Mid East policy speech
 

I won't pretend to understand all of the nuances to the on-going hostilities in the Middle East. It's against that backdrop that I'll say that Obama's speech on Thursday leaves me a bit mystified. Why would Isreal agree to the stating point for negotiations with it's neighbors must be a reshaping of it's current borders when that's not what the hostilities are really about? Why should Isreal concede anything until the central issue - a recognition of Isreal's right to exist- is addressed?

Not that I'm particularly sympathetic with either party, but the Palestinian's not recognizing Israel's right to exist is also their going-in position. They don't want to concede on this any more than the Israelis want to concede on anything else prior to negotiations. Either side demanding preconditions is not a good thing.

FWIW, 1967 borders (with land swaps) has been our position for decades and was the basis for the agreement under Clinton that almost got done.

This dust-up yesterday was less than meets the eye. It was about Netanyahu standing tall for his Likkud base constituency and Obama trying to throw a bone to Abbas in an effort to undermine the upcoming UN vote on Palestinian statehood in September.

But doesn't the "dust up" also serve to demonstrate that an agreement on territory would at at best be a political trophy and not lead to a "lasting peace", which is the stated objective of the "peace process"?

An agreement will, by its very nature, have to address territorial issues. However, we sometimes seem to believe that there is some sort of magical, yet elusive, territorial line that'll make everyone happy. There isn't.

If I claimed to have the right answer to this intractable mess, I would be the only person on Earth who did. Plopping an Eastern European nation smack dab in the heart of the Mideast created the problem. What will solve it is beyond me.

I wouldn't care if the borders were redrawn to 1947.

Dave

The arabs had good offers made twice and both times they said no.

good by who's standards?

the only standards that matter are Israel's and the Palestinian's

Better yet, 1946.

Let me put it this way, muslims have acosted and harassed my wife on four occasions, no one Jewish ever has, so if they all disappeared tomorrow I would not lose any sleep.

accosted your wife?

how so?

Muslims?

Could you please explain I am at a loss to understand what this means or how this makes you say so if they all disappeared tomorrow I would not lose any sleep??:confused:

I can't disagree. There's a sense of entitlement there that -- very much -- rivals the concept of Manifest Destiny in the Americas.

In this sense, what's the difference between Eastern US American Indian tribes and the current Palestinians? Today's Palestinians aren't counting on assistance from the French in order to be relevant, militarily...

Palestine DOES have a point that Israel is an "invented" nation that was forced upon the Middle East after WWII.

I'd be mad, too.

Have you seen my posts on this issue in the "Something we can agree on?" thread, Zeke?
Check it out.

Dave

Of course, that completely ignores the history of the Jewish people in the Holy Land. The Israelis may have been in the area just as long, or longer, than the Palastinians.

Using that logic, we could all go back to Africa and demand our rightful claim.

Dave

Yep. A piece of the Great Rift Valley has my name on it.;)

Uh -- It was the Brits who ceded the land to Israel after WWII with UN approval. I believe Whosit & Schwartz hold the Title Insurance and the deed is clear..

In fact, Israel didn't take the West Bank from the Palestinians in 1967. I believe the tanks and soldiers that came into Israel thru Jerusalem had Jordanian flags on them. It should be JORDAN asking for that land back..

Netanyahu had to remind everyone that Palestinians refugees were created when Israel was immediately attacked after it's creation. But also thousands of Jews were evicted from Arab lands at the same time. More like the story of the India/Pakistan exchange when those countries split. ((And THAT one certainly hasn't been neighborly either)) Those daffy Brits...

And Manifest Destiny is a real crock. We should have left ALL of the Americas in the hands of European colonialists. Waited for them to push the Indians back, build an Interstate Hiway system and construct 2 DisneyWorlds. THEN, we could have grabbed it already developed...:) Our founders and pioneers really blew it..

Few people seem to recall who the beligerants were. Palestinian and Jews did live in harmony once, but only when the presence of a powerful third party insured by force good behavior. The argument that without Israel there would be no ME problem is tenuous at best. Muslims have been fighting among themselves since the 700s.

It puzzles me why Obama is spending political capital and time on this issue. He needs all the help he can get on the domestic side of things. The Israeli/Palestine conflct is one eternal mess with the blood thirsty Hamas on one side and the religious fanatics on the other side, who believe that GOD gave them the land so much so that they are pushing their government to build more and more provocative settlements.
I would say to our president: Concentrate on the economy and giving help to our people in dire need.

Subtle -- not -- and precisely my point!

Checking out the recommended thread, now...

So you've noticed that also Bhunter? Palestine under Britain DID have Jews and Arabs living side by side (not totally happy, but peacefullly). Muslims and Hindus in India again under British rule.. More recently, Christians, Muslims, and 16 other Heinz varieties under Dictator Tito in Yugo.. And what happened in EACH case when Autonomy was granted?

Hmmm, there's a lesson here somewhere.. Could it be that to keep the melting pot from boiling over, you need a lid and a governor? Or just a baby-sitter. Or was it just the ole Brit charm?

All that proves is that without the more powerful third party to moderate the bully takes over the playground. And if the playground monitor is simpatico with the playground bully-------Well, just take a gander at those charts again. Especially the one in my avatar.
Today, I caught some discussion of this very matter. It was interesting because one of the commentators asked, "Maybe it's time for the Israeli government to get the hint that we might not always have their back? In fact, we might even begin to hold them responsible for some of what goes on over there."

Or maybe when you have two kids that refuse to get along no matter what you do, you end up just letting them fight it out? Can't be their friggin' Nanny forever. (Or Sugar Daddy either.) They have to grow up sometime.

Dave

Maybe I'm milking this American Indian tribes versus Middle East "tribes" thing too much but -- related to the former -- the revisionist history that the Americas were Utopia before 1492 always makes me ill. (And it would have continued to NOT be Utopia if Columbus had actually sailed off the edge of the Earth to find nothing.)

Somehow, I think there's a Middle East lesson in there somewhere...

Maybe BlueStreak:

It's just the scale of things. Like the phrase 'Balkanizing' pertaining (primarily) to the break-up of Yugoslavia. Yeah Tito was a monster, but when you "federate" all of those ethnic areas under one flag, it's like neutralizing the PH. No potential chemical explosion. Got nothing to do with the potential bully factor until you cut all those areas loose to self-govern. Maybe Zeke can make the argument that all that American Indian inter-tribal warring could have been indefinately put on ice once the British/French arrived -- if the governators weren't fighting each other!

Remember when Biden wanted to divide Iraq into 3 pieces? From the history lesson we're discussing here, I think we can predict THAT outcome as well.

BTW: Can't read your avatar at any scaling. But I assume it shows how the poor Palis are losing more and more claim to land as the clock ticks. You gotta remember that British Palestine included all of current Jordan and small bits of Syria. 80% of that British Mandate went to "Palestinian" Arabs.. Specifically to EXCLUDE Jews and Zionists from any entry or citizen rights in THAT part of Palestine which became Jordan. Leaving the Jews to beg for scraps of the 20% or so that was left West of the Jordan River.

As we've been fighting with each other even under the fiduciary care of the Federal government for ~150 years (which is as "peaceful" a period as we've ever had), I find it unlikely that there's anything the United States can do to actively cease unrest in the Middle East.

Why? Their factions are just as committed to being asses towards each other as American Indians have been with significantly enhanced military acumen.

Not good.

Obama's spending capital on an imaginary new 'push' because it's an easy no lose way to pander to the far left coming into '12 without actually doing anything.

You're not shooting rockets into Chicago or sending suicide bombers into DC?

Pete

I guess what has me a bit chagrined about this whole dust-up with Obama's speech is that he vocalized what has been pretty much our defacto policy for the past 20 years (1967 borders with land swaps) and he's taken to the woodshed by the Netanyahu and the GOP.

Our body politic is willing and able to vocalize all sorts of various positions regarding our various allies in the world without all the "sturm und drang" (Freedom Fries anyone?), but the instant that anything is said with which the Likud party or their (mostly GOP) enablers in Congress ever-so-slightly disagree (even if it's been said before), it solicits a "how dare he throw Israel under the bus?" response.

Compounding my confusion on this issue is that anyone who says that the Jewish/Israel lobby has too much influence in Washington is shouted down as anti-semitic, while at the same time our politicians are forced to bow down before AIPAC. I would argue that Israel has greater influence on our politics than the residents of at least a dozen of our own states.

FinnBow:

I'm not really buying that it's the same-0.. I must not have been following Camp David and the peace attempts for the past 30 years or my ears haven't been working..

Let's try some logic.

1) If you START with 1967 borders as an initial condition --- Then
2) In order to swap for anything, Israel has to give UP acreage that it held prior to 1967.
3) The end result being that Israel loses land it held prior to 1967.

NEVER was in the cards previously.. You'd have to give me concrete examples...

What parts of pre-67 Israel were EVER on the table in serious negotiations other than "joint use" travel corridors that amounted to road access?

Well, quite possibly because as posted earlier, this has been a desired end point for negotiations, not a starting point.

I still get back to this: If the ultimate goal is not about territory, and assuming its about peace, why would / should Israel negotiate with anyone until the Palestinians and their ideological affiliates agree that Israel has a right to exist? They could give up territory back to 1967 and still end up with a bunch of neighbors who want them extinguished.

So why vocalise and extend political capital at this time when your domestic programs are still not firm. Not very political astute! I say put the Pal/Israeli issue on a far back burner.
Moreover the end result is to embolden the Likkud to erect more far out settlements.......boots on the ground.

Its always been an amazing dichotomy here. The left seems more impacted by what is typically a very solid voting block in the Jewish community. The right seems to place high value on the foreign policy side of the relationship with Israel. Either way, Israel does get a significant share of our attention.

I guess my point is that I really don't give much of a rat's ass exactly where the ultimate border of a two-state solution is drawn. There is no magic line, although Israel's ongoing (illegal in many minds) settlement policy is all about shaping the "facts on the ground" in their favor (and at our expense in terms of our relationships with everybody in the world except Israel).

Clinton, Dubya and Obama all have had pretty much the same position vis-a-vis 1967 borders with land swaps, although everybody (including Obama until last week) was careful to fine-tune their message with a certain amount of ambiguity out of fear of AIPAC's wrath.

I've long since tired of our kowtowing to Israel and its Zionist ambitions. I, like most Americans, reflexively sided with Israel until I spent two weeks there in ~1983 travelling all over the country, including the West Bank. Their treatment of Palestinians that I personally witnessed changed my views a bit as to the unquestionable righteousness of their cause and our country's blind fealty to it.

FinnBow:

You're talking with an American Jew that got socially blackballed from the congregation for questioning Israel back in the late 70's. I considered it so nasty, I extended it to permanent exile. So I'm not just rubber-stamping a position here. There is no such thing as a friendly or productive 40 year "occupation" of the West Bank. It's that occupation that I join you in questioning. However, you need to realize that the Palis don't value the same stuff that Israel does. Infrastructure, hospitals, schools, are a whole lot less important to them. They have been given money to build stuff, but have little to show for it. And Jordan -- the actual claimant to the West Bank has not cared a whit about them either.. Why isn't Jordan building infrastructure (or significantly aiding the Palis) in the West Bank areas that Israel has ceded to P.A. control?

Different value scale completely.. That's a LARGE part of the disparity you see when you visit there. Technology, commerce, economic growth? Ain't even on their radar. Unless they've already left to live abroad..

All true enough. What I object to is the enforced & blind fealty on the part of our body politic to Israel's Zionist ambitions (something you seem to have experienced first-hand). Admittedly, Obama's position, as illuminated in the speech, is a nuanced/semantic change (though not substantive) from Clinton/Dubya, but the nerve of Bebe to lecture the President (and leader of Israel's only meaningful ally and biggest benefactor) in public bothers me. Then the body politic virtually demands that Obama "walk back his position" in front of AIPAC. WTF???

Lots of people are complaining that Obama even touched on Israel in his "Arab Spring" speech. But how does he go about expressing support for popular uprisings in Israel's neighbors (Egypt and Syria) while side-stepping the issue of Palestianian rights. Answer - he can't.

Personally, I don't much care about the details of the ultimate resolution of this mess, just that it ultimately gets resolved (as long as our country is so intertwined with Israel). Having said that, I'd much prefer agnosticism or benign neglect in our relationship with Israel and the Palestinians. There's no upside in picking sides in this intractable conflict, especially if it means signing on to the unsavory tactics undertaken by "our" side.

I've got to say, I think saying 'we' use unsavory tactics is, um, funny in a strange way in this case.

How can there be a solution? 'They' can't even enforce a cease fire!

Pete

I am ok with that and shouldn't this be on the table?

FinnBow:

What I got exiled for was a comment about how a flight of F16s leveling a village in the Heights might not be an entirely proper response to a couple crazed Palis with a mortar and bad aim. Guess I also stuck my foot in it when I asked some of the dittohead zealots when was the last time they got to VOTE in an Israeli election. That -- pissed them off for sure.

Israel's Zionist "ambitions" might have been a threat BEFORE Israel was established in '48. But today the sum total of the Zionist "ambition" is to survive as an advanced country and refuge from persecution and hold Jerusalem. I'd say that is a pretty small "threat" to ANYONE in America or outside the Muslim sphere. So even the phrase "Zionist ambition" is one of those super-charged lightning bolts that stokes the fire. As if the solution to TODAY'S Zionist ambition is to sweep Israel into the sea. Or at least celebrate their demise in some fashion.

If I didn't get the Zionist agenda memo and I'm missing something important --- Please FinnBow -- let me know...;)

BTW: I'm all for honest representation of the Pali cause. Like any other "occupation" -- I'm against it...
None of that leftist "grey area" here -- as if there were GOOD occupations and BAD occupations. You win, you occupy, you get out or absorb the refugees with full rights.

I guess I'm tired of being told that I should care deeply about Israel's plight (and that my concern has to be one-sided and equipped with blinders), so much so that the semantic turn of a phrase by the President (that deviates, slightly at most, from our postion of the past 20 years) causes so much harrumphing, hyperbole and indignation.

Without going all "chapter and verse" on ya, there are plenty of unsavory tactics on both sides of this conflict. Our media reports it like all the unsavory stuff is perpetrated solely by the Palestinians against their generous, gracious and unfailingly kind Israeli hosts. It simply ain't so.

FlaCalTenn - My "Zionist Ambitions" reference is to their ongoing settlement practices on the West Bank, actively establishing "facts on the ground" to the detriment of our foreign policy interests and in violation of numerous UN resolutions (FWIW) and international law (whatever that means).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli...t#Legal_status

I'm certainly not saying Israel is a nation of saints. What I'm saying is, what are they supposed to do, say 'oh OK it's just some nuts shooting rockets, that's OK then'?

Or, 'Well, they couldn't even keep a cease fire so let's give them their own country, I'm sure it'll stop once we do that'?

Any US President who did so in their shoes would probably be impeached and rightly so.

Pete

NoOneReal:

It has been on the table in SOME form as FinnBow twisted my arm to admit for a long time. But there's a certain diplomatic parsing and lexicon to present that idea. It is NOT as the Pali.Author. wanted it to be a one acre for one acre swap as logic would dictate. Was never intended that way. Anyone who's been there knows how much wasteland surrounds the habitable parts.

When you just blurt out "pre- 1967 borders" as a starting point, it just shows that you are oversimplifying the concept and avoiding all that special diplomacy that it takes to sell an international solution..

For instance, it comes AFTER some other important pre-conditions, such as identifying who SPEAKS for the Palis? -- recognizing the rights of the other parties -- and deciding on the luncheon menu...

FinnBow:

I got friends that I work with in Tel Aviv. They said it tears their hearts out to see Pali moms stopped at the border with children who need hospital. In the times BEFORE the intifada, MOST Palis worked in Israel and had quick access to medical care even schools. The hostilities end all those reciprocations.

Anyway -- after they vent about misery caused by isolating the Palis -- they always remind me....

If all that Arab moolah that funds the intifada and those damned to hell muslim "schools" that turn out little rock-throwing, hating, know-nothings -- if all that money went to building a Pali Hospital or a real University -- there might be hope...

As for the "Zionist ambitions" of letting Israeli settlers build in the occupied lands... It's been 45 years.. The guys who fought over that land are close to dead. I'd say that showed some restraint.. Or it's only a half-assed zionist ambition. Hitler didn't wait a week to start building stuff in German occupied lands.

Don't give a packaged shit about UN resolutions.. If you want to know why -- I'll start a thread...