Soccer Dad

Bibi-phopia - 2009 edition

Meryl enthusiastically welcomes/welcomed Prime Minister Netanyahu to office. Not everyone is so happy. The editors of the Washington Post, for example, fret in Israel's New Government and Palestinian Statehood:

There are nevertheless several grounds for concern about Mr. Netanyahu's government. The new prime minister leans heavily toward military solutions, at least rhetorically: He has promised to "smash" Hamas in Gaza and suggested that Israel will have little patience for a U.S. attempt to conduct a dialogue with Iran. Though he has promised to negotiate with the Palestinian Authority, Mr. Netanyahu has never endorsed the creation of a Palestinian state -- and he has said that he will support the "natural growth" of Jewish settlements in the West

The Obama administration can restrain Israel from launching an independent attack on Iran's nuclear facilities and, barring serious new provocations by Hamas, should pressure the new government to maintain the peace with Gaza. The remaining problem is how to respond to Mr. Netanyahu's failure to accept Palestinian statehood, which in the past decade has become the anchor of U.S. policy in the region. Since the Palestinians are currently weak and divided, the temptation for the administration will be to tacitly tolerate Mr. Netanyahu's position and focus on Israeli negotiations with Syria, which could benefit U.S. interests even if they don't succeed.

This recalls the editorial the Post ran shortly after Hamas overran Gaza, tossing Fatah sympathizers out of windows and illegally usurped power.. At the editors of the Washington Post wrote:

We are very concerned that Hamas has once again chosen the path of violence instead of the path of peace. Since its democratic election last year, Hamas, which was elected on a platform of good government has refused to accept the premises of the peace treaty negotiated between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, regularly firing rockets at Israeli civilians. The Palestinians claim that they want a secular democratic state, but the presence of Hamas in the government threatens that claim to legitimacy.

Just kidding, the editors of the Post did not write the above paragraph, here's what they did write in A bet on Mr. Abbas.

The most dangerous illusion to emerge from the U.S.-Israeli discussions is the idea that Hamas can be isolated in Gaza while Mr. Abbas is built up in the West Bank. The Palestinian president is unlikely to abandon the 1.5 million people of Gaza to a de facto military and economic siege. If he does, Hamas will use its own forces to ensure that the West Bank also is ungovernable or to start a new war with Israel. As repugnant as its terrorism and ideology are, Hamas won a free election and still has the support of a large part of the Palestinian population. It cannot be abolished by decree, and isolation will only make it more radical and more dependent on sponsors in Syria and Iran.

The contrast of the two editorial could be summed up: Elected Israel civil government: bad; usurping Palestinian terrorists: good.

As I noted above the Hamas coup of Gaza was illegal but the Post were so respectful of the elections that brought the terrorist group to power, they would not countenance any challenge to its legitimacy. Even if it rejected the "two state solution" that the Post's editors declare essential to Middle East peace making, the editors still considered Hamas sacrosanct.

Not so Netanyahu. Because Netanyahu has not explicitly stated his support for a two state solution, somehow that is more problematic than being a terrorist organization committed to the destruction of a sovereign nation.

And while the Post criticized Netanyahu for "lean[ing] heavily towards military solutions" the couldn't cite anything in his record to show that is true. If the fact that he believes that terrorist violence should be met with violence in response, makes him that way, I hardly think that's a disqualifying quality. Furthermore, it didn't seem to bother the editors that Hamas "leans heavily towards military solutions!"

I've pointed out before:

Towards the end of his term in office, the government released data on the Palestinian economic situation and it was the best it had been since 1992. Furthermore, terror fatalities that had risen since the signing of Oslo and Israel's handing over security obligations to the Palestinians were at their lowest level in years. So under Netanyahu, Palestinians had more prosperity and Israel had more security. Yet because Netanyahu insisted that Arafat abide the agreements he signed, he was undercut by the Clinton administration and pilloried in the press. By 1999, Israelis felt secure enough to elect the more accommodating Ehud Barak as their Prime Minister and by the end of 2000 they were shown how uncommitted to peace the Palestinians were.

In fact I'd argue (and have) that Netanyahu in his first term did more to create a Palestinian state than Yasser Arafat every did. But Bibi-phobia is nothing new.

Back in 1998, a Washington Post article about Netanyahu's visit to Washington noted that he would be treated to "snub diplomacy" by the Clinton administration. At the time Clinton was insisting that Netanyahu move forward on withdrawing Israel from more territory and Netanyahu was insisting that Arafat and the PA abide by the terms - guaranteed by the Clinton administration - of the Hebron Accords signed a year earlier. In "He Negotiates by the Rules," Charles Krauthammer laid out the source of friction between Netanyahu and the administration - not to mention the diplomatic corps, the media etc.

There is no better illustration of the comical one-sidedness of the peace process: Israel's demand for Palestinian compliance with its own written obligations is deemed a form of sabotage.

What are these demands?

(1) Change the Palestinian National Covenant to remove the clauses that call for Israel's destruction.

(2) Fight terror and prevent violence. This includes extraditing terrorists; confiscating illegal firearms; and preventing hostile propaganda, like that from Palestinian officials and official media that accuses Israel variously of injecting Palestinians with AIDS, poisoning their food, planning to destroy the Al-Aqsa Mosque ("with the creation of artificial earthquakes") and propagating the fiction known as the Holocaust.

(3) Reduce the size of the Palestinian police force, now more than 12,000 above the level allowed under the Oslo accords.

(4) Close Palestinian Authority offices in Jerusalem.

These commitments are contained in the official "Note for the Record" drawn up by the United States at the completion of the Hebron accord a year ago.

Sound sensible? Not to Bibi-phobes.
...
The Times' false front-page report (subject of a correction the following day) is typical of its tendentious treatment of Netanyahu. It echoes the PLO line that Netanyahu's demand for reciprocity is nothing but a ploy. But how can any fair-minded observer consider reciprocity anything but an unobjectionable, indeed essential, condition for a peace process?

Then, as now, Bibi-phobia consists of insisting that Netanyahu accede to every demand of the Palestinians and that the rest of the world turn a blind eye to the consistent Palestinian rejection of Israel and violations of Oslo. Only Israel is to be held to any commitment. That's not a recipe for peace or stability.

As far as the urgency of the peace process that the Post's editors claim, Barry Rubin writes:

Yet to a considerable extent Obama--though not Secretary of State Hillary Clinson--thinks he understands true reality and the parties don't. In fact they know far better than him. Back in the 1990s U.S. and European leaders would say: The status quo is unsustainable and Palestinians are desperate for a state so we have to move real fast? Today some of the same people--including Bill Clinton--say their big mistake was trying to force a resolution to the conflict when Yasir Arafat really didn't want one.
Today, the PA believes the status quo is sustainable (at least if they can make a deal to reunite with Hamas) because they're unwilling to make the compromises and concessions required for peace (full recognition of Israel, end of conflict, resettling Palestinian refugees in Palestine, security guarantees, stopping incitement, and so on).
Israel--no matter who leads it--believes the status quo is sustainable (at least if it can stop rocket firing from the Gaza Strip) because it won't make any more concessions to a side that can't and won't deliver anything serious toward full and lasting peace.
So, no, Obama will not persuade anybody that very bad change is better than a bad status quo. And because he doesn't comprehend that all his efforts are doomed to failure.

Crossposted on Yourish.

Posted by SoccerDad at March 31, 2009 4:35 AM