281 Iran won't nuke Israel: it would kill Palestinians & destroy Jerusalem - Yousef Munayyer

(1) Iran won't nuke Israel: it would kill Palestinians & destroy Jerusalem - Yousef Munayyer
(2) But Israeli should be allowed a preemptive strike against Iran - Benny Morris
(3) More Hype About Iran? - Stephen M. Walt
(4) The Holocaust won't protect Israel forever - Israel will be judged by its deeds
(5) Bad Faith in the Holy City
(6) Response to Elie Wiesel: Arabs can't build "anywhere" but are evicted from their homes

(1) Iran won't nuke Israel: it would kill Palestinians & destroy Jerusalem - Yousef Munayyer
From: Sadanand, Nanjundiah (Physics Earth Sciences) <sadanand@mail.ccsu.edu> Date: 22.04.2010 04:38 PM

Why Iran won't attack Israel

21 April 2010

 By Yousef Munayyer

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oew-0421-munayyer-20100421,0,7413579.story

This appeared today in the Los Angeles Times and is a response to a column written by Benny Morris that was published in the Los Angeles Times on 16 April 2010.

Palestinians are in Israel today because they managed to survive the depopulation of 1948, the year the Jewish state was founded (Arabs constitute about 20% of Israel's population). Ironically, while Benny Morris' scholarship suggests that the mere existence of these Palestinians in Israel -- and millions more in the occupied territories -- irks him, Israel's substantial Arab population also blows a hole in his argument about the need to deal with the supposed Iranian nuclear threat. <http://articles.latimes.com/2010/apr/16/opinion/la-oe-morris16-2010apr16>

Morris is part of an increasingly vociferous chorus warning of an impending apocalypse for Israel at the hands of a nuclear Iran eager to rid the Middle East of its Jews. Yet Iran's religious leaders have repeatedly stated that such weapons are "un-Islamic" or "forbidden under Islam."

Morris' role in our understanding of the region's history is confounding. Arguably, no one played a more central role in exposing Israel's role in the depopulation of Palestinians from their homeland than Morris. In his seminal work, "The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem," Morris, using declassified military documents, exposed the calculated effort by early Israeli leaders to impose a Jewish majority through ethnic cleansing.

Long considered a champion of modern Israeli historians who sought to shed light on the ugly side of Israel's birth, Morris shocked many Israelis and Palestinians alike when he later changed course. To Morris, the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians was no longer the problem at the heart of the conflict; in fact, he suggested that the problem was that Israel didn't finish the job in 1948.

Morris said in a 2004 interview "Under some circumstances expulsion is not a war crime. I don't think that the expulsions of 1948 were war crimes. You can't make an omelet without breaking eggs. You have to dirty your hands."

Morris added later in the interview that if Israel's first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, "was already engaged in expulsion, maybe he should have done a complete job. ... If he had carried out a full expulsion - rather than a partial one - he would have stabilized the state of Israel for generations."

Yet the pesky Palestinian minority Morris wishes had been expelled decades ago serves as a deterrent from a nuclear-armed Iran, should the Islamic Republic ever build nuclear weapons and consider using them on Israel. The fact that Arab Israelis were among the casualties of the 2006 war with Hezbollah speaks to the reality that no nuclear attack on Israel could happen without the deaths of countless Palestinians and Israelis, not to mention the likely destruction of Jerusalem, the third holiest site in Islam.

The reality of Palestinian casualties, the destruction of Jerusalem, the onset of regional war and the immediate destruction of Iran's regime as a result of a multilateral conventional or even nuclear counterattack all serve as a credible deterrent to a nuclear Iran. The Iranian leadership has shown a demonstrable interest in self-preservation

The alarmism espoused by Morris and company isn't grounded in reality. Rather - just as with Iraq, Syria and now Iran - Israel constantly needs an enemy that it says threatens its existence. Otherwise the Jewish state would have a harder time maintaining its overwhelming military supremacy in the region and continuously changing the subject from resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to practically anything else.

The ideology at the foundation of the state of Israel and the very justification for its existence requires the existence of apocalyptic anti-Semitic forces with the intent and capability to annihilate. Without these boogeymen, whether it is Saddam Hussein, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or Arabs who "want to push Israel into the sea," the state of Israel ceases to have any justification for the maintenance of a Jewish majority by force or for its ongoing occupation of Palestinian lands.

The fact that Benjamin Netanyahu, the pro-colonization Israeli prime minister, has made every effort to connect the idea of a nuclear Iran to the Holocaust is evidence of this scare-mongering. Iran, like Iraq in 2003, is an inflated but necessary fear for Israel. No credible analysis of the situation envisions a scenario in which Iran would use nuclear weapons against the Jewish state. But proponents of Israel's colonial enterprise, who support maintaining a Jewish majority by the force of walls and soldiers in occupied territory, want everyone to believe that the focus should be on Iran, not on the occupation, and that Israel's security policies are justifiable against "existential threats."

The need for these inflated threats has increased in the years since Israel signed peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan. Despite these agreements, Israel still maintains and furthers its occupation of Palestinian lands through blockade and settlement expansion.

The emperor may be naked in Tel Aviv, but he can continue avoiding attention and shame if he persuades the world to look in Tehran's direction instead.

Yousef Munayyer is Executive Director of the Palestine Center

(2) But Israeli should be allowed a preemptive strike against Iran - Benny Morris

When Armageddon lives next door

Obama is denying Israel the right to self-defense when it is not his, or America's, life that is on the line.

April 16, 2010 | By Benny Morris

http://articles.latimes.com/2010/apr/16/opinion/la-oe-morris16-2010apr16

I take it personally: Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, wants to murder me, my family and my people. Day in, day out, he announces the imminent demise of the "Zionist regime," by which he means Israel. And day in, day out, his scientists and technicians are advancing toward the atomic weaponry that will enable him to bring this about.

The Jews of Europe (and Poles, Russians, Czechs, the French, etc.) should likewise have taken personally Adolf Hitler's threats and his serial defiance of the international community from 1933 to 1939. But he was allowed, by the major powers and the League of Nations, to flex his muscles, rearm, remilitarize the Rhineland and then gobble up neighboring countries. Had he been stopped before the invasion of Poland and the start of World War II, the lives of many millions, Jews and Gentiles, would have been saved. But he wasn't.

And it doesn't look like Ahmadinejad will be either. Not by the United States and the international community, at any rate. President Obama, when not obsessing over the fate of the ever- aggrieved Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, proposes to halt Ahmadinejad's nuclear program by means of international sanctions. But here's the paradox: The wider Obama casts his net to mobilize as many of the world's key players as he can, the weaker the sanctions and the more remote their implementation. China, it appears, will only agree to a U.N. Security Council resolution if the sanctions are diluted to the point of meaninglessness (and maybe not even then). The same appears to apply to the Russians. Meanwhile, Iran advances toward the bomb. Most of the world's intelligence agencies believe that it is only one to three years away.

Perhaps Obama hopes to unilaterally implement far more biting American (and, perhaps, European) sanctions. But if China and Russia (and some European Union members) don't play ball, the sanctions will remain ineffective. And Iran will continue on its deadly course.

At the end of 2007, the U.S. intelligence community, driven by wishful thinking, expediency and incompetence, announced that the Iranians had in 2003 halted the weaponization part of their nuclear program. Last week, Obama explicitly contradicted that assessment. At least the American administration now publicly acknowledges where it is the Iranians are headed, while not yet acknowledging what it is they are after -- primarily Israel's destruction.

Granted, Obama has indeed tried to mobilize the international community for sanctions. But it has been a hopeless task, given the selfishness and shortsightedness of governments and peoples. Sanctions were supposed to kick in in autumn 2009; then it was December; now it is sometime late this year. Obama is still pushing the rock up the hill -- and Ahmadinejad, understandably, has taken to publicly scoffing at the West and its "sanctions."

He does this because he knows that sanctions, if they are ever passed, are likely to be toothless, and because the American military option has been removed from the table. Obama and Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates -- driven by a military that feels overstretched in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq and a public that has no stomach for more war -- have made this last point crystal clear.

But at the same time, Obama insists that Israel may not launch a preemptive military strike of its own. Give sanctions a chance, he says. (Last year he argued that diplomacy and "engagement" with Tehran should be given a chance. Tehran wasn't impressed then and isn't impressed now.) The problem is that even if severe sanctions are imposed, they likely won't have time to have serious effect before Iran succeeds at making a bomb.

Obama is, no doubt, well aware of this asymmetric timetable. Which makes his prohibition against an Israeli preemptive strike all the more immoral. He knows that any sanctions he manages to orchestrate will not stop the Iranians. (Indeed, Ahmadinejad last week said sanctions would only fortify Iran's resolve and consolidate its technological prowess.) Obama is effectively denying Israel the right to self-defense when it is not his, or America's, life that is on the line.

Perhaps Obama has privately resigned himself to Iran's nuclear ambitions and believes, or hopes, that deterrence will prevent Tehran from unleashing its nuclear arsenal. But what if deterrence won't do the trick? What if the mullahs, believing they are carrying out Allah's will and enjoy divine protection, are undeterred?

The American veto may ultimately consign millions of Israelis, including me and my family, to a premature death and Israel to politicide. It would then be comparable to Britain and France's veto in the fall of 1938 of the Czechs defending their territorial integrity against their rapacious Nazi neighbors. Within six months, Czechoslovakia was gobbled up by Germany.

But will Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu follow in Czech President Edvard Benes' footsteps? Will he allow an American veto to override Israel's existential interests? And can Israel go it alone, without an American green (or even yellow) light, without American political cover and overflight permissions and additional American equipment? Much depends on what the Israeli military and intelligence chiefs believe their forces -- air force, navy, commandos -- can achieve. Full destruction of the Iranian nuclear project? A long-term delay? And on how they view Israel's ability (with or without U.S. support) to weather the reaction from Iran and its proxies, Hezbollah, Hamas and Syria.

An Israeli attack might harm U.S. interests and disrupt international oil supplies (though I doubt it would cause direct attacks on U.S. installations, troops or vessels). But, from the Israeli perspective, these are necessarily marginal considerations when compared with the mortal hurt Israel and Israelis would suffer from an Iranian nuclear attack. Netanyahu's calculations will, in the end, be governed by his perception of Israel's existential imperatives. And the clock is ticking.

Benny Morris is the author of many books about the Middle East conflict, including, most recently, "1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War."

(3) More Hype About Iran? - Stephen M. Walt

From: Graham Jukes <grahamjukes@blueyonder.co.uk> Date: 22.04.2010 07:38 PM

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article25279.htm

More Hype About Iran?

By Stephen M. Walt

April 21, 2010 "Foreign Policy" --  Back when I started writing this blog, I warned that the idea of preventive war against Iran wasn't going to go away just because Barack Obama was president. The topic got another little burst of oxygen over the past few days, in response to what seems to have been an over-hyped memorandum from Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and some remarks by the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, Adm. Michael Mullen, following a speech at Columbia University. In particular, Mullen noted that military action against Iran could "go a long way" toward delaying Iran's acquisition of a weapons capability, though he also noted this could only be a "last resort" and made it clear it was not an option he favored. 

One of the more remarkable features about the endless drumbeat of alarm about Iran is that it pays virtually no attention to Iran's actual capabilities, and rests on all sorts of worst case assumptions about Iranian behavior. Consider the following facts, most of them courtesy of the 2010 edition of The Military Balance, published annually by the prestigious International Institute for Strategic Studies in London:

GDP: United States -- 13.8 trillion
Iran --$ 359 billion  (U.S. GDP is roughly 38 times greater than Iran's)

Defense spending (2008):
U.S. -- $692 billion
Iran -- $9.6 billion (U.S. defense budget is over 70 times larger than Iran)

Military personnel:
U.S.--1,580,255 active; 864,547 reserves (very well trained)
Iran--   525,000 active; 350,000 reserves (poorly trained)

Combat aircraft:
U.S. -- 4,090 (includes USAF, USN, USMC and reserves)
Iran -- 312 (serviceability questionable)

Main battle tanks:
U.S. -- 6,251 (Army + Marine Corps)
Iran -- 1,613 (serviceability questionable)

Navy:
U.S. -- 11 aircraft carriers, 99 principal surface combatants, 71 submarines, 160 patrol boats, plus large auxiliary fleet
Iran -- 6 principal surface combatants, 10 submarines, 146 patrol boats

Nuclear weapons: 
U.S. -- 2,702 deployed, >6,000 in reserve
Iran -- Zero

One might add that Iran hasn't invaded anyone since the Islamic revolution, although it has supported a number of terrorist organizations and engaged in various forms of covert action.  The United States has also backed terrorist groups and conducted covert ops during this same period, and attacked a number of other countries, including Panama, Grenada, Serbia, Sudan, Somalia, Iraq (twice), and Afghanistan.

By any objective measure, therefore, Iran isn't even on the same page with the United States in terms of latent power, deployed capabilities, or the willingness to use them. Indeed, Iran is significantly weaker than Israel, which has roughly the same toal of regular plus reserve military personnel and vastly superior training. Israel also has more numerous and modern armored and air capabilities and a sizeable nuclear weapons stockpile of its own. Iran has no powerful allies, scant power-projection capability, and little ideological appeal. Despite what some alarmists think, Iran is not the reincarnation of Nazi Germany and not about to unleash some new Holocaust against anyone.  

The more one thinks about it, the odder our obsession with Iran appears. It's a pretty unloveable regime, to be sure, but given Iran's actual capabilities, why do U.S. leaders devote so much time and effort trying to corral support for more economic sanctions (which aren't going to work) or devising strategies to "contain" an Iran that shows no sign of being able to expand in any meaningful way? Even the danger that a future Iranian bomb might set off some sort of regional arms race seems exaggerated, according to an unpublished dissertation by Philipp Bleek of Georgetown University. Bleek's thesis examines the history of nuclear acquisition since 1945 and finds little evidence for so-called "reactive proliferation." If he's right, it suggests that Iran's neighbors might not follow suit even if Iran did "go nuclear" at some point in the future).

Obviously, simple bean counts like the one presented above do not tell you everything about the two countries, or the political challenges that Iran might pose to its neighbors. Iran has engaged in a number of actions that are cause for concern (such as its support for Hezbollah in Lebanon), and it has some capacity to influence events in Iraq and Afghanistan. Moreover, as we have learned in both of these countries, objectively weaker adversaries can still mount serious counterinsurgency operations against a foreign occupier. And if attacked, Iran does have various retaliatory options that we would find unpleasant, such as attacking shipping in the Persian Gulf. So Iran's present weakness does not imply that the United States can go ahead and bomb it with impunity.

What it does mean is that we ought to keep this relatively minor "threat" in perspective, and not allow the usual threat-inflators to stampede us into another unnecessary war. My impression is that Admiral Mullen and SecDef Gates understand this. I hope I'm right. But I'm still puzzled as to why the Obama administration hasn't tried the one strategy that might actually get somewhere: take the threat of force off the table, tell Tehran that we are willing to talk seriously about the issues that bother them (as well as the items that bother us), and try to cut a deal whereby Iran ratifies and implements the NPT Additional Protocol and is then permitted to enrich uranium for legitimate purposes (but not to weapons-grade levels). It might not work, of course, but neither will our present course of action or the "last resort" that Mullen referred to last weekend.

Stephen M. Walt is the Robert and Renée Belfer professor of international relations at Harvard University.

(4) The Holocaust won't protect Israel forever - Israel will be judged by its deeds

From: IHR News <news@ihr.org> Date: 19.04.2010 03:00 PM

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1162668.html

Last update - 10:48 13/04/2010

The Holocaust won't protect Israel forever

By Nehemia Shtrasler

"I am Hanna Weiss, a native of Italy, No. A5377. I left Auschwitz alive. I feel that I triumphed. I have had a full, rich life. Every day that a person lives is a holiday."

This statement by a survivor summed up the most important week in the Jewish-Israeli calendar, the week between Holocaust Remembrance Day and Memorial Day for Israel's fallen soldiers, the week that epitomizes the Zionist revolution, from Holocaust to resurrection.

It's true that it was not the 6 million victims who established the state, but they have supplied it with a flak jacket over the years. The thousands who paid the price of independence with their lives, those we commemorate next week, should be included with the 6 million.

The 6 million were the reason for the UN General Assembly's partition resolution of November 1947. Were it not for them, the required majority would not have been reached. It was only the onerous guilt feelings of the nations of the world, who did nothing to stop the so-called Final Solution while it was being implemented, that tipped the scales. On November 30, 1947, Haaretz ran a special front-page editorial that said, "The nations of the world have resolved to redress the injustice of 2,000 years ... the aspiration of a persecuted people, one that has known suffering and has undergone a Holocaust, is about to be realized."

If it were not for these guilt feelings, the Czechoslovaks would not have shipped us weapons during the War of Independence, the Germans would not have stood by our side in all circumstances and situations, and the Americans would not have supplied us with money and warplanes year after year. So it is right to connect Holocaust Day with Memorial Day. They are both the basis for Independence Day.

The world feels guilty because the murder of Europe's Jews was unprecedented in the annals of humankind. There has been no shortage of atrocities throughout history, but a preplanned liquidation according to a well-thought-out program aimed at wiping an entire nation off the earth - that had not yet occurred.

The countries of the West also feel guilty because they did not agree to open their gates to refugees from Germany and Austria before World War II. They also refrained from intervening in 1942, when the acts of annihilation were already known. They did not bomb, even once, the railroad lines leading to the gas chambers and crematoria or the death camp itself, although there were thousands of air raids and tens of thousands of bombs dropped near Auschwitz while the Nazi death machine was killing and burning the bodies of 12,000 Jews each day.

The cruel truth is that no one really cared. Hundreds of years of anti-Jewish propaganda, persecution, pogroms and expulsions prepared the ground for the hatred.

The conclusion must therefore be unequivocal: In our cynical and cruel world, we must continue trying to strengthen the Israel Defense Forces, regardless of our political outlooks. The world must know: Never again. Never again will Jewish blood be spilled with impunity, not here and not in any other corner of the globe.

And even in our cynical and cruel world, we must not ignore the rule of evil. It was evil that murdered 6 million Jews and set the whole of Europe alight (the Soviet Union alone sacrificed 27 million people in the war against Germany). And this evil has not ceased to exist.

But strengthening the IDF does not depend upon us alone. It depends on this country's status, which in turn depends on the nations of the world and public opinion. Sixty-five years after the horrors of the Holocaust became clear, more and more voices in Europe say to Israel: No more. Guilt feelings as well have their limits. From now on we'll treat you like a normal country. You will be judged by your deeds, for better or worse.

And indeed, the latest reports reveal that the number of anti-Semitic incidents rose sharply in 2009. This is a new kind of anti-Semitism that combines the ancient hatred with strong opposition to the occupation. In other words, time is working against us. Support for Israel and for bolstering the power of the IDF can no longer be taken for granted. The world's guilt feelings are gradually becoming dulled, making it possible for the global criticism of the occupation of Palestinian territories to strengthen.

And because in the West it is public opinion that ultimately determines how governments act, we must reach an agreement that will get us out of those territories and make Israel a moral and just country once again.

This is because the Holocaust flak jacket won't last forever. It is cracking as we watch, and soon it will no longer be able to protect us.

(5) Bad Faith in the Holy City
From: Sadanand, Nanjundiah (Physics Earth Sciences) <sadanand@mail.ccsu.edu> Date: 19.04.2010 10:55 PM

By Rashid Khalidi

Foreign Affairs, 15 April 2010.

http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/66198/rashid-khalidi/bad-faith-in-the-holy-city

The Israeli government’s announcement in March that it would further expand East Jerusalem settlements was just the latest in a decades-old series of calculated slights to the United States.

Since 1967, virtually every time a U.S. envoy has arrived to discuss the fate of the West Bank or Gaza, the Israeli government of the day has bluntly shown who is really boss, usually with a carefully timed unilateral expansion of Israel’s presence in the occupied territories. Since the 1970s, Israel has illegally settled close to half a million of its citizens in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, not to mention building a barrier mainly inside the West Bank on Arab-owned land that is longer and taller than the Berlin Wall.

Given that for a year the Obama administration has sought a settlement freeze in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, it is impossible to interpret the latest announcement of settlement expansion in the city as anything but a provocation. (The alternative explanation -- that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu cannot control his own government -- cannot be taken seriously.) As if on cue, an obedient majority in Congress issued a letter demanding that there be no public discussion of U.S.-Israeli differences. This, however, has not ended the controversy.

Although this episode has revealed that some things never change, it has been unusual in the sense that U.S. administrations usually take great care to avoid offending the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (known as AIPAC). Yet, this year, senior officials suggested that unconditional U.S. support for Israel, far from serving U.S. national interests, may in fact jeopardize them. The Israeli paper Yediot Ahronot reported that Vice President Joe Biden said as much to Netanyahu in March; the message was reiterated in a statement by Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and in the congressional testimony of the head of the United States Central Command, General David Petraeus, who argued that “Arab anger over the Palestinian question limits the strength and depth of U.S. partnerships with governments and peoples [in the region].”

This is nothing new. It has been true at least since the end of the Cold War and the beginning of the first Gulf War, when the last shred of strategic justification for extensive U.S. support for Israel disappeared. After 1991, as the U.S. military presence grew in the Middle East, Washington’s overt bias toward Israel became a growing liability for the United States.

The intense media coverage of the recent diplomatic crisis has largely obscured what is actually happening in East Jerusalem, where the controversy began. As usual, given the media’s obsession with U.S. and Israeli perspectives, there were few, if any, Palestinian voices to point out precisely what each new housing unit, each fresh expulsion of Arabs from their homes, and each new strategic colony in East Jerusalem means for the 200,000 Arabs who live in the city, for the future status of Jerusalem, and for the possibility of a resolution to this conflict.

One telling problem was the media’s widespread use of the Israeli terms “disputed” and “neighborhoods” to describe East Jerusalem's status and the illegal Jewish-only settlements proliferating there. There is nothing disputed about East Jerusalem’s status under international law as understood by every country besides Israel: it is universally considered occupied territory. Similarly, Israeli settlements in the parts of the city that lie across the Green Line are in clear contravention of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which forbids an occupying power from moving its own population into occupied territory.

Jerusalem is the slated location for the capital of an independent Palestinian state, and this is not a matter to be haggled over as far as the Palestinians and Arab and Islamic leaders are concerned. At least 40 generations of leading figures in Palestine’s and the Islamic world’s political, military, religious, and intellectual history -- ranging from generals in Saladin’s armies and Sufi saints to great scholars and distinguished judges -- are buried in the ancient Mamilla cemetery, located in present-day West Jerusalem. Part of this great historic landmark is now being excavated in order to pave way for a “Museum of Tolerance” to be built by the Los Angeles–based Simon Wiesenthal Center, despite the protests of the families of those buried there and of many leading Israeli academics and organizations. Its completion would erase not only part of Jerusalem’s Palestinian and Islamic heritage but also part of the heritage of all mankind that makes this city so important to the entire world.

Today, Jerusalem is the geographic center and communications hub of the West Bank. By walling the city off from its Arab hinterland and building fortresslike settlements in concentric rings around the city -- and, increasingly, within its remaining Arab neighborhoods -- Israel has succeeded in fragmenting and isolating Arab population centers within the city. These settlements also hinder the flow of north-south traffic through the West Bank, leaving Israel as the master of a terrain speckled with tiny Bantustan-esque islands of Palestinians.

One reason Israel continues to build settlements is that, according to the so-called Clinton parameters laid down in 2000, a final Israeli-Palestinian agreement would grant sovereignty over Jewish-occupied areas to Israel, and Palestinian-inhabited areas to the new Palestinian state. Indeed, well over a decade of failed negotiations have only led to an acceleration of Israel’s land grab in the Holy City. Israeli planners have spent this time pushing settlers into heavily Arab-inhabited areas of the city, such as Sheikh Jarrah, Silwan, and Abu Dis, in order to create fresh “facts on the ground” -- a tactic used by the Zionist movement for over a century in order to obtain control over more and more of Palestine.

The Obama administration’s more robust reiteration of longstanding U.S. positions on settlement, occupation, and East Jerusalem has made the current Israeli government extremely uncomfortable. Moreover, these days, groups that unconditionally support Netanyahu’s policies, such as AIPAC, no longer have the following that they like to claim they do. It is worth noting that in addition to the increasingly vocal segments of the U.S. Jewish community willing to question such Israeli policies, 78 percent of Jewish voters supported Barack Obama in 2008 despite establishment Jewish groups’ clear preference for Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.) and his wholesale support of the Likud Party’s agenda.

It is exceedingly important today that the U.S. government emphasize such bedrock principles as the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by force, the illegality of settlement in all occupied territories, and the legally invalid nature of “actions taken by Israel, the occupying power, which purport to alter the character and status of the Holy City of Jerusalem,” in the words of a June 1980 Security Council resolution. These are not simply elements of any just and lasting future resolution of the conflict; they are also pillars of a world order that rejects the law of the jungle and is not beholden to the distortions of a slick public relations machine. They are relevant whether or not the two sides are on the cusp of substantial final-status negotiations that address the issue of Jerusalem.

Many obstacles are keeping Israelis and Palestinians from reaching a final-status agreement. First among them is the U.S. government’s reluctance to allow Fatah and Hamas to establish a consensus political platform and produce a coalition government that can negotiate effectively. It is foolish to expect a weak and divided Palestinian polity to deliver a final settlement or stand by it. Ultimately, the Palestinians must resolve their own debilitating internal problems themselves, but the United States must cease placing diplomatic and legal obstacles in the way of such political reconciliation. Without it, there can be neither successful negotiations nor an agreement that has the slightest chance of obtaining legitimacy in the eyes of a majority of the Palestinian people.

When it comes to Jerusalem, a final-status negotiation that begins from the status quo -- the result of successive Israeli governments establishing settlements as faits accomplis -- will be unacceptable to any Palestinian leader. Even a return to the status quo ante of 2000 is insufficient, given Israel’s aggressive reshaping of Jerusalem’s surface and subterranean landscape since the 1980s. One need only walk through the streets of Jerusalem with a sense of what they once looked like to understand how takeovers of key buildings; strategically placed new housing developments, roads, and infrastructure; extensive archeological excavations; and the digging of a vast network of tunnels under and around the Old City were intended to fragment Arab East Jerusalem and permanently incorporate it into Israel.

In the end, only a negotiation in which all of Jerusalem is placed on the table will suffice. This is not only the right thing to do; such a posture is rooted in a solemn U.S. obligation made in the all but forgotten U.S. letter of assurances to the Palestinian delegation issued on October 18, 1991, at the outset of the Madrid-Washington-Oslo sequence of Palestinian-Israeli negotiations. In it, the U.S. government declared that nothing should be done by either side that would “be prejudicial . . . to the outcome of the negotiations,” notably “unilateral acts that would exacerbate local tensions or make negotiations more difficult or preempt their final outcome.” If these words meant anything, they meant that the United States would oppose any act seeking to unilaterally resolve issues slated for discussion during final-status negotiations.

The expansion of settlements in East Jerusalem (described in the 1991 letter as “an obstacle to peace”) and the separation of the city from its Arab hinterland fit this category. Once the United States issued the letter, the Palestinian delegations to the 1991-93 Madrid and Washington negotiations, to which I was an adviser, insisted that keeping with the letter’s spirit meant resolutely opposing such incendiary acts. We argued that there was no point to negotiations if unilateral and irreversible Israeli actions were deciding the fate of the very lands, buildings, and hilltops at issue. And what was a letter of assurances worth if the U.S. government would not or could not give it teeth?

Presidents George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush failed to prevent settlement expansion and the closure and encirclement of East Jerusalem. In consequence, none of them resolved the issue of Jerusalem, and every one left the situation far more fraught than it had been when he entered office.

The biggest obstacle the Obama administration must now overcome is the legacy of these two decades of failed policies. If the president wants a successful outcome to any future negotiations, he should decisively reject the failed approach of his predecessors and resolutely stress the positions of every previous administration as laid down in Security Council resolutions and international law. Such a clean break from the past is not enough to ensure a rapid and successful resolution of the Jerusalem issue, but it is an essential step toward producing the lasting and equitable peace that the people of that city and the region deserve.

Rashid Khalidi is Edward Said Professor of Arab Studies at Columbia University and the author of Sowing Crisis: The Cold War & American Dominance in the Middle East.

(6) Response to Elie Wiesel: Arabs can't build "anywhere" but are evicted from their homes

From: ReporterNotebook <RePorterNoteBook@Gmail.com> Date: 18.04.2010 11:37 PM

For Jerusalem, a response to Elie Wiesel

Yossi Sarid

Mon., April 19, 2010

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1163819.html

For Jerusalem's sake I, like you, will not rest.

With great interest I read the beautiful open letter you penned to the U.S. president that appeared in the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal and International Herald Tribune on Friday, and which will appear in the New York Times today. From it I learned that you know much about heavenly Jerusalem, but less so about its counterpart here on earth.

An outsider reading your letter would probably have concluded that peace has already taken root in the City of Peace. He would learn that in Jerusalem, Jews, Christians and Muslims worship their gods unimpeded, that "all are allowed to build their homes anywhere in the city."

Someone has deceived you, my dear friend. Not only may an Arab not build "anywhere," but he may thank his god if he is not evicted from his home and thrown out onto the street with his family and property. Perhaps you've heard about Arab residents in Sheikh Jarrah, having lived there since 1948, who are again being uprooted and made refugees because certain Jews are chafing from Jerusalem's space constraints.

Those same zealous Jews insist on inserting themselves like so many bones in the throats of Arab neighborhoods, purifying and Judaizing them with the help of rich American benefactors, several of whom you may know personally. Behind the scenes our prime minister and Jerusalem's mayor are pulling the strings of this puppet show while in public deflecting responsibility for this lawlessness and greed. That is the real reason for the "new and old tensions surfacing at a disturbing pace" of which your warn in your letter.

For some reason your historical survey missed an event of the utmost importance, namely the destruction of the Temple. If we are already citing events that happened here 2,000 years ago, let us recall the Sicarii, who blinded by religious zeal murdered opponents within the Jewish community and brought on us the disaster of our 2,000-year exile. We have no choice, you and I, but to ask whether history is now repeating itself.

You, my dear friend, evoke the Jews' biblical deed to Jerusalem, thereby imbuing our current conflict with messianic hues. As if our diplomatic quarrels weren't enough, the worst of our enemies would be glad to dress this epic conflict in the garb of a holy war. We had better not join ranks with them, even if unintentionally.

The fact is and always will be that this city is holy to everyone - such is its blessing and its curse. That's why the solution to the Jerusalem problem can't wait for the end of the Middle East conflict as you suggest, because it will have no end if its resolution is postponed until "the Israeli and Palestinian communities find ways to live together in an atmosphere of security."

"Jerusalem is above politics," you write. It is unfortunate that a man of your standing must confuse fundamental issues and confound the reader. Is it not politics that deals with mankind's weightiest issues, with matters of war and peace, life and death? And is life itself not holier than historical rights, than national and personal memory - holier even than Jerusalem? The living always take precedence over the dead, as must the present and future over the past.

There is nothing in our world "above politics." Yes, politics creates problems, but only through it can those same problems be resolved.

Barack Obama appears well aware of his obligations to try to resolve the world's ills, particularly ours here. Why then undercut him and tie his hands? On the contrary, let's allow him to use his clout to save us from ourselves, to help both bruised and battered nations and free them from their prison. Then he can push both sides to divide the city into two capitals - to give Jewish areas to the Jews and Arab areas to the Arabs - and assign the Holy Basin to an agreed-on international authority.

Only then can Jerusalem be maintained as "the world's Jewish spiritual capital," as you write. The Jewish spirit does not need Sheikh Jarrah, Silwan, Abu Dis and Shoafat to fulfill God's command to Abraham to "Arise, walk through the land in the length of it and in the breadth of it." Ha'aretz

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Alison Weir
Executive Director
If Americans Knew
office: (202) 631-4060