Peace and Golan

It's official.

Shortly after noon yesterday, the Prime Minister's Office announced that "Syria and Israel have started indirect talks under the auspices of Turkey" in search of a "comprehensive peace" based upon "the Madrid Conference terms."

That reference point is significant because it was at Madrid, in 1991, that Israel accepted the principle of a withdrawal from the Golan Heights in exchange for peace.

Though reports that Turkey has been serving as an intermediary in secret talks between Syria and Israel have been circulating for months, Wednesday's official announcement stuns nevertheless. For it comes as Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is fighting for political survival in the face of mounting investigations into alleged wrongdoing.

Yet the news that top Olmert aides Shalom Turjeman and Yoram Turbovitz were in Istanbul as Turkish officials shuttled between them and Syrian negotiators raises hope that Syria may join Egypt and Jordan in making peace.

It also evokes cynicism. A common reaction by politicians and citizens alike - across the political spectrum - has been the Hebrew saying which translates as: "The depth of the retreat parallels the extent of the investigation."

But let's for the moment put aside the question of the premier's possible ulterior motives. And let's, for argument's sake, forget that Olmert's popularity is at a nadir, that his governing coalition is crumbling, and that on Friday the police will again be visiting his home with more questions about money-stuffed envelopes from a man named Morris Talansky.

WHAT INTERESTS Israelis most is whether this momentum toward a deal is in the country's interest. We are troubled by reports of a Syrian announcement that Israel has already agreed to withdraw from the Heights even in the absence of direct negotiations between the sides.

Meanwhile, behind the scenes, we may be witnessing an extraordinary Bush administration about-face. Until recently, Washington had been signaling Jerusalem not to engage with Damascus because of Syria's treacherous roles in Iraq and Lebanon and its bond with Iran.
Then all of a sudden, according to a report Saturday in the London-based Arabic Al-Hayat daily, the US supposedly asked Turkey to increase its efforts to advance negotiations between Israel and Syria.

YET ALL this is also besides the point. For what matters most now is what Syria is offering to make a withdrawal worth Israel's while. The extent of any withdrawal must parallel the depth of the peace offered. Who wants a cold peace with a Syria which has practically melded its foreign and military policies with Iran?

For Israelis to take its overtures seriously, Damascus would have to disconnect itself totally from the Iranian mullahs. Rather than helping arm Hizbullah, Syria would have to isolate it. And not only would Syria's policy of assassinating freedom-loving Lebanese leaders have to end, Damascus would need to recognize Lebanese sovereignty and open an embassy in Beirut. Israel cannot reasonably make peace with Syria while Lebanon smolders.

A deal with Syria could also potentially bolsterrelative moderates among the Palestinians; but not if Syria continues to host the Hamas leadership in Damascus. From state-sponsor of terror, it would have to transform itself into strategic opponent of terror.

Nor can Israel afford a deal perceived as being with Bashar Assad's Alawite clique alone. For the complete normalization of relations integral to any treaty, we need signs that Syria is developing its civil society and political institutions, and that the Sunni majority is being socialized toward tolerance and peace by the formidable state-controlled media.

A peace treaty with Syria is in Israel's strategic interest - but not at any price. Jerusalem is being called upon to make irrevocable concessions in return for the promise of Syrian goodwill. The finer points of an accord, notably about access to Israel's main natural water resource, the Kinneret, will be critical. The Golan, a vital geostrategic area which offers control of northern Israel, would have to be demilitarized and somehow trustworthy monitors put in place - but why not also envision a normalization that allows Jews to continue living there?

When Bashar took over from his father, Hafez, in 2000, the London-educated, British-accented physician was portrayed as the leader who would transform an autocracy into a forward-looking polity. But the apple didn't fall far from the tree. Assad the son has actually blocked access to the Web. There is only one government controlled Internet provider in Syria. Even Iran has more freedom of access.

Still, if Bashar now seeks that path, and truly seeks to lead his country, and by extension the Arab world, to full normalization with Israel, Israelis would urge him, as a vital step toward persuading us that we have entered an era of reconciliation, to come to the Knesset and tell us about it.

Urban Legend - Jews criticizing Israel

'Where there are two Jews, there are three opinions," so the saying goes. And the idea that American Jews could ever speak with one voice on Israel? That could not have originated within the community itself.

The single-voice notion came from a non-Jew. The story that follows is partly apocryphal, but it does inform. Accounts differ, but either secretary of state John Foster Dulles or State Department official Henry Byroade is said to have complained that too many requests from disparate Jewish groups seeking audiences with president Dwight Eisenhower were arriving at the White House.

Byroade (if it was he) suggested to Nahum Goldmann that it might be useful if the various intercessors combined into a single deputation. Goldmann raised the idea with Philip Klutznick. Soon afterwards, the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations was born.

Some suggest the crafty Dulles (if it was he) may have had an ulterior motive, knowing that the Jews could never develop a consensus position to present to the administration. That would put an end to their pestering.

Sure enough, a broiges broke out. Taking charge of the World Jewish Congress, Goldmann set out to lead a new, thriving Diaspora which would decide for itself what being pro-Israel was all about.

A further rupture is traceable to the premiership of Golda Meir, who was openly condescending toward Diaspora machers coming to her with peace-making advice.

IT IS TRUE that the nature and stridency of Diaspora criticism of Zionist policies evolved. After the Holocaust no mainstream Jewish leader remained anti-Zionist. And after the 1967 Six Day war every one of them had become explicitly pro-Zionist. Yet the impulse to criticize this or that Israeli policy remained a constant. There are few former chairs of the Presidents Conference who have refrained from publicly criticizing Israeli policies.

Then there are the dissident groups. Breira was founded in 1973 to support the unconditional inclusion of an unreformed PLO into the diplomatic process. Breira's legacy, given its brief existence and minuscule membership, was extraordinary in that it "broke" afresh the imaginary barrier against public criticism of Israel. Breira's successor organization was the New Jewish Agenda, which operated during the premiership of Menachem Begin, when Jewish criticism of Israeli policies was vociferous.

The founding of Peace Now, the zealously anti-settlement movement, led its US Jewish supporters to begin their own lobbying, starting in 1978.

Some US Jews, still more to the Left, went further. It was a Jewish academic who drafted the November 1988 declaration of independence for the "State of Palestine" which Yasser Arafat in Tunis dutifully proclaimed.

And rightist Diaspora groups, rabbis notably among them, have since 1993 been prominently critical of Israeli government efforts to reach land-for-peace deals with the Palestinians.

So the notion that US Jews have ever been hesitant to break with Israeli policies is simply uninformed by history.

AND STILL, The Atlantic magazine's Jeffrey Goldberg, writing on the op-ed pages of The New York Times Sunday ("Israel's 'American Problem'"), thinks he's breaking new ground when he advocates that US Jews vote for a president who will "help" and "prod" Israel "publicly, continuously and vociferously" to facilitate a Palestinian state.

As Goldberg sees it, Israel now, belatedly, wants peace, but is being blocked by a monolithic and supposedly right-wing Presidents Conference and its fellow travelers at AIPAC. He's worried that too many US Jews "conflate" support for the settlement enterprise - what he calls "the colonization" of the West Bank - with being pro-Israel.

He needn't worry. Most US Jews have never visited Israel, let alone a "settlement." Many are clueless about the strategic value of the West Bank and couldn't distinguish between an "ideological" settlement in the heart of Samaria and Har Homa in Jerusalem. All this makes Goldberg's calls for a "radical rethinking of what it means to be pro-Israel" both anachronistic and disingenuous.

Goldberg might glance across the page at veteran New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman, who's been redefining what it means to be pro-Israel for decades. Friedman, too, argues that a "pro-Israel" president is one who draws "red lines when Israel does reckless things" like building settlements.

So let's restate the obvious: No gatekeeper stifles criticism of Israeli policies among US Jews. There are no risks, not on the Left or on the Right, in proffering advice to Israel from the Diaspora.

All one needs is lots of hubris.

Oil and the Saudis

On Friday, President George W. Bush traveled to Saudi Arabia from Israel to meet with King Abdullah and commemorate the 75th anniversary of diplomatic relations between Washington and Riyadh.

Saudi Arabia is probably the only country in the world named after the family that controls it. Abdul Aziz ibn Saud headed the puritanical Wahhabi movement, which founded the country in 1932. Oil was discovered in 1936. Commercial production began two years later.
The Saudis have come a long way from the days, after the 1973 Yom Kippur War, when they orchestrated the 1973 Arab oil embargo; and 1979, when they opposed Egypt's peace treaty with Israel.

Some of the changes are traceable to the regime's battle with homegrown fanatics, for instance, the November 1979 assault by dissident Wahhabis on Mecca's Great Mosque. Riyadh-born Osama bin Laden openly broke with the king in August 1995 - not over "Palestine," as he claimed in a Web posting Friday, but because of the royal family's profligacy, perceived religious hypocrisy and what he saw as the galling presence of "filthy Crusaders" - aka US troops - on Arabian holy land.

Since 1979 and the overthrow of the Shah, the Saudis have also faced an ever-growing threat from Iran. From their perch across the Gulf, the Persian Shi'ites view the Sunni Arab custodians of Mecca with theological and political disdain.

The historic March 2007 visit to Riyadh by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad notwithstanding, tensions between the two countries have hardly abated. Last week Prince Faisal, the Saudi foreign minister, accused Iran of staging a coup in Lebanon which would affect Teheran's relations with the Arab and Islamic world. And next month, former Iranian president Ali Rafsanjani, an Ahmadinejad critic, is expected to visit the kingdom.

WE DO not know what Bush and Abdullah talked about during their time at the king's horse farm outside Riyadh, but we can guess it was mostly oil and Iran.

The White House announced a series of agreements on energy, civilian nuclear cooperation, nonproliferation and the fight against global terrorism. Not much was said about Bush's plans to push through Congress a $1.4 billion arms sale to the kingdom.

The Saudis, the world's biggest oil exporter, agreed to sell an additional 300,000 barrels per day, raising their daily output to 9.45 million barrels; Bush responded that the Saudi move wouldn't solve the problem of skyrocketing oil prices.

He was right in saying that America's energy problem would be ameliorated only when domestic exploration increased and refining capacity expanded; when alternative energy sources were better developed, when conservation was robustly pursued and safe nuclear energy promoted.
Meanwhile, oil stands at $128 a barrel. US consumers are paying $4 a gallon. Of course, we Israelis pay substantially more - roughly $7 a gallon (or about NIS 6.58 a liter).

While energy costs are not solely to blame, oil prices have been slowing consumption and putting a drag on the world's economy. America is in a recession, unemployment is up. In Israel, the April cost-of-living index jumped 1.5%, the highest in six years. Annual inflation stands at 5%.

GONE ARE the days when the Saudis could singlehandedly bring down oil prices and solve such problems. Nor can we expect them to contain Iran by themselves. Still, they could be far more helpful on Lebanon, Hamas and Arab-Israel relations.

Israel's have applauded Saudi efforts to tear down the edifice of religious justification for Muslim terrorism. And the king is to be applauded for recently launching an interfaith dialogue among monotheistic religions. But what good are such efforts if representatives from Israel are not invited to participate.

With Lebanon's rivals meeting in Qatar, I'd like to see the Saudis leveraging their clout within the Arab League, against Hizbullah. And with Hamas again seeking a rapprochement with Fatah, the Saudis should insist the League embrace the Quartet's conditions for including Hamas in the Palestinian Authority.

Of course, the Saudis still need to overhaul their own fundamentally flawed 2002 peace plan to make it a genuine starting point for improving Arab-Israel relations.

Given the regime's origins, it is ironic that the inheritors of Wahhabism are today uniquely positioned to help bridge the civilizational gap between Islam and the West.

Failing to do so will ultimately cost them, and us all, dear.

Is it about borders?

Border: A part that forms the outer edge of something... The line or frontier area separating political divisions.

The Bush administration would like Israel and the Palestinians to agree on a border so that everything else - Jerusalem, settlements, the "occupation," refugees, whatever - can then fall into place. This presupposes that the Palestinians see their conflict with Israel as primarily a border dispute.

Would it were so.

A 1921 British Mandate map showed Palestine's borders already divided between a Jewish homeland west of the Jordan (today Israel, the West Bank and Gaza), and an area to the east closed to Jewish settlement (today Jordan).

The Arab response to that map was: This isn't about borders.

In 1937 the Peel Commission offered another set of borders. Transjordan would, of course, remain in Arab hands, and virtually all of what was left west of the Jordan would also be Arab. The Jews would be given land from Tel Aviv running northward along the coastal plain and parts of Galilee. The Arabs said: It's not about borders.

A third map, proposed by the UN in 1947 as General Assembly Resolution 181 - the Partition Plan - divided Palestine west of the Jordan River (the eastern bank now being Transjordan): The Jews were to be given an indefensible, checkerboard territory, the biggest chunk of which consisted of the then arid Negev. Jerusalem, the epicenter of Jewish longing since 70 CE, would be internationalized; a tiny corridor would connect Israel's truncated parts. To get to Galilee, Jews would have to traverse Arab Palestine.

The Jews took the deal. The Arabs said: It's not about borders.

On May 15, 1948 - 60 years ago today - the Egyptian, Jordanian, Saudi, Syrian and Lebanese armies, along with Palestinian irregulars, sought to throttle the birth of Israel. Their failure to do so created the 1949 Armistice Lines. The West Bank, Gaza, the Golan Heights and east Jerusalem were all in Arab hands. There was no "occupation."

The Jews said: Now, can we live in peace? The Arabs said: It's not about borders.

TODAY, 41 years ago, Egyptian troops moved into the Sinai as Gamal Abdel Nasser declared "total war." The Syrians, for their part, promised "annihilation." Even King Hussein figured the time was ripe to strike. But, instead of destroying Israel, the Arabs lost more territory. The heartland of Jewish civilization, Judea and Samaria, was now in Israel's hands, as was Jerusalem's Temple Mount.
Even so, the Jews said: Let's trade land for peace.
In August 1967, Arab leaders assembled in Khartoum gave their reply: No peace. No negotiations. No recognition.

Ten years later, with the election of Menachem Begin, the courageous Anwar Sadat came to the Knesset with a message: "We really and truly welcome you to live among us in peace and security." Egypt and Israel then agreed on a border and signed a peace treaty.
The Arabs ostracized Cairo and Sadat was assassinated. The peace never really blossomed, but the border holds.

THEN IN 1993, Yitzhak Rabin took an astonishing strategic risk, turning over parts of the West Bank to a newly-created Palestinian Authority. Hebron, Bethlehem, Ramallah, Nablus, Jenin, Jericho, Tulkarm and Kalkilya all came under full Palestinian jurisdiction. Other territory was placed under the PA's civil control, and the PA took charge of Gaza's Arab population centers.
The sight of green PA license plates became commonplace throughout Israel. Checkpoints were minimized. The international community poured money into the Palestinian areas.

At last, the Palestinians had the parameters of a state-in-waiting - a political horizon. The parties still had tough issues to tackle, but the reality on the ground had dramatically improved.

In 2000, Ehud Barak offered at Camp David his vision of a viable Palestinian state. Yasser Arafat's "counter-offer" was the Aksa intifada, an orgy of suicide bombings nationwide and drive-by shootings in the West Bank that would claim over 1,000 Israeli lives. Clearly for Arafat, the issue wasn't borders.

For Israelis to now take the idea of a "shelf-agreement" about borders seriously, the Palestinians would have to declare - once and for all - that their dispute with us really is about borders. And that they accept Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state.
If they do that, the rest will fall into place.

Bush & the Palestinians

Yesterday, President Bush gave a gracious interview in the Oval Office to The Jerusalem Post and three other Israeli journalists. Today, the president embarks on a hectic farewell trip to the Middle East that will bring him to Israel tomorrow to celebrate the 60th anniversary of this nation's founding.

On Friday the president will head to Saudi Arabia to mark the 75th anniversary of the establishment of ties between Washington and Riyadh. And on Saturday, he will travel to Sharm e-Sheikh to meet Egypt's Hosni Mubarak, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Salaam Fayad, and Jordan's King Abdullah II. He is also scheduled to see the Afghan president, Iraqi leaders and Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Saniora. Finally, Bush will participate in a World Economic Forum gathering before heading home.

Presidents come and go - figuratively as well as literally - but America's stance toward the Arab-Israel conflict remains remarkably consistent. Support for Israel is balanced against Washington's energy and strategic interests in the Arab world, tending to leave neither Israelis nor Arabs completely satisfied.

When Israel not only survived but captured vast amounts of territory in the 1967 Six Day War, America saw an opportunity to pursue a policy of "land for peace." Arguably, few Arab leaders can bring themselves to accept the legitimacy of Jewish sovereignty anywhere in the region. Nevertheless, land for peace has remained the unwavering American policy approach. The personalities, daily headlines and controversies change, but not America's fundamental direction. It is in this context that the pattern of Bush's decisions must be understood.

Recall that Yasser Arafat launched the Aksa intifada just months after Bush took office, even though Ehud Barak had offered him both land and statehood. Bush gave up on Arafat, refusing to ever meet with him, but stuck with the land-for-peace idea.

In the wake of the September 11, 2001, al-Qaida attacks on the US, Bush sought to garner support among Arab and Muslim pragmatists. Thus on June 24, 2002, he articulated his "vision" of a Palestinian state predicated on Palestinians electing reformist leaders. Bush sidelined Arafat and championed the more pragmatic, if ineffectual, Mahmoud Abbas.

Though the violence continued, in March 2003 Bush unveiled "a performance-based and goal-driven road map," to Palestinian statehood, calling for an immediate, unconditional cessation of Palestinian violence. But it also said, "As progress is made toward peace, settlement activity in the occupied territories must end." As Palestinian attacks went on to kill more than 1,000, Israel had little incentive to freeze Jewish life in Judea and Samaria. Still, repeated and unfulfilled promises to dismantle non-authorized settlement outposts continue to undermine Jerusalem's credibility.

Convinced that Abbas would not take risks for peace, Ariel Sharon proposed unilateral disengagement from Gaza and parts of the northern West Bank. Bush chose to interpret this as being in harmony with the road map. And on April 15, 2004, he wrote Sharon to say that in light of new realities it would be unrealistic for final-status negotiations to result in a withdrawal to the 1949 Armistice Lines.

Israel pulled out from Gaza in August 2005, giving the PA the perfect opportunity to create a nascent state. It was tragically squandered.

Hamas's victory in the Palestinian parliamentary elections held in January 2006 exacerbated an already volatile environment, and in June 2007 Abbas was ousted from Gaza. Today he hangs on in the West Bank due in no small measure to the IDF's presence.

No one can blame President Bush for not having ended the Arab-Israel conflict. And yet there are steps he could take to leave our region better off than when he took office.

He could unambiguously tell the relative moderates among the Palestinians that their demand for an Israeli withdrawal to the 1949 Armistice Lines is unrealistic; that their claims to a "right of return," which would spell the demographic destruction of Israel, should be abandoned; and he could press Abbas to use his Western-trained and -equipped forces to tackle the terrorist infrastructure right under his nose.

Finally, Bush could point out that no progress will be made until Abbas prepares his people for genuine reconciliation with Israel.