Sarkozy sideshow...what really matters to Israeli foreign policy

Last week in Paris, French President Nicolas Sarkozy told Prime Minister
Binyamin Netanyahu to replace Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman with Tzipi
Livni. "I'm telling you," he reportedly said, "you need to get rid of that
man."


That might have been a propitious moment for Netanyahu to recommend that
French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner be replaced by Martine Aubry, head
of the Socialist Party. Instead, the premier replied, somewhat
mealy-mouthed, that Lieberman was actually a nice chap ­ once you got to
know him.


No doubt, were Sarkozy directeur des ressources humanines at our Foreign
Ministry, the place would take on a different political orientation. Would
Golda Meir have gotten his nod? Ariel Sharon? Moshe Arens? Yitzhak Shamir?
Unlikely.


But it's easier to be contemptuous of Sarkozy¹s behavior than to address the
bigger problems besetting foreign policy under Netanyahu¹s stewardship.
When he took office in March, he promised a reassessment of Israel¹s stance
vis-à-vis the Palestinians. Yet he arrived at the White House in May without
a plan; and didn¹t articulate one until his June 14 Bar-Ilan address. In
contradistinction to an Obama administration which knew exactly what it
wanted, the PM¹s three months of dawdling proved costly to Israeli
interests.

Secondly, Netanyahu appointed a foreign minister with a not-undeserved image
problem.


This newspaper was unenthusiastic about Lieberman's appointment. We strongly
urged Tzipi Livni to put country first and join a Netanyahu-led coalition as
foreign minister. It was not to be.


SOME Israelis suspect that when journalists rush to characterize Lieberman
as an "ultra-nationalist" and a "settler," or when foreign leaders maintain
their discreet boycott against him, they are motivated less by revulsion
over the positions of his Israel Beiteinu Party than by the sense that he is
a tough negotiator. Yet Lieberman embraced the road map and Netanyahu¹s
Bar-Ilan speech endorsing a two-state solution, and nothing about his
policies merits disdain. Moreover, if a security or settlement policy
doesn¹t gain Lieberman¹s support, chances are it won¹t fly with mainstream
Israelis either.

For all his bombast and past demagoguery, Lieberman is a remarkably
pragmatic politician.

So Netanyahu needs to be emphatic that Lieberman is a "fact on the ground" ­
and he made a good beginning on this before the European ambassadorial
delegation to Israel on Tuesday. The premier must do nothing to facilitate
foreign leaders going around Lieberman and dealing with Netanyahu directly.
A third problem is that there are too many players engaged in high-stakes
foreign policy-making. For instance, we find it curious that Defense
Minister Ehud Barak ­ rather than Lieberman ­ was tasked with negotiating
with US Special Middle East Envoy George Mitchell in New York. After all,
the foreign minister met with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in
Washington last month, and acquitted himself well. Certainly, Mitchell¹s
constitution is no more delicate than Clinton's.

Lieberman could have been accompanied by experts from the Defense Ministry
to help with any security issues that might have arisen. But the controversy
over a total and unconditional settlement freeze is in the purview of
foreign, not defense policy. Indeed, it was the Foreign Ministry that
disseminated the rather hollow joint statement following the meeting.
Nor, anyway, did Barak¹s presence ­ as opposed to Lieberman¹s ­ charm the
pants off Mitchell. A senior White House official told The Washington Post,
bluntly: "We have not changed our position at all... Nor has the president
authorized any negotiating room."

Israel recently appointed the highly capable Michael Oren as its ambassador
to Washington. His accreditation is in its final stages. Once that goes
through, it would be wise for visiting Netanyahu confidantes to steer clear
of meetings with Obama administration officials. It is essential that Oren
be recognized as Israel's paramount voice in the American capital.
Israelis' splenetic reaction to Sarkozy¹s meddling is understandable. Let it
not distract us, however, from far more serious challenges.

We need decisive, coherent foreign policy leadership at a time when
President Barack Obama seems intent on testing the special relationship
between the US and Israel. And Netanyahu needs to work with Lieberman in
explaining why ­ for all its good intentions ­ the administration's approach
is bad for both countries.

Mercy has its limits -

Vengeance & Bernie Madoff


When Bernard Madoff's attorney, Ira Lee Sorkin, appealed to US Federal District Court Judge Denny Chin to go easy on his client just before the Ponzi-scheme king was sentenced on Monday, his argument was: "Vengeance is not the goal of punishment."

There is no way of knowing what the judge thought of that. What we do know is that after labeling Madoff's 20-year crime spree an "extraordinary evil," Chin sent him to prison for 150 years. Granted, Madoff showed - if not remorse - then self-awareness, admitting that his $65-billion racket had caused "a great deal of suffering and pain… I live in a tormented state now… I've left a legacy of shame." Indeed, his wife, who absented herself from the courtroom, claims to have known nothing of the plot which left her "embarrassed and ashamed."

Just as "Quisling" has become synonymous with "collaboration"; "Churchillan" with "eloquence" and "Freudian" with "analysis," the name Madoff will henceforth, as The New York Times aptly put it, "become synonymous with greed and fraud."

It will be years before the Nobel Prize winners and baseball heroes; the foundations, hospitals and yeshivot; the universities and charities - and the thousands of pensioners and civil servants (who didn't even know their savings had been funneled to Madoff's operation by the firms they invested with) - know whether any of their losses can be recouped.

The number of lives Madoff shattered will never be known; nor the total number of potential medical breakthroughs his crimes aborted. The harm he caused to countless, anonymous individuals is incalculable.

From a Jewish perspective, Madoff has brought shame upon our people and disrepute to Judaism. He has desecrated God's name - a hillul Hashem. That the religion and ethnicity of non-Jewish criminals is seldom made an issue of is beside the point. It is our tradition, and not what the Gentiles may say, that makes Madoff's Jewishness pertinent.

THIS BRINGS us back to the issue of vengeance. Avraham Feder, rabbi emeritus of Beit Knesset Moreshet Yisrael in Jerusalem, notes that in the 1790s, after European Jews were emancipated, various ancient Hebrew ideas fell out of favor. With modernity, vengeance came to be seen as unethical and even un-Jewish. Jews began to embrace the Christian tenet of turning the other cheek.

In fact, in Jewish tradition, going back to ancient times, vengeance is closely associated with justice. The Psalmist calls upon the Creator: "Pour out your wrath on the nations that do not acknowledge you, on the kingdoms that do not call on your name; for they have devoured Jacob and destroyed his homeland."

Feder points out that while vengeance is the Lord's, the collective is occasionally empowered to exact retribution or vindication, as in Chapter 8, verse 13 of the Book of Esther, when the Jews are told to be ready "to avenge themselves on their enemies."

Rabbi Jacob Chinitz, a noted Jerusalem educator, has argued that vengeance is justice by another name - and justice is vengeance, so long as it is carried out lawfully, and sanctioned by society. Vigilantism by individuals is not justice and, if rampant, would send civilization back to a Hobbesian state of nature.

Elwood McQuaid, a leading Protestant clergyman and Christian Zionist, cites Romans 12:19 in defining his tradition's attitude to vengeance: "Beloved, do not avenge yourselves, but rather give place to wrath: for it is written, 'Vengeance is mine, I will repay,' says the Lord."

McQuaid: "What's interesting, and I believe clarifying here, is that the passage bases its authority on Deuteronomy 32:35. In the following passage, Romans 13, the justice/vengeance issue is left in the hands of the 'governing authorities,' with a strong admonition to obey and support those laws. Therefore, in cases like the Madoff fiasco, Christians would support whatever terms of justice/vengeance the law imposed. The prohibition is against executing personal vengeance, but supportive of the law of the land - justice."

So to attorney Sorkin, we say: Vengeance is indeed an acceptable goal of punishment, certainly in such a case. You might more credibly have appealed for mercy, which the Judeo-Christian tradition, and American jurisprudence, provide when justice makes a petitioner undeserving of leniency.

But even mercy has its limits.

Full-Court Press Against Israel With Obama in the Lead

What a settlement freeze would do


Search through the 1,000-word plus statement issued last Friday by the Middle East Quartet and you might be surprised by what turns up. For instance, the Quartet basically told the Palestinians that a peace deal with Israel would require them to end all other claims - implying abandonment of the "right of return." The Quartet also reiterated that Palestinian unity required Hamas to commit "to non-violence, recognition of Israel, and acceptance of previous agreements and obligations." It even demanded the immediate release of Gilad Schalit.

Yet, predictably, it was the Quartet's demand for a freeze on all settlement activity that dominated the news coverage.

THERE ARE signs that the international community's full-court press against settlements, with the Obama administration in the forefront, is wearing the Netanyahu government down. The Palestinians' position is that if settlements don't stop, negotiations won't start; and they define settlements broadly - as Jewish life beyond the Green Line. The Israeli government, under withering pressure from Washington, is reportedly floating the idea of a three-to-six-month settlement freeze to coax Mahmoud Abbas back to the negotiating table.

Barack Obama might want to reflect on how his push for a freeze is being seen among mainstream Israelis - those who want a peace deal. They wonder why there is no withering campaign to pressure Abbas into insisting that a Fatah-Hamas unity government explicitly accept the Quartet's principles. Or why ranking administration officials aren't demanding that Abbas explain why he rejected Ehud Olmert's unprecedented offer amounting to the equivalent of 100 percent of the West Bank. They are left uneasy by the administration's parsimonious reaction to Netanyahu's seminal Bar-Ilan speech on a two-state solution.

How can Netanyahu garner more domestic support to move vigorously against illegal outposts when Obama is essentially saying that in his eyes, Ma'aleh Adumim is an illegal outpost. It's hard to see.

Netanyahu articulated the consensus position of the Israeli body politic: "Palestine" must be demilitarized so that we don't wake up to find Iranian Revolutionary Guards overlooking Ben-Gurion Airport; that the Palestinian refugee issue must be addressed within the boundaries of Palestine; that, by extension, in a region which includes two dozen Muslim states, the Palestinians need to give up the "right of return" and accept Israel as the Jewish state. And that Israel cannot agree to pull back to the hard-to-defend 1949 Armistice Lines.

Settlement issues are complicated and the government's policy often seems incoherent at best. For instance, it is retroactively legalizing 60 apartments built without approval just outside Talmon. It is also belatedly building 50 new homes in Adam to accommodate the residents of unauthorized Migron, which it wants to dismantle. In the ideal world, Netanyahu's office should be breaking news of construction over the Green Line, and explaining it in the context of previous understandings with the US.

Would a temporary settlement freeze bring us any closer to peace? More likely, it would encourage the Palestinians to dig in their heels. Why not hold out for a permanent freeze? Or one that applied to metropolitan Jerusalem?

David Ignatius of The Washington Post recently quoted a senior Arab diplomat as telling him that a settlement freeze won't cut it. What the Arabs demand is an imposed solution. This is basically what Obama has also been hearing from some in the ostensibly pro-Israel community in Washington, led by J Street.

WERE HE to piggy-back on the Israeli consensus, Obama could bring us closer to the two-state solution George W. Bush envisioned. To do so, however, he would need to embrace the former president's commitments on settlement blocs and his administration's understanding regarding settlement growth.

Remarkably, these now dovetail with the position taken by a sitting Likud premier. Netanyahu has also taken extraordinary and potentially risky steps to improve the negotiating atmosphere - a dramatic reduction in preventative IDF operations and the lifting of virtually all internal checkpoints in the West Bank.

Israel is so not interested in a confrontation with the popular American president that Obama may feel he can insist upon an across-the-board and unconditional settlement freeze. The danger, if that happened, is that support for a deal among Israelis, predicated on Netanyahu's articulation of Bush's vision, would decline. And the Palestinians would become even more intransigent.
This article can also be read at http://www.jpost.com /

Friday's posting a bit late

Been moving apartments so this is being posted a bit late. Hope to be back at work on Monday.

Arab hearts & minds


Another day, another massacre in Iraq. Sunni fanatics bombed a Baghdad street market on Thursday, slaughtering 70 Shi'ites. The latest bloodletting comes just as 133,000 US combat forces are to be withdrawn from Iraqi population centers, on Tuesday. The troops will be out of the country altogether in two years.

While world attention has been focused on Iran, Iraqis have continued to kill each other and Americans. In Mosul, the coach of the national karate team was killed; a spate of violence earlier in the week claimed dozens of victims in Baghdad. A truck-bombing in Kirkuk on Saturday took 70 lives. Nor is the situation stable even in Fallujah, pacified at great cost in American lives and treasure.

The Sunnis responsible for recent attacks are mostly locals, not jihadis from abroad, and American intelligence believes that the chances of renewed sectarian warfare are receding. The official US line is that the war in Iraq is winding down and American forces there will be reassigned to Afghanistan.

US DEFENSE Secretary Robert Gates called on a Washington gathering of top military officers from friendly Arab countries to help stabilize Iraq and Afghanistan. He said that Washington's overtures to Iran notwithstanding, America would stick by its Arab allies.

America's dependency on imported petroleum, along with other geostrategic considerations, makes the need for good relations with the Arabs perfectly understandable. Still, isn't the administration curious about why it must work so hard to convince them to do what is in their own interest? After all, were Iraq (with its Shi'ite Arab majority) to fall completely into Iran's (Persian Shi'ite) orbit, this would be a bad thing for the predominantly Sunni Arab states. Likewise, a nuclear-armed Iran would most immediately threaten the Arabs.

On Thursday, Jerusalem Post diplomatic reporter Herb Keinon analyzed the approach Washington has been taking to bolster its credentials with the Arabs. By driving the settlement issue to the forefront, wrote Keinon, President Barack Obama has, paradoxically, made it next to impossible to resume Palestinian-Israeli peace talks.

The Palestinians insist they will not negotiate without a settlement freeze. And the Obama administration seems to have bought the assertion, reiterated at Wednesday's Arab League meeting in Cairo, that if only Jewish life over the Green Line was placed in suspended animation, Palestinian moderates would make a dash for peace.

There are some 550,000 Jews living beyond the Green Line: 300,000 in 120 communities in Judea and Samaria, the rest in metro-Jerusalem. Notwithstanding the shared Israeli and American desire to create a climate conducive to productive negotiations, it makes little sense to many Israelis that the US is demanding a freeze inside the strategic settlement blocs Israel is consensually insistent on retaining, and the extension of that demand to Jewish neighborhoods in post-'67 Jerusalem is still more problematic. Furthermore, all Israeli communities on the Palestinian side of a permanently agreed border would be relocated under the terms of a final status deal.

We suspect the Palestinians do not want to negotiate in good faith - otherwise why did they reject an offer by Ehud Olmert that would have given them the equivalent of 100 percent of the West Bank, plus Israel's agreement to international oversight of Jerusalem's holy basin? And why is Mahmoud Abbas still insisting on Israel agreeing to absorb millions of Palestinian "refugees" - thereby asking us to commit demographic suicide?

In Jordan this week, Saeb Erekat crowed that it was Palestinian negotiating obstinacy that had impelled Olmert's generous offer. The longer we hold out, he said, the better the offers get. In that context, American pressure for a complete Israeli settlement freeze seems likely to deepen Palestinian obduracy, not reduce it.

Fixating on settlements gladdens Arab hearts, no doubt. It will not, however, bring stability to Fallujah or Kabul.

What will? Perhaps a sense of certainty that America will not waver in its determination to lead. Even then, though, Arab collaboration on Iraq, Afghanistan and Iran will still be influenced by factors beyond Washington's control, such as the internecine struggle between Islamists and relative modernizers.

When the Arabs study Washington's handling of Iran's post-election upheaval, or how it's responding to the mullahs' quest for atomic weapons and to North Korea's brinkmanship, will they take heart from Obama's commitment to multilateralism and his dexterous employment of soft power and suasion? Or will they, looking at the results, hedge their bets and disingenuously attribute their vacillation to Jewish settlements on the West Bank?
This article can also be read

Gilad Shalit -- Still Waiting for a Red Cross Visit , Three Years In Captivity

Three long years


Something may be afoot in efforts to bring Cpl. Gilad Schalit home. Thursday marks three years since Palestinian infiltrators tunneled into Israel from the Gaza Strip, killed Lt. Hanan Barak and St.-Sgt. Pavel Slutsker and dragged our young soldier into captivity.

Hamas had recently defeated Fatah in Palestinian parliamentary elections and the international community was trying to figure out how to reconcile the will of the Palestinian majority with its need for the Islamist movement to recognize Israel, end violence and abide by the PLO's signed agreements.

Fatah and Hamas did eventually form a unity government, though it ended brutally in June 2007 with the ouster from Gaza of forces loyal to Mahmoud Abbas.

WHILE the strategic challenge Israel faces is not Hamas's custody of Schalit but its suzerainty over Gaza, it's been a long three years.

Hamas has held Schalit incommunicado. Violating international law and human decency, and although Hamas prisoners in Israel are permitted visitors, Gaza's rulers have refused to allow even the Red Cross to see their Israeli hostage.

Meanwhile, Fatah and Hamas unity talks are back on, and showing signs of "progress." And because the Islamists have held firm in their intransigence, the international community is fudging its original requirements of Hamas.

Hamas's rocket attacks on Israel together with its refusal to renew a de-facto cease-fire led the IDF to launch Operation Cast Lead last year. Since then, the Kassam firings have been sporadic, though a major attack was thwarted earlier this month and arms smuggling continues despite improved Egyptian vigilance along the Philadelphi Corridor.

Hamas's relentless bellicosity and Schalit's unlawful imprisonment notwithstanding, the Palestinians are aggrieved over Israel's restrictions on the types of goods it permits into the Strip (food, medicine, fuel and commodities go in; dual-use materials such as concrete and iron for making bunkers and rockets are kept out). Yesterday, in solidarity with Schalit, hundreds of Israelis blocked the shipment of goods into Gaza.

Europe and the US side with the Palestinians in demanding that the crossing points be unconditionally opened, with international monitors supposedly ensuring that Hamas plays by the rules. And if it doesn't? No doubt the rules will be "adjusted."

NEGOTIATIONS under Egyptian auspices for Schalit's release are accelerating. Defense Minister Ehud Barak was in Cairo this week, and a top Egyptian intelligence operative was said to have been in Tel Aviv yesterday on Schalit-related business.

Schalit's parents have not known a day of tranquility in three years and Israel must strive to bring him safely home - but not at any cost: Hamas has been insisting on the release of 1,000 prisoners in exchange for their Israeli hostage.

This newspaper raises no objection to freeing a modest number of prisoners, provided their release won't jeopardize more Israeli lives - though we regret the release yesterday of West Bank Hamas politician Aziz Dweik, while Schalit remains a prisoner.

However, we remain adamantly opposed to trading Schalit for mass-murderers such as Abdullah Barghouti, who has the blood of 66 Israelis on his hands (Sbarro, etc.); Ibrahim Hamed, who murdered 36 (Moment café, etc); Abbas Sayad (Netanya massacre, Pessah 2006).

It is not surprising that just as talk of an imminent deal on Schalit is circulating, so too is news of a blue-ribbon Defense Ministry panel shortly submitting its proposed guidelines governing future prisoner exchanges. These would constrain decision-makers in making obscenely lopsided exchanges: There would reportedly be no more releases of vast numbers of enemy prisoners for one or two Israeli soldiers, and only terrorist corpses - not live prisoners - could be traded for fallen Israelis.

These guidelines are eminently reasonable, and should - but won't - be applied to the Schalit case.

Once the wrenching Schalit affair is ended, we urge an efficient commission of inquiry into why there was no attempt to rescue the soldier over three years. Israelis have the right to know why the risks to the civilian population in releasing busloads of terrorists were deemed to trump those of a rescue mission.

If the government miscalculates the Schalit endgame, it could inadvertently fortify Hamas, endanger Israeli civilians and set the stage for the next hostage ordeal.