The outline of the agreement that Obama and Kerry wish to impose on Israel and the PLO is becoming evident. Lead US negotiator Martin Indyk is talking, and reportedly
…told the Jewish leaders on Thursday that under the framework agreement about 75-80 percent of settlers would remain in what would become Israeli sovereign territory through land swaps; he added that it was his impression that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas was not averse to allowing settlers who want to remain as citizens of the Palestinian state. …
This implies the ‘relocation’ of about 100,000 Jews (half as many as Ferdinand and Isabella kicked out of Spain in 1492). Practically speaking, this will be impossible, since many of these Jews will resist. Multiply the numbers of the Gaza expulsion by 10 or more, and then consider the ideological commitment of many of these Jews. Blood would be shed. For the Jewish people, it would be a historic defeat and disaster. It would tear the nation apart.
Morally speaking it would be unjust. Jews were encouraged by the ‘international community’ to settle in all of mandatory Palestine, but they were expelled by the Jordanian invasion and ethnic cleansing in 1948. Now they will be expelled again, in order to create a racially pure Arab state.
Yes, a racist state. Jewish citizens of a Palestinian state? The concept is a cruel, antisemitic joke. To even think about this, after the official adulation given to the newly released, joyously unrepentant murderers — it’s incredible. I have no words.
Broadly, Indyk said, the agreement will address: mutual recognition; security, land swaps and borders; Jerusalem; refugees; and the end of conflict and all claims. …
This, too, with a straight face, when anyone can see that if the Jews are removed from the territories and the Arabs do not uphold their end of the deal, then what? Will the Jews return to their homes?
On some sensitive issues — particularly the status of Jerusalem — the framework would be vague, but Indyk went into detail on other issues that participants said was surprising.
Among these was the security arrangement for the border between Jordan and the West Bank: Indyk said a new security zone would be created, with new fences, sensors and unmanned aerial vehicles.
Military experts, including Israel’s Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon, have made it clear why this is worthless. Simply, all of this high-tech equipment, even if it works correctly and can’t be sabotaged, can’t stop anyone. There is a high-tech fence at the border with Gaza, but it is patrolled by the IDF. How long would it stay there if the army were to leave?
Suppose the King of Jordan is overthrown and a Muslim Brotherhood regime is established. Suppose this regime masses an army on the border, even invites other nations to join it. Suppose ‘Palestine’ invites them onto its territory, in view of Tel Aviv.
All this will contravene lots of agreements, and Israel — kept up-to-date by its high-tech sensors — will be able to … do what? Complain to the UN?
Frankly, the whole idea of “high-tech security arrangements” is nonsense — worse, its purpose is to give Kerry an excuse to pressure Israel to abandon its security. It is another aspect of the deceit that characterizes this enterprise.
Indyk also said that the framework would address compensation for Jews from Arab lands as well as compensation for Palestinian refugees — another longstanding demand by some pro-Israel groups but one that has yet to be included in any formal document.
If the world recognizes the need to provide a humanitarian solution for the refugees, which includes resettlement in Arab countries and anything else they need after the way they have been used and mistreated by the Arab regimes, fine. But ‘compensation’ implies a right that has been taken away, and there is no such right. Any vestige of a symbolic right of return will soon transform itself into the demand for a real one. Much simpler and more just to simply consider the Arab and Jewish refugees a population exchange and call it even.
The same principle applies to the land swaps. Legally, the 1949 armistice lines have no political significance. But if Israel compensates the Arabs for land it keeps outside of the lines, the implication is that it belonged to the Arabs in the first place. Otherwise, what is there to compensate for?
He said that the framework would describe “Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people and Palestine as the nation state of the Palestinian people,” a nod to a key demand by the Netanyahu government that Israel be recognized as a Jewish state.
Fine. After all, their word is their bond! And now we come to the best part:
He said the framework would address the issue of incitement and Palestinian education for peace.
Here I can absolutely guarantee that the Arabs will not keep their side of the bargain. How do I know? Because this was part of the Oslo accords, part of the Road Map, and probably part of other agreements, and neither Arafat nor Abbas ever took any steps in this direction. Never.
And this, more than anything else — the hate-education system, the glorification of murderers and terrorists — even while ostensibly negotiating for peace, shows that in fact the Arabs are not negotiating for peace. Their objective is to get prisoners released, to get control of territory, to get money and weapons, to build an ideologically driven army of all of their people, to weaken Israel in every possible way in order to ultimately destroy it.
What is the common thread here? Deceit — and not just on the part of the Arabs, who are simply behaving as they always have. No, I am referring to Barack Obama, John Kerry and the Europeans who, by now, must understand the consequences of what they are doing, but keep throwing up smokescreens — like ‘high-tech security arrangements’ — to hide them.
And I haven’t even mentioned yet that they are doing this at the same time that they are pursuing improved relations with Israel’s most dangerous enemy, Iran — and in the process enabling Iran to get nuclear weapons. Here, too, deceit is key.
For whatever reason, the objective of the Obama-Kerry plan is to wreck the only functioning democratic state in the Middle East, the one closest to American ideals, the only one with a flourishing economy. And the only refuge for the Jewish people in a world that is rapidly becoming very unfriendly.