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Mr. President: This Is No Time For Ambiguity Or Foggy Doublespeak...
By Gerald A. Honigman
April 4, 2004
The recent report in Haaretz was headlined, "Bush to assure PM: Israel won't have to withdraw to Green Line."
Reading a bit further, however, it soon became apparent that America is still determined to remain non-committal on this crucial issue and won't get down to specifics. The usual explanation is that we don't want to prejudice negotiations.
This is precisely the wrong approach this late in the game. And it is late.
While the Foggy Folks have been trying to virtually rewrite the final draft of a hotly debated and meticulously worded U.N. Resolution #242 at least since the days of Secretary of State William Rogers back in 1969, the authors of that resolution themselves--Eugene Rostow, Arthur Goldberg, and others--have pointed out that Israel was not required to withdraw to its indefensible, artificially-imposed armistice lines of 1949. Nations have acquired vast tracts of territories as a result of wars, yet the world expects the sole State of the Jews to return to that 9-mile wide existence...a constant temptation to those who would destroy it.
As has been pointed out many times, #242 clearly states that any Israeli withdrawal was to be made to "secure and recognized " borders to replace those suicidal armistice lines. While it was not envisioned that Israel would retain a large percentage of the lands conquered from those who repeatedly tried to end its life, having already given back most of this territory upon concluding an iffy peace with Egypt, territorial compromise was in order for the remaining lands in question.
There is nothing comparable to the desert of the Sinai Peninsula separating Israel from its other surrounding would-be executioners. It's down hill all the way for Syria from the Golan, and right in Israel's backyard for the others in Judea and Samaria. The latter were unapportioned areas of the original Palestinian Mandate legally open to settlement by all residents of the Mandate, not just Arabs (many, if not most, of whom were also newcomers), that came to be known as the "West Bank" as a result of British imperialism and British officer-led Transjordan's illegal seizure of these territories in that country's assault on a reborn Israel in 1948. These were not exclusively Palestinian Arab lands. Until they were largely massacred by Arabs in the 1920s, Jews had lived and owned land in these areas long before the Arab conquest in the 7th century C.E.
That the European and Russian hypocrites expect Israel to cave in to all that Arabs demand is no great shock... they who have fire and carpet bombed enemies and incorporated other entire nations when their own security and interests were at stake. The stench from the crematoria has long since subsided, so the temporary respite from age-old, ingrained antipathy towards Jews has simply reemerged. No surprise.
Make no mistake about this. While legitimate criticism of Israeli policy is in order, for far too many, Israel has indeed simply become--as many have written--the Jew of the nations.
It sounds better, after Auschwitz, to call yourself "just" an anti-Zionist.
Denying Jews that which, with few exceptions, such as the Kurds, you won't deny to almost all other peoples is somehow legitimate for these folks.
Israel is always under a high power lens. Kurds are slaughtered in "Arab" Iraq and Syria, Berber language and culture is outlawed in "Arab" North Africa, Copts are suppressed in "Arab" Egypt, and millions of Blacks are killed, maimed, enslaved, etc. in "Arab" Sudan, but the U.N. has a trial in Geneva for Israel's security fence designed to keep Arabs from disemboweling its kids.
What is needed now from Washington is a clear statement to its tiny beleaguered ally and to the rest of the world--especially the Arabs, too many of whom still maintain their "destruction in stages" goals vis-à-vis Israel.
Having been blockaded (a casus belli) by Arabs and attacked as well in 1967 (Egypt and Syria calling for a war of extermination up to the days prior to Israel's forced defensive preemptive strikes in June '67), it was obvious to all fair observers in the aftermath of that war that Israel deserved something better.
If there is to ever be any real hope for true peace in this region, an American President must once again have the courage to stand up to his own State Department. Harry Truman did this when he recognized the Jewish State in 1948. If it was up to the Arabists-tied-to-Big Oil Foggy Folks, there would be no Israel today. Much of this hostility remains. For one thing, there's a wealthy revolving door between multinational businesses and State.
So leadership must come from the Oval Office on these matters.
A strong President must tell the Arabs point blank that there will be a territorial compromise that will take into consideration Israel's legitimate security needs. No doublespeak or blurred phraseology...
Any 23rd Arab state that will be created in an area that really doesn't have room for one must not come at the expense of the security of the sole state of the Jews. Paying merely lip service--as surfaced in the Haaretz report--to this crucial issue won't cut it.
Only when Arabs are convinced that Israel is not going to be offered up on a silver platter a la Chamberlain's disgraceful sacrifice of his Czech "friends" for "peace" (and there were lots of ethnic Germans in the Czech Sudetenland) on an earlier allegedly small territorial issue, will there actually be a better chance at arriving at a peace settlement. All parties will at long last know where they really stand and what is and what is not possible via negotiations. And if the Arabs can't handle this, then so be it. Israel must then take the gloves off.
In short, Arabs must learn that compromise is truly a two-way street. Up until now, it's simply been a game of what unilateral concessions they can get the world--including America--to pressure the Jews into giving in the good cop/bad cop game the Arafat and Hamas teams have been playing.
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