May 29, 2015
Dear Jeffrey Goldberg,
In my letter of May 27 I referred to my belief that much of the President Obama’s views about Israel result from misinformed reports about Israel and in particular misquoted reports about what Netanyahu has said.
Consequences and Jerusalem
You wrote:
“Obama issued a warning to Israel: If it proves unwilling to live up to its values—in this case, he made specific mention of Netanyahu’s seemingly flawed understanding of the role Israel’s Arab citizens play in its democratic order—the consequences could be profound“.
In view of the president’s warning that words have consequences, it is relevant to ask what he considers the consequences should be of his own words. For example his unambiguous declaration that Jerusalem will be the undivided capital of Israel.
According to NY Times of September 5, 2012 the president hadn’t changed the views he expressed in 2008 calling for an undivided Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, which views can be viewed clearly here
A Palestinian state
Much as you and I are anxious to see a two state solution in which Palestinians and Israelis live side by side in peace and security, neither of us can seriously believe that these conditions are feasible for so long as the pact between the PA and Hamas exists or until Hamas, an offshoot of the Moslem brotherhood, changes its attitude. Although he did not then speaak of consequences to Hamas, Obama recognized this difficulty in a May 2011 speech during which he said;
“The recent announcement of an agreement between Fatah and Hamas raises profound and legitimate questions for Israel — how can one negotiate with a party that has shown itself unwilling to recognize your right to exist..In the weeks and months to come, Palestinian leaders will have to provide a credible answer to that question.”
As you know Hamas leaders, who challenge Abbas’ leadership and his right to speak on their behalf have repeatedly rejected any form of coexistence with Israel as confirmed for example by Hamas chief Khaled Mashal to Charlie Rose
Article 13 of the Hamas charter states unambiguously
“There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavors.. ” (The Avalon Project)
Moving the goal posts and 242
Perhaps you could have reminded the president that he has made the achievement of a peaceful settlement more difficult by moving the goal posts entrenched in SC resolution 242 which is still valid and in the Oslo accords. In neither case is there a call for returning to the 1967 lines. In a departure from the accepted view that Israel will retain major settlements blocks as clearly spelled out in Rabin’s last speech before his tragic assassination President Obama said in the May 2011 speech
“We believe the borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps, so that secure and recognized borders are established for both states”.
If you examine the prelude to the 1967 war and the casus belli, you cannot come to any other conclusion than secure borders and returning to the 1967 lines are incompatible. But this change in US policy has encouraged President Abbas to nevertheless demand an unconditional return to those lines. On October. 11, 2013 Ma’an news Agency reported that Abbas said he will not compromise on the 1967 borders as the borders for the Palestinian state and that there is no peace without Jerusalem [not just East Jerusalem] as the capital for the state of Palestine.
Much has been written about the implications of resolution 242 and if we are to avoid the distortions introduced by propagandists, obviously, the most reliable source from whom to seek clarification are the persons who drafted it. Both British Ambassador to the UN in 1967, Lord Caradon, and American Ambassador, Arthur Goldberg, deliberately omitted a demand for Israel to return to the pre-1967 borders. In an interview in the Beirut Daily Star on June 12, 1974, Lord Caradon stated:
“It would have been wrong to demand that Israel return to its positions of June 4, 1967 because these positions were undesirable and artificial. After all, they were just the places where the soldiers on each side happened to be on the day the fighting stopped in 1948. They were just armistice lines. That’s why we didn’t demand that the Israelis return to them, and I think we were right not to.”
See articles by Eugene Rostow and Dealing with post-disengagement pressures
