In this eye-opening NY Times article, Obama Sees ’67 Borders as Starting Point for Peace Deal, it was the first time a US president stated personally that Israel’s withdrawal of former Palestinian real estate claims must move back to 1967, and that whatever properties it felt must remain close-in could be negotiated in swapping for lands that Palestine disputed in Israel. Their border, in essence, could be worked out anew by the two states mutually, which came as a jolt to Israel.
Jumping into this nest of barbed wire at this point, as an election approached, created an opportunity for true diplomacy. This was sparked by an angry conversation Benjamin Netanyahu had with Hillary Clinton and a variety of “geshrys” from Israel to D.C.’s AIPAC. But then, given the fact that the “Arab Spring” was at hand, the “euphoria of Tunisia and Egypt,” not to mention the pain of Bahrain, Syria and Libya on the dark side, egos needed to be soothed, promises needed to be made, backs needed patting.
Of particular interest were the large Jewish settlements made in the West Bank and Gaza where millions of Palestinians live, including Jerusalem, the capital of greater Israel, which oversees “a resentful occupied” population, and where much conflict has occurred and sensitivities on both sides remain. But most of all, from this tangle, some agreement, according to Obama, needed to be made that was real, not merely a rerun of the failed efforts of Clinton and Bush. The times they were a changin,’ as Woody Guthrie would sing.
Needless to say, but the Times did say it, Netanyahu Responds Icily to Obama Remarks, saying “he expects to hear a reaffirmation from President Obama of American commitments made to Israel in 2004 which were overwhelmingly supported by both Houses of Congress.” Netanyahu, who was to have a meeting last Friday with Obama, added “that the commitments ‘relate to Israel not having to withdraw to the 1967 lines, which are both indefensible and which would leave major Israeli population centers in Judea and Samaria beyond those lines,” referring to large settlement blocs in the West Bank. But Bibi had forgotten the part about land swaps Obama promised for Israel to regain some areas for others.
But for the sake of historical perspective and character, the first major attack on Palestine occurred in 1948, in the Israeli War of Independence, as noted in the Orthodox Jewish historian Elan Pappe’s book, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine. He writes, “The 1948 War of Independence involved one of the largest forced migrations in modern history. Around a million people were expelled from their homes at gunpoint, civilians were massacred, and hundreds of Palestinian villages destroyed. Denied for almost six decades, had it happened today it could only have called ‘ethnic cleansing.’”
An Amazon review writes, “This book documents, using historical sources, the wrongdoings that were done to the Palestinians during the 1948 war (the Israeli war of independence and the war the Palestinians call the catastrophe). This book analyses historical evidence from Israeli sources, independently proving true the 1948 experiences the Palestinian refugees, men and women, rich and poor, Muslim and Christian recount about their cleansing from their land and property.”
Also, though the US had become the ally of Israel, supplying it billions of dollars for weapons and other assistance, during the Six-Day War in 1967, Israeli Mirages disgracefully strafed the USS Liberty. Wiki writes, “The USS Liberty incident was an attack on a United States Navytechnical research ship, by Israeli Air Force jet fighter aircraft and Israeli Navytorpedo boats, on June 8, 1967, during the Six-Day War. The combined air and sea attack killed 34 crew members (naval officers, seamen, two Marines, and one civilian), wounded 170 crew members, and severely damaged the ship. At the time, the ship was in international waters north of the Sinai Peninsula, about 25.5 nmi (29.3 mi; 47.2 km) northwest from the Egyptian city of Arish.
“Both the Israeli and U.S. governments conducted inquiries and issued reports that concluded the attack was a mistake due to Israeli confusion about the identity of the USS Liberty.[5] Some survivors, in addition to some U.S. diplomats and intelligence officials involved in the incident, continue to dispute these official findings, saying the Israeli attack on the USS Liberty was not a mistake, and it remains “the only maritime incident in U.S. history where [U.S.] military forces were killed that was never investigated by the [U.S.] Congress.
The question is why weren’t they investigated by the U.S. Congress? Did Israel by that time have so much clout within the U.S. to stifle it?
As an admission of guilt or an act of good will, “In May 1968, the Israeli government paid the US $3,323,500 as full payment to the families of the 34 men killed in the attack. In March 1969, Israel paid a further $3,566,457 in compensation to the men who had been wounded. On 18 December 1980, it agreed to pay $6 million as settlement for the U.S. claim of $7,644,146 for material damage to the Liberty itself.”
Nevertheless, Israeli actions were curiously hostile behavior from an “ally” of the US that revealed a brutal, trigger-happy Israel, hardly in control of its own worst instincts. And so discussions of the borders and land-swaps of 1967 take on a whole new meaning for all, especially Israel’s biggest, and perhaps most indiscriminant booster, the United States, without whose help eradication would have been a certainty.
Nevertheless, this act of infamy was topped by revelations in the London Times in 1986 by the Orthodox Jewish nuclear technician working at Dimona, Mordechai Vanunu, that there was a nuclear facility in the Negev desert where Israel had already built between two and three-hundred nuclear warheads. America had been aware of this situation going back to Lyndon Johnson and said nothing about it. Again, this is a strange reaction from the most powerful country on earth.
Yet, despite these betrayals, the US has steadfastly contributed its pound of flesh, $3 billion a year for armaments, plus unsecured loans, and other armaments, to Israel. Perhaps Obama is reading about some other US and world sentiment than that planted by AIPAC, the powerful Israeli lobby in the US. In addition, Jewish-American sentiment has been molded both in Israel and America to contribute hundreds of millions of dollars more through various groups like B’nai B’rith, Hadassah, the United Jewish Appeal, and many others.
What Obama has offered is at least a temporary freeze in Israeli settlement building, which Israel has rejected, only to inflame Palestinian sentiment to the present point, to take Israel to the UN Assembly for a judgment of its behavior by the world body, and for its incursions of the past 60 plus years. Obama’s offer of negotiations now could also be a way of heading off or diminishing the impact of such a world judgment. Or perhaps he knows Congress won’t do anything whatever the UN says, which has been the case so far when Palestine was defended against Israeli violations of their human rights.
In a follow up article in the NY Times, Obama Presses Israel to Make ‘Hard Choices,’ whether or not the Palestinians themselves believe that Obama will enforce these standards for the peace talks also remains an item for discussion and belief. Of course, the Republicans have taken to speechifying, seeing an opportunity, that now more than ever, we should stand by our “steadfast” ally, Israel. At the very least, I see this as a check from Obama to balance Israel’s arrogance and expected continuation of billions in support, even in the wake of our weak economy, unlike their own, which is booming, thanks again to the US.
What Obama has said in this second round of words, before the America Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), is that he “offered familiar assurances that the United States’ commitment to Israel’s long-term security was ‘ironclad.’ But citing the rising political upheaval near Israel’s borders, he presented his peace plan as the chance Israel has to avoid ‘growing Isolation.’” Let these be words to the wise. The world, it is a-changin.
He went on to say, “I can continue defending you to the hilt, but you give me nothing to work with, even America can’t save you.” He had previously said, “We cannot afford to wait another decade, or another two decades, or another three decades, to achieve peace. The world is moving too fast.” Given the unrest in the Arab world, the US and Israel would gain credence coming to the bargaining table with some new proposals for real political change in the impasse between Israel and Palestine, the latter reduced to having large numbers of their people living in the largest outdoor concentration camp in the world, and holding on to only crumbs of what was their nation’s real estate and natural resources at one time.
Obama went so far as to rule out the Palestinians relationship with Hamas, which he described as a terrorist organization. It would seem that once again, quite a bit has been put on the table and pushed towards Israel, but nothing will satisfy it—now that its nuclear arsenal contains close to 400 nuclear warheads and a variety of other nuclear weapons—a number of which parenthetically were traded with the Apartheid State of South Africa for over two decades, from the mid-70s to the mid-90s, a government often compared to the Nazis in their attempt to genocide its black population, that is, until the native revolution reversed the political tables.
And in closing, President Obama said on Sunday last, “What I did on Thursday was to say publicly what has long been acknowledged privately,” allowing the world a breath of political relief. Ironically, Obama was not quite so generous to his African brother, Mommar Gaddafi, continuing the airstrikes and bombings, and pushing the limits of his War Control Powers to the hilt and beyond. Would that such a fate not befall Israel! Today, Obama’s last words were “I am waiting to hear from Prime Minister Netanyahu. Does he accept the doctrine of two states on the 1967 line with agreed swaps or not? Before we hear that acceptance, we’re just grinding water.” Mr. Netanyahu, once again the ball is in your court. Yes? No?
P.S. As of Tuesday, May 24, 2011, newsmax.com reported from Politico that in a Monday night speech that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid rejected Obama’s talk last week in which he called for Israel to negotiate peace with the Palestinians using pre-1967 borders as a baseline. Now there’s a man eager for reelection.
Reid pointed out to The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) that, “The place where negotiating will happen must be at the negotiating table—and nowhere else. Those negotiations . . . will not happen—and their terms will not be set—through speeches, or in the streets, or in the media.”
Regarding the borders issue, “No one should set premature parameters about borders, about building, or about anything else,” he said. Of course, no decisions should be made either about how much land has been wrongfully taken from the Palestinians, how many have been disproportionately killed, wounded or intimidated to determine the full rape of Palestine by the Israelis. Thanks Harry, you wimp.
Jerry Mazza is a freelance writer, life-long resident of New York City. An EBook version of his book of poems “State Of Shock,” on 9/11 and its after effects is now available at Amazon.com and Barnesandnoble.com.He has also written hundreds of articles on politics and government as Associate Editor of Intrepid Report (formerly Online Journal). Reach him at gvmaz@verizon.net.
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’67 borders, land-swaps starters for Israel-Palestine peace deal
Posted on May 31, 2011 by Jerry Mazza
In this eye-opening NY Times article, Obama Sees ’67 Borders as Starting Point for Peace Deal, it was the first time a US president stated personally that Israel’s withdrawal of former Palestinian real estate claims must move back to 1967, and that whatever properties it felt must remain close-in could be negotiated in swapping for lands that Palestine disputed in Israel. Their border, in essence, could be worked out anew by the two states mutually, which came as a jolt to Israel.
Jumping into this nest of barbed wire at this point, as an election approached, created an opportunity for true diplomacy. This was sparked by an angry conversation Benjamin Netanyahu had with Hillary Clinton and a variety of “geshrys” from Israel to D.C.’s AIPAC. But then, given the fact that the “Arab Spring” was at hand, the “euphoria of Tunisia and Egypt,” not to mention the pain of Bahrain, Syria and Libya on the dark side, egos needed to be soothed, promises needed to be made, backs needed patting.
Of particular interest were the large Jewish settlements made in the West Bank and Gaza where millions of Palestinians live, including Jerusalem, the capital of greater Israel, which oversees “a resentful occupied” population, and where much conflict has occurred and sensitivities on both sides remain. But most of all, from this tangle, some agreement, according to Obama, needed to be made that was real, not merely a rerun of the failed efforts of Clinton and Bush. The times they were a changin,’ as Woody Guthrie would sing.
Needless to say, but the Times did say it, Netanyahu Responds Icily to Obama Remarks, saying “he expects to hear a reaffirmation from President Obama of American commitments made to Israel in 2004 which were overwhelmingly supported by both Houses of Congress.” Netanyahu, who was to have a meeting last Friday with Obama, added “that the commitments ‘relate to Israel not having to withdraw to the 1967 lines, which are both indefensible and which would leave major Israeli population centers in Judea and Samaria beyond those lines,” referring to large settlement blocs in the West Bank. But Bibi had forgotten the part about land swaps Obama promised for Israel to regain some areas for others.
But for the sake of historical perspective and character, the first major attack on Palestine occurred in 1948, in the Israeli War of Independence, as noted in the Orthodox Jewish historian Elan Pappe’s book, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine. He writes, “The 1948 War of Independence involved one of the largest forced migrations in modern history. Around a million people were expelled from their homes at gunpoint, civilians were massacred, and hundreds of Palestinian villages destroyed. Denied for almost six decades, had it happened today it could only have called ‘ethnic cleansing.’”
An Amazon review writes, “This book documents, using historical sources, the wrongdoings that were done to the Palestinians during the 1948 war (the Israeli war of independence and the war the Palestinians call the catastrophe). This book analyses historical evidence from Israeli sources, independently proving true the 1948 experiences the Palestinian refugees, men and women, rich and poor, Muslim and Christian recount about their cleansing from their land and property.”
Also, though the US had become the ally of Israel, supplying it billions of dollars for weapons and other assistance, during the Six-Day War in 1967, Israeli Mirages disgracefully strafed the USS Liberty. Wiki writes, “The USS Liberty incident was an attack on a United States Navy technical research ship, by Israeli Air Force jet fighter aircraft and Israeli Navy torpedo boats, on June 8, 1967, during the Six-Day War. The combined air and sea attack killed 34 crew members (naval officers, seamen, two Marines, and one civilian), wounded 170 crew members, and severely damaged the ship. At the time, the ship was in international waters north of the Sinai Peninsula, about 25.5 nmi (29.3 mi; 47.2 km) northwest from the Egyptian city of Arish.
“Both the Israeli and U.S. governments conducted inquiries and issued reports that concluded the attack was a mistake due to Israeli confusion about the identity of the USS Liberty.[5] Some survivors, in addition to some U.S. diplomats and intelligence officials involved in the incident, continue to dispute these official findings, saying the Israeli attack on the USS Liberty was not a mistake, and it remains “the only maritime incident in U.S. history where [U.S.] military forces were killed that was never investigated by the [U.S.] Congress.
The question is why weren’t they investigated by the U.S. Congress? Did Israel by that time have so much clout within the U.S. to stifle it?
As an admission of guilt or an act of good will, “In May 1968, the Israeli government paid the US $3,323,500 as full payment to the families of the 34 men killed in the attack. In March 1969, Israel paid a further $3,566,457 in compensation to the men who had been wounded. On 18 December 1980, it agreed to pay $6 million as settlement for the U.S. claim of $7,644,146 for material damage to the Liberty itself.”
Nevertheless, Israeli actions were curiously hostile behavior from an “ally” of the US that revealed a brutal, trigger-happy Israel, hardly in control of its own worst instincts. And so discussions of the borders and land-swaps of 1967 take on a whole new meaning for all, especially Israel’s biggest, and perhaps most indiscriminant booster, the United States, without whose help eradication would have been a certainty.
Nevertheless, this act of infamy was topped by revelations in the London Times in 1986 by the Orthodox Jewish nuclear technician working at Dimona, Mordechai Vanunu, that there was a nuclear facility in the Negev desert where Israel had already built between two and three-hundred nuclear warheads. America had been aware of this situation going back to Lyndon Johnson and said nothing about it. Again, this is a strange reaction from the most powerful country on earth.
Yet, despite these betrayals, the US has steadfastly contributed its pound of flesh, $3 billion a year for armaments, plus unsecured loans, and other armaments, to Israel. Perhaps Obama is reading about some other US and world sentiment than that planted by AIPAC, the powerful Israeli lobby in the US. In addition, Jewish-American sentiment has been molded both in Israel and America to contribute hundreds of millions of dollars more through various groups like B’nai B’rith, Hadassah, the United Jewish Appeal, and many others.
What Obama has offered is at least a temporary freeze in Israeli settlement building, which Israel has rejected, only to inflame Palestinian sentiment to the present point, to take Israel to the UN Assembly for a judgment of its behavior by the world body, and for its incursions of the past 60 plus years. Obama’s offer of negotiations now could also be a way of heading off or diminishing the impact of such a world judgment. Or perhaps he knows Congress won’t do anything whatever the UN says, which has been the case so far when Palestine was defended against Israeli violations of their human rights.
In a follow up article in the NY Times, Obama Presses Israel to Make ‘Hard Choices,’ whether or not the Palestinians themselves believe that Obama will enforce these standards for the peace talks also remains an item for discussion and belief. Of course, the Republicans have taken to speechifying, seeing an opportunity, that now more than ever, we should stand by our “steadfast” ally, Israel. At the very least, I see this as a check from Obama to balance Israel’s arrogance and expected continuation of billions in support, even in the wake of our weak economy, unlike their own, which is booming, thanks again to the US.
What Obama has said in this second round of words, before the America Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), is that he “offered familiar assurances that the United States’ commitment to Israel’s long-term security was ‘ironclad.’ But citing the rising political upheaval near Israel’s borders, he presented his peace plan as the chance Israel has to avoid ‘growing Isolation.’” Let these be words to the wise. The world, it is a-changin.
He went on to say, “I can continue defending you to the hilt, but you give me nothing to work with, even America can’t save you.” He had previously said, “We cannot afford to wait another decade, or another two decades, or another three decades, to achieve peace. The world is moving too fast.” Given the unrest in the Arab world, the US and Israel would gain credence coming to the bargaining table with some new proposals for real political change in the impasse between Israel and Palestine, the latter reduced to having large numbers of their people living in the largest outdoor concentration camp in the world, and holding on to only crumbs of what was their nation’s real estate and natural resources at one time.
Obama went so far as to rule out the Palestinians relationship with Hamas, which he described as a terrorist organization. It would seem that once again, quite a bit has been put on the table and pushed towards Israel, but nothing will satisfy it—now that its nuclear arsenal contains close to 400 nuclear warheads and a variety of other nuclear weapons—a number of which parenthetically were traded with the Apartheid State of South Africa for over two decades, from the mid-70s to the mid-90s, a government often compared to the Nazis in their attempt to genocide its black population, that is, until the native revolution reversed the political tables.
And in closing, President Obama said on Sunday last, “What I did on Thursday was to say publicly what has long been acknowledged privately,” allowing the world a breath of political relief. Ironically, Obama was not quite so generous to his African brother, Mommar Gaddafi, continuing the airstrikes and bombings, and pushing the limits of his War Control Powers to the hilt and beyond. Would that such a fate not befall Israel! Today, Obama’s last words were “I am waiting to hear from Prime Minister Netanyahu. Does he accept the doctrine of two states on the 1967 line with agreed swaps or not? Before we hear that acceptance, we’re just grinding water.” Mr. Netanyahu, once again the ball is in your court. Yes? No?
P.S. As of Tuesday, May 24, 2011, newsmax.com reported from Politico that in a Monday night speech that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid rejected Obama’s talk last week in which he called for Israel to negotiate peace with the Palestinians using pre-1967 borders as a baseline. Now there’s a man eager for reelection.
Reid pointed out to The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) that, “The place where negotiating will happen must be at the negotiating table—and nowhere else. Those negotiations . . . will not happen—and their terms will not be set—through speeches, or in the streets, or in the media.”
Regarding the borders issue, “No one should set premature parameters about borders, about building, or about anything else,” he said. Of course, no decisions should be made either about how much land has been wrongfully taken from the Palestinians, how many have been disproportionately killed, wounded or intimidated to determine the full rape of Palestine by the Israelis. Thanks Harry, you wimp.
Jerry Mazza is a freelance writer, life-long resident of New York City. An EBook version of his book of poems “State Of Shock,” on 9/11 and its after effects is now available at Amazon.com and Barnesandnoble.com. He has also written hundreds of articles on politics and government as Associate Editor of Intrepid Report (formerly Online Journal). Reach him at gvmaz@verizon.net.