There is major pushback against the prospect floated by David Ignatius in the Washington Post yesterday that Obama will push an imposed solution to end the festering Palestinian issue. This is from Maariv, thru a friend:
“The American approach being led by Obama is a naïve approach that was tried in the past and which failed, and anyone who talks in terms of timetables or an imposed solution is displaying an absence good judgment and the loss of a level head,” said one high-ranking political official. He said, “anyone who tries to ride the Iranian excuse is going to fail. The coalition against Iran is a primary interest of all the Sunni countries in the region which want to stop Iran at any price, irrespective of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”
And here is Elliott Abrams, writing in the Weekly Standard against the two-state solution:
First, if indeed everyone has known the terms for nearly 20 years (since Oslo) yet agreement has never been reached, is it not obvious that neither Israelis nor Palestinians are willing and able to accept those terms? Does their embrace by an ambitious American president make them any more palatable to the people who will have to live with them? Second, the conclusion that all the terms are known is quite wrong. Is the fate of Jerusalem’s Old City agreed? Do Palestinians accept that Israel will keep every major settlement bloc? Do Israelis and Palestinians agree on the terms needed to guarantee Israel’s security once the IDF must leave the West Bank? (Examples: Is it agreed that Israel will control the air space and electromagnetic spectrum? Is it agreed that Israel can keep troops in the West Bank for some years? Do Palestinians accept that Israel can control the Jordan Valley and patrol the border with Jordan?) This is nonsense. One of Ignatius’s sources says the Obama plan will “take on the absolute requirements of Israeli security.” …
These are the kinds of calculations that persuade Israelis the administration is cavalier about their security, despite the occasional repetition of campaign pledges to the contrary.
Abrams may accurately reflect Israeli opinion (and Israeli Holocaust-consciousness, in the emphasis on security). I have no idea what solution Abrams imagines for the situation. His hard line on behalf of Israelis is a reminder of the fact that he once wrote that Jews must stand apart in any society that they live in except Israel. He is obviously only concerned with Israeli interests; and the fact that people debated this question about many of the neoconservatives during the Bush administration, well, it is laughable in retrospect. People like Doug Feith, Richard Perle, David Wurmser and Elliott Abrams obviously care deeply about Jews in Israel, that’s what makes them run; Feith and Abrams came into that administration determined to stop the peace process such as it was and here is the evidence. I don’t understand why the media never touched this, and meanwhile writers like Stephen Sniegoski and Walt and Mearsheimer had to do the heavy lifting of exposing them, and even now, sadly, Abrams speaks for a broad sector of American Jewish opinion when he says, Don’t give the Palestinians anything.
