ONE SINAI COMPLETE: DAVID ISAAC
One Sinai – complete By David Isaac
http://shmuelkatz.com/wordpress/?p=849&Source=email
Message from High Commissioner for Palestine Herbert Samuel. Will Israel receive one Sinai – complete?
When the first High Commissioner for Palestine, Herbert Samuel, took over the administration of Palestine from Sir Louis Bols of the Occupied Enemy Territory Administration, he signed a note which read: “Received from Major-General Sir Louis J. Bols K.C.B. — One Palestine, complete.”
Now that the Islamists are set to dominate Egypt’s legislature, will Israel receive one Sinai – complete? That’s the question Caroline Glick asks in a recent Jerusalem Post column. The Egypt-Israel treaty “is effectively null and void,” she writes. “Will the U.S. act in accordance with its role as guarantor of the peace and demand that the new Egyptian government give Sinai back to Israel?”
U.S. guarantees, as the past shows, are not worth the paper they’re written on – when they can find the paper, that is. As Shmuel writes in “The world is full of empty promises” (The Jerusalem Post, April 30, 1993):
In June 1967, when the neighboring Arab states prepared for their again-advertised plan of genocide against the still tiny and vulnerable Israel … U.S. president Johnson could not find the 1957 document which recorded a pledge to aid Israel if Egypt closed the Tiran Straits, which it had done on May 23. …
In her day, Prime Minister Golda Meir said (in reply to the suggestion of guarantees by an American diplomat): “Guarantees? You speak of guarantees? By the time you got here, we wouldn’t be here.”
The sad truth is that the Egypt-Israel treaty was never but half implemented – the half requiring Israeli concessions. The other half, the Egyptian half, was ignored. As Shmuel writes in “The meaning of peace” (The Jerusalem Post, May 6, 1983),
Egypt, with Sinai “in its pocket,” has behaved as though that agreement never existed.
Some might argue that this was due to Hosni Mubarak’s ascent following the death of Anwar Sadat. But Sadat never had any intention of honoring the treaty either. Indeed, Sadat only came to Jerusalem after the offer of ‘one Sinai – complete’ had been made. Shmuel writes in “How Begin’s initiative became ‘The Sadat initiative’” (The Jerusalem Post, March 8, 1978):
For some reason the leaders and spokesmen of Israel, and its Information services — as far as they exist — have concealed the fact that the story of a Sadat initiative is a hoax, that the initiative for a sensational revolution in relations between Israel and Egypt did not come from Sadat at all, but from Begin. When Sadat announced, as though proclaiming a vision, that he was prepared to come to Jerusalem, and when jubilation greeted the news that he was actually coming, he already had in his pocket Begin’s promise that he could have all of Sinai.
So when Sadat had seen the light – in the form of a promise from Begin to get the Sinai back – he wasn’t taking any great political risk by traveling to Jerusalem. Indeed, there was great political reward. He was hailed as a great man. In the same article, Shmuel notes:
Because of this initiative Sadat has become a world figure of historic dimensions. Throughout the world, and particularly in the U.S., he has been accorded a measure of glorification usually reserved for cinema stars and sports champions.
And when Sadat did come to Jerusalem and make his famous appearance before the Knesset, it became clear to anyone who was not mesmerized by the sight of an Arab leader at the podium, that he was not prepared to give anything in return.
In “The Hollow Peace” (Dvir & The Jerusalem Post, 1981), Shmuel writes:
It was a superb propaganda speech, but not in a single word did he deviate from the traditional Arab demands. Nor was he sparing in harsh phrases aimed at Israel, again in line with the accepted Arab mythology, such as Israel’s being an aggressor and the source and cause of the conflict. “Between us and you,” he said, “there has been a great, high wall, that you have been trying to build up for twenty-five years.” Such being the case, all he was demanding was unconditional surrender.
There was, to be fair, a personal risk for Sadat – that some of his own people, too fanatical or politically obtuse to see that he wanted the same thing as they did, would take revenge on him for dealing with Israel. This is eventually what happened. Sadat was assassinated on Oct. 6, 1981 after a fatwa was issued by Omar Abdel-Rahman, the one and the same “Blind Sheikh” who was behind the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
Now those fanatics have just won two-thirds of Egypt’s vote. This would be bad under any circumstances. Thanks to the Egypt-Israel treaty they are worse. Egypt has the 23,500 square mile Sinai and is armed to the teeth with the latest American weaponry. As Shmuel wrote in “Peace Hoax” (The Jerusalem Post, March 5, 1982):
Who can now deny that … Israel will have attained no greater prospect of peace than it had in September 1977? Who is so blind as not to see that the central consequence of the peace treaty is that it will have been weakened grievously by the loss of Sinai and by the torrents of sophisticated arms pouring into all the Arab states, including Egypt? Who can deny the manifest bankruptcy of Begin’s peace policy?
Shmuel’s words ring as true today.
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