http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Editorials/Article.aspx?id=255947
Encouraging Israelis and Palestinians to “re-engage” in order to move the peace process forward is one of the professed goals of UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon as he visits the region this week.
But since low-level talks began between the sides in Amman last month, a number of major obstacles have resurfaced, threatening to turn yet another round of peace talks into a dead-end. If he is to succeed in his mission, it is important for the UN chief to understand that despite two decades of negotiations, huge gaps still need to be bridged.
The concept of settlement blocs is a good example. For Israelis, for US administrations at least since the Clinton era, and for several European countries, including Germany and France, the notion that Israel must retreat to the 1949 Armistice lines and that Judea and Samaria – the cradle of Jewish history – must be made free of Israelis – is an unacceptable proposition.
The 2000 Clinton parameters, former US president George W. Bush’s 2004 letter (endorsed in both houses of Congress), and negotiations conducted by then-prime minister Ehud Olmert in 2008 were all based on the principle that Israel would retain major settlement blocs in any future two-state solution.
A wide range of Israeli politicians, from Yossi Sarid and Yossi Beilin on the Left to Ariel Sharon and Olmert in the center, have said in the past that blocs such as Ma’aleh Adumim would be part of Israel in any future agreement.
For Palestinians, however, settlement blocs are by no means a “given.” This was apparent from documents leaked to Al Jazeera in January of last year that came to be known as “Palileaks.” These documents revealed the content of negotiations that went on in 2008 between high-ranking Israeli and Palestinian Authority officials. They make clear that the concept of Israel’s retaining settlement blocs – which even appeared in the Geneva Accords – was rejected outright by the Palestinians – although they were willing to recognize some Jewish neighborhoods in east Jerusalem.
Last week, Palestinians reiterated their stance against settlement blocs. One Palestinian official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told The New York Times that Israel’s demand to keep settlement blocs “effectively abandons international law and the framework we have been focused on for the past 20 years.”
Ban should also understand the centrality of security arrangements. In the wake of the Arab Spring, Israel is concerned more than ever that a Palestinian state on the West Bank could be taken over by Hamas, which is affiliated with the resurgent Muslim Brotherhood. This would be similar to what happened in Gaza after Israel, in a painful move to end its “occupation,” unilaterally withdrew its forces there, removed all settlers and dismantled all its settlements.
A strong IDF presence in the Jordan Valley and the demilitarization of the future Palestinian state are essential, from an Israeli perspective. Unfortunately, PA President Mahmoud Abbas has said repeatedly he would not let any Israeli soldier remain in a future Palestinian state, though he has not ruled out an international peacekeeping force.
However, international peacekeeping forces are notoriously ineffectual and unreliable. UNIFIL’s failure to stop the rearmament of the Hezbollah after the 2006 Second Lebanon War in accordance with UN Resolution 1701 is just one example.
Another obstacle to peace that Ban should confront is the PA’s unabashed glorification of villainous terrorists who murder innocent Israeli civilians.
The most recent – and shocking – example, as reported by Palestinian Media Watch, was a show on PA television that praised as “heroes” the murderers of Udi and Ruth Fogel and three of their children – 11-year-old Yoav, four-year-old Elad, and Hadas, a four-month-old baby. And just a few weeks ago, Mohammed Hussein, the PA’s mufti in Jerusalem, publicly quoted an Islamic text calling for the murder of Jews.
Meanwhile, Fatah is in the process of forming a unity government with Hamas, an anti-Semitic terrorist group that calls for the destruction of Israel.
Ban faces many challenges in launching his bid to “reengage” Israelis and Palestinians – and we did not even mention the dispute over the Palestinian refugee problem.While we welcome the UN chief and his efforts and wish him luck, we cannot help but be pessimistic when considering his prospects for success.
Encouraging Israelis and Palestinians to “re-engage” in order to move the peace process forward is one of the professed goals of UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon as he visits the region this week.
But since low-level talks began between the sides in Amman last month, a number of major obstacles have resurfaced, threatening to turn yet another round of peace talks into a dead-end. If he is to succeed in his mission, it is important for the UN chief to understand that despite two decades of negotiations, huge gaps still need to be bridged.
The concept of settlement blocs is a good example. For Israelis, for US administrations at least since the Clinton era, and for several European countries, including Germany and France, the notion that Israel must retreat to the 1949 Armistice lines and that Judea and Samaria – the cradle of Jewish history – must be made free of Israelis – is an unacceptable proposition.
The 2000 Clinton parameters, former US president George W. Bush’s 2004 letter (endorsed in both houses of Congress), and negotiations conducted by then-prime minister Ehud Olmert in 2008 were all based on the principle that Israel would retain major settlement blocs in any future two-state solution.
A wide range of Israeli politicians, from Yossi Sarid and Yossi Beilin on the Left to Ariel Sharon and Olmert in the center, have said in the past that blocs such as Ma’aleh Adumim would be part of Israel in any future agreement.
For Palestinians, however, settlement blocs are by no means a “given.” This was apparent from documents leaked to Al Jazeera in January of last year that came to be known as “Palileaks.” These documents revealed the content of negotiations that went on in 2008 between high-ranking Israeli and Palestinian Authority officials. They make clear that the concept of Israel’s retaining settlement blocs – which even appeared in the Geneva Accords – was rejected outright by the Palestinians – although they were willing to recognize some Jewish neighborhoods in east Jerusalem.
Last week, Palestinians reiterated their stance againstsettlement blocs. One Palestinian official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told The New York Times that Israel’s demand to keep settlement blocs “effectively abandons international law and the framework we have been focused on for the past 20 years.”
Ban should also understand the centrality of security arrangements. In the wake of the Arab Spring, Israel is concerned more than ever that a Palestinian state on the West Bank could be taken over by Hamas, which is affiliated with the resurgent Muslim Brotherhood. This would be similar to what happened in Gaza after Israel, in a painful move to end its “occupation,” unilaterally withdrew its forces there, removed all settlers and dismantled all its settlements.
A strong IDF presence in the Jordan Valley and the demilitarization of the future Palestinian state are essential, from an Israeli perspective. Unfortunately, PA President Mahmoud Abbas has said repeatedly he would not let any Israeli soldier remain in a future Palestinian state, though he has not ruled out an international peacekeeping force.
However, international peacekeeping forces are notoriously ineffectual and unreliable. UNIFIL’s failure to stop the rearmament of the Hezbollah after the 2006 Second Lebanon War in accordance with UN Resolution 1701 is just one example.
Another obstacle to peace that Ban should confront is the PA’s unabashed glorification of villainous terrorists who murder innocent Israeli civilians.
The most recent – and shocking – example, as reported by Palestinian Media Watch, was a show on PA television that praised as “heroes” the murderers of Udi and Ruth Fogel and three of their children – 11-year-old Yoav, four-year-old Elad, and Hadas, a four-month-old baby. And just a few weeks ago, Mohammed Hussein, the PA’s mufti in Jerusalem, publicly quoted an Islamic text calling for the murder of Jews.
Meanwhile, Fatah is in the process of forming a unity government with Hamas, an anti-Semitic terrorist group that calls for the destruction of Israel.
Ban faces many challenges in launching his bid to “reengage” Israelis and Palestinians – and we did not even mention the dispute over the Palestinian refugee problem.While we welcome the UN chief and his efforts and wish him luck, we cannot help but be pessimistic when considering his prospects for success.
http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Editorials/Article.aspx?id=255804
Finally, after nearly two months of bickering, controversy surrounding the use by some on the American Left of the term “Israel-firster” to describe American Jews with a hawkish, pro-Israel orientation seems to have finally settled down. In the process, some important distinctions have been made and lines drawn.
Significantly, some on the Left have stood up and acknowledged the anti-Semitic roots of the slur, which apparently originated with Holocaust deniers on the extreme Right in the 1970s and was co-opted in the past decade by radical leftist, anti-Israel bodies such as Antiwar.com, Indymedia and Norman Finkelstein’s website.
Zaid Jilani, a blogger for the Center for American Progress (CAP), which is affiliated with the Democratic Party, erased the slur from his blogs and tweets after learning of its checkered past. J Street’s Jeremy Ben-Ami, who originally defended use of the term, later admitted that “Israel-firster” was a “bad choice of words.” (Unfortunately, Media Matters for America’s senior foreign policy fellow M.J. Rosenberg remains uncontrite and continues to use the term.)
On the Jewish website Tablet, left-wing journalist Spencer Ackerman, who said he has criticized the American Jewish Right’s “myopic, destructive, tribal conception of what it means to love Israel,” nevertheless admits that by using the term “Israel-firster” one loses the debate by revealing one’s “antipathy and contempt for Jews.”
More profoundly, Ackerman pointed out that many on the Left who are fond of the “Israel-firster” smear and categorically deny its anti-Semitic undertone are “very good at hearing and analyzing dog-whistles when they’re used to dehumanize Arabs and Muslims.”
Besides the distastefulness of using a term with anti- Semitic roots, naming someone an “Israel-firster” is highly problematic because it tends to completely and utterly delegitimize by issuing a nonnegotiable verdict. Thus, free debate is shut down instead of encouraged. Jews are not the only ones in US history who have been vilified for purported “dual loyalties.”
President Theodore Roosevelt denounced the “hyphenated Americanism” of German-Americans during World War I. And during World War II, president Franklin Roosevelt authorized the internment of about 110,000 Japanese-Americans. Both instances are stains on America’s history.
Also, “Israel-firster” is, as The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg has pointed out, an inaccurate term because it “precludes the possibility that the person who supports Israel is doing so precisely because he or she feels that it is in America’s best interest to support Israel.”
Indeed, there are non-Zionist reasons to support Israel, such as the fact that the Jewish state is the only true democracy in the Middle East that protects the rights of minorities, women and homosexuals; or the fact that Israel’s strong military helps protect US interests in the region. But there are also Zionist reasons to support Israel, such as the belief that the Jewish people have the right to political self-determination and sovereignty in their historical homeland; or that the Holocaust has proved that the Jewish people are in need of a country and a military of their own.
Neither Zionist nor non-Zionist arguments in favor of maintaining a strong Israel inherently contradicts American interests. In fact it is difficult to fathom a day in the future when it would no longer be possible to reconcile American and Israeli interests. But if such a day were to come, either Israel or America will have undergone a radical change for the worst.
The controversy surrounding the use of the “Israel-firster” slur has seemingly increased appreciation in America for the need to debate positions on US policy vis-à-vis Israel in an environment untainted by intimidation. Issues such as Israel’s settlement policies in Judea and Samaria must be conducted in a free and open manner regardless of where one is positioned on the political map. Claiming that the building of settlements is opposed to either US or Israel interests or both is legitimate. But those who believe differently should not be silenced with the accusation that they are putting Israel’s interests before America’s. Better to let rational argument and a free exchange of opinions determine American policy.
http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Editorials/Article.aspx?id=255356
Haredi-bashing has become a widespread phenomenon.
But while some of the criticism directed at the ultra-Orthodox community may be understandable (non-participation in the labor market and the refusal to serve in the IDF or any other National Service framework), the wholesale attack on Construction and Housing Minister Ariel Attias (Shas) was undeserved.
Even before he presented his program for affordable housing, copies were leaked to the press and the haredi minister was summarily lambasted for giving preferential treatment to his own constituency. However, a close look at Attias’s proposals reveals a mixed bag.
True, Attias decided to deviate from the Trajtenberg Committee’s recommendations. One of these recommendations was to place employment or active pursuit of employment at the center of the affordable housing plan. The Trajtenberg Committee recommended that “fully exploiting earning capacity” (which means that together a couple must put in 125 percent of a work week or be actively looking for work) be a condition for receiving rent-controlled apartments.
Under the “lowest price for the homebuyer” program, which pushes housing prices down by awarding projects to building contractors who commit to building at the lowest cost, those who work or who are actively looking for employment should at the very least receive preferential treatment, according to the Trajtenberg recommendations.
Critics claim Attias ignored Trajtenberg in order to benefit the haredim, many of whom are unemployed by choice so as to devote their waking hours to Torah study instead of productive employment. Still, Attias should at least be given the benefit of the doubt when he says that National Insurance Institute representatives called to leave out employment as a criterion for being eligible for affordable housing out of a desire to help the most destitute populations – the haredim and the Arabs – in which the level of participation in the labor market is the lowest (Arab women are often discouraged from leaving the house to work for cultural and religious reasons).
We believe it makes sense to overrule Attias not because he wants to benefit haredim, but because by adopting the Trajtenberg recommendations the plan would remain true to its stated goal of providing affordable housing for the middle class. Other programs such as public housing projects and subsidized mortgages target the poor. At any rate, while finding a job is not based solely on “luck” as Attias claimed Wednesday, we should, nevertheless, be sensitive to claims by various minority groups (haredim, Ethiopian- Israelis, Arabs) that they face discrimination when looking for work. The zeal to attack Attias for benefiting haredim should not eclipse this ability to be sensitive to real discrimination in our society.
Another criticism leveled at Attias is his decision to give preferential treatment to couples who have been married longer. Haredi-bashers claim this discriminates against secular couples, who tend to marry later.
But if Attias is to be believed when he says that on average couples do not get around to buying a home until they have been married for seven years, and since no special preference is given to couples married more than eight years, it seems clear that there will be little discrimination against secular Israelis.
The readiness to attack Attias for partiality has also prevented many from looking at the positive elements of his plan. He adopted a measure that would give preferential treatment to the handicapped. Also, half of about 5,000 apartments that will be made available at a discount under the affordable housing program will be reserved for families in which at least one of the heads – husband or wife – served in the IDF or performed national service. In the past, such a move would have been perceived by some as discrimination against Arabs, who are not obligated to serve in the IDF. But since national service is open to all, this claim can no longer be made.
In short, it is difficult to argue conclusively that Attias’s affordable housing plan discriminates in favor of haredim. Looking closer at the content of his proposal in a serious way leads to the conclusion that the knee-jerk criticism against him may have guided by prejudice against his constituency.
http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Editorials/Article.aspx?id=255654
Ahead of Tuesday’s primary election in Florida, GOP presidential candidates Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney seemed to be trying to outdo each other over their unequivocal support for Israel.
During Thursday night’s CNN debate, both candidates blamed the Palestinians for being obstacles to peace. Romney said that Israel would be happy to have a two-state solution, “it’s the Palestinians who don’t want a two-state solution. They want to eliminate the State of Israel.”
Gingrich, who reiterated his “invented people” assertion, said that the Palestinians would be entitled to self-government only after they: 1) Recognize Israel’s right to exist; 2) Abandon a right of return to what is now Israel for Palestinian refugees; and 3) Abandon hate speech against Jews.
Gingrich also vowed that he would relocate the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, our capital.
Indeed, many of the same positions on the Israeli- Palestinian conflict are shared by all the Republican candidates, with the exception of Ron Paul, whose positions on Israel are at best controversial and who has vowed to cut off all US foreign aid, including to Israel.
The Republican candidates’ outspoken support for Israel is at least in part due to a perception that Americans – particularly American Jews – are dissatisfied with the Obama administration’s policies toward the Jewish state. Emphasizing their support for Israel is, they believe, a way of wooing voters away from support for Obama.
Indeed, in the American Jewish Committee’s annual survey of American Jewish opinion, which was conducted in September, 53 percent of respondents disapproved of the Obama administration’s handling of US-Israel relations while just 40% approved.
However, Republican candidates’ pro-Israel messages – which are sometimes more hawkish than those of some Zionist American Jews – are more likely directed at Evangelical Christians. After all, Florida’s primary is open only to registered Republican Party members, while most of Florida’s Jews – who make up 3.4% of the population – are registered Democrats. Evangelical Christians are undoubtedly a bigger chunk of the Republican electorate in the Sunshine State than the Jews. Exit polls from the 2008 GOP primary show that 39% of voters identified themselves as born-again or Evangelical Christians.
Many of them are no less dissatisfied with Washington’s policies vis-à-vis Israel. In a Gallup poll conducted in May 2011, 39% of white Evangelicals said that Obama’s foreign policies favored the Palestinians too much, compared to 33% who said they struck the right balance.
Nor is it clear that Israel is a determining factor for the Jewish vote. In the above-mentioned AJC survey, Obama easily won a strong majority of the Jewish vote against various Republican candidates, including Romney. And AJC surveys in the past four years have shown that Israel has consistently ranked no more than fifth on American Jewish voters’ priority list. Ranking higher are domestic matters.
In Florida, where much of the Jewish population is elderly, issues such as healthcare rank high. And assuming elderly Jews are concerned for the wellbeing of the next generation, unemployment, house prices and other economic issues will figure prominently as well. In Florida in particular, where there is a large Latino population, immigration and the naturalization of undocumented workers will undoubtedly play a major factor.
(Romney is expected to be hurt in Florida by his publicized opposition to the DREAM Act – supported by 90% of Hispanic voters – which would legalize immigrants who came as children and then enrolled in college or the military.) The pro-Israel rhetoric we are witnessing in the run-up to the Florida primary seems to be directed principally at the Evangelical vote. And even when serious courting of the Jewish vote in Florida commences as the general election approaches, it is not at all clear that talking strong on Israel will be the best way to win hearts.
http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Editorials/Article.aspx?id=255018
The Islamic Republic is paying an increasingly high price for its stubborn insistence on developing nuclear weapons. By July 1, the European Union will phase out its oil purchases from Iran, which make up about of fifth of Iran’s total oil exports. Italy alone accounts for 10 percent of Iran’s oil exports, according to 2010 data provided by the US Energy Information Administration.
The impact of the EU decision – which includes a freeze on the assets of the Iranian central bank within the EU – was almost immediate: The Iranian currency, the rial, fell to record lows in black market trading against the dollar and there has been a surge in the prices paid by Iranians for basic goods.
Even before the new set of sanctions, Iran was hurting. In December, Deputy Oil Minister Ahmad Qalebani was quoted by the Iranian Students News Agency as saying the country’s crude oil production in 2011 had declined from the year before, “due to lack of investment in oil field development.”
Iran produced about 4 million barrels a day of oil in 2010 and is producing about 3.5 million barrels this year. Meanwhile, Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi was quoted by the official Islamic Republic News Agency as saying, “We cannot pretend the sanctions are not having an effect,” and the governor of Iran’s central bank, Mahmoud Bahmani, told reporters in Iran last week that the country must act as if it were “under siege.”
Obviously, Israel has a vested interest in seeing Iran’s mullahs prevented from achieving nuclear capability. But nonproliferation in the region is not solely or even principally an Israeli interest.
The EU and the US – led by policy-makers who cannot be suspected of holding neoconservative notions – have adopted equally stringent sanctions against Iran. This reflects the consensus that Tehran’s intentions with regard to its nuclear program are not, as it claims, peaceful.
Recent comments by Yukiya Amano, director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, and by the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security, point clearly to Iran’s intention to develop weapons of mass destruction. Researchers from the Center for American Progress and Media Matters, two institutions affiliated with the Democratic Party, who have tried to make the case that Iran’s belligerence and its level of nuclear sophistication are overstated in a pre-Iraq invasion-like way, have thankfully failed to make inroads among Congress members.
The Europeans, perhaps even more than the Americans, are directly threatened by a nuclear-capable Iran with missiles that can reach European cities. Even China’s Premier Wen Jiabao, who during a recent trip to Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, defended his country’s oil trade with Iran, nevertheless noted his country’s opposition to Iran achieving nuclear weapons. Without a bomb, Iran’s threat to close the Strait of Hormuz rattled the Chinese. They do not want to imagine such a threat issued by an Islamic Republic with nuclear warheads.
Without nuclear weapons, Tehran’s ability to bully Gulf state neighbors is limited. Despite Iranian threats, Saudi Arabia has said it has enough oil output capacity to meet global customers’ needs, House of Representatives Majority Leader Eric Cantor said after several days of meetings in the Middle East, including in Saudi Arabia. The Saudis are, apparently, willing to make up for banned Iranian oil in order to meet European and American needs, thus minimizing the inevitable rise in oil prices expected to follow from the sanctions.
As Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu noted, the latest round of sanctions are indeed a “step in the right direction,” making it increasingly expensive for Iran to continue with its nuclear program. Coupled with continued covert operations such as the assassination of nuclear scientists and cyber war attacks such as the Stuxnet, we hope that these sanctions will make a full-blown military attack on Iran unnecessary.
http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Editorials/Article.aspx?id=254858
Twenty years ago today, China and the Jewish state established official diplomatic relations. But long before January 1992, there was extensive, albeit secretive, cooperation. The Chinese were allured by Israeli military prowess and by “Jewish genius” exhibited in men such as Karl Marx and Albert Einstein. Sun Yat-sen – one of the founding fathers of the Chinese national movement who died in 1925 – was said to be empathetic to the Zionist movement. In the 1950s China produced a stamp with a picture of the Yiddish writer Sholem Aleichem.
Until Mao’s death in 1976, China’s foreign policy was driven by Communist ideology and the championing of “oppressed peoples” and “victims of imperialism” which included the Arab nations. But starting in 1979, China began conducting major arms deals with Israel, who was represented by businessman Shaul Eisenberg.
In 1999, The New York Times noted that “Israel has long had a close, secretive military relationship with China.”
The end of the Cold War and the disintegration of the Soviet Union’s influence among Muslim states in the region helped facilitate China’s embrace of a pragmatic, flexible diplomatic strategy in the Middle East driven primarily by the supreme economic interest of maintaining political stability.
During the first decade of relations with Israel, the Chinese were guided to a certain extent by the mistaken notion – held, ironically, to this day by critics of Israel such as John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt – that Jewish and Israeli lobbies had inordinate sway over decisionmaking in Washington.
This misconception was soon dashed after the US, contrary to Israeli interests, put pressure on Jerusalem to cancel a number of highly lucrative military deals with China.
In October 1999, US president Bill Clinton formally opposed the sale to China of Phalcon airborne early-warning and surveillance systems worth $1 billion. In December 2004, the Bush administration objected to the Israeli government’s decision to repair and upgrade the Harpy unmanned aerial vehicle that Israel had sold to China in the 1990s.
During the Cold War, Washington did not oppose Israeli arms deals with China because Beijing was needed as a counterweight to Moscow. But after the collapse of the Soviet Union, it began to see China as a threat to its strategic interests in the Asia-Pacific region. US opposition has essentially put an end to all significant military trade with China.
One of the main challenges facing Israel, therefore, is developing non-military trade with China, which will soon become the world’s largest economy, even if it grows at just half of the present rate of 8.7 percent annually. Bilateral trade, which in 1992 was worth $60 million, is now worth about $8b. a year, one-third of which is Israeli exports to China.
More than 1,000 Israeli companies operate in China and there is cooperation in the fields of industrial R&D, water, biotechnology and pharmaceuticals. A consulate was opened in the southern city of Guangzhou, and another is planned for Chengdu, in the underdeveloped western province of Sichuan. Both locations offer unique opportunities in parts of China with untapped economic potential.
A Chinese firm built the Carmel tunnels, ChemChina acquired a controlling stake in Makhteshim Agan Industries and Chinese chemical companies have opened R&D facilities here.
Unfortunately, one area in which China’s interests are at odds not only with the US’s but also with Israel’s involves Iran’s nuclear program. But according to Prof. Yitzhak Shichor of University of Haifa’s Department of Asia Studies, China’s ties with Iran must not be misconstrued as expressing Beijing’s identification with Iranian belligerence. Rather, it is a tactical move against US influence in the region.
According to Shichor, there is nothing that China wants more than quiet and stability so that its economy can continue to grow unheeded. Iran’s threat to block the Hormuz Straits is seen by China as extremely counterproductive. Chinese foreign policy in the region has troubling elements. Beijing maintains strong trade relations with Iran while conveniently ignoring the threat posed by an Islamic Republic with nuclear capability.
But China is an economic powerhouse that Israel simply cannot afford to ignore. Hopefully, the Iranian crisis will be resolved peacefully so that mutually beneficial economic interests shared by Jerusalem and Beijing can be pursued against the backdrop of a stable, safe Middle East.
