Nothing New Under The Sun?

In the Middle East and UN, ein chadash tachat hashemesh, there is nothing new under the sun. Yet, representatives of the Obama Administration have repeatedly made strong statements that this is not the case, including most notably, the one made by the President himself to the United Nations in 2009 about which I wrote here in commenting on this administration’s foreign policy decisions. You may remember President Obama’s words to the United Nations General Assembly:

The time has come to realize that the old habits, the old arguments are irrelevant to the challenges faced by our people.

Conclusions drawn from history and experience are often ignored in favor of the exploration by trial and error of new approaches or even previously tried and rejected ones. The belief that it is the Jews, and specifically the Jewish state, who are intractable in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process is exactly such a previously tried and rejected approach. Israel has agreed to final peace agreements at the negotiating table three times, since 1967. Three times!

1. With Egypt
2. With Jordan
3. With the Palestinians at Camp David

The Palestinians have never agreed to peace once, only to interruptions in violence for negotiations through which they might pursue gains that they were unable to obtain through violence. Current attempts to utilize the United Nations to obtain gains are the result of the failure of both violence and negotiations to advance the goal of eventually eradicating the Jewish state, the unrealized goal of the violence.

That reasonable people argue for the creation of a Palestinian state roughly along the 1967 borders has allowed the Palestinian leadership legitimacy in pursuit of a goal not limited to the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel, but in fact to pursue the destruction of Israel with the creation of a Palestinian state that substantially weakens Israel’s security and viability being a step in that direction.

This is why it is Israel’s security and not the borders of a future Palestinian state that must be discussed first. For those truly pursuing peace, the coexistence of the two states in peace and security must take precedence over the land which they control and it must be clear that all belligerent claims, much less actions, must end with whatever peace agreement is made.

As I wrote recently for We Are For Israel, American advocacy must support Israel in achieving this goal, in achieving security, opposing efforts in the UN advancing territorial claims by the Palestinians without negotiating a permanent peace.