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Jewish World Review Nov. 30, 2007 /20 Kislev 5768 Apartheid not peace By Caroline B. Glick
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
This week the Bush Administration legitimized Arab anti-Semitism. In an
effort to please the Saudis and their Arab brothers, the Bush administration
agreed to physically separate the Jews from the Arabs at the Annapolis
conference in a manner that aligns with the apartheid policies of the Arab
world which prohibit Israelis from setting foot on Arab soil.
Evident everywhere, the discrimination against Israel received its starkest
expression at the main assembly of the Annapolis conference on Tuesday.
There, in accordance with Saudi demands, the Americans prohibited Israeli
representatives from entering the hall through the same door as the Arabs.
At the meeting of foreign ministers on Wednesday, Foreign Minister Tzipi
Livni called her Arab counterparts to task for their discriminatory
treatment. "Why doesn't anyone want to shake my hand? Why doesn't anyone
want to be seen speaking to me?" she asked pointedly.
Israel's humiliated Foreign Minister did not receive support from her
American counterpart. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who spent her
childhood years in the segregated American South, sided with the Arabs.
Although polite enough to note that she doesn't support the slaughter of
Israelis, she made no bones about the fact that her true sympathies lie with
the racist Arabs.
As she put it, "I know what it is like to hear that you cannot go on a road
or through a checkpoint because you are a Palestinian. I understand the
feeling of humiliation and powerlessness."
Rice's remarks make clear that for the Secretary of State there is no
difference between Israelis trying to defend themselves from a jihadist
Palestinian society which supports the destruction of the Jewish state and
bigoted white Southerners who oppressed African Americans because of the
color of their skin. It is true that Israel has security concerns, but as
far as Rice is concerned, the Palestinians are the innocent victims. They
are the ones who are discriminated against and humiliated, not Livni, who
was forced - by Rice - to enter the conference through the service entrance.
The Bush administration's tolerance for discrimination against Israel was
not merely ceremonial. Diplomatically the conference was equally
prejudicial. At Annapolis, the US joined the Arabs in placing the lion's
share of blame for the absence of peace between Israel and the Palestinians
on Israel. But you wouldn't know that from listening to Olmert, who is
working steadily to hide what happened there.
Olmert obfuscates the truth because his political stability rests in the
hands of his hawkish coalition partners Yisrael Beiteinu and Shas. Both
warned before the summit that if Olmert made any concessions on either
Jerusalem or the so-called outpost communities in Judea and Samaria they
would bolt his coalition and so spur new elections.
Shas and Yisrael Beiteinu expressed satisfaction with the outcome of the
summit. Both Shas leader Eli Yishai and Yisrael Beiteinu leader Avigdor
Lieberman dismissed Annapolis as a pathetic joke and claimed that there is
no reason for them to resign from the Olmert government. But their
assertions are deliberately misleading.
The fact that the Israeli-PLO joint statement made no specific mention of
Jerusalem, and the government didn't announce a timetable for destroying the
so-called outpost communities and expelling the hundreds of Israeli families
who live in them doesn't mean that Israel made no concessions on these
issues. In fact, the Olmert government made massive concessions on these
issues.
The Israel-PLO joint statement at Annapolis contains a joint pledge "to
propagate a culture of peace and nonviolence; to confront terrorism and
incitement, whether committed by Palestinians or Israelis."
Although Olmert, Lieberman and Yishai dismiss this Israeli acceptance of
moral equivalence with Palestinian jihadists as a meaningless rhetorical
concession, the government's move is rife with political and legal
implications. US Ambassador Richard Jones' unprecedented meeting this week
with Supreme Court President Dorit Beinisch made clear that the US demands
that Israeli courts interpret Israeli law in a prejudicial manner in order
to demonize Israeli opponents of Palestinian statehood and the ethnic
cleansing of the Jews from Judea and Samaria.
Their meeting also signaled that the US expects Israel to treat lawful
building activities by Jews in Judea and Samaria and even in sections of
Jerusalem as criminal acts. Since the Olmert government accepts that Israel
is morally indistinguishable from the Palestinian Authority, it is hard to
foresee it preventing the criminalization of its political opponents. From
now on, Israelis who oppose the diplomatic moves of the Olmert government
can expect to be treated as the moral equivalents of Palestinian terrorists.
At Annapolis the Americans accepted the role of sole arbiter of Israeli and
Palestinian compliance with their commitments to the so-called Roadmap and
the peace process. They also committed themselves to reaching a
comprehensive peace treaty by the end of 2008. But as former US Middle East
mediator during the Clinton administration Dennis Ross has admitted, these
goals are contradictory. It is impossible to both ensure Palestinian
compliance and the achievement of a peace treaty in that timetable.
Writing in the *Washington Post* after the Oslo peace process collapsed at
Camp David and the Palestinian jihad had begun, Ross explained, "The
prudential issues of compliance were neglected and politicized by the
Americans in favor of keeping the peace process afloat….Every time there was
a behavior, or an incident, or an event that was inconsistent with what the
peace process was about, the impulse was to rationalize it, finesse it, find
a way around it, and not to allow it to break the process."
"What the peace process was about" for the Clinton administration was
signing peace agreements. It was not about ensuring that the Palestinians
were actually interested in living at peace with Israel. When Rice stated
that "failure is not an option," in the coming peace process, she made clear
that the same is the case for the Bush administration today. She wants an
agreement. Whether the Palestinians are serious about peace or not is none
of her business.
Although reporting on Palestinian non-compliance with their commitments to
fight terror will harm prospects for speedy "progress," accusing Israel of
filching on its commitments will actually speed things along. Alleging
Israeli non-compliance will force the pliant Olmert government to make
further concessions to the Palestinians.
In light of this, it is clear that contrary to Yishai and Lieberman's
dismissive treatment of what happened at Annapolis, Olmert's acceptance of
the Americans as both judge of compliance and guarantor of "progress" means
that Israel already made massive concessions.
On Jerusalem for instance, although Yishai is right that Jerusalem is not
specifically mentioned in the joint statement, the fact is that Israel
agreed to negotiate the status of its capital city by agreeing to discuss
all outstanding issues. Since the Americans want a Palestinian state within
a year and they know that Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas will
not make any concessions on Jerusalem, they can be expected to pressure
Israel to accept the Palestinian position. The thousands of Arab
Jerusalemites now applying for Israeli citizenship are a clear sign that the
Arabs understand that Israel has already made massive concessions on the
city. And Yishai must know this.
The American status as arbiters of compliance has far reaching implications
for Israel's ability to cope effectively with the security situation in Gaza
and the Western Negev. Since Hamas seized control of Gaza in June, Abbas has
opposed any wide-scaled IDF counter-terror offensive on the area. Abbas has
claimed - probably rightly - that an Israeli ground offensive in Gaza would
weaken his position in Palestinian society since the Palestinians support
Hamas's positions more than they support him. Given that the Americans are
committed to strengthening Abbas, it is obvious that they will veto any
Israeli plan to conduct an offensive in Gaza aimed at restoring security to
the Western Negev.
Then there is Judea and Samaria. Lieberman claims that he can remain in the
government because Olmert has yet to announce a timetable for throwing the
Jews out of their homes in the so-called outpost communities. But that isn't
Olmert's responsibility anymore. He ceded it to the Americans at Annapolis.
They will set the timetable for expulsions, not Olmert. And it isn't only
the Israeli communities in Judea and Samaria that are now at risk.
By anointing the State Department arbiter of Israeli compliance, the Olmert
government gave the Americans the right to veto IDF operations in Judea and
Samaria. As the guarantors of progress in the peace process, the Americans
will tell the IDF where it can - or more precisely where it cannot - erect
roadblocks. The Americans will tell the Israelis what cities and towns to
transfer to Fatah control. They will tell Israel what guns and armor to
transfer to the Palestinians, what to do with terror fugitives and when and
how many terrorists it must release from its prisons.
Actually, the US has been constraining Israel's counter-terror operations in
Judea and Samaria for months now. That these American efforts have harmed
the effectiveness of the IDF's operations is something that Ido Zoldan's
widow can attest to. Zoldan after all was murdered last week by Fatah
terrorists who owed their ability to move about freely to Israel's decision
to bow to American pressure and dismantle 24 roadblocks and curb its efforts
to arrest Fatah terror bosses.
In essence what we see in Olmert's and Livni's machinations is a repeat of
Ariel Sharon's and Livni's political maneuvering in the period that preceded
the withdrawal from Gaza. In both cases, Israel's senior leaders abide by
the basic political understanding that a fight postponed is a fight won.
In 2004 Sharon lacked the political strength to announce openly that he was
going to completely withdraw from Gaza and destroy all the Israeli
communities in the area. So he allowed the Likud to hold a referendum on his
plan to withdraw and authorized Livni to draft the so-called compromise plan
according to which the destruction of Israeli communities would take place
in four stages over several months and that each stage would require
separate government approval.
By the time the Likud rejected his plan, Sharon was strong enough to ignore
the will of his party. And when the withdrawal took place, far from taking
place in four stages, it took place in four days. Livni and Sharon could
ignore their previous commitments because when the time came to pay the
piper, they had already destroyed their opponents.
Today, by pretending that the joint declaration at Annapolis was a big
nothing, Olmert and Livni are repeating the maneuver. By the time they start
throwing Jews out of their homes, they won't need Shas or Yisrael Beiteinu
anymore.
Lieberman and Yishai are under no obligation to leave the government. They
can stay for as long as they like. But they cannot pretend that by staying
they are not full partners in the government's policies. As Annapolis made
clear, those policies include dividing Jerusalem, destroying the Israeli
communities in Judea and Samaria and compromising the security of the State
of Israel.
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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