The Peace Process Is an Obstacle to Peace
And it always has been, because its premises are falseU.S. Investment in - not Foreign Aid to - Israel
This Palestinian demand is in fact an assault on the sovereignty of the Jewish state and thus part of the century-old campaign against Zionism. It asserts that Israel should not be allowed to exercise the fundamental, indeed defining, prerogative of sovereignty—the control of its own borders. It would also deny to Israel another sovereign prerogative, deciding who has the right to citizenship. By flooding the country with people hostile to it, finally, the result of implementing the Palestinian “right of return” would be the destruction of Israel, which is surely the reason that the Palestinians insist on it.
In peace-process orthodoxy, the “refugee problem” is classified as one of the “final status” issues—problems so difficult that they can be addressed only after all the easier ones have been resolved. In fact, the insistence on a “right of return” assures that negotiations will fail, and thus should not be started in the first place, because they amount to the Palestinian insistence on achieving what is not negotiable: Israel’s disappearance.
If and when the Palestinians do signal their acceptance of Israel by abandoning this claim, it will become possible to address the issues that do require negotiation: the border between Israel and a Palestinian state, which may well require uprooting some Jewish settlements to the east of Israel’s eastern border of 1967, and the disposition of military forces between the new border and the Jordan River. As long, however, as the Palestinians make clear, by asserting their “right of return,” that they refuse to live peacefully side by side with a Jewish state, negotiations are at best a waste of time and at worst a way of perpetuating the conflict by encouraging the Palestinians to persist in their goal of eliminating Israel.
To be sure, the two necessary changes to the American approach to the peace process will not, in and of themselves, bring peace. Only the abandonment of the fundamental Palestinian attitude to Israel can do that; and the United States does not have the power to transform that attitude. The changes would, however, have desirable consequences. They would discourage the strategy of delegitimation by making it clear that the United States rejects the strategy’s premises, which would in turn reduce, although not eliminate, the constituency for that strategy in the United States and in the place where it is most popular, Europe. Reducing support for it would send to the Palestinians the message that, like a frontal military assault and terrorism, delegitimation will not succeed in destroying Israel. The two changes would also improve the moral tone of American foreign policy. Telling the truth about the Israeli–Palestinian conflict would affirm American support for international law, democracy, the peaceful resolution of international disputes, and the principle of equal rights for all peoples. It would also affirm American opposition to aggression and terrorism. It would, that is, put the United States—to use a term favored by recent administrations—on the right side of history.
Israel is no longer a supplicant – as it was in its early years of independence – transformed from a net-national security and economic consumer to a net-national security and economic producer, generating substantial military and commercial dividends to the U.S., which exceed the highly appreciated $3.1 billion annual investment in Israel by the U.S.Ben-Dror Yemini: An Israeli initiative is needed now
The annual U.S. investment in Israel – erroneously defined as "foreign aid" (Foreign Military Financing) – has yielded one of the highest rates of return on U.S. investments overseas. But, Israel is neither "foreign" nor does it receive "aid."
A Partnership
From a one-way street relationship, the U.S.-Israel connection has evolved into an exceptionally productive two- way mutually beneficial alliance. The U.S. is the senior partner, and Israel the junior partner, in a win-win, geo-strategic partnership, which transcends the 68-year-old tension between all American presidents (from Truman through Obama) and Israeli prime ministers (from Ben Gurion through Netanyahu) over the Arab-Israeli conflict and the Palestinian issue.
According to the former Supreme Commander of NATO forces and Secretary of State, the late General Alexander Haig: "Israel constitutes the largest U.S. aircraft carrier, which does not require a single U.S. boot on board, cannot be sunk, deployed in a most critical region to the U.S. economy and national security. And, if there were no Israel in the eastern flank of the Mediterranean, the U.S. would have to deploy to the region a few more real aircraft carriers and tens of thousands of troops, which would have cost the U.S. taxpayer some $15 billion annually. All of which is spared by the existence of Israel."
Israel has been the most cost-effective, battle-tested laboratory of U.S. defense industries; the most reliable and practical beachhead/outpost of the U.S. defense forces; sharing with the U.S. unique intelligence, battle experience, and battle tactics. Thus, Israel extends the U.S. strategic hand at a time when the Pentagon is experiencing draconian cuts in its defense budget, curtailing the size of its military force and the global deployment of troops, while facing tough international industrial-defense competition and dramatically intensified threats of Islamic terrorism overseas and on the U.S. mainland.
Fighting BDS is a right and good thing to do, but we can’t do it by merely reacting: Israel needs to be proactive in offering solutions.
The Washington lawyer and the IDF officer are both correct. The struggle against the anti-Israeli campaign on US campuses isn’t simple. The claims against Israel sound reasonable because there’s a perception that Israel isn’t doing anything. I’ve spoken in campuses in recent weeks, as well as in synagogues and community centers. I’ve listened to the various voices, including the worried ones. It’s not enough to say that the Palestinians have rejected every peace proposal so far and that and Israeli withdrawal could make things worse.
That’s all true, but it doesn’t counteract the tough queries. It wouldn’t be a mistake to say that 90 percent of US Jews have a hard time understanding the logic in the continued settlement project. And I’m talking about pro-Israel activists here.
The government’s determination in dealing with the anti-Israel campaign is a step in the right direction but PR alone, with all due respect, has a limited scope of influence. We need policy too. We need a show of good will.
The government has allocated NIS 100 million to combating the anti-Israel campaign, but that’s not very much at all. An Israeli initiative would cost $10 billion at least. Why the heck does the Prime Minister of Israel not understand what Israel’s supporters around the world understand very well? Why does he insist one doing nothing?
Why does he insist on helping the BDS movement?