Israeli victory is the only way to advance peace process
American policy has long been to prevent Israel from achieving a decisive military victory over its adversaries. In 1956, President Eisenhower forced Israel to abandon its territorial gains from the Suez Crisis. Similarly, following the 1967 Six Day War, the U.S. helped engineer a U.N. resolution calling on Israel to return unspecified “territories occupied” in the war. The Reagan administration stopped Israel from obliterating Yasser Arafat’s PLO forces in Lebanon in 1982, and, most recently, the Obama administration pressured Israel to limit its objectives in its 2014 war with Hamas. These concessions, which are often unilateral and irreversible, include settlement freezes, prisoner releases and forfeiture of territory.Washington calls Netanyahu’s ethnic cleansing video ‘inappropriate’
Such policies deliver pernicious results; American “restraint” of Israel encourages its enemies to take risks. Much like government bailouts encourage banks to make high-risk, high-payoff investments by removing the consequences of failure, Israel’s adversaries need not fret over irrevocable loss because they know the international community will admonish Israel for any gains it achieves.
Moreover, restraining Israel legitimizes and nourishes Palestinian rejectionism, defined as the refusal to acknowledge Israeli sovereignty and right of Jews to live in their ancestral homeland. Because it knows there will be no consequences for its sophisticated propaganda war, the Palestinian Authority can continue to demonize Israel. “To become a normal people, one whose parents do not encourage their children to become suicide terrorists, Palestinian Arabs need to undergo the crucible of defeat,” writes Middle East Forum President Daniel Pipes.
When Israel has licensure, without American opprobrium, to unleash its military might after a Palestinian rocket or terror attack, as when Liberman ordered over 50 airstrikes on Hamas military infrastructure in Gaza in response to one rocket, the Palestinians retreat. The fear of crushing defeat is a potent weapon in neutralizing Palestinian resistance.
America’s handling of the Arab-Israeli conflict is preventing the kind of metamorphosis in Palestinian thinking about Israel that peace requires. It’s time for Washington to allow Israel to demolish the Palestinian dream of a one-state solution, free of Jews. As Ronald Reagan said regarding the US fight against communism, the only way to “win is if they lose.”
This doesn’t mean the U.S. should support a winner-take-all settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But we must dispense with the fallacy that Israel is only a concession or two away from an American-brokered diplomatic breakthrough. As Gen. Douglas MacArthur said famously, “there is no substitute for victory.”
Washington on Friday fumed at comments made by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a video released online in which he accused the Palestinians of advocating ethnic cleansing of the Jewish population in the West Bank.Car packed with gas cylinders parked in front of Marseilles synagogue
US State Department spokeswoman Elizabeth Trudeau told reporters the administration is “engaging in direct conversations with the Israeli government” about the video.
“We obviously strongly disagree with the characterization that those who oppose settlement activity or view it as an obstacle to peace are somehow calling for ethnic cleansing of Jews from the West Bank. We believe that using that type of terminology is inappropriate and unhelpful,” Trudeau said.
She said Israel expansion of settlements raises “real questions about Israel’s long-term intentions in the West Bank.”
A week after police in Paris discovered a booby-trapped car near a tourist attraction, a suspect vehicle with gas cylinders was found outside a Jewish community center in the southern city of Marseille.Arrested French women, directed by Islamic State, planned Paris attack
The parked car found Saturday morning outside the Bar Yohaye Jewish Community Center and synagogue in Marseille’s 4th Arrondissement east of the Saint-Charles railways station had no trigger mechanism to cause an explosion and was not stolen, Laurent Nuñez, the police commissioner of the Bouches-du-Rhône region, told La Provence.
There was no indication that the car found in Marseille was connected in any way to what police believe was a foiled attempt to carry out a terrorist attack in Paris last week involving a car with several gas cylinders that was found abandoned near Paris’s Notre Dame cathedral, Nuñez added.
Three women were arrested last week in connection with the Paris incident. They were likely planning an imminent attack, French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said.
One of three women arrested over a failed Islamist attack in Paris had been "promised as a bride" to two men behind attacks on police officers and a priest earlier this year, the Paris prosecutor said on Friday.
The revelations highlight the close links between members of radical Islamist circles in France, even though they might live in different parts of the country.
Sarah H, a 23-year-old Frenchwoman, was taken into custody on Thursday along with the other two women after police launched a manhunt to find them, believing they were planning an imminent attack on the Gare de Lyon train station in Paris.
The three women were being tracked after a car loaded with gas cylinders was found near Notre Dame cathedral at the weekend. Sarah H allegedly stabbed a police officer when she was arrested; another of the women was shot and wounded . Neither the police officer nor the woman shot was seriously injured.