Barack Obama is only one of a string of U.S. presidents, beginning with Ronald Reagan, to press the Israelis to stop settlement activity.
Hillary Clinton's blunt public statement that President Obama "wants to see a stop to settlements — not some settlements, not outposts, not natural growth exceptions," made for good headlines. The Israelis were shocked and upset that their slavish ally had acted slightly less obsequious and engaged in a public spat with them.
This ballyhooed baby step came after Obama had raised halting Israeli settlements in the West Bank privately with hawkish Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House — only to get the push back that, at minimum, Israel would have to allow the "natural growth" of settlements to match population expansion.
Yet Obama is only one of a string of U.S. presidents, beginning with Ronald Reagan, to press the Israelis to stop such settlement activity. Despite billions in U.S. military and economic aid to Israel, the Israelis won't even accommodate this seemingly modest U.S. request.
That's because the request is not modest and cuts to the heart of Israeli strategy. With current demographic trends, even many on the Israeli Right realize that Israel will eventually have to acquiesce to a two-state solution. If the West Bank and Gaza aren't jettisoned, Arab population expansion, which is higher than Jewish growth, will eventually make the Jews minority rulers in an ostensibly democratic state — similar to apartheid South Africa. Thus, if democracy with a Jewish majority is to be preserved, the Palestinians will have to be given some sort of a state.
That said, the longer that outcome can be delayed, the better for Israel because proliferating and expanding Jewish settlements can continue — thereby grabbing greater amounts of the best Palestinian land and leaving the Palestinians the meager scraps. Any affirmative Israeli response to U.S. pressure to halt settlements would ruin this underlying Israeli strategy of getting more Palestinian land while the gettin's good.
Of course, these continued Israeli salami tactics have weakened the moderate Palestinian leadership, which has nothing to show for its years of negotiation with Israel, and vastly strengthened the more strident Hamas, which does not acknowledge Israel's right to exist. Thus, Israel may wait too long to accept and implement the two-state solution so that it is no longer possible. Thus, the Israelis will be forced to give up their ideal of a Jewish democracy for an apartheid-style minority rule.
But the real question may be why the United States should care. For the U.S., what Israel does is more a domestic issue than a national security concern. After the Cold War, a U.S. alliance with Israel gets the United States very little and merely antagonizes Middle Eastern oil-producing nations. Although the United States gives Israel billions in aid every year, Israel is in the driver's seat in the bilateral relationship because U.S. politicians — both Democratic and Republican — feel they need the support of the powerful Israeli lobby to get elected.
The moral claim that Israel is a small, embattled democracy surrounded by Arab dictatorships is nullified by the fact that much of Israel sits on land stolen by force of arms. Prior to Israel's 1948 "war for independence," Jews owned only seven percent of the land in Palestine. After the war, Jews possessed more than 70 percent of that land. Thus, like much of the land that is now the United States, even Israel proper was stolen from indigenous peoples and will not be given back. Israel, contrary to the myth of the David among Goliaths, has always been much stronger militarily than the Arabs and will not return Israel proper. So the United States has focused on getting the Palestinians some scrap of land that Israel might someday be willing to give up.
But why? On the one hand, the many U.S. presidential administrations — including that of Barack Obama — have pressured Israel to give the Palestinians land, and on the other hand — with huge amounts of military and economic aid and unflinching political support — they have made it less likely that Israel will do so. Albert Einstein said that doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result is insanity. U.S. policy is therefore insane. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not going to be solved anytime soon and worrying about it deflects the Obama administration's attention from more important problems.
Likewise, Palestinians continue to hope and expect the United States to pressure Israel to give them a state. But given U.S. domestic politics, the U.S. government is incapable of being an honest broker and therefore is unlikely to be of real help to the Palestinians.
Finally, massive U.S. aid and knee-jerk political support for Israel merely helps the Israelis continue their dysfunctional policy. If they would give up occupied land and settle the Palestinian issue, they could have much better relations with all of their Arab neighbors. Everyone in the region could get richer together.
Thus, U.S. policy toward Palestine is costly, a waste of time, and of no help to the real interests of the Palestinian or Israeli people. The United States should follow the physician's motto of "do no harm" and withdraw from the field.
Republished with permission from the Independent Institute.
Very original premise, Ivan. You’re a real free thinker. Jewish puppet masters, “stolen” land from a “people” and “nation” that didn’t exist, and a global coalition of Jew-sympathizers oppressing the fabricated minority. A random word-selection algorithm processing 20 articles from the Daily Kos could have spat out something no less redundant, but at least more interesting from a technical perspective.
Tell me, what was the humanitarian crisis that made a four nation coalition of Arab neighbors attack Israel without warning in 1967, which is when the Israeli “occupation” of Gaza and the West Bank began? Can your property really be “stolen” when you lose it in a war that you started? If that’s the case, when will the occupiers vacate Poland, Austria and Czechoslovakia and return them to their rightful owner, Germany?
Amazing, so much intellectual rubbish. The demographic scenario is a false cliché. For your information, the settlements grow in a rate of 6.5% annually and reach 1 million Jews by 2020. Ultra Orthodox Jews increase very rapidly and double every 12 years. There is a Jewish majority west of the Jordan River, and it will increase: the average Arab woman reproduces in a rate of 3.9 children, a decline from 4.7 in 2000. The fertility of a Jordanian woman now is 3. An orthodox Jew reproduction is 8 and remains constant.
You sound quite a Jew hater and Ivan has been a common name for many Ukrainian gourds in the death camp my parents were held.
Mind your own business, thank you. What are you doing on this site anyway – go work for your master Obama.
Civilisation seemed that could evolve after WWI. By that time humanity was ready to bury all religious legends and myths, and be only guided by reason. Then came WWII, and after it the creation of the religious nazionist state. Reason was overrode by passion and belief. Believers from other dying religions, islam in particular, but also christianity, took the opportunity to resurrect retrograde customs. God, who, if was not dead, was in the ICU, did actually come back. Now what we have are fundamentalists (or should I say conservatives) fighting for the love of their own god and hatred to mankind.
“Intellectual Conservative is a contradiction, but Foolish Conservative is a pleonasm.”
You all need to read the outstanding real good thinking from Mr. Guillaume in the comment section to
http://www.intellectualconservative.com/2009/06/12/if-only-israel-wasn%e2%80%99t-jewish/
He’s gonna tell us poor ignurant folk how to spot one of them jews who go “nazisraeli” on us all from time to time while pricking thorns on the ride to Damascus. [You can't make this kind of stuff up].
You can see what a real good thinker he is there too. And to make sure you all know how good he thinks, he even used the same end quote to tell you nazisraeli jew-loving ignurant conservatives the where to and how for.
Oh, and while he don’t like them jews the most, Mr. G. don’t cotton much to none of them other religions neither, which is responsible for all the bad things that happen in the world except for the atheist commies like Stalin and Mao and pagans like uncle Adolph who we don’t talk much about ‘cause it takes away from blaming god for all the problems the French don’t like (except when they’re cuttin’ off their own people’s heads and making deals with Saddam for oil).
“Consistency is the hobgoblin of liberal minds”.
Phillip Ellis Jackson hates jews.
He, or the man that every night snatches his body and gets deep inside him, is hiding beneath a veil of false sarcasm to express his very own true feelings.
Tell us Mr Phillip Ellis Jackson, why do you hold much hatred against the jews?
Phillip Ellis Jackson hates jews.
He, or the man that every night snatches his body and gets deep inside him, is hiding beneath a veil of false sarcasm to express his very own true feelings.
Tell us Mr Phillip Ellis Jackson, why do you hold much hatred against the jews?
“Intellectual Conservative is a contradiction, but Foolish Conservative is a pleonasm.”
Mr. Guillaume:
Like I done said in that other comment section, I is jest a poor ignorant feller whose trying reel hard to understand what a “nazisraeli” is, which is a term you used to describe them jews over there. Remember that real good thinking statement you made back there in comment #3 about “The advent of Nazisrael”?
Then there’s that other real good thinking you said in comment #5 about them “rabid jews” we ignorant folk got keep wary of.
Well sir, like the simple folk I am, I is jest askin’ you to help me understand how to identify one of them rabid jews before they go nazisrael in me and make me wear a beanie or something real bad like that ‘cause they’re out to destroy indigenous populations with their aka gods that hurl bolts on their way to Damascus.
Since you — as the official real good thinker — thunk hard enough to raise these real important issues, it’s only fair of me — the dumb ignurant one — to ask you to help me identify them rabid jew nazisralis you spoke about.
Or is it only now, that the ignurace of what you done said is so obvious to ever-one, that you done switched from words like “rabid jew” to “jewish” to act like a real good thinker across the pond who speaks the language of the bard to make people think you’re not just an ordinary a racist fool with a good vocabulary?
Now for my clever end quote to show ever-one how real smart I am.
“Consistency is the hobgoblin of liberal minds.”
This is hardly new ground, Mr. Eland; and, no more noteworthy for the regurgitation. The points on which you are wrong are only exceeded by the number of unsupportable statements you make, starting with Reagan representing the starting point of U.S. demands for Israeli land-for-peace. That, after all, was Jimmy Carter’s proud slogan at Camp David. As a prescription for peace, it has proved both delusional and cynical. And your mischaracterization of Israel as principle aggressor in wars fought to annihilate it and the U.S. as “slavish” are equally bogus. Moreover, you inflate, deflate, and conflate facts to suit this thesis of yours.
Israel has already surrendered a great deal of land that it won in the several wars of Arab aggression, wars fought with the deadly aim of wiping Israel entirely off the map. Israel captured large areas of Egypt and Syria from these aggressors, yet willingly surrendered them as a price of peace, a surrender that figures no where in any of your calculations. To this day, no Arab map acknowledges Israel even exists. You differentiate the Palestinian Authority from Hamas on the sole basis Hamas refuses to admit Israel’s right to exist; all the while ignoring the P.A., in its charter, also denies Israel’s right to exist, and has turned down peace-offering after peace-offering on that basis; most notoriously the offer made to Arafat in 2000 granting every Palestinian demand. You forget or ignore the land which the P.A., today, inhabits and claims as its sole birthright was barely inhabited a century ago and that Jews made up half or more of its inhabitants going back to Biblical times. So, let’s deconstruct your many misstatements and historical misreading.
– Eland: “Despite billions in U.S. military and economic aid to Israel, the Israelis won’t even accommodate this seemingly modest U.S. request.”
In fact, Israel has halted, and even reversed, settlement several times in the hopes of a lasting peace with the Palestinians: 1973 for two years, for 3-months following Camp David until talks broke down, following the 1993 Oslo Accords, during the 1999-2000 Clinton initiative, and, most recently, the bulldozing of Gush Katif in 2005. The agreements made included provisions retaining some of the settlements while giving up others. Despite the PLO (later split into PA and Hamas) never signed onto them, those areas were surrendered per the proposals in the hopes they would lead to a peace with the Palestinians. Instead, the Palestinians took the land offered without making any concessions and continued laying claim to the rest of Israel.
– Eland: “…the [Obama] request is not modest and cuts to the heart of Israeli strategy” sounds a reasonable enough statement – until Eland compromises it by calling it “… similar to apartheid South Africa…”
In this 4th paragraph, Eland manages to twist a demographic trend almost entirely the result of an Israeli benevolence into a racist provocation having no bearing on regional history or Israeli-Palestinian relations. South-African apartheid was a case of a transplanted white culture dominating and patronizing a long established, native black culture. 95+% of the Palestinians are as alien to the region as Israelis, and can have no greater claim to the land than Israelis. If anything, Jews have the far longer and more persistent presence on the land as a people; and that includes the entire period of Muslim dominance (710-1918). What Eland regards as ‘native’ Palestinians had no group identity prior to the creation of Israel, and consisted more in vagrants, outcasts, and flotsam of Ottoman indifference. The rest arrived in response to opportunities the Zionists and (later) Israelis created. Moreover, Palestinians and Israelis are far less racially distinct than Afrikaners; making a mockery of Eland’s racist implication. The separation between Israelis and Palestinians is almost entirely the product of Muslim intolerance of any state and culture in what they regard ‘their midst’ that is not primarily Muslim (not one of Israeli intolerance).
The Israelis can make at least one claim Palestinians cannot: for 100+ years, the Israelis have labored to create a viable country (complete with culture, agriculture, industry, and continuity) where none has existed nearly a millennium; and have been hugely successful in the undertaking. The Israelis have invested their lifeblood in creating such a country, whereas the Palestinians merely lay claim to something others created on the pretense they were ‘on the land’ first. Should not ownership be vested by more than mere presence? Otherwise, all of us are subject to eviction by the next claimant who manages to build up a substantial presence on property we made valuable. The Palestinians are claiming as ‘ancestors’ people to whom they are related mainly by culture, but, for whom, most are recent arrivals and are, at best, related by marriage. This is akin to the brother-in-law and his pals who move in only to claim squatter-rights and trash the place before they can be evicted. If we take from the Israelis any part of holdings they alone (or even principally) made valuable to give to those who contributed little or perfunctorily, how does that differ from claim-jumping abetted by corrupt officials in other eras. Superficially, the Palestinians have begun creating a culture and output their own, but this is by way of rivalry and imitation more than intent; and its viability is, as yet, uncertain.
– Eland: “the longer that outcome can be delayed, the better for Israel because proliferating and expanding Jewish settlements can continue — thereby grabbing greater amounts of the best Palestinian land and leaving the Palestinians the meager scraps. Any affirmative Israeli response to U.S. pressure to halt settlements would ruin this underlying Israeli strategy of getting more Palestinian land while the gettin’s good.”
The 1948 partition gave title to 85-90% of Palestine to Muslims; including the so-called ‘Palestinians’. Their fellow Muslims accepted the portion given them as their due, but then refused to recognize either Israel or those Muslims living east of the Jordan as having any share of the settlement, insisting instead that Israel was their share while denying to Jews any share. At that time, there was no recognizable group called ‘Palestinians’. The term ‘Palestinian’ simply referred to anyone who happened to live within the Palestinian Mandate, including Jews and Christians who, today, are no longer accepted as part of that meaning. So, when Eland accuses Israel of “grabbing greater amounts of the best Palestinian land”, just who does he think made it the ‘best’ and why then should they be excluded from it.
– Eland: “…tactics have weakened the moderate Palestinian leadership, which has nothing to show for its years of negotiation with Israel, and vastly strengthened the more strident Hamas, which does not acknowledge Israel’s right to exist.”
Nothing to show for its ‘years of negotiation with Israel?’ How about the billions of dollars in aid poured into PLO/PA coffers? How about the land so far wrested from Israel and given over to the Palestinians? How about the land won from Egypt, Jordan and Syria (and area twice the size of Israel) surrendered in the pretended ‘solution’ cooked up at Camp David; some of which was supposed to be given to the Palestinians to make a home? How about the recognition granted Palestine and the Palestinians that they do, indeed, comprise a ‘people’ worthy of that name where before none existed other than as a political figment with which to attack Israel? How about the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who are alive today solely because Palestinians are never turned away from Israeli hospitals and charities? How about the many jobs Israel provides to Palestinians who then agitate for Israel’s destruction? The ‘best land’ Eland refers to is desirable precisely because Israelis have invested so much into; transformed it from wasteland to garden. It was centuries of Muslim misrule from Constantinople that caused this region to be stripped of resources, productivity discouraged, abandoned as unproductive, and, ultimately, a refuge for misfits, wastrels, banditti and corrupt officials who plundered its remaining worth. When the Zionist arrived a century ago, no one cared and no one believed they would last – including the handful of so called “Palestinians” eking out an existence on land so poor it was a subject of Muslim scorn. As for the “moderate Palestinians”, would that be the same P.A. (aka, PLO) that heaved Klinghoffer overboard, lob rockets at and murder innocent Israelis regularly for four decades, and scold Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and the rest of the Muslim world for failing to deliver on promise to maintain perpetual war until Israel is no more? That moderate Palestine? Don’t get me wrong, because there are some truly moderate Palestinians. They just don’t happen to be the same guys Eland references.
– Eland: “…that Israel is a small, embattled democracy surrounded by Arab dictatorships is nullified by the fact that much of Israel sits on land stolen by force of arms. Prior to Israel’s 1948 “war for independence,” Jews owned only seven percent of the land in Palestine. After the war, Jews possessed more than 70 percent of that land. … Israel, contrary to the myth … has always been much stronger militarily than the Arabs … So the United States has focused on getting the Palestinians some scrap of land that Israel might someday be willing to give up.”
Israel ‘is’ the lone self-sustaining democracy in the region, ‘is’ far smaller than her Arab neighbors, ‘is’ under constant threat of attack both from without and within, and her neighbors ‘are’ dictators. Yet, Eland wants us to believe all that is nullified by Israel’s hanging onto land that fell to her when attacked and is to blame for keeping land vital to her survival given the unrelenting state of hostility. Eland is technically correct, logically inconsistent, and politically clever; though we can’t really credit him with coming up with the method (variants of this theme have been around for decades). The false argument he employs is saying Jews increased their holdings ten-fold in their War of Independence. But, even assuming that were true (it isn’t), the same would apply even more to the so-called ‘Palestinians’, few of whom held any kind of land title at the time of the Partition because that form of individualized ownership was rare in Muslim society of the time. If all you count is land to which Jews had clear title without counterclaim, then Eland is right Israel got more than the individual Jews living there had clear title. However, Eland can no more give us proof of Muslim ownership then Jewish. The Ottoman Empire kept sloppy title records in Palestine because Palestine was a neglected backwater. Most of those then living their (other than Zionists) were squatters, migrants, outlaws, scofflaws, and dregs, little interested in land ownership. Most of these lived in villages and towns like Jerusalem and Joppa where they could get work and shelter. The real owners lived in places like Constantinople, Cairo, and Damascus. Zionist immigrants were often fleeced by corrupt locals who sold title to land improperly or sold it to them legitimately only to, later, deny Jews could own land at all. This created a situation the more rabid anti-Zionists later exploited to assert Jews never owned lands claimed by them, and made cross claims against it under the British Mandate until British officials despaired of sorting it all out. Even allowing Jews received 10 times as much land than they had title to in the Partition, it can equally be said the local Muslims (aka ‘Palestinians’) likewise received land far in excess of that to which they were legally entitled; and, in fact, the ratio of Muslim land to title was far larger than that for Jews. If this is true of both groups but even more true of the ‘Palestinians’ almost none of whom held any kind of land title, how can Eland use it as a basis for claiming Jews stole this land from the locals. Again, by the time of Partition, the Sabras were as much ‘natives’ as were the local Muslims. Did Muslims, then, ‘steal’ all the land they got as their portion with no clear title, land that was nine-times greater than the Jews got? And, who did they ‘steal’ it from? Land un-owned by individuals or private organizations is termed ‘public’ land and both Jews and Muslims got a share of that as their portion. In this situation, the proper measure for partitioning public land is not ownership but population-distribution, development/investment, and prevailing culture. By all three measures, the land that went to Israel by the terms of the Partition was, without doubt, Jewish. Thus, it is only by giving greater weight to Muslim counter claims can it be said Jewish claims were exaggerated. In fact, the Jews of Israel had equal or better claim to far more than they received by the terms of the settlement, terms Israel conceded but which Muslims have, so far, never recognized; further weakening Muslim as against Jewish claims (chose the ‘all or nothing’ option and wound up with nothing). The land promised Israel which Zionists made improvements on prior to the war was, in fact, larger than that settled on by its charter of sovereignty. The original Palestinian Mandate consisted of all of modern Israel, all Jordan (aka, Transjordan), southern Lebanon, 1/4 of modern Syria, a slice of modern Iraq, bits of northern Saudi Arabia, and part of the Sinai. Of that, Israel was promised all the land between the Mediterranean and the line of the Jordan River down to the Gulf of Aqaba, but before the ink was dry were told the West bank, the Old City of Jerusalem, and Gaza would go to the Muslims who insisted they must have those or there would be no peace. Muslims got all they demanded yet still they refuse to acknowledge Israel’s right to exist and, instead, inflamed local Muslims against the Jews in an all out war in which there was to be no Jewish survivor. Prior to the Partition, Zionists purchased land, built settlements, and made impressive improvements throughout the whole of Palestine; including Transjordan, southern Syria, and Sinai; and drawing far more Muslims into Palestine than were native to it. By WWII’s end, Sinai was transferred to Egypt and the House of Saud was claiming sovereignty as far north and west as Amman and Jerusalem. 85-90% of the original mandate was handed over to Muslims, including the West Bank, Jerusalem and Gaza contrary to that promised. In fairness, promises had also been made to Muslims that conflicted with those made to Jews and were not kept either, but the point of this is Muslims got most of their demands and the lion’s share of Palestine; whereas the Jews were forced to concede nearly half all they’d been lead to expect (into which they’d poured their energies and wealth) in the forlorn hope it might assuage Muslim hostility (it didn’t). Muslims, of course, claim they were promised every bit of Palestine (including southern Lebanon), though the assurance given was vague where the more pragmatic Zionists insisted on specifics. Transjordan was supposed to have become the new home of those Muslims not otherwise absorbed by Arabia, Syria, Egypt, Lebanon, and Iraq or incapable of living amicably among Jews. Therefore, Eland’s ‘Palestinians’ who were supposed to have become ‘Jordanians’ were, instead, refused by their coreligionists and persuaded to stay in Israel as a permanent provocation with which to attack it. To keep them their and sustain their hopes of reward, the oft repeated promise was made the Muslim powers would soon return to wreak Allah’s wrath on tiny Israel.
A look at any map of Israel (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/58/Israel_districts_numbered.png) is all it takes to convince most people the 1967 War increased the land mass of Israel (after surrender of captured Sinai and Syria) no more than a third; not the massive land grab Eland suggests. Assuming Eland is right and Israel ‘stole’ 9/10ths of her original (1948) mandate and later ‘grabbed’ all she could, Israel would have been so tiny it could not have lasted long enough to steal anything; and would, today, likely own Cairo, Amman, Damascus, Beirut, and the Saudi-Kuwaiti oil fields. Deceitfully, Eland has counted as ‘stolen’ lands given to Israel per the 1948 U.N. charter but contested by Muslims who steadfastly refuse recognition. But, it that is Eland’s standard of ‘stolen’, why stop at land to which Jews had uncontested title in 1948? Why not swallow the whole Muslim argument that Jews have no title to any part of Palestine, not so much as it take to bury us there. Following similar reasoning, the argument is posited the Palestinians are the rightful owners because they outnumbered the Jews at the time of Partition, and remain so today. This, too, is accomplished by a trick of counting as ‘native’ several hundred thousand Muslims who were drawn by Jewish industry to Palestine; without which the ‘native’ Muslim population is insufficient to make the argument they outnumbered Jews in the area, and the part of Palestine that was partitioned to Israel would have been Jewish 2:1 (or more). Were Eland to more modestly whine the British and French made bad faith promises to both sides and bungled matters trying to straighten it out, I’d concede as much. As he, instead, disguises botched attempts at diplomacy as theft by Jews with which to attack Israel, I ardently protest.
The ‘greatly stronger Israel’ Eland asserts can only be in the sense Israel is stronger than the P.A.; totally ignoring the P.A.’s powerful allies in neighboring Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Libya, Morocco, Pakistan, and Iran; plus 1.6-billion Muslims globally who have steadily backed ‘Palestinian resistance’ to Israel, and were and remain hostile to Israel’s existence since before it was even a country.
– Eland: “…U.S. government is incapable of being an honest broker and therefore is unlikely to be of real help to the Palestinians.”
For once, I agree with Eland but not for the reasons he believes. No government (and, for that matter, no group) on Earth is capable of being 100% honest when meddling in the business of others. Eland accuses the U.S. of unfairly backing Israel, never once acknowledging it was constant U.S. meddling in favor of the Palestinians, of satisfying the meddlesome demands by third-party state-sponsors of Muslim terror, and an obsession with becoming the first ‘U.S. President to bring about Middle-East Peace’ that has kept Israel embroiled decades after the state-sponsors were ready to throw in the towel.
For a guy with a PhD, a supposed scholar, and an impartial ‘independent’ thinker there is an awful lot of leftist nonsense this Eland guy buys into, doesn’t understand, gets flat wrong, or deliberately distorts. As scholars go, I find him something of an embarrassment his ‘facts’ don’t even match information readily available to every high-school student doing background assignments on the Palestinian conflict.
Additional reading:
http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=29962
http://www.betar.co.uk/articles/betar1123246700.php
http://www.adl.org/israel/advocacy/how_to_respond/settlements.asp?xflag=1