An Arab explains about 1948: 'The British wanted us to kill each other'

May 10, 2008

'The British wanted us to kill each other'

Said Jabr, 74, Arab Israeli

The old British Army base, a small sandstone fort, stands abandoned on a hill in Abu Ghosh, an Arab village just southwest of Jerusalem. Said Jabr was 14 when the British pulled out.

"It was on the 14th or 15th of May. I remember exactly that the British commander came to Ali Saleh, the village mukhtar (elder), and said they were going to leave and warned us to be ready," he recalled from his family home in Abu Ghosh. "Thirty-five armed villagers walked into the base to take command. But the British commander went at the same time to the kibbutz and told them the same thing.

"The British left one tank in front of the army base. Then a few tanks driven by the Haganah (the fledgling Jewish army) drove up and surrounded the army base. But we had great relations with the local kibbutzim – we believe in friendship and protecting a neighbour's property, no matter who they are – and the leaders of the kibbutzim. . . came to the village. They met the mukhtar, drank coffee and reached an agreement that the villagers would leave the base and the Haganah would take over. The British commander was waiting in the remaining tank to see what would happen. He saw the Abu Ghosh villagers leaving the base and shaking hands with the Haganah members, and he said, 'F****** Arabs'. Our impression was that he wanted us to kill each other. Thank God the people from both sides resolved the issue peacefully."

Mr Jabr proudly displays the Hebrew shield he was awarded by the kibbutz. It shows two hands shaking – a token of thanks and friendship.

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Iran is engaging everyone else

Meeting Iran half way

11.05. 2008
http://www.zionism-israel.com/log/archives/00000542.html
Original content copyright by the author
Zionism & Israel Center http://zionism-israel.com

A few years ago I was engaged in an animated multi-way debate with American and other foreign policy analysts who insisted that Iran poses no existential danger to Israel. They reasoned that Iran could not realistically use nuclear weapons against Israel even if they got them, and they pointed out Iran has no border with Israel, and would have no way of invading Israel. Therefore, they could attack under a nuclear umbrella that prevented massive retaliation. So how, they asked could Iran constitute an existential danger to Israel?

They got the first part of their reply in the summer of 2006, when Hezbollah, with the consent of Iran and probably at its bidding, triggered the 2006 Second Lebanon war. Iran, both through Hezbollah and other means, has also been supporting the Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorist groups in Gaza and the West Bank. Hezbollah has boasted frequently of its aid to "Palestinian resistance."

But this week Israel was given another dramatic illustration of the escalating Iranian threat, when Hezbollah, which has virtually paralyzed the Lebanese government since December 2006, almost pulled a coup in Beirut similar to the one that Hamas engineered in Gaza. As Hezbollah terrorists overran Beirut, a frightening new prospect opened up for Israel: Lebanon is on its way to being converted into a franchise Islamic republic, a second Iran, right on our northern borders. Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilnai said:

"(Egyptian) President Hosni Mubarak recently declared that Egypt already has a border with Iran with the Gaza Strip. For us it's even worse because it's not only the Gaza Strip, but also Lebanon in the north.

Actually, it would be much worse, because Lebanon is a recognized state. If Hezbollah takes over Lebanon, they will have all the resources and rights of a state at its disposal. At the very least, Lebanon would become a training and operations base for terrorism aimed at Israel, both directly over its border with Lebanon, and through infiltration into the West Bank. We can anticipate that large numbers of Iranian Nation Guard Corps troops would be stationed there, training Islamic Jihad and Hamas members in guerrilla warfare, and recruiting Palestinian terrorists from the misery of the refugee camps. Hezbollah would also control the Lebanese army even if it would not necessarily merge with it, and it might turn that army into a potent fighting force. But that is the best case scenario. Hezbollah controlled Lebanon can provide Iran with a Mediterranean naval base and forward airbases. In the worst case scenario, it could be the staging ground for an Iranian invasion of Israel.

A Lebanese Islamic republic is clearly a threat not only to Israel, but to US and French interests in the Levant, and to neighboring Turkey. The most alarming feature of last week's crisis is that nobody did much about it. The United States issued some pro-forma warnings, and France engaged in some feverish and pointless diplomatic activity. The major activities of France and Italy were to prepare for evacuation of their citizens. True to form, they were planning the retreat. Turkey was silent, at least in public. The Arab League scheduled a meeting. Israel did nothing, because Israel, given the presence of UNIFIL in Lebanon, cannot possibly do anything. In any case, any support for the government of Fouad Saniora given by Israel would most certainly doom that government.

Continued at Meeting Iran half way

 

Cross posted: Israel News  Middle East Analysis

Continued (Permanent Link)

Newsweek interviews Israeli PM Ehud Olmert: We are looking forward

Ehud Olmert does not give away much information here. Other than the fact that Jerusalem is not being discussed with the Palestinians yet, there are no commitments. He was careful not to rule out an Israeli strike on Iran, but not to volunteer any information concerning a possible strike.

 

'We are Looking Forward'

 

Ehud Olmert on prospects for peace and his political future.
Lally Weymouth
Newsweek Web Exclusive
Updated: 8:25 PM ET May 8, 2008

 

On Thursday, after it was revealed that Israeli police were investigating charges that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert had accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars in illegal campaign contributions from an American benefactor when he was mayor of Jerusalem, Olmert pledged not to resign unless he was indicted. But earlier in the week, in an interview with Newsweek's Lally Weymouth, Olmert sounded resigned to the possibility that he might stand down. He also spoke of his hopes for achieving peace with both the Syrians and the Palestinians this year.  Excerpts:

 

Newsweek: What did you and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice talk about during her visit here last week?
Olmert: We talked about the ongoing discussions between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, about the possibility of having an understanding that will lead to the realization of President Bush's vision—the two-state solution.

 

Do you and she think [a peace agreement with the Palestinians] is possible? Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas reportedly said when he recently left Washington that he was very disappointed.
I don't want to comment about statements made by Dr. Abbas. My discussions with Condoleezza Rice are serious and in general optimistic that peace can happen--that the distance between us and the Palestinians is not such that it can't be bridged.

 

So do you still believe that there can be a declaration of principles or an agreement with the Palestinians [by year's end]?
A more detailed and accurate outline of how a solution of the two states should look.

 

Does that include Jerusalem and the difficult issues (borders, refugees)?
Some of the issues will be discussed later by agreement. The future of Jerusalem is one of them. It is probably going to be the last issue.

 

It will not be resolved by you and Abbas?
Maybe yes, but in a later stage.

 

In Annapolis, didn't you, President Bush and President Abbas talk about concluding a statement of principles or a framework agreement by the end of this year?
I don't know if you call it a statement of principles or a declaration of principles. They all amount to the same thing. We want to be able to define the vision of President Bush about the two states in a more accurate, specific and detailed manner.

 

I heard that you have a very good relationship with Abbas. Is that correct?
Yes. Because we meet quite regularly. More or less twice a month. I don't know of any greater frequency of meetings between leaders of nations.

 

Is it true that the talks have gone fairly far?
Yes, I think so—far enough to justify the efforts we are making and the desire to continue. Whether it is sufficient is a little bit premature to say.

 

What can you say about the talks in detail? Do you think Israel would give up settlements, retreat to the pre-'67 borders? How do you see the final outcome of the negotiations?
Well, one can say that the borders, once agreed, will be closer to what they were in '67 than what they are today because we will give up a large part of the territories . . . in the context of full, comprehensive peace and the total end of any hostilities.

 

Does that mean the Palestinians will give up the right of return?
I don't think they have to give it up. They don't have a right of return, and I don't think that this is on the agenda as far as Israel is concerned.

 

You said [a Palestinian state] would be closer to the pre-'67 borders. Do you think you can achieve such an agreement?
I think that the distance between us and them is not unbridgeable. I think that there are three issues which can be resolved: One is the territorial issue; the other is security arrangements; and the third is refugees.

 

Do you want peace with Syria, and do you think it's obtainable with President Bashar al-Assad?
We are very unhappy with the continued intensive involvement of Syria in the affairs of Lebanon and the lack of a democratic process in electing a new president in Lebanon. We are also unhappy with the continued links between Iran, Syria, Hezbollah and Hamas. [But] the relations between us and Syria have to be reexamined, [as well as] the possibility of making peace. It's not something that can be done publicly. I don't mind that President Assad made an announcement that there will be negotiations, but the actual negotiations ought to be discussed quietly. In principle, we are ready for it if they are.

 

In order to have a full peace with Israel, would Syria have to break with Iran? Is such a break possible?
Look, I don't know if this is a possibility or how you can describe it in terms of probabilities. But one thing I know, if I don't check it, I will never find out. I think at the end of the day, this will have to be the choice of Syria.

 

Have there been direct Israel-Syrian talks, or have they all been conducted via the Turks?
I prefer not to go into these details.

 

Hasn't the United States been apprehensive about Israel-Syria negotiations for some time?
The international and local press . . . [has left] the impression that America does not allow Israel to engage in negotiations with Syria. This is not true. I never heard from my friend George W. Bush any warning or any request not to negotiate with the Syrians. I think that if the Syrians will handle the negotiations with us in an appropriate manner, they will be surprised to see how these negotiations can improve their status with America. My personal view is that no one can be of better help to this process than President Bush. Because any new president in America, if confronted with this issue, will have to wait two years at least until he learns enough and finds the appropriate time to devote to this, while Bush knows, Bush is familiar, and Bush understands. Therefore, if one is interested in a [Syrian-Israeli] process that ultimately leads to a public endorsement by the United States of America, then he has to hurry up. I believe, for reasons that I don't want to go into, that for Syria, the road to Washington must cross Jerusalem. I know what I'm talking about.

 

Officials in the U.S. government are reportedly concerned that Syria's real price for peace is Lebanon. The U.S. is interested in the survival of the government of Lebanese Prime Minister Siniora.
I know what our expectations are. I know what the Americans' expectations are. I'm not going to do anything which [is in contradiction] to what my understanding of [what] the fundamental interests of the United States are in this part of the world.

 

So is this a pure deal about the Golan?
I didn't say that. I said that this is an attempt to achieve peace between Israel and Syria. And at the same time, to also make sure that the interests of free, democratic Lebanon are well protected. What the ingredients of peace [are] is something that will have to be discussed. I would not limit it to only one issue. It has to be peace from both sides--no threats or attacks from both sides.

 

What is your assessment of Assad?
Look, Assad is the president of Syria. He enjoys fairly effective control over his country. And I'm looking forward to negotiating with him.

 

What will you do about the situation in Gaza? Your towns keep getting hit by missiles, and weapons keep getting smuggled in from Egypt. Is it getting to the point where you have no other choice but to take action?
I don't like this terminology that you have no choice. You always have a choice. While we were talking, two Qassam rockets landed in open areas near the regional municipality of Eshkol. Then there were a series of seven rockets shot from Gaza to [the Israeli town of] Sderot.

 

Will there be an Egyptian brokered ceasefire with Hamas?
There is no talk about a peace brokered between us and Hamas. The question is whether Egypt will fully understand and support the conditions set forth by Israel for refraining from further military actions. Hamas will have to stop all of the terrorist actions—ground, ground-to-air, rockets, mortar shells, suicidal attacks—any kind of attacks by all the organizations.. . . Stopping all the violent and hostile actions means ending the smuggling of arms into the Gaza territory.

 

You mean via Egypt?
Through Egypt by the Palestinians. We don't blame Egypt.

 

Why not? Why can't they stop it?
They tried to stop it, and we hope that they will become more effective in stopping it.

 

What about the investigations you are dealing with?
I'm dealing with them, and, unfortunately, as a matter of law, I can't talk about it. It's unpleasant. It's mostly referring to campaign contributions.

 

Have you thought of saying, 'Okay, I'll just resign' . . .
I don't really see that this will bring any better outcome for the country at this point. Not that a person is indispensable or irreplaceable. . . . But given the circumstances right now, I think it will not do good that I step down at this point. I have to think about it. I have to think about the possible ramifications of an early retirement. I was not born to be prime minister, and I'm not going to stay here until the end of my life. I'm too young for that. Right now, I think it will be a mistake [to leave], and I have a job to accomplish, a vision to realize. This is the great vision of peace which I think is possible this time more than ever.

 

What about Iran? You told me over a year ago that tolerating a nuclear weapon was not possible.
Yes, Israel will not tolerate a nuclear weapon in the hands of people who say openly, explicitly and publicly that they want to wipe Israel off the map. Why should we?

 

If you're not prepared to live with it, is Israel capable [of striking Iran's nuclear facilities]?
I don't want to go into this issue every time I'm asked, 'Do you have plans?' The United States is the leader of the international effort to stop the Iranians from becoming nuclear. The European countries, the Russians, the Chinese, the Japanese—all the most powerful nations of the world are joined together in an effort to stop the nuclearization of Iran. I hope they will be successful.

 

But didn't Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad just say that he has added 6,000 more centrifuges to his program . . . got them up and running?
We have to listen to him, but that doesn't mean that we have to believe everything he says.

 

It's widely believed in the U.S. that after the latest National Intelligence Estimate [on Iran, which concluded with 'high confidence' that Iran had shelved its nuclear weapons program in 2003], the U.S. will not act.
We have a different opinion about [the Iranian nuclear program] from the NIE, and we haven't changed our attitude. The Israeli information is available for our friends to examine and to come to other conclusions.

 

You mean that you think [Iran's nuclear program] is closer to being usable?
The main point of the NIE, the estimate, was that there is no evidence that the Iranians restarted their [covert] military program since it was closed in 2003. . . . Based on the information we have, the military program continues and has never been stopped. If this program continues, at some point they will be in possession of a nuclear weapon.

 

There have been recent revelations in Congress about the North Korean-built Syrian nuclear reactor bombed by Israel last September. The director of the CIA actually said that the Syrian reactor would have had enough plutonium to make two bombs. What do you say?
I heard about the briefing that [CIA Director Michael] Hayden gave Congress. But I didn't talk about it before the briefing, and I won't talk about [it] now.

 

You can't say anything about September 6th?
We are not looking backward. We are looking forward. We are looking now to establish a peace process with Syria.
URL:

 

Continued (Permanent Link)

Isreali electric car prototype demonstrated

Last update - 16:44 11/05/2008    

 

 Israel gets first look at prototype of revolutionary electric car  By The Associated Press

Israelis got a first demonstration Sunday of the electric car that developers hope will revolutionize transportation in the country and serve as a pilot for the rest of the world.

 

The silver car doing circles in a Tel Aviv parking lot looked like a regular sedan - except it had no exhaust pipe and there was an electric socket where the mouth of the gas tank should have been.

 

The Silicon Valley start-up Project Better Place hopes the fully electric prototype will be on Israel's streets in large numbers beginning at the end of 2010.

 

Backers of the project say the car will drastically reduce dependence on oil, cut emissions and put Israel at the forefront of international efforts to develop more environmentally friendly modes of transportation. Israel's government endorsed the project in January, and a Danish energy company also has joined as a partner.

 

But experts say technical pitfalls, such as a limited battery range, remain before the car will be marketable, and other car manufacturers are gambling on gas-electric hybrids as the green cars of the immediate future.

 

If the company's plan proceeds on schedule, Israel will be the first country to have electric cars on its highways in large numbers.

 

On the dashboard of the Renault sedan presented Sunday, the gas gauge was replaced by a screen showing how much battery power remained. In a test drive, the car accelerated quickly - the company says it can go from zero to 60 miles (100 kilometers) per hour in eight seconds - and the engine remained nearly inaudible even at high speed.

 

The project is a joint venture between automotive giant Renault-Nissan, which is building the car, and Project Better Place, which came up with the business model and is supposed to operate a recharging grid to be built across Israel beginning in 2009.

 

Several hundred cars are scheduled to hit Israel's streets in a pilot run next year, the company says, with larger numbers to arrive in late 2010.

 
The initiative is being led by Shai Agassi, an Israeli-American entrepreneur and high-tech wunderkind who raised $200 million (129.38 million) to get the project off the ground. He also got Israel's government to endorse it earlier this year and promise tax incentives to promote the new vehicles when they go on the market.

 

At the time, experts said there are still plenty of technical pitfalls that need to be surmounted before the car becomes available to the general public.

 

Critics have pointed at the car battery's limited range - 125 miles (200 kilometers) - as a potentially major deterrent to consumers.

 

For long drives, motorists will be able to replace the battery at about 150 swap stations expected to be built around the country. The battery swap is expected to take the same amount of time as filling a tank of gas. For shorter journeys, drivers will be able to recharge the batteries at home or at the office.

 

Drivers will pay a monthly subscription for the batteries, with different plans like those of cellphone users. The company says the rates will come to less than the average monthly expenditure on gasoline.

 

Following Israel's lead, the Danish energy company DONG Energy AS adopted the Better Place model in March with a plan to have thousands of cars running on electricity generated by wind turbines by 2011.

 

If the company's plans remain on schedule, Israeli consumers will be able to purchase an electric car by the end of 2010 for around the price of a regular sedan.

Continued (Permanent Link)

Honest Reporting takes on Johann Hari's complaints about Israel

Hari has invoked the usual "nobody lets us talk" complaint to defend inaccurracies and fake quotes.

HonestReporting critiqued Johann Hari's op-ed in the Independent, systematically exposing the many distortions, omissions and Hari's reliance on fringe revisionist sources and individuals. We even caught Hari employing a quote that he had previously been warned was false. Despite this, he has responded not by addressing the issues raised but by attacking us:

In the US and Britain, there is a campaign to smear anybody who tries to describe the plight of the Palestinian people. It is an attempt to intimidate and silence - and to a large degree, it works....

There was little attempt to dispute the facts I offered. Instead, some of the most high profile "pro-Israel" writers and media monitoring groups - including Honest Reporting and Camera - said I am an anti-Jewish bigot akin to Joseph Goebbels and Mahmoud Ahmadinejadh, while Melanie Phillips even linked the stabbing of two Jewish people in North London to articles like mine. Vast numbers of e-mails came flooding in calling for me to be sacked.

Responding in his own Independent column, Howard Jacobson, a writer highly regarded by the political liberal left in the UK, argues that Hari is mistaken

to invoke the spectre of a campaign, a front mobilised with aforethought to defame anyone who speaks ill of Israel. Indeed, accusing your detractors of carrying out a campaign often amounts to carrying out one in return - for it is a smear in itself to accuse people who disagree with you of acting out of no other motive than malice. He who says I smear him when I don't smears me.

Something else doesn't feel quite right to me about Johann Hari's unearthing of this "campaign", and that is his assertion that "it is an attempt to intimidate and silence - and to a large degree it works". To my ear, that answers intimidation with intimidation, since it impugns the intellectual honour of those of whom he speaks, and coerces us into thinking the worst of them.

Furthermore, it is patently untrue that "intimidation" has worked. Johann himself is demonstrably not intimidated. Nor is it easy to see who else is. Whatever the rights and wrongs of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, it cannot surely be argued that the Palestinian case is not heard.

Like us, Jacobson also questions Hari's use of revisionist historian Ilan Pappe, "something of a believer in campaigns and conspiracies himself, a man whose work has been questioned at every turn, not least by historians on whose findings he has drawn."

Melanie Phillips, who is also attacked in Hari's op-ed, responds to this statement:

Alan Dershowitz and Melanie Phillips are two of the most prominent figures sent in to attack anyone who disagrees with the Israeli right.

'Sent in', eh? By whom, exactly? By the world-wide Jewish/Zionist/Likudnik conspiracy, of course. Yup, it's those Protocols again. Whoops, what a giveaway. Case proved, I think.

We at HonestReporting are not so naïve to believe that Israel is infallible and immune from legitimate criticism. However, Hari's one-sided reliance upon fringe, revisionist sources and individuals deserves to be exposed along with his use of a falsified quotation to back his case.

Hari's piece was one-sided and journalistically suspect - HonestReporting and our subscribers had every right to respond. Charging us with "McCarthyism" is merely a means to silence those who disagree with his own views.

We will continue to help you, our subscribers, to write considered letters to media outlets using the materials we provide, despite this latest attempt to delegitimize ours and your right to do so.

Rather than shutting down free speech as Hari would have you believe, we encourage you to contribute positively to the debate. Please make your views heard by sending e-mails to The Independent - letters@independent.co.uk and posting to the comments section of Hari's op-ed.

Continued (Permanent Link)

Israel at 60 Remains a Success Story

Israel at 60 Remains a Success Story

 

 Efraim Inbar

 

BESA Perspectives Papers No. 42, May 11, 2008

 

Israel was successful in parrying several military challenges intent on destroying the Jewish state. Over time the power differential between Israel and its regional foes has grown, enhancing Israel's capacity to deal successfully with security problems. While Israel has become stronger, its enemies, with the exception of Iran, have become weaker. Moreover, the Jewish state is widely recognized as an entrenched reality even by Arab and Muslim states.

 

The common image of a deeply-torn Israel is inaccurate, as social cohesion is greater than before. An analysis of the political, social and economic dynamics within Israel indicates that time is on Israel's side. This is good news for the ability of Israeli society to withstand inevitable tests of protracted conflict in the future.

 

Significantly, the ideological debate over the future of the territories acquired in 1967 is over. The Sinai was relinquished in 1979 and Gaza in 2005. Over two thirds of Israelis oppose any territorial concessions in the Golan Heights. Concerning Judea and Samaria, there is a great majority in favor of partition, the traditional Zionist position, and in favor of retaining the settlement blocs, Jerusalem (the Temple Mount), and the Jordan Rift.

 

The current territorial debate revolves around the percentage of historic homeland that can be relinquished to Arab control. The discussion is not ideological, but couched in a pragmatic assessment of Israel's security needs and domestic political costs. Similarly, the Israeli public no longer opposes the establishment of a Palestinian state, once seen as a mortal danger, although skepticism over the ability of Palestinian state-building is widespread.

 

Furthermore, the expectations of the Left for peaceful coexistence with the Palestinians after the Oslo agreements, which elicited ridicule and anger on the Right, were replaced by a sober consensus that peace is not around the corner. Israeli society has reconciled itself to the idea that it will have to live by its sword for the foreseeable future and most of it is ready to pay the price of continuous conflict.

 

Similarly, the debates over economic policies have long disappeared. Nearly all Israelis agree that capitalism is the best way to create further wealth. Israel's strong, vibrant economy is a result of wise economic policies; stressing market values and adapting to globalization. Currently, all economic indices indicate bright prospects despite continuous security problems. A strong economy reinforces Israel's capacity to withstand the protracted conflict with its neighbors.

 

The Ashkenazi/Sephardi social rift has also become much less divisive than in the past. The number of "intermarriages" is on the rise, obfuscating ethnic differences. The political system has responded positively to complaints of discrimination by significantly increasing the number of Sephardi politicians at the local and national levels. The past three decades have seen an influx of Sephardi Jews into the middle class and into the ranks of the senior officers of the Israeli military.

 

The only rift within Israeli society which is still of great social, cultural and political importance is the religious-secular divide. However, this situation does not differ greatly from the afflictions of identity politics faced by other western societies. Moreover, the conflict is not between two clearly defined camps, leaving room for finding a reasonable modus vivendi. A growing number of Israelis identify themselves as traditionalists, situated in the middle of the Orthodox-Secular continuum.

 

 In the international arena, developments have been similarly positive. The American victory in the Cold War and in the 1991 Gulf War bode well for Israel, a valued American ally. The November 1991 Madrid conference, convened by the US, marked greater Arab acceptance of Israel. The Arab League peace initiative (2002) and the Arab states' presence at the Annapolis gathering (2007), indicate the continuation of this trend.

 

 Many important countries decided to improve relations with the Jewish state due to its perception as a good conduit to Washington and its military and technological strength. The year 1992 marked the establishment of ambassadorial relations by important states such as China, India, Turkey and Nigeria. Jerusalem nourished new strategic partnerships with Ankara and Delhi, alliances which add significantly to Israel's national power.

 

 The ups and mostly downs in Israeli-Palestinian relations have hardly had an impact of how states conduct their bilateral relations with Israel. Actually, the failures of the Palestinian national movement and the ascent of Hamas in Palestinian politics have elicited greater understanding for the Israeli predicament. 9/11 was an event that also sensitized much of the world to Israel's dilemmas in fighting Palestinian terrorism.

 

Palestinian terrorism was successfully contained since the large-scale 2002 offensive in the West Bank. Gaza will in all probability be subject to a similar military treatment to limit its nuisance value. The IDF learned its lesson from the 2006 fiasco in Lebanon and seems better prepared to deal with Hizballah.

 

 In contrast, Israel's foes in the Arab world display weakness and their stagnant societies are beleaguered by problems. The Human Development reports released by the UN underscore their huge deficits entering into the twenty-first century. Their ability to militarily challenge the status quo is limited.

 

The only serious security challenge is a nuclear Iran. It is unclear how the international community will deal with this issue, but the world seems more attentive to Israel's perspective on this matter. Possibly, Israel might be left alone to deal with the Ayatollas, but the obstruction of the Iranian nuclear program is not beyond the capabilities of Jerusalem.

 

Finally, the Zeitgeist of this epoch that stresses democracy and free market values favors Israel rather than its Muslim opponents, who continue to grapple with the challenge of modernity.

 

In conclusion, Israel is a vibrant democracy that prospers and maintains strong social cohesion. Significantly, it built a mighty military machine able to meet all regional threats. In parallel, Israel's international status has improved, while support for Israel in the US, its main ally and the hegemonic power in world affairs, remains high. Israel is a success story. If the country successfully continues to inculcate the Zionist ethos into the next generations, its future looks bright.

 

Efraim Inbar is Professor of Political Studies at Bar-Ilan University and the Director of the Begin-Sadat (BESA) Center for Strategic Studies.

 

 BESA Perspectives is published through the generosity of the Littauer Foundation.

Continued (Permanent Link)

Israel to hear Egypt proposal on Gaza truce Monday

Is this a good idea? If Israel doesn't do it is it a missed opportunity? Or can it create a nightmare and permanently install Hamas in Gaza?? 
 

 Israel to hear Egypt proposal on Gaza truce Monday By Reuters 

 

Israel will host an Egyptian mediator on Monday to hear a proposal for a truce with Hamas in the Gaza Strip, though Israel would still shun direct negotiations with the group, Israeli officials said.

 

Following talks with Egyptian intelligence chief Omar Suleiman in Cairo last month, Hamas offered a six-month halt to hostilities in Gaza if Israel were also to lift an embargo on the coastal Palestinian territory.

 

A spokesman for Prime Minister Ehud Olmert rebuffed the initiative when it was broached, but Deputy Defence Minister Matan Vilnai signalled possible flexibility on Sunday.

 

"Omar Suleiman will come, we will listen to him, we will confer, we will see what he is offering, and on that basis we will make decisions," he told Israel Radio.

 

"As of now, there is nothing on the table for discussion...We have no dialogue with an organization that flies the flag of our destruction," Vilnai said in reference to Hamas's refusal to forswear violence and recognize Israel.

 

Another Israeli official said Suleiman would come on Monday.

 

The United States has endorsed Cairo's mediation in hope of curbing violence that threatens to derail peace talks between Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Hamas's Western-backed and secular rival.

 

A senior Israeli official said this month that Israel would likely agree to an informal ceasefire in Gaza if cross-border rocket attacks and arms smuggling into the territory ended.

 

On Friday, a mortar bomb fired by Hamas fighters in Gaza across the border killed an Israeli civilian. Hours later, Israel's air force killed five Hamas security men in Gaza.

 

Egypt would want to parlay any Gaza truce into a similar future deal in the West Bank. Cairo's plan also includes attempts to reconcile Hamas, which rules Gaza, and Abbas's Fatah movement, which runs the Palestinian Authority from its West Bank base.

 

Hamas seized Gaza from Fatah last June, prompting Israel to step up economic sanctions and Egypt to shut its border with the coastal enclave. That border was temporarily opened on Saturday to allow sick and wounded Palestinians to seek treatment abroad.

 

Separately, Gaza's only power plant was forced to shut down due to a lack of fuel deliveries from Israel. Israeli officials said the EU-funded shipments would resume on Sunday.

 

Olmert, whose domestic standing has been sapped by a police investigation into his finances, pledged in a speech on Saturday to press ahead with peace talks with Abbas while responding harshly to attacks from Gaza.

 

"We will not desist from our actions and the other side knows how painful and harsh can be the blow that it will suffer," he said. "We will not relent until there will be full security for the citizens of Israel's south.

Continued (Permanent Link)

Shimon Peres interview with Newsweek

 

'Practically All of Us Were Hawks'

Shimon Peres on the search for peace with the Palestinians, the Iranian threat and American presidents since Truman.

Lally Weymouth

NEWSWEEK

Updated: 3:57 PM ET May 10, 2008

Israeli President Shimon Peres, 85, is the last remaining founding father of the Israeli state still in office. A hawk who helped build Israel's military-industrial complex, in recent years Peres has been a leader in the search for peace with the Palestinians. As part of Israel's 60th-anniversary celebrations, Peres is hosting a conference this week titled "Facing Tomorrow," which will be attended by President George W. Bush and other dignitaries. Last week Peres looked forward as well as back in an interview with NEWSWEEK's Lally Weymouth in Jerusalem. Excerpts:

Weymouth: Is there a realistic chance of peace with the Palestinians?
Peres: I think we have to follow a two-track approach -- one political, the other economic. We have unbelievable economic proposals as to how to make accommodations between us and our neighbors. In the political negotiations, the gaps are not very great, but they are highly emotional. It will be extremely difficult to put them on paper because each party looks to its own audience and will be very careful not to appear as losers.

So do you think you should be focusing on improving the day-to-day lives of the Palestinian people rather than trying to achieve a political agreement?
Both. The economic coordination depends upon three [parties -- the Jordanians, the Palestinians and us … What I think can be done is to take the whole length of the border between us and the Jordanians and the Palestinians and convert it into a free-trade zone. We can create close to a million jobs, change the standard of living, solve the water problem which is becoming catastrophic for the Jordanians, Palestinians and us, and build a new era.

What should be done about Gaza?
I think the ones who will change the situation in Gaza will be the people of Gaza. They are getting tired of Hamas. They say, "What the hell are you doing to us?" They are looking for a ceasefire.

As a young man, you were head of manpower under Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion. Your assignment was to purchase arms for Israel, but the United States had imposed an arms embargo on your country. Sam Bronfman in Canada helped you. How did you meet him?
I

 went to his office without an appointment.

You just rang the bell?
Yes. I was in my 20s and was head of our mission in the United States.

You persuaded Mr. Bronfman to help you?
I told him that we wanted to buy surplus guns from the Canadian government. So, being a businessman, he asked me how much they were asking. I said, "Two million dollars." He said, "It's too much. We can cut it." Then he called up the minister of Commerce and Industry, C. D. Howe, in Ottawa and started to yell, "Two million dollars? Haven't you any shame? I want to see you." So Bronfman took his Cadillac and the two of us went to Ottawa. In Howe's office, he started to argue. My God! The poor Howe said, "OK, we shall halve it. Instead of 2 million, 1 million."

Then Bronfman asked me, "Where are you going to get the other million?" I said, "From you." He wanted to kill me. He called up his wife and told her, "Tonight at 8 o'clock we will invite 50 people. Everyone will pay $20,000. We need a million dollars." In the evening we had a million dollars.

A few years later you made a deal with the French Defense Ministry to sell Israel arms. These arms were crucial to Israel's survival in the '67 war.

Yes, the '67 war, the Sinai war and part of the Yom Kippur war. They gave us old arms. There was an embargo on arms sales by the United States, Great Britain and France. While Russia supplied free arms to the Arabs, we didn't have any guns, tanks or planes ... So I went to France and started to work. Finally, they were convinced. All of a sudden France opened up to Israel. It changed the whole situation.

Now you are known for your dedication to the search for peace. But when I first interviewed you in 1981, you were still hawkish.

Half of Israel was under the impression that the Arabs would not make peace with us. As long as they thought they could overpower us, they wouldn't make peace. So practically all of us were hawks. The minute that Israel showed its muscles and proved that you cannot overcome [it was] the first time we saw some chances for peace. And then we went over to the other side. It's not that I changed my character. I found a different situation.

Do you worry for your country on its 60th anniversary when there is such a scandal around your prime minister?
The prime minister is innocent until it will be shown otherwise. But, what shall I say? Better a democracy with scandals than an authoritarian system without scandals.

What do you believe should be done about Iran's nuclear program? After all, you were once the creator of the military-industrial complex here, including the Dimona reactor.
We never said we were going to wipe anybody off the map, but they have. It's not a problem of nuclear capability but of political intention.

What do you think about that?
I think it's terrible. I think today [Iranian President Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad is becoming more and more a problem for the world, not only for Israel. Sooner or later, the world will wake up.

You told me once that you've known every U.S. president since Harry Truman. Is that correct?
Yes.

So, how does this president impress you?
I think Bush did something which is very courageous. And that was to topple down Saddam Hussein. Imagine today that we would have in the Middle East both Ahmadinejad and Saddam Hussein. The problem with the Europeans is, they are right but they are always late. And here to be late is to be wrong.

What about President Clinton?
Clinton was a friend. Bush's father was a friend and President Ronald Reagan was a friend …

Reagan could conquer your heart in five minutes by his modesty. You couldn't meet Reagan without being equipped with an anti-Russian joke. And you could be sure that he had another one.

The title of your conference this week is "Facing Tomorrow"?
Yes. I think the world has changed, the Jewish world has changed and Israel has changed … I think that relations with the Jewish people shouldn't be based so much on finance but rather on intelligence and intellect, arts and spirit. Because, after all, it's not the pocket that enriches our minds. It's the mind that enriches our pocket and we are looking too much to the pockets and not enough to the minds.

We want to be citizens of the world and not just followers of our faith. We would like to be as old as the Ten Commandments and as new as nanotechnology.

Continued (Permanent Link)

Europe - keep your fingers crossed for Israel

National Review Online

May 10, 2008, 8:30 a.m.

Be Careful What You Wish For
Israel's doom would be bad news for Europe.

By Mark Steyn

Almost everywhere I went last week — TV, radio, speeches — I was asked about the 60th anniversary of the Israeli state. I don't recall being asked about Israel quite so much on its 50th anniversary, which as a general rule is a much bigger deal than the 60th. But these days friends and enemies alike smell weakness at the heart of the Zionist Entity. Assuming President Ahmadinejad's apocalyptic fancies don't come to pass, Israel will surely make it to its 70th birthday. But a lot of folks don't fancy its prospects for its 80th and beyond. See the Atlantic Monthly cover story: "Is Israel Finished?" Also the cover story in Canada's leading news magazine, Maclean's, which dispenses with the question mark: "Why Israel Can't Survive."

Why? By most measures, the Jewish state is a great success story. The modern Middle East is the misbegotten progeny of the British and French colonial map-makers of 1922. All the nation states in that neck of the woods date back a mere 60 or 70 years — Iraq to the Thirties, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, and Israel to the Forties. The only difference is that Israel has made a go of it. Would I rather there were more countries like Israel, or more like Syria? I don't find that a hard question to answer. Israel is the only liberal democracy in the Middle East (Iraq may yet prove a second) and its Arab citizens enjoy more rights than they would living under any of the kleptocrat kings and psychotic dictators who otherwise infest the region. On a tiny strip of land narrower at its narrowest point than many American townships, Israel has built a modern economy with a GDP per capita just shy of $30,000 — and within striking distance of the European Union average. If you object that that's because it's uniquely blessed by Uncle Sam, well, for the past 30 years the second largest recipient of U.S. aid has been Egypt: Their GDP per capita is $5,000, and America has nothing to show for its investment other than one-time pilot Mohammed Atta coming at you through the office window.

Jewish success against the odds is nothing new. "Aaron Lazarus the Jew," wrote Anthony Hope in his all but unknown prequel to The Prisoner Of Zenda, "had made a great business of it, and had spent his savings in buying up the better part of the street; but" — and for Jews there's always a `but' — "since Jews then might hold no property…"

Ah, right. Like the Jewish merchants in old Europe who were tolerated as leaseholders but could never be full property owners, the Israelis are regarded as operating a uniquely conditional sovereignty. Jimmy Carter, just returned from his squalid suck-up junket to Hamas, is merely the latest Western sophisticate to pronounce triumphantly that he has secured the usual (off-the-record, highly qualified, never to be translated into Arabic, and instantly denied) commitment from the Jews' enemies acknowledging Israel's "right to exist." Well, whoop-de-doo. Would you enter negotiations on such a basis?

Since Israel marked its half-century, the "right to exist" is now routinely denied not just in Gaza and Ramallah and the region's presidential palaces but on every European and Canadian college campus. During the Lebanese incursion of 2006, Matthew Parris wrote in the Times of London: "The past 40 years have been a catastrophe, gradual and incremental, for world Jewry. Seldom in history have the name and reputation of a human grouping lost so vast a store of support and sympathy so fast. My opinion - held not passionately but with little personal doubt — is that there is no point in arguing about whether the state of Israel should have been established where and when it was" — which lets you know how he would argue it if minded to. Richard Cohen in The Washington Post was more straightforward: "Israel itself is a mistake. It is an honest mistake, a well-intentioned mistake, a mistake for which no one is culpable, but the idea of creating a nation of European Jews in an area of Arab Muslims (and some Christians) has produced a century of warfare and terrorism of the sort we are seeing now. Israel fights Hezbollah in the north and Hamas in the south, but its most formidable enemy is history itself." Cohen and Parris, two famously moderate voices in the leading newspapers of two of the least anti-Israeli capital cities in the West, have nevertheless internalized the same logic as Ahmadinejad: Israel should not be where it is. Whether it's a "stain of shame" or just a "mistake" is the merest detail.

Aaron Lazarus and every other "European Jew" of his time would have had a mirthless chuckle over Cohen's designation. The Jews lived in Europe for centuries, but without ever being accepted as "European": To enjoy their belated acceptance as Europeans, they had to move to the Middle East. Reviled on the Continent as sinister rootless cosmopolitans with no conventional national allegiance, they built a conventional nation state, and now they're reviled for that, too. The "oldest hatred" didn't get that way without an ability to adapt.

The Western intellectuals who promote "Israeli Apartheid Week" at this time each year are laying the groundwork for the next stage of Zionist delegitimization. The talk of a "two-state solution" will fade. In the land between the Jordan and the Mediterranean, Jews are barely a majority. Gaza has one of the highest birth rates on the planet: The median age is 15.8 years. Its population is not just literally exploding, at Israeli checkpoints, but also doing so in the less incendiary but demographically decisive sense.

Arabs will soon be demanding one democratic state — Jews and Muslims — from Jordan to the sea. And even those who understand that this will mean the death of Israel will find themselves so confounded by the multicultural pieties of their own lands they'll be unable to argue against it. Contemporary Europeans are not exactly known for their moral courage: The reports one hears of schools quietly dropping the Holocaust from their classrooms because it offends their growing numbers of Muslim students suggest that even the pretense of "evenhandedness" in the Israeli-Palestinian "peace process" will be long gone a decade hence.

The joke, of course, is that Israel, despite its demographic challenge, still enjoys a birth rate twice that of the European average. All the reasons for Israel's doom apply to Europe with bells on. And, unlike much of the rest of the west, Israel has the advantage of living on the front line of the existential challenge. "I have a premonition that will not leave me," wrote Eric Hoffer, America's great longshoreman philosopher, after the '67 war. "As it goes with Israel so will it go with all of us."

Indeed. So happy 60th birthday. And here's to many more.

© 2008 Mark Steyn

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National Review Online -  

Continued (Permanent Link)

Is Gaza Occupied?

The Myth Of Occupied Gaza

By David B. Rivkin Jr. and Lee A. Casey
Saturday, May 10, 2008; A15

Hamas claims that former president Jimmy Carter's recent meeting with its leader, Khaled Meshal, marks its recognition as a "national liberation movement" -- even though Hamas rockets fired from the Gaza Strip, which Hamas rules as an elected "government," continue to rain down on Israel's civilian population. While Hamas is clearly trying to bolster its legitimacy, the conflict along Israel's southern border has a broader legal dimension -- the question of whether, as a matter of international law, Israel "occupies" Gaza. The answer is pivotal: It governs the legal rights of Israel and Gaza's population and may well set a legal precedent for wars between sovereign states and non-state entities, including terrorist groups such as al-Qaeda.

Israel's critics argue that Gaza remains "occupied" territory, even though Israeli forces were unilaterally withdrawn from the area in August 2005. (Hamas won a majority in the Gazan assembly in 2006 and seized control militarily in 2007.) If this is so, Jerusalem is responsible for the health and welfare of Gazans and is arguably limited in any type of military force it uses in response to continuing Hamas attacks. Moreover, even Israel's nonmilitary responses to Hamas-led terrorist activities -- severely limiting the flow of food, fuel and other commodities into Gaza -- would violate its obligations as an occupying power.

Israel, however, is not an occupying power, judging by traditional international legal tests. Although such tests have been articulated in various ways over time, they all boil down to this question: Does a state exercise effective governmental authority -- if only on a de facto basis -- over the territory? As early as 1899, the Hague Convention on the Laws and Customs of War on Land stated that "[t]erritory is considered occupied when it is actually placed under the authority of the hostile army. The occupation applies only to the territory where such authority is established, and in a position to assert itself."

The Hague Convention is a founding document of the modern law of armed conflict, and its definition of occupied territory was woven into the 1949 Geneva Conventions. There, the relevant provision provides that "[i]n the case of occupied territory, the application of the present Convention shall cease one year after the general close of military operations," although certain protections for the populations continue "to the extent that such Power exercises the functions of government in such territory." That is the key -- exercising the functions of government. This proposition was recognized in a seminal Nuremberg prosecution, the Trial of William List and Others.

It is because an occupying power exercises effective control over a territory that international law substantially restricts the measures, military or economic, it can bring to bear upon this territory, well beyond the limits that would be applicable before occupation, whether in wartime or peacetime.

The Israeli military does not control Gaza; nor does Israel exercise any government functions there. Claims that Israel continues to occupy Gaza suggest that a power having once occupied a territory must continue to behave toward the local population as an occupying power until all outstanding issues are resolved. This "principle" can be described only as an ingenious invention; it has no basis in traditional international law.

The adoption of any such rule (designed to limit Israel's freedom of action and give Hamas a legal leg up in its continuing conflict) should be actively opposed by the United States. Its adoption would suggest that no occupying power can withdraw of its own volition without incurring continuing, and perhaps permanent, legal obligations to a territory. This issue is particularly acute regarding territory not otherwise controlled by a functioning state -- failed states or failed areas of states where the "legitimate" government cannot or will not exercise effective control. Such places -- call them badlands -- were once rare. Over the past 15 years, though, there has been an explosion in the number of such areas, notably parts of Afghanistan, Somalia and portions of Pakistan.

Gaza is exceptional only in that its international legal status is indeterminate. Its last true sovereign was the Ottoman Porte. It was part of the British Palestine Mandate and has since been administered by both Egypt and Israel. Today, no state claims sovereign authority, though it is expected that Gaza will become part of a future Palestinian state. For its part, Hamas acknowledges no higher authority and functions as a de facto government in Gaza. It is a classic example of a terrorist-controlled badland.

Unduly handicapping states that intervene in such badlands -- whether to protect their own interests, those of the local population or both -- is unrealistic and irresponsible. Requiring agreement by the "international community" (whatever that may be) as a precondition for extinguishing such a designation is equally unproductive if the goal is saving lives. Consider the example of Darfur.

Even worse is pretending that groups such as Hamas are merely criminal gangs that must be dealt with as a local policing problem -- just one of the potential side effects of imposing an "occupied" status on a territory. This implicates U.S. interests directly, since America's ability to use robust armed force against al-Qaeda and similar non-state actors remains critical to defending our civilian population from attack. Efforts to limit states' rights to use military force against such groups simply benefit the globe's worst rogue elements and endanger the civilian populations among which they operate. Here, as in so many other areas, the traditional international law that imposes the obligations of an occupier only on states that physically occupy a territory makes perfect sense.

The writers are Washington lawyers who served in the Justice Department under Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. They were members of the U.N. Subcommission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights from 2004 to 2007.

 

Continued (Permanent Link)

Benny Morris on Palestinian Refugees and the political solution

From Dove to Hawk
A prominent Israeli historian explains why, after decades of research about the Jewish state, he now holds out little hope for reconciliation between Jews and Palestinians .
Benny Morris
Special Guest Columnist
Updated: 6:23 PM ET May 8, 2008

I remember the moment when the Palestinian diaspora began to interest me, professionally. It was in Rashidiye Camp, outside Tyre, in June 1982, just after the Is­rael Defense Forces had scythed through on their way north to oust the Palestinian Liberation Organization from Lebanon. A journalist at the time, I picked my way through the devastated buildings. Most of the men had fled or been detained or killed by the Israelis, but I was struck by a group of old women hunched over a tabun, an outdoor oven, making pita bread far from their homeland. A few weeks later a stash of documents produced in 1948 by the Palmah—the strike force of the Haganah, the main Zionist underground in Palestine—was opened for me, revealing why and how many of these people had been displaced as Israel was born.
My historical account of that event, published a few years later, was greeted with some acclaim by Palestinians and their sympathizers—and much shock by Is­raelis, who had been brought up to believe, or to pretend to believe, that the Palestini­ans had fled their homes four decades earli­er because of orders or advice from their leaders. In certain places, at certain times, there had been such advice and orders, of course. But there had also been Israeli ex­pulsions, as well as the chaos of British withdrawal and economic hardship and anxiety about an uncharted future under Jewish rule. In most places it was the flail and fear of onrushing hostilities that had set some 700,000 Arabs on the roads.

Myself and several other young Israeli historians were dubbed revisionists and commonly assumed to be doves. But what brought me to my conclusions about 1948 were the facts, not my political views. Con­trary to current historiographic discourse I believe there is such a thing as the Truth—what, why and how things happened—and I've always sought it in my research. If I've since come to a much bleaker opinion about the possibility of reconciliation be­tween Jews and Palestinians—many would now call me a hawk—it is also because of that research.

During the 1990s, as the Oslo peace process gained momentum, I was cautious­ly optimistic about the prospects for peace. But at the same time I was scouring the just opened archives of the Haganah and the IDF. Studying the roots of the Arab-Is­raeli conflict—in particular the pronounce­ments and positions of the Palestinian leadership from the 1920s on—left me chilled. Their rejection of any compromise, whether a partition of Palestine between its Jewish and Arab inhabitants or the cre­ation of a binational state with political parity between the two communities, was deep-seated, consensual and consistent.

Haj Amin al-Husseini, the mufti of Jerusalem and leader of the Palestinian na­tional movement during the 1930s and 1940s, insisted throughout on a single Muslim Arab state in all of Palestine. The Palestinian Arab "street" chanted "Idbah al-Yahud" (slaughter the Jews) both during the 1936-1939 revolt against the British and in 1947, when Arab militias launched a campaign to destroy the Yishuv, the Jewish community in Palestine. Husseini led both campaigns.

So when Yasir Arafat rejected Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak's two-state proposals at Camp David in July 2000, and then President Clinton's sweetened offer the follow­ing December, my surprise was not exces­sive. Nor was I astounded by the spectacle of masses of suicide bombers launched, with Arafat's blessing, against Israel's shop­ping malls, buses and restaurants in the second intifada, which erupted in Septem­ber 2000. Each suicide bomber seemed to be a microcosm of what Palestine's Arabs had in mind for Israel as a whole. Arafat's rejectionism and, after his death, the election of Hamas to dominance in the Pales­tinian national movement, persuaded me that no two-state solution was in the offing and that the Palestinians, as a people, were bent, as they had been throughout their history, on "recovering" all of Palestine.

I found that current events had echoes in the historical record, and vice versa. The founding charter of Hamas repeatedly refers to the victory of Saladin over the me­dieval crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem, and compares the crusaders to the Zionists. In researching my new history of the 1948 war, I was struck by the fact that this analo­gy, usually overlooked or ignored by previ­ous historians, suffused the statements and thinking of Palestinian leaders and the leaders of the surrounding Arab states dur­ing the countdown to, and the course of, the war. A few days before Arab armies struck at Jewish forces in Palestine, Abd al-Rahman Azzam, secretary general of the Arab League, told the British minister in Transjordan their aim was to "sweep the Jews into the sea."

If the documents I studied 20 years ago painted Palestinians tragically, as the underdog, this record did the opposite. It has become clear to me that from its start the struggle against the Zionist enterprise wasn't merely a national conflict between two peoples over a piece of territory but also a religious crusade against an infidel usurper. As early as Dec. 2, 1947, four days after the passage of the partition resolution, the scholars of Al Azhar University proclaimed a "worldwide jihad in defense of Arab Palestine" and de­clared that it was the duty of every Muslim to take part.

This history has deepened and reinforced my pessimism, itself bred by the fail­ure of Oslo. Those currently riding high in the region—figures like Hamas's Ismail Haniyeh and Khaled Meshaal, Hizbullah's Hassan Nasrallah and Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad—are true believers who are convinced it is Allah's command and every Muslim's duty to extirpate the "Zionist entity" from the sacred soil of the Middle East. For all its economic, political, scientific and cultural achievements and military prowess, Israel, at 60, remains profoundly insecure -- for there can be no real security for the Jewish state, surrounded by a surg­ing sea of Muslims, in the absence of peace.

 

Morris's most recent book on Israeli history is the recently pub­lished "1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War."

Continued (Permanent Link)

Israel's war on despair

Israel's war on despair

Melanie Phillips | May 10, 2008

 

WHAT would Israel's first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, have said if, on the day that he declared the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948, he had known that six decades thence Israel would be encircled by its enemies, hopelessly outnumbered and fighting for its existence?

 

He would surely have said: so what's new?
This week, on May 8, Israel celebrated the 60th anniversary of that declaration. With every decade that it clocks up, people ask the same question: will Israel still be there for the next one? It is indeed astonishing that it has not only survived but is flourishing. Its situation as a permanently embattled nation is unique. On the day after Ben-Gurion declared its independence, six Arab armies invaded and tried to wipe it out. With the present exception of Egypt and Jordan, the Arab and Muslim world has been trying ever since.

 

Israel is the only country whose creation was approved by the UN, yet it is the only one whose legitimacy is called into question. It is the only country that the world requires to compromise with its Palestinian Arab attackers and accede to their demands, even while they are firing rockets at its schools and houses and blowing up its citizens. It is the only country that continues to provide electricity and basic services to those attackers and routinely treats thousands of Palestinians in its hospitals, even those who have Israeli blood on their hands. Yet it also is the only country that, in the court of public opinion, is condemned for behaving disproportionately when it uses targeted military means to defend itself and is accused of causing the very Nazi or apartheid atrocities of which it is itself the victim.

 

At present, the situation looks particularly ominous. Israel is menaced on several fronts by Iran which, racing to develop a nuclear weapon, is threatening a new genocide of the Jews while denying the last one. In Lebanon Hassan Nasrallah, leader of the Iranian-sponsored army Hezbollah, which is once again armed with thousands of rockets, says the next attack on Israel is not a matter of if but when.

 

Since Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005, Iranian-backed Hamas, which is pledged to wipe out Israel and every Jew, has built a well-trained standing army of at least 20,000 men and a huge arsenal of weapons smuggled in from Egypt, and relentlessly attacks Israel with rockets and bombs.

 

It is widely expected that, once Independence Day is over and President George W. Bush has returned home from his celebratory visit, Israel will finally mount a substantial incursion into Gaza to deal with Hamas. If it does, Western opinion, which largely ignores Israeli victimisation, can be guaranteed to cry "atrocity" once again.

 

And just as before, Hamas will deliberately place women and children in the line of fire to maximise civilian casualties to further inflame that opinion.

 

For Israel finds itself trapped by a pincer movement of military and psychological attack from not only the Arab and Muslim world but also the West. And Britain, whose intelligentsia has swallowed wholesale Arab and Muslim lies, is the Western leader of those baying for Israel's head. Thanks to the poison spread by the British media, the universities, non-government organisations and the churches, Israel has been systematically demonised and delegitimised.

 

Few are aware, for example, how Hamas and Hezbollah deliberately position terrorists and weaponry in densely populated civilian areas, using women and children as human shields. While British headlines scream at Israel for causing a humanitarian crisis in Gaza, few are aware that Hamas has been stealing fuel supplies intended for Gaza's population and blowing up the crossing points to provoke Israel into closing them, to escalate the conflict and inflame the world.

 

Even fewer are aware that many of the most inflammatory images from the region are fabricated, since Hamas and Hezbollah routinely stage ostensible atrocities or artificially exaggerate incidents using doctored footage, courtesy of British journalists who are threatened with murder or kidnap if they fail to toe the line.

 

More fundamentally, the obsessional demonisation of Israel is based on a false set of beliefs taken straight from Arab propaganda: that, as a result of Holocaust guilt, Israel was created when a load of European Jews with no claim to the land were dumped on Palestine, driving out its rightful Arab Muslim inhabitants. Ben-Gurion would be surprised to find, for example, that today Israel is regarded as illegally occupying the West Bank (and, until 2005, Gaza). Along with modern Israel, this was part of the territory of Palestine within which in 1922 the League of Nations gave Britain the task of re-establishing the Jewish national home because of the unique claim by the Jews, the only people for whom it had been their nation state, hundreds of years before the Arabs invaded it.

 

In other words, far from Israel being Palestinian land, the Jews are entitled to claim it under international law, which also gives it the right to hold on to it in self-defence.

 

Yet so-called progressive opinion not only denies law and history but demands (as do the Palestinians) the ethnic cleansing of every last Jewish settler from a putative Palestinian state (just as half Israel's population was created by Jews driven out of their ancient homes in Arab lands).

 

So much for anti-racism.

 

The denial and inversion of such facts has singled out Israel for vilification applied to no other country. Scapegoated for crimes of which it is in fact the victim, Israel has become the Jew of the Western world. This is a victory for the Arabs in the new type of war in which they are engaged. Asymmetric warfare, whose principal battlefield is the mind, uses ostensibly powerless people (the Palestinians) who are in fact backed by powerful state actors (Iran). Such an inversion of strong and weak and the systematic use of deception are vital to the principal strategic goal of asymmetric warfare: to confuse and demoralise its victims and suborn world opinion to its cause.

 

Even Israel itself has weakened under this. For it has an intelligentsia that is no longer confident of the nation's right to its own Jewish identity. This has created a dangerous vacuum. In Israeli universities, revisionist historians have told corrosive lies about their country's history, portraying it as having been born in sin. In the schools, children have not been taught Jewish history and parrot Arab disinformation instead.

 

The country's sense of national purpose has been further weakened by the 2006 Lebanon war, which punctured public belief in Israel's military invincibility, and by the ongoing crisis of political leadership caused by a political system that is endemically corrupt and excludes the brightest and the best from public office.

 

The result of all this is that, at present, both the Israeli Left and Right are consumed by a morbid despair.

 

The Left thinks Israel is doomed to war in perpetuity because there is no prospect of a Palestinian state, which it remains convinced is the prerequisite for peace, despite this being contrary to all history, evidence and logic.

 

The Right, on the other hand, thinks that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is Israel's Neville Chamberlain, about to declare peace in our time by giving away half of Jerusalem and the Golan Heights and thus delivering Israel to the wolves of Arab annihilation.

 

But both are surely missing the bigger picture. First, despite entering its seventh decade of living under existential siege, Israel is prospering. Its economy is booming, it leads the world in hi-tech and property prices in Tel Aviv rival those in London. Second, having stared over the edge of the cultural abyss, it has started to realise the danger. It is beginning to turn education around, with a new awareness dawning among high school principals of the need to teach Jewish history, identity and values. And although unprecedented numbers of mainly secular Israelis choose to live abroad, there are rapidly growing numbers of the religiously orthodox who know exactly what they are fighting for and are prepared to die for it, as do most middle-of-the-road Israeli citizens.

 

The same, however, can't be said of the Palestinian Arabs, who are simply falling apart. The rise of Hamas, the progressive Islamisation and terrorisation of Palestinian society, and the continued corruption and factional fighting within Fatah are all taking their toll. Increasingly, Palestinians are packing up and leaving.

 

It is they, rather than the Israelis, who are in despair. Their sense of national identity - always artificial - lies finally shattered by the death cult that acts in their name. After all, with even supposedly secular Fatah being steadily Islamised, why would any Palestinian in his right mind want to live in a repressive Islamic republic, which Palestine would without doubt become, where dissidents are thrown from the tops of tall buildings?

 

And here lies the paradox that offers the best hope for Israel's future: the Islamism that so menaces it may finally unlock the door to peace. This is because Islamism and Iran threaten not just Israel but the moderate Arab world too. Accordingly, the last thing those Arabs want is an Iranian-backed, Islamised state of Palestine. Egypt and Jordan simply cannot afford to have Iran or the Muslim Brotherhood on their doorsteps in a Hamas-dominated Gaza or West Bank. They rely on Israel to prevent it. But, increasingly, talk of some kind of Jordan-Egypt-Palestinian confederation is in the air.

 

As analyst Jonathan Spyer has noted, Jordan's recent decision to connect Jericho to the Jordanian electricity grid is an example of its increasing involvement in the West Bank. And behind the scenes the more realistic Palestinians have grasped that their best chance of having any future at all lies in just such a confederation. Such an outcome would have history on its side. Some readers may feel the need to lie down after reading the rest of this sentence, but Jordan is historically the state of Arab Palestine. This was the original two-state solution back in 1921, when Winston Churchill unilaterally gave away three-quarters of the original territory of Palestine to the Hashemite dynasty, creating what is now Jordan, with the remainder supposed to go to the Jews.

 

But this chance of an end to the dispute is being undermined by the self-serving meddling of the US which, like Europe, falsely casts the Arab war against Israel as a boundary dispute between Israel and the Palestinians and is trying to force the agreed outline of a Palestinian state by the time Bush leaves office.

 

It is even pressuring Israel to accept Hamas's truce - by which Hamas means a period when Israel doesn't attack it so it can equip itself for war undisturbed - so that on his visit to Israel this week Bush can pretend that Middle East peace in our time is imminent. But this is a virtual reality peace process, since even the ostensibly moderate Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas has said that he will never recognise Israel as a Jewish state. So what's to discuss?

 

Despite its sham nature, however, this appeasement process has had two baleful consequences. It has caused Olmert, under pressure from the US, the Israeli media and powerful Israeli oligarchs who want the economic advantages of peace at any price, to destroy checkpoints, release prisoners and float the possibility of territorial concessions, all of which promote and incite further Arab violence. And it has caused Jordan to put its confederation idea on ice. Thus the meddling US is destroying the best option for the Middle East to resolve its core dispute, that it is left to sort it out by itself.

 

Indeed, much of the responsibility for these six decades of conflict lie with a Western world that, from 1921 onwards, has chosen to appease Arab violence while shedding crocodile tears over its Jewish victims.

 

But the future of Israel is the future of the West. If the front line in Israel were to go down, the West would be next. Given its internal appeasement of Islamism, however, the West may go down anyway. At least Israel knows it has to fight to survive. As a result, in 60 years it will still be there. Can the same be said for Britain or Europe?

 

The Spectator

 

Melanie Phillips is a Daily Mail columnist and author of Londonistan.

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