RUTHFULLY YOURS

A CONSISTENTLY (DIS)HONEST BROKER: DAVID ISAAC*****

Posted By Ruth King on September 4th, 2010

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.7262/pub_detail.asp

On September 2nd, direct talks began between Arabs and Israelis. During the August 20 press conference announcing the talks, Special Envoy for Middle East Peace George Mitchell was asked by a reporter whether President Obama would be seen as an “honest broker” by the two sides. In the case of Israel, the answer, to put it bluntly, is no.

There are, of course, the obvious concerns about our current president: His acceptance of the Palestinian-Arab narrative, revealed during his Cairo speech when he rejected “the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements,” his attempt to make political hay out of Israel’s announcement of new home construction in Jerusalem, and his obnoxious behavior towards Israel’s prime minister during their March meeting. The pieces create a whole that would disturb any Israeli negotiator’s night’s sleep.

But the fact of the matter is, regardless of whether a U.S. president is more or less favorably disposed to the Jewish state – and in this case, certainly less – the United States has consistently pursued a policy that is inimical to Israel and accepting of the Arab position. This policy entails Israel’s return to the strategically indefensible 1949 Armistice lines – what Abba Eban called a “death trap.”

Since 1967, every administration has put forth plans that pushed for Israel’s surrender of the territories it captured in the Six Day War. Policy-makers ignore the fact that areas like Judea and Samaria (the “West Bank”) never belonged to the Arabs. Legally, they remained part of the British Mandate for Palestine. They were seized illegally by Jordan in a war of aggression. They were then wrested from Jordan by Israel in a war of defense. The idea that these are ‘illegally occupied lands’ is the language of anti-Israel Arab propaganda, a figment of a fictional history.

Yet, it’s on this fabrication that the U.S. bases its policy, arguing for Israeli withdrawal. What happens when Israel does surrender territory is clear from the case of Gaza – now a Hamas launching pad for missiles into Israeli population centers. Gaza’s decline has not shaken the belief of American policy-makers that Israel must continue to cede captured territory.

Largely to blame is the State Department, which has a well-documented antagonism to Zionism dating from the First World War. Its motives are two-fold: A desire not to antagonize the Arabs and a fear of risking the flow of oil. For each incoming president, it trots out the same old policy dressed up in new clothes. Unless a U.S. president has strong views to the contrary and the will to impose them, the State Department’s policy will emerge triumphant.

From the start, America has shown itself to be an untrustworthy ally. In 1948, only three years after the Holocaust, when five well-armed Arab states with the support of the British attempted to annihilate the newly formed Jewish state, the U.S. incongruously declared an arms embargo on both sides. In 1967, America attempted to restrain Israel even as Arab forces gathered on its border.

In the Yom Kippur War, it was the U.S. that turned Israeli victory to defeat by pressuring Israel to refrain from destroying the Egyptian Third Army. Nor let us forget how Israel was restrained by the first Bush administration from retaliating when Iraqi Scud missiles rained down on it.

On no issue has America done more to forfeit its right to the title “honest broker” than on the subject of Jerusalem, which through 3,000 years has never been the national capital of any other people. Not only has the U.S. not relocated its embassy there, it led the diplomatic community in its refusal to recognize the city as Israel’s capital – even when only the western part was in Israel’s hands.

The Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995 was meant to right this historic wrong. Overwhelmingly passed by Congress and designed to fund the relocation of America’s Israel Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem no later than May 31, 1999, the law has still not been implemented. It has been blocked by successive U.S. presidents.

For those who love America and Israel, it’s sad to revisit this history, and it would not be necessary if not for the habit of U.S. politicians to proclaim America’s historic commitment to Israel’s security. This parading of America’s bona-fides is typically followed by demands for further Israeli withdrawals.

Take Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s speech at the March AIPAC meeting, in which she declared: “In Israel’s story, we see our own. We see, in fact, the story of all people who struggle for freedom and the right to chart their own destinies. That’s why it took President Harry Truman only 11 minutes to recognize the new nation of Israel – and ever since, our two countries have stood in solidarity.”

Conveniently ignoring the many life-and-death situations (for Israel) in which America did not stand in solidarity, Clinton went on to make remarks that basically hewed to the Arab narrative, calling Israel’s hold of territories vital to its security as an “occupation,” describing Israel’s attempts to build in its own capital as ‘undermining trust’ and rejecting once more, in case anyone missed Mr. Obama’s Cairo speech, “the legitimacy of continued settlements.”

In the direct talks scheduled for September, Washington will not be alone in setting itself up as a referee offering dispassionate advice to the two sides. George Mitchell revealed that various allies “have been extremely important in getting us to this phase and will be extremely important in reaching a conclusion.” He went on to list Egypt, Jordan, “many of the other Arab states,” other Quartet members, the UN, the EU and Russia.

Honest brokers all, no doubt.

FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributor David Isaac is a former executive director of Americans for A Safe Israel and currently serves as editor of the Web site ShmuelKatz.com.

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