Israel as Czechoslovakia
Whatever actually happens at Annapolis, what is blindingly obvious right now is the extent of America’s betrayal of the Jewish people and, in the process, of its own supposed core doctrine post 9/11. President Bush, through his proxy Condoleezza Rice, is pushing Israel to accept suicidally indefensible borders. By contrast, there is no pressure on Mahmoud Abbas to adhere to the first commitment of the Road Map, which is for him to dismantle the Palestinian infrastructure of terror. Only the victim of this terror is to make the most ‘painful sacrifice’ of all — its own existence.
There are many very shocking aspects to this American position. The first, and most dramatic, is the way in which President Bush has reneged on his own commitment to Israel. At the Jerusalem Centre for Public Affairs, Dore Gold spells out the extent of this perfidy:
On April 14, 2004, Prime Minister Sharon presented his Gaza Disengagement plan to President Bush and received as a quid pro quo a presidential letter with a set of U.S. guarantees about the shape of a future Israeli-Palestinian peace settlement. Sharon appeared before the Knesset on April 22, 2004, and explained the significance of the Bush Letter:There is American recognition that in any permanent status arrangement, there will be no return to the ‘67 borders. This recognition is to be expressed in two ways: understanding that the facts that have been established in the large settlement blocs are such that they do not permit a withdrawal to the ‘67 borders and implementation of the term ‘defensible borders.’
…The Bush Letter did not intend to impose the outlines of a peace settlement in lieu of future Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. However, it laid out an updated vision of the U.S. position on a final peace settlement if the U.S. were actually asked to provide these details by the parties, especially if negotiations stalemated. The Bush Letter, moreover, did not represent a sharp break with past U.S. policy; it was fully consistent with UN Security Council Resolution 242. Former President Ronald Reagan used the language of ‘defensible borders’ in September 1982 and it was adopted by former Secretary of State Warren Christopher in January 1997 in his letter of assurances to former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
There is a serious question about the exact standing of the Bush Letter on the eve of Annapolis. Buried in the address by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice at the United Jewish Communities General Assembly in Nashville on November 13, 2007, was a surprising sentence: ‘I believe that most Israelis are ready to leave most of the — nearly all of the West Bank, just as they were ready to leave Gaza for the sake of peace.’2 It is doubtful that Rice was reflecting on the results of any serious Israeli public opinion poll, which actually show strong Israeli support for retaining strategic areas of the West Bank, like the Jordan Valley. And given Israel's bitter experience from unilaterally leaving the Gaza Strip, it is difficult to draw analogies from Israeli positions on Gaza prior to the August 2005 disengagement and Israeli positions, at present, toward withdrawal from the West Bank. It is likely that she carefully chose her language as a trial balloon, couching a new possible U.S. position on borders as a general statement about Israeli public opinion.
Having decided to convene the Annapolis meeting, the Bush administration is under enormous pressure to make sure it succeeds. The situation that has been created provides the Arab states with enormous leverage over Washington to revise its positions on the core issues in order to obtain their attendance at a high enough level. Even if the U.S. does not issue its own statement in lieu of the Joint Statement, a revised U.S. position could come in the form of a presidential address or even private communications from Washington to Arab capitals that erode the Bush Letter and empty it of much of its original content.
So why is this happening? People have noticed that the proposal on the Annapolis table is essentially a reheated version of the Saudi ‘peace’ plan, which required Israel to retreat to the 1967 ‘Auschwitz’ borders, exile Jews altogether from their holiest place, the Temple Mount in Jerusalem and accept the mass immigration of Arabs from the disputed territories — which would destroy Israel’s existence as a Jewish state — despite the creation of a separate state of Palestine (from which of course Jews would be excluded). The most likely immediate reason for President Bush’s shameful acceptance of this proposal to annihilate by stealth its ally, Israel, is the fact that, as this article suggests, Saudi is calling the shots. If anyone should doubt the vast power of the Saudi lobby, this provides a primer.
So much for the supposedly all-powerful American Jewish lobby of which we hear so much and from so many. It turns out that six million overwhelmingly Democrat-voting American Jews are totally eclipsed by the power over a Republican President of Saudi oil. Well, waddya know.
But the Saudi lobby has been in place for a very long time. So why has Bush performed this astounding volte-face now? Two explanations. The first is that he is but the latest to be captured by Presidential Middle East Derangement Syndrome — the fantasy that he can engrave his place in history as the President who brought the simulacrum of peace to the Middle East. The second is that this is in line with the idea that a historic realignment is under way, in which mutual interests with the west mean that ‘moderate’ Islamic states such as Saudi Arabia can be brought into a grand coalition against Iran provided a bone is thrown their way. That bone — don’t laugh — is supposed to be a Palestinian state.
Of course, the idea that Saudi is at all concerned about the fate of the Arabs of the territories is ludicrous; the idea that if a state of Palestine comes into being this will make all the difference to Saudi’s membership of a coalition against Iran is beyond ludicrous. If Saudi thinks that it is in its interests to present itself as America's ally against Iran, it will do so regardless of the fate of the Palestinians. Its cause in the Middle East is not and has never been their interests; it is, as it always was, the destruction of the Jewish state. Saudi may be Iran’s regional enemy but in terms of the global jihad they are both singing from the same murderous songsheet. Saudi wants Israel annihilated and its holy sites in Jerusalem erased. And America, in this bone-headedly stupid and amoral strategic error, is trying its damnedest to help bring this about — thus signalling its wholesale retreat from the ‘Bush doctrine’ and calamitously undermining the defence of the west.
Annapolis is America’s Munich — and Israel is the new Czechoslovakia.