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Jewish World Review April 3, 2009 / 9 Nisan 5769 Ending Israel's conditional legitimacy By Caroline B. Glick
Last Friday, in anticipation of the swearing in of the new Netanyahu
government, EU foreign ministers met in Prague and discussed how they would
stick it to the Jews.
According to media reports, the assembled ministers and diplomats decided
that they will freeze the process of upgrading EU relations with Israel
until Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu explicitly commits his government to
establishing a Palestinian state and accepts that the only legitimate policy
an Israeli government can have is the so-called "two-state solution."
Czech Foreign Minister Karel Schwartzenberg, whose country currently holds
the rotating EU Presidency reportedly summed up the new approach saying,
"There won't be any progress in relations between Israel and the European
Union until the Israeli government clarifies its stance on the creation of a
Palestinian state."
On an operational level, the assembled ministers and diplomats decided to
cancel the Israel-EU summit now scheduled for late May until Israel has
bowed to Europe's demand.
Europe's decision to launch a preemptive strike against the Netanyahu
government even before it was sworn into office on Tuesday came against the
backdrop of its growing enthusiasm for opening formal ties with Hamas. As
the *Jerusalem Post* reported on Thursday, Europe's diplomatic courtship of
the Iranian-sponsored genocidal terror group is being spearheaded by Sweden
and Switzerland. But they are far from alone.
Britain's Foreign Minister David Miliband has in recent weeks openly called
for recognizing Hamas. France is reportedly using its involvement in the
attempts to secure the release of Israeli hostage Gilad Schalit from his
Hamas-controlled captors to advance its own bilateral ties to the jihadist
group. At last Friday's meeting, Belgian Foreign Minister Karel De Gucht
reportedly also called for Europe to open ties with Hamas.
In its move to isolate Israel - and indeed to treat the only free country in
the Middle East as if it is morally and politically inferior to Hamas - the
EU reportedly believes that it is acting in concert with the Obama
administration. Since entering office, and increasingly in recent weeks, the
Obama administration has been both directly and indirectly signaling that it
will adopt a hostile stance towards Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and
his government. Unnamed Democratic Congressional and administration sources
have been warning Israel through the media that the administration does not
accept the Israeli voters' right to set a new agenda for the incoming
government that rejects the Olmert-Livni government's subordination of
Israel's national interests to the establishment of a Palestinian state.
The administration itself has stated through both White House and State
Department spokesmen that it is completely committed to the swift
establishment of a Palestinian state - regardless of Israel's position on
the issue.
Other global policy-shapers have also weighed in. Former British prime
minister and Quartet Middle East mediator Tony Blair has been making daily
statements warning of a breach with Israel if the Netanyahu government
doesn't fall in line. On Wednesday for instance, Blair threatened, "There is
no alternative to a two-state solution, except the one-state solution. And
if there is a one-state solution, there's going to be a big fight."
The Palestinians, for their part are enjoying the ride. Last Saturday, Fatah
negotiator Saeb Erekat published an op-ed in the *Washington Post* where he
portrayed Netanyahu as more radical than Hamas, and demanded that the US
show that it is a true "honest broker" by treating Israel and Palestinian
terrorists as moral, political and strategic equals.
Fatah leader, Mahmoud Abbas has also piled on, announcing that he will
boycott the Netanyahu government until it falls into line.
Perhaps the most noteworthy aspect of the international hysteria over the
Netanyahu government is its timing. The calls for Israel's international
isolation, the decision to treat Israel as a beyond-the-pale-pariah-nation
far worse than Hamas, emerged even before the Netanyahu government was sworn
into office. How did this foul state of affairs come about? Why is the
Middle East's only democracy being treated worse than North Korea, Iran,
Syria, Sudan, Hamas, and Hizbullah?
The responsibility for this horrendous state of affairs belongs mainly with
Netanyahu's predecessors - former prime minister Ehud Olmert and Opposition
Leader Tzipi Livni. During their tenures in office, Olmert and Livni
effectively embraced Israel's enemies' view that unlike the PLO and even
Hamas, Israel has no independent right to exist. Indeed, not only did they
accept that view, they turned it into the official policy of the Israeli
government.
Around the time that former prime minister Ariel Sharon was felled by a
stroke in January 2006, Olmert and Livni began asserting that Israel's very
legitimacy is dependent on the rapid establishment of a Palestinian state.
For instance, in her speech at the Herzliya conference in January 2006,
Livni stated outright that until and unless a Palestinian state is carved
out of land currently controlled by Israel, the Jewish state cannot expect
for the world to accept its right to exist. Olmert made this point
explicitly in a series of media interviews in recent months.
Livni maintained her allegiance to the view that a Palestinian state is more
legitimate than Israel when during coalition talks with Netanyahu she
stipulated that like the EU and the PLO, she would only accept the
legitimacy of the Netanyahu government, and so agree to serve in it if it
accepted the two-state paradigm.
To fully understand the significance of what Livni and Olmert have done, it
is necessary to understand the source of the phrase "two-state solution."
The term was created by the PLO. When the PLO discussed the issue, the
question under debate was not whether or not to build a Palestinian state,
but whether or not to accept the existence of a Jewish state. That is, the
debate over whether to accept a "one-state solution" or a "two-state
solution" did not revolve around the establishment of a Palestinian state -
which would exist no matter what. At issue was whether to accept the
existence of Israel or not. For the Palestinians then, and for supporters of
the two-state paradigm like Blair and his European and American cohorts, it
is Israel's existence, not the existence of the Palestinian state that is
conditional.
Israel embarked on the road towards accepting the PLO's position when it
accepted the legitimacy of the PLO itself with the launch of the Oslo peace
process in 1993.The first time Israel explicitly and formally accepted the
establishment of a Palestinian state however came only in 2004, with the
Sharon government's qualified acceptance of the Middle East Quartet's
so-called Road Map plan for the establishment of a Palestinian state.
That acceptance was not unconditional. As both the government's reservations
and Sharon's repeated statements made clear, Israel would only accept the
eventual establishment of a Palestinian state after the Palestinian
Authority dismantled all terror groups operating in Palestinian society
including its own Fatah terror groups. That is, for the Sharon government,
it was the Palestinian state, not the Jewish state whose legitimacy was
contingent on its actions.
The innovation of the Olmert-Livni government was to discard this position.
In November 2007, Olmert and Livni enthusiastically signed on to the
Annapolis formula for Palestinian statehood which itself was nothing more
than a regurgitation of the PLO's position. At the time, then US secretary
of state Condoleezza Rice extolled the Annapolis formula specifically
because it removed the requirement that the Palestinians dismantle all
terror groups operating in their territory before receiving statehood. That
is, she applauded the fact that at Annapolis, the goal of fostering peaceful
coexistence between the Palestinians and Israel was supplanted by the goal
of establishing a Palestinian state as the aim of the so-called peace
process.
By adopting the so-called the Annapolis "two-state" platform then, the
Olmert-Livni government accepted the PLO's position that it is Israel, not
the PLO and its sister terror groups whose legitimacy is contingent on its
behavior. It is not the PLO that needs to quit the terror business in order
to be acceptable. Israel needs to accept the PLO - and for that matter Hamas
- regardless of their behavior if it wishes for anyone to even consider
recognizing it.
Due to the Olmert-Livni government's unconditional acceptance of the PLO's
position, today conditional Israeli acceptance of the eventual establishment
of a Palestinian state, along the lines of the Sharon government's
conditional acceptance of the Road Map is no longer sufficient. Now, as
Europe, the US and regional actors are all making clear, Israel must accept
that its own right to exist is contingent on the establishment of a
Palestinian state - regardless of its character or the identity of the
Palestinian leadership. That is, if Israel doesn't accept the legitimacy of
a Hamas or Fatah-ruled Palestinian terror state in Judea, Samaria, Jerusalem
and Gaza, then it has no right to exist.
This reality of course was made clear by the outcry that Foreign Minister
Avigdor Lieberman's official denunciation of the Annapolis formula on
Wednesday induced. Lieberman after all did not say anything particularly
anti-Palestinian. Indeed, he made clear that the Netanyahu government
remains committed to the establishment of a Palestinian state.
All Lieberman said was that the Netanyahu government will not accept a
Palestinian terror state. That is, all he said was that Israel's support for
Palestinian statehood is contingent on Palestinian behavior. Additionally,
Lieberman correctly pointed out that Israel's own international position has
been harmed rather than advanced by its willingness to compromise its
positions and accept those of its Palestinian adversaries.
What the outcry at Lieberman's remarks -- from both Livni and her domestic
supporters, and the international community - makes clear is that it will be
exceedingly difficult for the Netanyahu government to walk away from the
anti-Israel positions adopted by its immediate predecessor. But it also
shows how urgently those positions need to be rejected.
For the past sixteen years, from Israel's first acceptance of the PLO as a
legitimate actor to Israel's acceptance of the PLO's position that it is the
Jewish state rather than the Palestinian state whose legitimacy is
conditional, Israel's international position has become ever more tenuous as
prospects for peace have become ever more remote. The Netanyahu government
was elected to put an end to this disastrous trend. It is heartening to see
that straight out of the starting gate, it is working to accomplish this
essential task.
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.
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