Oslo Accords

As far as I can tell from a cursory examination the Oslo Accords were only intended to last 5 years and are now null and void because no one lived up to them....

....so it's a complete disgrace that someone as dishonest as you is allowed to post at all.

So I clicked MJ's link. The first thing expropriators do when confronted is to make the big accusation.

I hope he's got good security over there.

I think the settler-apologists understand America's two-party system well enough. Like AARP, NRA, Right-to-life, and any other successful special interest group (but without the legitimacy of being domestic since they represent foreigners) they shovel money to both sides of the aisle. (This partly explains why they can repeatedly and readily get 98% of Congress to sign off on ridiculous claims, for example, that Israel was "defending itself" by massacring Gazan children earlier this year.)

They no doubt also understand very well the saying: "get it in writing."

Where they have difficulty is in grasping the fundamental incompatibility of incessant bigotry and pathological hypocrisy with civilization. Due to their hardwired bias, they actually believe that Israel can do no wrong ever, that any wrong it does must be something every other country does even more more wrong (they also believe two wrongs make a right), and that Israel can therefore simultaneously act like a rogue state and terrorist gang (e.g. Gaza in January) and yet be just as much the democratic underdog victim today as it (to a considerable extent actually) was in the 1940s and '50s.

Even the intellectually challenged U.S. Congress
appreciates privately that this is absurd. Probably Netanyahu himself realizes that it is not sustainable long term. Politicians focused on the next election cycle nonetheless make the cynically pragmatic choice of coddling the lunatic fringe, because the sane majority has been ignorant, apathetic or cowed for decades. THAT, thanks to the Obama adminisration, J-Street, etc. is finally starting to change.

For an excellent longer term and international perspective, see also Roger Cohen's astute column in today's NY Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/04/opinion/04iht-edcohen.html/

That's one of many problems with the Bush syndicate. All their business dealings are executed quietly, behind the veil of a carefully engineered cover story.

The Israeli government needs to wake up fast. To the Bush syndicate, they are just another crony. And Bush cronies who don't keep secrets find themselves outside the circle in a hurry.

Israeli Government Says Obama Is Not Living Up To Bush's Commitment On Settlements!!!

Obama is not lying down for committments Bush made on any front. 9 out of 10 times, they were the wrong thing to do!

The elementary problem is -- and all concerned should have recognized this -- the land of the West Bank was never Bush's to essentially give away. There is absolutely nothing in international law or recognized past agreements that provides for the President of the United States to parcel out land from the late Palestine Mandate.

What does exist is the 1948 UN agreed division of the land, creating Israel, followed by UN resolutions following the 1967 war that recognize the pre-1967 war boundaries, and require Israel to give up land conquered in that war. Unless a new agreement is openly registered with the internationally agreed depository, the UN, in the normal way -- a process agreed to with the founding of the UN, and to which Israel agreed when it joined the international organization -- there is simply no valid agreement.

A two state solution (something I don't necessarily believe appropriate, but am willing to see it given a go), would require the actual founding of a Palestinian State, followed by normal international recognition. This can only be accomplished if both states are willing to demarcate their borders -- and Israel has never been willing to do this. We don't really know whether a Palestinian State that would be willing to accept international borders could be created, as they have never been fully empowered to try. But legitimacy of any land-borders agreement is tied to first, the founding of the second state, and second, the mutual survey work between the two parties that result in a map with lines, that competent authorities can sign, and submit for international recognition.

It is really important to go back to basics when discussing this, and remember we have invested much in what is called International Law and broadly accepted international proceedures, and these have been properly sent to the US Senate in the form of treaties, and agreed to, making them under our constitution US Law, on a par with all other US Statutes. One has to look at Bush's secret agreements to give away land that was not his to "give away" in this framework.

It is true that new administrations can reverse the policies of previous administrations. However, it is done far less and far more carefully in foreign policy, and, especially on an issue like the Middle East.

Even if Obama's real aim is to bring in a more accomodating Israeli government, ask yourselves what the absolute non-natural growth policy means...what Israeli leadership would agree not to build or re-build anything in the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem's old city, or to agree that the Western Wall is "occupied territory"? That is what the administration seems to mean by no "natural growth" beyond the 1949 cease-fire lines.

Repudiating a written statement of policy from one head of state to another is a particularly serious matter. Have a look at what President Bush wrote in his letter to Sharon in 2004....

"In light of new realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli populations centers, it is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949, and all previous efforts to negotiate a two-state solution have reached the same conclusion. It is realistic to expect that any final status agreement will only be achieved on the basis of mutually agreed changes that reflect these realities."

If the above statement to an American ally can be repudiated, the Israelis might wonder what else they can no longer count on, and what good would future Presidential statements or letters of policy be.

PS: Note also the use of the pharse "armistice lines of 1949." It is more accurate than the oft-used term 1967 Borders. The lines of June 4, 1967 were never considered borders by either Israel or the Arab states. They were the lines established in the cease fire negotiations of 1949. Borders were to be established as part of a peace agreement.

>O R Dinary

We are a world-wide, fast-growing, conservative Jewish family, in NY, LA, Paris and London, which includes Barak Obama, who reject absolutely the killing of all civilians - particularly children and their mothers. We define those who take life, except in genuine self-defence, as no different to those who took life on 9/11. Wearing a uniform of the IDF or any other militia, does in no way lessen the crime. Nor does brain-washing of young, impressionable men and women.

The killings in Gaza and the Lebanon were an aberration that we, and Jews throughout the Diaspora, condemn outright.

Mad As Hell,

You might want to have a look at the Bush letter of 2004, from which I quoted.

BTW, do you think the Jewish Quarter of the Old City and the Western Wall are "occupied territory?" If you do, I don't think you will be happy with the way things will materialize

Lost in all the whining by Likudniks here is any rational explation of why it's okay for Israel to colonize the West Bank. The problem isn't that Obama is talking about it. The problem is the settlers.

Obama is doing nothing but stating the obvious. But after decaudes of the ridiculously incestuous relationship between the U.S. and Israel, the obvious apparently strikes Israelis as a shocking revelation.

Fact: Israelis are slowly and consciously colonizing the West Bank with the intention of keeping it. Anyone with eyeballs and grey matter between their ears knows this. How long are we supposed to continue insisting that the emperor is wearing clothes?

Fact: This settlment activity isn't in the interests of the United States.

Fact: Obama is just speaking these obvious truths aloud.

The fact that the settler movement and its boosters need to operate in an atmosphere of distortion and disception at all times is an indicator of the flimsiness of their underlying moral position.

America will align our policies with those who pursue peace, and we will say in public what we say in private to Israelis and Palestinians and Arabs

Well it hasn't taken long for the old tired anti-semite ruse .

Seems to me Obama will not be pushed on this issue.
And there is no doubt his life experiences contribute to his views here.
bush the madman cared little about killing people and israel has shown the same disregard for lifein gaza. (UN war crimes investigations are heating up)

Obama brings this issue and the israeli position to the light.
The entire world is watching.

Even treasonous congresswomen/men, wont change the course of events that are about to unfold.

While Ordinary wants to dismiss International Law and just make it up as he goes along, much the way Bush and Cheney did with the Geneva Torture Conventions which are also treaties, and thus is US Law as provided for by the US Constitution -- I suspect that Obama is going to be centered on the these existing laws and guided by them. (so I will not spare him the implications of International Law and his non-strict constructionist constitutional problems.)

I use the 67 borders because I believe it could be argued that UN Resolutions 242 and 348 recognized these -- even though the process of actually demarcating borders, proper authorities agreeing on them, and then depositing them with the UN as the basis for international recognition was skipped over.

I believe it would be perfectly possible for a US President to agree to support some changes in those 67 borders, but only if they represented a negotiated border agreement between the two parties -- and before that would be possible, there would need to be a Palestinian State that could be recognized both by Israel and all other international states as the legitimate authority, authorized by the Palestinian Citizens to negotiate in their name. Sans a Palestinian State absolutely nothing legitimate can transpire. The current Likud rejectionist stand thus is a profound barrier to progress, and needs to be understood this way.

As I said in my first post (and in many others here over the years) I am not really a fan of a two state solution. I believe from the get-go not enough consideration was given to the construct of a bi-national state, along the lines of the Swiss Canton system (three religions, four languages), as a permanent solution, and if one cannot get to "yes" in moving the process forward to a two-state solution, a new and serious look at the concept of bi-nationalism ought to be taken. It just might be that if the notion is seriously studied and discussed, there would be a much stronger motivation to progress toward a two-state structure. But on the otherhand, serious consideration of bi-nationalism might be very appealing.