In Israel there's open warfare on the Pax Americana

Il Giornale, January 31, 2014

On the pages of the New York Times it seems simple, but since two days ago, when Thomas Friedman described the lines of the Pax Americana that Kerry will present in a few days (and his sources are more than insiders in the Obama administration!), the debate in Israel is skyrocketing. They are basic ideas, nothing ingenious about them, and they allot, with American simplicity, something good and something bad to Israelis and Palestinians. But Friedman warns that if this train were to pass without either Mahmoud Abbas or Netanyahu taking it at once, the next will run right over them. Obama needs this to work.

Friedman's sources describe a dreambook more than a road map, but they make the parties feel the US administration breathing down their necks. The American ambassador to Israel, Dan Shapiro, says that Kerry has only gathered ideas from the discussion between the two parties, and that the document is intended to be the basis for moving forward to the second phase on a very concrete basis "that leaves no room for fantasy." The plan calls for an end to the conflict and to any further demands after Israel withdraws from the West Bank beyond the line of 1967. Netanyahu doesn't like this. Even the Jordan Valley, which separates Israel from the Arab world, and as Rubin used to say, [is] a vital defense area, will see new arrangements in which Israel will be marginalized. In general, the withdrawal would not include some settlements that would be compensated with Israeli territory. The Palestinians would have their capital in East Jerusalem, but they must recognize Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people. And that hurts a little. The plan does not include the right of return for Palestinian refugees (now of the third or fourth generations). The list is that of sacred cows. For example, Abbas has always said that for him, it is out of the question to recognize a State of the Jewish people; his delivery is full of verbal hatred and his policy of incitement in books and on television. Israel, on the other hand, fears that restricting its territories to the '67 borders will force it into a space that cannot be defended from terrorism and from expanding jihadism.

And the inhabitants of the Territories are very nervous these days, since Netanyahu declared at a meeting that in his plans, no one will be evacuated. A posthumous homage to the poor colonies of the Gaza Strip, which was nevertheless interpreted as the idea that tens of thousands of Jews will stay in the future Palestinian State, just as Arab Israelis exist within the Jewish State. But the Palestinian leadership immediately said that they don't want to see even one Jew within their borders. Meanwhile, government partner and minister Naftali Bennett has practically called Netanyahu a murderer for having floated the idea: the Palestinians will kill anyone you leave in their hands, he told him; you are giving up the Jewish homeland and our compatriots.

Bibi demanded that he apologize or risk forced removal, and Bennett has delivered, but the settlers now see themselves threatened with two fates: that of being torn from their homes, their lives, their businesses, as the inhabitants of the Gaza Strip were, and that of being left in the hands of a very hostile entity. In this confusion, Netanyahu is experiencing a deep dilemma. Security is not being traded for benevolence, but the risk of rupture with the USA is fatal.

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