www.geraldahonigman.comBack in President Obama’s second term in office, Secretary of State John Kerry, like his boss and other members of the same peapod (Samantha Power, Susan Rice, Joe Biden, Chuck Hagel, etc.), liked to warn Israel about such things as its isolation andalienation if it did not agree to Arab demands to return to its pre-’67 war, ’49 armistice lines (not borders) which made it an over-sized ghetto, 9-15 miles wide at its waist, where most of its population and infrastructure are located. President George W. Bush commented that Texas had driveways larger than that. I don’t know about driveways, but I also don’t doubt the size of some Lone Star ranches. And I’m pretty sure Mrs. Obama had to travel farther than that for shopping trips to Target.
Others like President Jimmy Carter supposedly worried/worry (and even wrote books) about Israel’s soul and looming “apartheid nature” if it insists on the more secure, defensible, real borders that UNSC Resolution 242 promised in the wake of the ’67 fighting–a war Israel was forced to fight after being blockaded by Egypt (a casus belli), shelled by Jordan, abandoned by the UN Emergency Force placed in Sinai after the ’56 war (largely fought over another blockade and acts of terror), and other hostile acts and constant threats of annihilation.
All of 242’s architects (Lord Caradon, Eugene Rostow, etc.)–and Presidents Johnson, Reagan, and others (including George W. Bush in his letter to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon)–agreed that Israel would never return to those pre-’67 Auschwitz lines. That, dear readers, is what the “settlement” issue is mostly all about…besides Jews having both modern, religious, and historical connections to Judea and Samaria (only since the 20th century, the “West Bank”) for over three thousand years. Question: Was Jesus born in Bethlehem of the West Bank or Bethlehem of Judea? Ask the Gospels’ Matthew.