Palestine - Obama Continues To Fudge On America's Commitment To Israel

[Published 23 May 2011]


President Obama in an address to the AIPAC Policy Conference on 22 May has failed to redress the enormous damage done by him to America’s integrity and reputation during his speech three days earlier at the State Department.

Addressing the State Department Obama then stated:

“We believe the borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps, so that secure and recognized borders are established for both states.. “

This statement amounted to the repudiation of an American written commitment given by President George Bush (the Bush Letter) to Israel’s then Prime Minister Ariel Sharon on 14 April 2004 which stated:

“As part of a final peace settlement, Israel must have secure and recognized borders, which should emerge from negotiations between the parties in accordance with UNSC Resolutions 242 and 338. In light of new realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli populations centers, it is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949, and all previous efforts to negotiate a two-state solution have reached the same conclusion. It is realistic to expect that any final status agreement will only be achieved on the basis of mutually agreed changes that reflect these realities.”

America’s commitment in the Bush Letter was clear and unambiguous.

1. America would support Israel’s refusal to withdraw from 100% of Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem - as the Arabs had been demanding since 1967
2. The amount of such land to be retained by Israel would be determined by mutually agreed changes that reflected the realities existing at the time negotiations were completed

No mention was made that those mutually agreed changes would require Israel to make land swaps of Israeli sovereign territory in exchange for land retained by Israel in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem.

The importance of these American commitments to Israel was stressed in a speech given in the Knesset by Prime Minister Sharon on 22 April 2004 when he stated:

“The political support we received during my visit to the United States is an unprecedented accomplishment for Israel. Since the establishment of the State, we have not received such vast and staunch political support, as was expressed in the President’s letter.”

President Bush’s letter was subsequently approved by the US Senate and House of Representatives on 23 June and 24 June 2004.

Obama’s apparent attempt to abrogate this American commitment in his statement on 19 May resulted in trenchant criticism from Israel and many members of the American Congress forcing him to clarify his position on 22 May.

In doing so President Obama did not climb out of the diplomatic hole he had dug for himself and America three days earlier - but only managed to slide further down it taking America’s integrity and reputation even lower with him.

President Obama told the AIPAC delegates and many Congressmen present and keen to hear his explanation:

“And it was my reference to the 1967 lines—with mutually agreed swaps—that received the lion’s share of the attention, including just now. And since my position has been misrepresented several times, let me reaffirm what “1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps” means. By definition,it means that the parties themselves—Israelis and Palestinians—will negotiate a border that is different than the one that existed on June 4, 1967. That’s what mutually agreed- upon swaps means. It is a well-known formula to all who have worked on this issue for a generation. It allows the parties themselves to account for the changes that have taken place over the last 44 years. It allows the parties themselves to take account of those changes, including the new demographic realities on the ground, and the needs of both sides. The ultimate goal is two states for two people: Israel as a Jewish state and the homeland for the Jewish people and the State of Palestine as the homeland for the Palestinian people—each state in joined self-determination, mutual recognition, and peace”

With the greatest respect the President is talking utter nonsense.

“Agreed upon swaps” surely means an agreed exchange of something for something else.

President Obama clearly was breaching the Bush Letter in stating that his Government’s belief:

”now was that Israeli sovereign territory would have to be swapped for territory retained by Israel in the West Bank or East Jerusalem.

President Obama’s belief in 2011 is totally irrelevant. President Obama is committed in 2011 to supporting whatever decision Israel makes on how much of the West Bank and East Jerusalem it will ultimately withdraw from - nothing more nothing less.

To continue to support the concept of

“mutually agreed swaps”

only makes matters even worse so far as restoring America’s integrity and reputation is concerned.

It is clear President Obama does not like the terms of the Bush Letter. But he - and America - are bound by it if America’s integrity and reputation is to be maintained.

Obama’s explanation smacks of a pathetic attempt to try and retrospectively substitute the words:

“mutually agreed changes” in the Bush Letter with the words “mutually agreed exchanges”.

Surely Congress will react with even greater fury at President Obama’s latest remarks to try and massage the meaning of the Bush Letter to give it a meaning that was never intended.

Israel made a historic - and highly controversial - political decision to unilaterally withdraw from Gaza as a condition of obtaining the Bush Letter. Israel paid dearly for that decision when tens of thousands of its civilian population were subsequently murdered, wounded or traumatized following that disengagement.

It is inconceivable that America should seek in any way to diminish or circumvent the commitments it made under the Bush Letter.

Words have meaning and in this case their meaning brooks only one interpretation.

Obama’s attempt to subvert their meaning must be resisted until he recants and states without qualification or ambiguity that he - as America’s President - and America still stands by what President Bush signed and its Congress ratified.

Palestine,President Peres And Poppycock

[Published November 2008]


“The President seems to extend executive privilege way out past the atmosphere. What he says is executive privilege is nothing but executive poppycock.” - Sam Ervin


Israel’s President -Shimon Peres - has seriously undermined Israel’s national interest in his endorsement of the 2002 Arab League Initiative proposing a comprehensive peace with Israel and the 22 members of the Arab League.

Addressing the United Nations General Assembly Meeting on Inter-Faith Dialogue in New York on November 12 President Peres called the Arab League expressions of establishing normal relations with Israel in the Initiative as:

“inspirational and promising, a serious opening for real progress”.

He was moved by the Initiative’s call

“to stop the further shedding of blood enabling the Arab countries and Israel to live in peace and good neighbourliness and provide future generations with security, stability and prosperity”

Fine sounding words indeed but the devil is in the detail of how this vision is to be realised.

Israel’s Government has made no bones of the fact that it does not consider the Arab League initiative as having any effective role to play in the current negotiations being conducted under the Roadmap adopted by America, the European Union, Russia and the United Nations - dubbed the Quartet.

In agreeing to enter into negotiations under the Roadmap Israel made it abundantly clear to the Quartet on 25 May 2003 that its acceptance of the Roadmap was subject to the removal of all references to the Arab League Initiative from its terms whilst further stating succinctly that :

“A settlement based upon the Roadmap will be an autonomous settlement that derives its validity therefrom.”

Israel’s reasons for rejecting the Initiative were based on the following Arab League demands that were clearly expressed as the price Israel was required to pay for Arab League recognition:

1. Full Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank, Gaza, the Golan Heights and Lebanon which would have involved the uprooting of about 300000 Jews then living in those areas at the time and their resettlement inside the armistice line between Israel and Jordan on June 4, 1967 .

2. Achievement of a just resolution to the Palestinian refugee problem to be agreed on in accordance with UN General Assembly Resolution 194 that would have involved the resettlement of millions of Arabs within Israel making the Jews a minority in their own country.

3. The establishment of a sovereign, independent and exclusively Jew free Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza - between Israel, Jordan and Egypt - with East Jerusalem as its capital.

President Bush accepted the strength of Israel’s rejection of the Arab League Initiative when he advised Israel’s Prime Minister Ariel Sharon on 14 April 2004 that Israel could not be expected to withdraw from all of the West Bank and Gaza and remove every single Jew living there nor could the resettlement of millions of Arabs into Israel be expected outcomes of any negotiations under the Roadmap.

Indeed it appears that the Roadmap has come to an end precisely because the Palestinian Authority has refused to budge on these identical demands in its negotiations with Israel under the Roadmap.

What we then have at the present time are tenuous ongoing negotiations, meetings and press conferences which Israel, the Palestinian Authority and the Quartet continue to attend for fear of being blamed for bringing the Roadmap negotiations to a crashing end if they don’t.

President Peres would have done well to take the opportunity to remind the Inter-Faith attendees that the belated Arab League Initiative and the Roadmap would never have been necessary had the Arab League:

1. Accepted the United Nations Partition Plan in 1947

2. Not attempted to wipe Israel off the face of the earth in 1967.

3. Not refused to negotiate with Israel for 25 years after the loss of the West Bank, Gaza and the Golan Heights

4. Accepted the provisions of Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338 which recognised that Israel’s return to the June 4, 1967 armistice lines was not going to happen.

President Peres is not the Government of Israel. He is entitled to dream of peace. In that he is no different to all Israelis - indeed the whole world - who pray and yearn for peace between the Jews and the Arabs.

However if in doing do so he hangs the Government of Israel out to dry by adopting a stance that is completely contradictory to its stated policy, then he forfeits the respect of large sections of the Israeli population all of whom he is sworn to represent as their Head of State - as well as the continuing support of all Jews and persons of goodwill world wide who regard Israel as the national homeland for all Jews not only for this but for all future generations.

The Roadmap is doomed to failure. When that inevitability is finally recognised, the way forward will certainly not be realised by negotiating on the Arab League Initiative. The Arab League has not changed its negotiating stance on the demands embodied in the Initiative for the last 41 years. Expecting it to do so now is pie in the sky thinking.

If however the Israeli Government were to nevertheless decide to try and change the Arab League’s intransigent stance by entering into negotiations based on the Initiative then it would be right and appropriate to do so only after receiving approval of the electorate. It is extremely doubtful that any political party in Israel could win a mandate to negotiate with the Arab League on its Initiative.

President Peres’ disastrous foray into peacemaking with the Arabs whilst a politician is matter of historical record. It is totally inappropriate for him to once again try do so from outside politics in opposition to the stated policy of the Government whilst holding the office of President

President Peres should stick to inspecting honour guards and giving cocktail parties for visiting dignitaries and leave the conduct of foreign policy to the democratically elected Government of Israel.

Jerusalem's Judgement Day

[Published July 2008]

President Bush’s Road Map to create a new Arab state between Jordan and Israel is in terminal tatters following the bloody events in Jerusalem on 2 July 2008 when an east Jerusalem Arab commandeered a bulldozer and went on a rampage through Jerusalem’s busy streets trying to kill as many people as he could before being killed himself.

Another East Jerusalem Arab had previously murdered 8 Jewish religious seminary students on 5 March as they sat at their desks where tens of thousands of others had done so before them since its establishment in Jerusalem in 1924 under the British Mandate.

The Arab response to President Bush’s Roadmap had embraced the uncompromising demand that millions of Arabs be allowed to emigrate to Israel - a position totally opposed by Israeli negotiators. That demand had been at the centre of Arab proposals to settle the Arab-Israel conflict since 1967 - long before the Roadmap finally saw the light of day in 2003.

President Bush made it clear as long ago as 14 April 2004 that he supported Israel’s rejection of that demand when he wrote to then Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon:

“It seems clear that an agreed, just, fair and realistic framework for a solution to the Palestinian refugee issue as part of any final status agreement will need to be found through the establishment of a Palestinian state, and the settling of Palestinian refugees there, rather than in Israel.”

One may well ask then why the Roadmap negotiations have been allowed to run on since 2004 when this clear rejection of the Arab demand was in the public place. Surely no reasonable prospects of settling this intractable dispute could ever eventuate from the Roadmap negotiations unless this Arab demand was dropped.

Yet despite this clearest signpost leading to a complete dead end in the negotiations, they continued on amid statements of ever growing optimism - fuelled perhaps even by desperation - that continued to be made in inverse proportion to what was being achieved in those negotiations.

The Quartet - America, the United Nations, the European Union and Russia - refused to believe that their combined clout could ever hit a brick wall in bringing President Bush’s vision to reality and finality. They did not count on the continued Arab intransigence they were to encounter.

All unequivocally supported the right of the Jewish people to a Jewish State. How could this support be possibly reconciled with supporting the demand that millions of Arabs be given the right to flood Israel and destroy its Jewish character?

No doubt neither Jews nor Arabs wished to be seen as the ones to have ended the negotiations and have upset an American President who had intervened to try and settle a dispute that had escaped the best efforts of the League of Nations and the United Nations over the last 88 years.

There were some - especially among the Israeli negotiators - who believed and hoped the Arab demand was a lot of hot air and that a combination of compensation and a limited entry of perhaps 100000 Arabs into Israel could satisfy this intransigent and entirely irrational Arab demand and bring about the longed for peace. This proposal had been suggested in negotiations in 2000 but was categorically rejected by the Arabs.

1.4 million Arabs are presently Israeli citizens. 250000 Arabs reside in east Jerusalem and are the holders of Israeli blue Identification cards that allow them access throughout Jerusalem and the West Bank.

Arabs make up 20% of Israel’s population. They have been long viewed with suspicion from time to time as a fifth column waiting to spread havoc when ordered to do so. Whilst their loyalty to their country is frequently called into question they have been able to achieve a standard of living and lifestyle that is the envy of those who live in the Arab States that surround Israel.

A recent poll conducted by the Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government showed that 77% of Israeli Arabs would rather live in Israel than in any other country in the world.

Another poll conducted with 668 adult Israeli Jews for the Knesset Channel shortly after the seminary massacre in March showed that 29% wanted all Israeli Arabs relocated out of Israel into any new Arab state created between Israel and Jordan, 19% said relocation should only apply to settlements in close proximity to any new state, whilst 28% restricted relocation to those whose disloyalty to Israel could be proved. 24% were against any relocation taking place.

Any lingering hopes that any sizable number of Arabs would ever be permitted to legally emigrate to Israel has ended with the last two traumatic events in Jerusalem. No doubt there will be circumstances where some limited emigration is permitted but it will be strictly applied and strenuously enforced.

Israel obviously has enormous problems in trying to prevent terrorist attacks on its citizens by its own Arab population, to appropriately respond to them and is grappling with what it can do to end them.

Any political party in this current climate of suspicion and fear espousing the lawful entry of more Arabs into Israel would be decimated at the polls. Israel’s political parties will unite in resisting the Arab demand and with it kiss goodbye to the Roadmap as the route to achieving peace between Jews and Arabs.

Jerusalem on 2 July 2008 was judgement day for President Bush’s Roadmap - but not in the Christian understanding of the dead being restored to life. Rather the exact opposite happened - the Roadmap was buried that day by the Arabs in the graveyard of lost opportunities ending any hopes of President Bush’s vision ever achieving peace between Jews and Arabs in Jerusalem - the city of peace.

Bush's Vision Requires A West Bank Subdivision

[Published June 2008]

Subdivision of the West Bank between Jewish and Arab claimants has always been an essential ingredient of President Bush’s 2002 vision to create a new Arab State between Israel and Jordan.

Indeed such a subdivision had been pursued by President Clinton in 2000 before negotiations between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) broke down after Yasser Arafat had demanded all of the West Bank and ended up getting nothing at all as a result.

President Bush made his position on this issue abundantly clear on 14 April 2004 when he declared in a letter to Israel’s then Prime Minister - Ariel Sharon:

“In light of new realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli populations centers, it is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949, and all previous efforts to negotiate a two-state solution have reached the same conclusion. It is realistic to expect that any final status agreement will only be achieved on the basis of mutually agreed changes that reflect these realities.”

Fifteen years of negotiations with the PLO - begun with the much heralded but totally ineffectual Oslo Accords in 1993 - have proved a complete waste of time in achieving the determination of sovereignty in the West Bank - an area that has had no recognised sovereign authority since 1948 when Great Britain terminated the mandate conferred on it by the League of Nations in 1922.

President Bush’s Roadmap - backed by the United Nations, Russia and the European Union - has failed to make the slightest impression on securing PLO agreement to any part of the West Bank remaining in Jewish hands.

The PLO’s continuing intransigence has forfeited its right to continue to negotiate the future of the West Bank on behalf of the Arabs. Its conditions for statehood are incapable of fulfilment.

Jordan was the last sovereign Arab State to occupy the West Bank, which it did from 1948 to 1967 until it was lost to Israel in the Six Day War in 1967.

Jordan ceded all claims to the West Bank in 1988 in favour of the PLO in the face of extreme pressure by the Arab League to do so. That decision has proved disastrous for the Arab residents of the West Bank and now requires to be urgently reviewed by the Arab League and reversed.

Jordan needs to be brought back as the appropriate partner to negotiate a subdivision of the West Bank with Israel so as to enable its Arab residents to at least be freed of Israeli military control and restrictions on their freedom of movement and assembly.

Randa Habib of Agence France Presse in an article dated June 10 and posted on http://www.canada.com titled “Jordan fears new pressure to merge with West Bank” reports of Jordanian concerns at such a possibility quoting “a senior Jordanian official” as stating:

“The only acceptable scenario for us is the merger of Jordan and all of the West Bank”

In the same breath the same official however is quoted as saying:

"Jordan does not want to be linked to 30 or 50 per cent of a territory which it owned from 1950 - 1967. To get half or less of the West Bank with all the Palestinian population would be suicide.”

Jordan need have no fears on this score. Israel was prepared to cede its claim to 93% of the West Bank in 2000 and reportedly to a slightly lesser area in the failed negotiations on President Bush’s Road Map. The radicalization of the Arab population of the West Bank might well necessitate a staged withdrawal by Israel from the areas it agrees to cede to Jordan in direct negotiations.

Jordan represents the only realistic option for removing Israel’s grip on the West Bank’s Arab population. Failure to grasp the opportunity now presented will be a tragedy and end any prospects of a peaceful settlement of the Jewish-Arab conflict in the foreseeable future.

Jordan cannot go it alone. It will need the backing of the Arab League as well as American and hopefully international support - politically, militarily and financially - to secure Jordan against any attempt to overthrow its monarchy and governing structure by Arab terrorist and radical groups who oppose any concessions or any territory in the West Bank being kept by Israel or the recognition of a Jewish State anywhere in the Middle East.

Additionally the implementation of any agreed subdivision will entail a joint co-operative effort between Israel and Jordan to render the West Bank an “arms free” area where the only weapons there are under the control of the Jordanian and Israeli military and police forces.

No doubt demilitarization of the West Bank - partially or totally - would be on the negotiating agenda.

The existence of a peace treaty signed between Israel and Jordan in 1994 puts Israel and Jordan in a position of equal negotiating strength as sovereign States already living side by side in peace - a critical factor never existing in any previous negotiations over the last 70 years.

Substantive issues such as water, refugees and Jerusalem are already covered under the peace treaty and afford ready made, agreed solutions to what has been considered impossible to achieve under previous negotiations.

Redrawing the boundary between these two sovereign states should be a relatively simple task that can be accomplished in a matter of weeks - well before President Bush leaves the Oval Office in January 2009.

Another Arab State in any part of the West Bank would require the joint consent of Jordan and Israel. Maybe when the current environment turns from confrontational to peaceful and cooperative, the opportunity might then be afforded to complete what President Bush’s vision so earnestly desired and what proposals over the last 70 years have been unable to achieve.

That is for the future. The present demands swift and decisive intervention by Jordan.

Abbas Loses The Plot

[Published May 2008]

PLO Chairman and President of the Palestinian Authority - Mahmoud Abbas - was clearly not happy with the remarks made by President Bush on the occasion of the 60th Anniversary of Israel’s reconstitution as an independent Jewish state within its biblical homeland 2000 years after it had last flourished there.

In what the Egyptian newspaper Al Ahram’s Publisher Mursi Attallah described as “a Torah (Old Testament) inspired speech”, President Bush told the Knesset:

“We gather to mark a momentous occasion. Sixty years ago in Tel Aviv, David Ben-Gurion proclaimed Israel’s independence, founded on the “natural right of the Jewish people to be masters of their own fate.” What followed was more than the establishment of a new country. It was the redemption of an ancient promise given to Abraham and Moses and David — a homeland for the chosen people Eretz Yisrael.”

President Bush’s words affirming such ancient and historical Jewish rights certainly did not break any new ground that would justify Abbas’s outrage as he told a news conference in Sharm El Sheikh:

“What President Bush said at the Knesset made us angry and did not satisfy us. We told him what we need is a balanced position,”

Regrettably a more balanced position is what Abbas needs at this time when it comes to the Jewish people - something he has lacked and continues to lack.

Similar moving and eloquent words to those spoken by President Bush had been used by the Peel Commission in 1937 when attempting to resolve the then escalating conflict between Jews and Arabs in Palestine. The Commission’s words were equally as compelling as President Bush’s:

“ While the Jews had thus been dispersed over the world, they had never forgotten Palestine. If Christians have become familiar through the Bible with the physiognomy of the country and its place names and events that happened more than two thousand years ago , the link which binds Jews to Palestine and its past history is to them far closer and more intimate. Judaism and its rituals are rooted in those memories. Among countless illustrations it is enough to cite the fact that Jews, wherever they may be, still pray for rain at the season it is needed in Palestine. And the same devotion to the Land of Israel, Eretz Israel, the same sense of exile from it, permeates Jewish secular thought. Some of the finest Hebrew poetry written in the Diaspora has been inspired, like the Psalms of Captivity , by the longing to return to Zion.” (pp 8-9).

Arab leaders then refused to accept the truth inherent in those words - just as Abbas today refuses to accept the words spoken by President Bush in the Knesset.

President Bush’s Road Map is but the latest in a long line of well intended and serious attempts by the international community to resolve the conflict in Palestine between Jews and Arabs since the League of Nations in 1922 affirmed

“the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine and to the grounds for reconstituting their national home in that country”.

This recognition affording the Jewish people the right of self determination in Palestine did not take place in isolation but as part of a series of international obligations that granted the Arabs the right to self determination in what today is called Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Jordan - an area 99.99% larger than the size of former Palestine.

President Bush had made it clear to Abbas four years ago that the successful outcome to his Roadmap involved Abbas accepting Israel as the Jewish State existing alongside a 23rd Arab state that would be created for the Arab residents of former Palestine under the President’s plan.

Yet the idea of a Jewish State has long been anathema for Abbas since his days in exile in Tunis with Yasser Arafat more than 25 years ago. He has been unable to get this monkey off his back as he continues to lead the Palestine Liberation Organisation whose Charter rejects the very words uttered by President Bush in the Knesset last week and by the Peel Commission six decades ago.

The most Abbas has been able to bring himself to grudgingly acknowledge was contained in the following statement made by him last December:

“From a historical perspective, there are two states: Israel and Palestine. In Israel, there are Jews and others living there. This we are willing to recognize, nothing else,”

That is not the historical perspective President Bush expressed in the Knesset last week. Whilst Abbas refuses to recognise the President’s perspective - and his vision - then Abbas’s ability and competence to negotiate any form of settlement with Israel will be rendered totally impotent.

There were Arab leaders such as Anwar Sadat of Egypt and King Hussein of Jordan who were prepared to make the quantum leap and recognise Israel as the Jewish State - a jump that Abbas is still obviously not prepared to take judging by his reaction to President Bush’s speech in the Knesset.

Abbas’s outburst at President Bush’s remarks indicates that he is just one more Arab leader in a long line of failed leaders who refused to accept the idea of Jews having their own state and as a result ensured continued suffering and humiliation for those whose national interest he was supposed to advance.

He - like those failed leaders who preceded him - has surely lost the plot and needs to get off centre stage.

President Bush, Condoleezza Rice and Forgotten Letters

[Published May 2008]

President Bush and Condoleezza Rice have a lot on their minds as they grapple with a multitude of the world’s current conflicts which - no doubt - have caused overloading of their respective memory banks

Yet this would be a lame excuse for them forgetting about - or seeking to minimise - the existence and crucial importance of the letters exchanged between President Bush and Israel’s then Prime Minister - Ariel Sharon - on 14 April 2004 and a subsequent letter sent by Sharon’s Chief of Staff - Dov Weinglass - to US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on 18 April, 2004.

This correspondence resulted in courageous and highly dangerous decisions being taken by Israel to kick start President Bush’s stalled 2003 Road Map - envisioned by him as the key to resolving the Israeli-Arab conflict by 2005.

The President’s letter provided the catalyst - and the political justification - for Israel unilaterally evacuating the entire Jewish population of 8,000 from Gaza and withdrawing Israel’s army totally from there without any preconditions or undertakings from Gaza’s highly hostile Arab population..

The Presidential letter also set out the framework that President Bush would support as Israel attempted to progress the Road Map that would create a new Arab State between Israel and Jordan.

President Bush’s letter clearly - and unambiguously - stated that;

1. The borders of the new Arab State would not encompass the entire West Bank despite successive Arab leaders having demanded this outcome for the previous 37 years,

2. Jewish towns and villages in the West Bank would be incorporated into the borders of Israel

3. The Arabs would have to forego their demand to be given the right to emigrate to Israel and

4. Israel’s existence as a Jewish State would be assured

Jerusalem Post Editor David Horovitz joined a group of Israeli journalists who met with President Bush in the Oval Office last week prior to the President’s visit to Israel to take part in its 60th Anniversary celebrations. In his editorial - published on 14 May 2008 - Mr Horovitz revealed the extent of the American loss of memory concerning the President’s 2004 letter in the following terms:

“Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, however, has been known to minimize the significance of this four-year-old letter. Just last week, for instance, she told reporters that the 2004 letter “talked about realities at that time. And there are realities for both sides...” …
Bush’s National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley has also given briefings to the effect that Israel has tried to overstate the importance of a rather vague letter, which was issued at a time when Sharon was seeking to bolster support for the pullout from Gaza.
And in answering my question, Bush did not at first even realize that I was referring to the 2004 letter. Hadley, who was also in the Oval Office, had to prompt him. “Okay, the letters,” the president then said, remembering.”

[http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1210668628898&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull]

This is not simply memory loss but something far worse and more sinister.

In their apparent desperation to do any deal before losing the reins of power in eight months time, the President and his Secretary of State are treading on extremely dangerous ground in giving out signals that they are possibly prepared to renege on their solemn undertakings to Israel.

Israel has already paid a high price in relying on the President’s letter.

Gaza has been turned into a de facto terrorist Palestinian State. Israel has had to sustain a never ending barrage of rockets and mortars fired indiscriminately into Israeli population centres from Gaza by a bewildering variety of terrorist groups and sub-groups who would have had no chance of becoming so firmly entrenched in Gaza if the Israeli Army had remained there.

The latest shelling of a shopping mall in Ashkelon using an Iranian Katyusha rocket fired from Gaza signifies a highly dangerous escalation of the conflict. It also indicates the ease with which such sophisticated weaponry can be smuggled into Gaza through the Philadelphi corridor under the noses of the Egyptians despite Condoleezza Rice’s assurances to the Israelis that this would not occur.

Israel needs to make it perfectly clear to President Bush and his Secretary of State that any attempt to resile from the President’s letter will lead to the immediate termination of all further negotiations - that the President then will have no one but himself to blame for bringing his own vision to an ignominious end.

Israel’s Prime Minister - Ehud Olmert - has not forgotten - or overlooked - the critical significance of the President’s letter in any ongoing negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

President Bush and Ms Rice were quick to claim credit at the international conference held in Annapolis last November for a breakthrough in the resumption of those negotiations that would see the three clearly defined stages of the Road Map now being dealt with simultaneously rather than stage by stage.

Maybe the President and Madam Secretary were so overcome by their apparent success that they failed to hear - or perhaps hoped everyone might overlook - what Prime Minister Olmert told the gathered world leaders about the course of those future negotiations:

“The negotiations will be based on previous agreements between us, U.N. Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338, the road map and the April 14, 2004 letter of President Bush to the Prime Minister of Israel.”

Jews have accumulated many memories - both pleasant and unpleasant - since losing their State, being expelled from there 2000 years ago and being dispersed to all corners of the globe. The Jews steeled themselves to ensure they never forgot who they were, where they came from and to where they would one day return.

Strength comes from remembering - not forgetting.

The President and his Secretary of State would do well to remember - and heed - this lesson as the State of Israel remembers the 60th Anniversary of its reconstitution on and in its ancient biblical homeland.

Palestine After Bush - Vision or Mirage?

[Published April 2008]

14 April 2008 marks the fourth anniversary of the date when the signposts pointing the direction towards realizing President Bush’s vision for a Palestinian State were emblazoned on the diplomatic horizon.

Few however have grasped the significance of - or conveniently wish to forget - what occurred that day when President Bush and Israel’s then Prime Minister Ariel Sharon met in Washington.

A historic exchange of letters took place between them with Israel announcing it would unilaterally initiate a process of gradual disengagement starting with the intention “to relocate military installations and all Israeli villages and towns in the Gaza Strip” as well as “other military installations and a small number of villages in Samaria”.

In addition Israel planned to accelerate the construction of the Security Fence which it stated would be a security rather than a political barrier, temporary rather than permanent and therefore would not prejudice any final status issues including final borders.

This Disengagement Plan was to be undertaken with the hope of reducing friction between Israelis and Palestinians, to improve the economy of the Palestinian Authority and to enhance the welfare of its people. It was designed to improve security for Israel and stabilize its political and economic situation. It was clearly expressed to be an initiative not being undertaken under President Bush’s Road Map but was an independent Israeli plan whilst not being inconsistent with the Road Map.

President Bush in his letter to Mr Sharon acknowledged the Disengagement Plan to be

“a bold and historic initiative that can make an important contribution to peace” and a “courageous decision “.

The President’s letter stated the United States appreciated the risks such an undertaking represented and gave Mr Sharon the following written assurances:

1. The United States would do its utmost to prevent any attempt by anyone to impose any plan other than the Road Map.

2. The United States reiterated its steadfast commitment to Israel’s security, including defensible borders and to preserve and strengthen Israel’s capability to deter and defend itself - by itself - against any threat or possible combination of threats .

3. Israel would retain its right to defend itself against terrorism, including to take actions against terrorist organisations.

4. The United States was committed to Israel’s well being as a Jewish State,

5. The United States understood that after Israel withdrew from Gaza and/or parts of the West Bank, existing arrangements regarding control of airspace, territorial waters and land passages would continue pending agreement on other arrangements.

6. An agreed, just, fair and realistic framework for the solution of the Palestinian refugee issue would need to be found through the establishment of a Palestinian State, and the settling of the Palestinian refugees there, rather than in Israel.

7. In the light of new realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli population centers, it would be unrealistic to expect that the outcome of the final status negotiations would be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949.

The Disengagement Plan proved an absolute disaster with none of its defined goals or objectives being attained. Indeed the seizure by Hamas of absolute power in the Gaza Strip in June 2007 and the complete failure of the Palestinian Authority to now have any influence over political decisions being made there represents a diplomatic denouement of massive proportions.

The Road Map remains but a twinkle in the eye of President Bush with not one single step put into operation despite six years of intense diplomacy. Any chances of it being fully implemented by the end of this year when the President leaves office is a hopeless exercise in wishful thinking.

The only people who keep talking up this possibility are President Bush, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Special Envoy Tony Blair.

The Presidential aspirants - John McCain, Barak Obama and Hillary Clinton - remain remarkably tight-lipped as to the policies they intend to pursue if President Bush’s “June 24, 2002 vision” remains unrealised when one of them is elected the next President of the United States.

Each candidate needs to answer the following questions before polling day:

1. Will you remain committed to President Bush’s vision and to its implementation as described in the Road Map?

2. Will you confirm that you intend to honour the assurances given by President Bush in his letter to Israel’s Prime Minister Ariel Sharon on 14 April 2004?

There is no room for equivocation by the candidates. A simple “yes” or “no” to each question is required.

Israel cannot be expected to accept - nor should it have to confront - any attempt by the next President to walk away from - or seek to alter - the assurances made by President Bush.

If the next President fails to honour the 14 April 2004 assurances, he (or she) will be held entirely responsible for seeing the window of opportunity for creating an independent State of Palestine for the first time ever in history slammed unceremoniously in his (or her) face.

“Palestine” after Bush will then no longer be a vision but only a mere mirage that will finally disappear when the international community opens its eyes, erases the thought completely from its mind and finally focuses on the division of the West Bank and Gaza between Israel, Jordan and Egypt.

Power Plays In Palestine

[Published February 2008]


Jordan’s decision to begin supplying electricity to Jericho last Monday - coupled with Egypt’s intention to do exactly the same in Gaza - sends a clear message that perhaps the lights are at last being turned on for the first time in 40 years - possibly heralding the beginning of the end to the gloom and darkness that has marked the long running Arab-Jewish conflict over the territory once called Palestine.

Jordan and Egypt have indicated they are acting out of humanitarian concern for the Arab residents of the West Bank and Gaza rather than seeking to again rule in the West Bank and Gaza as they respectively did between 1948-1967.

However Jordanian political analyst Saleh Zaytoun has taken a different view and said this new supply does carry “political overtones” describing it as “reminiscent of the custodianship these countries once provided” in Gaza and the West Bank before they were removed by Israel in the Six Day War of 1967.

Jordanian officials and even King Abdullah himself are trying to play down the political consequences of Jordan’s decision. However it is clear that any such action could only have been initiated with the consent of Israel - and the same would no doubt apply to Egypt’s decision to follow suit in 18 months time when the electricity grid to Gaza will have been completed.

Fifteen years after Oslo and the creation of the Palestinian Authority designed to negotiate with Israel an end to the Arab- Jewish conflict, the Authority has been reduced to a powerless and ineffectual rump as its much stronger rival - Hamas - has taken control of Gaza and openly boasts that it can overthrow the Palestinian Authority’s rule in the Arab occupied areas of the West Bank whenever it chooses to do so.

Five years of vainly trying to implement President Bush’s Road Map to create a new Arab State between Israel, Egypt and Jordan has also proved a disastrous failure. The involvement of the most powerful negotiating team ever assembled in the history of world diplomacy - America, the United Nations, Russia and the European Union - has not succeeded in even remotely translating the President’s vision into a reality.

With President Bush set to stand down at the end of the year virtually everyone has now written off the Road Map’s end objective as “mission impossible” to achieve by then.

None of the US Presidential candidates - John McCain, Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton - has made any commitment to seeing President Bush’s vision through to completion after he is on longer President. Any light at the end of the tunnel is rapidly disappearing despite the frantic efforts of negotiating teams from Israel and the Palestinian Authority to portray otherwise.

The one positive and enduring aspect of Arab-Israel contacts has been the peace treaties signed between Israel and Egypt in 1978 and Israel and Jordan in 1994. Both peace treaties have withstood many pressures that could have so easily ended in their abrupt termination and have been maintained in the face of many attempts to seek their unwinding. It is a tribute to the political leaders in each country that they have resisted the temptation of giving in to such attempts.

A peace treaty between Israel and the Palestinian Authority is impossible to achieve. The Authority’s demands for the return of every square metre of the West Bank and Gaza and the demand that millions of Arabs be allowed to settle in Israel are non-negotiable and cannot and will not be met by Israel. In adopting this stance Israel is supported by a written commitment given by President Bush.

Jordan and Egypt are not blind to the bleak future that awaits the Arab residents of Gaza and the West Bank once the Road Map is finally pronounced dead and buried as appears inevitable when the next US President assumes office in January 2009.

At this very moment the lights are being turned off in Gaza as Israel girds its loins for a vigorous response to the incessant barrage of mortars and rockets being fired daily from Gaza indiscriminately into civilian population centres in Israel.

Establishing another Arab State in the miniscule area of land between Jordan, Israel and Egypt has always been a non-starter only kept alive by intransigent Arab League demands and the dream of a well intended but thoroughly misinformed President Bush who has become - as so many Presidents before him have found to their chagrin - a victim of bad advice furnished by a State Department staffed by a large team of former diplomats who served in 22 Arab States and 45 other Moslem States.

Division of the West Bank and Gaza between Jordan, Egypt and Israel - by redrawing the existing boundaries between them - remains the one and only possible solution to ending the humanitarian disaster that is bound to occur unless the present stalemate is ended.

Jordan and Egypt need to at least resume the roles they occupied in the Arab occupied areas of the West Bank and in Gaza between 1948-1967 and assume control over the lives and destiny of the Arab residents.

Neither the Palestinian Authority nor Hamas have proved themselves remotely capable of ending the conflict. Nor has the Authority or Hamas given up on their desire to see Israel wiped off the map - a fate they seem both destined to suffer themselves as a result of the opportunities wasted in years of fruitless negotiations and power plays between themselves.

“Electricity” may indeed become the buzzword that electrifies the region into action.

Let us hope that indeed we will soon no longer have 20 watt light globes trying to operate in 100 watt sockets.

President Bush Ambushed By Arab Perfidy

[Published October 2007]

President Bush, supposedly the world’s most powerful man, is being humiliated and hung out to dry by the Palestinian Authority and the Arab League as they use their collective muscle to try and change the focus and possibly cause the cancellation of next month’s international meeting called by the President.

Mahmoud Abbas - President of the Palestinian Authority and Chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organisation - had no compunction in telling President Bush to his face what the agenda should be for that meeting when they met at the Waldorf Astoria in New York on 24 September :

“Mr. President, these days we feel hopeful and we feel and we sense the hope, especially after the call to convene an international meeting during the month of November. We believe that this meeting should deal with the substance and issues of substance that would lead to full negotiations on the permanent status that would lead to a permanent peace and a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians.”

Threats of boycotting the meeting by Abbas and various Arab states if the agenda does not meet these demands has sent Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice into a spin as she embarks on yet another of her trips to the Middle East .

She will be desperately trying to find a face saving formula to bring the Arab States - especially Saudi Arabia - to the November meeting.

President Bush needs to show he can deliver the Arab States to meet with Israel. It is a critical element in building Israel’s confidence to continue negotiations to create an Arab State - the 23rd - between Israel and Jordan.

The Arabs apparently are not so ready to oblige. Their attempt to subvert the meeting by changing the President’s planned agenda is in distinct contrast to their frequent statements applauding President Bush for his efforts to bring peace to the Middle East.

President Bush certainly had no intention of creating a putative peace conference of the kind demanded by Abbas when he announced the proposed meeting on 16 July stating:

“The world can do more to build the conditions for peace. So I will call together an international meeting this fall of representatives from nations that support a two-state solution, reject violence, recognize Israel's right to exist, and commit to all previous agreements between the parties. The key participants in this meeting will be the Israelis, the Palestinians, and their neighbors in the region. Secretary Rice will chair the meeting. She and her counterparts will review the progress that has been made toward building Palestinian institutions. They will look for innovative and effective ways to support further reform. And they will provide diplomatic support for the parties in their bilateral discussions and negotiations, so that we can move forward on a successful path to a Palestinian state“.

This was the way President Bush saw his vision of the two state solution now being best advanced - a solution which has been in deep trouble ever since the President first proposed it four years ago.

Much had changed in the immediate region in just twelve months to bring the President to call this meeting - the ascendancy of Hamas to political control of Gaza, the flight of Abbas and his Fatah faction from Gaza, the sacking of the Palestinian Government, the war in Lebanon and Hezbollah‘s resurgence.

The international meeting was intended and designed as a new and important confidence building block on the way to successfully progressing bilateral discussions and negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority - after the last fourteen years of negotiations had got the parties nowhere.

Those negotiations had failed because of the uncompromising stance adopted by Abbas and his predecessor Arafat on two issues of substance demanding that Israel :
(i) withdraw to the pre-June 1967 armistice lines and
(ii) permit millions of Arabs to go and live in Israel.

Abbas now claims that these issues can be resolved within six months of President Bush’s meeting if Abbas’ agenda is adopted - which indicates a total flight from reality. His stance on these issues mirrors the policy of the Arab leadership for the last 40 years. To believe these issues can now be successfully negotiated in six months is the height of absurdity.

The Palestinian Arabs have become victims of their own rhetoric.

It now needs an exceptionally strong leader to take them down a different path and to disavow these fanciful notions - especially when the current Palestinian Arab leadership is so divided and President Bush has made it clear that Israel could not be reasonably expected to meet these demands.

President Bush correctly assessed that Abbas is pathetically weak at the present time and cannot make any concessions on these issues - let alone carry them through -in the face of strident Hamas opposition.

President Bush saw this international meeting as a launching pad to firmly install Abbas in the driving seat. Abbas would steadily assert his credibility and influence with his constituency by firstly rebuilding a totally dysfunctional society with the aid of international financial backing and secondly by receiving diplomatic support to encourage him to change his current intransigent stance on these core issues.

However President Bush’s attempt to chart this path of hope for the future is rapidly descending into high farce. The Arabs don’t want to play ball - Arab intransigence on these core issues still rules the roost.

The Arabs will only have themselves to blame if President Bush washes his hands of the conflict and lets the cards fall where they will.

Will the Arabs blow an opportunity yet again to replace misery and suffering with hope for a better life and brighter future for everyone in the Middle East?

Their current behaviour can only alienate and offend the United States and push it closer towards Israel - its only truly reliable ally in the Middle East.

The two state vision so earnestly supported by a United States President will probably not present itself again.

It’s a crucial make or break time for the two State solution.

Egg on the face is not appreciated by anyone - especially the President of the United States.

President Bush Must Resist Threatened Arab Boycott

[Published September 2007]

President Bush's planned meeting on the Middle East in November has been dealt a severe body blow as the Palestinians and Saudi Arabians threaten to boycott the meeting if their agenda demands are not met.

A senior advisor to Palestinian Authority and PLO Chairman Mahmoud Abbas is reported in Israelinsider on 17 September as stating:

"We can live without the summit, but if it does take place and fail by producing nothing more than a joint statement, then it could prove to be a danger for the whole region. We must not attend such a summit. We're not demanding the resolution of the entire problem by then, but we are demanding a significant breakthrough from the meeting."

Saudi Minister of Foreign Affairs Prince Saud Al Faisal has echoed these demands:

"If this conference will not discuss serious topics aimed to resolve the conflict, put Arab initiative as a key objective, set an agenda that details issues as required and oblige Israel to withdraw from the occupied territories, this conference will not have any objective and will turn into protracted negotiations."

These peremptory demands represent an attempt by the Arabs to try and set the agenda for the meeting that go way beyond what the President initially announced.

President Bush clearly enunciated the intended scope of the meeting on 16 July when he declared:

" The world can do more to build the conditions for peace. So I will call together an international meeting this fall of representatives from nations that support a two-state solution, reject violence, recognize Israel's right to exist and commit to all previous agreements between the parties. The key participants in this meeting will be the Israelis, the Palestinians, and their neighbours in the region. Secretary Rice will chair the meeting. She and her counterparts will review the progress that has been made towards building Palestinian institutions. They will look for innovative and effective ways to support further reform. And they will provide diplomatic support for the parties in their bilateral discussions and negotiations, so that we can move forward on a successful path to the Palestinian State."

On 17 July President Bush's spokesman Tony Snow was asked the following question:

" What significance can we read into the fact [that] you're now saying it's a meeting in the Mideast. Yesterday, when you first started teasing this out, you said its significant, a conference; but now it's a meeting. What's - why are we back peddling here?"

Mr Snow replied:

"Well, no, I think what has happened is it was being spun up as a major peace conference where people are going to be talking about final status issues and that is not the case. And the President made that pretty clear. You can call it what you want. Call it a confab. You guys have thesauruses and you also have extensive vocabularies [laughter] but the fact is that it will be a gathering where people really do try and get down to nuts and bolts issues of helping build that institutional capability so that the Palestinian government will be in a position to move on to the next phases."

President Bush needs to tell the Palestinians and Saudis where to get off.

He must make it absolutely clear to them in no uncertain terms that the agenda will deal precisely with the three issues he enumerated in his 16 July statement:

1. Reviewing the progress that has been made towards building Palestinian institutions.

2. Innovative and effective ways to support further reform.

3. To receive a report on bilateral discussions and negotiations and to provide diplomatic support for the parties in those discussions and negotiations.

If he fails to show leadership on this issue and nip the proposed Arab boycott of his meeting in the bud, he will demonstrate that he is not the master of his own affairs and is merely a lame duck in the hands of others.

The Arabs are testing the President. He needs to immediately reject their attempts to wriggle out of the upcoming meeting.

Set the above agenda and let those who are truly interested in exploring the President's ultimate vision of another State between Jordan and Israel attend the meeting so that it will proceed in accordance with the initiative he has proposed.

If the Arabs fail to show, perhaps the President will realise his vision is not being taken seriously by them.

"Show up or shut up" might well be the message President Bush sends to everyone he invites to the meeting.

At least he will then know who is genuinely prepared to travel down the road with him to try and resolve a conflict that has now lasted for 125 years and has proved an insurmountable stumbling block for many of the Presidents before him.

Perhaps he might then well conclude that he should turn his attention to other pressing world issues where his efforts to bring a just and lasting peace will be truly appreciated.

Palestine, Fantasy and Tales from the Arabian Nights

[Published August 2007]

President Bush's planned Middle East peace summit is rapidly being transformed into an event that will rival the Tales from the Arabian Nights .

It seems no one is listening to what the Arabs are saying - which is nothing new.

However you would think that after sixty years of drum beating by the likes of Arafat, Abbas , Haniyeh ,Assad Senior and Junior and the Arab League the message might have started getting through to opinion makers and influence peddlers in the West that the Arabs ( apart from Egypt and Jordan) are really not interested in a peace deal with Israel - that the demands they are making are the exact antithesis of a desire to peacefully end a conflict that has existed between the Arabs and the Jews for the last 125 years.

A flurry of meetings being presently undertaken by Israel's Prime Minister Ehud Olmert with Palestinian Authority President and PLO Executive Chairman Mahmoud Abbas have led to much speculation in the media of a peace deal being done that will be announced to an expectant world at President Bush's summit in the fall.

Michael Williams the United Nations Special Co-Ordinator for the Middle East Peace Process ( as fancy a title you could ever be given) is apparently in raptures at what has been taking place at these talks in Jerusalem, Jericho, Ramallah and even in Mr Olmert's own home. He told the United Nations Security Council yesterday:

"There is a hope now which has been absent for almost seven years."

Seven years? What about the Quartet's Road Map announced in a blaze of pomp and circumstance in 2003? Is the United Nations spokesman telling us there was indeed never any hope of success when this plan was announced and to which the United Nations was a sponsoring signatory? If so why did the Quartet try to convince everyone it offered the only hope for peace?

It gets even worse for Mr Williams as he gushed:

"Both sides have reported substantive discussions and exchanges of ideas on permanent status issues , as well as confidence- building steps. There appears to be a welcome common desire to reach an agreement or understanding that could be presented to November's international meeting."

Not to be outdone, Riyad Mansour the Palestinian UN observer told the Security Council:

"There is at this time a significant opportunity before us to end the Israeli occupation and towards the attainment of the two state solution"

Mr Williams said:

"with 10-12 weeks to play for, and with the very strong basis that they have now, I'm convinced that they can make real movement in that regard"

So much for the fantasy. It is a pipe dream totally divorced from reality.

What has actually occurred at these "substantive discussions" can best be gleaned from the comments of Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian Authority negotiator who on the very same day said:

"Today's meeting was good and thorough, but until now we haven't discussed any details related to the fundamental issues"

More tellingly Mr Erekat had this to say:

"The Palestinian leadership wants peace, but not at any price. The peace we are seeking must be based on all the UN resolutions pertaining to the Israeli-Arab conflict, the Arab peace plan of 2002, the road map and the US President George W. Bush's vision for two states. Together, all these plans and resolutions will lead to an end of the Israeli occupation of all the territories that were occupied in 1967."

In other words Mr Erekat was repeating the identical formula that has been repeated ad nauseam since 1967 - the return of every square meter of territory captured by Israel in the Six Day War including the Golan Heights and East Jerusalem - a formula which has not and can never be accepted by Israel.

Despite Israel releasing hundreds of terrorists, granting amnesties from arrest to scores of other known terrorists, transferring tax revenue running into hundreds of millions of dollars and supplying additional weapons to the Palestinian Authority, Saeb Erekat continues to hum the same song that can only lead to President Bush's upcoming talkfest leading nowhere.

The amazing thing is that the Western leaders still rely on the optimistic assessments of people like Mr Williams, when they only have to read what Arab spokesman are actually saying to understand that the idea of creating a 23 rd Arab State in 5% of historic Palestine is a tale straight out of the Arabian Nights.

Palestine, Israel and Condoleezza - The Crowd Pleaser

[Published August 2007]

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is at it again talking up the prospects of ending the 140 years old Arab-Jewish conflict by the adoption of a two state solution involving the creation of an Arab state between Jordan and Israel - the 23rd Arab State in the world should it ever eventuate.

This crowd pleasing prediction of peace has been made by Ms Rice despite four fruitless years of intense international diplomacy to achieve just that solution by America, Russia, the United Nations and the European Union - the Quartet - under their meticulously detailed and crafted Roadmap first published in 2003.

The United Nations News Service heralded the Roadmap at the time as a:

"performance-based and goal-driven roadmap, with clear phases, timelines, target dates, and benchmarks aiming at progress through reciprocal steps by the two parties in the political, security, economic, humanitarian, and institution-building fields, under the auspices of the Quartet. The destination is a final and comprehensive settlement of the Israel-Palestinian conflict by 2005, as presented in President Bush’s speech of 24 June, and welcomed by the EU, Russia and the UN in the 16 July and 17 September Quartet Ministerial statements.”

Not one of these goals has been remotely achieved - an abysmal failure by anyone’s standards -especially given the amount of political, financial and diplomatic clout vested in the Quartet"

Yet speaking at a joint media conference on 2 August with Mahmoud Abbas - the Palestinian Authority (PA) President and Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) Executive Chairman - Ms Rice was decidedly upbeat when she said:

“I want to note that we will have a discussion about the political discussions that you are having on a bilateral basis with [Israel’s] Prime Minister Olmert. The Prime Minister said to me that he looks forward to continued discussions with you and that he is ready to discuss the fundamental issues that will lead to negotiations soon for the creation of a Palestinian state. And I know that that is your desire too, and the United States wants to support that bilateral track.”

When asked by an inquiring reporter as to what those “fundamental issues” might be, Ms Rice gave this remarkable reply:

“ I believe that the word “fundamental” speaks for itself. And the desire to move toward a two- state solution seems to me to be there on both sides, and there are a lot of issues that are going to have to be discussed in order to get to a two-state solution.”

Sorry Ms Rice - every conceivable “fundamental issue” there is - and that you seem even too frightened to specifically identify - was discussed in detail in 2000 at Camp David and Taba in negotiations between President Bill Clinton, then PA and PLO leader Yasser Arafat and Israel’s then Prime Minister Ehud Barak.

Those negotiations led to the rejection of the two state solution offered by Israel in 90% of the West Bank and Gaza and effectively ended any prospect of the two state solution ever becoming a reality unless there was a total revolution in the thinking of the PA and the PLO.

One of the fundamental issues on which those negotiations foundered was the failure of Mr Arafat to recognise any political rights of the Jews to sovereignty in any part of the West Bank and Gaza - a policy that had been maintained by the PLO without change since 1964, by the PA since its formation in 1994 and by Mr Abbas as head of both organisations to this very day.

Those political rights were recognised by France and Great Britain in 1920, formalised by unanimous vote of all 51 members of the League of Nations in 1922, endorsed by a joint resolution of both Houses of the Congress of the United States in the same year, and preserved by the United Nations Charter in 1945.

The Quartet’s failure to insist on these international agreements being recognised and accepted by the Palestinian Authority and the Palestine Liberation Organisation remains one of the principal causes for the Quartet’s Roadmap collapsing into the total chaos it is today.

Statements such as Ms Rice’s are just diplomatic doublespeak, empty grandstanding and devoid of reality. They only serve to hold those making them open to ridicule and loss of credibility as the objective they so earnestly desire - the Quartet’s two state solution - continues to elude them.

It is surely time for Ms Rice to put the following questions to Mr Abbas to determine whether he is really sincere in his desire for a two state solution.

1. Does the Palestinian Authority accept and recognise the legality of

(i) Article 6 of the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine giving the Jews the right to closely settle State lands and waste lands not required for public purposes in the West Bank?

(ii) Article 80 of the United Nations Charter which preserves the above right?

(iii) Security Council Resolution 242 - which does not require Israel to withdraw from all the territories occupied in the Six Day War and recognises Israel’s right to live in peace within secure and recognised boundaries?

2. Does the Palestine Liberation Organisation and the Palestinian Authority recognise the existence of the State of Israel and have they abandoned violence and armed struggle against Israel?

3. If the answer to 2 is “yes” - when will Mr Abbas call a meeting of the Palestinian National Council to revoke articles 2, 3, 6-10, 13-23 and 30 of the PLO Charter- all of which are in direct conflict with the principles laid out in question 2.

If Ms Rice can get a positive response from Mr Abbas to these crucial questions, she might well be able to make a meaningful statement on the future of the Quartet’s two state solution.

If she is too embarrassed to put these questions to Mr Abbas or is too afraid to hear the answers, then maybe she can get Mr Olmert to ask them during his “political discussions” with Mr Abbas.

If neither wants to take the plunge then maybe someone in the press corps might be emboldened or even induced to put these questions to Mr Abbas at one of his next media conferences. The answers will certainly create front page headlines no matter what response is evoked.

Until these questions are answered one thing is crystal clear - any hope of the Quartet’s two state solution ever eventuating is doomed to failure.

President Bush Presses The Palestine Panic Button

[PublishedJuly 2007]

President George Bush is having a panic attack as his five year old vision of implanting an Arab state between Israel and Jordan in 6% of historic Palestine - the Bush Dream - has turned into a nightmare.

The President has been exposed as totally powerless and lacking in influence to resolve what seemed to him to be so readily achievable in 2002.

The Bush Dream has yet to get off the ground in the slightest detail and still remains only a distant mirage on the political horizon despite intense diplomacy over the last four years by America, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations - the Quartet - to transform it into a reality.

A desperate President Bush has now fallen back on three old chestnuts - an international conference, providing lots of weapons and throwing $190 million at the problem - in a last ditch effort to salvage something from the wreckage of his Middle East policy that is in tatters and utter disarray

The recipient of this largesse is Palestinian Authority President and PLO Chairman Mahmoud Abbas who has been unceremoniously and ignominiously removed from control of Gaza and its 1.5 million inhabitants and who has no power to make any agreement with Israel that can possibly bind the Arab residents of the West Bank and Gaza.

President Bush is simply wasting his time and needlessly squandering his country's resources in thinking that Mr Abbas can ever deliver on the Bush Dream for the following further reasons:

1. No meaningful negotiations can even begin until the repeal of those provisions of the Palestine Liberation Organisation Covenant which

(a) call for the State of Israel to be eliminated by armed military struggle and

(b) deny the legality of existing international agreements in relation to the former territory of Palestine - including the Mandate for Palestine, article 80 of the United Nations Charter and Security Council Resolution 242.

These provisions in the PLO Covenant are the very antithesis of the Bush Dream.

Creating a climate conducive to a peaceful resolution of the conflict can only be achieved by first erasing these offensive provisions.

President Bush has erred badly in not conditioning his further diplomatic and financial support on these provisions being immediately repealed.

2. President Bush's latest statement makes it clear that any negotiations "must lead to a territorial settlement with mutually agreed borders reflecting previous lines and current realities, and mutually agreed adjustments."

However Mr Abbas is unwilling to concede one square metre of the West Bank to Israel and requires Israel to withdraw to the 1949 armistice lines -a sure fire recipe for sinking any negotiations.

How can the Bush Dream ever eventuate given this totally uncompromising stance by Mr Abbas?

Furthermore "the current realities" are that

(a) Mr Abbas is demanding that 450000 Jews be uprooted from their existing homes for the Bush Dream to come to fruition.

(b) Mr Bush has already signalled this is not acceptable in a letter dated 14 April 2004 to former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon declaring:.

"In light of new realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli populations centers, it is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949, and all previous efforts to negotiate a two-state solution have reached the same conclusion. It is realistic to expect that any final status agreement will only be achieved on the basis of mutually agreed changes that reflect these realities. "

How then can President Bush contemplate the successful conclusion of a final status agreement to which Mr Abbas is a party given his intransigent stance on these basic issues?

3. Remarkably Mr. Bush's latest statement makes no mention of a very sensitive issue - the demand by Mr Abbas that millions of Arabs be allowed to go and live in Israel. Mr Abbas has never indicated the slightest interest in modifying this demand - which is totally unacceptable to Israel.

However President Bush's letter to Mr Sharon makes America's position very clear:

" It seems clear that an agreed, just, fair and realistic framework for a solution to the Palestinian refugee issue as part of any final status agreement will need to be found through the establishment of a Palestinian state, and the settling of Palestinian refugees there, rather than in Israel."

This is a deal breaker on its own. No wonder President Bush seeks to gloss it over. His reticence indicates an unwillingness by him to come to grips with recognising that further negotiations with Mr Abbas are doomed before they begin.

The Bush Dream - as well intentioned and heartfelt as it was when it was first proposed in 2002 - has failed and has now joined many other similar proposals that have fallen by the wayside over the last 70 years.

Prolonging the agony and raising false expectations can only be the end result of this latest effort to resuscitate a process that has realistically never had a chance of succeeding since it was first announced.

The adage - "You can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink" - succinctly describes President Bush's failure to get the Arabs to genuinely negotiate with Israel in resolving the Arab-Jewish conflict. He joins many other famous statesmen and diplomats whose efforts went unrewarded for the same reason.

Better he wakes up to the reality now than suffer the indignity of further rebuffs.

Humility is far preferable to humiliation - and there is plenty of that in store for President Bush if he continues down the road to nowhere.

Palestine - The New Myth About Jordan

[Published May 2007]

Jordan’s Prime Minister, Marouf al- Bakhit, has now added one new myth to the countless many concerning Palestine that have been invented by Arab propagandists.

Speaking at a recent seminar marking the 61st anniversary of Jordan’s independence, the Prime Minister asserted that everyone should realise that:

"this small country [Jordan] was not accidentally born nor was the outcome of deals,conferences or conspiracies.”

Jordan’s history is well documented and totally contradicts the Prime Minister‘s amazing assertion.

It was accidentally born in 1921 - as the emirate of Transjordan. It then comprised 77% of the area designated by Britain and France as “Palestine” after the First World War - the land in which the Jewish National Home was intended to be reconstituted almost 2000 years after the Jews had lost their biblical and ancestral homeland to foreign invaders and occupiers.

This noble plan was suddenly “postponed or withheld” in relation to Transjordan, when Britain changed tack and proceeded to transform Transjordan into an “Arab province or adjunct of Palestine”, as Winston Churchill described it at the time. However it still remained part of Palestine until independence was granted by Britain in 1946 but the Jews were prohibited from settling there.

What was postponed or withheld became permanent after 1946.

The Jews were then left to reconstitute their homeland in just 23% of the area originally allotted to them - a miniscule 28000 square kilometres. The Arabs had ended up with the other 92000 square kilometres of Palestine as an exclusively Arab State but this did not and never has satisfied the Arabs. Some wanted and still demand a greater share and others want the lot.

Jordan was indeed the outcome of deals, conferences and conspiracies - a pay off by the British, following the Cairo Conference, to Emir Abdullah, second son of Sharif Hussein of Mecca - to stop Abdullah and his armed band of followers transiting through Transjordan on their way to Damascus to help his brother Feisal in a struggle against the French who had taken control of Syria in the break up of the Ottoman Empire.

Former US President Jimmy Carter best summed up Jordan’s history in Time on 11 October 1982 when he said:

“As a nation, it is a contrivance, arbitrarily devised by a few strokes of the pen.”

One could equally apply Carter’s statement to Syria (independent only since 1946), Iraq (1932), Saudi Arabia (1932) and Lebanon (1943) - all nations created from the vast tracts of the Ottoman Empire allocated to the Arabs by the British and the French simultaneously with the allocation of Palestine to the Jews at the end of World War 1.

Deals, conferences and conspiracies certainly abounded at the time of Jordan’s birth and still exist today when it comes to Jordan and the role it has to play in resolving the Arab -Israel conflict.

The Jordanian Prime Minister ’s statement appears to be trying to distance Jordan from the current woes of the West Bank and Gaza - just 5% of former Palestine and 15 times smaller than the large chunk of former Palestine that Jordan now occupies.

Denying Jordan’s Palestinian parentage and lineage draws a line in the sand. It sends a message to both Hamas and Fatah to not be tempted to try attacking and wresting control of Jordan from its current rulers, as the idea of a separate State in the West Bank and Gaza now slowly fades into the sunset of history.

King Abdullah of Jordan is well aware of this nightmare scenario.

Yasser Arafat tried to do it in 1970 to Abdullah’s father King Hussein from inside Jordan and failed dismally leaving thousands dead in the process.

Now Jordan could face such a threat externally if the chaos, lawlessness, murder and mayhem occurring in Gaza spreads to the West Bank as Messrs Haniyeh and Abbas find themselves engaging in an undeclared war with Israel that they cannot possibly win.

Firing Kassam rockets into Jordan from the West Bank and making terrorist incursions into Jordan could well mirror what is happening in Israel if steps are not taken to prevent jihadist groups taking root in the West Bank.

Preserving the territorial integrity of Jordan and the safety and welfare of its citizens, all of whom are Arabs of Palestinian descent from either eastern or western Palestine, has been King Abdullah’s and his family’s sacred duty since that day back in 1921 when his great-grandfather was induced to remain in Transjordan under British patronage and protection.

Because of their efforts Jordan has been preserved as an exclusively Arab state in 77% of historic Palestine.

61 years of Arab rejectionism since Jordan’s independence in 1946 wasted in attempting to conquer all or part of the remaining 23% have brought the Arab population nothing but misery and suffering.

King Abdullah understands that both Israel and Jordan now have common enemies that are seeking their downfall.

He told Acting Israeli President Dalia Itzik just that only recently.

King Abdullah now appears to be setting the stage for a return to the Arab occupied areas of the West Bank, which Jordan last occupied from 1948 to 1967, as a necessary counter to stop any threat to his country and the relative peace and tranquillity it has enjoyed since it signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1994.

Jordan’s Prime Minister does not have to re-write history to justify the continuing rule of Jordan under its current leadership and the role it must play - as the successor state in 77% of historic Palestine - in resolving who will ultimately be allocated sovereignty in the West Bank.

Jordan and Israel - Singing the same song?

[Published 4 May 2007]

Jordan and Israel have reportedly embarked on secret negotiations to end the impasse in the West Bank and Gaza according to Matthew Guttman of ABC News (3 May 2007).

If true, such negotiations might successfully conclude 17 years of failed diplomacy that has included;

(i) the Oslo fiasco conceived by Shimon Peres and Yossi Beilin and reluctantly adopted by Yitzchak Rabin,
(ii) Ehud Barak’s unprecedented concessions, supported by US President Bill Clinton but rejected by Yasser Arafat ,
(iii) Ariel Sharon’s evacuation of 8000 Jews from Gaza and parts of the West Bank,
(iv) Ehud Olmert’s stillborn plan to remove another 70000 Jews out of the West Bank at a cost of US$10 billion,
(v) the Saudi Peace Plan designed to remove all 400000 Jews from the West Bank and allow millions of Arabs to live in Israel,
(vi) The Geneva Peace Initiative and
(vii) US President George Bush’s Road Map promoting the creation of a second Arab State within the boundaries of former Palestine - backed by the United Nations, the European Union and Russia dubbed the Quartet

All of these initiatives have not brought peace and now have no value other than learning tools to instruct future negotiators on how not to commence or handle negotiations in the Middle East.

Jordan was the common denominator excluded from all of these failed processes. It was left out at its own insistence but the Quartet and Israeli negotiators must share the blame for allowing this to occur - virtually by default - and for the pathetic results that inevitably followed.

Any negotiations without Jordan were doomed to failure from the outset.

Jordan, after all, is the Arab State created, built on and occupying 77% of Palestine whose exclusively Arab population is no different in ethnicity, religion, language or cultural beliefs to the Arabs living in the West Bank, Gaza and Israel.

Hundreds of thousands are related by familial and clan ties stretching across the Jordan River which runs between Jordan and the West Bank. All live within an easy one to two hours drive of each other.

Jordan is the country that occupied the West Bank from 1948-1967. It only ceded its claims to sovereignty in the West Bank in 1988 after being pressured by the Arab League and the Palestine Liberation Organisation to do so.

Jordan annexed the West Bank in 1950 which was recognised by Britain and Pakistan at that time.

Jordan’s rulers, not the PLO, have successfully preserved almost four fifths of Palestine as an exclusively Arab State. Not one Jew lives there today and the death penalty awaits any one found selling land to Jews. This is no mean feat given that Jordan was originally designated by the League of Nations in 1922 to be part of the territory in which the national home for the Jews was to be reconstituted under the Mandate for Palestine granted to Great Britain.

Contrast this to the remaining 23% of Palestine where 17% - today called Israel - has a population that is 80% Jewish and 20% Arab whilst the remaining 6% - today called the West Bank - has a population that is 80% Arab and 20% Jewish .

Yet the fiction has been created that the Arabs of Palestine lack a State and have been stripped of any rights to self determination in Palestine.

The fact is that Jordan and Israel are the successor sovereign States in former Palestine together exercising sovereignty in 94% of Palestine whilst sovereignty in the remaining 6% still remains unresolved and unallocated after 59 years.

Commonsense rejects the idea of creating a second Arab or, for that matter, a second Jewish State in this remaining 6% of Palestine - an area about the size of Delaware or just two thirds of Cyprus.

The obvious solution is to redraw the boundary between Jordan and Israel so that the heavily populated Jewish areas of the West Bank become part of Israel and the heavily populated Arab areas of the West Bank (together possibly with Gaza) become part of Jordan.

This is certainly attainable as Jordan and Israel are parties to a peace treaty signed in 1994, which they both have observed in good faith, with mutual dignity and respect despite some strains in their relationship over the years.

Jordan and Israel could be confidently expected to realign the border to ensure that very few Jews or Arabs would be faced with deciding whether to move from their existing residences or stay put as part of a minority population. Compensation would be paid if they decided to move and become part of the majority population on the other side of the new border.

Guidelines to deal with controversial issues such as water, refugees and Jerusalem are already set out in the Jordan - Israel Peace Treaty.

Unceasing and unsuccessful efforts to sign a peace treaty between Israel and the Palestinian Authority have led nowhere in the last 17 years and threaten to continue to do so ad infinitum whilst the fiction writers continue to believe that a new State between Jordan and Israel is the answer to the conflict between Jews and Arabs.

How many more Jews and Arabs need to be killed and maimed in the pursuit of a solution that has not got even the slightest chance of success?

Perhaps the following words from American composer Cole Porter’s song - “I’ve got you under my skin” - should resonate in the ears of Jordanian and Israeli negotiators as their secret talks proceed :

“Don’t you know you fool, you never can win
Use your mentality, wake up to reality”

That reality is that two peoples, the Jews and the Arabs, need two States, not three States, in Palestine.

At last Jordan and Israel may finally be singing the same song. Everyone interested in ending the 130 years conflict between the Jews and Arabs - including the Quartet -should join in.

Quartet Crumbles, Arab League Rumbles, Israel Fumbles

[Published 15-03-2007]

America, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations - the Quartet - have now apparently decided that their shared vision of creating a second Arab State in former Palestine -in addition to Jordan - is unrealistic and unattainable.

It has taken the Quartet four years of fruitless endeavour to finally understand that this vision has turned into a nightmare, that its' negotiating skills have been found wanting, totally inept and ineffective, and that its' inability to exercise any persuasive leadership or control over the negotiations has made it the laughing stock of the Arab world.

Competent negotiators know that you don't start negotiations unless you can reasonably be assured of a successful outcome. The Quartet has stumbled badly and its' reputation has been shot to pieces.

You would think that in these circumstances the Quartet would understand the need to go back to the drawing board and formulate a new policy that did not have the creation of another Arab State in former Palestine as its' centrepiece.

Instead the Quartet has decided to create a symphony orchestra by joining with the 22 members of the Arab League in pursuing the League's outdated and totally flawed 2002 Peace Initiative - which calls for precisely the same second Arab State to be created in former Palestine.

By what stretch of the imagination does the Quartet believe the Arab Plan will succeed when its' own plan has so spectacularly failed to be implemented in even the smallest detail?

Does the Arab plan have any more desirable features than the Quartet's Plan to enable this new Arab state - the 23rd in the world - to be created?

Definitely not for the following reasons:

(i) It demands the right of return to Israel of all Arabs (and their descendants) who have not lived there for the last 60 years , which even our intrepid Quartet found to be totally unrealistic.

The Quartet's view on this outrageous proposal is set out in the letter George Bush gave to Israel's then Prime Minister Ariel Sharon at the White House on 14 April 2004 (the Bush Pledge) which explicitly stated:

"It seems clear that an agreed, just, fair and realistic framework for a solution to the Palestinian refugee issue as part of any final status agreement will need to be found through the establishment of a Palestinian state, and the settling of Palestinian refugees there, rather than in Israel."

(ii) It demands the right of expulsion of 400000 Jews living in the West Bank for the last 40 years - ethnic cleansing at its' cruellest and most primeval level , a gross abuse of international humanitarian law and as racist as you can get.

The Bush Pledge said of this pernicious proposal :

"In light of new realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli populations centers, it is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949, and all previous efforts to negotiate a two-state solution have reached the same conclusion. It is realistic to expect that any final status agreement will only be achieved on the basis of mutually agreed changes that reflect these realities."

(iii) It demands the return of every single inch of the West Bank to Arab rule. No ifs and buts- every single inch.

This makes a mockery of United Nations Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338 which made it clear to the Arabs that more than a few inches of the West Bank would remain in Israel's hands.

Again the Bush Pledge was firm and uncompromising stating:

"As part of a final peace settlement, Israel must have secure and recognized borders, which should emerge from negotiations between the parties in accordance with UNSC Resolutions 242 and 338."

It is critical to understand that the Arab League Plan is not something that is open to bargaining of the kind one usually indulges in on a visit to an Arab bazaar where the end result usually involves the shopkeeper running down the street after the departing customer, frantically prepared at that stage to do any deal he can conclude.

The Arab leadership has made it crystal clear that its' plan is an "all or nothing proposal".

Israel and the Quartet must somehow think otherwise as both suddenly find something of value in an overture that has been ignored for the last five years.

What could possibly lead them to that conclusion is the real mystery.

What is also crystal clear is that the symphony orchestra will not play a note of this score and that it will be consigned to the dustbin of history like the many plans that have preceded it. Anyone buying tickets to this performance will be bitterly disappointed .

The creation of a second Arab State in former Palestine on the terms demanded by the Arab League is dead in the water.

There is only one piece left to be performed- the division of the West Bank between Jordan and Israel.

Who in the orchestra will have the guts to grab the baton, get on the podium and bring this program to a successful finale?

Uprooting Jews Violates International Treaties

[Published June 2005]


Plans by the Israeli Government to forcibly remove Jews from their homes in the West Bank and Gaza breach the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights 1966 [Covenant] as well as the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child 1989 [Convention], to both of which Israel is a signatory.

Article 17 of the Covenant provides that:

1. No one shall be subjected to arbitrary or unlawful interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence nor to unlawful attacks on his honour and reputation.

2. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.

Article 16 of the Convention expressly protects children and is a mirror image of Article 17.

The International Court of Justice determined last year that both the Covenant and the Convention are applicable in the West Bank and Gaza, which Israel had disputed.

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan however also advised the International Court that Israel recognises that the Convention is intended to protect its citizens from their own Government in times of peace.

Israel's High Court of Justice acknowledged in its recent judgement on the disengagement law, that the forced evacuation of Israelis would undermine their human dignity.

The High Court nevertheless asserted that the disengagement law passed all constitutional tests because it "corresponds with the Zionist values of the State and is intended for a worthy purpose -- the political, national and security purposes on which the disengagement is based are designed to realize a vital and substantial need."

This viewpoint could not be successfully raised to negate article 17 since Article 4.1 of the Covenant states:

"In time of public emergency which threatens the life of the nation and the existence of which is officially proclaimed, the States Parties to the present Covenant may take measures derogating from their obligations under the present Covenant to the extent strictly required by the exigencies of the situation, provided that such measures are not inconsistent with their other obligations under international law and do not involve discrimination solely on the ground of race, colour, sex, language, religion or social origin."

Israel's forced removal of Jewish residents of Gaza and the West Bank obviously involves discrimination solely on the ground of race and/or religion and so could not be relied on by Israel to escape its international obligations under the Covenant or the Convention.

Jews living in the West Bank and Gaza are legally entitled to reside there pursuant to the provisions of the Mandate for Palestine and article 80 of the United Nations Charter in order to reconstitute the Jewish National Home in those areas as specifically stated in the Mandate document.

Many returned there after 1967 to reclaim land from which other Jews had been driven out in 1948 by six invading Arab armies.

Any attempt now to forcibly uproot Jews from their homes against their expressed will is therefore in breach of the inalienable rights conferred on them by the Covenant, the Convention, the Mandate and the United Nations Charter.

Choosing to stay will not be palatable to all 8000 Jews affected by the withdrawal of Israel's army and they will have the option of accepting the compensation packages that are being offered by the Israeli Government to those who voluntarily leave.

But one thing is certain -- the forced removal of Jews from the West Bank and Gaza is not permitted or authorised under international law and is in breach of international agreements in force since 1920 authorising Jews to live in those areas.

President Bush, President Putin, the European Union and the United Nations have publicly welcomed the forced uprooting, whilst Human Rights organisations are deafening in their silence toward such expulsions.

Would they all act differently if the Arabs residing in the West Bank and Gaza were subjected to such proposed action against their will?

Ariel Sharon needs to revise his thinking on this aspect of his proposed disengagement.

He should urgently seek the opinion of the High Court of Justice on this issue before embarking on a course of action that has the capacity to lead to the outbreak of civil insubordination and threatens to seriously undermine the ability of Israel to resist those who seek its' total annihilation.