The King's London Times Interview

Taking a break from the pope today. But I was stuck in "pope traffic" last night. Our reporters and chief photographer (who are out there in the field) tell me they are exhausted from covering the pope. Nothing like it, they say. They have to show up hours ahead of schedule to events to get through extremely tight security...
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Abdullah's Vital Role

As the Royal Jordanian Airlines jet carrying Pope Benedict XVI to Israel taxied toward the waiting dignitaries yesterday, the cockpit side windows were adorned with the Vatican and Israeli flags. That was in keeping with protocol, yet it was a remarkable sight: a Muslim carrier bringing the Catholic pontiff to the Jewish state.

Then, too, there was the afterglow of the warm hospitality extended to the pope earlier by King Abdullah II and Queen Rania.

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is interested in meeting with Abdullah before he sees President Barack Obama next week in Washington. Yesterday, however, directly after welcoming the pope, Netanyahu was off to Sharm e-Sheikh for lunch with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and talks about the new government's approach to the Palestinian issue, Iran and, presumably, Gilad Schalit.

Abdullah, for his part, has met with Obama (on April 21); addressed the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, DC (last Friday); and granted (yesterday) a major interview to London's Times - headlined, on page one: King's Ultimatum: Peace Now Or It's War Next Year.

Throughout, he's been hammering home the message - delivered with regal understatement - that Israel is to blame for the negotiating impasse with the Palestinians, and that it has maybe 18 months to submit to the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative. Everything, he says, hinges on the Obama-Netanyahu meeting. If there is "no clear American vision" - read: If Obama doesn't lean hard on Israel - the president will lose his credibility, and the region will go up in smoke.

THE KING is a genuine moderate. His father made peace with Israel in 1994. In a region prone to shrill bullying, Abdullah prefers reasonable-sounding persuasion.

And yet it is striking that all his recent pronouncements held hardly a hint of Arab self-criticism; not a word about what the Palestinians need to do for peace.

The king naturally wants to end the "occupation." He claims the "Arab Peace Initiative is the most important proposal for peace in the history of this conflict." And he warns that "any Israeli effort to substitute Palestinian development for Palestinian independence" is unacceptable.

But the king surely knows that:

# Israel has no interest in "occupying" the Palestinians. That's been the stance of every premier from Rabin to Netanyahu. It is the Palestinians who have prolonged the "occupation" by rejecting generous offers to end the conflict (the latest proffered by Ehud Olmert and Tzipi Livni at the end of 2008).

# The Arab initiative, as it stands, is a fatally flawed take-it-or-leave-it diktat. Too bad, then, that just last week, Jordan denied it had agreed to a reported Obama administration suggestion that it spearhead efforts to make the plan more palatable.

# The Palestinians are hardly ready - today, right now - for total sovereignty. They are violently divided between the West Bank and Gaza. Fatah itself is polarized between generational factions. Palestinian political institutions are, shall we say, embryonic.

Stampeding the creation of a militarized "Palestine" would endanger both Israel and Jordan (a majority of whose population is Palestinian).

The good news is that moderate Jordan can play a vital role in fostering peace. We don't mean via such Abdullah platitudes as - "We are offering a third of the world to meet them with open arms" - but by working to narrow the differences between the parties. For no one understands the dynamics of Palestinian polity or appreciates the geostrategic lay of the land west of the Jordan River better than the king.

Rather than expecting Obama to deliver Israel prostrate, the king needs to lobby the Arab League for essential improvements to its plan: removing unrealistic demands for a total Israeli pullback to the hard-to-defend 1949 Armistice Lines; dropping their insistence on a Palestinian "right of return" to Israel proper - no more than a mechanism for demographically asphyxiating Israel; and adding a necessary plank committing the League to recognizing the legitimate rights of the Jewish people to self-determination.

The king does an excellent job of making the Arab position seem reasonable. But he could better advance the cause of peace by helping to make it reasonable in practice.

The Pope in Israel

Monday - Salve, Shalom


On the blustery morning of January 5, 1964, president Zalman Shazar and prime minister Levi Eshkol stood ready to "unofficially" welcome the first head of the Catholic Church to the Jewish state.

Pope Paul VI crossed into northern Israel via the Ta'anech gate, near Megiddo, from the Jordanian-held West Bank. Such was the excitement that local cinema houses advertised newsreel screenings of the visit within 24 hours of the pontiff's departure.

A day earlier, in a story datelined "Jerusalem, Jordan," UPI reported that the pope was practically trampled on his visit to the Via Dolorosa "when hysterically excited crowds pressed in upon him," and later escaped harm "when the arc-light cables in the church of the Holy Sepulcher caught fire while he was saying mass. Many pilgrims and worshipers were injured in the pushing, thrusting, shouting crowds whose unruliness at times threatened to overwhelm the 66-year-old pontiff…"

On the Israeli side of the 1949 Armistice Line, the pope was determined not to utter the name "Israel," nor hold any formal meetings with the Israelis - not even with chief rabbi Yitzhak Nissim. The Vatican did not recognize the Jewish state.

Pope Paul conducted Mass in Nazareth and dipped his hands in the Sea of Galilee. Then he made his way to western Jerusalem, thousands of Israelis lining the roads; 25,000 awaited him at the entrance to the city.

Just 111⁄2 hours after arriving, the pope stood before the Mandelbaum Gate connecting divided Jerusalem, ready to take his leave.

The area was floodlit and 5,000 well-wishers came to bid him farewell. The president and prime minister were there, as were religious affairs minister Zerah Warhaftig and Jerusalem mayor Mordechai Ish-Shalom.

In brief farewell remarks delivered in French, the pope chose to dwell on the controversial figure who was pontiff during the Holocaust: "Our great predecessor Pius XII… everybody knows what he did for the defense and the rescue of all those who were caught in [the war's] tribulations, without distinction; and yet you know suspicions and even accusations have been leveled again the memory of the great pontiff… [This is a] slight against history."

Back in Rome, the pope sent a thank-you cable to Israel's president in "Tel Aviv," thanking nameless "authorities" for their logistical assistance during his visit.

AS Israel greets Pope Benedict XVI today, we cannot fail to recall, fondly, the March 2000 visit of pope John Paul II; how, standing at the Western Wall, the leader of the Catholic Church stuffed a note into a crevice among the ancient stones imploring God's forgiveness for those who had caused Jews to suffer throughout ages.

Clearly, any appraisal of relations between the Church and the Zionist enterprise must take a long view - from the January 25, 1904 meeting between Theodor Herzl and Pius X, at which the pontiff refused to support Zionism or recognize the Jewish people; to December 30, 1993, when the Holy See established diplomatic relations with Israel; to Benedict's arrival at Ben-Gurion Airport this morning.

The conclusion? There has been more progress in Catholic-Jewish relations during the past 105 years than in the previous 2,000.

Yet there is no papering over the reality that relations under this pope have not been entirely smooth. Elected in April 2005, Benedict pledged to continue in John Paul's path to have the Church recognize Pius XII as a saint. Benedict also tacitly encouraged the Latin Good Friday prayer "For the Conversion of the Jews," used by ultra-traditionalists. And he lifted the excommunication of four bishops belonging to the reactionary Society of Saint Pius X, which rejects reconciliation with the Jews. One of the four, the British-born Richard Williamson, is an unregenerate Holocaust-denier.

Since these contretemps Benedict has, however, reiterated his commitment to Vatican II's more liberal line, strongly repudiated anti-Semitism, called the Shoah "a crime against God" and labeled Holocaust denial "intolerable."

From now until he leaves Friday, the pope's every pronouncement will be scrutinized. On Mount Nebo, where tradition holds God showed Moses the Promised Land, Benedict made a promising start, citing the "inseparable bond" between the Catholic Church and the Jewish people, and speaking about "reconciliation" and "mutual respect."

It is in this spirit that we welcome the Holy Father.

Trial balloons

Erev Shabbat -

Nobody can be uncheered with a balloon. - Winnie the Pooh

Perhaps Pooh is right. Still, some balloons rise to the stratosphere, while others sputter into oblivion. This week witnessed a cascade of trial balloons - from Hamas, the American State Department, the Quartet and the Arab League.

Let's differentiate between the one potential high-riser and the three duds.

# The New York Times interviewed Hamas politburo chief Khaled Mashaal in Damascus this week. Hamas is following in the footsteps of the Yasser Arafat's PLO, circa 1980.

Arafat had come to the realization that "armed struggle" alone would not achieve his goals. So in July 1982, he confided to Uri Avnery that the PLO was prepared to "recognize" Israel. Avnery immediately shared the good news with the Times.

As it turns out the PLO hasn't, to this day, genuinely recognized Israel as a Jewish state.

Anyway, Mashaal has an offer: Were Israel to pull back to the hard-to-defend 1949 Armistice Lines, uproot "settlements" such as Jerusalem's East Talpiot and French Hill neighborhoods, agree to have its population inundated by millions of descendents of the original 650,000 Palestinian Arabs who became refugees during the 1948 war - Hamas would offer us a long-term truce.

Dud Number 1.

# Before Rose Gottemoeller became Assistant Secretary of State for Verification and Compliance in the Obama administration, she had been a think-tank wonk advocating a nuclear-free Middle East. In a 2005 paper "Universal Compliance: A Strategy for Nuclear Security," she called on Israel to "proactively" negotiate a Mideast "free of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons."

So it was little surprise that in her State Department capacity, in addressing the Preparatory Committee for the 2010 Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty Review Conference this week, she made waves by pointedly including Israel in her call for "universal adherence to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty," bunching us together with India, Pakistan and North Korea.

Dud Number 2.

Curiously, Gottemoeller did not include Iran, a NPT signatory working furiously to build a bomb.

Israel, unlike Iran, has never threatened to wipe one of its neighbors off the face of the earth. Jerusalem maintains a policy of nuclear ambiguity, but has said it will not be the first to introduce nuclear weapons to the region.

Gottemoeller only needs to know that the raison d'etre of the Zionist enterprise is to make certain that, should our survival here be jeopardized, the Jews of Israel will "never again" go defenselessly to the slaughter.

# The Quartet is, according to Palestinian-sourced reports on Wednesday, working on a new peacemaking strategy, with input from the US, UN, EU and Russia, supposedly to be unveiled later this summer, promising a comprehensive solution to the Arab-Israel conflict.

Dud Number 3.

The Road Map broke down, in Phase I, due to ongoing Palestinian violence. But rather than hold the Palestinians to account, the international community produced Annapolis, which also bombed. Coming up with a new "framework" every time the Palestinians violate their promises is a recipe for failure.

# The London-based, pan-Arab, Al-Quds Al-Arabi newspaper reported that Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia are working on Version 2 of the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative which will "clarify the vague points" of the defective original.

As far as this trial balloon goes, we confess to being intrigued. As we understand it, the plan calls for the Palestinians to abandon their demand for a "right of return" and be granted citizenship in Arab countries, or in the newly created and demilitarized Palestine. There would be a timetable for the establishing of diplomatic relations between Israel and the Arab states. Israel would not be expected to return to the 1949 Armistice Lines (there would be some kind of land swap). Jerusalem would not be physically partitioned, and the holy places would be placed under international stewardship.

OBVIOUSLY, we have lots and lots of questions, but this is broadly the kind of proposal that could constitute a realistic starting point for talks.

Reaction to the Al-Quds Al-Arabi report? Denials from Jordan and Egypt, and silence from the Palestinians. Meanwhile, Mahmoud Abbas says he's working on a peace plan...

Is "international law" out to "get" Israel?

Wed - Dickens' law

What a busy time it's been for those who exploit international law to gang up on Israel. Let us count the ways.

Starting with yesterday's UN report compiled by Ian Martin on that incident during Operation Cast Lead at the UNRWA compound in Jabaliya, the one that generated mendacious headlines like "Israeli shelling kills dozens at UN school in Gaza."

In fact, no one sheltering at the school was killed - but about a dozen Palestinians nearby (including gunmen) were when Israel retaliated to Hamas's shelling. While Martin pointedly refused to incorporate the IDF's side in drafting his report, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon promised his cover note to the Security Council will provide some of the missing details and extenuating circumstances.

Don't go confusing Martin with Richard Goldstone's commission, which will be also be investigating the Gaza war. And don't confuse Goldstone with Richard A. Falk's "investigation" for the UN's Human Rights Council.

All this is in addition to the routine "docketing" of Israel at the UN Committee Against Torture in Geneva, partly instigated by Israel-based advocacy groups, some of which receive funding from the New Israel Fund and foreign powers. The committee's chair is Claudio Grossman, a Chilean national whose connection to the NIF figures is no secret.

If that wasn't enough, there is the Spanish legal system's persecution of top Israeli officials for the 2002 operation that liquidated Salah Shehadeh. Tragically, 14 civilians also lost their lives. But unintended civilian deaths in warfare are not unheard of. Shehadeh supervised dozens of terrorist attacks, killing or wounding hundreds of Israelis. The "universal jurisdiction" claimed by Spain and other countries - even where neither the "perpetrator" nor the "victim" has anything to do with them - verily turns the law into an ass.

Let's not forget the Durban II farce starring Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, or that it was ostensibly organized as a UN-sponsored "anti-racism" conference.

Finally, there's the unrelenting abuse of international law at every single UN body - except the essentially defunct Trusteeship Council.

WHY this obscenely inordinate investment of time, money and personnel in bashing us?

Because an odd coalition - of progressives and reactionaries - finds itself united in the aim of forcing Israel out of the West Bank, and international law is a potent weapon in their arsenal.

The progressives see Israel as "occupying" only the West Bank and Gaza (though Israel pulled out of there in 2005), while the reactionaries see the "occupation" as extending over all of "Palestine," and Israel's establishment as an inexpugnable sin. This "human rights coalition" is united in the belief that the end - forcing Israel out of the West Bank - justifies the means: exploiting and distorting international law.

That's why it has been made virtually "illegal" for Israel to defend itself. An "occupier" doesn't deserve that right.

The progressives' demand for a West Bank withdrawal is hardly tempered by concern for realities on the ground. Didn't Ehud Olmert offer just about the entire West Bank to Mahmoud Abbas? Hasn't every Israeli leader since Yitzhak Rabin made clear that Israel has no interest in ruling the Palestinians?

If the international community wanted to be part of the solution, rather than the problem, it would tell the Palestinians to stop hiding behind a perverted international law and start negotiating with Israel in earnest.

As for Spain, it's patently obvious that politicians in that country could have intervened to limit the scope of "universal jurisdiction." Their repeated failure to do so speaks volumes. Spanish diplomats and Spanish EU functionaries ought not to be astonished when Israelis show little faith in them as honest brokers.

Are we claiming that Israel - uniquely among nations - never commits human rights violations? Of course not. We are saying that the unprecedented manipulation of international law and global legal institutions to isolate and delegitimize the Jewish state is simply not fair. Moreover, it has the unintended consequence of ripping asunder the fabric of international law and morality.

For the Organization of the Islamic Conference and the Arab League this may not matter much, but shouldn't it matter a great deal to those who embrace Western values?