Thursday, May 19, 2011

Obama Calls for "Pre-1967 Borders"

If anything confirmed my suspicions about Obama's anti-Israel stance, his foreign policy speech today did the trick.  Obama explicitly called for "pre-1967 borders" when he said that "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."  Why is this declaration problematic?
  • The pre-1967 borders to which the media refers frequently were not borders at all.  They were armistice lines.  Armistice lines are ceasefire lines that serve as an interim agreement while more permanent agreements are being established.  Armistice lines are never considered to have any geopolitical value, which means they have no bearing in establishing nation-states.
  • Last time I checked, to the victor goes the spoils.  If you win a war, you are entitled to the land acquired.  This is how warfare has been fought throughout history.  This is one of the only times we have expected a victor to give up any land.  Even so, Israel gave up the Sinai Peninsula, which was a considerable amount of land that Israel won in the 1967 war.  Israel even tried giving the Gaza Strip to Egypt, but Egypt didn't want it!
  • UN Resolution 242 does not call for Israel to relinquish all the acquired land from the Six-Day War.  The controversial part of this UN Resolution is the call for "withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict."  Anti-Zionists take this to mean that Israel should give up everything it gained.  This was actually a huge debate amongst those drafting up the resolution.  The Russians, as well as the Arabs, wanted the Israelis to withdraw from all the land acquired.  However, the word was taken out of the resolution, thus creating the ambiguity.  Those who drafted the resolution, including Lord Caradon, said that it was not meant to refer to all of the territories. 
  • Palestinian nationalism didn't even come into fruition until after the Six Day War.  As such, these armistice lines have no bearing on "Palestine," only for Egypt, Jordan, and Syria.
  • As I have stated before, the obstacle to peace has nothing to do with land.  If the Palestinians wanted land for themselves, their Arab brothers could have given them plenty of land, especially since Israel is less than one percent of the Middle East.  This does, however, have plenty to do with hatred of the Jews.
  • From an Israeli perspective, this would be disaster for Israel, particularly if they had to give up the Golan Heights.  Not only did that acquisition provide much water resources (which Israel desperately needs to begin with), but the Golan Heights provides Israel with a militaristic advantage.  Asking Israel to give that up would be tantamount to nationalistic suicide.
  • Between the recent alliance of Hamas and Fatah and the attempt by Abbas to get UN recognition this upcoming September, it makes it perfectly clear where Obama stands: with the Palestinians.  Today's speech is nothing more than another example of how one-sided Obama is on the Israeli-Palestinian issue.  He is always going to castigate Israel while expecting nothing from the Palestinians.  That is the Middle East policy of Obama.  It is the most anti-Israel of all policies ever espoused by any American president, and will most certainly not bring any peace to the region.  Let's hope that Netanyahu is able to stand up to Obama.     

2 comments:

  1. First time commenting, but Steve, what do you believe the U.S. governments role in this should be? In my opinion, it would be good for the U.S. government to stay neutral in this.

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  2. This was a good question, and I am glad that you did comment, TheEdge......hope to see more questions like this in the future. America has a highly interventionalist foreign policy. Because it feels that it's national interests are in every region in the world, American naturally feels that it has to police the entire world. Since Israel is the only truly democratic nation-state in the region, America is invested in the longevity of Israel for regional stability, and rightly so. However, I would contend that the United States should not be involved in the peace-making process. America might have foreign policy specialists, but Israel and Palastine are the ones that have to live with the ramifications of the foreign policy choices, so it shouldn't be the United States or the United Nations figuring it out; they should be the ones doing so.

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