Finish it now
The Goldstone report is a cruel but accurate image of Israel the leper as seen by the 'anti-Semitic' Goldstone and Israel's good friends around the world.
By Eldad Yaniv Tags: Goldstone report Israel news PalestiniansIn the early 1990s, when Judge Richard Goldstone headed a commission of inquiry on the rising violence in South Africa toward the end of apartheid, he garnered the same kind of compliments from the Afrikaners as he has been getting from Israel over the last few weeks. But the "Jew boy" wasn't the problem then, and he isn't the problem now. And PR isn't the solution. Take a look in the mirror; it's not Goldstone, it's us. We're the problem as well as the solution.
Israel is being pushed to the side of the world stage and will yet find itself in the same position South Africa was during the final years of the right-wing "crocodile," P.W. Botha, a conservative ideologue. The Goldstone report is a cruel but accurate image of Israel the leper as seen by the "anti-Semitic" Goldstone and Israel's good friends around the world, who are having a hard time continuing to defend the country.
When Martin Luther King Jr. was fighting for the rights of black people in the United States, it didn't bother anyone that South Africa had benches for white people only. But then the weather changed, winter turned to spring and racism became a crime once more, first in the United States and then around the world. That's exactly what's happening in Israel now. George W. Bush retired to his ranch and America has gotten tired of the settlers. Everyone understands what every decent and patriotic Israeli also realizes: Israel won't be in Hebron or Ofra when it celebrates its 70th anniversary. So why not be done with it before then?
When will be the appropriate time? When Ankara recalls its ambassador? When Vice Premier Moshe Ya'alon is arrested in London? When the Security Council imposes sanctions? When Angela Merkel, Nicolas Sarkozy and Silvio Berlusconi start saying behind our backs the same things the Swedes and Norwegians say about us to our faces?
We could be total suckers and not be done with it until then, or we could decide now, the way David Ben-Gurion took action at 4 P.M. one Friday afternoon: mightily, and in thrall to a Zionist vision. Complete the ugly, injurious fence that causes injustice but saves lives and turn it into Israel's internationally recognized border. Patriotic Israel realizes that the Palestinians must not beat us in the War of Independence and become the majority here, just as Ben-Gurion understood in 1948 when he made his decision. So the Arabs oppose dividing the land under reasonable conditions and want to talk until they form the majority here? Let them oppose. The world agrees, and we act.
Israel didn't have to wallow in Lebanon for 18 years because of the Katyusha threat, and it doesn't need to immerse itself in Hebron for 42 years because of the Qassams. The Israel Defense Forces successfully defends our internationally recognized borders from security threats. We've waited too many years to give the Palestinians an answer on this, and time is against both sides of the conflict - mainly us.
And when Israel establishes recognized borders, maybe peace will make a surprise appearance. The Palestinians will no longer be living under occupation, no one in the world will listen to them anymore, and the leaders of Egypt and Jordan will be worried about staying in power if it's not quiet in Palestine. So maybe something will move and we'll bury the sword.
And if not? We will continue to seek peace while establishing ourselves as a model society with recognized borders; we will be respected members of the European Union and sought after by the entire world.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu must decide whether it will be on his watch that Israel closes the book on its control over the territories, just as Ariel Sharon closed the book on Israel's presence in Gaza and Ehud Barak did in Lebanon. Or not, in which case Bibi will be followed by the Israeli F.W. de Klerk, who will lead us to a safe harbor and a historic, and final, victory in the War of Independence.
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Nina caught again flaunting her ignorance. The Olmert-Abbas talks were suspended as a result of the elections to the current Knesset, Feb 10th, 2009, and not because Abbas got panicked. The Taba Summit, held from Jan 21 to Jan 27, 2001, was discontinued by then-PM Barak because of the upcoming Israeli elections, Feb 6, 2001, that brought Ariel Sharon to the PM office. Sharon never responded to the offer to resume the talks. "The breakdown is often attributed to the political circumstances posed by Israeli elections and changeover in leadership in the United States. They had run out of political time. They couldn't conclude an agreement with Clinton now out of office and Barak standing for reelection ... " http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taba_Summit#End_of_the_negotiations " ... rocketing over the fence to solve their internal problems and unite the population behind them in war. If you think I am imagining things, that is what happened in Gaza." (Nina) Another figment of a sick imagination: On what happened in Gaza, Mahmoud Abbas had no part at all. Sharon, prior to his foolish unilateral disengagement, had taken great care to publicly humiliate the man, calling him "a non-partner" and "a not-yet-feathered chick", he who had been elected for Chairman by his people, just six months earlier - and who, later, was addressed by GW Bush as a "man of peace who believes in a two-state solution." "President Bush meets with President Abbas", Sep 20, 2006. www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/US-Israel/bush092006.html Who does Nina think she can fool? Herself perhaps and other hopelessly deluded wingnuts.
" ... that if only Israel backs down, hands over all the West Bank to the Palestinians, and lets a few million refugees in, then peace will reign supreme and all of our problems will go away." (Joe Sittizen) It is a very old trick of dishonest debaters engaged in logical fallacies to put words in their opponents' mouth, in order to try and prove them wrong. "We must either have a Palestinian state in our neighborhood, or we will become a Palestinian state." Yehoshafat Harkabi (1921-1994), head of Israeli Military Intelligence (1955-1959), then professor and director of the Institute of International Relations and Middle East Studies, at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. "Harkabi was the only commander of military intelligence to have had a good command of Arabic, in addition to genuinely professional knowledge of Arab civilization and history, and of Islam." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yehoshafat_Harkabi
So much blathering by pundits is centered around the theory that if only Israel backs down, hands over all the west bank to the Palestinians and lets a few million refugees in, then peace will reign supreme and all of our problems will go away. Duh? Yaniv says "And when Israel establishes recognized borders, maybe peace will make a surprise appearance." What? Unilaterally declare a new border? Which one - the 1949 armistice line and cut Jerusalem in half again? Yaniv blandly states that Israel should establish "recognized borders", and as a writer and pundit he easily avoids all the problems and implications of such a pithy statement. Israel can't simply declare borders - that's done via negotiation. Israel already showed that unilateral border moves don't work. And Yaniv also forgets: Mahmud Abbas must decide whether it will be on his watch that the Palestinians close the book on a one-state solution that excludes the Jews.
all you dreamers that live in australia or sweeden seem to ignore the simple fact that the israeli palestinian conflict has a religious side to it and that no religious muslem will agree to surrender any inch of land that use to be muslem in the past to a non moslem state.they want it all and will wait as long as it takes.Israel should not forget that and strive to a peace which is not attainable, even if the world favours such a "peace"
"And when Israel establishes recognized borders, maybe peace will make a surprise appearance ... " "That was exactly what they said about Gaza ... " (Nina quoting the author) That is totally untrue. Nobody has ever said such blatant nonsense, not about recognized borders nor about Gaza. Putting words in the mouths of one's opponents is the way of the liars and propagandists. "Having thousands of Jewish settlers among millions of Palestinians is a mistake, and we will not stay in Gaza forever." Former Chief of Staff Shaul Mofaz, then Sharon's Minister of Defense, in May 2004. www.newsweek.com/id/105454/page/2 Don't tell me Mofaz is a defeatist spineless far-leftist Jew. I would not believe you.
"If the Jews have no right to be in Hebron [...], what gives them the right to Tel Aviv?" (Ahmed) Has nobody told you yet, wise guy, that Tel-Aviv-Jaffa is in Israel, and Hebron is not? That Hebron is in the heart of a military occupied territory, outside Israel's sovereignty, where not a single Arab resident is holding Israeli citizenship, while in Tel Aviv-Jaffa all Arabs are Israeli nationals? This is why the Jews have right to be in Tel Aviv-Jaffa, and no legitimacy to settle in Hebron, amidst a foreign and stateless occupied population. Or is that too far beyond your most apparent feeble understanding of what is going on here?
Olmert was very close to doing just that, and it panicked Abbas, and Arafat before him in Taba. Why panicked? They would have to resettle the refugees in Palestine, and be responsible for them, and UNRWA would stop supporting them, and there would be mayhem. They would surely try to bait Israel by rocketing over the fence to solve their internal problems and unite the population behind them in war. If you think I am imagining things, that is what happened in Gaza. Also in Lebanon, where Hezbollah's claims against Israel grow ever more farfetched, to justify its continued existence.
Yaniv may be very interested in a negotiated solution, as would I, but the Palestinians (and also the Syrians) are not negotiation partners. In a negotiation, one side makes an offer, and the other responds, until they see if the outer limits of their interests coincide. What was Arafat's counteroffer in Taba? What was Abbas' response to Olmert's Hail Mary peace plan that was supposed to save his political skin? There was none, precisely because the offers were so generous that the world would not understand them not agreeing to them. So Arafat started an intifada to divert attention and Abbas waited out the elections, knowing he'd get rid of Olmert. There is no offer the Palestinians can accept without Israel giving itself up, and so it's not going to happen.
If the Jews have no right to be in Hebron - the city of the Patriarchs and one of the holy cities of Judaism - then what gives them the right to Tel Aviv? Be gone with all of you!! Go back to Poland, it was great there, right?
fine article, I lived those days when Botha used to say Apatheid SA and Smith of Rhodesia will last forever. Only lasted 20 years from that date. This article sees into the future, Israel needs somebody in the calibre of De Clerk or De Gaulle to say enough is enough. Marvellous writer.
Israel could freeze the settlement building and then declare that it is willing to negotiate an end of the conflict based on the '67 lines and not actually do anything else. If that is the official and declared Israeli diplomatic position, the Palestinians would then be the pariahs of the world community unless they responded in kind. The Palestinians would have to choose between seeking and end to "the occupation" and Peace with Israel
N: "That was exactly what they said about Gaza and even Lebanon. Mind going to find out how that worked out and then getting back to us?" Yeah, it ended badly both times. UNILATERAL acts tend to do that, Nina, because they don't actually end the root cause of the conflict - they simply separate the two opponents. Yaniv is advocating that Israel can solve its problems by a UNILATERAL disengagement. He is indeed delusional, but the real solution is not to occupy until the end of days but to NEGOTIATE a fair and equitable solution. Yaniv has no interest in *that* and, I'd suggest, neither do you.
"And when Israel establishes recognized borders, maybe peace will make a surprise appearance. The Palestinians will no longer be living under occupation, no one in the world will listen to them anymore, and the leaders of Egypt and Jordan will be worried about staying in power if it's not quiet in Palestine. So maybe something will move and we'll bury the sword. " That was exactly what they said about Gaza and even Lebanon. Mind going to find out how that worked out and then getting back to us?
that the Palestinians, or anyone else, will accept the completed fence as the internation ally-recognized border of Israel? Do you think that settling the problems of Jerusalem and the "refugees" will become any easier? I too, am for completing the fence, and for either evacuating, or leaving under Palestinian control, most of the settlements and settlers, but I still don't think we can reach a peaceful solution so easily.
When I said in my poem, "Mending Walls", 'good fences make good neighbors' I didn't mean the fence should be on the neighbor's property.
I've never commented on an article until now, but this is an articulation of my own thoughts exactly. Hamas knows that, in the absence of a credible peace process, unilateral withdrawal to the fence is Israel's best option. The alternative is the annexation of the West Bank and the loss of the demographic battle. So, Hamas has tried to thwart future unilateral line-drawing with Qassams into Sderot. Israel should not let those missiles intimidate her; she should protect her status as a secure Jewish democracy that can endure into the future, with or without a bilateral agreement. Hamas wants a one-state solution and control of it through demographics. Let's not give it to them! Draw the line, be done with it, and defend the border. Why is this view so unpopular? Would we sacrifice the Jewish majority because we're afraid of Hamas's Qassams?
This is a no brainer which I have insisted on for years , continue to do so and will. Once drawn back to the 1967 borders (+/-) and the Jerusalem and refugee issues are resolved (almost) satisfactorily , Both side should go on and attend to their own burning issues (and there are galore). What part of it these knuckleheads do not understand?