The Politics of Subversion. By Caroline Glick. Jerusalem Post, December 5, 2013.
Glick:
US
Secretary of State John Kerry arrived in Israel on Wednesday to put additional
pressure on Israel to make more concessions in land and political rights to the
PLO in Judea and Samaria. To advance his current effort, Kerry brought along
retired US Marine Gen. John Allen.
According
to media reports, Allen presented a proposal to address Israel’s security
concerns and so enabled the talks about Israeli land giveaways to proceed
apace. The proposal involved, among other things, American security guarantees,
a pledge to deploy US forces along the Jordan River and additional US military
assistance to the IDF.
These
Obama administration proposals are supposed to allay Israeli concerns that
withdrawing Israeli forces from the Jordan Valley and the international border
crossings with Jordan will invite foreign invasion and aggression, and
increased Palestinian terrorism.
By
controlling the Jordan Valley, (and the Samarian and Hebron mountain ranges),
Israel is capable of defending the country from invasion from the east. It can
also prevent penetration of irregular enemy forces, and on the other hand,
maintain the stability of the Hashemite regime in Jordan. Without control over
the areas, Israel can do none of these things.
Facing
these undeniable facts, Kerry and his supporters have two main challenges.
First they need to present themselves as credible actors.
And
second they have to give Israel reason to trust the Palestinians. If Israel
trusts the US, then it can consider allowing the US to defend it from foreign
aggression. If the Palestinians are real peace partners, then Israel can
surrender its ability to defend itself more easily, because it will face a
benign neighbor along its indefensible border.
Unfortunately,
Israel cannot trust the US. Kerry and the Obama administration as a whole lost
all credibility when they negotiated the deal with Iran last month.
After
spending five years promising they had Israel’s back only to stab Israel in the
back in relation to the most acute threat facing the Jewish state, nothing
Kerry or US President Barack Obama says in relation to their commitment to
Israel’s security can be trusted. The fact that Kerry had the nerve to show up
here with “security guarantees” regarding the Palestinians two weeks after he
agreed to effectively unravel the sanctions regime against Iran in exchange for
no concrete Iranian concessions on its nuclear arms program shows that he holds
Israel in contempt.
But
then, even if Kerry had all the credibility in the world it wouldn’t make a
difference. The real problem with the notion of an Israeli withdrawal to
indefensible borders is that those indefensible borders will be insecure. Both
the PLO and Hamas remain committed to Israel’s destruction.
They
will never agree to Israel’s continued existence in any borders. So the whole
peace process is doomed. Kerry’s attempt to dictate security arrangements is a
waste of time.
This
much was again made clear last Friday by the PLO’s chief negotiator Saeb
Erekat. Speaking to foreign supporters, Erekat said that the Palestinians will
never accept Israel’s right to exist.
Their
entire existence as a people is predicated on denying Jewish rights and
nationhood. And, as Erekat put it, “I cannot change my narrative.”
The
people who should be most upset both about Obama and Kerry’s destruction of US
strategic credibility and about the utter absence of Palestinian good faith
should be the Israelis wedded to the two-state paradigm. Former prime minister
Ehud Olmert, former Shin Bet director Yuval Diskin, Justice Minister Tzipi
Livni and Labor Party leader Issac Herzog among others, should be so vocal in
their opposition to the deal with Iran that they make Prime Minister Binyamin
Netanyahu look like a pushover.
It is they,
not Netanyahu and his voters, who have insisted that Israel can make massive
concessions to the PLO and sit on the sidelines with regard to Iran because the
US will defend us. For the past generation it was they, not the political
Right, that preached strategic dependency rather than strategic sovereignty.
These
peaceniks, rather than Likud supporters should also be the ones leading the
charge against PLO support for terrorism, incitement against Israel and
rejection of Israel’s right to exist. The Right never wanted a Palestinian
state to begin with. That’s the Left’s policy. If Netanyahu abandoned his
support for Palestinian statehood, he would become more popular, not less so.
And unless Palestinian society and the Palestinian leadership fundamentally
transform their position on Israel, there is no way that Israel can be expected
to surrender its ability to defend itself.
There
is no way that Israel can consider the PLO’s territorial demands. And there is
no way a Palestinian state can be established.
But the
peaceniks don’t seem to care about these things.
Olmert
uses every open microphone to attack Netanyahu.
Last
week Olmert went so far as to say that Netanyahu, “declared war on the American
government,” by openly criticizing the deal with Iran.
Despite
the fact that PLO chief Mahmoud Abbas didn’t even respond to Olmert’s peace
offer in 2008, Olmert places all the blame for the absence of peace on
Netanyahu and his government.
For his
part, on the eve of Kerry’s visit Diskin launched an equally unhinged attack on
the government.
Speaking
to the European funded pro-Palestinian Geneva Initiative, Diskin claimed wildly
that Israel is more at risk from not surrendering to PLO demands than from an
Iranian nuclear arsenal.
Last
month Livni attacked Netanyahu for criticizing Obama’s deal with Iran and then
claimed vapidly that Israel will protect itself from Iran by giving away its
land to the PLO. Ignoring the fact that the Arab world is already siding with
Israel against Iran, Livni said, “Solving the conflict with the Palestinians
would enable a united front with Arab countries against Iran.”
This
week newly elected Labor Party chief Issac Herzog went to Ramallah and
chastised the government.
Praising
Abbas for his “real desire to achieve peace,” while remaining silent about
Abbas’s daily statements in support of terrorism, Herzog pledged “to try to put
pressure on the Israeli government to take brave positions to achieve peace and
security for our children.”
As for
the deal with Iran, shortly after his election to head the Labor Party last
month, Herzog lashed out not at the deal, and not at Obama for betraying his
pledge to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power, but at Netanyahu. Netanyahu,
he claimed, “has harmed our relations with the US and hasn’t brought about an
improved agreement.”
Ignoring
the fact that the Obama administration negotiated with Iran behind Israel’s
back and then lied about the contents of what it had agreed to, Herzog seethed,
Netanyahu “has created a total lack of trust between us and Obama rather than a
trusting relationship.”
As
polls taken over the past 20 years have shown, a majority of Israelis would be
happy to make peace with the Palestinians, and pay a price in territory for
doing so. But those polls have also shown that the public believes the
Palestinians when they say they want to destroy the Jewish state. The Israeli
public does not think people like Abbas, who praise mass murderers of Jews as national
heroes, have “a real desire to achieve peace.”
And, as
recent polls show, following the US deal with Iran, while the public continues
to prize Israel’s alliance with the US, it no longer trusts the US government.
The
fact that the likes of Olmert, Livni, Diskin and Herzog and their followers are
not at the forefront pressuring the Palestinians to change their ways and
demanding that the Obama administration demonstrate its trustworthiness, but
rather have directed all their energies to attacking the government, indicates
that peace with the Palestinians is not their primary concern.
Rather
it would appear that their main concern is their personal power and prestige.
By
siding with the Americans against the government, these senior figures seek to
exploit the public’s support for the US. By presenting Netanyahu as
anti-American, and claiming that he is responsible for Obama’s abusive
behavior, they hope to convince the public to embrace them as guarantors of the
strategic alliance. Certainly that is Olmert’s goal as he looks past his
criminal prosecutions and begins to plot his course back to the center of
power.
As for
their support for the Palestinians against their government, here the
motivation is external.
Israelis
do not trust the Palestinians. And they certainly do not trust Abbas. But the
Americans and Europeans have made Palestinian statehood the centerpiece of
their foreign policies and view Abbas as the indispensable man.
Livni
had no political future after she lost the Kadima party primary to Shaul Mofaz
last year.
Her
hopes of becoming prime minister had ended. But then she went to Washington,
met with Hillary Clinton, and announced she was forming a new party and running
on a pro-Palestinian, pro-Obama platform. She won a paltry six seats, which she
took from other leftist parties.
But
that was enough. Bowing to US pressure to prove he was serious about appeasing
the Palestinians, Netanyahu appointed Livni justice minister and put her in
charge of the talks with the PLO. If Livni had been less supportive of Obama or
of the PLO, she would not be where she is today.
If the
behavior of these people were just a matter of shameless jockeying for
political power their actions would be bad enough. But they cause immeasurable
damage to the country.
By
accusing Netanyahu of blocking peace between Israel and the Palestinians, they
embolden the Palestinians to escalate their political warfare against Israel,
and maintain their steady anti-Semitic incitement. Indeed they lay the moral
groundwork for justifying terrorism against Israel.
Livni,
Olmert, Diskin, Herzog and their allies also give political cover to outside
forces to adopt anti-Israel positions and policies. Why shouldn’t the European
Union boycott Israeli goods when the former prime minister claims that Israel
is the reason there is no peace? Why should Obama care what Netanyahu tells
Congress when Olmert says Netanyahu is at war with the US? How can Israel
justify attacking Iran’s nuclear installations when Olmert says it is
strategically idiotic to even train for such an attack and Diskin says that we
need a PLO state more than we need to block Iran’s nuclear ambitions? Diskin’s
unhinged attack against Netanyahu on the eve of Kerry’s visit was hardly
coincidental.
And we
should expect more such displays as Obama becomes more open in his hostility
towards Israel.
As long
as we have a seemingly endless supply of senior officials willing to harm the
country to advance their personal goals, domestic subversion will remain a key
weapon in the international arsenal against us.
