|
|
|
Jewish World Review January 23, 2009 / 27 Teves 5769 History's tragic farce By Caroline B. Glick
Given this, it is hard to believe that with the advent of the Obama
administration, we are seeing history repeat itself with nearly unheard of
precision. US President Barack Obama's reported intention of appointing
former Senator George Mitchell to serve as his envoy for the so-called
Palestinian-Israeli peace process will provide us with a spectacle of an
unvarnished repeat of history.
In December 2000, outgoing president Bill Clinton appointed Mitchell to
advise him how to reignite the "peace process" after the Palestinians
rejected statehood and launched their terror war against Israel in September
2000. Mitchell presented his findings to Clinton's successor, George W. Bush
in April 2001.
Mitchell asserted that Israel and the Palestinians were equally to blame for
the Palestinian terror war against Israelis. He recommended that Israel end
all Jewish building outside the 1949 armistice lines, and stop fighting
Palestinian terrorists.
As for the Palestinians, Mitchell said they had to make a "100 percent
effort" to prevent the terror that they themselves were carrying out. This
basic demand was nothing new. It formed the basis of the Clinton
administration's nod-nod-wink-wink treatment of Palestinian terrorism since
the Palestinian Authority was established in 1994.
By insisting that the PLO make a "100 percent effort," to quell the terror
it was enabling, the Clinton administration gave the Palestinians built-in
immunity from responsibility. Every time that his terrorists struck, Yassir
Arafat claimed that their attacks had nothing to do with him. He was making
a "100 percent effort" to stop the attacks after all.
After getting Arafat off the hook, the Clinton administration proceeded to
blame Israel. If Israel had just given up more land, or forced Jews from
their homes, or given the PLO more money, Arafat could have saved the lives
of his victims.
Mitchell's plan, although supported by then secretary of state Colin Powell,
was never adopted by Bush because at the time, terrorists were massacring
Israelis every day. It would have been politically unwise for Bush to accept
a plan that asserted moral equivalence between Israel and the PLO when
rescue workers were scraping the body parts of Israeli children off the
walls of bombed out pizzerias and bar mitzvah parties.
But while his eponymous plan was rejected, its substance, which was based on
the Clinton Plan, formed the basis of the Tenet Plan, the Roadmap Plan and
the Annapolis Plan. And now, Mitchell is about to return to Israel, at the
start of yet another presidential administration to offer us his plan again.
Mitchell of course, is not the only one repeating the past. His boss, Barack
Obama is about to repeat the failures his immediate predecessors. Like
Clinton and Bush, Obama is making the establishment of a Palestinian state
the centerpiece of his foreign policy agenda.
Obama made this clear his first hour on the job. On Wednesday at 8 a.m.,
Obama made his first phone call to a foreign leader. He called PLO chief
Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah. During their conversation, Obama pledged his
commitment to Palestinian statehood.
Fatah wasted no time responding to Obama's extraordinary gesture. Wednesday
afternoon Abbas convened the PLO's Executive Committee in Ramallah and the
body announced that future negotiations with Israel will have to be based
new preconditions. As far as the PLO is concerned, with Obama firmly in its
corner, it can force Israel to its knees.
And so, now the PLO is uninterested in the agreements it reached with Prime
Minister Ehud Olmert and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni. For Israel to enjoy
the privilege of negotiating with the PLO, it must first announce its
willingness to expel all the 500,000 or so Israeli Jews who live in Judea,
Samaria and the neighborhoods in east, south and north Jerusalem built since
1967 as well as the Old City and then hand the areas over, lock, stock and
barrel to the PLO.
This new PLO "plan" itself is nothing new. It is simply a restatement of the
Arab "peace plan" which is just a renamed Saudi "peace plan" which was just
a renamed Tom Friedman column in the *New York Times*. And the Friedman plan
is one that no Israeli leader in his right mind can accept. So by making
this their precondition for negotiations, the PLO is doing what it did in
2000. It is rejecting statehood in favor of continued war with Israel.
What is most remarkable about the new administration's embrace of its
predecessors' failed policy is how uncontroversial this policy is in
Washington. It is hard to come up with another example of a policy that has
failed so often and so violently that has enjoyed the support of both
American political parties. Indeed, it is hard to think of a successful
policy that ever enjoyed such broad support.
Apparently, no one in positions of power in Washington has stopped to
consider why it is that in spite of the fervent backing of presidents
Clinton and Bush, there is still no Palestinian state.
Since Israel recognized the PLO as the "sole, legitimate representative of
the Palestinian people" in 1993, the US and Israel have based their plans
for peace on their assumption that the PLO is interested in making peace.
And they have based their plans for making peace by establishing a
Palestinian state on the assumption that the Palestinians are interested in
statehood. Yet over the past 15 years it has become abundantly clear that
neither of these assumptions is correct.
In spite of massive political, economic and military support by the US,
Israel and Europe, the PLO has never made any significant moves to foster
peaceful relations between Israel and the Palestinians. Not only did the
PLO-led PA spend the six years between 1994 and 2000 in which it was
supposedly making peace with Israel, indoctrinating Palestinian society to
hate Jews and seek their destruction through jihadist-inspired terrorism. It
also cultivated close relations with Iran and other rogue regimes and terror
groups.
Many are quick to claim that these misbehaviors were simply a consequence of
Arafat's personal radicalism. Under Abbas, it is argued, the PLO is much
more moderate. But this assertion strains credulity. As the Jerusalem
Post's Khaled Abu-Toameh reported on Monday, Fatah forces today boast that
their terror cells in Gaza took active part in Hamas's missile offensive
against Israel. Fatah's Aksa Martyr terror cells claim that during Operation
Cast Lead, its terrorists shot 137 rockets and mortars at Israel.
Abbas's supporters in the US and Israel claim that these Fatah members acted
as they did because they are living under Hamas rule. They would be far more
moderate if they were under Fatah rule. But this too, doesn't ring true.
From 2000 through June 2007 when Hamas ousted Fatah forces from Gaza, most
of the weapons smuggling operations in Gaza were carried out by Fatah. Then
too, most of the rockets and mortars fired at Israel between those years
were fired by Fatah forces. Likewise, most of the suicide bombers deployed
from Judea and Samaria were members of Fatah.
The likes of Madeleine Albright, Powell, and Condoleezza Rice claimed that
Fatah's collusion with Hamas and Islamic Jihad and its leading role in
terror was a consequence of insufficient Israeli support for Arafat and
later Abbas. If Israel had kicked out the Jews of Gaza earlier, or if it had
removed its roadblocks and expelled Jews from their homes in Judea and
Samaria, or if had prevented all Jewish building beyond the 1949 armistice
lines, then Arafat and later Abbas would have been more popular and able to
rein in their own terror forces. (Incidentally, those same forces receive
their salaries from the PA which itself is funded by the US and Israel).
The problem with this line of thinking is that ignores two essential facts.
First, since 2000 Israel has curtailed Jewish building in Judea and Samaria.
Second, Israel kicked every last Jew out of Gaza and handed the ruins of
their villages and farms over to Fatah in September 2005. It is worth noting
that the conditions under which the PA received Gaza in 2005 were far better
than the conditions under which Israel gained its sovereignty in 1948. The
Palestinians were showered with billions of dollars in international aid. No
one wanted to do anything but help them make a go of it.
In 1948, Israel had to secure its sovereignty by fending off five invading
armies while under an international arms embargo. It then had to absorb a
million refugees from Arab countries and Holocaust survivors from Europe
with no financial assistance from anyone other than US Jews. Israel
developed into an open democracy. Gaza became one of the largest terror
bases in the world.
Months after Israel handed over Gaza - and Northern Samaria - the
Palestinians turned their backs on statehood altogether when they elected
Hamas — an explicitly anti-nationalist, pan-Islamic movement that rejects
Palestinians statehood — to lead them. Hamas's electoral victory, its
subsequent ouster of Fatah forces from Gaza and its recent war with Israel
tells us another fundamental truth about the sources of the repeated failure
of the US's bid for Palestinian statehood. Quite simply, there is no real
Palestinian constituency for it.
Even if we were to ignore all of the PLO's involvement in terrorism and
assume like Obama, Bush and Clinton that the PLO is willing to live at peace
with Israel in exchange for Gaza, Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem, what Hamas's
control of Gaza and its popularity throughout the Palestinian areas shows is
that there is no reason to expect that the PLO will remain in control of
territory that Israel transfers to its control. So if Israel were to abide
by the PLO's latest demand and accept the Friedman/Saudi/Arab/PLO "peace
plan," there is no reason to believe that a Jew-free Judea, Samaria and
Jerusalem wouldn't then be taken over by Hamas.
Given that there is no chance that Israeli territorial giveaways will lead
to a peaceful Palestinian state, the question arises, is there any way to
compel American politicians to give up their fantasies of fancy signing
ceremonies in the White House Rose Garden that far from bringing peace
engender radicalism, instability and death?
As far as Mitchell is concerned the answer is no. In an address at Tel Aviv
University last month, Mitchell said that the US and Israel must cling to
the delusion that Palestinian statehood will bring about a new utopia, "for
the alternative is unacceptable and should be unthinkable."
So much for "change" in US foreign policy.
JWR contributor Caroline B. Glick is the senior Middle East Fellow at the Center for Security Policy in Washington, DC and the deputy managing editor of The Jerusalem Post. Comment by clicking here.
| ||||||||||
