Unscrambling Olmert's Omelet

[Published August 2008]

“No clever arrangement of bad eggs ever made a good omelet”

(CS Lewis).

This adage best sums up one possible outcome for Israel following the announcement of Ehud Olmert’s intended resignation as Israel’s Prime Minister at some unspecified date after his successor as head of the political party - Kadima - is named on September 17.

Mr Olmert’s uncertain resignation date could well be resolved with greater clarity if the raft of inquiries currently investigating his past conduct result in his indictment and forced stand down much earlier than he expects.

What appears to be planned following his replacement as Kadima’s leader is merely a change in the arrangement of the same faces that make up the present Government.

Israelis will thus be denied an early election that the current parlous situation demands be held in Israel’s national interest to determine who should next make the crucial decisions needed to meet the rapidly developing - and deteriorating - circumstances that threaten their very lives.

Kadima only has 29 seats in a Parliament of 120 members. It has managed to hold on to power by clobbering together a coalition of various other parties. This has allowed Kadima to conduct Israel’s foreign policy with disastrous results - leaving its coalition partners to claim a piece of the domestic action to advance their own narrow based and vested interests whilst threatening to quit the coalition if their demands are not met.

Fresh elections should have been called in the wake of the Olmert Government’s failure to successfully prosecute the war against Hezbollah in 2006 and to prevent the evacuation of an estimated one million Israelis from the north of Israel to the south to escape the thousands of shells and rockets indiscriminately rained down on their homes and businesses from Lebanon during that war.

Many other events since then have justified the need for the Government to seek the nation’s vote of confidence - the failure to halt thousands of rockets being fired into Israel from Gaza without any effective Israeli response, the failure to halt Hamas from rearming and smuggling weapons into Gaza through Egypt and the intrusion of Iran and Syria into the political equation and the policies needed to deal with each of these existential challenges.

The failure of the Olmert Government to achieve any breakthrough in negotiations on President Bush’s Road Map - despite optimistic and glowing reports of progress by Mr Olmert - requires the Israeli electorate to be given the opportunity to choose which future direction Israel should now take in attempting to resolve the competing territorial claims it has with its Arab neighbours.

Mr Olmert’s turn about on the progress of the Road Map from unbridled optimism in Paris just two weeks ago to subdued reality in Jerusalem this week illustrates the urgent need for there to be more than a changing of the deck chairs on the sinking ship.

In seeking to explain away the last two years of failed negotiations with the Palestinian Authority, Mr Olmert gave the electorate the following explanation when announcing his resignation:

“As prime minister, I bear ultimate responsibility for every decision. There are many excellent people in the country, and together with them I have championed far-reaching, daring and complex processes… Most of them are unknown to the majority of the public, but they are well- known to those who were part of the decision-making and operational process.”

The Prime Minister has no clothes - his far reaching, daring and complex processes have gone nowhere.

Keeping the public completely in the dark as to what they were and why they failed is not the way to gain public confidence nor to expect the voters to let this pathetic situation continue until possibly 2010 when the next election would normally be held.

The portents for fresh elections are however not good at the present time.

Already the two main candidates vying for leadership of Kadima - Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and Transport Minister Shaul Mofaz - have both called for a national unity Government to be formed.

Ms Livni is reported by the Jerusalem Post on 31 July as saying :

“We must leave the small considerations aside and create unity, both inwardly and outwardly,” adding that the main goal of the coalition members would be to “restore the public’s faith in Israeli politics.”

Her recipe for restoring that faith by forming a Government of national unity and not submitting herself and her colleagues for re-election is only a cynical exercise in promoting her own party’s political hold on power and will certainly result in a further erosion of the public’s faith in its politicians.

She attempted to justify her call for a national unity Government by asserting:

“I believe that the internal divisions we have become accustomed to and the idea that different parties have such extremely different ideologies and agendas is a thing of the past and is no longer the case. There is a common agenda that every party can put forward on political issues and also on dealing with the threats we face.”

This makes strange reading considering she and her Kadima colleagues quit the Likud party to form Kadima because the policies adopted by Likud were not - and still are not - to their liking.

Ms Livni’s call has already been rejected by Likud leader Mr. Netanyahu who has declared:

“Kadima is a party of failures,… We must let the public choose. Particularly at such a critical juncture we need to let the people decide who will lead them.”

A third contender for Mr Olmert’s position - Interior Minister Meir Sheetrit - has also called for early elections but his bid for leadership of Kadima presently has little support.

There is still time for Kadima to rethink its position, put the people of Israel before its own interests, accept the urgent necessity of dissolving Parliament and hold early elections.

Mr Olmert’s resignation offers the opportunity for fresh elections - and should be endorsed by all political parties as soon as possible.

Opportunities - like eggs - come one at a time. Missing this one will surely leave egg on the politicians’ faces and create a very dangerous strategic and negotiating void for Israel when it is least needed.

No Drama From Obama

[Published July 2008]

Barack Obama’s visit to Jordan and Israel this week turned out to be one very big yawn as he endorsed President Bush’s fundamentally flawed and totally failed plan - the so called “two state solution” - designed to create a new Arab State between Jordan and Israel - where none has ever existed before.

Hailed as the shining light for change on America’s political horizon Mr Obama showed himself to be completely bereft of any new ideas to end the territorial conflict between Jews and Arabs over this tiny piece of land the size of Delaware.

This was clearly evident as he told a press conference in Amman:

“I do believe that an ultimate resolution is going to involve two states standing side by side in peace and security, and that the Israelis and the Palestinians are going to both have to make compromises in order to arrive at that two-state solution.”

What Mr Obama ignores is the fact that 5 years of the most intense diplomatic pressure by America, the European Union, Russia and the United Nations - the Quartet - has failed to bring even the slightest hint of any breakthrough in realising the Bush solution that Mr Obama still so seriously espouses.

Mr Obama sought to explain away the failure to achieve this “ultimate resolution” by asserting to the assembled media:

“Now, one of the difficulties that we have right now is that in order to make those compromises you have to have strong support from your people, and the Israeli government right now is unsettled. You know, the Palestinians are divided between Fatah and Hamas. And so it’s difficult for either side to make the bold move that would bring about peace the way, for example, the peace between Israel and Egypt was brought about. Those leaders were in a much stronger position to initiate that kind of peace.”

This statement is a complete furphy for three major reasons:

1. Israel’s Government is not unsettled - unless you call threats to flee the coalition unsettling, which is a constant fact of life in all democracies. Whilst its Prime Minister is almost out on his knees, the democratically elected Government continues to maintain a parliamentary majority and the confidence of the Knesset to ensure that any compromises an Israeli Government makes will be honoured and enforced .

2. The objectives of Fatah and Hamas are identical - the elimination of the existence of Israel as the Jewish State - as both their constitutions frankly and openly declare. Hamas says this can only be achieved by armed struggle whilst Fatah thinks it can happen via the diplomatic route.

No matter which one of them the Palestinians choose - or even if they reconcile and reunite to form a government of national unity - how then can there ever be any bold move for peace whilst this joint mind set continues to persist and what is the point of any further negotiations with either of them until such racist ideology is first removed from their respective platforms?

3. The peace between Israel and Egypt concerned sovereign territory that belonged to Egypt prior to its loss to Israel in 1967. This then became a far easier conflict to resolve than the West Bank and Gaza - territory in which sovereignty has remained undetermined since 1920 but to which Israel claims superior title over any other claimants under the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine, article 80 of the United Nations Charter and Security Council resolutions 242 and 337.

Mr Obama cannot be that ignorant, naïve or poorly advised to be unaware of these basic contradictions to his statement to the media

He himself has given Hamas and Fatah notice of his stance on their policy to eliminate Israel telling a meeting of the American and Israel Public Affairs Committee just last month :

“[A]ny agreement with the Palestinian people must preserve Israel’s identity as a Jewish state.”

In doing so Mr Obama has given his wholehearted endorsement to a similar statement made by President Bush to Israel in 2004 - sounding the death knell then - and now - for President Bush’s vision ever coming to fruition.

This is the ultimate deal breaker that neither Hamas nor Fatah will ever be prepared to relinquish and which America has quite rightly said is totally abhorrent and must be rejected.

Mr Obama has now also affirmed to the Jerusalem Post in an interview this week that there will have to be some “give and take” in the West Bank - knowing full well that the Palestinian Authority has refused to give even one square metre for the last five years. He also made it clear in the same interview that Israel cannot be expected to return to the armistice lines that existed prior to the Six Day War in June 1967.

So why is Mr Obama still endorsing President Bush’s two state solution when he knows it can never eventuate?

Is this how he seeks to establish his leadership and foreign policy credentials - by continuing to engage in a diplomatic process begun by the incumbent American President that has been a total diplomatic disaster since it was first articulated?

Why would Mr Obama want to be associated with this clear policy failure by - and humiliation of - the world’s only superpower to bring about the division of a tiny piece of real estate between two competing parties to end the conflict between them?

In continuing to endorse Mr Bush’s failed vision, Mr Obama has made it clear that he is more interested in not rocking the American political boat by giving his opponents any sniff that he might contemplate a different direction in resolving the Arab-Israeli dispute.

In doing so he has aligned himself with a failed President - obviously deciding this is less of a political risk than formulating his own bold move for trying to achieve what so many past American Presidents have wanted to do - but also failed to achieve.

That might be smart politics - but it has merely confirmed that on this issue he lacks the sincerity and conviction to be the architect for change and to break the unbridgeable deadlock that has spelt doom for the current negotiations and will continue to plague them until they are finally disbanded.

Meanwhile the killing and carnage will continue followed by the usual condemnations and recriminations.

Mr Obama’s visit to the Middle East this week has shown he is just your ordinary politician after all.

Sarkozy Succumbs To Mediterranean Mismatch

[Published July 2008]

France’s President Nicolas Sarkozy has had to eat humble pie after his ground-breaking plan to establish the 43 member Mediterranean Union failed to reach an agreed final communiqué because of the opposition to its wording by the Palestinian Authority (PA) - the only non-state member present.

President Sarkozy’s efforts in bringing Israel and 9 members of the Arab League - including Syria - to this inaugural meeting promised to introduce a ray of light for Israeli-Arab co-operation and an end to regional turmoil.

Hopes were high that the parlous - indeed terminal - state of negotiations between Israel and the PA under the Roadmap proposed by America, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations - the Quartet - might miraculously be brought back to life.

Israel’s Prime Minister Mr Olmert had been remarkably upbeat in claiming - prior to the meeting - that his country had never been closer to a peace deal with the Palestinians.

The images of President Sarkozy, PA President Mahmoud Abbas and Mr Olmert smiling and enjoying a three way bear hug would have encouraged President Sarkozy into believing that he would be able to achieve the diplomatic breakthrough that had eluded the Quartet for the last 5 years.

French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner however was not taken in by Mr Olmert’s absurd assessment and had sounded a word of warning when he bluntly told European News (12 July):

“Being around the same table with people you have fought is the beginning of something, it is the wind of hope. I’m sorry to say that the talks between the Israelis and Palestinians are not part of this wind of hope”

Little did Mr Kouchner - or President Sarkozy - imagine that the fundamental disagreements between Israel and the PA would be used by the PA to undermine the grand design of President Sarkozy to bring the nations of the Mediterranean and the European Union together in a new spirit of co-operation and joint venture.

The unfriendly wind Mr Kouchner had felt was shortly to blow away any hopes of an agreed summit position when the PA objected to the wording of the summit declaration.

Why the PA thought it necessary to incur the wrath and displeasure of President Sarkozy by importing the Middle-East conflict into the formation of the Mediterranean Union was puzzling. Quibbling over a few words in an otherwise agreed document remained a mystery - until the PA tried to explain the significance - and insidiousness - of its objection.

PA Foreign Minister Riyad al-Maliki told reporters according to Xinhua news agency (July 15):

“The Israelis insisted on the inclusion of the words - “state for the Jewish people” - something we are categorically opposed to. It was out of the question for us to accept this wording. We wanted to ensure the final statement was very clear on this point".

The Israeli delegation had a different take on what had happened telling Xinhua that Israel was in “ agreement with everything that has been adopted in the declaration because it was done by consensus”

Mr Kouchner was more forthcoming on what had actually occurred to spoil President Sarkozy’s party.

He told Xinhua that the standstill had been caused by the use of the expressions “nation state, national state, and democratic state”. This had resulted in “ a last minute deadlock between the Israelis and the Palestinians which meant that the final text had to undergo some little changes. The use of the expression “national state” implies difficulties in ensuring the return of refugees to the Jewish State or non-Jewish, Palestinian State.”

How the PA could ever hope to succeed in getting the Mediterranean Union members to unanimously agree to wording in the summit declaration that would support the entry of millions of Arabs into Israel and deny the Jewish people its own State is unbelievable.

These two intransigent demands of the PA have long been the sticking points in ensuring that President Bush’s vision - the creation of a 23rd Arab state between Israel and Jordan - will remain an impossible dream incapable of fulfilment. Now they had been brought to France by the PA to embarrass and undermine President Sarkozy’s vision - the establishment of the Mediterranean Union.

The supine French reaction to these untenable and badly mistimed demands was entirely predictable.

President Sarkozy could have told the PA to take a cold shower or to re-apply for membership of the Mediterranean Union when it had received international recognition as the governing authority of a sovereign and democratic state. Alternatively he could have suggested the PA be given observer status at the Mediterranean Union until statehood was achieved.

Mindful that any such action would have provoked an Arab walkout, President Sarkozy bit his tongue and chose the diplomatic path - sending the hapless Mr Kouchner on an appeasement journey to ease the frustration President Sarkozy must have felt at this upstart non-state thwarting mighty France at the very moment of what was to be one of its greatest achievements.

Mr Kouchner was left to tell Xinhua (July 15) :
“At the last moment we failed , perhaps for half an hour, to advance due to one word”

That one word was “Jewish”.

The Arab campaign to delegitimise the Jewish State was once again exposed as it continued in earnest in Paris at the birthplace of the Mediterranean Union.

One Jewish State on this planet remains an anathema to most of the 22 Islamic Arab States as they continue resisting it and calling for its destruction wherever and whenever the opportunity arises.

Mr Kouchner is fooling no-one as he bends the French knee once again in deference to this racist alliance that has actively opposed the existence of the Jewish State in its ancient homeland since its establishment 60 years ago.

It will take more than half an hour and more than one word before these nations are disavowed of their evil intention.

.

The Pope, Palestine And Papal Politics

[Published July 2008]

Pope Benedict XVI’s appointment of Archbishop Fouad Twal as the new Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem to succeed recently retired Archbishop Michael Sabbah - after 21 years in that position – signals a significant change of course by the Vatican in its relationship with the Jewish State.

Archbishop Twal becomes the second Palestinian Arab to be appointed - after Archbishop Sabbah - as head of the Roman Catholic Church in Jerusalem.

However their Palestinian lineage and political heritage have taken markedly different routes.

Archbishop Sabbah was born in Western Palestine in Nazareth in 1933 - growing up and spending his entire life in that part of Palestine that witnessed the political struggle by the Jews that had begun in 1917 to reconstitute the Jewish National Home in Palestine - and culminated in the birth of Israel in 1948 in just 17% of Palestine.

Archbishop Twal was born in Eastern Palestine in Madaba in 1940 - growing up in that part of Palestine in which Jewish rights to settle or constitute their National Home were postponed or withheld - culminating in the Mandatory Power - Great Britain - granting independence in 77% of Palestine in 1946 to the totally Palestinian Arab population living there - today called Jordan.

Archbishop Twal’s appointment must be seen as an attempt by the Pope to heal the serious rift in relationships between Israel and the Vatican that had sunk to their lowest ebb ever by the end of 2007.

In November 2007 a former Holy See envoy to Jerusalem – Monsignor Pietro Sambri – complained that relations with Israel had been better before a historic agreement was signed between the Holy See and Israel in 1993 - recognising the State of Israel 45 years after its establishment. Monsignor Sambri listed a number of complaints – the failure to ease travel restrictions for Catholic clerics, threatened taxes on the Church and the status of expropriated Church property.

His complaints were mild in the face of what was to come when Archbishop Sabbah delivered this Christmas message on 19 December 2007 questioning Israel’s legitimacy to exist as the Jewish State:

“In recent times, there has been some talk about creating “religious” States in this land. But in this land, which is holy for three religions and for two peoples, religious States cannot be established because they would exclude or place in an inferior position the believers of the other religions…[Political leaders] must know that the holiness of this land does not consist in the exclusion of one or the other of the religions, but in the ability of each religion, with all of their difference, to welcome, respect, and love all who inhabit this land.”

The Archbishop was not directing his call to the Palestinian Authority’s Basic Law that declares:

“Islam is the official religion of Palestine”

and calls for 450000 Jews to be thrown out of the West Bank.

He was not sending his message to Jordan whose constitution declares that:

“Islam shall be the religion of the State”

and where Jews are not permitted to live.

The Archbishop was unabashedly espousing the right of return for millions of Palestinian Arabs - overwhelmingly Moslem - and their descendants into the Jewish State - Israel.

This uncompromising demand has been war cry of the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Arab League for the last 40 years and has wrecked any prospects by America, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations - the Quartet - to attempt to create a new Arab State between Israel and Jordan.

The Vatican was silent in face of the Archbishop’s partisan antagonism towards - and criticism of - Israel despite the Vatican’s supposed non-political stance as expressed in Article 11 (2) of the 1993 Agreement:
“The Holy See, while maintaining in every case the right to exercise its moral and spiritual teaching-office, deems it opportune to recall that owing to its own character, it is solemnly committed to remaining a stranger to all merely temporal conflicts, which principle applies specifically to disputed territories and unsettled borders.”

Archbisop Twal’s appointment serves notice that the Vatican is now ready to honour this agreement.

Mending bridges - not tearing them down - has been the hall mark of Archbishop Twal’s career as one of the Vatican’s top diplomatic envoys. It started in 1976 with his appointment as charge d’affaires in Honduras in Central America thence back to the Vatican between 1982-1985 where he was made responsible for 19 speaking African countries in the Secretariat of State. Egypt, Germany, Peru and Tunis were signposts on the roadmap toward his appointment in 2005 as Coadjutor Archbishop of Jerusalem.

Archbishop Twal told http://www.cutodia.org in an interview on 22 June that :

“If you want to touch Jews, Muslims, Christians, Jordanians, Palestinians, Cypriots, Europeans all together ..then you have to consider every comma”

In the same interview he said :

“Perhaps I will disappoint journalists in politics”.

Yet he is still alive to the need to involve Jordan in the peace process telling Vatican Radio on 21 June:

“The majority of our priests, nuns, schools families are in Jordan. We need a link to Jordan…,”

The Pope - who is visiting Australia this week for World Youth Day might not be aware that another Catholic with the name Benedict - Australia’s 16th Prime Minister Joseph Benedict Chifley - once said:

“You don’t try to make love to a woman by kicking her in the shins”

The Pope’s appointee in Jerusalem has signalled the universality of this message. Regular newspaper columns devoted to Patriarchal criticism of Israel will now become mere historical footnotes.

The last Pope to bear Pope Benedict’s name - Benedict XV - enthusiastically endorsed the Jews’ right to reconstitute their national home in what was then Palestine when he told Zionist leader Nahum Sokolov at an audience in 1917 :

“Nineteen hundred years ago Rome destroyed your homeland and when you seek to rebuild it, you seek a path which leads via Rome…Yes this is the will of Divine Providence, this is what the Almighty desires.”

This papal message is hopefully what will now permeate relations between Israel and the Vatican. It has been a long time coming but can only be seen as a positive development in a region where bad news is usually the norm.

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.

Palestinian Parentage Generates Jordanian Jitters

[Published June 2008]

Jordan’s King Abdullah was very edgy this week as he sought to terminate any discussion of the role Jordan will have to ultimately play in ending the standoff caused by the pending demise of President Bush’s Roadmap to create a new Arab state between Israel and Jordan.

Fired up by an unconfirmed report that Republican presumptive nominee John McCain intended to declare the Kingdom of Jordan as the Palestinian State, King Abdullah gave an interview to the Lebanese newspaper As -Safir in which he defiantly proclaimed:

“This country is here to stay. Jordan is Jordan and Palestine is Palestine”

Abdullah’s shorthand attempt to deny that the future of the West Bank has anything to do with Jordan flies in the face of the history, geography and demography of both Jordan and the West Bank and the strong ties that bind these two land masses and their Arab populations.

King Abdullah’s great grandfather - the late King Abdullah I - and also his own father - the late King Hussein - had said exactly the opposite to justify Jordan’s occupation of the West Bank.

King Abdullah I had emphasised the territorial connection between Jordan and the West Bank when addressing a meeting of the Arab League in Cairo on 12 April 1948:

“Palestine and Transjordan (now called Jordan - author) are one, for Palestine is the coastline and Transjordan the hinterland of the same country.”

King Hussein had expressed the familial connections between their respective Arab populations in the Jordanian National Assembly on 2 February 1972:

“There is no family on the East Bank of the River (Jordan) that does not have relatives on the West Bank - no family in the West that does not have branches in the East”

Marwan al Hamoud, member of the Jordanian National Consultative Council and former Minister of Agriculture told the Jordanian political journal Al Rai on 24 September 1980:

“Jordan is just not another Arab State with regard to Palestine, but rather, Jordan is Palestine and Palestine is Jordan in terms of territory, national identity, sufferings, hopes and aspirations, both day and night.”

King Abdullah’s attempt to re-write the history book this week was driven by his deep concern to thwart any possible move by the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) or any other group such as the Moslem Brotherhood to overthrow the King and assume control in Jordan following the inevitable breakdown and inconclusive end of the Roadmap negotiations.

The PLO had tried to overthrow King Abdullah’s father in 1970 from within Jordan - but was routed and driven out to Lebanon. The thought that another coup might possibly be contemplated from territory less than one hour’s drive away from Abdullah’s palace in Amman has never been far from Hashemite thinking - especially since the Arab League made the PLO the sole spokesman for the Palestinian Arabs in 1974 in place of Jordan.

That singular decision has proved to be a monumental error and has brought nothing but untold misery and suffering for the beleaguered Arab populations of the West Bank and Gaza.

The King is now hanging suspended in mid-air by a thread. There is no realistic outcome to successfully concluding the Roadmap negotiations with the PLO. The PLO demands that it be granted sovereignty in all of the West Bank, that 450000 Jews living there be expelled and that millions of Arabs be allowed to live in Israel are non-negotiable and cannot be possibly accepted by Israel.

Basem Sakkhijha - an analyst with the Jordanian newspaper Al-Dustor - this week summed up the blind alley into which these negotiations have already led:

“The project of Palestinian independence led by the Palestine Liberation Organisation, was marked by failure and has reached a dead end. The only alternative out of this historical conflict is for Jordan to have a role in the future of the West Bank”

Labib Kamhawi - a Jordanian economist and political analyst - was reported this week in the United Arab Emirates National Newspaper as saying that:

“Jordan had never really relinquished its ambition for a serious role in the West Bank”.

Jordan occupied the West Bank between 1948-1967. Its administrative ties with the West Bank have never been totally severed since Israel captured the West Bank from Jordan in the 1967 Six Day War.
Kamhawi concluded that:

“Jordan cannot turn its back and say “I do not want to be involved.’”

Kamhawi is right. It is only a matter of time before Jordan does become involved. Jordan will have to step into the void left by the collapse of the Roadmap negotiations and bring the West Bank’s Arab population under its jurisdiction and authority. Jordan’s population will demand this action be undertaken to allow family reunion to occur on both sides of the Jordan River. No one - Arab or Jew - will need to leave his existing home or business for this to happen.

Israel and Jordan must redraw and mutually adjust their borders and assume sovereign rule in the West Bank within the agreed areas allocated to each of them. New - and meaningful - negotiations will be relatively easy to conclude when their end objective is not the creation of another Arab state between Israel and Jordan but the division of sovereignty of a postage sized piece of land between the two successor States in former Palestine.

This will continue the process of completing the division of sovereignty in former Palestine - first begun between the Arabs and the Jews in 1920. When concluded, this will leave the issue of sovereignty in just 1% of Palestine - the Gaza Strip - to be finally resolved.

King Abdullah should be proud of the incredible efforts his great grandfather, his father and himself have made to secure 78% of Palestine as a sovereign independent and exclusively Arab State in an area originally proposed by the League of Nations as being part of the site within which the Jewish National Home was to be reconstituted.

Denying Jordan’s parentage and his own patrilineal heritage is the surest way for King Abdullah to increase - not decrease - Jordan’s jitters. He will certainly have to watch his back if he continues to do so.

Petulance And Pandemonium In Petra

[Published June 2008]

Arab League Secretary General Amr Moussa must have had a brain explosion during a lunch time speech delivered by Israel’s President Shimon Peres to Nobel Laureates attending a conference in Petra to discuss the global food crisis.

Which particular comment by Peres caused the normally urbane and polished Moussa to grab the microphone and verbally attack Peres is unclear but his reaction was quite breathtaking :

“You are a maestro in talking, but don’t take us for granted because we are not fools … You talk about peace, but we did not hear Israel’s opinion about the Arab peace initiative,”

Surely Moussa is aware of Israel’s opinion about the Arab peace initiative first proposed by Saudi Crown Prince Adullah and endorsed by the Arab League in Beirut on 28 March 2002.

Any prospect of that initiative having any bearing in resolving the Arab - Israel conflict was doomed from the time it was announced since it called for:

“full Israeli withdrawal from all the territories occupied since 1967, including the Syrian Golan Heights, to the June 4, 1967 lines as well as the remaining occupied Lebanese territories in the south of Lebanon.”

When President Bush announced the details of his Roadmap on 30 April 2003 he stated it would:

…"resolve the Israel-Palestinian conflict, and end the occupation that began in 1967, based on the foundations of the Madrid Conference, the principle of land for peace, UNSCRs 242, 338 and 1397, agreements previously reached by the parties, and the initiative of Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah – endorsed by the Beirut Arab League Summit – calling for acceptance of Israel as a neighbor living in peace and security, in the context of a comprehensive settlement.”

These were fine sounding words but Israel was in no mood to accommodate President Bush and commit national suicide by agreeing to return to the borders where it had faced extinction at the hands of the armies of many Arab League members on 4 June 1967.

Israel accordingly presented President Bush with 14 reservations to the Road Map’s implementation.

One of those reservations required:

“The removal of references other than 242 and 338 (1397, the Saudi Initiative and the Arab Initiative adopted in Beirut). A settlement based upon the Roadmap will be an autonomous settlement that derives its validity therefrom. The only possible reference should be to Resolutions 242 and 338, and then only as an outline for the conduct of future negotiations on a permanent settlement.”

On 23 May 2003, then Secretary of State Colin Powell and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice made the following statement from the White House:

“The roadmap was presented to the Government of Israel with a request from the President that it respond with contributions to this document to advance true peace. The United States Government received a response from the Government of Israel, explaining its significant concerns about the roadmap. The United States shares the view of the Government of Israel that these are real concerns, and will address them fully and seriously in the implementation of the roadmap to fulfil the President’s vision of June 24, 2002.”

On 25 May 2003, the Israeli Cabinet met and by a majority resolved:

“Based on the 23 May 2003 statement of the United States Government, in which the United States committed to fully and seriously address Israel’s comments to the Roadmap during the implementation phase, the Prime Minister announced on 23 May 2003 that Israel has agreed to accept the steps set out in the Roadmap.
The Government of Israel affirms the Prime Minister’s announcement, and resolves that all of Israel’s comments, as addressed in the Administration’s statement, will be implemented in full during the implementation phase of the Roadmap.”

Israel’s rejection of the Arab peace initiative could not have been more clearly delivered or underscored.

So what was Moussa hoping to achieve by his petulance in Petra? Clearly he is very frustrated as he sees the Roadmap disappearing down the diplomatic drain as the Arabs continue their intransigent demands that Israel return to the 4 June 1967 borders and 450000 Jews pack up and vacate their homes.

Trying to distance the Arab League from any consequences for maintaining those demands must have been uppermost in his mind as he then publicly admonished Peres:

“Stop building settlements. You keep constructing settlements and demolishing Palestinian homes. What peace are you talking about?”

His remarks repeated the tired old mantra castigating the Jews for wanting to live in any part of their biblical heartland whilst serving to detract any attention from the ineffectual role played by the 22 members of the Arab League in realising the objectives of the Road Map in these four key areas:

1. Failing to prevent Gaza and the West Bank being split into two separate territorial units under two different power structures.

2. Failing to persuade either Egypt or Jordan to offer part of their lands to the Palestinian Arabs as an inducement to moderating the Arab League demand for 100% of the West Bank and Gaza

3. Failing to have the border between Gaza and Egypt opened to allow the humanitarian flow of food and medicine into Gaza or to allow Gazans the opportunity to emigrate through Egypt to other Arab States either temporarily or permanently.

4. Pledging no more than a miserly 20% of the total pledges made at the international donors fund set up in Paris to help their own brothers and allowing many pledges to still remain unpaid.

Arab League members no doubt will cheer Moussa for having stood up to the “Zionist aggressors”. Once again rhetoric has overcome reason and an occasion for goodwill, recognition and mutual respect has been turned into a dummy spit by the Arabs’ top diplomat and negotiator.

Moussa’s grandstanding has only lowered - not elevated - his own standing. The Arabs may not be fools - Moussa certainly is.