Freemysoremaligabluefilm

by Jeff Robbins, Wall Street Journal

Original title: Obama and Palestine

Translation: Goal-info

The distancing of the Authority with Israel is likely to strengthen those believe that U.S. support for that country may end.
In his new book, "A state, two states: a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian" historian Benny Morris tells the story of the deadly Palestinian refusal to accept Israel really tan State Jew in the heart of a Middle East uniformly Muslim. Morris reviewed the ongoing rejection of the Palestinians in particular and Arabs in general a two-state solution. This denial indicates he was "the continuing commitment of the Palestinian leadership ... in the history of their national movement until today.

course, the refusal of Palestinian politicians, academics and clergy agree to accept a Jewish state forever beside a Palestinian state is both a dirty little secret, and a huge 800-pound gorilla in the middle of the room when the discussion is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.


As Morris notes, the Palestinians have given for over 80 years of evidence "persuasive" they do not want a Jewish state in the region, regardless of frontiers, and whatever the policy pursued by this or that Israeli government with regard to settlements. The Palestinian rejection of a Jewish state of any kind is not one of the recurring themes of conflict, but its dominant theme. Thus in the 30s, the Palestinians rejected a two-state solution which would have created a Jewish state in less than 20 percent of Palestine. In the years 40, the Palestinians rejected the partition plan of United Nations which created a Jewish state in less than half the arable land of Palestine. From 1948 to 1967, when Israel was in no way present in Gaza, the West Bank or East Jerusalem, the Arabs did not create a Palestinian state. After the 1967 war, when Israel accepted the formula of land against peace in Resolution 242 of the UN, the Arab world, including the Palestinians, rejected it. In 2000, when Israel has supported a plan proposed by President Clinton that would have created an independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem capital, Gaza in its entirety and virtually all the West Bank, Palestinians have also rejected, and instead of approving it launched a campaign of bombings that killed 1,100 Israelis and caused as a result of death of 4,000 Palestinians.


And in 2006, when Israel withdrew unilaterally from the Gaza Strip by force, thousands of settlers, drawing a line on the Jewish presence, the Palestinians responded by firing rockets against centers Israeli civilian population. They put on Israel faced with the choice of leaving a detestable increasing number of its civilians under fire from rocket attacks daily, or to enter Gaza to put an end to these attacks with inevitable losses in the local population. For its part, the Hamas leadership who had murdered many of his opponents and ended the military takeover of Gaza, was more than happy to exchange for hundreds of Palestinian lives against a wave of international criticism of Israel, a predictable consequence of its efforts to protect its civilians against the firing of rockets.


Recently, Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian Authority president told The Washington Post that the Palestinians had once again rejected a two-state solution. Abbas told the Post that the former Prime Minister Olmert had recently offered an independent Palestinian state with all of Gaza, a capital in East Jerusalem and 97 percent of the West Bank. Abbas flatly rejected the offer again. "The gap was too big" Abbas said without elaborating.


Meanwhile, Abbas has refused to recognize Israel as a Jewish state, telling the Post that he preferred to let time do its work, confident that American pressure on Israel and international weaken its future position. "Meanwhile," Abbas said "things are going well in the West Bank ... the people have a comfortable life." And last week, despite many new difusées in the Western media that Hamas was trying to "moderate" his position on Israel, the latter informed the former President Carter, whose credulity on this conflict is a source of wonder, of what he has already made it clear: he will never recognize Israel's right to exist, whatever the circumstances.


The problem is that all this coincides with conformist views increasingly hegemonic: they amount to the idea that these are the Israeli settlements in the West Bank are the obstacle to peace between Palestinians and Israelis. Despite the picture painted of a so convincingly by Morris, the interpretation is defended with great vigor by supporters of the Palestinians in the West. And that even though those same Palestinians have declared without great discretion in fact the problem with Israel has nothing to do with settlements, but with its existence which remains unacceptable three generations after its founding.


Morris characterizes a rather elegantly, oscillations of the Palestinian popular discourse that preaches moderation while continuing to deny Israel's right to exist at the price "of elisions, of trickery and inaccuracies." He could describe with less reserve, as the expression of a propensity to lie. However, the official line is that these are the Israeli settlements that are the problem, and the reluctance of Prime Minister Netanyahu is to dismantle the fundamental obstacle to peace. In some quarters it adheres to this vision as the Gospel is the case more and more among Democrats. As Dennis Ross and David Makovsky wrote it by underestimating their new book, Myths, Illusions, and Peace: A New Direction for America in the Middle East, "those who are left ... tend to be the ignore the ideological opposition to Israel's existence. "


For the Democrats who voted for Barack Obama, and observe with concern the encirclement of Israel by armed forces although zealots who have sworn to destroy it, how the president handled the Prime Minister Netanyahu during their first meeting resulted in some discomfort. The Obama administration has put his finger on Israeli settlements and focused on their own, minimizing the importance of the Palestinian refusal. She organized leaking to tell the world how little respect she showed the newly elected leader of Israel. And Vice President Biden pointedly admonished supporters of Israel during a recent conference of AIPAC. We must consider all this as evidence of a deliberate plan to involve the Arab world in the peace process by showing that the policy U.S. vis-à-vis Israel has changed. Starting from there, we can consider how Obama has rejected Israel's arms as the diplomatic equivalent of a Hail Mary intended to improve the plight of President Abbas to strengthen him and other moderate relative to persuade the Arab masses to finally accept a Jewish state.


course, rather than enhancing the stature of the moderates, rather than reducing the influence of those who openly say they want the destruction of Israel, the administration's maneuver Obama may well have the opposite effect. The speech that Palestinians in the West where they profess to accept a two state solution is undoubtedly accompanied by a speech to their people when they assure him they will refuse to accept this solution, and it does not appear that there on this significant development, as Morris says.


The intentional distancing of the Authority vis-à-vis Israel will strengthen those who have always believed, and continue to believe that over time, support from America to Israel can s etiolation and with it Israel's ability survive. In the Arab world, those who believe that this is indeed the case, and there are many, think that the insistence of the U.S. administration that wants to be "honest broker" is proof that, finally, support U.S. to Israel began to erode. For them it is a matter of time and there is no need to pretend to be interested in a two-state solution. If true, the Obama administration, wanting to do well, will inadvertently brought a serious blow to prospects for peace in the Middle East.



Mr. Robbins was Member of U.S. Delegation to the Commission of Human Rights United Nations in Geneva on behalf of the Clinton administration. He is currently an attorney in Boston.
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