Soccer Dad

Israel etc.

I thought it would be funny to do this. Elder of Ziyon writes about the Protocols. Alas it's not really funny.

Bloghead writes about a royal pain. But as we (a number of us J-bloggers) concluded recently, nearly everyJew alive today is likely descended from King David. But that raises another question. The Hashemite dynasty derives its royalty from the fact that they can trace their ancestry back to the prophet. I suspect (though don't know for sure) that the ibn Sauds probably make the same claim. What would happen if a demographer or geneaologist starting studyin the Muslim world and determined that more than 90% of the Arab/Muslim world alive today is descended from Mohammed. Do you think that the dynamics of the Arab world change if more of its subjects thought that they were royalty too?

Biur Chametz revisits his arguments against disengagement. And they still stand up.

In the early days of the internet before most people had access at home there was Information Regarding Israel's Security or IRIS. At that time about the only way to get alternative news from Israel was from IRIS, IMRA or the Jerusalem Post. I'm pretty certain that this even pre-dated Arutz-7. Well now it's back. With a blog to boot. And who should be the #1 blogger at IRIS but longtime Best of the Web Today contributor Barak Moore! And what does IRIS have on it's plate right now? Bush Administration's Arab Radio Gaining Market Share. Administration critics love claiming that the Bush administration is bad at public diplomacy. I wonder how they will explain this away.

It's Almost Supernatural gets a well-deserved mention in Media Backspin. He's also all over South Africa's Mail and Guardian for its biased coverage of disengagement. One item in particular caught my eye:

Two full pages were devoted to the disengagement, with what the editorial staff would say was perfect balance - analysis by Daoud Kuttab, director of the Institute of Modern Media at Ramallah's Al Quds University;

Mr. Kuttab, who never has a word to say about the fate of his fellow Christians under the PA has been rather busy. Actually the Mail and Guardian's op-ed, is roughly the same one that appeared in the Washington Post. In short, these articles are pleas for international pressure on Israel to negotiate with the PA because unilateralism can't possibly work. (Ignoring the bilateral nature of the years 1993 - 2000 and the wonderful success that brought about.):

Washington’s quixotic decision to call Israel’s unilateral move part of the road map has failed to convince many Palestinians. The prevailing opinion among Palestinians is that the road map will be put into deep freeze once the Israelis complete their Gaza withdrawal.

But the Palestinian and Israeli peoples, their leaders and the international community must all respond to the challenges that will follow. Most importantly, the future of the conflict and the chances for genuine peace in the region will depend on understanding the limits of offensive military power, defensive resistance and unilateralism. Serious face-to-face talks, in accordance with international law and with the help of the international community, are the only way forward.

(Usually papers do not want op-ed articles that are written for other newspapers. I wonder how the Post and Mail & Guardian would feel if they knew that Kuttab cut and pasted parts of one article into the other.)
The New York Times article "Live from Gaza: A New View of Israel" was slightly different. (The title though, evoking Saturday Night Live, is a bit flip.) It was to the effect of "Palestinians can't believe that Israelis are human." Still Kuttab had the ability to make the article nastily critical of Israel:

Of course, Palestinians didn't miss the context. Talk in our living rooms and over Turkish coffee at the office has been mixed: "Do you think they were acting?"; "Anyway, they were illegally on our land"; "Imagine what Palestinian refugees felt as they were being forcibly evicted years ago"; "What about the 120 homes in Rafah that were razed a few months ago?"; "Where was the world press as Palestinians were killed, often by these same settlers?"

Do we know that any of these statements describe actual events? I guess no matter, it's only an opinion piece.
but I was surprised by this:

Another network countered such images with an interview with the parents of Muhammad al-Dura, the 12-year-old boy who was photographed dying in his father's arms in 2000 and whose image has become a symbol of the intifada.

Nowhere does that item suggest that Israeli troops shot Mohammad al-Dura. Maybe James Fallows' work has made a difference.
Finally there's:

It carried an editorial on Thursday about the effects of the images of settlers crying and Israeli soldiers embracing them. It concluded that such scenes could have been avoided had Israel not grabbed Palestinian lands in the first place.

Which is really no different from what you would read in Ha'aretz. Or the message of the cartoons It's Almost Supernatural complained about at the beginning of this item.

Right now, however upset we are (or aren't) about the disengagement, it has happened and supporters of Israel must be ready for the next step. Ruthie Blum's interview of Dore Gold "Defensible Borders" shows why that's necessary:

"While Israel is consumed with the issue of disengagement," he says, in the style of someone well-versed in diplomacy, "the rest of the world isn't standing still; it's already thinking about the post-disengagement period. And over time, if we're not articulating what our long-term goals are, others' impressions of what final-status talks will look like begin to coagulate and harden."

Remember the Douad Kuttab article above calling for international pressure on Israel? That is going to be the most common call among those who are not pro-Israel. It will be the mantra of the New York Times and Washington Post. And it has been unfortunately been mentioned by Secretary of State Rice.
Here are the two key questions and answers:

When you refer to 'defining our territorial requirements,' don't you mean withdrawals? Unlike the Palestinians, who can aim at something they don't have, Israel is saying: "We are willing to retreat from X, Y, and Z. Whatever we put forth as a territorial goal, it is less than what we have now. Correct?
That's true. It is less than what we have today.

So, would you still call it a goal?

Unless we articulate that we have territorial rights in the West Bank for defensible borders, sooner or later we will find ourselves fighting over the '67 lines. This is what I want to avoid.

When most people talk about the boundaries between a Palestinian state and Israel, they have certain reference points. For example, they use the term "viable Palestinian state." They claim that the '67 lines are absolutely necessary for a such a state, because anything less would not be viewed by the Palestinian people as legitimate.

Furthermore, many analysts look at the whole issue of the West Bank and Palestinian statehood and ask what its limitations are. Their answer is Israeli settlements. So the methodology goes like this: How does one draw a line in the West Bank to pack in the maximum number of Israelis into the minimum amount of territory? Once that line is figured out, they assess, a solution to the conflict is at hand.

I was approached two years ago by members of Congress, who said, "When you say 'Palestinian state,' most people think '67 lines. No one is hearing any counterpoints to that."

When Prime Minister Sharon presented the disengagement plan to President Bush on April 14, 2004, it was pretty clear – since Arafat was still alive – that he didn't think he could get a quid pro quo from the Palestinians. He did think, however, that he could get one from the United States. What he got was a letter from the president which talked about Israel's realistic expectation to retain settlement blocs in the West Bank. It also used the expression "defensible borders."

I took that expression and built a conference around it at the Knesset six months later, in conjunction with MK Yuval Steinitz.

At the conference, I talked about US policy – about Resolution 242 and about "defensible borders," among others – and turned it into a user-friendly booklet in English, with pull-quotes and attractive maps.

Everybody forgets that Resolution 242 never required Israel to withdraw fully from the territories it accrued in the '67 war. In fact, the fight over the wording of the resolution – whether to say, "withdraw from territories," "withdraw from the territories" or "withdraw from all the territories" – wasn't at the level of a nit-picking drafting team in New York.

Another reason we chose the term "defensible borders" as our mantra had to do with the late Yitzhak Rabin. One month before he was assassinated, he presented the interim agreement for ratification by the Knesset. Amazingly, in that speech, he laid out the future borders of Israel! He spoke of the Jordan Valley in the widest sense of the term. He talked about the settlement blocs. He talked about united Jerusalem.

Efforts to support Israel now must be centered around this approach. Like it or not, (I don't) this is what the government is doing or will be doing. (And it won't e any better if Likud is ousted and Labor takes its place.) Yes it's a retreat, but for too long the settlement to the conflict has been defined by the Palestinians and their supporters internationally and in Israel. We'd better make sure that the withdrawal from Gaza leads to pressure on the Palestinians to deliver and not invite more unilateral pressure on Israel.
I must emphasize that it must be clear that if the Palestinians don't accept Israel's minimum security requirements, there will be no more concessions.
Technorati tag: Israel.
Crossposted on Israpundit and Soccer Dad.

Posted by SoccerDad at August 24, 2005 12:56 AM