J Street’s Call to End Oslo

This week J Street sent out a petition to its membership urging them to sign on to a letter urging the Obama Administration as follows:

Mr. President — You have inspired me with your commitment to a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

I urge you to take the next step toward realizing that goal by focusing on a “Borders and Security First” approach to ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that moves beyond just talk towards tangible progress in defining and implementing a two-state solution.

My good friend, Rabbi Micky Boyden from Hod Hasharon, Israel, gave an excellent response to the petition on the We Are For Israel website here. However, he did not comment on J Street’s full policy position upon which this petition is based. This plea to the President is based upon J Street’s misguided policy, found here, in which J Street calls for the United States to impose a solution on borders and security!!! The J Street policy document argues that the two sides must meet their “internationally recognized obligations,” a term by which they seem to mean all prior negotiations and potentially include UN resolutions (they do not explicitly exclude them for certain):

However, the time has come for the United States to put forward a proposal to establish a border and security arrangements.  With a border established, there will be no further need to negotiate over settlement construction. Both Israel and the Palestinians will be able to build where they please within their borders and not beyond.

This is both naive and harmful. It is irresponsible for those who desire peace to go in this direction. In essence, the US would have to

1. Insist on the 1967 lines with some minor territorial changes,
2. Create an international zone in Jerusalem that only the US could possibly police for the indefinite future and could not possibly wish to do so,
3. Ratify Israeli control over territory that the UN doesn’t recognize and the Arab world would vehemently, if not violently, oppose, or
4. Do all three of the the above.

J Street’s position here would result in the complete collapse of the peace process and potentially the Palestinian Authority itself. Functionally, J Street calling for an end to Oslo. Some of us might not like Oslo. Some among us may say that bringing the PLO back was a bad idea. However, I cannot imagine that J Street itself would wish to end Oslo and collapse the Palestinian Authority. They keep arguing how wonderful Abbas is? See here. Yet J Street’s policy would bring about just that end:

• The end of the Oslo process,
• Potentially the collapse of the Palestinian Authority,
• A new intifada, this time against the United States as well as Israel (the US would have sided with Israel in granting Israel more than the 1967 border as such and in not granting all of pre-1967 Jerusalem to the Palestinians), and
• No gains on the peace front either between Israel and the Palestinians, Israel and the Arab world, or the US and the Arab world. Things might even significantly worsen because the United States would take a position opposed by the Arab world and even by the broader Muslim world.

What would the Palestinians and broader Arab world say if the United States proposed to allow Israel to control the Old City? What would the Arab world say if the United States proposed to control the Old City itself? Can you imagine the conflicts in law that would occur between US law, international law, Sharia and the Halakhah over the holy sites? Are you kidding me??? The last foreign power that tried to govern these sites, Britain during the Mandatory Period, was attacked by both Jews and Arabs. I cannot imagine that this solution would prove to be any different. If Amir was willing to kill Rabin, how many crazies would carry out attacks against US soldiers? How many Hamas attacks, especially now that Hamas is allied with Iran, would take place? How many more Muslim radicals would target Americans around the world? For the US to grant Israel control over the Old City or to claim control over the Old City itself would be an utter nightmare and would destroy US-Israel relations as well as significantly harm US-Arab and US-Muslim relations. To call this a horrible policy would not begin to scratch the surface.

I assume to this point that the US would not simply grant the Palestinians control over the Old City, but let us assume that such an idea were to be proposed by the US. A US proposal that removed access to the Jewish holy sites in the Old City or in any way restricted them would likely end discussions between the US and Israel until a President more favorable to Israeli control of those sites took office. Should the US try to force through a solution in the UN that is opposed by Israel, it would destroy the US-Israel relationship and would do so with limited or no political gain. Would Saudi Arabia be a closer ally of America if America went that route? No. Would Egypt? No. Jordan? No. So why even consider it?

J Street makes sure to exclude the Old City from these initial border discussions probably because of the very problems discussed above, but if one must resort to settling the far easier disagreement through US intervention, surely the Old City and the holiest sites must be addressed that way as well, namely through an imposed solution.

Should the Obama Administration go this route, it will not only fail to bring peace but will wreak havoc in the region. The US would be far better off letting go of the peace process entirely, totally ignoring it, rather than going this route. J Street’s policy here is terrible in the extreme.