By Isaac Yetiv, Ph.D
LA JOLLA, California — In his speech “to the Arab World,” delivered at the State Department (5-19-11), President Obama said that the boundaries between Israel and the future Palestinian state should be based “on the 1967 lines with agreed land swaps by both sides.” This shift of policy has stunned Israel and its supporters in the U.S., and the next day, at a press conference in the White House, P.M. Netanyahu,
with all due respect to his host, clearly declared that “this won’t happen, because it will leave Israel with indefensible borders and will endanger its security and survival.”
I hereby submit that Obama’s call for a return to the 67 borders is wrong, legally, morally, practically, and tactically. It is certainly not conducive to peace but rather inflames the Palestinians
and emboldens them to persist in their rejectionist policy that will inevitably lead to another war.
1) Legally: Lord Caradon, who was the architect of UN Security Council Resolution 242 that was unanimously adopted after the six-day war of 1967, made a strong point on the question of the future borders: he insisted that “it was wrong to demand that Israel return to its positions of June 4, 1967 because these positions are undesirable and artificial…” By the same token, he stood fast on another point related to the borders: while the Arabs demanded, in a heated discussion, that Israel withdraw “from the territories conquered in the war (which meant all territories), Lord Caradon insisted on removing the article the , leaving just “from territories” (meaning not all) with the final borders arrived at only “through negotiations.” Needless to say, Lord Caradon prevailed on both counts.
2) Morally: The six-day war was conceived and prepared by Gamal Abdel Nasser, the former dictator of Egypt, who trumpeted his malevolent desire to “annihilate Israel and throw the Jews into the sea” to avenge the defeats of 1948 and 1956 and redeem the Arab honor. Syria and Jordan joined the battle to share in the spoils of war. The stunning victory of Israel was seen by many as “a miracle.” Who in the world can muster the moral strength to ask Israel to return to that precarious and dangerous situation of the 67 borders — which Abba Eban, the former Israeli Foreign Minister, has called “the Auschwitz borders”– and to tempt an implacable enemy, who has never abandoned the idea of destroying the Jewish state, to try again? As Netanyahu said,”it won’t happen.”
3) Practically : With whom will Israel negotiate? The last so-called “unity agreement” between Fatah and Hamas has made negotiations, always thorny and difficult, now impossible. Even President Obama stressed the fact that Israel cannot, and will not, negotiate with a terrorist organization sworn to its destruction. These are the same Palestinians who danced in the streets and celebrated nine-eleven, who demonstrated against Obama for killing their “hero warrior Osama bin Laden, ” and who continue to launch rockets against civilian populations and kill babies in their cradles.As one historian said, ” When certain people elevate violence to a virtue, pursuing peace with them can be fatal.”
4)Tactically: Last year, Obama called on Israel to stop building in the settlements. Abbas’s reaction was to stop meeting with Israel, after he had done it 17 times without the pre-condition of building stoppage. Netanyahu agreed to a ten-month moratorium to allow Abbas to come to the table but Abbas refused to meet. Obama backed off from his demand to stop building but Abbas still
used it to explain his recalcitrance.”Even the president of the United States…,” he claims, “can I be less demanding ?” The same thing happened with Obama’s speech on the ‘ 67 borders. Even if he reneges on his declaration, or tries to amend it –at the Aipac conference, for example– Abbas will stick to it, and will continue to refuse to come to the table until he receices a pre-negotiation guarantee that Israel will return to the ‘ 67 borders. And that is Abbas, the so-called “moderate.” Forget Hamas, and Hizballah, and Ahmanidejad, and all-assorted Israel –and America– haters. |
One may ask why, for so many decades, more than a dozen American presidents and more than a dozen Israeli Prime Ministers, with their generous offers of peace, could not entice the Palestinians to see the reality, renounce their “cult of death,” and negotiate in good faith a compromise solution that will give them citizenship, sovereignty, and a better future for their children. It is because the world, especially the United States, never mustered the courage to tell them the truth. Through all this time, they led them to believe that no concession is required from them. It is time to change that, and the sooner the better.
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Yetiv is a freelance writer based in La Jolla. He may be contacted at isaac.yetiv@sdjewishworld.com