By Cliff May
Thursday, December 20, 2012
More than 40,000 people have been slaughtered during the
rebellion in Syria, and the death toll rises daily. The European Union does not
appear to be particularly concerned. North Korea’s rulers have launched a
three-stage rocket, moving closer to their goal of developing a nuclear-tipped
ICBM, and they’re sharing nuclear-weapons technology with the world’s leading
sponsors of terrorism in Iran. The EU does not seem to be worrying about that
either. Israel is considering building homes on barren hills adjacent to
Jerusalem. The EU’s 27 foreign ministers said they were “deeply dismayed” and
warned Israel of unspecified consequences if the plan is carried out.
The European Union — recent winner, I should note, of the
Nobel Peace Prize — has its priorities. So let’s talk about what the Israelis
are doing to so distress them.
The area in which Israel may build covers 4.6 square
miles. For the sake of comparison, Denver International Airport is 53 square
miles. Known as E1, this area lies within a territory that has a much older
name: the Judean Desert. Might Jews think they have a legitimate historical
claim to the Judean Desert? This question is rarely asked.
For Israeli military planners, E1’s strategic value is
more germane than its history. Developing it would help in the defense of
Jerusalem, and would connect Jerusalem to Maaleh Adumim, an Israeli town with a
population of 40,000. Media reports note that both Israelis and Palestinians
claim Jerusalem as their capital. Media reports often fail to note that right
now both Jews and Arabs live in Jerusalem — for the most part peacefully, with
both populations growing — while Hamas vows to forcibly expel every Jew from
Jerusalem. Such threats of ethnic cleansing also do not trouble the EU much.
It has been widely reported that if Israel should build
in E1, the possibility of a two-state solution would be shattered. The New York
Times was among those reporting this but, to the paper’s credit, it later
published a correction, stating that building in E1 actually “would not divide
the West Bank in two,” nor would it cut off the West Bank cities Ramallah and
Bethlehem from Jerusalem. Anyone looking at a map would see that. People
forget, or perhaps choose not to remember, that Israelis always have been
willing to give up land for peace, including land acquired in defensive wars.
Historically, that has not been a common practice, for a very sound reason:
Aggression can be deterred only if it carries substantial risk. Nevertheless, Israelis
gave up Gaza and the Sinai, and have offered to give up more land — at least 97
percent of the West Bank, retaining only those areas absolutely necessary for
national security.
Israelis do want something in exchange: an end to the
long conflict they have been fighting against those who insist that the Jewish
people, uniquely, has no right to self-determination, no right to independence,
no right to self-rule within their ancient and ancestral homeland.
What Israelis have received instead: missile and
terrorist attacks and, last week, Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal at a rally in
Gaza proclaiming that “jihad,” armed struggle, will continue until Israel is
defeated, conquered, and replaced — every square mile — by an Islamist
theocracy. “Since Palestine is ours, and it is the land of the Arabs and
Islam,” he said, “it is unthinkable that we would recognize the legitimacy of
the Israeli occupation of it. . . . Let me emphasize that we adhere to this
fundamental principle: We do not recognize Israel . . . The Palestinian
resistance will crush it and sweep it away, be it Allah’s will.” He added: “We
will free Jerusalem inch by inch, stone by stone. Israel has no right to be in
Jerusalem.”
Within the EU there was a debate about whether to comment
on that. Eventually, pressure from Germany and the Czech Republic led the EU to
issue a mild rebuke to Hamas — a single paragraph in a three-page statement
focusing on Israel’s “dismaying” behavior. Mahmoud Abbas, regarded as a
moderate Palestinian leader, could not bring himself to call Mashaal’s latest
threats wrong — or even unhelpful. Instead, Azzam Alahmed, a senior official in
Abbas’s Fatah organization, described Mashaal’s speech as “very positive,”
because it stressed the need for reconciliation between Hamas and Fatah. Such
reconciliation would be achieved not by Hamas softening its positions, but by
Fatah more explicitly agreeing that Israel’s extermination — rather than a
two-state solution — remains the Palestinian goal, the final solution, if you
will.
Just after the conclusion of the truce halting the most
recent Hamas/Israel battle, Abbas went to the U.N. General Assembly to request
that Palestine be recognized as a “non-member state.” The outcome was never in
doubt — the UNGA, which cannot with a straight face be described as a
deliberative body, has a reflexively anti-Israeli majority. Abbas’s action was
a blatant violation of the Oslo Accords, under which any change in the
Palestinians’ status is to come about only through negotiations with Israel.
New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman laments that
“the Europeans in general, and the European left in particular, have so little
influence” in Israel. He is puzzled as to why that is. He insists that “it’s
incumbent on every Israeli leader to test, test and test again — using every
ounce of Israeli creativity — to see if Israel can find a Palestinian partner
for a secure peace.” Only by so doing, he adds, can Israel “have the moral high
ground in a permanent struggle.” If “creative” Israelis were to find such a
partner, would Friedman be able to arrange a life-insurance policy for him? And
between those threatening their neighbors with genocide — which is,
indisputably, what Hamas is doing — and those offering to negotiate peace with
their neighbors — which is what Israel is doing — can there really be ambiguity
about who holds the moral high ground?
Evidently, there can — at least for Friedman and the EU
and, I’m afraid, lots of other folks around the world. Israelis, and their few
friends, may just have to learn to live with that as best they can.
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