Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, September 22, 2011

Clinton blames Netanyahu for lack of peace (updated)

Who's to blame for the continued failure of the Middle East peace process? Former President Bill Clinton said today that it is Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu -- whose government moved the goalposts upon taking power, and whose rise represents a key reason there has been no Israeli-Palestinian peace deal.

Clinton, in a roundtable with bloggers today on the sidelines of the Clinton Global Initiative in New York, gave an extensive recounting of the deterioration in the Middle East peace process since he pressed both parties to agree to a final settlement at Camp David in 2000. He said there are two main reasons for the lack of a comprehensive peace today: the reluctance of the Netanyahu administration to accept the terms of the Camp David deal and a demographic shift in Israel that is making the Israeli public less amenable to peace.

"The two great tragedies in modern Middle Eastern politics, which make you wonder if God wants Middle East peace or not, were [Yitzhak] Rabin's assassination and [Ariel] Sharon's stroke," Clinton said.

Sharon had decided he needed to build a new centrist coalition, so he created the Kadima party and gained the support of leaders like Tzipi Livni and Ehud Olmert. He was working toward a consensus for a peace deal before he fell ill, Clinton said. But that effort was scuttled when the Likud party returned to power.

This is a bit of wishful thinking on Clinton's part. Sharon's goal in giving up Gaza was to help strengthen Israel's hold on the settlement blocs in Judea and Samaria,and this is why he was so keen on the letter from Bush that said that the 1967 borders are a non-starter. I do not believe that Sharon would have been nearly as generous as Barak was before him and as Olmert was afterwards.

"[Palestinian leaders] have explicitly said on more than one occasion that if [Netanyahu] put up the deal that was offered to them before -- my deal -- that they would take it," Clinton said, referring to the 2000 Camp David deal that Yasser Arafat rejected.

From all publicly available information, the Olmert offer in 2008 went even beyond the Clinton parameters, and the Palestinian Arabs kept on asking for more. So on this point I am calling BS - the PalArabs might have told Clinton this but it is not true.

But the Israeli government has drifted a long way from the Ehud Barak-led government that came so close to peace in 2000, Clinton said, and any new negotiations with the Netanyahu government are now on starkly different terms -- terms that the Palestinians are unlikely to accept.

"For reasons that even after all these years I still don't know for sure, Arafat turned down the deal I put together that Barak accepted," he said. "But they also had an Israeli government that was willing to give them East Jerusalem as the capital of the new state of Palestine."

The reason is simple, and it is the same reason that Abbas didn't accept any peace offers as well - because in the end, they want to ensure that they can continue to make more claims against Israel even after "peace." Whether it is the "right to return" or a demand for 1947 borders or whatever, there has been no desire on the Palestinian Arab side to truly end the conflict.

The Netanyahu government has received all of the assurances previous Israeli governments said they wanted but now won't accept those terms to make peace, Clinton said.

"Now that they have those things, they don't seem so important to this current Israeli government, partly because it's a different country," said Clinton. "In the interim, you've had all these immigrants coming in from the former Soviet Union, and they have no history in Israel proper, so the traditional claims of the Palestinians have less weight with them."

The Russian aliyah took place before Camp David. However, one thing is true - the Russian Jews know a thing or two about dealing with totalitarianism, and they recognize it in the Palestinian Arab leadership and their partners in Hamas. They know the tricks and the subterfuge that they experienced firsthand.

Clinton then repeated his assertions made at last year's conference that Israeli society can be divided into demographic groups that have various levels of enthusiasm for making peace.

"The most pro-peace Israelis are the Arabs; second the Sabras, the Jewish Israelis that were born there; third, the Ashkenazi of long-standing, the European Jews who came there around the time of Israel's founding," Clinton said. "The most anti-peace are the ultra-religious, who believe they're supposed to keep Judea and Samaria, and the settler groups, and what you might call the territorialists, the people who just showed up lately and they're not encumbered by the historical record."

Clinton has fallen into the lazy trap of regarding all Jewish residents of the territories as being religious Jews from Brooklyn!

Clinton affirmed that the United States should veto the Palestinian resolution at the U.N. Security Council for member-state status, because the Israelis need security guarantees before agreeing to the creation of a Palestinian state. But the Netanyahu government has moved away from the consensus for peace, making a final status agreement more difficult, Clinton said.

"That's what happened. Every American needs to know this. That's how we got to where we are," Clinton said. "The real cynics believe that the Netanyahu's government's continued call for negotiations over borders and such means that he's just not going to give up the West Bank."

Why is Israel the only state in the world who is not allowed to change its politics to the right? After all, Netanyahu and his coalition did get more votes than their opponents. That is what would be considered a mandate in any other democratic context.

Turkey can decide on a whim to shut down diplomatic relations with other countries and to start threatening them. People aren't thrilled but no one says that Turkey must always adhere to the most dovish of its previous behaviors. Nations change, populations change, opinions change. And between Camp David and today there was a little matter called an intifada, that was enthusiastically embraced by the majority of Palestinian Arab society until they started losing. That is what made Israeli society move to the right, far more than anything else. To blame Netanyahu means to blame Israel for electing him. (And he has moved his positions leftward as well since he's been elected.)

This is why the goalposts were moved - the majority of Israelis were not comfortable with the direction that Kadima was going in giving up rights of Jewish self-determination.

Clinton is not stupid, and I respect him. But this analysis smacks more of egomania and nostalgia, a refusal to admit that it was Palestinian Arab terror that pushed Israel to the right - terror that was Arafat's strategic choice instead of accepting the Camp David offer. He doesn't even mention the slight problem of a split government between Gaza and Ramallah, and the terrorists that control 40% of the population.

Clinton wants to turn back the clock and pretend that nothing has changed in the past eleven years. It would be nice, but it is fantasy.

UPDATE: read the comments - there are some very good ones.

Also Elliot Abrams slams Clinton in The Weekly Standard.

The errors and misstatements in Clinton’s interview with bloggers are sufficient to change his reputation from that of a firm supporter of Israel into that of a firm supporter of Israelis who agree with his twisted version of the facts. Clinton simply blames the Israeli right for killing peace efforts. He appears entirely—in fact, embarrassingly— unaware of what has actually happened to the Israeli right over the last ten years, where the change has been extraordinary.

(h/t Noah)

My circus poster outside the UN (photo)

Here is a version of my Eldertoons poster as a 4' x 6' banner at the StandWithUs anti-Durban three-ring circus protest:

I hope it gets on the news....

Photo of empty UN seats as Ahmadinejad spoke

From Getty Images:

Reuters shows some of them leaving;

I wonder if the representative of "Palestine" left too? After all, aren't they seeking a free, democratic state just like the nations that did leave?

Jewish satellite news channels - from zero to two?

From JPost:

Call it the battle of the Jewish Al Jazeeras.

Earlier this year Jewish billionaire Alexander Machkevitch of Kazakhstan announced plans to open a 24- hour international news channel with a Jewish twist that would compete with Al Jazeera, the popular Arab media outlet based in Qatar.

But he may have been beaten to it.

This week a separate channel called Jewish News 1 started broadcasting throughout Europe, said Peter Dickson, the station producer, and Brussels Bureau Chief Alexander Zanzer, on Wednesday.

“Some Jews came up with the idea of how to change the world and they wanted to compete with other news channels, including one in particular,” Zanzer said over the phone from Belgium. “I won’t say which one but it starts with ‘al’ and ends with ‘ra,’” referring to the Qatari-based channel.

The nascent Jewish news organization is jointly owned by Jewish businessmen Igor Kolomoisky and Vadim Rabinovich, two of the richest men in Ukraine.

Zanzer said it has a budget of five million dollars, studios in Brussels, Kiev and Tel Aviv, and is available on satellite frequency Astra 1G – 31.5°E.

“We’ll broadcast everything that might interest Jewish people in the world, whether it’s the fall of the euro or what’s happening in Israel,” he said.

Right now the best way to follow Jewish News One is on their Facebook page.

(h/t Russell)

NYT's latest push for "Palestine"

Here's the New York Times doing its usual slanted reporting in a report by Neil MacFarquhar:

The original two-state solution designed to establish separate countries for Jews and Arabs anticipated the day that both would seek United Nations membership.

“When the independence of either the Arab or the Jewish State as envisaged in this plan has become effective,” begins a paragraph deep in General Assembly Resolution 181 from November 1947, then “sympathetic consideration” should be given to the application.

Israel became a member in May 1949. The Palestinians have announced their intention to submit an application to the Security Council, setting the stage this week for the most dramatic annual gathering of world leaders at the United Nations General Assembly in years.

And why has it taken nearly 64 years? Could it be because the Arab world could not then - and cannot now - accept the idea of a Jewish state? Could it be that for most of that time they chose war instead of peace? Could it be because on the threshold of a peace treaty in 2000, the Palestinian Arab leadership chose a terror war instead that killed thousands?

Are those facts not relevant when trying to paint a false equivalence between Israel and "Palestine"?

The Palestinians see the membership application as a last-ditch attempt to preserve the two-state solution in the face of ever-encroaching Israeli settlements, as well as a desperate move to shake up the negotiations that they feel have achieved little after 20 years of American oversight.

Israeli communities in Judea and Samaria have not been "encroaching" on any Arab owned land. They have been building within their own boundaries.

Since Oslo, the Palestinian Arabs have gained control over Gaza, they have gained autonomy over practically all of their citizens, and they have gained economically as a result of agreements with Israel. One would think that a reporter could offset how they "feel" with a fact or two.

In the past, as long as Arab despots endorsed American control over the peace process, officials in Washington usually ignored how they treated their citizens.

Excuse me? Is MacFarquhar saying that Arab repression is somehow the fault of the American role in the peace process? I'm sorry, I didn't know that Syria and Tunisia's and Libya's support for Oslo influenced US policy. Perhaps Neil can enlighten us someday.

[Palestinian Arabs] remain under occupation, the number of Jewish settlers has tripled to around 600,000, and they have far less freedom of movement in the territories ostensibly meant to become their state.

Saying that Area A or Gaza is under occupation is obviously false. Occupation means that the occupier can change the government, and clearly it cannot. They indeed have less freedom of movement than they did before the first intifada and before the second intifada. I wonder why that might be? The number of Jews in Judea and Samaria did triple since 1992, from about 111,000 to over 300,000. If you include "east" Jerusalem, which of course the NY Times is, the numbers have not even doubled (282,000 to 517,000.) It is not close to 600,000.

And, as the reporter no doubt knows, Israel is not going to freeze construction of areas that "everyone knows" will always remain part of Israel in Jerusalem's suburbs.

The newspaper of record cannot keep basic facts straight.

(h/t Ian)

What's next for Libya?

The Economist Intelligence Unit has an interesting analysis of what's next for Libya. There is a lot of good information in the document, although I am far more pessimistic about the potential political future of the country than they are.

Here is their summary:

Libya’s rebels have pushed the regime of Muammar Qadhafi out of power, and are poised to take complete control of the country. This in itself is a monumental achievement, but it marks only the start of what is likely to be a long and fraught process of rehabilitation. The new leadership must rebuild a state that for decades was run on the whims of an authoritarian leader, determined both to monopolise and to hold on to power. There are few institutions that work, and even fewer that work to the benefit of the general population, so the challenge amounts to little short of building a functioning state from scratch. Views on what form that state should take are as diverse as the regional, ideological and sectarian interests making up its would-be architects, and these stake holders must be persuaded to support the process—or at least not to obstruct it—before it can even begin.

Libya is strategically placed, adequately supplied with talent and well endowed with natural resources. If the state-building exercise is successful, it can quickly become a stable and thriving economy, offering a range of opportunities to business investors both at home and abroad. But the challenges are numerous and substantial, and a post-Qadhafi dividend is not guaranteed. This report spells out those challenges, and the business opportunities that would be the reward of success.

The first section of the report looks at the political outlook. The Economist Intelligence Unit identifies three scenarios, and attaches probabilities to each.

Scenario 1 (60% probability): According to plan - Elections to replace the National Transitional Council (NTC) with an elected government based on a new constitution take place more or less on schedule, although the election results in a weak government and parts of the country remain insecure.

Scenario 2 (30% probability): Permanent transition - The NTC struggles to overcome internal disputes and is distracted by security problems and by outbreaks of popular protest at its failure to deliver adequate services, and therefore fails to stick to its blueprint. The NTC becomes a de facto regime.

Scenario 3 (10% probability): Prolonged instability - The NTC loses control of security and fails to establish an effective interim government. Local groups including remnants of Qadhafi-era people’s committees and Islamist militias take charge of different parts of the country, threatening the viability of Libya as a unified nation state.

The second section of the report starts from the assumption that our central scenario, that the NTC blueprint is adhered to, comes to pass. We then look at the implications and opportunities for business, sector by sector.

I would reverse the probabilities for each political scenario.

The report does give some reason for its relative optimism that Scenario 3 is unlikely:

We consider this scenario to have a very low probability because of the powerful interest that Libyans have in retaining a functional unitary state. The NTC has already established a solid basis for a new Libyan state, and has overwhelming international support. This means that it will have control over the proceeds of Libya’s oil export revenue (past and present), which gives it immense powers of patronage, which would be denied to any breakaway faction.

I am not convinced that, in the Arab world, what makes sense is the most likely to happen. Although the report downplays the chances for Islamist trouble, if recent history is any guide Libya is going to be a magnet for Islamists in the next few months. Chaos strengthens them. And it only takes a small number of rabid fundamentalists to disrupt the will of the majority.

The US Energy Information Administration came out with its own analysis of the likelihood of Libyan oil flowing again soon.

Either way, timing is important - Libya has only 3-6 months of cash to keep going and it needs to get oil revenues before then.

Tunisia sent aid ship to Gaza - via Egypt

For the first time since the Tunisian revolution, Tunisia has sent an aid ship to Gaza - but they are not going straight to Gaza, rather through Egypt.

Which is why there are no news articles about this.

The Tunisians have been waiting for a few days to get permission from Egyptian authorities to bring the goods through Egypt to the Rafah crossing.

The aid includes wheelchairs and medicines.

Meanwhile, as usual, some 300 trucks full of material are being sent from Israel to Gaza today, including gravel, cement and iron for international construction projects.

Amazing AP bias in opposition to French ban on face veils

Headline: "Veiled Muslim women flout ban in bid for freedom"

Kenza Drider's posters for the French presidential race are ready to go, months before the official campaign begins. There she is, the "freedom candidate," pictured standing in front of a line of police — a forbidden veil hiding her face.

Drider declared her longshot candidacy Thursday, the same day that a French court fined two women who refuse to remove their veils. All three are among a group of women mounting an attack on the law that has banned the garments from the streets of France since April, and prompted similar moves in other European countries.

They are bent on proving that the ban contravenes fundamental rights and that women who hide their faces stand for freedom, not submission.

"When a woman wants to maintain her freedom, she must be bold," Drider told The Associated Press in an interview.

The article frames the French opposition to the veil as a sop to rabid Islamophobes, rather than an issue of security and human rights.

This article is a textbook example of media bias.

Israeli breakthrough in detecting breast cancer painlessly

From Reuters:

The mammogram has long been the test of choice for doctors examining women for signs of breast cancer. The test has a high detection rate, but many women find the procedure uncomfortable and are sometimes left bruised.

Researchers for Israeli company Real Imaging believe they've developed a painless alternative, using infra-red imaging.

Doctor Dhavid Izhaky is Real Imaging's vice president of research.

"Our system provides highest sensitivity for detection of breast cancer, it doesn't involve any ionising radiation, it's very comfort(able) - we do not apply any pressure on the breast and (it) is applicable for women with dense breasts".

Researchers say the system shows instant thermal signals emitted by cancerous cells. Izhaky says results can be analysed and diagnosed immediately without the need for x-rays or professional interpretation.

"We acquire three dimensional infra red imaging from the woman and the uniqueness of our system and the novelty is by providing automatic risk assessment. We do not require the radiologist to diagnose and interpret the images. The system does it automatically".

Electro-optical engineer Boaz Arnon pioneered the system after his mother died of breast cancer seven years ago:

"After several clinical trials, including multi centre clinical trials, we imaged more than 25 hundred patients in the last five years. We have a solution which is accurate, our sensitivity is higher than 90 percent for all ages, not just above 40 or above 50, including all ages, without radiation and the solution is ready".

Clinical trials have been undertaken in six medical centres across the country.

Dr Miri Sklar-Levy ran one of the trials at the Sheba medical centre in central Israel: "We have just concluded our blinded study of almost one hundred woman and the accuracy or the sensitivity was 92 percent with a specificity of 72 percent which is much above the results that we have with mammography."

Trials in Europe and the US are planned for next year.

If successful, Real Imaging hopes to provide a simple and pain-free alternative for breast cancer testing and encourage more women to have regular check-ups.

(h/t HuffWatcher)

Ramallah demonstration was a bust

There were plenty of news reports about the demonstration in Ramallah yesterday, all trying to make it look as large as possible:

But how many people actually were there?

From The World Bulletin:

Thousands of flag-waving Palestinians rallied Wednesday in towns across the occupied West Bank to show support for their president's bid to win U.N. recognition of a Palestinian state. The gatherings were carefully orchestrated, with civil servants and schoolchildren given time off to participate, and the mood seemed largely subdued. Still, a new poll indicated an overwhelming majority of Palestinians support President Mahmoud Abbas' quest for U.N. recognition of a state in the occupied West Bank, besiged Gaza and east Jerusalem.

In the city of Ramallah, the seat of Abbas' government, crowds of youths hoisted Palestinian flags in a downtown square and chanted slogans calling for the establishment of an independent Palestine. Others used the time to mingle and do some window shopping in the newly refurbished town center with tree-lined pedestrian areas.

A large mockup of a blue chair, symbolising a seat at the U.N., and giant Palestinian flags hanging from buildings provided a backdrop for the Ramallah rally, where attendence peaked at several thousand.

AFP says "at least 15,000" were at the demonstration. Considering that schools were out, the government closed, free transportation was provided and the rally included free concerts from popular bands, this is a small rally.

However, what is not as well reported was the possibly larger demonstration in Nablus - which took a distinctly anti-semitic turn:

Tens of thousands of Palestinians turned out in the northern West Bank city of Nablus in support of Abbas. Joined by a small ultra-Orthodox Jewish sect that opposes Israeli state, activists prayed at the nearby Joseph's tomb and raised a Palestinian flag.

Specifically going to a Jewish holy site is not a political move.

(There were also demonstrations in Hebron and Bethlehem.)

Will Obama release Pollard before the 2012 elections?

From the New Jersey Jewish News:

A longtime national activist in the fight to free convicted spy Jonathan Pollard believes his sentence will be commuted by President Barack Obama.

“I believe it will happen sooner rather than later,” said Farley Weiss.

Weiss said he based that assessment on several factors, including support from four prominent political leaders with access to classified information regarding the case. They are former Arizona Sen. Dennis DeConcini, former head of the Senate Intelligence Committee; former CIA director R. James Woolsey; Philip B. Heymann, former deputy attorney general under President Bill Clinton; and Clinton White House counsel Bernard Nussbaum.

Moreover, the movement to free the former naval intelligence analyst has picked up the support of hundreds of legislators, legal scholars, and a large segment of the Jewish community, said Weiss. (Earlier last month, Robert Wexler, a former Democratic congressman from Florida and one of Obama’s closest Jewish confidantes, urged the president to release Pollard.)

Pollard has served 26 years of a life sentence for passing classified materials to Israel, longer than anyone else convicted of espionage on behalf of a U.S. ally.

Weiss suggested that Obama could use a Pollard pardon to shore up his faltering support among Jews who are wary of his policies toward Israel.

“This is an era of political expediency and a lot of people think he will do it because it’s politically beneficial,” said Weiss. “There is no constituency opposing Pollard’s release. So when it’s in their political interest and also the right thing to do, eventually a politician will do it.”

Releasing Pollard would definitely make political sense, especially when Obama is being increasingly seen as anti-Israel by the Jewish community and as the Republicans are increasing their attacks on the president because of his Israel policies.

Syrian death toll over 5000!

From IRIN:

Twice as many people have allegedly been killed in Syria - since the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad began six months ago - than the current UN estimate, and three times the regime's official tally, according to new statistics from human rights researchers and opposition activists in Syria.

The report by Avaaz, the global campaign group and its partner Insan, a leading Syrian human rights organization, said over 5,300 people have been killed.

A team of 60 human rights researchers verified the names of 3,004 people killed in over 127 locations across Syria from 18 March to 9 September, while an additional 2,356 people were registered as dead, but have not yet been verified, the report said.

Each of the 3,004 recorded killings was triple-sourced in line with international protocols for recording casualties of conflict, by at least one family member and two other contacts, such as friends, community leaders, clerks or imams of mosques.

The other 2,356 names have been recorded as killed but Insan researchers have not yet been able to triple-source each case, as the deaths were either reported in the Syrian state media or the bodies were taken away following injury or death and later not acknowledged by the authorities.

The total figure of 5,360 people killed is roughly double the current figure of 2,600 given on 12 September by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, while Amnesty International has documented the deaths of 2,121 people, not including members of the security forces.

The government acknowledges only 1,400 casualties.

“We knew the official numbers were way below,” Avaaz’s Henrietta McMicking said. “The 3,004 names have been verified, while we know that the 2,356 additional people are definitely dead, but we have not been able to verify their names under our stringent criteria.”

The as yet unverified figure includes 308 names of people reported killed in Syrian state-run media, 674 names of military personnel the authorities have reported killed, and 1,374 names of people who have been reported dead, but whose bodies have never been found.