Finally, an Israeli official responds to unilateralism

From JPost:

Dr. Uzi Landau, Israel's Minister of National Infrastructure, warns that in the event of a unilateral United Nations declaration of a Palestinian state, he will call upon Israel to annex the Jordan Valley and large, Jewish populated blocs in the West Bank:

“We'll have to take care of our interests,” Landau told Inside Israel's Mordechai I. Twersky in a wide-ranging interview April 21. “We'll have to take protect ourselves. If such a thing happens, I'm going to suggest to my government to extend out sovereignty over the Jordan Valley and over the highly-populated blocs we have in Judea and Samaria, just to start with.”

The former chairman of the Knesset's Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee invoked the Bush Road Map and a letter of commitment issued by the former president committing to Israel's retention of major Jewish population centers in the West Bank in any negotiated settlement with the Palestinians. If that signed agreement can't be honored, he said, all bets are off.

“If we don't see negotiations, and if we do a policy which basically makes the entire Road Map agreement a hoax, Israel should take care of its own interests,” said Minister Landau.

This is exactly what Netanyahu should be saying. If the PA wants to act unilaterally and abrogate Oslo and the Road Map, they need to understand that Israel is under no obligation to adhere to the same agreements either. And the result will be far, far worse for Palestinian Arabs than if they would have stayed with negotiations.

The world needs to understand this as well. Nations are sympathetic to the idea of a unilateral declaration of a Palestinian state but they are basing it on the assumption that Israel will continue to adhere to its commitments that the PA is ignoring. If they know that Israel will not play a game where it is the only one that has to follow the rules, they would be much less likely to support something that will inevitably destabilize the region and make things worse for everybody.

Right now, under so-called "occupation," there is peace. It is not ideal for anyone but it is stable and getting better every year. If the PA abrogates the peace treaty, that peace will end and the Palestinian Arabs who are supposedly going to be helped by living in "Palestine" will be the real losers. This fact is self-evident but Western nations do not seem to have grasped it.

Landau's other observations are worth reading as well:

Landau said the Arab Spring has brought chaos to the Middle east, and could well spread to the important western allies of Jordan and Saudi Arabia. He questioned the logic of Israel signing a peace deal with a Palestinian leader, whose own future and that of his government, remains tenuous at best.

“Who knows what's going to happen in the future to any agreement we sign with, let's say, another chief of tribe in Judea and Samaria?” asked Minister Landau. “Today it's Abu Mazen (Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas). Who is it going to be in the future?”

Landau said the US Administration's continued insistence that a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinian Authority is key to wider stability in the region – even in the face of spreading Arab unrest – is incomprehensible.

“This is clearly, totally detached from the present reality of the Middle East,” said Landau. “Anyone who lives here clearly understands that this is totally detached from the Middle East reality.”

(h/t Yerushalimey)

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Ira Chernus' agenda

In Salon and the Huffington Post, Ira Chernus pooh-poohs Israel's security concerns.

Chernus lists three "myths" about Israel's security. I will only discuss the first one. It should be enough to show that Chernus is not being intellectually honest, to say the least.

Myth Number 1: Israel’s existence is threatened by the ever-present possibility of military attack.

This is a straw man argument. I'm not aware of anyone who says that Israel's existence is threatened by any conventional military attack.

Israel's security posture is not aimed primarily at defending the existence of Israel. Rather, Israel's army is an almost unique position where it must defend its citizens from the threat of being wantonly attacked.

The US Army has no such worries. NATO members have no such worries. For them, all wars are far away and only soldiers are at risk. Israel is perhaps the only Western country in the world where every single citizen is under the credible threat of an attack in any given week.  


This simple fact, which Chernus ignores altogether, is the security issue that Israel faces. Chernus, for all his supposed analytical ability, does not even mention Hezbollah once in his article. It is as if the 2006 Lebanon war - where the hundreds of thousands of citizens in the northern part of the country were forced to become temporary refugees - never happened. Chernus downplays Hamas rockets and ignores the 40,000 more deadly and accurate rockets that are aimed, today, at Israel's population centers. And, as in 2006, it takes only one border incident to escalate into a full scale war.

Would such a war threaten Israel's existence? No. But such a war is still not acceptable. Concern about such a war is still a primary security issue. And those who cannot even acknowledge that this type of war is a possibility less than five years after the last one is either willfully blind or adhering to an agenda.

Chernus also downplays the possibility of a nuclear threat against Israel, with this almost unbelievable sentence:

While the Israeli government constantly sounds alarms about imagined Iranian nuclear weapons -- though its intelligence services now suggest Iran won’t have even one before 2015 at the earliest -- Israel remains the region’s only nuclear power for the foreseeable future.

Is Chernus really suggesting that a nuclear threat that is perhaps four years away is not a significant security concern? How can one take anyone who writes such a sentence seriously?

Moreover, only in 2007 did the world discover that Syria has a secret nuclear weapons program as well. Is Chernus so naive as to think that this is not a threat to Israel either? (Or does he believe that Syria just gave up, and is now a peaceful neighbor that can be trusted?)

In short, Chernus uses multiple false arguments to imply that Israel has no real security concerns.

So why is he purposefully mis-characterizing Israel's security posture?

The answer can be seen in how he sums up his article:

But what if the American public knew the facts...? What if every solemn reference to Israel’s “security needs” were greeted not with nodding heads, but with the eye-rolling skepticism it deserves? What if Israel’s endless excesses and excuses -- its claims that the occupation of the West Bank and the economic strangulation of Gaza are necessary “for the sake of security” -- were regularly scoffed at by most Americans?

It’s hard to imagine the Obama administration, or any American administration, keeping up a pro-Israel tilt in the face of such public scorn.

Chernus has an agenda - to turn the US against Israel.

That agenda is what drives his knowingly deceptive analysis. That agenda is what makes him downplay Iran's nuclear program and political program to surround Israel with Iranian satellites. That agenda is what makes him ignore Hezbollah's rockets and Syria's nuclear ambitions altogether.

And any analysis of Israel's security needs that is based on such an agenda is not worth the disk space it takes up.

---

Israel Matzav and Yisrael Medad have also written some criticisms of the piece, as did HuffPoMonitor in three parts:
http://hpmonitor.blogspot.com/2011/04/ira-chernus-and-more-myths-part-3.html
http://hpmonitor.blogspot.com/2011/04/ira-chernus-and-more-myths-part-2.html
http://hpmonitor.blogspot.com/2011/04/ira-chernus-and-more-myths-part-1.html

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The last gasp effort to make the UNHRC relevant

A very interesting dispatch from AP:

Several members of the U.N.'s top human rights body are pressing for an emergency meeting to examine the government crackdowns against popular protests that have swept the Middle East and North Africa, Western diplomats said Wednesday.

The countries, from Latin America, Europe, North America and Asia, are trying to collect 16 signatures necessary to force a special session of the U.N. Human Rights Council next week, the diplomats said.

They spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject, which was underlined by the innocuous title proposed for the meeting — "Promotion and protection of human rights in the context of recent peaceful protests."

The title was chosen to avoid singling out particular countries, the diplomats said. But they confirmed that Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Yemen, Bahrain and Syria would be among the nations whose violent suppression of protests would be on the agenda.

The Organization of the Islamic Conference, whose members carry significant weight in the 47-nation Human Rights Council, said it wouldn't consent to holding such a meeting.

"We think that the events that are taking place do not merit some kind of a special session," said Zamir Akram, Pakistan's ambassador to the U.N. in Geneva.

He accused those advocating a special session of double standards, and said the OIC would use any such meeting to focus on human rights abuses by Israel instead.

We already know that the UNHRC is a joke. (Leading UNHRC advisor Jean Ziegler edited a book that likened Libya's dictator Moammar Gaddafi to philosopher Jean Rousseau.) Yet there are those who cling to the idea that it has some relevance; pointing to the very few non-Israeli statements it has made or to the fact that it finally, belatedly kicked Libya out.

The UNHRC's actions over the next few days should be the final nail in the coffin of this thoroughly corrupt institution as well as proof positive that the Organization of Islamic States has an agenda that is fundamentally opposed to human rights.

And how much more proof do you need that Israel is used as a scapegoat for Muslim human rights abuses than the statement by the Pakistani ambassador to the UN?

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Hezbollah calls UN chief "Zionist"

Black comedy from Hezbollah:

[U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon]on Wednesday called on Syria to help Lebanon in transforming Hizbullah from an "armed militia" into a political party.

"The existence and activities of Lebanese and non-Lebanese militias continue to pose a threat to the stability of the country and the region," read Ban's report on the implementation of Security Council Resolution 1559, which was adopted in 2004 and calls for "the disbanding and disarmament" of all factions in Lebanon.

Hizbullah on Thursday hit back at Ban.

"It is not something new for the U.N. secretary general to take unjust and unfair stances in his analysis of the situation in Lebanon, especially in terms of holding Hizbullah responsible for all the problems in Lebanon," the party said in a communiqué.

"This is the nature of the mission assigned to him by the U.S. administration and some Western governments, which he is carrying out very precisely instead of performing his role … in achieving security and peace in the world."

"The U.N. secretary general's latest stance clearly shows that he is blatantly on the side of the Zionists who are violating Lebanon's security and stability," said Hizbullah in its communiqué.

The party accused Ban of justifying Israel's "crimes and terrorist practices while condemning Lebanon's preservation of its strength and immunity in the face of this blatant aggression."

It also said Ban "relied on reports written by Terje Roed-Larsen," U.N. Secretary-General's envoy on the implementation of Security Council Resolution 1559.

Hizbullah described Larsen as "the U.N. official in service of the Zionist media structure."

It accused Ban of animosity against "the Resistance, Lebanon, Arabs and all the just causes in the world," vowing to continue to "protect Lebanon and preserve its dignity according to the golden army-people-Resistance formula."

Earlier Thursday, Hizbullah MP Hussein al-Moussawi also lashed out at Ban over his report.

Moussawi said he was not "surprised by Ban Ki-moon's statements, because the latter is part of the American-Zionist alliance which has always targeted mujahid peoples.

"Enough of your submission to the American tyrant and the Zionist criminal."

The UN, of course, loves this sort of thing, because then it can claim this as proof it is even-handed. "See? we are accused of being Zionist and anti-Zionist! This shows we are right!"

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The first real casualty of the Arab uprisings: Pan-Arabism

Pan-Arabism, the idea that all Arab countries would eventually combine or at least confederate, seems to be on its last legs.

Pan-Arabism had its heyday in the late 1950s and early 1960s, when Egypt and Syria created the United Arab Republic.

It has been in decline ever since.

But wishful thinking about the power of a united Arab front continued, mostly in the form of the Arab League, which would meet regularly and where every such meeting would result in de rigueur condemnations of Israel and little else.

Now that Egypt's leadership role in the Arab world has faded as it struggles to discover its own identity, and in the wake of the other Arab uprisings, even the Arab League is falling apart.

A major Arab League summit that was to take place next month in Baghdad has been postponed, and no new date has been set although they are talking about September.

The reason for the postponement is that the Arab League members are squabbling with each other. Iraq is against Saudi Arabian and UAE supporting Bahrain's government in the current Shi'ite uprising there, and Iraq is siding with Iran.

The upheavals in the Arab world are taking the focus off of "Palestine" as each government must actually think about survival. The always-ready excuse of blaming everything on Israel has outlived its usefulness for Arab despots.

While pan-Arabism has been mostly a joke for decades, its most likely successor is not funny at all: pan-Islamism, a construct that Iran hopes to control. Iran also intends to ultimately make Arab identity meaningless, subsumed under the banner of Islam.

While it is too early to know how successful Iran will be - centuries of enmity between Arab and Persian cannot be erased so quickly, and neither can the Shiite/Sunni rift be patched up anytime soon - it is clear that the Islamic Republic is the early winner as the world witnesses the death of pan-Arabism.

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That age old respect Islam had for Christians and Jews

I just read another ignorant article in OnIslam.com, this one describing the Muslim view of anti-semitism. (Hint: it is very similar to Helen Thomas'.)

The article ends off with

This is indeed our call to Christians and Jews. As people who believe in God and follow His revelations, let us rally to a common formula - faith. History proves that when we all return to the true altruistic teaching of our religions, harmony and a successful civilization will follow.

Whenever I see any Muslim group telling us that Islam was historically tolerant towards Christians and Jews, I feel compelled to dig up a new counterexample.

Today's comes from The encyclopædia of missions: descriptive, historical, biographical, statistical, Volume 1, published in 1891, meant as a reference for Christian missionaries in far-flung places.

It says, in the entry on Alexandria, Egypt:

The Mohammedans have acquired a very bitter feeling toward the Christians and the Jews, and are ever ready to join in any demonstration or insurrection against them, if they have any reason to suppose such a movement agreeable to the rulers of the city. Given a chief of police like the one in office in 1882, and another scene like that of June llth of that year, with all its barbaric horrors and cruelty, would be enacted, for the elements suitable for such an act are ever ready.

Here's what happened then:

On 11 June 1882 a row over a fare between an Egyptian donkey boy and a Maltese man triggered a riot in the city in which several hundred people were killed, including about 50 foreigners.

Must have been those Zionists.

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Wikileaks and Goldstone (Dershowitz)

Nice Alan Dershowitz piece in Hudson-NY:

The Goldstone commission adamantly refused to accept testimony that would have shown that the Israeli army took greater care to reduce civilian deaths than any other armed forces fighting comparable wars. For example, they refused to hear the proffered testimony Colonel Richard Kemp, the former commander of British forces in Afghanistan and a recognized expert on asymmetric warfare, who would have testified that:

"[F]rom my knowledge of the IDF and from the extent to which I have been following the current operation, I don't think there has ever been a time in the history of warfare when any army has made more efforts to reduce civilian casualties and deaths of innocent people than the IDF is doing today in Gaza.

The recently published book about Wiki Leaks strongly confirms Colonel Kemp's assessment.
The Guardian summarized one Wiki Leaks disclosure about Afghanistan as follows:

"We today learn of nearly 150 incidents in which coalition forces, including British troops, have killed or injured civilians, most of which have never been reported…."

And another:

"The logs disclosed a detailed incident-by-incident record of at least 66,081 violent deaths of civilians in Iraq since the invasion. This figure, dismaying in itself, was nevertheless only a statistical starting point. It is far too low. The database begins a year late in 2004, omitting the high casualties of the direct 2003 invasion period itself, and ends on 31 December 2009. Furthermore, the US figures are plainly unreliable in respect of the most sensitive issue—civilian deaths directly caused by their own military activities.
For example, the town of Falluja was the site of two major urban battles in 2004, which reduced the place to near-rubble. Yet no civilian deaths whatever are recorded by the army loggers, apparently on the grounds that they had previously ordered all the inhabitants to leave. Monitors from the unofficial Iraq Body Count group, on the other hand, managed to identify more than 1,200 civilians who died during the Falluja fighting."

...No "Goldstone Commissions" have ever been appointed to investigate the far greater number and proportion of civilian deaths caused by British, German and U.S. military actions—and the frequent lack of credible investigators.

Whenever efforts are made to put Israel's actions in a comparative context with other democracies, demonizers of Israel, who always impose a double standard on the Jewish state, respond by arguing "we're talking about Israel now; don't change the subject by talking about other democracies." That reminds me of a famous story about Harvard's notoriously anti-Semitic president, A. Lawrence Lowell, near the beginning of the 20th Century. In an effort to defend his decision to impose an anti-Jewish quota, he said, "Jews cheat." A distinguished Harvard alumnus, Judge Learned Hand, wrote President Lowell a letter saying that "Protestants also cheat," to which Lowell responded, "you're changing the subject; we're talking about Jews now."

You can't just talk about Jews, or about the Jewish state when making accusations of war crimes or violation of international law. Comparison is everything, especially since international humanitarian law is expressly based on how democratic nations customarily behave in comparable situations.

According to the materials disclosed by Wikileaks, Israel shines in comparison to other democracies. It has a significantly better ratio of combatant to civilian deaths; it takes greater steps to avoid such casualties, and it does a better job investigating negligent and criminal behavior on the part of its soldiers. Moreover, it is seeking to protect its own civilians directly from ongoing cross-border rocket attacks and other terrorist acts, whereas the other democracies are fighting wars of choice many miles from its civilian areas.

This is not to suggest the need for "Goldstone Reports" against Great Britain and Germany and the United States. It is to demand that a single standard be applied to all democracies.

(h/t Zach N. via FB)

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Amr Moussa: Camp David has expired

From MEMRI, quoting Al Masry al-Youm:

The Camp David Accords signed between Egypt and Israel have expired and no longer govern the situation, Arab League secretary-general and potential Egyptian presidential candidate Amr Moussa has said.

Moussa, who participated in the negotiations with Israel in 1978, made the statements during a discussion with Egyptian youth.

He added, "What governs the relationship between the two countries is the Arab Peace Initiative of 2002 and the Egyptian-Israeli treaty."

Can Israel take back the Sinai - and its oil fields - then?

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Hamas is so generous with crowded Gaza land

From Reuters:

Palestinian militants of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) take part in a joint drill with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) for the media in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip April 21, 2011.

It is nice to know that the DFLP and PFLP can do joint terror exercises under the magnanimous purview of Hamas. Isn't it sweet that Hamas is so nicely willing to grant so much of that valuable, scarce Gaza land for such an important purpose?

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Red Cross: "There is no humanitarian crisis in Gaza"

From the IDF:

Mathilde Redmatn is the deputy director of the Red Cross in the Gaza Strip. Redmatn has had the opportunity to see with her eyes what most of us only see on television screens.

On previous assignments, Redmatn has lived in Congo and Colombia. Her activities in Gaza are completely different, she says.

"Of course the work is different everywhere, but here the fabric of life is problematic," she says. "There are two peoples, one living under closure and one living under daily rocket fire, which violates international law.

Redmatn has a lot to say about problems related to the closure Israel has placed on Gaza but she also talks about the surprising normalcy in one of the most explosive regions of the world that receives extensive media attention.

"There is no humanitarian crisis in Gaza," she explains. "If you go to the supermarket, there are products. There are restaurants and a nice beach. The problem is mainly in maintenance of infrastructure and in access to goods, concrete for example. Israel has the legitimate right to protect the civilan population, this right should be balanced with the rights of 1.5 million people living in the Gaza Strip. Despite the easing of the closure and the partial lifting of export bans in the wake of the flotilla incident, continued restrictions on the movement of people and difficulties in importing building materials hampered sustainable economic recovery and dashed any hope of leading a normal and dignified life".

(h/t Challah Hu Akbar via HuffPoMonitor)

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If it looks like s**t and smells like s**t, it must be - Lauren Booth!

Lauren Booth, unhinged moonbat and unabashed terrorist supporter, has described what she considers clear proof that Israel killed both Juliano Mer Khamis and Vittorio Arrigoni:

The headline ‘Italian peace activist killed by Palestinian extremists’ is an Israeli propagandists wet dream....Which brings us to timing of both Juliano and Vittorio’s murders. ...

It is no coincidence then that both Juliano and Vittorio should die within two weeks. Both, at the hands of unknown Palestinian ‘cells.’ As they say on children’s TV - tell us boys and girls what’s wrong with this picture?

Israel’s supporters will doubtless feel affronted at the assertion that Vittorio was murdered by those almost certainly in the pay of the Jewish State. But they can’t have their dark ops cake and eat it too. Not this time. Too many of us have our eyes open to the filthy tactics employed by Israel every time they come under intellectual attack. And there is no doubt that Israeli Apartheid is losing traction by the day.

As Hamas rounds up the perpetrators of this most recent, deadly crime, the Gaza grapevine is buzzing with the news that they will indeed be found to be, (as suspected from the get-go), Israeli collaborators.

Statements of denial from the ‘Salafis’ accused of the murder have already been issued.

So, who benefits from the killing of Vittorio Arrigoni? And what is the significance of the timing of his murder?

Well, if it smells like s***t and looks like s**t it almost certainly is - Israel.

Sure, the kidnappers’ video looked genuine at first. It had all the customary layout of the kind of ‘Jihadi’ videos that the tabloid press loves: the black flag of Islam, the Quranic verse in the introduction, footage of the kidnapped victim. But a small detail on the black flag, underneath the precious, Islamically untouchable phrase ‘There is No God, but God’ raises questions about the authenticity of the groups grasp on Islam. The extra words read something like “the Brigades of Muhammad Ibn Maslama.” This has been hard for experts to verify because the video is being systematically pulled off YouTube. But one thing is certain;

‘Jihadis’ never write ANYTHING on the flag besides La Ilaha Ila Allah.

After reading her whole diatribe, this is her only real shred of "proof" that Israel must be behind the murders: because of text that is under the Shahada, something Jihadi's "never do."

Here's the supposedly problematic flag from the video:

Five minutes of searching found this:

I don't read Arabic, but it looks like the bottom flag also contains the Muslim declaration of faith, if stylized differently. And there is text underneath, something that even newly-Muslim Lauren Booth knows is not done by real Muslims!

Well, she can always still rely on the "Gaza grapevine" for unassailable proof of her fevered fantasies.

The rest of her posting is equally stupid. Read it all to see how detached from reality the anti-Israel crowd is.

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Evil, Talmudic Jews desecrating Al Aqsa again

Palestine Times reports that Jews "desecrated" the Al Aqsa Mosque yet again, by...standing there.

They are "roaming in the courtyards" of Al Aqsa, attempting to establish "Talmudic rituals" in the area. These "Zionist extremists" are also doing "provocative tours."

As you can see, the photo shows how horrible they are acting.

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Best place to go for breaking news from Syria

Now Lebanon is following Syrian tweets, Facebook entries and YouTube channels to bring you the very latest on the protests in Syria.

Here are two videos said to have been taken last night of two separate crowds, in two separate towns, chanting "The people want to bring the regime down.”

To read more: http://www.nowlebanon.com/NewsArticleDetails.aspx?ID=253828#ixzz1K9hkaYLF
Only 25% of a given NOW Lebanon article can be republished. For information on republishing rights from NOW Lebanon: http://www.nowlebanon.com/Sub.aspx?ID=125478

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Morning briefs

Syria's nuclear secrets at TNR:

Syria is getting a free ride. It has suffered no consequence for snubbing the IAEA. Already shaken by North Korea’s defection and Iran’s manipulation, the nonproliferation treaty now finds itself at a crossroads. If it cannot be enforced in Syria, a relatively weak country currently buffeted by its own Arab spring, the wounded agreement risks falling into irrelevance—and the region into a tense nuclear future. The treaty’s survival requires that the international community draw a line. It should start at the gates of Damascus.

GIYUS interviews Benny Begin:

Now we sum it up – look at the map, it's a new Muslim crescent. Five countries - Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Turkey, comprise an Islamic radical block, with terrorism and instability emanating from two of them to the whole Middle East. That's even before Iran has acquired nuclear weapons ability.

The irony is that out of these 5 countries the majority are democracies. 3 out of 5 are democracies. Of course, the numbers are small so it's not a great sample, but to me these observations, that are factual, there is no assessment there, afford constraints on the possible positive outcome of the revolutions in the Middle East.

Fiamma Nirenstein on Arrigoni:

The crucial issue is this: When you go to Gaza or Afghanistan, it is important to realize that our concept of life is completely different from politically Islamic people's concept of life. To them, you can die because you are Jewish, because you are Italian, or Christian, because you are an apostate, or a corrupt Westerner... the extremist mentality, make no bones about it, cancels out friends and allies. No matter how much you have worked against the "Zionist power" or that you have called Zionists "rats," as Arrigoni did, nothing is of any worth if you break their rule -- a rule which will remain changing and unclear until the knife blade comes.

NGO Monitor on Sarah Leah Whitson:

An op-ed by Human Right Watch’s Middle East and North Africa Director Sarah Leah Whitson, “A Matter of Civil Rights” (Huffington Post, April 15, 2011), blatantly exploits the US Civil Rights Movement to vilify and demonize Israel.

Abusing the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King: “In a week when the U.S. paused to recall the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, President Peres might have considered King's message -- an end to segregation -- and why such a system of racial inequality remains in place in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.”

This op-ed contains 23 references that abuse civil rights rhetoric in this way, including accusations of “laws and policies [that] strictly segregate Jews from Palestinians,” “blatant racial inequality,” and “racial discrimination and segregation.” This is Whitson’s dominant theme.

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Turkey's president lays a turkey of an op-ed

A laughable op-ed from Turkey's president Abdullah Gul in yesterday's NYT:

THE wave of uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa is of historic significance equal to that of the revolutions of 1848 and 1989 in Europe. The peoples of the region, without exception, revolted not only in the name of universal values but also to regain their long-suppressed national pride and dignity. But whether these uprisings lead to democracy and peace or to tyranny and conflict will depend on forging a lasting Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement and a broader Israeli-Arab peace.

Really? Even though the Tunisians and Egyptians and Yemenis and Bahrainis and Syrians and Moroccans and Iranians who are protesting are barely saying a word about Israel, the key to their countries turning democratic is based on Israeli policy? How so?

The plight of the Palestinians has been a root cause of unrest and conflict in the region and is being used as a pretext for extremism in other corners of the world.

Now, this is funny. Arab and Islamic regimes - the ones being protested against - are the ones who have claimed that they cannot reform because of Israel's existence. They are the ones who have used Israel as an excuse to repress their own people. Yet the president of one of those repressive regimes is now pretending that the protesters are the ones pushing the Palestinian Arab agenda - even though one would be hard pressed to find a single sign in the protests that mention Israel or "Palestine."

Israel, more than any other country, will need to adapt to the new political climate in the region.

More than the Arab and Muslim countries who will have to become democracies?

In these times of turmoil, two forces will shape the future: the people’s yearning for democracy and the region’s changing demographics. Sooner or later, the Middle East will become democratic, and by definition a democratic government should reflect the true wishes of its people. Such a government cannot afford to pursue foreign policies that are perceived as unjust, undignified and humiliating by the public. For years, most governments in the region did not consider the wishes of their people when conducting foreign policy. History has repeatedly shown that a true, fair and lasting peace can only be made between peoples, not ruling elites.

In these times of turmoil, and the previous six decades of turmoil, Israel has been trying to make peace with its Arab neighbors. This reflected the wishes of Israel's Jewish majority. I don't quite get how this is considered humiliating or unjust to anyone except the Arab masses who are quick to respond to government-initiated incitement against Israel. They are the ones who scream about "dignity."

Just like Gul.

Here's where he tries some sleight-of-hand:

I call upon the leaders of Israel to approach the peace process with a strategic mindset, rather than resorting to short-sighted tactical maneuvers. This will require seriously considering the Arab League’s 2002 peace initiative, which proposed a return to Israel’s pre-1967 borders and fully normalized diplomatic relations with Arab states.

Sticking to the unsustainable status quo will only place Israel in greater danger. History has taught us that demographics is the most decisive factor in determining the fate of nations. In the coming 50 years, Arabs will constitute the overwhelming majority of people between the Mediterranean Sea and the Dead Sea. The new generation of Arabs is much more conscious of democracy, freedom and national dignity.

However, every peace plan that Israel has proposed - and that Palestinian Arabs and the Arab League has rejected - included making a Palestinian Arab state in the vast majority of the territories, thus solving that demographic problem (and also solving the supposedly overriding concern of Palestinian Arabs to have a state!) Why must Israel choose the Arab League plan which does not specifically solve the "refugee" problem and which would involve the ethnic cleansing of hundreds of thousands of Jews from their homes? Why is the supposed "dignity" of the Arab and Muslim people more important than the lives of so many who legally and voluntarily chose to live in the heartland of their ancestors?

More to the point, if Gul is so concerned about democracy and a solution to the "Palestine" problem, why is he not telling Abbas to accept Israel's peace proposals and move on? Wouldn't a Palestinian Arab state on 96% of the territories fulfill every one of the criteria he lists in this op-ed?

No, this op-ed is not about peace. It is about forcing Israel to accede to Arab blackmail and to harden the Palestinian Arab rejectionist position towards compromise.

(h/t Samson)

UPDATE: Meanwhile, Turkey's leadership probably needs to learn other lessons from the upheavals. (h/t Serious Black)

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