Arutz Sheva Staff writes:
So, essentially the Obama administration is telling the world that it is "illegitimate" (whatever that means, exactly) for Jews to build housing for themselves where Jews have lived for thousands of years and where we are the closest thing to an indigenous population in the entire region.The United States Monday blasted Israel for pledging to build 1,000 more Jewish homes in Jerusalem, saying any such move would be "incompatible" with peace efforts, according to AFP.
State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said Washington was "deeply concerned" by the reports and American embassy officials were having high-level talks with Israeli leaders to seek more information.
"We continue to make our position absolutely clear that we view settlement activity as illegitimate and unequivocally oppose unilateral steps that prejudge the future of Jerusalem," Psaki told reporters.
This is racism, pure and simple and it helps fuel the very Arab and Muslim antipathy toward Jews that has driven the conflict for millennia.
Is there any other people on the planet that the Obama administration feels that it has a right to tell them where they may, or may not, be allowed to live? I do not think so.
Of course, I have been beating this drum for a very long time now and it is clear that the administration absolutely refuses to learn from previous mistakes and thus makes those same mistakes over and over and over again. In this way the administration's insistence that Jews building housing for themselves in Judea is an obstacle to a negotiated conclusion of hostilities makes of it an obstacle to a negotiated conclusion of hostilities.
By demanding that Jews be allowed to live and therefore build over here, but not over there, it gives Abbas all that he needs to justify his never-ending intransigence.
At this point in the game, however, does anyone honestly believe that there is any life left in the Oslo process?
I do not think so and therefore believe that Israel needs to develop alternative and practical visions for the future and to act on those visions. Since the Obama administration is blundering around the Middle East searching for a truffle, and since Mahmoud Abbas is a two-bit dictator, terrorist, and Holocaust denier who never had any intention of making peace to begin with, Israel must act in a unilateral fashion in which the only concern should be security and well-being of the citizens of the country.
Israel basically has two broad options. It can maintain the status quo which, by the way, can actually go on and on and on well into the future. The status quo can be maintained indefinitely because it has already outlasted pretty much everything else around it. It has outlasted US president after US president. It has outlasted Israeli Prime Minister after Israel Prime Minister. It has survived wars and intifadas and literally millions of hours of people arguing with one another how unsustainable the status quo is.
And, yet, there it is.
Of course, this is not my preferred option. As I have consistently argued, Israel needs to declare its final borders and remove the IDF to behind those borders. What those borders should be I leave entirely to the Israelis. If they want to annex the entirety of Judea and Samaria along lines proposed by people such are Caroline Glick and Martin Sherman of the Jerusalem Post, that is dandy with me. If, on the other hand, they wish to annex Area C or even unilaterally pull back to something that resembles the 1967 borders, that is fine with me as well. My main concern, naturally, is Israeli security and if such a move was consistent with that security than I would have no cause for complaint.
One quibble re: language -
ReplyDelete"something that resembles the 1967 borders"
There were never any 'borders.' Those were, and are, the 1949 armistice lines, which were just so where the armies at the end of the Israeli War of Independence happened to be when the shooting stopped. No borders have been set yet, since the Palestinian-Arabs have rejected every single offer they've received.
I prefer the third option (or the second part of the presented second option) - keeping all of Jerusalem, and the large Jewish neighborhoods across the ceasefire line, then throwing the keys for the rest to 'Palestine.' If Israelis want to offer 'land swaps' to make up for that, I wouldn't riot in opposition, but I personally wouldn't do it myself, either. There's gotta be a cost to launching, and losing, multiple terror wars.
The status quo is less bad than annexing all of Judea and Samaria, because once that is done, well... look at the demographics. Even though the Palestinian-Arab population figures are probably slightly inflated, you're still adding probably two million hostile new 'citizens' who have been inculcated with genocidal Jew-hatred for generations, and if they're citizens, at that point they are going to have to be allowed to vote, and receive all benefits of citizenship.
You can safely tell the world to go screw when they whine about the current situation, but I don't think that will work for long after potentially pulling the trigger on a complete annexation.