Soccer Dad

One-sided diehl

I'm not sure what to make of this. Annan updates Beilin on soldiers in Lebanon

General Kofi Annan said that one of the problems in the negotiations for the release of the two kidnapped Israeli soldiers in Lebanon is the demand for Hizballah to return them alive.

(UDATE: I haven't seen this report anywhere else. It makes me suspicious as to its accuracy.)

If true, it's outrageous. Is it that Annan considers it a problem that Israel wants Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev returned alive? Or is he just relaying Hezbollah's sentiments?

Still it's absurd that the UN is involved in negotiations and not condemning Iran, Syria and Lebanon every day that the soldiers are not returned. Remember Hezbollah violated an internationally (UN) sanctioned border to capture the two of them from the soil of a member state. And Annan is carrying out negotiations with these terrorists as if he were negotiating the terms of forced retirement.

The anti-idiotarian Rottweiler has its own vicious take on the report.

Those Pesky Jooos and Their Unreasonable Demands

And where's Yossi Beilin's outrage?

Speaking of outrageous, Jackson Diehl has a positively absurd suggestion as to how Bush and Olmert could help each other. After going through the political troubles each leader is having he proposes that Olmert make another bold move that could help them both.

What's possible? From the American point of view, the obvious answer is a major Israeli effort to encourage the formation of a responsible Palestinian government. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, a moderate, has been negotiating with the militant Hamas movement for months about a "unity" coalition made up of technocrats. Israeli officials tend to dismiss the effort as doomed. But what if Olmert were to spell out an aggressive Israeli plan to work with such a government? The plan could start with restoring the Palestinian tax funds that Israel collects but has impounded, and move on quickly to the release of Palestinian prisoners and talks about a negotiated version of the West Bank withdrawal Olmert proposed.

Among some senior Israeli officials a different but even bolder idea is being quietly kicked around: the opening of a dialogue with Syria. The idea is to flip Syrian President Bashar al-Assad; to induce him to drop his alliance with Iran and join the moderate Sunni alliance that is quietly lining up against Tehran. The Bush administration is loath to talk to Assad, partly because previous efforts have failed and partly because of what he wants from the United States, which is acquiescence to renewed Syrian suzerainty over Lebanon.

So let's see, Diehl wants Israel to support an effort by Arafat crony who never lifted a finger for peace to create a new government with Hamas. That will accomplish exactly what? Granting legitimacy to a terror organization that is dedicated to Israel's destruction?

And a dialogue with Syria. Supposedly Syria is anxious to open a dialogue with Israel and Diehl thinks that Israel ought to bite. How might this work?

Israel cares less about who rules Lebanon. And it has something Assad wants at least as much: the Golan Heights. The Syrian president has been saying for months that he is ready to open talks about a swap of the territory for peace, a deal that his father came within inches of closing 6 1/2 years ago. Until recently Israel had little incentive to make that bargain with Bashar Assad. But the rise of the Iranian threat in the past year has changed the calculus for at least some of Olmert's advisers.

Now this is a very sly way of explaining what happened 6 1/2 years ago. As I recall Diehl's own paper reported that Assad Sr. was leery of deal with Israel because Israel would want normalization with Syria. Apparently like getting back its soldiers alive, Israel having normal relations with its northern neighbor after ceding to it strategic territory is an unreasonable demand. I'm still not sure what Assad Sr. did to get this deal done. I do remember that President Clinton went to Geneva to present PM Barak's offer that included Israel withdrawing from all of the Golan except for a few meters along the coast of the Sea of Galilee, but even that wasn't enough for Assad who refused to budge.

In other words it wasn't that Israel and Syria were deeply involved in negotiations that just missed because of some mis-dotted i's and miscrossed t's. No, it didn't work because Israel failed to meet 100% of Syrian demands. It's funny how everywhere else peace is the result of compromise and negotiations, but for Israel it requires following the absolute demands of its enemies. In other words, for Israel peace sounds a lot like unconditional surrender rather than the end of a process of reconcilliation.

Diehl recalls some other bold moves made by the United States and Israel.

What's needed is a game-changing initiative that would break the momentum of Iran and its allies, and energize demoralized Arab moderates -- like Ariel Sharon's 2003 proposal to withdraw from Gaza or Bush's June 2002 endorsement of a Palestinian state.

So President Bush in 2002 finally made explicit what was implicit since (at least) 1993, that the peace process should end with a Palestinian state. Did the Palestinians then organize to create the political mechanisms for running that state? Or did they take this declaration as encouragement to continue their efforts to destroy an existing state?

And PM Sharon did carry out his plan to evacuate Gaza. But that strengthened Hamas and made them even less likely to compromise. With no Israeli presence in Gaza - and Israel even ceding the Philadelphi route giving up some of its security - the Palestinians took advantage to smuggle and build even more weaponry with which to attack Israel.

So does Diehl really expect that an Israeli proposal to withdraw fully and completely from the Golan will somehow cause Syria to moderate and pull it out of Iran's orbit. The evidence from the past suggests that a withdrawal from the Golan would serve to tell Iran and Syria that this past summer's war did its job and wore Israel down. It would make even more resolute in their mischief making. Just as the withdrawal from Gaza did to the Palestinians.

Technorati tag: Israel.