus in Middle East terms, he's saying: Your intransigence has won. We couldn't move you so our policy has failed. We must give in.

In my entire life I have rarely read an article which simultaneously showed the need to be well-informed before reading a newspaper and the shocking shortcomings of mass media coverage of the Middle East than this minor piece about the reopening of the Cairo synagogue. I've never said this before but will now: If you want to understand the Middle East's reality and how it is distorted in the media, read the following anlysis.

In September 2007, Israeli fighter jets destroyed a mysterious complex in the Syrian desert. The incident could have led to war, but it was hushed up by all sides. Was it a nuclear plant and who gave the orders for the strike?

At the center of this stands the Number One Paradox of the issue, in some ways of all Middle Eastern politics: Why is it that although the Palestinians complain that they are suffering from a horrible occupation and not having a state of their own they are not in any hurry to make a peace agreement, end the "occupation," and get a state.

The main answer is that the dominant Palestinian view is still the desire to win a total victory and wipe Israel off the map. The back-up stance is that any peace agreement must not block the continued pursuit of that goal. And the back-up position to that is to reject strong security guarantees, recognition of Israel as a Jewish state, an unmilitarized Palestinian state, settlement of Palestinian refugees in Palestine, territorial compromise or exchanges, and indeed any concession whatsoever.

There are two implications of this:

--The Palestinians are at fault for the failure to achieve peace.

--There isn't going to be any Israel-Palestinian peace in the near- or even medium-term future.

If you understand the preceding 176 words then you understand the issue comprehensively.

When it was launched last December, Israel's invasion of the Gaza Strip looked to most people in Washington to be risky, counterproductive and doomed to futility. Not only pundits like me but senior officials of the Bush administration predicted that the Israeli army would not succeed either in toppling Gaza's Hamas government or in eliminating its capacity to launch missiles at Israeli cities. Instead it would subject the Jewish state to another tidal wave of international opprobrium and risk its relations with West Bank Palestinians and Egypt.

Mostly, we were right. But today, Operation Cast Lead, as the three-week operation is known in Israel, is generally regarded by the country's military and political elite as a success. The reasons for that are worth examining now that a new and even more hawkish Israeli government is weighing whether to flout Washington's prevailing opposition to a military attack on Iran.

The basic reality that the US is being led by a radical ideologue who clings to his views in the face of overwhelming proof of their falsity is the most fundamental fact that world leaders must reckon with today as they formulate policies to contend with the Obama administration. This is first and foremost the case for Israel.

Since the Netanyahu government took office three months ago, the Obama administration has placed inordinate pressure on Jerusalem in a bid to coerce it into making massive concessions to the Palestinians. These concessions are demanded not for peace, but simply for the sake of placing pressure on Israel. Obama wishes to pressure Israel to show his good intentions to the Arabs and Iran.

TO DATE, Obama's loudest demand has been to officially prohibit all Jewish construction in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria. Although the demand is intrinsically bigoted, illegal and immoral, and although the consequences of the expulsion of all Jews from Gaza in 2005 show that Israeli land giveaways and ethnic cleansing bring war not peace, the Netanyahu government has opted not to get into an open confrontation with the administration on the issue.

Instead, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and his government have sought to treat Obama's offensive as a routine disagreement between otherwise close allies. Rather than defending the principles of Jewish national, legal and human rights and the country's right to security, Netanyahu has sought to reach an accommodation with Obama by reducing the discussion to a conversation about the inevitable natural growth of Jewish communities due to expanding families.

But what Obama's slavish devotion to his radical world view shows is that Netanyahu's decision to seek an accommodation is not simply an exercise in futility, it is a recipe for disaster. Obama and his advisers do not care that Jewish fertility rates are the fastest rising in the world. They do not care that by arguing for a complete halt in "natural" growth, they are effectively adopting a eugenics argument the likes of which no US policy-maker has dared to advance since before the Holocaust. They are looking to fight because they believe that the US is best served by fighting with its allies - particularly with Israel. Any concession Netanyahu makes will just form the basis for the next round of demands.

Obama has called settlements "illegitimate." And he has said that Israel "has obligations under the road map," while referring disparagingly to "settlements that, in past agreements, have been categorized as illegal."

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By characterizing its demand that Israel prohibit Jews from building homes in Israel's capital city and its heartland as a legal requirement, the Obama administration portrays Israel as an international outlaw.

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The problem with the Obama administration's characterization of a ban on Jewish building in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria as an Israeli legal obligation is that Israel has never taken upon itself a legal obligation to prohibit such building activities. Israel has never signed an agreement that has characterized any Jewish communities as "illegal."

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More importantly perhaps from the Obama administration's perspective is that the road map itself lacks the force of international law. Although it was adopted by the Security Council, it was not adopted as an internationally binding document under Chapter VII of the UN Charter. Consequently, Israel has no international legal obligation to end Jewish construction in Judea and Samaria or Jerusalem.

Hamas head Khaled Mashaal gave a speech Thursday evening in response to a policy speech given by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu several days earlier. Mashaal proclaimed that Hamas is ready to cooperate with the international community in order to reach a deal with Israel, but only under conditions it deems favorable.

Specifically, Mashaal rejected every proposal supported by Israel, including Netanyahu's insistence that the Palestinian Authority recognize Israel as a Jewish state. Hamas will never recognize Israel as a Jewish state, because it hopes to see millions of descendents of Arab residents of pre-state Israel "return" to the area, potentially turning Israel into a majority-Arab state, Mashaal explained.

So generous of them. They are ready for peace with Israel, as long as Israel ceases to exist.

Leaving aside for the moment the malice towards Israel that is involved, the attitude of the Obama administration towards the Middle East is well-nigh incomprehensible in its suicidal stupidity. It is trying to make Israel play the role of Czechoslovakia in 1938, when Britain under Neville Chamberlain told it that if it didn't submit to the Nazis it would stand alone – with the result that the following year, Hitler invaded Poland. Determined to prove that history repeats itself the second time as tragedy, America is trying to force Israel to destroy its security by accepting the creation of a terrorist Iranistan on its doorstep, under the threat that otherwise the US will not help protect its security by defanging Iran (and how, precisely would it do that?). But in doing so, the Obama administration is jeopardising the security of America itself and the free world, not to mention the Arab states which have good reason to fear Iranian regional hegemony.

The overall Obama policy will be to push Israel to the brink, using financial and military blackmail against the Netanyahu government, while maintaining control over American Jews to prevent any protests or backtalk.

The more Israel will offer, the more the Obama Administration will tighten the screws. No offer will be good enough, and Israel will be blamed for every breakdown in talks and every bit of violence that takes place. The media will portray Israel and particularly Netanyahu as extremist and intransigent. Hamas will be slowly whitewashed in the media, the same way that Arafat's goons were, (assuming that they prove more willing to cooperate in creating a positive media image of themselves than Ahmadinejad is.)

The plan is to destroy Israel, and to do it by pushing Israel to the edge of the cliff and then over the cliff. Israel's enemies will be getting top of the line US military equipment. Israel will not. Israel will be squeezed economically until the Netanyahu government collapses, leaving a weak left wing leader like Livni in charge of Israel, and in charge of acceding to the new Pharaoh's demands.

Meanwhile so-called American Jewish groups will support Obama all the way, some because they were created precisely for that purpose, e.g. J-Street, and others because they have been hijacked, cowed or subverted.

Will the United States sell out its strongest ally in the Middle East to cozy up to its worst enemy? The Washington Times reports today that the Israeli government is increasingly worried that the Obama administration will break a 40-year understanding between Washington and Tel Aviv to keep Israel's clandestine nuclear program a secret.

As the Arabs line up behind Israel, the Obama administration is operating under the delusion that the Iranians will be convinced to give up their nuclear program if Israel destroys its communities in Judea and Samaria.

According to reports published last week in Yediot Aharonot and Haaretz, President Barack Obama's in-house post-Zionist, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel, told an American Jewish leader that for Israel to receive the administration's support for preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, it must not only say that it supports establishing a Palestinian state in Judea, Samaria, Jerusalem and Gaza, it must begin expelling its citizens from their homes and communities in Judea and Samaria to prove its good faith.

With just months separating Iran from either joining the nuclear club or from being barred entry to the clubhouse, the Obama administration's apparent obsession with Judea and Samaria tells us that unlike Israel and the Arab world, its Middle East policies are based on a willful denial of reality.

Oy, oy and more oy.

But the headlines were wrong, as anyone can ascertain by reading Lieberman's short address. Far from disparaging peace, Israel's new foreign minister called for pursuing it with the respect and realism it deserves. And far from "dumping" agreements entered into by his predecessors, he explicitly committed himself to upholding the Roadmap -- a step-by-step blueprint to a "two-state solution" adopted by Israel, the Palestinian Authority, and the international Quartet (the United States, the United Nations, Russia, and the European Union) in 2003.

"I voted against the Roadmap," Lieberman acknowledged, but it was "approved by the Cabinet and by the Security Council" and is therefore "a binding resolution and it binds this government as well." However, he insisted, it must be implemented "exactly as written" and "in full." The Road Map imposes specific obligations that the Palestinians must meet prior to achieving statehood -- above all, an unequivocal end to violence, terrorism, and incitement against the Jewish state -- and Israel will not agree to waive them in order to negotiate a final settlement.

In tandem, there was scant paid attention to a disquieting comment by Obama when he spoke effusively about a 2002 Saudi peace initiative for normalization of relations between the Arab world and Israel. The Saudi initiative, which would end Israel as a Jewish state, is now also the official position of the entire Arab League.

In a brief press statement, the White House said "the President reiterated his appreciation for Saudi Arabia's leadership in promoting the Arab peace initiative."

Later, President Obama's Middle East Special Envoy, George Mitchell, said the U.S. intends to "incorporate" the initiative into its Middle East policy

That stops short of an explicit endorsement of the Saudi-Arab plan, but it comes uncomfortably close. Either way, Obama's gushing over the Saudi initiative hardly can be reconciled with his oft-repeated assurances that Israel can count on U.S "unwavering support" of its basic security interests.

International donors pledged almost $4.5 billion in aid for Gaza earlier this month. It has been very painful for me to witness over the past few years the deteriorating humanitarian situation in that narrow strip where I lived as a child in the 1950s.

The media tend to attribute Gaza's decline solely to Israeli military and economic actions against Hamas. But such a myopic analysis ignores the problem's root cause: 60 years of Arab policy aimed at cementing the Palestinian people's status as stateless refugees in order to use their suffering as a weapon against Israel.

Far too many Westerners make the mistake of projecting their own views onto Palestinians without really understanding the Palestinian narrative. The "occupation" doesn't refer to the West Bank and Gaza, and it never has. The "occupation" refers to Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. A kibbutz in the center of Israel is "occupied Palestine" according to most. "It makes no sense to a Palestinian to think about a Palestinian state alongside Israel," Martin Kramer from the Shalem Center in Jerusalem said to me a few days ago. "From the Palestinian perspective, Israel will always exist inside Palestine."

We have reached a crucial stage in the IDF's operation against Hamas in the Gaza Strip. If we are not careful, we may have defeat staring us in the face - another defeat, after the fiasco of the Second Lebanon War. This time at the hands of Hamas, a terrorist organization even smaller and weaker than Hezbollah.

Insistent calls are being heard for a cease-fire. Some of these calls come from outside Israel and others come from within our midst. If the IDF does not complete the mission it has been assigned, of suppressing the launching of rockets from the Gaza Strip against the cities, towns and villages of southern Israel, and if the final act before a cease-fire goes into effect ends up being an avalanche of rockets fired by Hamas against Israel, not only Hamas and the Arab states, but most of the world, will consider Hamas as having succeeded in defeating Israel.

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Our job now is to keep our eye on the ball, and not be diverted from the task at hand. The IDF must continue to pursue the mission it has been assigned and put an end to the firing of rockets from the Gaza Strip. We have the ability to do so and it must be done. The consequences of failure, regardless of the explanations offered by Israeli politicians and the wording of the relevant UN Security Council Resolution, would bode very ill for Israel.

When attacked by a wild animal you don't negotiate or ask what rules it wants to use in the fight. You strike it down without mercy and without remorse. If you are attacked by a pack of wild animals you fight savagely and without restraint until all of them are dead or neutralized. To do otherwise doesn't mean facing ignominious defeat. It means you move down the food chain and become an entrée!

The only way Israel can regain its deterrence in the region after this recent debacle is to make it clear to all that, from this day forward, we will play by whatever rules our enemies are willing to honor.

No Rules = No Restraint.

If our towns and cities are fair game… so are yours. Don't complain that our weapons are better, or more powerful. You should have thought of that before attacking us.

If you portray the killing of civilians as heroic, then we will surpass you in heroism. Don't cry to the world about your precious civilians and then prepare a national celebration to honor a monster who deliberately destroyed a family, and whose final act before being captured was to gleefully crush the skull of a small child against a rock.

If our soldiers won't enjoy the protections of the Geneva Conventions… neither will yours. A dead prisoner will be worth a dead prisoner in any exchange. If we run out of dead prisoners to trade, we will make more. As you've ably demonstrated today, live prisoners can be unapologetically turned into dead ones quite easily.

The above was written as a reaction to the release yesterday by Israel of Samir Kuntar (plus four other criminals and 200 bodies) to Hezbollah in exchange for the bodies of two dead Israeli soldiers that had been kidnapped and held as ransom, along with the national celebration that occurred in Lebanon to welcome this child-killer back home.

Read the whole thing before you comment (I just quoted a section from the middle). Also, read the followup post by the blogger's wife, Zahava: An Elusive Prophecy. Here is its conclusion:

Throughout all this, one thing remains crystal clear to me: Until such time as Israel's existence is finally recognized and her people are accepted as full and legitimate global citizens, Isaiah's elusive prophecy; 'Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more', will remain nothing more than a bunch of empty words carved in stone outside the United Nations, designed to allow apologists for murderer's to sleep at night.

Israel is known as the best democracy in the Middle East. This is a true statement. Compared to all of its neighbors, the personal freedoms afforded to citizens in Israel far surpass those given to citizens in neighboring countries. However, this does not mean that Israel is perfect in this respect. Far from it. Coming from the US, I have noticed and been bothered by aspects of the US system of governance that are missing in Israel, resulting mainly in unrestrained abuses of power and corruption in certain branches of the government. Below is my list of five changes that could be made to the way that the government runs in Israel, the implementation of which would make Israel into a more complete democracy and a better place to live.

1. Supreme Court: The Judicial sector needs some definition as to its scope of power. Some form of checks and balances. In the US, supreme court justices are appointed by the Executive Branch, and must be affirmed by the Legislative branch. In Israel, the supreme court justices appoint their own successors, declare what their power is, what their jurisdiction is, meddle in political decision-making, and answer to no one. Justice Secretary Friedmann is doing something to try to curtail this, but there is still a long way to go.
2. Direct Legislative Election: Most Israeli citizens today despise the government (or at least do not approve of its continued existence). Yet, somehow, it remains in power. One of the factors in play is that the leading party is supported by a coalition or other parties. Each party is free to make deals, receiving money or power in order to help keep Kadimah propped up. And the individual legislators are answerable to no one. In the US, where congressman and senators represent specific people, if those people no longer like the job that their representative is doing, they vote them out of office. Not so in Israel. Here, no one is directly elected. Instead, everyone votes for specific parties. Those parties have central committees which decide who will be on the party list. It is a very confusing system, where a criminal like Chaim Ramon is able to become the next-in-line to the Prime Ministership merely because he is friends with Olmert (the same way that Olmert got into power as well). And people like Eli Yishai and Ehud Barak are guarunteed to hold onto their power, regardless of how many people disaprove of their actions (yes, I know that their own parties membership can throw them out, but the system is built to make this hard to do). Until Knesset representatives are answerable for their actions, there will be no end to members and parties in the Knesset acting to further their own power while sacrificing the security and well-being of the country.
3. Equal Enforcement of the Law: Enforce the law equally, in all sectors. That means against both settlers and Israelis who live in pre-1967 Israel, against Jews, Arabs and Christians, and in both East and West Jerusalem. Free speech for all (and not just for those who the Supreme Court or current ruling party favors).
4. Cabinet Members Cannot be Knesset Members: Today, the positions in the cabinet are given out by the Prime Minister to the ruling members of his coalition parties as a reward for supporting the government's coalition. This leads to ill-suited cabinet appointments (anyone remember who the defense minister was during the Second Lebanon War) as well as misuse of Cabinet positions. Cabinet positions are extremely powerful - the secretaries of the different government ministries have the ability to positively and negatively affect nearly all aspects of life in the country. The Prime Minister and his government should have every right to fill these positions; however, these appointments should be based on the appointees ability to fill the office and expertly run his/her ministry - they should not be based on political gamesmanship and cronyism.
5. Constitution: Israel needs a constitution. Right now, there is none, and therefore there are no clear legal principles guiding what rights the government has, what rights people have. It is based on a mish-mash of laws inherited from British Common law and the US, along with the Basic Law, but there are no defined standards. Is Israel a Jewish state or a Democracy? Search and Seizure? Are there any standard rights that all citizens have? Whether or not today's secular state is to be ruled by Torah and halacha is a separate issue. Is there to be an equivalent of the US Bill of Rights? But at least have something clearly defined. Nearly all of the above issues would be solved if Israel had a constitution that was accepted and observed to the degree that the same document is in the United States.

What would have happened if, during the Yom Kippur War, the Syrians would have stationed an artillery unit in the Syrian village of Kuneitra and shelled Tiberias from its heights? Would somebody have even thought it improper to retaliate because of the civilian casualties that would inevitably result? That would be ridiculous. If a sovereign government decides to go to war, it does so in the name of its entire nation. Everybody is included. There are no 'innocent civilians.' If the elected government goes so far as to use a civilian platform for its attack, the responsibility for the results is clearly on its shoulders and not on the side defending itself.

But in Israel's case, this logic does not hold. Hamas enjoys the best of both worlds. On one hand, it has territory, a democratically elected government, and international aid and recognition, while on the other hand, it bears no responsibility for its actions. It has the power of government and the responsibility of an impudent teen. It shells the Jews from inside its sovereign territory and the Jews restrict themselves to policing the attackers alone - as if they were a gang smuggling drugs from Mexico to Texas.

Can Israel win under these circumstances? Obviously not. That is precisely the cause of the insane situation in Israel today - unique to this country alone.

The answer would likely be something incoherent--either that Israel has no right to defend itself, which would make a mockery of the UN Charter, or that Israel has to offer the Palestinians a binational state, which would reverse more than 60 years of UN resolutions on the two-state solution. In short, the UN would fail to respond, and Israel would have a freer hand in dealing with Hamas.

The UN has utterly discredited itself on the Gaza issue. Thankfully, Israel's Supreme Court has appropriately balanced concerns about international law and human rights with security concerns. It says a lot about the legitimacy of Israel's own legal system when the defense minister says he's going to call the justice minister to get a legal opinion before launching attacks in civilian areas.

From what I have been able to observe so far, one of the main strengths of Barack Hussein Obama is his ambiguity: he does not appear to take many hard , controversial positions, and is thus able to cater to a large number of voters by slightly changing his language based on the group that he is addressing (while avoiding the "mistake" of committing himself to any one position that may upset someone).

One of the big issues where this is in play is Obama's attitude towards Israel. Traditionally, Jews vote Democrat, and because they vote in high percentages and have high numbers in swing states, the Jewish vote is important. For many Jews, the first and only issue in a presidential election is the candidate's attitude towards Israel and the "peace process". Because of his traditionally ambiguous positions, it is not very clear where he stands on many Israel-related issues. After soundly defeated by Hillary in Florida (big Jewish vote), the Obama campaign is on the war-path, trying to define his Israel position in a way that will be pleasing to Jewish voters.

In a recent post on Israel Matzav, blogger "Carl from Jerusalem" provides links to a couple of sources that show how the Obama campaign is trying very hard to win over the Jewish vote, and to a number of other sources that highlight why while Obama can talk the talk, when it comes to Israel, do not count on him to be such a good friend. If you would like to learn more about the subject, I encourage you to check out the link and the cited sources and analysis. For those who want a quick sneak preview:

Ed Lasky, American Thinker: Obama Speaks Before AIPAC

Although the Senator finds Hezb'allah violence against Israel worthy of being condemned he seems to ignore acts of Palestinian terrorism (merely talking of Palestinian "extremists" instead). He criticized Hezb'allah rocket attacks from Lebanon, but not Hamas rocket attacks from Gaza. He notes the destruction of homes by Hezb'allah but not the destruction of lives from Palestinian suicide bombings. He condemns Holocaust denial by Iran but is silent about Palestinian indoctrination of hatred among its children.

The double standard is chilling and disquieting. The remedy of more "jaw-jaw" and the near futility of sanctions (particularly when Iran is protected by strong commercial relations with various nations) are equally unsettling.

Ali Abunimah, Electronic Intifada: How Barack Obama Learned to Love Israel

The last time I spoke to Obama was in the winter of 2004 at a gathering in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. He was in the midst of a primary campaign to secure the Democratic nomination for the United States Senate seat he now occupies. But at that time polls showed him trailing.

As he came in from the cold and took off his coat, I went up to greet him. He responded warmly, and volunteered, "Hey, I'm sorry I haven't said more about Palestine right now, but we are in a tough primary race. I'm hoping when things calm down I can be more up front." [Yikes!]

Debbie Schlussel

When Obama first ran for the U.S. Senate, he gave militant responses to the Chicago Jewish News about Israel. Obama denounced Israel's fence--which he called a "wall" and "barrier to peace"--to keep out terrorists and favored working with Yasser Arafat. When members of the Chicago Jewish community circulated his responses, Obama said that the answers were not his positions, but the work of a low-level intern. He submitted new answers. But that was a lie, the insider says. In fact, they were the work of Obama's Policy Director, Audra Wilson. Moreover, Obama told the insider that he blamed the Mideast conflict on the Jews:

Barack told me that he felt that Jewish community was too inflexible, and that was why the situation in the Mideast could not be resolved.

This is the man who says in a new campaign ad that Hillary Clinton will say anything but change nothing. Barack Obama will say anything, but change his answers.

Check out Israel Matzav for more links and analysis.

Although I never thought that I would say it, right now I think that Hillary is the Democratic candidate who is the best for Israel. Obama's shadow positions just scare me. He seems to be saying just enough so that he will not scare away Jewish voters, but once in power, I am afraid that his true colors, and those of his advisers, will come out, to the detriment of the Jewish State.

"We can't just 'all get along' because frankly, why should we? Why should we, Israelis, products of an ancient tradition of learning as well as a post-Renaissance and humanist society, get along with a bunch of medieval fanatics who at their most liberal concede that some Jews might be allowed to survive the coming Arab-led genocide and live here as second-class citizens under Palestinian law?"

"These are people who deny the Holocaust ever happened, insist that Jewish antiquities are all fakes planted by the Israeli government, and claim that despite the Koran, the Bible and the Tanakh, the Jews have no historical affiliation with this land whatsoever."

"These are people who believe that women are second-class citizens, and that its okay for fathers to totally control their daughters' lives. This is a society that condones honor killings because a girl talked to a boy without a male relative being present and without having prior approval of the family patriarch. This is a society that agitates for the imposition of "Moslem law," meaning Sharia--a Code which calls for execution by impaling of homosexual men and the stoning of women who engage in "immoral behavior," which is defined by, of course, the men. This is a Code which gives full credit to the testimony of a Moslem male but denies such weight to the testimony of non-Moslems and Moslem females---so even if a woman denies a charge of 'immoral behavior' the testimony of her male accuser outweighs her denial."

On June 9, 2006, a beach in Gaza was rocked by an explosion that killed seven members of a Palestinian family. Shortly afterward, Palestinian Authority television released a horrific video showing a 10-year-old girl shrieking amidst the dead bodies on the beach, and Palestinian hospital workers and spokesmen angrily blamed Israel Defense Forces (IDF) artillery fire for the deaths--even though no investigation had been conducted, and the Palestinian accusers had no way of knowing what caused the explosion. The exultant declarations of an Israeli massacre were reported as fact in newspapers and television broadcasts around the world; human rights groups joined in the condemnations; and once again Israel found itself the object of international outrage over the issue of civilian casualties.

If this story and its origins fit a predictable pattern, so did Israel's reaction to the crisis: The IDF immediately ceased military activity in Gaza, and Israeli officials at the highest levels reflexively assented to the IDF's culpability and promised an investigation of the incident.

The last chapter of the story is equally familiar: It was ultimately determined that the Palestinians on the beach were not killed by the IDF. Rather, Hamas had mined the section of beach where the explosion occurred, hoping to defend their arsenal of Kassam rockets against Israeli commando missions. After the explosion, Hamas men combed the beach, removing shrapnel that could be used as evidence. The sensational video that captured the sympathies of credulous journalists and set off a wildfire of opprobrium turned out, upon objective evaluation, to be a mangled skein of spliced footage and puzzling anachronisms. It was, in other words, a fake. The explosion itself occurred some ten minutes after the last IDF artillery shell had been fired into the area, and the shrapnel found in the victims' bodies was not from Israeli munitions. Hamas, in a sloppy attempt at defending Gaza, had almost certainly killed its own citizens.

In the end, none of the exculpatory evidence mattered in the least: Israel had been tried and convicted in the court of world opinion in the first few days after the incident. And, as has happened so often before and since, Israeli officials had helped their enemies make their case.

I have often joked that the trend in Arab-Israeli negotiations is that Israel is expected to bring large tracts of land to the negotiating table in order to sue for peace... and the Arabs are expected to bring a pen. But this time around I'm struggling to find the joke.

How sad is it that after all these years we still haven't settled the most basic issue of Israel's right to self-determination... yet Palestinian self-determination is not only a given, but their right to define themselves any way they like is considered sacrosanct.

Just to review:

1. The Palestinians want demand their own state... but they want all of the 'Palestinian refugees' to have the right to retrn to Israel... not the Palestinian state. Isn't the very raison d'etre of a Palestinian State (and the Paletinian self-determination movement) to provide people who self-identify as ethnically, politically or culturally 'Palestinian' with a place they can call their own???

2. The Palestinians claim the right to self rule and bridle at any whiff of outside interference in their internal affairs... yet they demand that Israel be treated like some bankrupt company languishing in receivership that must be administered by an outside fiduciary trustee (i.e. the UN or the EU).

3. The Palestinians are arguably the least transparent legal/political/financial entity on the planet, yet they dismiss as cumbersome and insulting any request from those who have been pouring unprecedented amounts of foreign aid into their Swiss bank accounts coffers (more than even the Marshall Plan provided to All of Europe after WWII) for even the most basic accounting of where the money has gone.

...

The refusal of the Palestinian Authority to acknowledge Israel as a legitimate Jewish state isn't a denial of reality; it is a sign of their determination to change that reality. Like Arab leaders going back a century, they seek not to live in peace with the Jewish state, but in place of the Jewish state. Olmert can show up at Annapolis bearing Palestinian sovereignty on a silver platter, with half of Jerusalem thrown in for good measure. He will not walk away with peace. On the contrary: He will intensify the Arab determination to replace the world's one Jewish state with its 23rd Arab state.

The key to Arab-Israeli peace is not Palestinian statehood. It is to compel the Arab world to abandon its dream of liquidating Israel. As a matter of national self-respect, Olmert should repeat his demand that the Palestinians acknowledge Israel's Jewish identity - and make it nonnegotiable. If Israel cannot insist even on so fundamental a point of honor, it has already lost more than it knows.

Hillary Clinton has published her foreign policy agenda in Foreign Affairs magazine, under the title "Security and Opportunity for the Twenty-First Century." The one paragraph on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict draws deeply on the notions that "resolving the conflict" should be America's top priority, that both sides are equally at fault for the "violence," and that Palestinians need only make promises to earn statehood....IT IS ALL the more astonishing, then, that Hillary, who witnessed the debacle from up close, thinks "consistent US involvement," whatever its outcome, will "lower the level of violence and restore our credibility in the region." She ignores precisely the lesson inflicted upon us by the failed policy of the Clinton administration: If the US obsessively tinkers with this issue without result, it is bound to raise the level of violence and damage our credibility...In September, Hillary issued a statement on Israel designed to bolster her standing among pro-Israel voters. Her Foreign Affairs piece, aimed at the wider foreign policy establishment, takes a very different line.

Who is the real Hillary, behind the triangulation? Who knows?

After reading this article, it is clear to me that a vote for Hillary is a vote for continued and increased conflict in Israel, and a vote for continued US-led diplomatic mediocrity in the Middle East political arena.

There is an unmistakable tinge of insanity creeping into the U.S. effort to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It takes form in the embarrassing desperation of Condoleeza Rice, as she countenances the increasing implausibility of the Annapolis conference with ever more florid and urgent declarations of the imperative of creating a Palestinian state. It takes form in the haphazard manner in which the U.S. has jettisoned virtually every requirement arrived upon in previous negotiations, most notably the unannounced dismissal of the 2003 Roadmap. And this creeping insanity takes form most strikingly in the refusal of U.S. strategists to deal seriously with the array of facts on the ground, facts that would undermine any print-on-paper agreements arising from Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.

...

What Rice has in fact gone a long way toward accomplishing is a demonstration of the fact that none of the U.S.'s previous diplomatic commitments will be considered of the slightest relevance when it comes to the latest round of peacemaking. Most farcical of all is that the current round of "engagement," intended in part to restore American credibility in the Middle East by showing the world that the U.S. is willing to heavily invest itself in the conflict, is swiftly establishing the opposite—the same thing that was established in all the previous peacemaking efforts. But at least the Bush administration can come away from all of this knowing that this particular failure was not a unique one.

About a month ago, we were driving on highway 60 in Jerusalem towards Pisgat Ze'ev, and we saw in the other direction that there were absolutely no cars coming from the other direction. I said to my wife that it is probably aחפץ חשוד (suspicious object - a suitcase or bag that might be a bomb was found, and they shut down the road until they can safely blow up the suspicious object). Then from the other direction (coming from the direction of Ramallah) four motorcycles come, followed by a bunch of very large armored SUVs, some limousines, more motorcycles and cars. So I said, "Look's like it is Olmert or Rice coming back from talking with Abbas in Ramallah" to which my wife responded, "so I guess it really was a חפץ חשוד". (If you don't get the joke, too bad).

A few days later we were on King David street in Yerushalayim, between the King David hotel and the David Citadel (Condoleeza's favorite hangout spot) and the police stopped traffic for 10 minutes. I said "I bet it is Condoleeza again". A few minutes later, a few police motorcycles led four armored SUVs away from the hotel. And when I checked the Internet later that night, it turned out the Condoleeza had been visiting once again.

Now she is back, trying to push a peace plan that nobody wants and that doesn't stand a chance at succeeding win a Nobel Peace prize. According to the AP article that I read yesterday "During her four-day visit, [Rice] will bounce between Israel and the West Bank, seeking a consensus". Although this sentence could conjure up images of Condoleeza on a pogo stick, bouncing her way up Route 60 into Ramallah, what it really means for those in the area is that she will leave her floor at the David Citadel (yes, she gets a whole floor at the nicest hotel every time she shows up), get into her limousine, and ride 15 minutes past the Old City and up Route 60 into Ramallah, escorted by the army, police and the Secret Service.

My wife left a few minutes to go to the supermarket. When she got to Route 60 (many miles away from any section of the road that would be touched by Rice's motorcade), the army blocked all traffic from proceeding, since Rice's motorcade would be passing within a few miles. Not only that, but she was told that Rice would be leaving Ramallah again at 2:45 today and that the roads would be shut down once more.

So on to my request: Condoleeza Rice, please leave and do not come back. Everyone here laughs at you and your ideas of the peaceful Palestinians with whom you would deign to make peace deals, and at your conceptions of "Road Maps" and "Confidence Building Measures". All that your diplomacy will lead to is more blood shed (God forbid). The only thing that I can say for sure about your presence it that whenever you show up, I get caught in traffic (and I don't like traffic). So please do us all a favor and go home.

National Union-National Religious Party chairman Benny Elon proved that peace plans were not limited to the Left on Sunday when he presented his solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict - a plan dubbed the "Israeli initiative."...

"The political discourse in Israel consists of old-fashioned concepts and mistakes," Elon said. "The assumptions are that in order to achieve peace, we must relinquish territory; that the Palestinians are a partner; and that Israel is prohibited from dealing with the refugee problem. These conceptions have failed and brought us to the place we are today: No peace, terror, Hamas controls Gaza and is threatening to seize control of Judea and Samaria. We must reexamine all the underlying assumptions that brought us to this current situation, and think differently, 'outside the box.'"

According to the initiative, the West Bank would remain under Israeli sovereignty, but Palestinians would become Jordanian citizens. The plan is based on three main principles: the rehabilitation of refugees and the dismantling of the refugee camps; strategic cooperation with Jordan; and Israeli sovereignty over the West Bank.

Elon said Israel must strive to find a humanitarian solution to the Palestinian refugee problem instead of a political one...

A crop of Israel's critics--most prominently Jimmy Carter and now Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer, the authors of "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy"--have managed something of a feat: They express no concerns about the massive pro-Arab effort, funded in significant measure by foreign oil money, taking American Jews to task for participating in the American political process; meanwhile, they inoculate themselves against charges of anti-Jewish bias by pre-emptively predicting that "the Jewish lobby" will accuse them of it.

Messrs. Walt and Mearsheimer, in particular, have been heralded by Israel's critics for their "courage" in attacking American Jews, who have allegedly "strangled" criticism of Israel. Their case seems one part laughable, and one part eyebrow-raising.

...

In other words, for those who accept the Arab line on the Israel-Arab conflict--namely, that it is the product of Israeli intransigence in some form or another--the increasing proliferation of Middle East-funded enterprises all across the country aimed at advancing the Arab view of the conflict constitute "nothing wrong." Nor are those hewing to the anti-Israel line troubled by the way in which the massive Islamic bloc of nations, by dint both of their number and their economic leverage over the rest of the world, are able to guarantee an incessantly anti-Israel agenda at the United Nations and other international fora.

Although the aggressive deployment of petrodollars and oil-based influence from foreign sources aimed at advancing a pro-Arab line constitutes "nothing wrong" as far as Israel's critics are concerned, a new political fashion holds that there is something very wrong indeed about American Jews and other American backers of Israel expressing their support for Israel, and urging their political leaders to join them in that support.

...

If the charge that American Jews are able to stifle criticism of Israel is simply silly, the leveling of the charge that there is something nefarious about Jews urging support for the Jewish state raises questions about whether Messrs. Walt and Mearsheimer have descended into a certain ugliness. And the tactic of trying to neutralize those questions by loudly predicting that they will be asked, however clever a tactic it may be, does not neutralize them.

It is apparently the authors' position that, even in the face of the overwhelming leverage of an Arab world swimming in petrodollars, with a lock on the U.N. and an unlimited ability to pay for pro-Arab public relations, American Jews are obliged to stay silent. In essence, Messrs. Walt and Mearsheimer have repackaged the "the-Jews-run-the-country" stuff which has long been the bread and butter of anti-Semites.

There are four main misconceptions that diplomats bring with them to Israel. Primary among them is the idea that solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a prerequisite for stability in the Mideast. The truth is that the region is riven by clashes that have nothing to do with Israel. For instance, the Jewish state plays no role in the conflict between Shiites and Sunnis, between Persians and Arabs or between Arab nationalists and Arab Islamists.

Read the rest of this piece for a nice, fresh look at why the current, traditional diplomatic strategies adhered to by Western leaders and the Israeli Left (including the current government) are irrelevant and damaging to prospects for peace between Israel and its neighbors.

The U.S. and other Western powers are pushing for a new Israeli-Palestinian breakthrough, to help contain Iran and undercut the appeal of al Qaeda and radical Islam. A grand-scale Middle East peace conference is planned for this fall.

The underlying assumption is that radical Islam has something do to with Israel-related political grievances. Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair has made this argument repeatedly. If he and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice roll up their sleeves and work toward a permanent settlement of the Palestinian issue, so the logic goes, they will be providing a powerful diplomatic antidote to the jihadism threatening the security of the entire Western alliance.

But is this really the case?

...

In short, the U.S. and its Western allies thought that Israel's Gaza pullout would establish the foundations of a Palestinian state and thus reduce the flames of radical Islamic rage. Instead they got an al-Qaeda sanctuary on the shores of the Mediterranean.

The source of their error was a popular misconception in policy-making circles of what causes radical Islam to thrive. The gasoline fueling al Qaeda has been its sense of victory, not political grievances.

...

Forty years ago when U.N. Resolution 242 was drafted, its architects understood that peacemaking required balance. Israel would have to compromise, but its diplomacy should not undermine the delicate strategic balance in the Middle East with a radical pullout that would leave it excessively vulnerable. Effective diplomacy today requires striking the same careful balance--seizing opportunities for real peace, but granting Israel its right to defensible borders.

Pushing Israel back to the pre-1967 lines will not satisfy al Qaeda, nor will it bring peace. Right now, what the Palestinians need is help to build a stable civil society with governing institutions that work, not a return to the ceremonial diplomacy of the 1990s. The errors of past Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking have not been cost-free. They have real consequences in terms of loss of life and a deepening conflict. These initiatives do not halt the assault of radical Islam against the West. In fact, if mishandled, they can make it far worse.

The Rice offensive bears more than a passing resemblance to a record the Bush team once ridiculed -- the mad dash for Israeli-Palestinian peace and North Korean disarmament by the Clinton administration in its final months. In the summer of 2000 President Bill Clinton astonished many in and outside of the Middle East by abruptly convening a summit at Camp David in an attempt to leap to a two-state settlement. Not long afterward, his secretary of state, Madeleine Albright, flew to Pyongyang for an unprecedented meeting with Kim -- drawn by the prospect that North Korea would give up its program of long-range missiles.

Then as now, there were warnings from regional experts that the Palestinians were nowhere near ready for a final settlement and that deteriorating conditions in the West Bank and Gaza made the attempt particularly risky. More than a few Republicans claimed that Albright was being taken in by Kim, who, they said, would pocket the propaganda value of her visit but never deliver his missiles.

The naysayers turned out to be right. Yasser Arafat wasn't ready to conclude a deal, even on the generous terms that Israel then offered (and Olmert now rejects). And Kim was fooling: His negotiators never offered the Clinton administration a serious proposal on missiles. When time ran out, the Bush administration inherited a war between Israelis and Palestinians and an impasse with North Korea.

I was interested in asking Sharansky about his views on human rights. In his book, Sari Nusseibeh accuses Sharansky of being inconsistent in his support for human rights because he built settlements as housing minister in the Israeli government. I asked Sharansky how he reconciled Israel's settlement policy with the country's commitment to human rights—and his own.

I found his answer quite interesting. First, he said, we must look at the peace process as a whole. It was a mistake, he argued, for the world to link the concept of a Palestinian state with principles of human rights. The right to self-determination is not inherent: you have to stake a claim to it by organizing your own institutions. As it happened, the world, not the Palestinians, created the Palestinian Authority.

Second, he said, settlements are not an obstacle to Palestinian statehood, nor are they a violation of human rights. No settlement—with the exception of Hebron, he allowed—interferes directly in the life of any Palestinian community. Settlements are also a major source of jobs and investment in the Palestinian territories. Terror, and not settlement, has created the need for checkpoints and roadblocks.

I persisted. What about the obstacle that Israeli settlements pose to Palestinian-initiated economic development? and reports that settlements are infringing on Palestinian private property? Sharansky answered that as minister, he had found that Palestinian leaders were uninterested in investment projects unless they could use them to line their pockets, claim strategic territory and circumvent agreements.

On the issue of property rights, he noted that Israeli courts had been extremely diligent in investigating Palestinian claims, as well as quite lenient, lowering the standard of proof substantially to favor claimants. In some cases, he said, the courts had ordered the government to pay compensation to Palestinian property owners. Calls for the total pullout of all settlers, he said, were not based on human rights concerns but on the implicitly antisemitic idea that Jews cannot live in the area.

Syria is not a radical regime because it has been mistreated by the West or Israel but because the regime needs radicalism to survive. It is a minority dictatorship of a small non-Muslim minority and it offers neither freedoms nor material benefit. It needs demagoguery, the scapegoats of America and Israel, massive loot taken from Lebanon, an Iraq which is either destabilized or a satellite, and so on.

Take the simple issue of the Golan Heights. It is commonplace to say that Syria wants back the Golan Heights. But one need merely ask the simple question: what happens if Syria gets it back? If Syria's regime made peace with Israel it has no excuse for having a big military, a dictatorship, and a terrible economy. The day after the deal the Syrian people will start demanding change. The regime knows that.

Or economic reform. Again, many in the West take it for granted that the regime wants to take steps to improve the economy. But it would prefer to keep a tight hold on the economy rather than open it up and face enriched Sunni Muslim Arabs who hate the regime both due to their class status and their religious community.

The list goes on. Yet few of these points figure into the debate over Syria where statements like "engagement," "a common interest in Iraq," "getting Syria away from Iran," "the benefits of peace with Israel," and the reasonableness of Bashar al-Asad get repeated like mantras.

While the Syrian regime poses as being desirous of peace and engagement with the West, in fact its institutions, ideology, propaganda, and activities go in the exact opposite direction. To survive, the minority-dominated, dictatorial, and economically incompetent government needs radicalism, control over Lebanon, regional instability, anti-Americanism, and using Israel as a scapegoat.

There has hardly been an Arab peace plan in the past 40 years -- including the current Saudi version -- that does not demand a return to the status quo of June 4, 1967. Why is that date so sacred? Because it was the day before the outbreak of the Six Day War in which Israel scored one of the most stunning victories of the 20th century. The Arabs have spent four decades trying to undo its consequences.

The real anniversary of the war should be now, three weeks earlier. On May 16, 1967, Egyptian President Gamal Nasser demanded the evacuation from the Sinai Peninsula of the U.N. buffer force that had kept Israel and Egypt at peace for 10 years. The U.N. complied, at which point Nasser imposed a naval blockade of Israel's only outlet to the south, the port of Eilat -- an open act of war.

[snip]

Why is this still important? Because that three-week period between May 16 and June 5 helps explain Israel's 40-year reluctance to give up the fruits of the Six Day War -- the Sinai, the Golan Heights, the West Bank and Gaza -- in return for paper guarantees of peace. Israel had similar guarantees from the 1956 Suez War, after which it evacuated the Sinai in return for that U.N. buffer force and for assurances from the Western powers of free passage through the Straits of Tiran.

All this disappeared with a wave of Nasser's hand. During those three interminable weeks, President Lyndon Johnson tried to rustle up an armada of countries to run the blockade and open Israel's south. The effort failed dismally.

[snip]

The world will soon be awash with 40th anniversary retrospectives on the war -- and on the peace of the ages that awaits if Israel would only return to June 4, 1967. But Israelis are cautious. They remember the terror of that unbearable May when, with Israel possessing no occupied territories whatsoever, the entire Arab world was furiously preparing Israel's imminent extinction. And the world did nothing.

Please read this entire excellent article by Charles Krauthammer in order to get a better perspective on why giving returning to the pre-Six Day war borders would be so dangerous for Israel.

As a Syrian and a Muslim, I have always had this affinity for the State of Israel. As a businessman and an advocate of the free economic system of governance, Israel to me represents an astounding economic success in the midst of so many Arab failures. I measure achievement not in terms of trade or dollars going in or out (Saudi Arabia is best at that) but in terms of scientific prowess that ultimately churns the economic engine of success.

While many Arabs view Israel as a sore implant, I view it as a blessing. I should provide an example of what I mean.

[snip]

After some heated argument, almost all agreed that Arabs do not have any measure of respect for their own people (due mostly to lack of accountability) and that Arabs must embrace self-empowerment by learning how rather than why Israel begets results.

Interesting words from Farid Ghadry of the Reform Party of Syria (I hope for his sake that he has good bodyguards and isn't planning on visitng Syria any time soon). Is this viewed in the Arab world as Left-Wind extremism? Or is this becoming more mainstream?

It is my humble opinion that at the root of the MSM's obsession with pointing out the technological mismatch in the region is their essential loyalty to Israel's enemies. What I had failed to realize before was that the MSM (and their core audience) view the Arabs as Indiana Jones, and are therefore understandably outraged at the prospect of their hero facing off against the bad guy armed only with a whip... regardless of who started the fight.
[snip]

Simply put; Israel's problems with the world audience don't stem from bad PR. They are rooted in the fact that the MSM and the world audience view Israel as that sword-wielding assassin, a small plot complication that must be resolved as quickly as possible for the regional story to reach a satisfactory dénouement.

IMHO it is the height of silliness for Israel to place too much hope in positive 'Hasbara' (PR/propaganda). No amount of positive PR would have made an Indiana Jones fan care a wit about the fate of the assassin with the sword.

[snip]

Israel would do well to forget about trying to reclaim the hero status it enjoyed in the early days of its existence.

Those days are gone.

What remains is the challenge of simply meeting each threat with the only thing we have going for us; superior weaponry. They pull a whip we pull a sword. They pull a sword, we pull a gun. They pull a gun, we pull a cruise missile.

This isn't a movie set... and Israel needn't apologize for surviving. It may be that the rest of the world is rooting for our enemies to prevail and ride happily into the sunset, but that doesn't mean that we have to lay down and act like some pesky plot complication.

The BBC journalist kidnapped in Gaza, Alan Johnston, has now been missing for eight weeks.

The 44-year-old has not been seen since he was seized at gunpoint on his way home in Gaza City on 12 March.

This is the reason why it is extremely rare to see negative stories about the PLO/Hamas originate from first-hand sources, within Gaza. (Compare this with Israel, where the Israeli media can and does report about all manner of stories that cast Israel in a negative light.)

According to the IDF, no less than ten (10!) Kassam rockets have landed inside Israel since Friday. One hit a house... another struck a gas station (wounding a teenager with shrapnel) and the latest one landed outside a kindergarten. A security guard working at a facility where fuel is transferred from Israel to the PA was critically wounded when as many as three Palestinian gunmen opened fire, hitting him in the head and leg. His condition is still extremely unstable and he has lost the leg and an eye. Sadly there have been too many rock and Molotov cocktail attacks over the weekend to count...

Yet amid all this mayhem, the US is still pressuring Israel to move ahead with more confidence building gestures. They want Israel and the PA to agree to a short timetable during which each must achieve a series of steps in hopes of getting the stalled peace process back on track. IMHO this is a lot like getting a deer and a hunter to agree to work together towards their shared goals.

On Israel's side this series of steps includes such lunacy as removing security check points and easing restrictions on Palestinian movement. It also involves the incredible requirement for Israel to supply the Palestinian security services with more weapons and ammunition!

On the Palestinian side, the PA government is being asked to commit to far less tangible steps such as 'deploying security forces' and 'endeavoring to reign in rocket fire'. But even these seem plain silly in light of the fact that Hamas not only hasn't recognized Israel, but its top political leaders still say that open attacks on Israel - what they call 'resistance' - are among the basic rights of the Palestinian people.

My question is this? Why bother with this charade? The Palestinians will never be made to be deliver on any of the commitments they make, and each side's obligations are independent of one another, meaning that Israel must meet her obligations regardless of whether the Palestinians meet theirs. Good deal, huh?

In two recent articles in the Kuwaiti daily Al-Siyassa, Saudi columnist Yousef Nasser Al-Sweidan argued that the Palestinian refugees' right of return is an idea that cannot be implemented, and that the only solution is for the refugees to be naturalized in the countries where they currently reside.

"It is patently obvious that uprooting the descendents of the refugees from their current homes in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and other countries, and returning them to Israel, to the West Bank, and to Gaza is a utopian ideal and [a recipe for] anarchy. More than that - it is an idea that cannot be implemented, not only because it will upset the demographic [balance] in a dangerous and destructive manner, and will have [far-reaching] political, economic and social ramifications in such a small and constrained geographical area, but [mainly] because the return [of the refugees] stands in blatant contradiction to Israel's right as a sovereign [state], while the Palestinian Authority lacks the infrastructure to absorb such a large number of immigrants as long as the peace process... is not at its peak..."

The fact that these words appear in a Kuwaiti paper by an Arab columnist gives them even greater significance than if they would have appeared in some other news source. (Does anyone know how this newspaper is regarded in Kuwait and the Arab world?) Slowly, it appears as if at least some people outside of the general Pro-Israel community are starting to acknowledge reality.

I think Israel faces the same danger today in international institutions such as the HRC and in the court of world opinion more generally. The majority is in the wrong, and the minority—Israel—is in the right. But by condemning these institutions, without offering hope of repair, Israel and her defenders run the risk of isolating themselves, to the detriment of Israel and of the broader goals of peace and rights.

Occasionally, Israel's supporters, both Christian and Jewish, urge the Israeli government to adopt a more aggressive stance towards hostile Arab states. I have sometimes heard Israelis respond by reminding their friends abroad that they still have to live in the Middle East when all is said and done. Israel wants to be part of the region, and part of the world, and must keep an eye on the future.

[snip]

I think there is an important lesson in Ibsen's play for those of use who believe in Israel and its cause. We have to remember that we are not just defending Israel; we are also defending the right of all people to live in a better world, including Israel's enemies. We cannot lose faith in the idea that the Jewish fate is connected to that of all people. We can, and should, condemn—but also suggest, and most of all, lead.

I happened across an article titled Jerusalem: whose very own and golden city? (which seems to be a plagiarized copy of the same article by Philippe Rekacewicz and Dominique Vidal in Le Monde diplomatique). Although the agenda of the article is clear, I would like to examine a small section of it, drawing on my own personal observations to correct some incorrect statements. I believe that this example is representative of a lot of misinformation that is often quoted regarding Israel.

What follows is the second paragraph of the article, broken up with my commentary:

For Palestinians from the West Bank, access to the city is another matter. If they get through the internal checkpoints, they encounter the most brutal obstacle ever invented to control and restrict movement in the occupied territories: a 10m high wall that will soon completely surround the eastern part of the city, blotting out the landscape and blocking the traditional access roads.

The one thing true here is that in some parts of the areas surrounding Jerusalem there is 10m high concrete wall. However, most of the "wall" is really a series of three fences - one fence, security road, fence with more barbed wire and with electronic monitoring, sand, and another fence. This is the predominant form of the "wall". It is no more than 2-3 meters high, and in no way "blots out the landscape". In more urban areas, a single concrete block (up to 10m tall and not so nice to look at) is used, since it takes up more space (and since it works much better at protecting Jewish homes from gunfire and rocks than a fence does). I know this because I live within 2 miles of the fence and have large sections of it, up close and from both sides, in multiple locations.

It cuts straight across historic highways from Jerusalem to Amman (Route 417) and from Jenin to Hebron (Route 60). For West Bank Palestinians, the monstrous concrete serpent is broken only at four points: Qalandiya in the north, Shuafat in the northeast, Ras Abu Sbeitan in the west and Gilo in the south.

I know of at least one more checkpoint that is open to Palestinians: the Hizmeh checkpoint by Pisgat Ze'ev. I know this because this morning I drove through the Hizmeh checkpoint, along with Palestinian cars with green license plates.

To reach these they have to make many detours, leave their cars and cross on foot. Palestinian vehicles, with green licence plates, are strictly forbidden in Jerusalem.

This is simply not true. I drive from the "other side" of the fence into Jerusalem at least 2-3 times a week. More often than not I am driving alongside Palestinian vehicles with green license plates. And once I get into Jerusalem, driving down Route 60 towards the Old City, it is not an uncommon site to see Palestinian cars with green license plates.

You may argue that these details are inconsequential and that they do not change any of the basic facts of the situation. I say in return that every single one of these false statements are used in conjunction to paint a picture of Israel as an evil occupier bent on murder and destruction. Just a small number of these statements that do not happen to coincide with the truth, along with a manner of research that chooses to completely ignore many basic facts in a situation in order to pain a picture in line with a certain agenda *** can make a multi-faceted, complicated situation seem to be very clear cut. Unfortunately, this type of dishonest journalism that is employed by much of the MSM in Europe and the West does nothing more than create a large population of misinformed readers, and does nothing to help promote anything positive in terms of progress towards a peaceful resolution of this region's problems.

(*** As this article does - the authors spend many paragraphs talking about the evil ambitions of the Zionists who seek to have continuity of settlement without bothering to mention one of the main driving forces behind this ambition: protection and security against the countries that have continuously sought Israel's destruction over the past century; the authors also talk about how it is so wrong of the Israelis to make the commutes of Palestinian workers longer without mentioning the fact that the checkpoints are there in order to stop suicide bombers and terrorist attacks against Israelis.)

Scholar Bernard Lewis on Iran, Israel and Middle East issues,

For President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's Iran, he noted dryly, the notion of mutual assured destruction, of certain devastation so immense as to have kept the United States and the Soviet Union from firing their missiles at each other through the Cold War, was "not a deterrent," but rather "an inducement." Given the apocalyptic messianism of Ahmadinejad and his supporters, "if they kill large numbers of their own people, they are doing them a favor. They are giving them a quick free pass to heaven and all its delights, the divine brothel in the skies."

He dismissed Europe in a few sentences, a continent doomed to Islamist domination by dint of its own "self-abasement... in the name of political correctness and multiculturalism." What did this mean for Europe's Jews? The future, he said without hesitation, was dim.

Nonetheless, Lewis, whose recent bestsellers have included What Went Wrong? The Clash between Islam and Modernity in the Middle East and the post-9/11 The Crisis of Islam: Holy War and Unholy Terror, was not unremittingly bleak in outlook. He argued that Iran's goals could yet be thwarted, by encouraging the Iranian people to turn against their regime. "There is a level of discontent at home, which could be exploited," he said strikingly. "I do not think it would be too difficult to bring it to the point when the regime could be overthrown."

See the link for much more

Nobel Prize Laureate Prof. Israel Robert J. Aumann, an observant Jew as well as a world-famous game theorist, addressed the Herzliya Conference in Israel last week, and identified the abandonment of Zionism and the ensuing loss of energy and abandonment of hope in Israel that could lead to surrender and suicidal "peace" treaties as a greater threat to Israel's continued existence than any nuclear weapon.

The Nobel Prize Laureate, who was an outspoken opponent of the Disengagement, then addressed the prime minister: "About half a year ago in Petra, Jordan, the prime minister said that we are tired. He was right. He was elected by the nation, and he expresses the sentiments of the nation. We are like a mountain-climber that gets caught in a snowstorm; the night falls, he is cold and tired, and he wants to sleep. If he falls asleep, he will freeze to death. We are in terminal danger because we are tired. I will allow myself to say a few unpopular, unfashionable words: our panicked lunging for peace is working against us. It brings us farther away from peace, and endangers our very existence. I think it was Churchill who said, 'If you want peace, prepare for war.' The preparation includes material preparation, a fantastic army, effective tools of war, but above all, we are talking about spiritual preparation, about spiritual readiness to go to war.

"Roadmaps, capitulation, gestures, disengagements, convergences, deportations, and so forth do not bring peace. On the contrary, they bring war, just as we saw last summer. These things send a clear signal to our 'cousins' [the Arabs -ed.] that we are tired, that we no longer have spiritual strength, that we have no time, that we are calling for a time-out. They only whet their appetites. It only encourages them to pressure us more, to demand more, and not to give up on anything. These things stem from simple theoretical considerations and also from straight thinking. But it's not just theory: it has been proven and re-proven in the field over thousands of years. I returned today from a trip to India, where we heard about historical stories that illustrate the same. Capitulations bring about war; determination and readiness bring about peace.

"Ladies and gentlemen, we must tell our 'cousins' that we are staying here. We are not moving. We have time; we have patience; we have stamina. Understand this and internalize it. And we must not simply say it to our cousins but feel it within ourselves. This and only this will bring peace. We can really live in peace and unity and cooperation with our cousins. But only after they understand and internalize that the Zionist state will be here forever. Thank you very much."

Carter's book "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid," while exceptionally sensitive to Palestinian suffering, ignores a legacy of mistreatment, expulsion and murder committed against Jews. It trivializes the murder of Israelis. Now, facing a storm of criticism, he has relied on anti-Semitic stereotypes in defense.

One cannot ignore the Holocaust's impact on Jewish identity and the history of the Middle East conflict. When an Ahmadinejad or Hamas threatens to destroy Israel, Jews have historical precedent to believe them. Jimmy Carter either does not understand this or considers it irrelevant.

[snip]

Compare Carter's approach with that of Rashid Khalidi, head of Columbia University's Middle East Institute and a professor of Arab studies there. His recent book "The Iron Cage" contains more than a dozen references to the seminal place the Holocaust and anti-Semitism hold in the Israeli worldview. This from a Palestinian who does not cast himself as an evenhanded negotiator.

In contrast, by almost ignoring the Holocaust, Carter gives inadvertent comfort to those who deny its importance or even its historical reality, in part because it helps them deny Israel's right to exist. This from the president who signed the legislation creating the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.

In an interview with Chinese news agency Xinhua, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said that unilateral withdrawal has proven to be a failed policy.

In other news, several pigs were spotted flying over New York City yesterday...

The State Department has declassified a document that finally admits Yasser Arafat personally ordered the killings of Cleo Noel, the American ambassador to the Sudan, his deputy George Moore, and Belgian diplomat Guy Eid during a 1973 terrorist takeover of the Saudi Arabian embassy in Khartoum. (Hat tip: Daniel Freedman.)

Our government has known this for 33 years, but covered it up to avoid angering US "friends" in the Arab world.

Peace plans don't work with people who don't want peace. Dismantling settlements has done nothing for peace and only brought the rocket launchers closer to the borders. The Palestinians have cried for years that they suffer from "collective punishment" because of house demolitions and checkpoints and road closures.

The world has paid so much attention to this calumny that it has failed to notice that Israel has suffered from collective punishment for 58 years; Israelis have been killed by snipers on their own roads; their buses have been shot up; their children have burned to death on bombed buses and in bombed pizza parlors; Israelis stand in the same security lines and go through the same searches as Palestinians because anyone entering a building must be checked for a bomb or weapon. Palestinians complain about the security fence, crying that it keeps them from finding work in Israel. (It also keeps suicide bombers out and the auto theft rate has plummeted).Well, Israelis can't travel across the border in the other direction either--when was the last time an Israeli had a job offer in Ramallah or Amman?

Note to the Palestinians: quit trying to kill us, conquer us, terrorize us, invade us; quit massacring our children and old people; quit launching rockets and suicide bombers at us. We're here to stay. The United Nations created two lands, and we're entitled to ours and intend to keep it. The Arab world's 58-year-old collective temper tantrum over the creation of a Jewish democracy in its midst is itself state-funded "collective punishment" -- Israel is to be punished with unceasing terror for simply existing.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad today warned Western leaders to follow the path of God or "vanish from the face of the earth", the semi-official news agency Mehr reported.

"These oppressive countries are angry with us ... a nation that on the other side of the globe has risen up and proved the shallowness of their power," Mr Ahmadinejad said in a speech in the northern town of Ramsar.

"They are angry with our nation. But we tell them 'so be it and die from this anger'. Rest assured that if you do not respond to the divine call, you will die soon and vanish from the face of the earth," he said.

Israel's prime minister said Monday that he hoped to revive long-stalled peace efforts with the Palestinians, saying that they would be able to achieve an independent state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip through talks with Israel.

In what was billed as a major policy speech, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said that Palestinians stood at a "historic crossroads" and could choose to continue on the path of violence or peace.

If they choose the peace path, he said, "we will agree to leave large territories and dismantle settlements that we established."

"We will be willing to do this in exchange for real peace."

Though at first glance, this looks like a promising new development, I am only discouraged by this. Olmert has apparently learned absolutely nothing over the past ten years. This is not the first time that an Israeli leader has made a similar proclamation, and on all previous occassions they ended in the same way. As will this one. Unless something fundamentally changes in the atmosphere of hate that is brewing here, then Israel will only be weakening itself by giving away more land in exchange for some signatures. Nothing ideologically has changed on the Hamas/PLO since their latest proclamations that they wish to destroy Israel, do not recognize Israel, etc. And until that does, no high hopes on the part of unpopular Israeli politicians living in their own private dream worlds will change anything.

Since its birth 58 years ago, Israel has always been prepared to compromise for peace. From Begin's agreement with Sadat in 1979 to the Arafat-Barak talks at Camp David in 2000, Israeli leaders have been prepared to challenge their own people in pursuit of peace. Last summer Israel withdrew from Gaza, angry settlers and all. Yet the terror from the Gaza Strip has continued - more than 1,000 rockets have been fired into southern Israel in the past year. Since 2000, nine fatalities have been caused by Qassam missiles.

Some media have reported the panic these missiles have caused but they downplay the impact because of the small scale of fatalities compared with those on the Palestinian side. My husband, a British soldier, is currently serving a tour of duty in Iraq. His unit has come under mortar fire nearly every night for the past six months. Not many service personnel have been killed by these missiles but every soldier fears that the next one might have his or her name on it. Do you think that a child, a parent or a grandmother in one of the towns bordering Gaza thinks there have been "only" nine fatalities? Can you imagine what that does to a civilian population?

We need to think carefully about the consequences of questioning the defensive reactions of a nation-state that is constantly bombarded by an enemy calling for its destruction, especially after it has withdrawn from Lebanon and Gaza. Would we as British citizens accept a single rocket on a British town, let alone hundreds?

Keep in mind when reading this that this piece was published in The Guardian, one of the most anti-Israel newspapers out there.

I like Jimmy Carter. I have known him since he began his run for president in early 1976. I worked hard for his election, and I have admired the work of the Carter Center throughout the world. That's why it troubles me so much that this decent man has written such an indecent book about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

His bias against Israel shows by his selection of the book's title: "Palestine: Peace not Apartheid." The suggestion that without peace Israel is an apartheid state analogous to South Africa is simply wrong. The basic evil of South African apartheid, against which I and so many other Jews fought, was the absolute control over a majority of blacks by a small minority of whites. It was the opposite of democracy. In Israel majority rules; it is a vibrant secular democracy, which just today recognized gay marriages performed abroad. Arabs serve in the Knesset, on the Supreme Court and get to vote for their representatives, many of whom strongly oppose Israeli policies. Israel has repeatedly offered to end its occupation of areas it captured in a defensive war in exchange for peace and full recognition. The reality is that other Arab and Muslim nations do in fact practice apartheid. In Jordan, no Jew can be a citizen or own land. The same is true in Saudi Arabia, which has separate roads for Muslims and non-Muslims. Even in the Palestinian authority, the increasing influence of Hamas threatens to create Islamic hegemony over non-Muslims. Arab Christians are leaving in droves.

Why then would Jimmy Carter invoke the concept of apartheid in his attack on Israel? Even he acknowledges--though he buries this toward the end of his book--that what is going on in Israel today "is unlike that in South Africa--not racism, but the acquisition of land." But Israel's motive for holding on to this land is the prevention of terrorism. It has repeatedly offered to exchange land for peace and did so in Gaza and southern Lebanon only to have the returned land used for terrorism, kidnappings and rocket launchings.

I was just sent a link to a very interesting site called Arabs for Israel. From their homepage:

We are Arabs and Moslems who believe…

• We can support Israel and still support the Palestinian people. Supporting one does not cancel support for the other.
• We can support the State of Israel and the Jewish religion and still treasure our Arab and Islamic culture.
• There are many Jews and Israelis who freely express compassion and support for the Palestinians. We Arabs also express reciprocal compassion and support.
• The existence of the State of Israel is a fact that we accept.
• Israel is a legitimate state that is not a threat but an asset in the Middle East.
• Every major World religion has a center of gravity. Islam has Mecca, and Judaism & certainly deserves its presence in Israel and Jerusalem.
• Diversity is a virtue not only in the USA, but would be beneficial around the world. We support a diverse Middle East with protection for human rights, respect and equality under the law to all minorities, including Jews and Christians.
• Palestinians have several options but are deprived from exercising them because of their leadership, the Arab League and surrounding Arab and Moslem countries who have other goals besides seeing Palestinians live in harmony with Israel.
• If Palestinians want democracy they can start practicing it now.
• It will benefit Arabs to end the boycott of Israel.
• We can resolve our conflicts using non-violent means. Sending our young people on suicide/homicide missions as a form of Jihad is a distortion of Islam. We can do better.
• We are appalled by the horrific act of terror against the USA on 9/11/2001.
• It will be better for Arabs when the Arab media ends the incitement and misinformation that result in Arab street rage and violence. We support the Arab media providing coverage of ways that people of all religions are and can live together in harmony.
• We are eager to see major reformation in how Islam is taught and channeled to bring out the best in Moslems and contribute to the uplifting of the human spirit and advancement of civilization.
• We believe in freedom to choose or change one's Religion.
• We cherish and acknowledge the beauty and contributions of the Middle East culture, but recognize that the Arab/Moslem world is in desperate need of constructive self-criticism and reform.
• We seek dialogue with Israel. We invite you to join us on a path of love.

We are NOT:

• Anti-Islam, Anti-Arab, confrontational or hateful.

We remember with deep sadness and respect the brave Arabs, known and unknown, who were killed or severely punished for promoting peace with Israel; a special thanks to President Anwar Sadat of Egypt who was killed at the hands of Militant and Radical Islamists after he signed the peace treaty with Israel.

We salute and commend Arab and Moslem writers, scholars and speakers, who found the strength, commitment and honesty in their hearts to speak out in support of Israel. We thank you for being the pioneers that you are and for holding such sophisticated and advanced views in the realm of Arab and Moslem thinking. You are inspiring us all.

The site features letters and correspondence (and other related materials) from Arabs and Muslims all over the world who ascribe to the points copied above, who are not out to destroy Israel, but who rather recognize that there are some things in the Arab and Muslim world that are in need of reform, and that peace will only come about in the end through avoiding violence, not increasing it.

It is sites like this that can give one hope that peace will always be possible, and that the distance between Arabs, Muslims and Jews is not as far as it may sometimes seem.

Even before the American elections, a certain wariness had crept into the intimate friendship between Israel and the United States. The summer war in Lebanon produced questions in Washington about the competence of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. In Jerusalem, there were worries about the American approach to Iran and the Palestinians.

In theory, the two countries share a vision for a modern Middle East in which a thriving Israel would be accepted by its neighbors. But the Israelis balk at President Bush's embrace of regional change through promotion of Arab democracy. They view his effort as naïve and counterproductive, because it brings Islamists and Iranian clients to power.

Although Israel was grateful to see Saddam Hussein overthrown, officials here have long focused on what they consider a much bigger concern: preventing Iran from gaining nuclear weapons. They say the American policies that have empowered Iranian-backed militias in Iraq have been counterproductive to Israel's interests.

Analysis of the current state of US-Israeli relations

A close-up look at a small settlement near Hebron (which some will spitefully label as being illegal, and others will pridefully defend).

But there is a cloud hanging over this new outpost, and to a lesser extent Elon Moreh and all of Israel.

"Will this place survive?" I ask.

"It depends. If we can stay here long enough, yes. We may have problems with Peace Now. With Hamas. With Prime Minister Olmert. If they decide to destroy this place, as they have in the past, then there isn't much we can do to stop them. We will protest. We'll be arrested, and then they'll wreck it. But maybe they won't.

Two weeks ago, Ehud Olmert added the Yisrael Beiteinu party to his coalition in the Knesset. He was widely criticized for this, as many of Yisrael Beiteinu's political positions are diametrically opposed to Olmert's stated goals of giving away much of Israel to terrorists in the hope that this will appease them and cause them to lay down their weapons. (Not to mention that Yisrael Beiteinu is against the entire platform of the Labor party who is #2 in the coalition).

So why did everyone accept Yisrael Beiteinu? Because currently there is a very weak coalition. Any of the parties involved can break up the coalition and cause new elections at a moments notice, for any reason. Olmert, whose sole concern is (not the security of Israel but rather) to maintain his personal hold on political power, needed Yisrael Beiteinu to shore up the ranks. He knows very well (as does Labor) that in the event of early elections any time in the near future, his party would be relegated to the gutter, and that just would not do.

So they sucked it up, sold out and invited in Avigdor Lieberman and his gang.

Since then, I have seen lots of criticism and name calling of Yisrael Beiteinu from many quarters. They have been called racist, fascist, pro-settler, anti-worker, pro-religious, anti-religous and much more. The New York Times, summing up the position held by many who are still under the delusion that Olmert's plan of giving away lots of land in exchange for nothing will result in peace (apparently they slept through the whole war in Lebanon and the ongoing conflicts in Gaza) wrote the following in an anonymous editorial published on October 25, entitled "The Wrong Partner in Israel":

Badly weakened by criticism of his conduct of this summer's inconclusive war in Lebanon, Israel's prime minister, Ehud Olmert, has chosen to make an unwise and damaging trade-off. Bringing the pro-settler Israel Beiteinu party into his governing coalition reinforces his vulnerable parliamentary majority. But it makes it virtually impossible for Mr. Olmert to carry out the partial West Bank withdrawal program he ran on just seven months ago.

(Here we come to the meat of the issue). Lieberman read what the NY Times had to say (which is very much representative of the current world-view held by the Western media) and responded with a letter to the editor with A New Road for Israel:

Your editorial got it wrong.

The Middle East peace process has failed miserably, and trying to breathe new life into an already defunct process is not the way to go.

Israel needs a new direction. I suggest that we redefine our goals and focus on bringing security and stability to the Middle East instead of setting our sights on an unrealistic, unattainable fantasy.

The declared missions of Hamas and Hezbollah are not to expel Israel from Lebanon or Gaza but to eradicate all Jews from Tel Aviv, Haifa and Jerusalem, and until they achieve that goal, they will not lay down their arms.

Israel is where the war on terror started. Sadly, we have had to stand alone for many decades in the face of unrelenting attacks on our Western ideas and values of freedom and democracy.

After the terror attacks of 9/11, Madrid in 2004, London in 2005 (and the list goes on), the world knows better.

That's why old thinking, regardless of how well intentioned, simply won't work.

Thirteen years is long enough to determine that the peace process has failed.

It is time to go back to the drawing board, re-evaluate the goals of the peace process and start anew.

Although there are many things about Lieberman's policies that I disagree with, I must say that having a politician in Israel who will actually admit out loud that Hamas is only interested in destroying Israel and that the current policy of appeasement held by the Left-wing government is no good is a very positive change. Although Olmert has brought him in in order to firm up his hold on the government, the entrance of Yisrael Beiteinu into the coalition is just one more sign that the current political leadership in Israel is overdue for change, and is indicative of the direction that this change will be when it eventually comes.

Despite the 20,000 troops deployed in southern Lebanon, the United Nations admits that weapons smuggling from Syria continues unhindered. A German report finds UNIFIL does not patrol after dark.

Hizbullah terrorists are free to roam at night without fear of being identified by the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), according to a report by the German paper Der Spiegel.

[snip]

The United Nations itself has admitted that Syria was still successfully smuggling arms to the Hizbullah, which neither UNIFIL nor the Lebanese army plan to stop.

Wow, I sure am glad that the UN has sent its peacekeepers to the neighborhood. They sure are good at doing nothing.

92 percent of Egyptians see Israel as an enemy nation, over 50 percent view Denmark, US in same light. Only 2 percent call Israel friendly nation despite longstanding peace

Well, at least the Egyptians stay true to their values - a peace treaty and billions of dollars of US aid over the past couple of decades seem to have done nothing to change the status quo in terms of Egyptian foreign relations. (the_egyptian - feel free to correct me if I am wrong in this account).

It seems that not every Arab state and leader in the Middle East is excited about the prospect of a nuclear Iran. An it's not because they suddenly love Israel. It is because the solidarity that they share when ganging up against Israel only goes so far, and it is not inconceivable that Iran might want to use its new weapon against other Arab states as well.

The anti-Israel statements of the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, coupled with Iran's support for Hezbollah and Hamas, might lead you to think that the Arab states would welcome Iran's nuclear program. After all, the call to wipe the Zionist regime from the map is a longstanding cliché of Arab nationalist rhetoric. But the interests of Shiite non-Arab Iran do not always coincide with those of Arab leaders. A nuclear Iran means, at the very least, a realignment of power dynamics in the Persian Gulf. It could potentially mean much more: a historic shift in the position of the long-subordinated Shiite minority relative to the power and prestige of the Sunni majority, which traditionally dominated the Muslim world. Many Arab Sunnis fear that the moment is ripe for a Shiite rise. Iraq's Shiite majority has been asserting the right to govern, and the lesson has not been lost on the Shiite majority in Bahrain and the large minorities in Lebanon and Saudi Arabia. King Abdullah of Jordan has warned of a "Shiite crescent" of power stretching from Iran to Lebanon via Iraq and (by proxy) Syria.

But geopolitics is not the only reason Sunni Arab leaders are rattled by the prospect of a nuclear Iran. They also seem to be worried that the Iranians might actually use nuclear weapons if they get them. A nuclear attack on Israel would engulf the whole region. But that is not the only danger: Sunnis in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere fear that the Iranians might just use a nuclear bomb against them. Even as Iran's defiance of the United States and Israel wins support among some Sunnis, extremist Sunnis have been engaging in the act of takfir, condemning all Shiites as infidels. On the ground in Iraq, Sunni takfiris are putting this theory into practice, aiming at Shiite civilians and killing them indiscriminately. Shiite militias have been responding in kind, and massacres of Sunni civilians are no longer isolated events.

Mohammed Shahadeh, leader of al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades in the camp, was killed outside his home.

The clash began on Saturday when Fatah-aligned police blocked streets and set fire to tires on main roads, in protest of non-payment of salaries by the Hamas-led government. The stabbing of a Hamas militia man who arrived with a force to halt the rally led to a showdown of gunbattles which lasted hours.

Sunday morning, the exchanges of fire resumed and Shahadeh was killed. Three others were wounded.

This reminds me of the lyrics of a particular song.

I just happened across a very interesting website: Maps of War. Their main feature is a flash video showing a map of the Middle East. Along the bottom is a time line starting in 3000 BCE and proceeding to 2006 CE. As the video proceeds, you get an animated view of all the different kingdoms, empires and foreign powers that had control over what is today called Israel.

It is quite an extensive list: Kingdom of Egypt > Hittite > Kingdom of Israel > Assyrians > Babylonians > Persians > Macedonians > Romans > Byzantines > Sassanids > Caliphate > Seljuks > Crusaders > Saladin > Ottomans > Europeans > Israel

Quite a list. So many armies have come through here, so many conquerors have laid their claim. So many wars fought, and so many millions killed.

Please keep this in mind if you are tempted to make any claims about how Israel "stole the land from the Palestinians". In the greater scheme of things, those who would claim such a title have barely a foothold in this Land, relatively speaking. In the context of all that has happened here, to reduce everything to such a petty accusation is lacking historical validity (I don't see a country or empire called Palestine in the list above) and upon closer examination, only serves to weaken the case of those whom it is meant to enfranchise.

Haaretz just published an article with the headline: Russian FM calls international demands on Hamas 'unrealistic'. From the article:

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Friday that international demands for Hamas to immediately renounce violence and recognize Israel were unrealistic at present, and that the Palestinian movement should be given more time to honor them.

And how much time would be reasonable? 1 year? 2 years? A century? Why exactly is it unreasonable to expect Hamas to "recognize Israel"? Perhaps because they are incapable of such, and never intend to.

Meanwhile, Palestinian Foreign Minister Mahmoud Zahar of Hamas told demonstrators in Gaza on Friday that Israel is an abomination in the Middle East that will some day disappear.

So what is Russia worried about?

Lavrov added that the ruling Palestinian movement could "move gradually toward accepting these conditions."

He criticized unidentified members of the quartet of "trying to influence this process by making excessive demands, excessive at the present stage."

What amazes me is that the "Quartet" and every other international power that is putting pressure on Israel to accept and give in to Hamas and the PLO, are intimating that given more time, Hamas will really go and make extremely large and generous concessions like recognizing that the State of Israel deserves more than extermination.

Are they really that stupid and ignorant. Is there some alternate fantasy world where they are living, in which one is allowed to stick one's head in the ground and selectively pay attention to only the things that adhere to one's own personal agenda? Or do they really know what is going on, and just want to give off the impression of ignorance? While the Quarter continues speaking about how Hamas just needs a little bit more time, and eventually they will come around to recognizing Israel (which will still have gotten us absolutely no where), Hamas is making no effort to conceal their true intentions (other than speaking in Arabic). Here is what they have to say:

Speaking at a rally in the southern Gaza town of Khan Younis, the Palestinian foreign minister said Hamas would never accept Israel's existence.

"We will never recognize Israel, and the end the [fate of] Zionists will be like that of the Crusaders, the Persians and the English, who left. We want all of Palestine, every centimeter, from the river to the sea, from Rosh Hanikra to Rafah. If we can form a state within the 1967 borders we will do so, but this doesn't mean that we will relinquish our right to every centimeter of Palestine's land," he said.

In his speech, Zahar also addressed the Palestinian prisoners in Israel and promised them that Hamas will do all that it can to secure their release, including kidnapping more Israeli soldiers.

While the rest of the world is waiting for Hamas (and Iran), I sincerely hope that Israel can produce some real leaders who are capable of actually acting in the best interests of Israel. Not in the best interests of public relations, or doing things that will allow the Prime Minister to avoid indictment or get an invitation to Oslo or Washington DC. The best interests of Israel. Because if we can't do anything but help dig our own grave, we have no reason to blame the rest of the world for holding out the shovel.

A poll carried out in the Palestinian Authority by the Al-Mustaqabal Research Institute shows that nearly 2/3 of PA Arabs object to normalized relations with Israel - even if Israel quits Yesha (ie: "The West Bank" - Yaakov).

64.1% of the respondents said they oppose the Saudi peace initiative that calls for Israel to leave Judea and Samaria, the establishment of a Palestinian state - and subsequent normalized relations between it and Israel.

Former IDF Research Division Chief Gen. Yossi Kuperwasser says that the above plan recognizes "only Israel's existence, but not its right to exist. This is very significant. Only one who is blind does not see that Israel exists - but the question is whether they recognize our right to exist. Not only Hamas, but even Fatah is not willing to do so." Kuperwasser spoke with Arutz-7 correspondent Haggai Huberman.

So...who still thinks that Israel giving Hamas a state will lead to peace?

Confusing diplomatic developments on the Fatah-Hamas front: Abu Mazen has about-faced by saying Israel need not be recognized, and Hamas is giving signs of recognizing the Oslo Acords.

In order to win recognition by the West, Hamas is expected to recognize both Israel and previous agreements Fatah has signed with Israel, as well as renounce terrorism. Even Fatah leader Abu Mazen has said that he would not join a unity government with Hamas unless these conditions are fulfilled.

It was reported today, in the name of Palestinian Authority sources, that Hamas had finally come around to fulfilling one of the three conditions demanded by the U.S. - namely, that it would "honor agreements signed by the PA."

Wow! Looks like Hamas is really coming around. Maybe they are interested in peace after all. (Uh oh, better read the fine-print):

However, what was under-reported was the Hamas stipulation that it would recognize these agreements only "in such a way that would guarantee the ultimate rights and interests of the Palestinians."

Hamas also continues to insist on its right to use "legitimate means" - i.e., terrorism - to "free their land and end the occupation." No mention was made, in the newly-announced Hamas stance, of a Hamas recognition of Israel's right to exist.

Oh well.

It seems that some habits of the PA leadership will not change. Arafat was very good at saying one thing in English to the US political leadership and the exact opposite in Arabic to the Palestinians. So to with Abbas. However much he bends over backwards to tell Condi and Dubya what they want to hear, he is as bad as anyone else from Hamas or Hizballah and should not be trusted at all.

PLO chief Mahmoud Abbas told visiting US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice last week that he would demand any party that sits in government with him recognize the right of the Jewish state to exist.

Abbas lied.

Speaking days later in his native Arabic, and therefore apparently feeling open to express his true views, Abbas told the exact opposite to a pan-Arab television network.

That moment, I fear, has come. The very existence of Israel (which whatever its virtues or failings is home to nearly half of all Jews living today) has become in the eyes of much of the world a big bother. And we are not speaking here about the Moslem or Arab world, but about much of the West.

A disturbing analysis by columnist Jonathan Rosenblum of how the sentiment that Israel should not exist is one that is becoming much more popular around the world today (and not just in Arab countries). Israel is responsible for all Arab terrorism (and for North Korea and Sudan) and until the Jews are out of Palestine, there will be no peace (since obviously the Muslims should not be held responsible for any of their own actions, since Israel is really at fault).

Much of the West does not just lament the error of Israel's creation, but is prepared to assist, either actively or passively, in reversing that historical mistake. Iranian president Ahmadinejad threatens to wipe Israel or the map, and his predecessor publicly offered his calculus for a nuclear exchange with Israel: one nuclear bomb could wipe out Israel's five million Jews, whereas the loss of an equal number of Iranians would still leave another 15 million alive.

Despite the blatant threats against Israel's existence, Ahmadinejad is still treated to submissive visits from U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and a host of European dignitaries, and a fawning interview by America's "toughest" TV journalist focusing on his sweet family and sartorial tastes. Meanwhile, after more than 3 years of diplomatic talk-talk, we are no closer to the most minimal collective action to halt Iran's nuclear ambitions.

Even more telling is the West's refusal to grant Israel the right to defend itself from attack. It is the West that has made the terrorists' tactic of embedding themselves among civilians a win-win proposition: If their missiles kill Israelis, that is a win; and if Israel strikes back at those firing those missiles and kills civilians as well, the ensuing media condemnations of Israel are an even greater win.

Apparently sixty years was the amount of time necessary for the world to forget.

Why do Palestinians in Gaza still live in refugee camps? Did the Israelis force Palestinians to stay in the squalid, overcrowded camps?

Palestinians still live in refugee camps, even when the camps are in Palestinian Authority controlled areas, because the PLO opposes and prevents refugee resettlement. As the PLO slogan goes, A Palestinian refugee never moves out of his camp except to return home (ie, to Israel).

While the PLO has done its best to keep Palestinians in refugee camps, Israel has done its best to move Palestinians out of the camps and into new homes. Israel even started a heavily subsidized "build-your-own-home" program for Palestinian refugees. According to an early description of the program:

So what happened to these programs (created by Israel) aimed at resettling Palestinian "refugees" outside of their camps in new towns, which would have resulted in a higher quality of life for said "refugees"? As the article goes on to explain, it was oppossed by both the Palestinian leadership, and by the United Nations.

See the article for more.

In discussions of the contemporary Middle East, few arguments have resonated more widely, or among a more diverse set of observers, than the claim that the Palestinian-Israeli conflict constitutes the source of all evil and that its resolution will lead to regional peace and
stability. No sooner had the guns fallen silent on the Israel-Lebanon border than Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain, fresh from his summer vacation in the Caribbean island of Barbados, announced his intention to embark on a mission to the Middle East next month in an attempt to both stabilize the situation in Lebanon and to resuscitate the stalled peace process between Israel and the Palestinians. This sense of urgency was echoed by the American former national security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, who claimed that "Today, it's becoming increasingly difficult to separate the Israeli-Palestinian problem, the Iraq problem and Iran from each other." And the Jordanian commentator Rami Khouri put it in even stronger terms: "Every major tough issue in the Middle East is somehow linked to the consequences of the festering Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Its bitterness kept seeping out from its Palestine-Israel core to corrode many other dimensions of the region."

While there is no denying the argument's widespread appeal, there is also no way around the fact that, in almost every particular, it is demonstratively, even invidiously, wrong.

See the article for more on this line of thought. So what is the author's solution?

Only when the local political elites reconcile themselves to the reality of state nationalism and forswear the false notions of pan-Arab and pan-Muslim solidarity, let alone the imperialist chimera of a unified "Arab nation" or a worldwide Islamic umma, will the long overdue regional stability will be finally attained and the Arab-Israeli conflict resolved. Not the other way round.

An interesting notion: the Israel/Palestine conflict, which has been made the central issue for at least the last 20-30 years (if not more) and is still blamed as the root cause for all regional problems, may itself me the reason why the conflict refuses to end.

Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas told Hamas officials last week that the international community considered the Prisoners' Document unacceptable as the political platform of a Palestinian national unity government.

According to a report in the London-based Al-Hayat daily, Abbas explained that the changes made to the document to assuage the various Palestinian factions had made it unacceptable.

So much for the "Prisoners' Document". Apparently even implicit recognition of the existence of the state of Israel is too divisive a position for any government representing the Palestinians.

The Monty Python Prize for Arab politics must go to Emile Lahoud, the well-known Syrian puppet who also happens to be Lebanon's president. Hizbullah, he explains, "is part of the Lebanese army." Rather than disarm Hizbullah, he is saying, Lebanon's army should fight alongside of it. Israel, by his account, should turn over southern Lebanon to the joint Lebanese army-Hizbullah forces.

Aside from invalidating the cease-fire, what Lahoud has done is to justify completely Israel's war effort. For if Hizbullah is part of Lebanon's army (it is already a member of the coalition government), then the attack on Israel was an act of war by Lebanon, which was completely responsible for everything that happened next.

If this is true, why should the international community rush reconstruction aid to the aggressor? And how can a cease-fire depend on a government which views itself not as Hizbullah's master but as its ally?

We may very well be on the verge of an amazing turnaround regarding the cease-fire in Lebanon organized by the UN Security Council.

For decades China has been building up influence in the Middle East. It suits China's strategy well that coverage has been almost non-existent. As Deng Xiaoping once put it, China must "hide brightness and nourish obscurity . . . to bide our time and build up our capabilities". As China develops into the role of global power, its influence on the region is no longer obscure; it cannot now be ignored.

[snip]

But like all the most successful illicit traders, China is ideologically profligate in its relations. Keen to supply weapons to Israel's enemies in return for oil, it is equally happy to trade with Israel in return for its technology. As Benjamin Netanyahu put it to the Chinese when, as Prime Minister, he championed an Israeli investment in China: "Israeli knowhow is more valuable than Arab oil." The estimates are that there has been between $1 billion and $3 billion of arms trade between China and Israel. But in this case the flow of arms and weapons technology has been from Israel to China.

Interesting analysis of the somewhat shady role that China is playing with all sides in the Middle East, something of which I was not aware.

One of the major problems with Olmert's slow-mo strategy against Hezbollah is that it is putting Israel's hard earned aura of invincibility at risk. I know that since leftists don't believe that such emotions are supposed to impact national decision making, Olmert probably doesn't think it's an issue. The problem is not that his policy is causing the IDF to be defeated in battle at the hands of Hezbollah but that it is creating that perception for the vast majority of the world that doesn't understand military affairs.

Analyzing Israel's current situation, this blogger makes an interesting point regarding how despite a war which has gone extremely far in Israel's favor in strict military terms, its most enduring long-term damage to Israel may be that done to Israel's "aura of invincibility".

(I still have to disagree with the author. I think that after the Yom Kippur War, and after Israel went running from Lebanon after 18 years, no one still thinks that Israel is invincible. But they still have the most formidable military in this side of the world. Unlike the Prussian's, israel's military is not just hype. It is the real deal.)

The conversation between a Jewish holocaust survivor and a young Arab man attending Hebrew University. This took place in the middle of the intifada, in 2002 on a beach outside of Herzliya, Israel. I haven't looked at this piece for a few years, but I remembered it today while thinking about the animosities present in this region, and whether any prospects for peace in the near future exist.

For a while he looked at me perturbed. " We all make mistakes. But Islam with all its faults is a thousand times more preferable to the abomination that is the West." He finally said quietly. Then he gave me a fierce look and said: "If you had said in any Arabcountry about Islam, what you have just said to me, you would be a dead man!"

"I am sure I would. And if you had said in any Arab country denouncingtheir corrupt regimes the way you are denouncing Israel, you would be adead man too. Yet, here you are, studying at the Hebrew University inJerusalem, allowing yourself openly to speak of subversion and treasonagainst the State of Israel, without any fear of being arrested, let alonebeing killed for it. Doesn't it say something to you?"

"Yes, it says that you are weak, and that weakness will be your undoing."he said seriously."

Isn't there a way our two nations could ever come to terms and make peace?"

Again he gave me that serious look. " Yes, there is a way. We are not like the Nazis who gave you no other choice but death. We give you the chance to convert to Islam, then you will become a part of us and our people willlive in peace.

"For a while we stood in silence looking at the sea.

(This article was widely distributed in 2002 after it was first published. At the top of the page that is linked there is a letter of introduction from the author of the article. To get to the article itself you will have to scroll down a little bit)

Annann's hasty accusations that Israel was deliberately targetting the UN post are slowly unravelling:

Based on reporting by the U.N.'s peacekeeping chief, Jean-Marie Guehenno, Mr. Annan alleged in Rome Tuesday that the incident was an apparent "deliberate targeting by Israeli Defense Forces of a U.N. Observer post in southern Lebanon." Although Mr. Annan began to backtrack yesterday, his spokeswoman, Marie Okabe, said he stood by the accusation.

Mr. MacKenzie, who after retiring from the Canadian military became a politician, had a very different interpretation. "I happen to know" the now-deceased Canadian U.N. observer, Major Paeta Hess-von Kruedener, Mr. MacKenzie told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in a radio interview yesterday.

"We've received e-mails from him a few days ago and he was describing the fact that he was taking fire within, in one case, three meters of his position 'for tactical necessity — not being targeted,'" Mr. MacKenzie said he wrote.

In one such e-mail, obtained by The New York Sun, Hess-von Kruedener wrote about heavy IDF artillery and aerial bombardment "within 2 meters of our position." The Israeli shooting, he added, "has not been deliberate targeting, but has rather been due to tactical necessity."

The correspondence between the trooper and former commander amounted to "veiled speech in the military," Mr. MacKenzie, who once commanded the U.N. troops in Bosnia, told the CBC. "What he was telling us was Hezbollah fighters were all over his position and the IDF were targeting them, and that's a favorite trick by people who don't have representation in the U.N. They use the U.N. as shields knowing that they cannot be punished for it."

The quotes above come from one of the people who was killed when their post was accidentally hit by an Israeli missile yesterday.

As Israel is entering the third week of its offensive against Hizballah in Lebanon, many are speculating about possible exit strategies. Some things everyone agrees on:

• Someone will need to watch over Southern Lebanon to make sure that Hizballah (or their successors) are not able to rebuild their infrastructure.
• That someone cannot be Israel

Israel spent 18 years in Southern Lebanon during the 80s and 90s. At the end of this time the IDF withdrew ran back to Israel, leaving the land open for Hizballah to take over. And take over they did. They controlled the entire Southern part of Lebanon. Hundreds of missile launch sites, weapons caches, tunnels. You name it. They built it up with the purpose of using it for launching further attacks on Israel. Israel has now taken upon itself (after some pretty explicit prompting from Nasrallah and co.) to attempt to either destroy Hizballah, or in the failure to complete this goal, completely wreck their infrastructure, destroy their weapons, and eliminate as many of the terrorists as is possible. But once this is complete, they will withdraw back to Israel. No one wants to see Israel in there for another 18 years of guerrilla warfare with Iran/Syria proxy terrorist organizations or with Al Qaeda. However, someone must be there to hold down the fort.

But if Israel will not be there, than who will? Many are suggesting the United Nations as the logical choice. After all, they have maintained "observers" in Lebanon since Israel has left, and in Israel itself since the founding of the nation. They are supposed to be impartial, not taking sides, but would still have the manpower and firepower to make a difference. So when Israel leaves Lebanon (in a few weeks or months), the UN would sweep in, set up camp, and become the active party in terms of preventing large anti-Israel terrorist infrastructures from being built-up on the Northern side of this internationally-recognized border.

At least that's the way it looks on paper. In reality however, I find it very hard that the United Nations can be either impartial nor active in any "peacekeeping" role involving Israel. My suspicions do not rest principally on what seems to be the obvious bias against Israel that takes place in United Nations headquarters in New York City (go and compare the history of condemnations against Israel vs. condemnations against the nations that have attacked Israel over the years if you want to see what I mean). I am talking here about specific instances in the very recent past where the UN "observer" contingents located in Southern Lebanon have demonstrated themselves to be, at the best, incompetent fools, and at the worst completely complicit with the actions of Hizballah in its attacks against Israeli cities and IDF positions in Northern Israel.

A story of three soldiers

Although the current war in Lebanon was precipitated by the kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers, this is not the first time in recent years that Israeli soldiers have been attacked by Hizballah inside Israel. a>, Hizballah carried out an operation on Mount Dov in Israel in which they abducted three Israeli soldiers. The soldiers were killed either in the attack or in the immediate aftermath. Their remains were traded back to Israel in 2004. However, in the days after the attack, no one in Israel knew if the soldiers were still alive or not. It was known that the UNIFIL (United Nations Interim Force In Lebanon) was in a position to possibly observe the attack and abduction. Although a UN video of the attack was said to exist, the UN would not show it unaltered, so as not to damage their "neutrality".

Nine months later, in July 2001, one of the Indian soldiers who was witness to the attack during his time with the UNIFIL came out and said that the UNIFIL forces were in a position to prevent the abduction of the Israeli soldiers:

According to Maariv, the Indian soldier's testimony reported exactly how the kidnapping was carried out. After exploding an initial charge that left the three Israeli soldiers stunned, Hizbullah terrorists dressed in UN uniforms beckoned and called to them: "Come, come, we'll help you."

The soldiers accepted the invitation and approached the disguised Hizbullah men. When they came closer, a charge detonated, wounding the soldiers as well as the Hizbullah commander.

The commander started to curse his friends. Another two terrorists brought the Hizbullah commander into the getaway vehicle. Then they brutally dragged away the three wounded Israeli soldiers.

"By this stage," the Indian soldier reported, according to Maariv, "there was a big commotion and dozens of UN soldiers from the Indian brigade came around." He said they all knew that the men wearing their uniforms were really Hizbullah. One of the soldiers reportedly said that they should arrest the Hizbullah men, but they did nothing.

The Indian soldier said that at least four UN soldiers collaborated with the Hizbullah to help them reach the ambush location, and to assist them in locating the IDF soldiers.

That's right. The UNIFIL observers, sent on a mission to "Restore international peace and security" assisted Hizballah forces in an attack on Israeli soldiers and stood by watching their abduction.

The Failure of the UNIFIL

The above case illustrates very clearly how in this particular instance the United Nations forces in Lebanon directly aided Hizballah in attacking Israel. One may say that this was just a few soldiers who succombed to the large amounts of money, liquor and alcohol that Hizballah sent over as bribes and payment for their assistance. There is corruption in any large organization. Should this one incident forever taint the UN in this region?

Maybe yes, maybe no. However, this is not the only time when the UN has been partners with Hizballah in one way or another. As recently as last year, Israel has leveled accusations that the UN was cooperating with Hizballah forces in Southern Lebanon:

"The UN is in fact collaborating with a terrorist organization," says a political source in Jerusalem. "This is an intolerable situation, when the UN speaks at the same time of fighting terror."

In diplomatic meetings with the U.S. and France in the past weeks, a series of complaints about UNIFIL were brought up: The UN force maintains a permanent dialogue with Hezbollah, chiefly because of UNIFIL's own interest in survival; in many places along the Israel-Lebanon border, Hezbollah has posts and positions adjacent to UNIFIL positions; deployment of the force serves as an excuse for the Lebanese government not to deploy in the south, as required by UN Security Council resolutions; and UNIFIL treats the IDF as equivalent to the Hezbollah terrorist organization when reporting violations of the cease-fire.

The picture described above illustrates very well the reason for Israeli fears regarding future UN "peacekeeping" and "observer" forces in Lebanon. The picture is taken of a UN compound in Southern Lebanon and shows UN and Hizballah flags flying side by side. In a way, this is very appropriate, as "the U.N. and Hezbollah personnel share water and telephones, and that the U.N. presence serves as a shield against Israeli strikes against the terrorists." (Opinion Journal).

There is one thing that the UN can be trusted to do in Lebanon: ignore its mandate to promote peace while assisting the enemies of Israel as they ready their next attack.

(And in order not to be negative without proposing any alternatives, how about NATO?)

Interesting analysis of the undercurrents in Lebanese society, how in some ways the sectarian violence that has lain dormant (but just under the surface) since the end of their civil war may be about to erupt again. It is worth reading the whole thing.

Sectarian tensions and hatreds run deep in Lebanon, even so, far deeper than those of us in the West can begin to relate to. 32 years ago Beirut was the Paris of the Middle East. But 15 years ago Lebanon was the Somalia of the Middle East. It made the current troubles in Iraq look like a polite debate in a Canadian coffeeshop by comparison. There is no ethnic-religious majority in that country, and every major sect has been, at one time or another, a victim of all the others.

I spent a total of seven months in Lebanon recently, and I never could quite figure out what prevented the country from flying apart into pieces. It barely held together like unstable chemicals in a nitro glycerin vat. The slightest ripple sent Lebanese scattering from the streets and into their homes. They were far more twitchy than I, in part (I think) because they understood better than I just how precarious their civilized anarchy was. Their country needed several more years of careful nurturing during peace time to fully recover from its status as a carved up failed state.

[snip]

Lebanese are temporarily more united than ever. No one is running off to join Hezbollah, but tensions are being smoothed over for now while everyone feels they are under attack by the same enemy. Most Lebanese who had warm feelings for Israel -- and there were more of these than you can possibly imagine -- no longer do. This will not last.

My sources and friends in Beirut tell me most Lebanese are going easy on Hezbollah as much as they can while the bombs are still falling. But a terrible reckoning awaits them once this is over. Some Lebanese can't wait even that long.

"The U.N.'s years-long record on the Israel-Lebanon border makes mockery of the term "peacekeeping." On page 155 of my book, "Inside the Asylum," is a picture of a U.N. outpost on that border. The U.N. flag and the Hezbollah flag fly side by side. Observers told me the U.N. and Hezbollah personnel share water and telephones, and that the U.N. presence serves as a shield against Israeli strikes against the terrorists."

Kind of suspicious, don't you think?

I know that this may upset some of you very much. But then again, what's new (watch the video to see what I mean).

Noam Chomsky and his hard left gang of Israel bashers are at it again. This time it is about the current crisis in the Middle East, which they blame entirely on Israel.

Chomsky is circulating a letter which he got two naïve Nobel Prize winners--the playwright Harold Pinter and the poet José Saramago--to sign.

It is vintage Chomsky, beginning with its first sentences: "The latest chapter of the conflict between Israel and Palestine began when Israeli forces abducted two civilians, a doctor and his brother, from Gaza. An incident scarcely reported anywhere, except in the Turkish press." Chomsky typically cites obscure news reports in languages no one can read. This time it's "the Turkish Press." The problem with Chomsky's assertion is that a five minute Google News check reveals that the incident he points to was widely reported by the English language press, including The Washington Post, The Chicago Tribune, the Boston Globe, BBC, Reuters, and the Associated Press. (Lie number one).

Read the rest of the article for more lies.

Former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu answers the questions of British Sky News regarding the war with Hizballah, Syria and more. He gives a very good synopsis of Israel's position. (I would seed a transcript if I could. The video is only a few minutes long and is worth viewing).

Some noteworthy points (my summary, not direct quotes):

• The British and the US should not be ones to talk about "responding out of proportion", considering the British response to the Blitzkrieg in WWII and the US response to 9/11
• Hizballah is firing missiles with the direct intention of harming Israeli civilians. This is not morally equivalent to the incidental deaths that occur when Israel fires on Hizballah forces embedded in civilian areas (which Israel regrets).
• Regarding Syrian offers for dialogue: Instead of offering dialogue, it would be more helpful if they (and Iran) stopped supplying Hizballah with weapons. If they did this, the situation would stop much more quickly than it would as the result of any "dialogue"

The dire consequences of proportionality are so clear that it makes you wonder if it is a fig leaf for anti-Israel sentiment in general. Anyone who knows anything about the Middle East knows that proportionality is madness. For Israel, a small country within reach, as we are finding out, of a missile launched from any enemy's back yard, proportionality is not only inapplicable, it is suicide. The last thing it needs is a war of attrition. It is not good enough to take out this or that missile battery. It is necessary to reestablish deterrence: You slap me, I will punch out your lights.

[snp]

It's clear now that those boundaries -- a wall, a fence, a whatever -- are immaterial when it comes to missiles. Hezbollah, with the aid of Iran and Syria, has shown that it is no longer necessary to send a dazed suicide bomber over the border -- all that is needed is the requisite amount of thrust and a warhead. That being the case, it's either stupid or mean for anyone to call for proportionality. The only way to ensure that babies don't die in their cribs and old people in the streets is to make the Lebanese or the Palestinians understand that if they, no matter how reluctantly, host those rockets, they will pay a very, very steep price.

The Washington Post reports on members of the SLA (Southern Lebanese Army, who fought against Hizballah, alongside Israel, while Israel was in Southern Lebanon in the 80s and 90s) on their opinions regarding the current Israeli offensive against Hizballah.

With Israel again engaged in conflict in Lebanon, their views are more complicated than those rooted firmly on one side of the escalating standoff involving their new country and their old one.

"We are afraid for our families. All of our relatives are still there, in the villages, where the bombs are falling, and we have not heard from them since all of this began," said George, 33, who, like other former SLA members interviewed Friday, spoke only on the condition his last name be omitted because he feared retribution against his family in Lebanon.

"We don't want any more civilians to get hurt or die. But I am pleased, very pleased, with one thing. They are kicking Hezbollah. With the help of God, no one with the smell of Hezbollah will be left when this is done."

Couldn't have said it better myself.

With the exception of the Palestinians, the Arab world appears to be united in blaming Iran and Syria for the fighting in Lebanon. Until last week, Arab political analysts and government officials were reluctant to criticize Hizbullah in public. But now that Hizbullah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah and his top aides are in hiding, an anti-Hizbullah coalition is emerging not only in Lebanon, but in several other Arab countries as well.

[snip]

Hizbullah and their supporters were hoping that the massive Israeli military operation in Lebanon would trigger large-scale protests throughout the Arab world, creating instability and threatening to bring down some of the Arab regimes.

But the response on the Arab street has been so disappointing for Hizbullah that its leaders are now openly talking about an Arab "conspiracy" to liquidate the Shi'ite organization. The few Hizbullah supporters in Ramallah, the Gaza Strip and some Arab capitals have therefore been directing most of their criticism against the Arab presidents and monarchs, accusing them of serving the interests of the US and Israel.

The anti-Hizbullah coalition, which appears to be growing with every Israeli missile that drops on the heads of Hizbullah leaders and headquarters, is spearheaded by Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan. These three countries, together with many Arab commentators and political analysts, are convinced that the leaders of Teheran and Damascus are using Hizbullah to divert attention from Iran's nuclear program and Syria's involvement in the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri.

Interesting analysis of how the mainstream Arab world may be leaving Hizballah out to dry, (correctly) identifying them as a proxy for Iranian power.

I do not yet have any conrete ideas on the exact steps Israel should be taking right now (and I think that most people who do do not really know what they are talking about).

However, I think that this article is a good place to start for what Israel's overall strategy should be. First with Hezbollah and Hamas (and their cohorts), but more importantly with Syria and then Iran if need be.

This is one time an Arab aggressor must be allowed to be beaten so badly that every civilized nation will stand in horror, wanting desperately to step in and stop the carnage... but knowing that the fight will only truly be over when one side gives up and finally admits defeat.

Just as every person who had ever rescued that bully from admitting defeat helped create the cowardly brute I saw that evening in the bar, every well-intentioned power that has ever stepped in and negotiated a ceasefire for an Arab aggressor has helped create the monsters we see around us today.

After the new version of Google Earth was released a few weeks back, I can now get high resolution images of the yishuv (settlement) in which I live. I can even make out the exact street and house. Amazing technology.

This also enabled me to measure the exact distance from my home to the center of Ramallah - approximately two and one half miles (well within Qassam-range, God forbid). Although it would be pretty difficult to walk it (being that there is my town's security fence, a valley, quarry and a pretty steep hill or two in between), the proximity gave us pretty good seats for the fireworks show that took place last night.

The fireworks display was not limited to Ramallah and Kalandiya. They were going up from Arab towns and cities all over the West Bank (some corroborating blog posts from other Jewish bloggers in the area).

So what event happened last night that was worthy of such widespread celebration among the Arab towns in the West Bank? They were celebrating the dozens of Katyusha missiles that landed in cities in Northern Israel yesterday. Missiles hit Nahariya (30 year old woman killed on her balcony, 30 others wounded), Rosh Pina, Kiryat Shmona, Acco, Tzfat (70 year old woman killed). And two missiles were fired at Haifa, Israel's Northern city and port. In all over 70 missiles fired in a 24 hours period. (A little deja vu if you remember the celebrations going after 9/11).

If you will claim that Israel is dealing more punishment than it is receiving, that may be true. But there are some very distinct differences here:

• Israel is not aiming indiscriminately at civilian targets with the intent to injure and kill civilians
• Israel does not celebrate the civilian deaths that may inadvertently occur on the other side

That is right. Though it may surprise some of you, there were no fireworks going up in Tel Aviv and Be'er Sheva last night celebrating the bombardment of Hizballah headquarters in Lebanon or the death of a family in Southern Lebanon.

The citizens of Israel are behind their soldier 100%. We are not happy when civilians on the other side are hurt or killed. But we realize that when civilians on the other side rejoice at the death's Israeli civilians that this is not a war that will be won by sending back roses. I just read a blog post giving over some quotes from the US Civil War general W.T. Sherman (who basically razed the south during the final stages of the war). These statements could very well symbolize the attitude that may be necessary in order to emerge victorious (and not just against Lebanon). The longer Israeli thinking reflects the attitude that holding back will somehow discourage the enthusiasm of those who celebrate out deaths, the longer this will go on. This has been the way of the Israeli government over the past few years. Over the past three weeks, this attitude has begun to crumble. The sooner it is done away with, the sooner this will all end.

• Every attempt to make war easy and safe will result in humiliation and disaster.
• War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it; and those who brought war into our country deserve all the curses and maledictions a people can pour out.
• The object of war is a more perfect peace.

Lebanon recalled their ambassador to the US on Wednesday night for "expressing his support for Hizbullah in the US media."

Carl gives us some more background:

It seems that Abboud was interviewed by CNN last night, and said exactly what Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Siniora did not want him to say:

"We did not declare war. It was declared against us when our country was occupied by the Israelis, with prisoners taken from Lebanon into Israel, and with Palestinian prisoners pushed into Lebanon's territory. We did not occupy Israel and we did not declare war on it.

"At this stage any solution must be negotiations on Israel's withdrawal from the occupied Lebanese territories and a release of the Lebanese prisoners. We have our prisoners. They have prisoners. An exchange would be appropriate, and I think it will resolve the problem.

Hezbullah's Hassan Nasrallah could not have done a better job of stating his own position than Abboud did.

So, was Abboud (the ex-ambassador) speaking his own personal beliefs (in his capacity of official representative of the Lebanese government to Israel's most powerful ally) that were the opposite of his government's position? Or did Abboud just mess up by letting the world know exactly whose Lebanon is supporting in this big mess?

We are about to hit the one year mark since Israel left Gaza. When Israel did this, it was "unilateral" - they did not coordinate with the PLO or Hamas, they did not do this as a result of any agreement with someone deigning to represent the Palestinian people. They just left. One can argue whether this was a wise course of action. Some will say that by taking unilateral action, Israel must be acting in their own self-interest, and therefore against the interests of the Palestinians. Others might say that Israel would have negotiated with someone had there been someone to negotiate with - however, Abbas was not proving trustworthy (although he was good at talking, taking action was not exactly his forte) - and therefore Israel cannot be blamed for this lack of coordination. Whatever way you look at it, one thing is for sure: Israel was leaving Gaza, they were doing it at a certain date, they were clearing out all of the "fanatic" "extremist" Jewish settlers, moving the army out.

When Israel did this, it was taking a chance. Many in Israel saw any territorial compromise as a reward for terror - they were afraid (rightly so) that retreating from Gaza in exchange for nothing would add more fuel to the fire, and would turn Gaza into Hamastan within a short amount of time. Ariel Sharon, the Prime Minister at the time said that he saw this as a necessary, painful step that must be done in the pursuit of a separation between Israel and the Palestinian people. It will give them a chance at having their own land, without our interference, he argued, give them a chance to prove that they had what it takes to build a state. If they used it as a place from which to launch attacks against Israel, Israel would be back after the first missile is launched against Israel. It was an issue which caused a great divide to open in Israel between the religious and secular, between those who supported the settler movement and those who were against. Civil War within Israel almost broke out. But the withdrawal/expulsion was carried out. Israel left Gaza completely last August, turning the land over to the Palestinians who had been coveting it so much.

Time Magazine just published an article by Charles Krauthammer called Remember What Happened Here (Gaza is freed, yet Gaza wages war. That reveals the Palestinians' true agenda). Krauthammer sets the stage by talking about the conflict as a whole. It seems like the Israel/Arab conflict has been once never-ending cycle of violence for the past sixty years. One side attacks, one side retaliates, ad infinitum. Cycles by definition do not have starting points. Although there is lots of finger pointing, it has become increasingly difficult for people without a vested interest in the situation to figure out the rights and the wrongs.

However, when Israel left Gaza, the historic cycle had a chance to end.

How do the Palestinians respond [to Israel leaving Gaza]? What have they done with Gaza, the first Palestinian territory in history to be independent, something neither the Ottomans nor the British nor the Egyptians nor the Jordanians, all of whom ruled Palestinians before the Israelis, ever permitted? On the very day of Israel's final pullout, the Palestinians began firing rockets out of Gaza into Israeli towns on the other side of the border. And remember: those are attacks not on settlers but on civilians in Israel proper, the pre-1967 Israel that the international community recognizes as legitimately part of sovereign Israel, a member state of the U.N. A thousand rockets have fallen since.

For what possible reason? Before the withdrawal, attacks across the border could have been rationalized with the usual Palestinian mantra of occupation, settlements and so on. But what can one say after the withdrawal?

The logic for those continued attacks is to be found in the so-called phase plan adopted in 1974 by the Palestine National Council in Cairo. Realizing that they would never be able to destroy Israel in one fell swoop, the Palestinians adopted a graduated plan to wipe out Israel. First, accept any territory given to them in any part of historic Palestine. Then, use that sanctuary to wage war until Israel is destroyed.

So in 2005 the Palestinians are given Gaza, free of any Jews. Do they begin building the state they say they want, constructing schools and roads and hospitals? No. They launch rockets at civilians and dig a 300-yard tunnel under the border to attack Israeli soldiers and bring back a hostage.

Krauthammer's analysis is simple. Regardless of the circumstances of Israel's withdrawal from Gaza last Summer, the Palestinians had a Golden opportunity to stop fighting, start building and prove to the world that they were eager and capable of being partners in a two-state solution. Instead, the very day Israel left, the Qassams started flying towards pre-1967 Israel. The only explanation is that the Palestinian leadership was continuing on its quest to destroy Israel. What they cant get from concessions and withdrawals on Israel's part, they will seek with violence.

So we are brought to where we are today - many hundreds of Qassams, dozens of dead civilians on both sides - some (on Israel's side) killed through targeted attacks and murders, some (on the Palestinian side) killed because they were standing in the wrong place or riding in the wrong car when Israel shot back at her attackers. The IDF is now back in Gaza, seeking to rescue one of its own soldiers who was kidnapped last week. Everyone on each side is yelling at everyone on the other side, convinced that the rights and wrongs of the situation are totally clear cut.

1. Those in support of Israel make claims that Israel has the right to defend itself, to respond to attacks, to rescue its soldiers. If the Qassam missiles had not been fired at Israel, Israel would never have attacked Gaza. If the soldier had not been kidnapped, Israel would not have gone on the offensive. Israel is not interested in murdering or injuring Palestinians. They actually want to make peace, but so long as the Palestinians are pursuing Israel's destruction, Israel can and should respond with whatever force is necessary to defend itself.
2. Those in support of Hamas and the PLO make claims that Israel is interested in ethnic cleansing and in making land grabs. Israel are the real terrorists since they invaded the country, killed lots of people and Hamas has every right to respond in the way it has been doing, and they should just "admit they are powerless over violence—that their hatred has become unmanageable." There are lower health standards in Gaza, resulting in higher rates of infant mortality, and this is 100% Israel's fault (to the exclusion of anyone other than Israel being at fault). And regarding suicide bombing, it is "probably the most ethical tactic in a war of resistance."
3. And there is the third group who in theory might be in favor of Israel's right to defend themselves, but in practice think that Israel is too harsh and responds to violently to attacks that are made against it (which justifies some response from the other side).

For those of you who are new to this discussion, I am a firm proponent of the first group mentioned above. I think that Israel is trying its best in a tough situation, would make peace if they had a partner, but in the absence of one (and in the presence of an opponent who seeks Israel's destruction and has no problem teaching hate, lobbing missiles, digging tunnels and targeting civilians), Israel has an obligation to defend itself in the best way that it can. Civilian casualties on the other side are regrettable, but they are the fault of Israel's aggressors, the ones who attack Israel and pull Israel into further conflict.

I also have no problem accepting Krauthammer's explanation for the missiles being fired inti Israel from Gaza. The PLO, Hamas and other similar organizations have always officially stated that their definition of "Occupied Territories" (in terms of land that must be "liberated", on whose behalf it is legitimate to wage armed warfare against Israeli soldiers and civilians) includes all of Israel between the Jordan river and the Mediterranean (ie: all of Israel). Although promises to change their official stance and implicit recognition of Israel's right to exist may have made, the actions of these groups (through their "militant wings") have always been in line with their stated goals (ie: to destroy Israel). That being the case, Israel must always have this in mind when considering making "peace" with the Palestinians. As long as their "peace partners" officially seek the destruction of Israel (and support this goal through their actions), Israel must act cautiously when dealing with them, must avoid making any concessions or retreats in exchange for promises, and must act swiftly and with authority when defending against threats and aggression.

My questions are for those who fit better into the second or third groups described above:

• What explanation can you rationally argue (ie: without just spouting anti-Israel rhetoric, labeling Israel as a terrorist state seeking ethnic cleansing, etc) for the firing of hundreds of missiles into Israeli cities (pre-1967, if that makes a difference) starting on the day that Israel left Gaza?
• Is there some explanation that you can give for this that dispels the notion that the Palestinians do not seek the destruction of Israel?
• If the Palestinians would in fact be satisfied with a state established side-by-side with Israel, adhering for the most part to the 1967 borders, what could possibly have been their strategy when beginning this campaign of Qassam missiles against Israel on the day that Israel left Gaza?
• If the Palestinians were really interested in a two-state solution, how did it benefit them to restart armed conflict with Israel instead of taking the opportunity to start building new homes, factories and cities in Gaza, which would have had the affect of ending hostilities between Israel and Gaza, and in addition to jump-starting the Palestinian economy would have led to world-wide support and admiration, and would have put them in a much stronger position when it came to actually deciding the details of a two-state solution
• If your position is that most Palestinians do not support the actions of those attacking Israel, please explain this when the two largest parties in the government (PLO and Hamas) have both stated their official positions as calling for the destruction of Israel (and both have active "militant wings" supporting this goal). If you think that these groups are not involved with any missiles and really do support a two-state solution (their involvement in violence against Israel can easily be documented), and it is really just the other groups that direct violence and missiles against Israel, then how come the two most powerful organizations in Gaza have ignored these actions for the past year, with the knowledge that every missile fired into Israel brought the two sides farther away?

I ask these questions because given the events of the last couple of weeks in Israel, people are either becoming more frustrated with the whole situation, or more adamant regarding the correctness of their side of the argument. Rhetoric is flying, accusations are being made left and right, but in the end of the day it seems like absolutely no progress is being made in terms of arguing either position. The same people are making the same arguments time and time again on different posts relating ot the subject. So I would like to examine the events of the last year in the context of the questions laid out above. Why was there non-stop aggression against Israel from the day that they left Gaza? If it is in fact a continuation of the campaign to destroy Israel, then this fact must be acknowledged in all other conversations relating to the subject of the Arab-Israel conflict. If this is not the reason for the missiles, then what is?

In case the Intentions of the PLO and Hamas were not clear:

"We will rule the nations, by Allah's will, the USA will be conquered, Israel will be conquered, Rome and Britain will be conquered…" pronounces a reclining Ghalban in the video, promising to "crush the Jews and expel them from our country Palestine." He adds, "Just as the Jews ran from Gaza, the Americans will run from Iraq and Afghanistan…"

According to PMW, the video was produced by the Al-Qassam Brigades terrorist group, the military wing of Hamas.

[Begin Rant] Sometimes it is just too much.

I understand that people can give lots of rationalizations for why Israel needs to retreat for more territory. Pick your poison: the Arabs deserve the land, it is the right thing to do, Israel needs separation for peace, International pressure, etc. I do not agree with these, but still, those who use such reasoning at least demonstrate that they have put some little bit of thought into their decisions.

And then we have people like Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Shimon Peres. Among his previous claims to fame are accepting a Nobel Peace Prize alongside Arafat, handing over lots and lots of weapons to the PLO which were subsequently used against Israel, and always being positive that if we just give away a little bit more land, then the true colors of the Arabs will really show through and there will really be peace.

But this one today tops them all (from Arutz Sheva):

In response to the wave of Kassam rockets that have hit Sderot of late, Peres said last week, "Despite the grave results [of the Disengagement from Gaza], which were not what we expected, we must continue [along the same path], because if not, it would have been [or, it would be] even worse."

Excuse me? Can someone please explain this one to me? He is saying here that if Israel had not withdrawn from Gaza last Summer, and still had soldiers standing in the very places where there rockets are being fired from right now, that the rockets would have been worse? And furthermore, since the rockets could have been worse, and we are now getting the easy treatment, this is obviously a sign that withdrawing from land works, and we should try to pursue this further, so that we can get some more easy treatment in the future.

Oy vey.[End Rant]

In a recent editorial published on Arutz Sheva (with an expanded version with footnotes available here), Robert Barnes outlined a position that, though it was once viewed as right-wing extremist, is becoming more and more popular among the general Israeli population: providing economic and material aid to all any resident that wishes to emigrate from the country (the expected beneficiary being Arab that live in the West Bank).

Some background:

The Israeli public understands that there is not, and will likely never be, a partner for peace among Palestinian Arabs. Thus, the question arises what to do about the West Bank and east Jerusalem Arab populations. Reconquering and annexing the West Bank has been ruled out for demographic reasons. Various plans to transfer the Arab population have been rejected: no other country is willing to negotiate a population transfer treaty with Israel; and the Israeli Jewish population flatly rejects the notion of forced transfer. The primary solution proposed is one apparently opposed by a significant majority of Israelis -- another unilateral withdrawal.

However, there is a practical alternative, which would neither force anyone from their homes nor violate the civil rights of any Jew or Arab.

The author goes on to discuss how Arab emigration from the West Bank, encourage and aided by Israel may be available as a different type of solution.

Some of the factors in the equation:

• 40% of Arabs in the West Bank have considered emigrating to a different country
• 70% have identified some form of material or financial aid as a something that could induce them to emigrate
• No groups of people will be forcibly transferred. Individual who would like aid emigrating will be considered.
• Would not cost Israel (or other countries) any more than a complete expulsion of Jews from the same territory

I know that this document is written from a pro-Israel perspective, and that the basis of this proposition is that Israel should work to find ways to avoid withdrawing from territory, and should not allow a Palestinian state in the West Bank. I also know that because of this, many will have basic problem with the ideas here. However, the reality of the situation right now is not one that will lead to any solution that will meet 100% of what each side would independently want. Therefore, it behooves us to consider all solutions to carefully the problem that could reasonably be implemented and could result in a situation with decreased hostilities and higher standards of living for all involved.

I agree that one of the main factors for many of these people in desiring to leave the West Bank may be the detriments to their day-to-day lives that are a by product of the current war between Israel and Hamas/PLO. If you want to call it Israeli oppression and occupation, you are entitled. I will respond that it is Israel defending themselves. These positions have been presented an rehashed many times, on this forum as well as on many others.

However, whatever the cause, it does not change the fact that many members of the Arab populace just want out. If they independently choose to start their lives in a different country, with financial assistance, in the long run they will probably be experiencing a much better quality of life (especially compared to their lives in a new country called Palestine that some would like to create). This solution might help them to achieve that.

What would then happen in the West Bank after such a plan is implemented and 100,000 arabs voluntarily emigrate to different countries with Israeli assistance? The main Israeli objection to annexing all of the West Bank has been that because of demographic estimates, this will take away the Jewish majority in the country that is supposed to be the country of the Jews. As the article points out, many of the assumptions behind this demographic scare are simply not true. Combine this with a large scale voluntary emigration from the West Bank and we are left with a situation where Israel would have no more demographic reason to fear annexing the entire West Bank, and could go ahead and do so, transforming all remaining residents into Israeli citizens. As Israeli citizens, they will be entitled to all of the social benefits and religious freedoms (which are not present in most of the Arab countries in the region) that come along with it, and presuming an end to hostilities between the different parts of the population, a much higher quality of life as Israeli restrictions on movement (currently based on security concerns) are removed. One hundred thousand (and more) Jews will not have to be forcibly expelled, and money otherwise spent on destruction of communities can instead be spent on helping people rebuild their lives.

Think about it.

Israel is in turmoil (what's new?). On the one hand, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has just completed a tour of Europe in which he sought (and failed to receive) support for his long-announced plans for "convergence" – a unilateral withdrawal from most of the West Bank. After European and American leaders failed to back this plan, Olmert changed his tune. He is now saying that he would like to follow the Road Map, skipping Phase I (wait till the Arabs stop attacking us and acknowledge our existence) and going right to Phase II (negotiate, negotiate, negotiate). I have expressed my opinions to this plan in other places. Suffice it to say, for a variety of reasons, I think it is worse than a bad idea.

The Missiles

While all of this diplomatic and political maneuvering is going on, Israel is under fire. Every day, home-made Qassam missiles are fired from Gaza at Israel, focusing on the Israeli city of Sderot. Although the missiles are crude, and not particularly accurate, they do not need to score a direct hit in order to be affective. They hit buildings indiscriminately, whether it be places of work, private homes, or schools. Thank God, there have been no casualties in the most recent campaign. But the city is terrorized. Parents are afraid to send their children to school. A number of times every day, all residents are given a twenty second warning to make it to a bomb shelter. The Qassams are succeeding in completely ruining the lives of the Israeli citizens living in this city (which, by the way, is within the 1948 Israel borders).

Based on public pressure to stop the missiles, as well as a desire to protect its citizens and sovereign territory that is under attack, the Israel Defense Forces have opened a campaign to stop the mobile cells that fire these missiles. For the most part, this consists of firing artillery rounds at locations from which the missiles are fired. They fire this artillery before, during and after the attacks. Although they have scored direct hits on occasion, for the most part the results of this campaign is that the IDF is firing artillery into crowded civilian areas (the firing ground of choice for anti-Israel terrorists), hitting either empty land or private property belonging to civilians. Families have been injured, property destroyed, people killed. Although Israel has a good excuse for all of this (ie: they fire at us, we fire at them), the current artillery campaign does not seem to be effective in stopping the Qassams. The one thing that it does do effectively is hurt "innocent" civilians, and damage Israel's standing in the eyes of today's PR-conscious global audience.

Hamas vs. PLO

Finally, we have Hamas and the Palestinian Liberation Organization. Hamas won the last elections, and controls the national assembly, as well as the Prime Ministers office. They have always been up front as to their desire to wipe out Israel. In the President's office, we have Mahmoud Abbas (aka: Abu Mazen). Abbas took over from Arafat, a supposed moderate who desired to make peace with Israel. Abas, a long-time PLO operative and terrorist, who helped to fund the massacre if Israeli athletes in Munich has tried very hard to walk the walk and talk the talk since becoming President. He has been invited to the White House. He has given press conferences proclaiming how he wants peace. He has said that he will stop the terrorism against Israel. However, in more than three years in office, Abbas has accomplished absolutely nothing positive. He has not fulfilled any of his promises to Israel, nor to his electorate.

As a result of Abbas futility (and the corruption of his party), as well as Hamas' perceived strength at having driven the Zionist Entity from Gaza last Summer, Hamas carried the last election a few months ago. They still refuse to recognize Israel's right to exist. As a result of their policies, the world has stopped providing free money economic aid to the Palestinian government. Workers haven't been paid in month and are close to rioting. They still support (like Abbas' Fatah organization) terrorist attacks against Israel. They are engaged in a power struggle with Abbas and the PLO. It seems that any day, all out war will break out in Gaza between these two groups.

All the while, the missiles continue to fall, Israel continues to fire back, and Olmert keeps on talking about his grand plans for sabotaging Israel.

So What Should Israel Do?

I did not write all of this in order to be just one more person being critical of everything going on, without making any suggestions for actual steps that can be taken. The above is introduction and background for my ideas, that I would like to present. These ideas are not a final peace plan. The way that things are going right now, I think that it is foolish for anyone to start talking about a final peace settlement right now, as if the different parties could implement any agreement any time soon. Instead, I will present the steps that I feel Israel should be taking immediately in order to protect its citizens and territory from attack, and move in a direction that could eventually lead towards an eventual "peace" agreement.

1) Protect Israeli Citizens

Israel has to make it clear to the world (and to its own people) that its number one priority is to protect Israeli citizens. While an Israeli city is under attack, Israel will use any means necessary in order to defend it.

The following steps will be taken in response to Qassam missiles:

• Based on intelligence (ground, satellite, drone), when a squad of terrorists is seen preparing to fire any ordinance at Israel, they will be blown away. Israel will use tanks, artillery, mortars, ground troops, helicopters and missiles to completely eradicate any group of people that is preparing to fire a missile into Israel. Although this may result in civilian casualties (should the terrorist choose to use someones back yard for a launch area), this is just too bad. Israel is being attacked, and they are entitled to directly respond to these attacks.
• Once it is no longer feasible to score a direct hit on those firing missiles into Israel, Israel will refrain from any further shelling of the areas used for launch. As we have seen in the past month, this tactic does not succeed in stopping the missiles, and it only leads to bad things for civilians and for Israel.
• This does not mean that Israel will ignore missiles launched into Israel. For every missile that is successfully launched, Israel will carry out a targeted assassination of one of the senior members of the terrorist group that carried out the assassination. Israel will publish a list of the next in line for assassinations and make sure that all of the terrorist groups know what will be the consequences of initiating attacks against Israel (the same goes for suicide bombs, and other terrorist attacks). These types of threats have worked in the past, and seem to be the only language that the terrorist groups will understand. And if they think it is a bluff, they had better hide.
• If this does not work, Israel will invade Gaza and physically destroy as much of the terrorist infrastructure as possible

Israel will make it clear (in both word and practice) that all attacks against groups within Gaza end the minute attacks against Israel cease. However, if they persist, Israel's responses will increase in severity and scope.

2) Provide Material Humanitarian Support to Gaza

Since Hamas has been elected, the people living in Gaza have suffered economically. The foreign aid that had been pouring in has ceased to a trickle (ie: whatever the Foreign Minister can fit in in a suitcase, after he skims some off the top). Although I think that this foreign aid has long been a crutch for its recipients, the immediate consequence of its absence is that many people who are not directly affiliated with the terrorist organization end up suffering. There are claims of lack of food, sanitation, health supplies, etc. A veritable "humanitarian crisis".

In reaction to this situation, Israel will do the following:

• Using tax money collected on behalf of the Gaza government ($50 million per month, which Israel has not turned over for since Hamas took power), Israel will provide direct material aid to the Gaza residents. This includes medical supplies, food staples, other daily supplies that may be in short order, and tools that can be used to aid the economy in Gaza without supporting anti-israel activities (infrastructure equipment, farming equipment).
• Israel will encourage the other countries of the world to support the Gazans in this fashion (and will try to prevent any plans to funnel money to Gaza through "humanitarian channels". This has not worked in the past, it cannot be trusted to work now).
• Israel will provide absolutely no support for anything that can be related to attacks against Israel. This includes supplying the PLO with 1,000 rifles and 1,000,000 bullets to use against Hamas. If the PLO and Hamas want to kill each other, we will cheer from the sidelines, but we will not step in to support either side. This is because any weapons and ammunition given to the PLO will probably end up being used against Jews.

In short, Israel will attempt to aid the Gaza residents in all humanitarian areas with material assistance, but will not pass over cash, and will not give any aid that could be turned against Israel.

3) No Negotiations Unless...

Israel has made the mistake in the past of negotiating with individuals or groups that were not really telling the truth when they said that they acknowledged Israel's right to existence. Nor were they telling the truth when they said that they would no longer support terrorism against Israel. As I view these both as being (obvious) prerequisites for a negotiating partner of Israel, Israel cannot make this mistake again.

• Israel will only negotiate with persons who represent the majority of both the "Palestinian" people and government. Today, that means that they would only negotiate with the leaders of the PLO and Hamas
• Israel will not negotiate with anyone who does not first publicly declare that Israel has a right to exist, they denounce all violence aimed at Israel, and they will oppose anyone who does not agree with these statements (in other words, neither Hamas nor the PLO). This is not something to be negotiated over. This is a prerequisite for negotiations
• Israel will not negotiate while there is any violence being waged against Israel. This includes attempted infiltrations, suicide bombings, Qassam missiles, kidnappings, etc. There must be ninety days of quiet before any negotiations will be initiated. Any attack will reset the count (and will stop any negotiations in progress, as well as cause one of the reactions by Israel as described above in #1).

So, in the meantime, Israel could be waiting a while until negotiations begin. What should it do? If negotiations cannot begin for any reason, Israel will work to strengthen its hold on all areas of "disputed land" that will be the subject of future negotiations. The message must be sent that Israel will not wait indefinitely, remaining under fire, and at the same time dismantling settlements and doing the things that Hamas/PLO wants anyway. Israel's would-be negotiating partners must know that time is of the essence, and that every day in which they ignore reality, deny and attack Israel, the less potential land they will receive in any future settlement.

Final Thoughts

Many of you who have made it this far will disagree with some or all of the points laid out above. Among the responses I expect in the comments are:

• Israel must not respond to Qassams and continue the cycle of violence
• Israel must withdraw to the 1967 borders right now
• Israel is guilty of ethnic cleansing, racism, etc
• Global Avoidable Mortality, etc

All of these accusations and suggestions fail to address my main concern: the ongoing attacks against Israel that show no signs of ending. Israel's chief responsibility is not to look good for the cameras, and it is not for its Prime Minister to get invited to the White House. Nor is it to rush through a "peace" agreement and earn a trip to Sweden.

Israel's chief responsibility is to take care of its citizens, protect its land and to ensure that it will always remain a home for the Jewish people. I think that the course of action that I listed above is a step in that direction.