Terror Tunnels The Case for Israel's Just War Against Hamas (7 page)

These absurd conclusions follow from the theater of the absurd that occurred when the General Assembly, for the thousandth time, issued an irrelevantly one-sided declaration on Palestine. As Abba Eban once put it: “If Algeria introduced a General Assembly resolution that the world was flat and that Israel had flattened it, it would pass 100 to 10 with 50 abstentions.” That’s pretty much what happened the other day. I wonder whether the European countries that voted for the resolution knew what a tangled web they were weaving.

Nor was this resolution a recognition of the two-state solution, since a considerable number of states who voted for it have refused to recognize Israel’s right to exist. What they were looking for was a one-state resolution—that one state being yet another Islamic country that voted for Hamas in the last election and that is likely to be governed by Sharia law that will not allow Jews or Christians equal rights.

Neither will the General Assembly’s actions move the Palestinians closer to accepting the ongoing Israeli offer to begin negotiations toward a two-state solution with no prior conditions. The Palestinians now have little incentive to negotiate a state, which would require considerable compromise and sacrifice on all sides. They now think they can get their state recognized without the need to give up the right of return or to make the kinds of territorial compromises necessary for Israel’s security. The United Nations action will only discourage the Palestinians from entering into serious negotiations with Israel.

The United Nations’ action will also incentivize Hamas to continue firing rockets into Israel on a periodic basis in order to provoke Israeli retaliation. Many in Hamas believe that the recent fighting in Gaza actually helped the Palestinians get more votes in the General Assembly. They are certainly taking some of the credit for these votes.

All in all, the United Nations vote will make it harder to achieve a peaceful two-state solution acceptable to both sides. But that has been the history of General Assembly actions with regard to Israel, beginning with the lopsided vote in 1975 that challenged Israel’s very existence by declaring Zionism—the national liberation movement of the Jewish people—to be a form of racism.

Although the General Assembly was ultimately pressured into rescinding that blood libel, its bigoted spirit still hovers over numerous United Nations agencies that continue to regard Israel as a pariah. It could be felt in the General Assembly hall when so many countries that refused to recognize Israel voted to recognize Palestine.

This is all a prescription for continued warfare, lawfare, and enmity. It is not a prescription for resolving a complex and difficult issue in a realistic manner. But what else is new at the United Nations!

13

A Settlement Freeze Can Advance Israeli-Palestinian Peace

June 3, 2012

Israel’s new unity government is strong and diverse enough to survive a walkout by extremist elements.

Now that Israel has a broad and secure national unity government, the time is ripe for that government to make a bold peace offer to the Palestinian Authority.

The Palestinian Authority refuses to negotiate unless Israel accepts a freeze on settlement building in the West Bank. Israel accepted a ten-month freeze in 2009, but the Palestinian Authority didn’t come to the bargaining table until weeks before the freeze expired. Its negotiators demanded that the freeze be extended indefinitely. When Israel refused, they walked away from the table.

There is every reason to believe that they would continue such game-playing if the Israeli government imposed a similar freeze now, especially in light of current efforts by the Palestinian Authority and Hamas to form their own unity government, which would likely include elements opposed to any negotiation with the Jewish state.

That is why Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu should now offer a conditional freeze: Israel will stop all settlement building in the West Bank as soon as the Palestinian Authority sits down at the bargaining table, and the freeze will continue as long as the talks continue in good faith.

The first issue on the table should be the rough borders of a Palestinian state. Setting those would require recognizing that the West Bank can be realistically divided into three effective areas:

• Those that are relatively certain to remain part of Israel, such as Ma’ale Adumim, Gilo, and other areas close to the center of Jerusalem.
  
• Those that are relatively certain to become part of a Palestinian state, such as Ramallah, Jericho, Jenin, and the vast majority of the heavily populated Arab areas of the West Bank beyond Israel’s security barrier.
  
• Those reasonably in dispute, including some of the large settlement blocs several miles from Jerusalem such as Ariel (which may well remain part of Israel, but subject to negotiated land swaps).
  

This rough division is based on prior negotiations and on positions already articulated by each side. If there can be agreement concerning this preliminary division—even tentative or conditional—then the settlement-building dispute would quickly disappear.

There would be no Israeli building in those areas likely to become part of a Palestinian state. There would be no limit on Israeli building within areas likely to remain part of Israel. And the conditional freeze would continue in disputed areas until it was decided which would remain part of Israel and which would become part of the new Palestinian state. As portions of the disputed areas are allocated to Palestine or Israel, the building rules would reflect that ongoing allocation.

I recently proposed this idea to a high-ranking Israeli official. His initial reaction was mostly positive, but he insisted that it would be difficult to impose an absolute building freeze in any areas in which Israelis currently live. He pointed out that families grow and that new bedrooms and bathrooms are needed in existing structures as a simple matter of humanitarian needs. I reminded him that Mr. Netanyahu has repeatedly stated that Israel is prepared to make “painful compromises” in the interests of peace.

An absolute building freeze would be such a painful but necessary compromise. It might also encourage residents of settlements deep in the West Bank to move to areas that will remain part of Israel, especially if the freeze were accompanied by financial inducements to relocate.

Such a proposal by Israel would be an important first step and a good test of the bona fides of the Palestinian side. Since their precondition to negotiation will have been met by the promise of a freeze (to begin the moment they sit down to negotiate), they would have no further excuse for refusing the Israeli offer to try to resolve the conflict.

The conditional freeze would also test the bona fides of the Israeli government, which would no longer have the excuse that any freeze would risk toppling a fragile coalition that relies on right-wingers who have threatened to withdraw in the event of another freeze. The new national unity government is now sufficiently large and diverse that it could now survive a walkout by elements opposed to any freeze.

Once the parties reach a preliminary agreement regarding the three areas and what could be built where, they could get down to the nitty-gritty of working on compromises to produce an enduring peace.

These compromises will require the Israelis to give up claims to areas of the West Bank that were part of biblical Israel but that are heavily populated by Palestinians. It will require the Palestinians to give up any claim to a massive “right of return” for the millions of descendants of those who once lived in what is now Israel. It will require an agreement over Jerusalem, plus assurances about Israel’s security in the Jordan Valley and in areas that could pose the threat of rocket attacks like those that have come from the Gaza Strip in recent years.

Both sides say they want peace. In my conversations with both Israeli and Palestinian leaders, I have repeatedly heard the view that “everyone” knows what a pragmatic compromise resolution will look like. Each side claims that the other side has erected artificial barriers to reaching that resolution.

If the building freeze issue can be taken off the table, one of the most controversial and divisive barriers will have been eliminated. The Israeli government should take the first step, but the Palestinian Authority must take the second step by immediately sitting down to negotiate in good faith.

14

Mideast Peace Talks Should Resume

November 2, 2012

I was invited to meet with President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority just before he spoke to the General Assembly of the United Nations. I came to the meeting with an agenda: to persuade him to sit down with the Israelis and resume negotiations without first requiring the Israelis to accept a total settlement freeze.

I knew the Israelis would not—indeed could not—agree to a settlement freeze as a prior condition to beginning negotiations, since they had previously agreed to a nine-month freeze and the Palestinians refused to come to the bargaining table until just before the freeze expired, and then demanded that the freeze be extended.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had invited the Palestinians to begin negotiations with no prior conditions—an invitation that the Palestinians had rejected because the Israelis refused first to impose a freeze.

My proposal to President Abbas was to have the Palestinian Authority agree to sit down and begin negotiations before any freeze began, if the Israelis would agree to begin a freeze only after the negotiations commenced in good faith. In that way, the Israelis would get what they wanted: negotiations beginning with no prior actions on their part. And the Palestinians would get what they wanted: a settlement freeze while the negotiations continued in good faith.

I had written an op-ed laying out my plan, and I brought a copy of it to my meeting with Abbas. When I showed it to him, he said, “This looks good,” and he passed it on to Saeb Erekat, his close adviser. Erekat read it closely and gave it back to Abbas, who circled the operative paragraph and signed it, “Abu Mazzen.” He asked me to show it to Netanyahu, with whom I would be meeting several days later.

Between the time I met with President Abbas and the time I met with Prime Minister Netanyahu, both delivered their speeches to the General Assembly. Netanyahu reiterated his invitation to sit down and negotiate a peaceful resolution, while Abbas made a belligerent speech accusing Israel of ethnic cleansing and other crimes.

He expressed no real interest in negotiating peace. So when I told Netanyahu about Abbas’s apparent acceptance of my proposal, he was understandably skeptical. But he took a copy of the signed article and put it in his pocket, saying he would certainly give it careful consideration.

Since that time, Abbas has indicated that he might be willing to sit down and negotiate without a settlement freeze, but only after the United Nations votes on upgrading the status of the Palestinian Authority. Netanyahu, during his recent visit to France, reiterated a desire to sit down and negotiate with no preconditions.

There are no real downsides for either the Palestinians or the Israelis in resuming negotiations. Everyone knows roughly what a negotiated peace would look like.

There would be some mutually agreed upon territorial changes to the 1967 borders, a demilitarized Palestinian state, some military presence along the Jordan River to assure Israel’s security, a realistic resolution of the Jerusalem issue, and an abandonment of the so-called right of return. There would be no immediate resolution of the Gaza issue, so long as Hamas remained opposed to Israel’s right to exist.

Peace between Israel and the Palestinian Authority is long overdue. The parties have come close on several occasions. Hopefully, the time will soon be right for moving in the direction of peace. I hope my proposal will help to facilitate renewed negotiations.

15

Terrorists Win with Israel Prisoner Swap

October 13, 2011

The decision by the Israeli government to release hundreds of properly convicted Palestinian terrorists in exchange for one illegally kidnapped Israeli soldier, understandable as it is emotionally, dramatically illustrates why terrorism works.

By agreeing to this exchange, Israel has once again shown its commitment to saving the life of even one kidnapped soldier, regardless of the cost. And the cost here is extremely high, because some of the released terrorists will almost certainly try to kill again.

Leaders of terrorist groups, such as Hamas and Hezbollah, fully understand this cruel arithmetic of death. As Hassan Nasrallah, the head of Hezbollah, put it: “We are going to win because they love life and we love death.”

Democratic societies that value the life of each citizen are more vulnerable to emotional blackmail than terrorist groups that are steeped in the culture of death.

Terrorists understand what history has shown: that democratic societies, regardless of what they say about not negotiating with terrorists, will, in the end, submit to emotional blackmail: they will release their terrorist prisoners in order to obtain the release of their own kidnapped or hijacked citizens.

Accordingly, the threat of deterrence against terrorists is weak, because every terrorist knows that regardless of the prison sentence he receives, there is a high likelihood that he will be released well before he has served it. This not only encourages more terrorism, but it also incentivizes kidnappings and hijackings that provide the terrorist with hostages to exchange for captured terrorists.

Accordingly, from a pure cost-benefit perspective, it may well be wrong to agree to such disproportionate exchanges. But democracies do not operate solely on a cost-benefit basis because the families of kidnapped or hijacked citizens have a right to present their emotional case in the court of public opinion, as Gilad Shalit’s family, especially his mother, so effectively did. They can influence policy against a simple cost-benefit calculation and in favor of a more humanistic approach.