IDF: Commander of the Kenyan Military Visits Israel

IDF Spokesperson March 24th, 2010
Commander of the Kenyan Military Visits Israel

The Chief of Israel's General Staff, Lt. Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi, met earlier this
evening with the Commander of the Kenyan Military , General Jeremiah
Mutinda.

General Mutinda arrived in Israel on Sunday for a week-long work visit, as
the guest of the Ministry of Defense, in order to strengthen the military
cooperation between the two nations and examine a possible cooperation with
the Israeli Defense Industries. This is the first visit by a Commander of
The Kenyan Military in the IDF in over a decade.

During his visit, the General will attend security and strategy brieifings
from military officials, tour the Israeli Defense Industries and visit a
naval base and the Yad Vashem Museum.

The IDF and the Kenyan Military cooperate on different security matters.

Professor Moshe Arens: Israel doesn't need to grovel for U.S. forgiveness

Professor Moshe Arens
Haaretz - March 15, 2010

So sorry! Very sorry! Very, very sorry! We apologize! This will never happen again! The prime minister, cabinet members and senior bureaucrats repeated this over and over again last week in an attempt to set right what seemed to them to have been a major blunder, one they thought had spoiled what should have been a dramatic goodwill visit by the vice president of the United States, Joe Biden. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu might have been humming "I'm just a soul whose intentions are good, Oh Lord, please don't let me be misunderstood," while he sat waiting for the arrival of Biden, who vented his anger over what he considered an insult by being deliberately late for dinner.

The government's critics in the media had a field day. According to them the decision by the Jerusalem District Planning and Building Committee to approve plans for putting up additional houses in the Ramat Shlomo neighborhood, just as Biden was arriving in the country, was ruining relations between the United States and Israel and causing irreparable damage to strategic cooperation between the two countries. Listening to them, one might have thought that if some years from now historians try to determine why the U.S. administration did not take any effective action to prevent the Iranians from acquiring nuclear weapons, they will find that the responsibility lay on the shoulders of a minor Israeli civil servant who set the agenda of a local planning committee for that fateful day.

Since it was well known in Washington that the Netanyahu government had not frozen building activity in Jerusalem, and that therefore not only construction there was continuing but also the routine planning activities that precede construction, the blame was now being put on the "timing." Presumably, if the planning committee had held its session a few days before Biden's arrival there would not have been a problem. Or, had it met a few days after Biden's departure and he left here under the impression that planning activities had been suspended in Jerusalem, only to find out differently on his arrival in Washington, there would have been nothing to get excited about.

"Timing" is important when investing in the stock market, but it is of little relevance here. There is no substitute for the truth when dealing with friends and allies. And the truth in this case is that while the Israeli government has frozen construction in Judea and Samaria for 10 months, there has been no such freeze in any part of Jerusalem, and certainly no holdup of planning procedures. There was no need for all this groveling by Israeli spokesmen. On the subject of Jerusalem, the government of Israel and the administration in Washington simply disagree.

Throughout the U.S.-Israeli relationship there have been disagreements on certain issues. They are inevitable, even among the best of friends. But generally, the disagreements have not been taken public, but have been discussed in confidential exchanges between representatives of the two governments. U.S. President Barack Obama, however, has taken a new approach, which he signaled at his speech last June in Cairo, where he publicly called on Israel to stop settlement activity.

The rationale of this approach was presumably to accelerate the negotiations between Israel and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. But what the Americans must be finding out to their chagrin is that this approach is actually making it more difficult, if not impossible, for Abbas to come to the negotiating table. Whereas in the past he negotiated with Israel while settlement activity continued, without setting prior conditions, Obama's Cairo speech left Abbas no choice but to demand the cessation of settlement activity in Judea and Samaria as a condition for entering negotiations. After all, he cannot be less Palestinian than Obama.

Now, after the statements made by Biden in Israel, followed by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's public rebuke of Netanyahu, he will demand the cessation of construction in Jerusalem, and possibly even the freezing of all planning activity regarding future construction as a condition for beginning negotiations with Israel. As the saying goes, "why make it difficult, when with a little effort you can make it impossible?" This is hardly the way to advance the peace process.

Moshe Arens (Hebrew: משה ארנס‎, born 27 December 1925) is an Israeli-American aeronautical engineer, researcher, diplomat and politician. A member of Knesset representing the Likud party between 1973 and 1992 and again from 1999 until 2003, he served as Minister of Defense three times and once as Minister of Foreign Affairs. Arens also served as Israel's Ambassador to the United States and was professor at the Technion in Haifa. He currently serves as the Chairman of the International Board of Governors at the University Center in Ariel.

Moshe Arens: Palestinian dream of statehood further away than ever

From The Galilee Institute Archives:

Palestinian dream of statehood further away than ever
By Professor Moshe Arens

Originally Published in Ha'aretz, December 1, 2009


Never in the history of man has so much effort been invested by so many in nation-building as with the Palestinians. The United States, the European Union and many other countries have been investing huge resources as part of this effort. An American general, Keith Dayton, is training the Palestinians' fledgling police force.

And yet there still seems to be a long way to go. There is no unified Palestinian leadership. Hamas controls the Gaza Strip, and whereas the Palestinian Authority under Mahmoud Abbas is the generally recognized leadership of the Palestinians in Judea and Samaria, its control of this area is far from complete.

It was only relatively recently that the Palestinians declared themselves a national entity and have been recognized as such by the international community. The United Nations partition resolution in 1947 called for the division of western Palestine into a Jewish and Arab (not Palestinian) state. Jordan's annexation of Judea and Samaria in 1949 and the awarding of Jordanian citizenship to the Arab population residing there met with no objections from any quarter. It was only with the foundation of the Palestine Liberation Organization in 1964, under Yasser Arafat's leadership, that a claim for Palestine was put forth on behalf of the Palestinian people.

But for many years the PLO was little more than a terrorist organization. And it was only after Arafat declared in May 1989 that the PLO's charter, which denied the legitimacy of Israel's existence, was "caduc" ("obsolete"), and the 1993 Oslo Accords that granted rehabilitation to Arafat and his terrorist group, that the PLO attained general recognition as the representative of the Palestinian people. So the Palestinians took their place among the recognized community of nations.

It did not take long before Arafat reverted to terrorism and the Oslo Accords were turned into ashes. Only after Arafat's demise and the election of Abbas, who declared that the Palestinians must abandon the weapon of terror, were the Palestinians showered with outside assistance in an attempt to chaperone them on the road to statehood. The "two-state solution" mantra was adopted worldwide, including by many in Israel. Some even began to argue that the only obstacle to achieving Palestinian statehood and peace with Israel was the Israeli settlements in Judea and Samaria.

But while Abbas is in Venezuela seeking encouragement from Hugo Chavez, and the Israeli government declares a settlement freeze for 10 months in Judea and Samaria, the ultimate goal of Palestinian statehood seems further away than ever. So far there is nothing more than a virtual Palestinian state, a house of cards. Anyone who thinks the settlement freeze will serve as the foundation for this house of cards will soon find that he is mistaken. There is no connection there. The intensive care and artificial respiration provided by U.S. President Barack Obama may not be able to bring this patient to life.

At this time the Palestinian state may be no more than an impossible dream. The reality is that there are currently three Palestinian entities - the Kingdom of Jordan, the Hamas-ruled enclave in the Gaza Strip, and the area of Judea and Samaria that is not in the control of Abbas, although his headquarters is there. No law of nature prohibits the existence of three Palestinian states at some future date, but it seems patently unreasonable and not very likely. Freezing settlement construction in Judea and Samaria for the next 10 months is not going to change that.

So why did Benjamin Netanyahu's government decide on the 10-month settlement freeze, which is no more than a futile gesture? The prevailing explanation is that the Israeli government wanted to please President Obama. Although personal relations between the leaders of nations is not completely unimportant in international relations, it is certainly not the first priority in conducting a country's foreign policy. Relations between Israel and the United States are not based on personal sympathy, but rather on common values and strategic interests.

When there are differences of opinion between two friendly nations they are not resolved by trying to please one or the other leader. They are certainly not resolved through the issuance of orders by one side to the other. Israel is a small country, but it is an independent country. Netanyahu does not have to state, as Menachem Begin did, that we are not a banana republic, but he does need to make that clear. That is of great importance for U.S.-Israel relations in the years to come.


Moshe Arens (Hebrew: משה ארנס‎, born 27 December 1925) is an Israeli-American aeronautical engineer, researcher, diplomat and politician. A member of Knesset representing the Likud party between 1973 and 1992 and again from 1999 until 2003, he served as Minister of Defense three times and once as Minister of Foreign Affairs. Arens also served as Israel's Ambassador to the United States and was professor at the Technion in Haifa. He currently serves as the Chairman of the International Board of Governors at the University Center in Ariel.

Prof. Moshe Arens: From Balfour to a Palestinian State

From the Galilee Institute Archives:

Prof. Moshe Arens: From Balfour to a Palestinian State
November 3, 2009

Ninety-two years ago today the British foreign secretary, Arthur James Balfour, sent the now famous letter, known as the Balfour Declaration, to Baron Rothschild to be transmitted to the Zionist Federation of Great Britain and Ireland.

Looking at the State of Israel today one might say it all started with the Balfour Declaration. Some would say, it all started with Theodore Herzl and the first Zionist Congress in Basel in 1897, 20 years earlier. And students of Zionist history would say it all started even earlier with the Lovers of Zion, the Hovevei Zion, and the first wave of modern Jewish immigration to Palestine from Eastern Europe, Ha'aliya Harishona. But as far as international recognition of Zionist aspirations, and the political movement that set in motion the Zionist enterprise that became the Jewish state in Palestine, the State of Israel, it all started with the Balfour Declaration.

In World War I efforts had been made to have Jews, as Jews, participate in the fighting against the Turks. The Zion Mule Corps, commanded by John Patterson and his deputy Yosef Trumpeldor, had participated in the fighting at Gallipoli; the NILI spy network in Palestine, led by Aharon Aaronson, had been providing intelligence information to the British; and the Jewish Legion organized by Vladimir Jabotinsky, that was to participate in the fighting in Palestine, was formed in August 1917.

All that, and the political spadework done by Chaim Weizmann and Nahum Sokolow in London had laid the groundwork for the declaration. And there was the sympathy for the return of the Jewish people to their ancient homeland in some circles in Britain. But in the final analysis, as was to be expected in a nation at war, it was the immediate interests of Britain, at the moment, that tipped the scales in favor of this momentous declaration of sympathy with the Zionist cause.

The support of American Jewry, thought to have considerable influence, for the war effort was expected to be strengthened by the declaration. And the misperception that the many Jews in leadership positions among the communists in Russia, at the time in the throes of the communist revolution and Russia's continued role in the war uncertain, might be swayed by the declaration to keep Russia in the war, was a consideration in the issuance of the Balfour Declaration by the British government.

THE DECLARATION, a powerful statement of support for Zionist aspirations, by what was at the time one of the world's great powers intent on gaining control of much of the Middle East after the war, contained sufficient ambiguities to leave succeeding British governments plenty of room for maneuver to satisfy the exigencies on the ground as seen by British policymakers as time went on.

The original draft of the declaration which contained the phrase "Palestine should be reconstituted as the National Home of the Jewish people" was amended in the final text to read "His Majesty's government view with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people."

"In Palestine" could be interpreted as meaning that not all of Palestine should become the national home of the Jewish people. Additionally, the boundaries of Palestine not being defined at the time, left ambiguous the eventual size of the area to be allocated as a national home of the Jewish people. And not least - for Zionism's goal was the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine (Herzl's manifesto was entitled Der Judenstadt) - the Balfour Declaration had substituted for Jewish state the more ill-defined "national home for the Jewish people."

These ambiguities came to haunt the Zionist movement as British governments exploited them over the years. The Arab population in Palestine did not welcome the idea of largescale Jewish immigration and the application of the Balfour Declaration to the area. They quickly learned that rioting was an effective tool in getting the government in London to accede to their demands and backtrack on the Balfour Declaration.

In April 1920 riots were organized against the Jews in Jerusalem.

The following year there were Arab riots against the Jews in Jaffa. The immediate British response was a temporary suspension of Jewish immigration. Proposals by Jabotinsky that Jewish battalions similar to the Jewish Legion be enlisted so as to quell the riots and establish order were rejected, while the British forces stationed in Palestine were completely ineffective in overcoming Arab rioters.

The attitude of the British military in Palestine was generally anti-Zionist and favored the Arabs. In a circular distributed to the British officers serving in Palestine, Gen. Walter Congreve, commanding Egyptian Expeditionary Forces from Cairo, wrote "[The army's] sympathies are obviously with the Arabs... who have been the victims of the unjust policy forced upon them by the British government."

The Zionist delegation to the Paris peace conference in 1919 had submitted a map of the Jewish national home which included territory east of the Jordan River, as well as the Golan Heights in the north. But no sooner had a British military administration established itself in Palestine than a process of whittling away at the territory to which the Balfour Declaration was intended to apply was begun.

Within a month of assuming the post of colonial secretary in February 1921, Winston Churchill was on his way to Cairo to chair a conference to frame British policy in the Middle East. Paying little attention to the map presented by the Zionist delegation at the Paris peace conference, and the decisions of the Allied conference in San Remo in 1920 which decided that the area west and east of the Jordan River were to be a single territory to which the Balfour Declaration would be applied by the mandatory power, the Cairo conference concluded that Abdullah, who had entered the area east of the Jordan from Arabia with some of his troops, remain there as the ruler of Transjordan within the framework of the British mandate for Palestine. In making the offer to Abdullah at a meeting in Jerusalem in May, Churchill agreed that the provisions of the Balfour Declaration would not extend east of the Jordan River. The offer was accepted.

It was the beginning of Arab rule and the exclusion of Jewish settlers from over 78 percent of what was going to be the Palestine Mandate granted to Britain by the League of Nations in June 1922. At about the same time French-British negotiations delineating the northern border of Palestine were concluded leaving the Golan Heights in French mandated Syria.

IN ADDITION, under the pressure of the Arab riots in Palestine the British government began backtracking on the Balfour Declaration. The Churchill White Paper issued in June 1922 ascribed the Arab riots to "exaggerated interpretations of the meaning of the Declaration."

The White Paper, announcing the government's policy, went on: "Unauthorized statements have been made to the effect that the purpose in view is to create a wholly Jewish Palestine. Phrases have been used such as that Palestine is to become 'as Jewish as England is English.' His Majesty's government regard any such expectations as impracticable and have no such aim in view. They would draw attention to the fact that the terms of the Declaration referred to do not contemplate that Palestine as a whole should be converted into a Jewish National Home, but that such a Home should be founded 'in Palestine.'

"As for Jewish immigration to Palestine, the White Paper stated that "this immigration cannot be so great in volume as to exceed whatever may be the economic capacity of the country at the time to absorb new arrivals."

From there it was going to be one long retreat from the original promise. And so it was none other than Winston Churchill, throughout his life the greatest constant friend of Zionism among the British leadership, who decided on a drastic reduction of the territory assigned to the Jewish national home, while downgrading the meaning that this national home was to have for future British governments.

The Arabs were led to believe that rioting in Palestine would lead to further retreats by the British government from the Balfour Declaration. The riots of 1929 led to the appointment of the Shaw Commission which recommended that the immigration policy should be reviewed so as to prevent "excessive" Jewish immigration. The outbreak of renewed Arab riots seven years later led to the appointment of the Peel Commission.

Based on its recommendation, the British government concluded that the terms of the Mandate were unworkable and that the only feasible solution would be partition of western Palestine into a Jewish and Arab state, the Jews being assigned a small enclave covering about 33% of western Palestine or less than 10% of the area originally assigned to the Palestine Mandate for the establishment of a Jewish national home.

Rejection by the Arabs of these recommendations and three years of further Arab riots led in May 1939 to the Macdonald White Paper which rang the death knell for the Jewish state, limiting Jewish immigration to 75,000 during the next five years, and making further Jewish immigration to Palestine contingent on Arab approval.

It in effect provided for the establishment of an Arab state in Palestine, what in today's parlance would have been called a Palestinian state. Winston Churchill in later years was to refer to the MacDonald White Paper as "this low-grade gasp of a defeatist hour." It slammed the doors of Palestine shut to Jewish immigration just as Hitler's persecution of the Jews of Europe was beginning to move into high gear.

In a conversation with Malcolm MacDonald, the colonial secretary, in May 1939, Chaim Weizmann said: "You are handing over the Jews to their assassins."

The White Paper was ruthlessly and brutally enforced against those refugees who attempted to reach the shores of Palestine. The Royal Navy was used off the coast of Palestine, while the British secret service was used to spy on the organization of groups of "illegal" immigrants in Europe and Britain's diplomatic representatives in the capitals of the Balkan countries and Turkey were used to pressure these governments to deny them transit visas so that they would not be able to proceed to Palestine. The first shots by the Royal Navy during World War II were fired on September 2, 1939 against the immigrant ship Tiger Hill killing two of the refugees on board. It was a policy that was to be pursued throughout the war.

The tragedy of the Struma, which sank in the Black Sea in February 1942, claiming the lives of all but one of its 768 passengers, including many women and children, exemplified the heartlessness, if not to say the inhumanity, with which that policy was pursued.

As cables went back and forth between London, Cairo and Istanbul regarding the fate of the refugees on board, stranded in Turkey in a non-seaworthy vessel, Lord Moyne, the deputy minister of state, Middle East, notified the government that he had learned from secret sources that the Struma was the first of several ships which were being chartered in order to carry "illegal immigrants" from southeast European ports to Palestine, and that there was no alternative to carrying out the White Paper policy and refuse the passengers on the boat entry to Palestine.

THE PALESTINE high commissioner, Harold MacMichael, lent his support to this recommendation by the further objection that the passengers on the Struma were mainly professional people and would therefore, if admitted to Palestine, constitute an addition to the "unproductive element in the population." Tens of thousands could have been saved from the Holocaust had Britain relented on executing the White Paper policy. Hundreds of thousands could have been saved had a rescue effort been mounted to bring Jews from Europe to Palestine during the war years.

The Struma tragedy destroyed the last vestiges of the special relationship between Britain and Zionism inaugurated with the Balfour Declaration. From thereon it was going to be a confrontation, and eventually outright mutual hostility.

Britain barred the entry to Palestine of the Jewish survivors of the Holocaust, the Jewish underground carried on a campaign to force Britain to leave, and eventually Britain, relinquishing the Mandate, turned the seemingly insoluble problem over to the United Nations.

In the vote on the United Nations partition resolution, dividing western Palestine into a Jewish and Arab state, Britain abstained. During the War of Independence, the British equipped the Jordanian Arab Legion which participated in attacks on Israel, British tanks tried to block the advance of Irgun fighters during their attack on Jaffa and RAF fighters flying out of Egypt engaged the fledgling Israeli air force over Israeli positions in the Sinai.

Only eight months after Israel had been established, and had been immediately recognized by the United States and the Soviet Union, did Britain reluctantly extend its recognition to the new state.

What is the explanation for the fact that British governments turned their backs on the Balfour Declaration and over the years pursued a policy that was designed to lead to the establishment of a Palestinian state in Palestine rather than a Jewish state? That the Jewish state, Israel, was finally established over strenuous British opposition?

Although Britain's decision-makers were tainted throughout the years by a strain of anti-Semitism at all levels, the military, the civil service and also the government, the decisions reached were basically just plain power politics.

The Arabs were considered to have more power, more influence, more ability to cause trouble than the Jews. And as Britain approached the war years, looking for allies and trying to neutralize enemies, it seemed so obvious that the millions of Arabs in the Middle East, and the Arabs of Palestine were far more important to Britain's interests than the small Jewish community in Palestine, and their Zionist supporters in the world, who in any case had no choice but to back the war against Hitler. But it turned out to be a miscalculation. British governments underestimated the strength and the vitality of the Jewish community in Palestine and its nascent military capability, and the tenacity of the Zionist movement. The Arabs lent no support to the Allied cause in World War II.

Britain's attempts to appease them brought no returns. Whereas the Jewish contribution to the war effort was not insignificant and might have weighed far more in the scales had Britain been prepared to establish a Jewish army, as called for by Jabotinsky and Weizmann at the outbreak of the war, a call that was not heeded out of concern for the Arab reaction to such a move. The military potential of the Yishuv was significant as became clear a few years later.

When in May 1948 the surrounding Arab armies attacked Israel, Ernest Bevin told Churchill that the Arabs would win. It was another miscalculation. British miscalculations over the years turned out to be of no benefit to Britain, delayed the establishment of the Jewish state in Palestine, caused a great deal of suffering and claimed many victims, but they could not prevent the establishment of the Jewish state in Palestine - Israel. The Palestinian state may yet follow, but this time it will need Israel's agreement.


Moshe Arens (Hebrew: משה ארנס‎, born 27 December 1925) is an Israeli-American aeronautical engineer, researcher, diplomat and politician. A member of Knesset representing the Likud party between 1973 and 1992 and again from 1999 until 2003, he served as Minister of Defense three times and once as Minister of Foreign Affairs. Arens also served as Israel's Ambassador to the United States and was professor at the Technion in Haifa. He currently serves as the Chairman of the International Board of Governors at the University Center in Ariel.

Dore Gold: Diplomatic Dispute Obscures Israel’s Help to USA

Dore Gold: Diplomatic dispute obscures Israel’s invaluable help to U.S. military

By: Dore Gold
OpEd Contributor
March 23, 2010

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was right to speak about U.S.-Israeli strategic ties during his speech at Tuesday’s AIPAC conference.

During the recent bilateral tensions between the Obama administration and the Israeli government, a vicious rumor began to spread that the U.S. feels that Israeli “intransigence” in the peace process puts U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan at risk.

The source of this rumor was not Gen. David Petraeus, commander of the U.S. Central Command, who recently testified before the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee. Petraeus is concerned with the possible outbreak of an initifada that is shown on the Al-Jazeera satellite network and foments rage in the Arab street that weakens the legitimacy of his Arab military partners.

Yet the idea that Israel was putting U.S. forces at risk began to spread inside the Washington beltway. For example, Jake Tapper, White House correspondent for ABC News, interviewed President Obama’s political advisor, David Axelrod, March 14 and asked whether the Israeli “housing issue” put the lives of U.S. troops at risk.

When Axelrod refused to answer, Tapper persisted and asked the question a second time. Clearly this idea has penetrated the thinking of political reporters.

Columnist Jeffrey Goldberg wrote that linking construction plans at Jerusalem’s Ramat Shlomo neighborhood to the security of U.S. forces in the Middle East actually came from Israeli press reports of the meeting between Vice President Joe Biden and Netanyahu in Jerusalem. Biden’s spokesman denied those reports when Goldberg made a formal inquiry.

The net effect of rumors of this sort is to reinforce the image of Israel as a strategic burden rather than as a strategic asset, which only exacerbated the current tensions. For years, there has been a whole cottage industry of anti-Israel forces, who have been trying to promote this view across the United States.

It began with professors Stephen Walt of Harvard and John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago, who argued in their 2007 book, The Israeli Lobby, that Israel is nothing less than “a strategic liability.” They have made significant inroads in universities and think tanks, so that the rumors about Jerusalem building projects threatening soldiers in Afghanistan fell on fertile ground.

Netanyahu argued at AIPAC that Israel has actually helped save the lives of Americans. Historically, he is absolutely correct to paint Israel’s strategic partnership this way. In August 1966, the Mossad succeeded in recruiting an Iraqi Air Force pilot who flew his MiG-21 to Israel.

The intelligence on the MiG-21 was shared with Washington and would prove to be extremely valuable, considering the fact that the MiG-21 was the work-horse of the North Vietnamese Air Force in the years that followed.

Israel supplied the Americans with many other Soviet weapons systems, from 130mm artillery to T-72 tanks. Gen. George Keegan, the former head of U.S. Air Force Intelligence, was quoted in the New York Times on March 9, 1986, saying that the intelligence the U.S. received from Israel could not have been obtained if the U.S. had “five CIAs.”

Keegan went further: “The ability of the U.S. Air Force in particular, and the Army in general, to defend whatever position it has in NATO owes more to the Israeli intelligence input than it does to any single source of intelligence.”

Even after the Cold War, Israel continues to be a vital American strategic partner. In 2007, the U.S. ambassador to Israel revealed that Israeli technology was being used by the U.S. armed forces in Iraq to protect them from Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) that were responsible for most U.S. casualties in the Iraq War.

In short, Israel was helping save American lives in Iraq.

On March 15, 2007, the commander of EUCOM, Gen. Bantz Craddock, told the House Armed Services Committee that “in the Middle East, Israel is the U.S.’s closest ally that consistently and directly supports our interests.”

During his AIPAC speech, Netanyahu disclosed: “Israel shares with America everything” that it knows about their common enemies, especially intelligence.

When states like the U.S. and Israel have high-profile diplomatic disagreements, it is sometimes the nature of the press to seek the dramatic. A learned debate about the applicability of the 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention to Jerusalem would be fitting for Yale Law School, but it does not sell newspapers.

For that reason, the Obama administration has a special responsibility to contain its tensions with Israel. It would be a serious development if the disagreement over Israel’s rights in Jerusalem spilled over into the strategic relationship between the two countries.

Netanyahu tried to contain this problem at AIPAC, but both sides need to make sure that unnecessary diplomatic tensions do not sacrifice their long-held strategic interests that have served the security of both countries.

Dore Gold served as Israel's ambassador to the UN. His website is www.dore-gold.com. He heads the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs.


Reposted with permission of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs.

IDF Spokesperson: Response to Qassams May Be Surprising

Maj. Gen. Galant to Hamas: IDF's response to Qassams may be surprising
IDF Spokesperson 23 March 2010 , 18:17

The head of the Southern Command Maj. Gen. Yoav Galant spoke about restoring
calm in the south. He also referred to the soldiers morality during
Operation Cast Lead and the recent investigation on the death of Soldier
Gavriel Cheptich.

The head of the Southern Command Maj. Gen. Yoav Galant, spoke today (Mar.
23) about restoring calm to the Southern communities and utilizing the
element of surprise against Hamas if need be.

Referring to the recent intensifying rocket attacks originating from Gaza,
Maj. Gen. Galant said that, "We hope this is a temporary event. Our response
is measured and calculated, based on our intention to facilitate the
continuation of the quiet and a normal life in the south. I suggest that the
enemy not repeat its mistake the way it misjudged our response in Operation
Cast Lead. The blood of the State of Israel's citizens will not be shed
without consequence," he added.

Moreover, Galant said, that the IDF will work to restore calm in the south,
"utilizing our capabilities including the element of surprise." He also
added that the achievement gained during Operation Cast Lead will not shape
the long term reality.

Later, Maj. Gen. Galant spoke about the moral behavior of soldiers during
Operation Cast lead saying that, "During Operation Cast lead, for every
three terrorists, one Palestinian civilian was killed in the fighting.
Senior Commanders of armies from countries that criticized Israel's morality
during Cast Lead have come here to learn exactly how we achieved such a
thing."

Additionally, Galant referred to the death of Staff Sergeant Gavriel
Cheptich saying that "We are looking into the details of the incident, we
will draw the necessary conclusions and lessons to see how to improve our
operations in the future."

Dr. Emmanuel Navon: Prelude to Suez?

March 24, 2010

Abba Eban used to quip that the Six Day War was the first war in history after which the victors asked for peace while the vanquished demanded unconditional surrender. This pattern still characterizes Middle East peace negotiations, but it seems that it is now being applied to other regions.

Hillary Clinton recently advised the UK and Argentina to begin talks about the Falklands Islands. What is there to talk about, for goodness’ sake? Those islands are British since 1833, and Britain won the Falklands War in 1982. Whenever Argentina makes claims over the Falklands, the island’s inhabitants reply that they have a right to self-determination and that they have no wish to be part of Argentina. Britain’s sovereignty over this far-away island off Argentina’s coast is indeed a historical oddity, but so is France’s regime in Guyana or America’s in Puerto Rico. The list is longer. Yet one wonders what America’s reaction would be if it were "advised" to "begin talks" with Spain about Puerto Rico. Incidentally, Mrs. Clinton has not "advised" Russia to "begin talks" with Japan about the South Kuril Islands.

It is not hard to understand why. If Japan were to press its case on the Kuril Islands, it would likely be ignored by America. The Obama Administration is unsuccessfully trying to convince Russia to vote for tougher UN sanctions against Iran, and aggravating the Russians with the almost-forgotten territorial dispute over the Kuril Islands would not be helpful.

Why has Argentina decided to pick a fight about the Falklands? Recent seismic surveys suggest the presence of oil reserves in the Falklands basin. The Kirchners figure that such a boon, if it is confirmed, would come at the right time: the first couple is unpopular because of recent revelations that they’ve grown rich while in office, and Argentina’s economy is performing poorly. Invading the island would undoubtedly end in another military humiliation. But claiming that all Argentina cares about is the "human rights" of the Falklands’ residents has better chances of working. That the current US Administration is legitimizing this canard is troubling.

No less troubling is the fact that the United States is treating Britain (one of its closest international allies) with such disdain while accommodating the Krichners. Argentina’s President and her husband are die-hard peronists who have distanced their country from the United States and improved ties with Hugo Chavez. The message being sent to Britain is that pro-American democracies that win wars when they are compelled to fight should not expect a better treatment from Washington than nationalist bullies who feel entitled to impose their will after being defeated on the battlefield.

Well, Perfidious Albion: Welcome to the club. We in Israel know the feeling. But we also know the morality of the story. After the 1956 Suez war, the Eisenhower Administration abandoned England because it thought that such was the price for convincing the Arabs that America was not their enemy. It didn’t exactly work: Nasser became a hero, he united his country with Syria, and the Bagdad Pact started falling apart. When Nasser announced his military alliance with the Soviet Union in 1955, the US did not respond with a military alliance with Israel. Foster Dulles considered Israel a liability and responded to the Egyptian-Soviet deal with renewed arms sales to conservative Arab regimes. This is what eventually convinced Ben-Gurion to initiate a preemptive strike against Egypt.

Looking at America’s current foreign policy, it is hard not to have in mind the reasons that convinced Israel to act against Egypt in 1956 and that might convince it to eventually act against Iran.

Dr. Alex Grobman: Enabling Arabs

24 March, 2010

Vice President Joe Biden’s recent visit to Israel, ostensibly to renew negotiations between the Israel and the Arabs, demonstrates once again America’s failure to address the root causes of the conflict. Pressuring Israel to make concessions and condemning her for constructing homes in Jerusalem and in Yehuda and Shomron where Jews are legally permitted to build only encourages Arab intransigence, and convinces them to continue their war against the Jewish state.

When will the U.S. insist that the Arabs stop incitement against Israel in their media, schools and mosques? When will the U.S. demand that Arabs stop abusing their own children by subjecting them to TV programs and music videos preaching hatred of Jews, encouraging martyrdom, and denying Israel’s existence?

When will the U.S. insist the Arabs cease denying the historic connection of the Jews to the land of Israel? And when will the U.S. acknowledge that the Arabs have never recognized Israel’s right to exist?

Since the days of the British Mandate, the Arabs have resorted to violence in an attempt to shape British and U.S. policy. The Palestinian Authority, which is wrongly viewed as moderate, glorifies terror. To celebrate the 45th anniversary of the establishment of Fatah, the largest faction of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), the Palestinian Authority daily newspaper featured a special section praising terrorism and terrorists.1

The paper extolled the 1976 Savoy Operation during which terrorists captured the Savoy Hotel in Tel Aviv and killed eight hostages and two soldiers. The bus hijacking by Dalal Mughrabi in 1978 in which 37 Israelis were murdered is described as a “Ribat (religious war).” A square in the Arab town of el-Bireh was recently named after Mughrabi. Fatah was applauded for firing missiles at Israeli cities from Lebanon during the 1980s. Accounts of ten senior terrorists, described as “heroic Shahids (Martyrs), were featured.2

Where is the outrage against Fatah and Hamas for manipulating their children by using alluring animated characters like Farfur, the Mickey Mouse character, Nahul, a bee and Assud, a bunny to that instill hatred against Jews and seek their destruction? “Kids fall in love with them, and then right in front of their eyes these characters …become shahids (martyrs for Allah),” notes Itamar Marcus, the director of Palestinian Media Watch. 3

Teaching children that Israel is “occupied Palestine” and that the Jews have usurped their land is another theme found on Hamas and Fatah television. During one month, each televised a program in which a group of children were dancing with large keys hanging around their necks. Hamas had the towns of Beit She’an, Haifa, Jerusalem, Ramle and Acre on their keys. Fatah’s keys had Haifa, Acre, Jaffa, Ramle and Jerusalem on them. To everyone the message was quite clear: the Arabs were the real owners of these cities, not the Jews.4

How will the Arabs rid their land of the Jews? The only way Hamas asserts is to kill them. Three different words were used by a Hamas children’s television program to describe how to purge the Jews from Arab land. All the Arabic expressions, Manhurin Naher, Nidbah- hom, Shaht mean slaughter. Nassur, the bear puppet, explained that the Jews must be “erased from our land.” To ensure the children understood precisely what this meant, the young host of the program added that “They’ll be slaughtered.”5

Hamas is clear that violence should not be directed against the Jews alone, since the U.S. is also their arch enemy. This message against America is contained in a children’s song broadcast on Hamas TV:

"Daddy gave me a present, a machine gun and a rifle.
When I am a big boy, I will join the Liberation Army.
The army of [Izz Al-Din] Al-Qassam (Hamas),
which has taught us how to defend our homeland.
Our homeland is precious, precious.
We [are] victorious, victorious over America and Israel.
[Improvises:] Son of a bitch - what brought you to this land?"

6

Peace with Israel is not the goal of the Palestinian Authority either. In an interview on PA TV, Fatah spokeswoman Kifah Radaydeh stated: “It has been said that we are negotiating for peace, but our goal has never been peace. Peace is a means; and the goal is Palestine. I do not negotiate in order to achieve peace. I negotiate for Palestine, in order to achieve a state."7

At a preliminary conference of the Palestinian Youth Parliament in Ramallah.
Palestinian Authority president and Fatah chairman Mahmoud Abbas reiterated this point: “I say this clearly: I do not accept the Jewish State, call it what you will." Abbas was given a large framed map of "Palestine," covering the entire area of Israel.8

When PA Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, another Arab leader inexplicably presented in the West as a moderate, paid a condolence call to the family of Faiz Faraj, the terrorist who tried to stab an Israeli soldier in Hebron in February, he sent an important message to the Arabs that he supports terrorism. Instead of condemning violence, Fayyad denounced “in extremely harsh terms the action of the occupation forces carried out as part of the ongoing campaign to suppress the non-violent protests of residents in the various regions.”9

There is no subtlety in what the Arabs are saying or doing. When a sermon broadcast over PA TV under the control of Mahmoud Abbas calls for the destruction of the Jews because they are “the enemies Of Allah [and] enemies of humanity,”10 what alternative do the Arabs have but to to liberate their land through jihad? They have shown that they will use whatever means to defeat the Jews, even if it means poisoning the minds of their own children and sacrificing them in homicide bombings.

Settlements have never been an impediment to peace, and never will be. They are used as tactic to dupe the gullible and as an excuse to attack the Jews. Israel’s first president Chaim Weizmann understood the fundamental reason for the Arab/Israeli conflict when he said, “The real opponents of Zionism can never be placated by any diplomatic formula: their objection to the Jews is that the Jews exist, and in this particular case, they exist in Palestine.”

Dr. Alex Grobman’s latest book The Palestinian Right to Israel will be published by Balfour Books in April 2010.

1. Itamar Marcus and Nan Jacques Zilberdik, “Fatah prides itself on deadly terror attacks.” Palestinian Media Watch (PMW), (January 15, 2010).
2. Ibid; Khaled Abu Toameh, “Fatah holds ceremony naming square after terrorist.” Jerusalem Post. (March 15, 2010); Itamar Marcus and Nan Jacques Zilberdik, “Fatah officials celebrated popular inauguration of terrorist square.” PMW (March 14, 2010). Palestinian Authority TV began its broadcast on the 32nd anniversary of the terror attack by praising it as: "A glorious chapter in the history of the Palestinian people... [near Tel Aviv] in the heart of the occupation state. The operation shocked the occupation entity." Itamar Marcus and Nan Jacques Zilberdik, ““PA TV Interviews terrorist’s sister on anniversary of terror attack.”PMW (March 13, 2010)

3. Aryeh Dean Cohen, “Tube of Hatred” Jerusalem Post (August 10, 2009), Online Edition; Itamar Marcus and Barbara Crook, “Mickey Mouse Again: Disney Images adorn studio while mass murder is glorified.” Palestinian Media Watch (September 9, 2008); Itamar Marcus and Nan Jacques Zilberdik, “Hamas TV teaches kids to kill Jews,” PMW (September 23, 2009).

4. Ibid; Itamar Marcus and Nan Jacques Zilberdik, “PA still teaches kids that all of Israel is ‘occupied.’” PMW (October 19, 2009); Itamar Marcus and Nan Jacques Zilberdik, “Palestinian TV children’s quizzes teach that there is no Israel.” Palestinian Media Watch. (September 2, 2009); “Hamas’ Al-Aqsa TV Children’s Puppet Show: ‘We Must Rise Against the Zionist Criminal, the Enemies of Allah, and Liberate Jerusalem and All the Holy Places.’” MEMRI. Special Dispatch 2864 (March 17, 2010).

5. Itamar Marcus and Nan Jacques Zilberdik, “Hamas TV teaches kids to kill Jews.” PMW (September 23, 2009). See “Palestinian Hate Education since Annapolis, taxpayersalliance.com (February 2, 1010).

6. Itamar Marcus and Nan Jacques Zilberdik, “Palestinian child sings about victory over Israel and the US: Daddy gave me a present, a machine gun and a rifle." PMW (February 8, 2010); see also Itamar Marcus and Barbara Crook, “PA TV news report: Child vows to ‘liberate Palestine’ with weapons” PMW (February 1, 2010).

7. Itamar Marcus and Nan Jacques Zilberdik, “Fatah official: “Our goal has never been peace. Peace is a means; the goal is Palestine.” PMW (July 12, 2009).

8. Itamar Marcus and Barbara Crook,”Mahmoud Abbas: ‘I do not accept the Jewish state, call it what you will.” PMW (April 28, 2009); Itamar Marcus and Nan Jacques Zilberdik, “High school graduates at official Fatah ceremony: Haifa and Jaffa are ‘Palestine.’” PMW (August 4, 2009).

9. Itamar Marcus and Barbara Crook,”PA Prime Minister honors dead terrorist with condolence visit.” PMW (February 14, 2010).

10. Itamar Marcus and Nan Jacques Zilberdik, “Jews are the enemies of Allah and humanity” “The Prophet says: ‘Kill the Jews.’” PMW (February 1, 2010).

11. Chaim Weizmann, Trial and Error: The Autobiography of Chaim Weizmann (New York: Harper and Brothers Publishers, 1949), 290.

Walter Rostow: Historical Approach to the Issue of Legality of Jewish Settlement Activity

From the Galilee Institute Archives:

Copyright 1990 The New Republic Inc.
The New Republic, April 23, 1990

HEADLINE: Historical Approach to the Issue of Legality of Jewish Settlement Activity
BYLINE: Rostow, Eugene W., GI Note: The Late Eugene W. Rostow was US Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs between 1966 and 1969. He played a leading role in producing the famous Resolution 242 and in the debate around the word "the" that was left out of it.


The Jewish right of settlement in the West Bank is conferred by the same provisions of the Mandate under which Jews settled in Haifa, Tel Aviv, and Jerusalem before the State of Israel was created. The Mandate for Palestine differs in one important respect from the other League of Nations mandates, which were trusts for the benefit of the indigenous population. The Palestine Mandate, recognizing "the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine and the grounds for reconstituting their national home in that country," is dedicated to "the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, it being clearly understood that nothing should be done which might prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing nonjewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country."

The Mandate qualifies the Jewish right of settlement and political development in Palestine in only one respect. Article 25 gave Great Britain and the League Council discretion to "postpone" or "withhold" the Jewish people's right of settlement in the TransJordanian province of Palestine-now the Kingdom of Jordan-if they decided that local conditions made such action desirable.

With the divided support of the council, the British took that step in 1922. The Mandate does not, however, permit even a temporary suspension of the Jewish right of settlement in the parts of the Mandate west of the Jordan River.

The Armistice Lines of 1949, which are part of the West Bank boundary, represent nothing but the position of the contending armies when the final cease-fire was achieved in the War of Independence. And the Armistice Agreements specifically provide, except in the case of Lebanon, that the demarcation lines can be changed by agreement when the parties move from armistice to peace. Resolution 242 is based on that provision of the Armistice Agreements and states certain criteria that would justify changes in the demarcation lines when the parties make peace. Many believe that the Palestine Mandate was somehow terminated in 1947, when the British government resigned as the mandatory power. This is incorrect. A trust never terminates when a trustee dies, resigns, embezzles the trust property, or is dismissed. The authority responsible for the trust appoints a new trustee, or otherwise arranges for the fulfillment of its purpose.

Thus in the case of the Mandate for German South West Africa, the International Court of justice found the South African government to be derelict in its duties as the mandatory power, and it was deemed to have resigned. Decades of struggle and diplomacy then resulted in the creation of the new state of Namibia, which has just come into being. In Palestine the British Mandate ceased to be operative as to the territories of Israel and Jordan when those states were created and recognized by the international community. But its rules apply still to the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, which have not yet been allocated either to Israel or to Jordan or become an independent state.

Jordan attempted to annex the West Bank in 1951, but that annexation was never generally recognized, even by the Arab states, and now Jordan has abandoned all its claims to the territory. The State Department has never denied that under the Mandate "the Jewish people" have the right to settle in the area. Instead, it said that Jewish settlements in the West Bank violate Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949, which deals with the protection of civilians in wartime. Where the territory of one contracting party is occupied by another contracting party, the Convention prohibits many of the inhumane practices of the Nazis and the Soviets before and during the Second World War-the mass transfer of people into or out of occupied territories for purposes of extermination, slave labor, or colonization, for example. Article 49 provides that the occupying power "shall not deport or transfer part of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies."

But the Jewish settlers in the West Bank are volunteers. They have not been "deported" or "transferred" by the government of Israel, and their movement involves none of the atrocious purposes or harmful effects on the existing population the Geneva Convention was designed to prevent. Furthermore, the Convention applies only to acts by one signatory "carried out on the territory of another." The West Bank is not the territory of a signatory power, but an unallocated part of the British Mandate. It is hard, therefore, to see how even the most literal-minded reading of the Convention could make it apply to Jewish settlement in territories of the British Mandate west of the Jordan River. Even if the Convention could be construed to prevent settlements during the period of occupation, however, it could do no more than suspend, not terminate, the rights conferred by the Mandate. Those rights can be ended only by the establishment and recognition of a new state or the incorporation of the territories into an old one.

As claimants to the territory, the Israelis have denied that they are required to comply with the Geneva Convention but announced that they will do so as a matter of grace. The Israeli courts apply the Convention routinely, sometimes deciding against the Israeli government. Assuming for the moment the general applicability of the Convention, it could well be considered a violation if the Israelis deported convicts to the area or encouraged the settlement of people who had no right to live there (Americans, for example).

But how can the Convention be deemed to apply to Jews who have a right to settle in the territories under international law: a legal right assured by treaty and specifically protected by Article 80 of the U.N. Charter, which provides that nothing in the Charter shall be construed "to alter in any manner" rights conferred by existing international instruments" like the Mandate? The Jewish right of settlement in the area is equivalent in every way to the right of the existing Palestinian population to live there. Another principle of international law may affect the problem of the Jewish settlements. Under international law, an occupying power is supposed to apply the prevailing law of the occupied territory at the municipal level unless it interferes with the necessities of security or administration or is "repugnant to elementary conceptions of justice."

From 1949 to 1967, when Jordan was the military occupant of the West Bank, it applied its own laws to prevent any Jews from living in the territory. To suggest that Israel as occupant is required to enforce such Jordanian laws-a necessary implication of applying the Convention-is simply absurd. When the Allies occupied Germany after the Second World War, the abrogation of the Nuremberg Laws was among their first acts. The general expectation of international law is that military occupations last a short time, and are succeeded by a state of peace established by treaty or otherwise. In the case of the West Bank, the territory was occupied by Jordan between 1949 and 1967, and has been occupied by Israel since 1967. Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338 rule that the Arab states and Israel must make peace, and that when "a just and lasting peace" is reached in the Middle East, Israel should withdraw from some but not all of the territory it occupied in the course of the 1967 war. The Resolutions leave it to the parties to agree on the terms of peace.

The controversy about Jewish settlements in the West Bank is not, therefore, about legal rights but about the political will to override legal rights. Is the United States prepared to use all its influence in Israel to award the whole of the West Bank to Jordan or to a new Arab state, and force Israel back to its 1967 borders? Throughout Israel's occupation, the Arab countries, helped by the United States, have pushed to keep Jews out of the territories, so that at a convenient moment, or in a peace negotiation, the claim that the West Bank is "Arab" territory could be made more plausible. Some in Israel favor the settlements for the obverse reason: to reinforce Israel's claim for the fulfillment of the Mandate and of Resolution 242 in a peace treaty that would at least divide the territory. For the international community, the issue is much deeper and more difficult: whether the purposes of the Mandate can be considered satisfied if the Jews finally receive only the parts of Palestine behind the Armistice Lines-less than 17.5 percent of the land promised them after the First World War. The extraordinary recent changes in the international environment have brought with them new diplomatic opportunities for the United States and its allies, not least in the Middle East.

Soviet military aid apparently is no longer available to the Arabs for the purpose of making another war against Israel. The intifada has failed, and the Arabs' bargaining position is weakening. It now may be possible to take long steps toward peace. But to do so, the participants in the Middle East negotiations - the United States, Israel, Egypt, and the PLO - will have to look beyond the territories.


The Late Eugene W. Rostow served as US Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs between 1966 and 1969 and played a leading role in producing the famous Resolution 242 and in the debate around the word "the" that was left out of it. When he wrote this piece in 1991 he was "Distinguished Fellow" at the United States Institute of Peace.

Are the settlements legal? by Eugene Rostow

From the Galilee Institute Archives:

Copyright 1991 The New Republic Inc.
The New Republic, October 21, 1991

HEADLINE: Resolved: are the settlements legal? Israeli West Bank policies
BYLINE: Rostow, Eugene W., GI Note: The Late Eugene W. Rostow was US Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs between 1966 and 1969. He played a leading role in producing the famous Resolution 242 and in the debate around the word "the" that was left out of it.


Assuming the Middle East conference actually does take place, its official task will be to achieve peace between Israel and its Levantine neighbors in accordance with Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338.

Resolution 242, adopted after the Six-Day War in 1967, sets out criteria for peace-making by the parties; Resolution 338, passed after the Yom Kippur War in 1973, makes resolution 242 legally binding and orders the parties to carry out its terms forthwith. Unfortunately, confusion reigns, even in high places, about what those resolutions require.

For twenty-four years Arab states have pretended that the two resolutions are "ambiguous" and can be interpreted to suit their desires. And some European, Soviet and even American officials have cynically allowed Arab spokesman to delude themselves and their people--to say nothing of Western public opinion--about what the resolutions mean. It is common even for American journalists to write that Resolution 242 is "deliberately ambiguous," as though the parties are equally free to rely on their own reading of its key provisions.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Resolution 242, which as undersecretary of state for political affairs between 1966 and 1969 I helped produce, calls on the parties to make peace and allows Israel to administer the territories it occupied in 1967 until "a just and lasting peace in the Middle East" is achieved. When such a peace is made, Israel is required to withdraw its armed forces "from territories" it occupied during the Six-Day War-- not from "the" territories nor from "all" the territories, but from some of the territories, which included the Sinai Desert, the West Bank, the Golan Heights, East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip.

Five-and-a-half months of vehement public diplomacy in 1967 made it perfectly clear what the missing definite article in Resolution 242 means. Ingeniously drafted resolutions calling for withdrawals from "all" the territories were defeated in the Security Council and the General Assembly. Speaker after speaker made it explicit that Israel was not to be forced back to the "fragile" and "vulnerable" Armistice Demarcation Lines, but should retire once peace was made to what Resolution 242 called "secure and recognized" boundaries, agreed to by the parties. In negotiating such agreements, the parties should take into account, among other factors, security considerations, access to the international waterways of the region, and, of course, their respective legal claims.

Resolution 242 built on the text of the Armistice Agreements of 1949, which provided (except in the case of Lebanon) that the Armistice Demarcation Lines separating the military forces were "not to be construed in any sense" as political or territorial boundaries, and that "no provision" of the Armistice Agreements "Shall in any way prejudice the right, claims, and positions" of the parties "in the ultimate peaceful settlement of the Palestine problem." In making peace with Egypt in 1979, Israel withdrew from the entire Sinai, which had never been part of the British Mandate.

For security it depended on patrolled demilitarization and the huge area of the desert rather than on territorial change. As a result, more than 90 percent of the territories Israel occupied in 1967 are now under Arab sovereignty. It is hardly surprising that some Israelis take the view that such a transfer fulfills the territorial requirements of Resolution 242, no matter how narrowly they are construed.

Resolution 242 leaves the issue of dividing the occupied areas between Israel and its neighbors entirely to the agreement of the parties in accordance with the principles it sets out. It was, however, negotiated with full realization that the problem of establishing "a secure and recognized" boundary between Israel and Jordan would be the thorniest issue of the peace-making process. The United States has remained firmly opposed to the creation of a third Palestinian state on the territory of the Palestine Mandate. An independent Jordan or a Jordan linked in an economic union with Israel is desirable from the point of view of everybody's security and prosperity. And a predominantly Jewish Israel is one of the fundamental goals of Israeli policy. It should be possible to reconcile these goals by negotiation, especially if the idea of an economic union is accepted.

The Arabs of the West Bank could constitute the population of an autonomous province of Jordan or of Israel, depending on the course of the negotiations. Provisions for a shift of populations or, better still, for individual self-determination are a possible solution for those West Bank Arabs who would prefer to live elsewhere. All these approaches were explored in 1967 and 1968. One should note, however, that Syria cannot be allowed to take over Jordan and the West Bank, as it tried to do in 1970.

The heated question of Israel's settlements in the West Bank during the occupation period should be viewed in this perspective. The British Mandate recognized the right of the Jewish people to "close settlement" in the whole of the Mandated territory. It was provided that local conditions might require Great Britain to "postpone" or "withhold" Jewish settlement in what is now Jordan. This was done in 1922. But the Jewish right of settlement in Palestine west of the Jordan river, that is, in Israel, the West Bank, Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip, was made unassailable. That right has never been terminated and cannot be terminated except by a recognized peace between Israel and its neighbors. And perhaps not even then, in view of Article 80 of the U.N. Charter, "the Palestine article," which provides that "nothing in the Charter shall be construed ... to alter in any manner the rights whatsoever of any states or any peoples or the terms of existing international instruments...." Some governments have taken the view that under the Geneva Convention of 1949, which deals with the rights of civilians under military occupation, Jewish settlements in the West Bank are illegal, on the ground that the Convention prohibits an occupying power from flooding the occupied territory with its own citizens. President Carter supported this view, but President Reagan reversed him, specifically saying that the settlements are legal but that further settlements should be deferred since they pose a psychological obstacle to the peace process.

In any case, the issue of the legality of the settlements should not come up in the proposed conference, the purpose of which is to end the military occupation by making peace. When the occupation ends, the Geneva Convention becomes irrelevant. If there is to be any division of the West Bank between Israel and Jordan, the Jewish right of settlement recognized by the Mandate will have to be taken into account in the process of making peace.

This reading of Resolution 242 has always been the keystone of American policy. In launching a major peace initiative on September 1, 1982, President Reagan said, "I have personally followed and supported Israel's heroic struggle for survival since the founding of the state of Israel thirty-four years ago: in the pre-1967 borders, Israel was barely ten miles wide at its narrowest point. The bulk of Israel's population lived within artillery range of hostile Arab armies. I am not about to ask Israel to live that way again."

Yet some Bush administration statements and actions on the Arab-Israeli question, and especially Secretary of State James Baker's disastrous speech of May 22, 1989, betray a strong impulse to escape from the resolutions as they were negotiated, debated, and adopted, and award to the Arabs all the territories between the 1967 lines and the Jordan river, including East Jerusalem. The Bush administration seems to consider the West Bank and the Gaza Strip to be "foreign" territory to which Israel has no claim. Yet the Jews have the same right to settle there as they have to settle in Haifa.

The West Bank and the Gaza Strip were never parts of Jordan, and Jordan's attempt to annex the West Bank was not generally recognized and has now been abandoned. The two parcels of land are parts of the Mandate that have not yet been allocated to Jordan, to Israel, or to any other state, and are a legitimate subject for discussion.

The American position in the coming negotiations should return to the fundamentals of policy and principle that have shaped American policy towards the Middle East for three-quarters of a century. Above all, rising above irritation and pique, it should stand as firmly for fidelity to law in dealing with the Arab-Israeli dispute as President Bush did during the Gulf war. Fidelity to law is the essence of peace, and the only practical rule for making a just and lasting peace.


The Late Eugene W. Rostow served as US Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs between 1966 and 1969 and played a leading role in producing the famous Resolution 242 and in the debate around the word "the" that was left out of it. When he wrote this piece in 1991 he was "Distinguished Fellow" at the United States Institute of Peace.

Other Than Apartments in Jerusalem, What Else is Going on in the Middle East?

Nations Must Know When to Cringe and Crawl--But for the West It's Becoming Routine
By Barry Rubin
March 18, 2010

Sometimes selective appeasement is necessary in foreign policy. But when and just how far should a democratic country go in such behavior? Here's a brilliant defense of giving in at times-which doesn't mean I necessarily agree with it, but I do respect it-and a recent example of how it's overdone and mistakenly carried out nowadays.

The Times of London article is by George Walden, a former British diplomat and Conservative member of parliament with a lot of international experience. Let's consider what he says and how we should interpret it.
The title tells a great deal: "We can't afford the moral high ground: "In tough economic times, Britain cannot be too picky about whom it does business with." In other words, the West is much weaker than it used to be and is often the beggar in these relationships with Third World dictatorships.

At times this is true, but at other times craven behavior is unnecessary and dangerous. Indeed, as I've often pointed out, the sense of Western weakness (the West cannot do anything) and cowardice (it won't do anything) is Viagra for aggressive regimes-from Venezuela through Russia and the Middle East to North Korea--and revolutionary groups.

Here are Walden's vivid examples:

1. The British government had to persuade an enraged Saudi king that the showing on television of a program about his government's nasty beheading of a princess did not reflect official British views. He writes: "Being careful not to apologize for something over which the Government had no control, in the hope of reversing a devastating trade ban and other sanctions." This is the right way to handle it, explaining without apologizing and also, one might add, without censoring. Note, however, how often this line has been crossed more recently by the United States and European governments.

2. A cordial meeting with Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, "Despite what we knew of Saddam's crimes, not just against his own people but in London, where his goons were busy poisoning dissidents." In this case the action was strategic as well as trade-oriented. The British government did it, "Because he was at war with Iran, because the Russians were in Afghanistan and - who knew? - en route for the Gulf; and because, for historical reasons, our exports to Iraq were rather large."

Supporting Iraq against Iran during the 1980-1988 war was a correct decision. The great mistake though, as I have argued in great detail elsewhere (Cauldron of Turmoil; The Tragedy of the Middle East) was to continue that behavior after 1988, errors that helped produce Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. In other words, strategic appeasement has to be carefully limited and, of course, used only with countries which are actually doing something useful to you, not your enemies (Iran) or those who promise benefits and never deliver (Syria).

3. The British government also "countenanced with little more than a noisy protest the barbarously sophisticated assassination of a British citizen in London, Alexander Litvinenko. Why? Partly because to have taken it farther would have jeopardized our exports to a fast-growing market, where the largest company in Britain, BP, had extensive investments." The same thing happened in the case of a Libyan embassy employee murdering a British policewoman in cold blood.

I'd say this is going too far. Looking the other way while one of your citizens-and especially one of your own civil servants--is murdered on your territory out of purely commercial considerations seems too craven and a violation of the government's promise to protect its own people.

4. Prime Minister Tony Blair overrode, "The law of the land in unprecedented fashion to protect the Saudi Royal Family from a corruption investigation in connection with a BAE deal. Legally it was a scandal, but to do otherwise would have put a huge defense contract at risk (you could hear the French salivating), not to speak of the incidental disadvantage of severing anti-terrorist cooperation with Riyadh, which the Saudis had blatantly threatened."

I think this was a mistake, though perhaps the investigation might have been slowed or reduced in scope. When dictatorships get you to break your own laws like that it is subverting your own society. As for anti-terrorist cooperation, I suspect reasonably that this was more a Saudi than a British benefit. Beware of letting a dictatorship charge you for a service which is more useful to them than to you.

5. The deal allowing a Libyan terrorist in the Lockerbie plane incident go free in exchange for an oil deal with Libya. This is a serious error because not only does it make clear you can be bought and sold but also encourages future terrorist attacks. This-not the attack on Iraq-is the real blood for oil scandal.

Ironically, of course, when once Western states conducted gunboat diplomacy to protect investments and citizens while also to open markets, today the exact opposite occurs. (Is a terrorist attack the equivalent of a modern gunboat?) Walden rightly notes, "We would do well to understand this, because the international moral climate seems destined to become more brutal at roughly the same rate as our economic vulnerability increases."

One should ask if Western imperialism has been replaced by Third World imperialism. Wow, that's a good subject to study, isn't it? Let's get the academics , journalists, and intellectuals on it right away: Once upon a time North America and Europe were at times aggressive bullies but now that torch has been passed to a variety of radical dictatorships in the Third World. They are guilty of Westophobia, anti-Western racism, opposition to diversity, and a variety of other sins. I hope you can see the potential in this line of inquiry for turning the contemporary Western debate upside down.

But I digress. Walden makes clear regarding his examples: "I am not talking about wars, so much as how sovereign nations deal with one another in conditions of formal peace. " But I'd go further than this: one can justify concessions or even what seems like appeasement in exchange for something tangible provided by an ally, even if somewhat odious and temporary. (The prime example is the alliance with Stalin's USSR during World War Two.)

Yet such gifts should never be given to enemies-even in conditions of formal peace-who are trying to destroy the friends and influence of one's own countries. The reason is that given the most practical considerations, such steps will strengthen the enemies and make them redouble their efforts to attack and undermine.

While acknowledging that Great Britain and America have done wrong things themselves, Walden explains-this should be obvious but unfortunately isn't:

"Those who look forward eagerly (pop stars and theatre folk very much included) to the demise of the Anglo-American model and the emergence of a multipolar world should pause and consider where exactly these new poles of power are to be located, and how they are likely to behave when they feel the post-colonial boot transferring to the other foot."

He also notes that some Western countries will merely step in even if others engage in sanctions. Of course, this is a problem in the Iran case with Russia and China.

One error I think Walden makes is to attribute the demand for more moralism as coming from pop stars and cosmopolitan elitists. Yet while such groups may find a cause like saving the whales or freeing Tibet congenial, it seems that nowadays they are more often on the other side, demanding kindness to dictatorships and tolerance of terrorists.

Indeed, given the five cases he cites above, I cannot identity a single one of the "beautiful people" who were outraged and demanded tougher action against Saddam, the Saudis, Libya, or for that matter Venezuela, Russia (over its attack on Georgia, for instance), Iran, or Syria (given its terrorist intimidation of Lebanon.

Tellingly he concludes:

"I am not suggesting we ease our moral joints in preparation to incline the knee in multiple directions. I simply draw attention to the widening gap between our predilection for national outrage and our power for action, and inquire how we propose to bridge it....Above all ask yourself how you would explain your ethical one-upmanship to an-out-of-work aviation technician/oil man/fork lift truck driver in the North of England."

This made me think of the impoverished British mill workers who demanded sanctions against the Confederacy during the American Civil War because they opposed slavery, even though refusing to buy Southern cotton made them unemployed. Are today's workers made of the same stuff as their ancestors, even if the elite doesn't live up to its forbears?

So often we see that what is going on, though, is not dictated by clever strategy but a belief system in which "my country right or wrong" (yes I know the rest of the quote about putting it right if it isn't) becomes "my country always wrong." This is what the late J.B. Kelly called the "preemptive cringe" as policy.

And so State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley who never apologized to undermining a democratic friend of the United States did so to Libya. After that country's daffy dictator Muammar Qadhafi threatened jihad against Switzerland because that country merely wanted to sustain its rule of law against his son's criminal behavior while on a visit, Crowley made some mildly derogatory remarks.

But once Libya threatened actions against U.S. businesses he backed down. So let's get this straight. Switzerland briefly arrested one of Qadhafi's sons on the charge of beating up hotel workers, Libya then kidnapped two Swiss businessmen, imposed a trade embargo on Switzerland, and barred EU citizens from visiting but the United States is apologizing to Libya.

Shouldn't the United States be backing up brave little Switzerland? Apologizing, crawling, and appeasing should be reserved for those times when it is really required by a compelling national interest. Doing it too often can be habit-forming; teaching others that they can walk all over you to their profit.

Optional footnotes:

I resisted the temptation to make some reference about Walden's pond being turned into a swamp by excessive appeasement.

I also resisted the temptation to quip that P.J. O'Rourke would certainly make a better--certainly a more entertaining--State Department spokesman than P.J. Crowley. For those who don't know, O'Rourke is a bitterly acerbic and funny satirical writer.

Reposted by permission of the author.

* Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are Lebanon: Liberation, Conflict, and Crisis (Palgrave Macmillan), Conflict and Insurgency in the Contemporary Middle East (Routledge), The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition) (Viking-Penguin), the paperback edition of The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan), A Chronological History of Terrorism (Sharpe), and The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley).