So, Barack Obama thinks Israel should give up the land it acquired in the Six-Day War, rolling back to its 1967 borders. Good going, Barack! In less than a minute, you not only infuriated another staunch ally of the United States, but you (if I might employ an image you favor) “moved the goal posts” in the Middle East such that Israel’s enemies will henceforth cite you when demanding that Israel neuter itself.
Suicide, national or personal, is rarely a wise career move, so I believe we can be pretty certain that Israel will ignore your suggestion. But your invocation of 1967 is by no means barren. I was talking to a friend last night who had this alternative suggestion. Leave Israel alone and roll back the U.S. Government to its 1967 size.
I wish he had said 1965: that was the annus mirabilis when Lyndon Johnson, with a profligacy that still, even now, even In the age of Barack “Have-a-Trillion” Obama, makes one pause and wonder. Remember the “Great Society”? Money, meet toilet. Consider the “war on poverty”: back in mid-Sixties 1965 it cost only $1 billion per year (about $7 billion in today’s dollars). But the government was wasting as much as it could as fast as it could. And of course, the “war on poverty” was only the tip of the iceberg. There was also the department of education—what a waste of money that has been! And don’t forget about “Public Broadcasting,” also a silly idea but also, in the age of the internet and cable TV, a completely superannuated one. And then there were the real biggies: Medicare and Medicaid, which together cost the taxpayer some $700 billion per year.
There were other, many other stupid ideas to come out of the “Great Society” years, the National Endowments, for example, and let’s not forget that stupendous blight on the economy, the Environmental Protection Agency.
The President’s remarks about Israel were both silly and dangerously irresponsible. But his idea of returning to the strictures of an earlier time has great possibilities on home front. I hope concerned citizens will start to make the case: 1965 or bust!
This is beginning to remind me of how Kosovo played out, with Netanyahu filling the role of Yugoslavia’s demonized leader. This time with masses of Arabs poised at the borders to annihilate Israel, it would be the community organizer’s answer to Bill Clinton’s most notable foreign policy achievement. It should be marked down by future historians that the Jewish owned New York Times played an indispensable role in this first Jewish holocaust of the 21st century.
Netanyahu has told Adjunct President Oblather to stuff it.
Let me submit my plan for a Middle East peace settlement between Israel and the PA:
Now that Hamas and Fatah have settled their dispute and joined forces, let there be a land swap between Israel and the PA which provides the Palestinians with a contiguous country and Israel with defensible borders.
Israel gives the west bank to a PA state in return for which the PA gives Israel the Gaza strip. East Jerusalem becomes the capital of the Palestinians, West Jerusalem becomes the capital of Israel, the holy sites of each faction become neutral sites protected by the UN which is moved from New York to Jerusalem and located between the two countries.
Total non starter.
Gaza is highly valuable Mediterranean beachfront property (or at least it would be if anyone OTHER than the Palestinians were in charge of it) and literally over 1.5 million Palestinians live there.
The Palestinians living there are not going to want to give up their houses and land and move to the West Bank. The West Bank, at least at the current time, wouldn’t be able to absorb that many new immigrants anyway.
Here a more realistic arrangement (though also probably a political non-starter):
Gaza, which historically was part of Egypt, is handed over lock, stock, and barrel to Egypt, which then becomes responsible for administering it. All current Gazans keep their land, their homes, and become Egyptian citizens with proportional representation in Egypt’s parliament. If they want to consider themselves “Palestinian” or “Gazan” instead of “Egyptian” so be it, but if they continue lobbing bombs into Israel that’s a violation of the Egyptian-Israeli peace accords and an act of war.
Naturally this is unlikely to happen mainly because Egypt doesn’t want to take responsibility for Gaza, though *maybe* the USA could use its massive foreign aid to Egypt as leverage here.
On the other side of Israel, the Palestinians of the West Bank are given political autonomy, and Jordanian citizenship, though their “State” is NOT administered by Jordan. Again, makes historical sense as Jordan was supposed to be the original Arab division at the time of Israel’s founding.
The fact is that right now as we speak the West Bank and Gaza are two physically different locations with different political administrations (using the term loosely) and different cultures. They’re effectively ALREADY different States, and trying to unite them only makes sense as a matter of political theater.
As wonderful, fair, and correct as this would be, it’s also a non-starter.
Egypt and Jordan don’t want the Palestinians. They’re troublemakers and when they’ve been let in before they’ve tried to overthrow the government.
Dividing Jerusalem is another non-starter. Where do you run the border, right through the Old City and between the top of the Temple Mount and the Western Wall? Talk about indefensible borders! Logistically it’s ridiculous.
Jerusalem has been the capital of Israel and the center of Judaism for 2500 years, never been the capital of any other country, and no other city is divided in two as the capital of two countries. Plus the Jerusalem Arabs do NOT want to be ruled by the PA, nor does any other Israeli Arab for that matter. No one wants to divide Jerusalem but the PA and their enablers the Arab bloc and Leftist fellow travellers. Culturally it’s ridiculous too.
I do like this suggestion: “…the holy sites of each faction become neutral sites protected by the UN which is moved from New York to Jerusalem and located between the two countries.”
“1967 borders” actually means Israel’s pre-1967 borders, i.e. 1949 borders, not its post-June-1967 borders. Let’s hear it for 1949-sized federal government!
Change we CAN believe in!
Actually 1967 size is too late: you need to go back before Medicare and before Vietnam heated up to 1963.
Mr. Stockinger:
On the assumption that you are serious in your plan, let me assure you that it won’t be adopted by the parties in question, and it wouldn’t work even if they did.
Here’s a dirty little Middle east secret: nobody wants Gaza. It’s a crowded little strip of land with little to recommend it in the way of agriculture or natural resources. What it does have is a population of over one million Palestinians, carefully kept at the boiling point for decades by their Arab brethren. The West Bank, by contrast, has a great many Israeli communities, in addition to Biblical holy places and vital strategic depth. So Israel is not going to give up claims to it in return for the nothing that is Gaza.
(Do you really expect Israel do give up its claim to East Jerusalem, containing — among other things — the Western Wall and the Old City of Jerusalem? To the Palestinians, of all people, who have a history of demanding control of holy places, getting it, and then destroying them? Sorry, not a chance.)
The Palestinians, for their part, have never been remotely willing to agree to anything as small as the West Bank with East Jerusalem. “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”, and so forth. The late unlamented Arafat was fond of referring to “occupied Tel Aviv” and “occupied Haifa”, one of his ways of reminding the faithful that he didn’t want part of Israel — he wanted the whole thing.
Here’s my counterproposal for Middle East peace. Marching orders to the Palestinians: stop all terror attacks and return all kidnapped prisoners, with no exceptions. No more blown up pizza parlors, no more rocket attacks on school buses and kindergartens. The Israelis will, in short order, fall all over themselves to help you build your Palestinian state (albeit not “from the river to the sea”, but hey, you can’t have everything).
respectfully,
Daniel in Brookline
Daniel
I think it was tongue in cheek. But the idea of moving the UN to Jerusalem to act as a human shield for peace does have some merit…if only at the SNL level.
Agree, putting the UN into harm’s way is the appealing part of the plan
Historically Gaza has served as a seaport, and its location on the Mediterranean at the Northern edge of Egypt is basically its main value (ie there’s fishing, there are resorts and could be more, etc).
Now, if the Palestinians really want “pre-67 borders” lets not forget that prior to 1967, Gaza was administered by Egypt!
I think that would be one return to “pre-67″ borders that Israel would eagerly agree to. The problem, as you say, is that Egypt doesn’t want the headache and responsibility of running the total cesspool that is Gaza.
People don’t realize how much Israel gave back after that war, right away. They had taken possession of the whole Sinai Peninsula and fought their way all the way to the Suez Canal. They had won, in a war they did not start, about twice the territory they currently “occupy”. But they didn’t want to keep the Sinai. It was not strategically important to their security, and diplomatically it would look good for them to hand it back. They DID.
Does anyone remember this? Israel ALREADY GAVE BACK TERRITORY THEY OCCUPIED IN THE WAR. And by international law, they didn’t have to. the border expansions they DID make were for the express strategic purpose of not being at existential risk in future war.
Israel certainly has made a distinction between ordinary “land won in war” and “land necessary for national security”. Going back to pre ’67 borders would be suicide. 500 million people in a dozen neighboring countries want to wipe out that little nation. The moral equivocation required just to DISCUSS this publicly, as though reducing border size was even an OPTION, is making me sick to my stomach.
We should give the Louisiana Purchase back to the French. And the American Southwest back to the indigenous peoples of what is now Mexico. And the Eastern seaboard back to the UK. After all, it was theirs and we took it by force. Who are we to continue to occupy these land we took by force and theft?
I mean, if you’re going to make decisions by removing your moral compass first, we should be uniform about it.
Even the UN does not require Israel to withdraw to the 1949 lines. Check out UNSCR 242. Also the UN requires only the withdrawal of military forces, it does not prevent Jews from living in the ‘west bank’ at all. The only people demanding that are Hamas and Obama.
The best idea is for the US to do nothing and walk away from the ‘peace process’. Not China, Russia or the EU are going to be able to really push Israel to self-immolate. And the we get nothing from the Arabs for pushing an ally under the bus. There is no compelling reason for Palestinian statehood and no benefit to the US in pushing for it. On the other hand if we were to start pushing for a Kurdish state that would freak the Arabs out and probably force them to stop their asymmetrical warfare against the US. As for the size of government pushing back to 1960 levels would be best and then start paring from there.
We should at least move a lot of our State Department folks to Jerusalem. Being in a target zone might clarify the situation for them.
They’d have a blast! Best idea I ever heard. When can we start?
I agree totally, right down to the year: 1965. the Civil Rights Act passed in 1964, most of what follows was downhill. The 1965 Voting Rights Act made sense at the time, but in 2011 would not be missed except by race-mongering politicians.
As for the rest, we would have to figure out better substitutes for a few things (Medicare, Medicaid) but almost everything else would be good riddance for bad rubbish.
LCP @ 8,
No, we bought Louisiana in a fair transaction.
Of course I did have my tongue in my cheek when I proposed my Middle East peace plan in #3.
It will never work because it will never be enacted. Neither the PA, the UN, nor even the Israelis would permit it.
But some parts of it, like getting Gaza out of the hands of Hamas/Fatah control, and getting the UN out of the US, are still excellent ideas….. no more tunnels from Egypt to Gaza; no more “Freedom Flotillas” to break the Israeli blockade against weapons shipments to H/F terrorists, and the elimination of the idea of a contiguous Palestinian country by the division of Israel into two non-contiguous areas would result. Those are the ideals i hope for.
There will be no peace between Israel and the PA, or in the Arab/Persian world, until the downfall of the Iranian mullahs, if ever.
Hmmm, how about rolling back immigration to 1967 levels?
How about rolling back the United States border to pre-Hawaii and we can rid ouselves of Obama.