Netanyahu Calls on Obama to Retract Statement, Honor U.S. Commitments
By Ken Falkenstein | Thursday, May 19th, 2011 | Policy
While President Obama travels the world apologizing for his country, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu works tirelessly to defend his. Today, in response to Obama’s demand that Israel grant the Palestinians a terrorist state alongside indefensible Israeli borders, Netanyahu released a statement demanding that Obama retract his new anti-Israel position and honor the United States’ existing commitments to Israel:
Israel appreciates President Obama’s commitment to peace. Israel believes that for peace to endure between Israelis and Palestinians, the viability of a Palestinian state cannot come at the expense of the viability of the one and only Jewish state.That is why Prime Minister Netanyahu expects to hear a reaffirmation from President Obama of U.S. commitments made to Israel in 2004, which were overwhelmingly supported by both Houses of Congress.Among other things, those 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.Those commitments also ensure Israel’s well-being as a Jewish state by making clear that Palestinian refugees will settle in a future Palestinian state rather than in Israel.Without a solution to the Palestinian refugee problem outside the borders of Israel, no territorial concession will bring peace.Equally, the Palestinians, and not just the United States, must recognize Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people, and any peace agreement with them must end all claims against Israel.Prime Minister Netanyahu will make clear that the defense of Israel requires an Israeli military presence along the Jordan River.Prime Minister Netanyahu will also express his disappointment over the Palestinian Authority’s decision to embrace Hamas, a terror organization committed to Israel’s destruction, as well as over Mahmoud Abbas’s recently expressed views which grossly distort history and make clear that Abbas seeks a Palestinian state in order to continue the conflict with Israel rather than end it.
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About the author
Ken Falkenstein has been a staffer in the United States Senate and the Virginia House of Delegates. He has managed political campaigns. He was a military intelligence analyst in the U.S. Army in West Germany during the Cold War. He is currently the Vice President of the Down Syndrome Association of Hampton Roads and practices as a civil litigation attorney with the law firm of Poole Mahoney PC in Virginia Beach. His concern for his kids' future is what most informs his writing.
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13 Responses to "Netanyahu Calls on Obama to Retract Statement, Honor U.S. Commitments"
Netanyahu is essentially saying that he can’t depend on Obama for anything. I assume he is going to try to do an end run around him with Congress. It’s risky but I don’t know what other option he has. Maybe he figures that if Obama could flip on Gitmo he could flip on this latest smackdown of Israel. I’m not sure since Obama has more control over foreign policy than he did in transporting terrorists to the Midwest. Israel is going to try to bob and weave for the next 18 months and hope the 2012 election saves them.
Netanyahu’s position seems to be that as long as there is not peace agreement, Israel should be allowed to continue to increase the size of the settlements and in fact open up new ones. That is the goal and as long as his coalition will be allowed to follow this path they are perfectly happy.
It is kinda like a perfect circle isn’t it? Because there is no peace agreement, the settlements will expand. Because the settlements have expanded, a peace agreement is harder to reach.
Just stop expanding the settlements. If our enemies are impossible to negotiate with, OK, absemt a peace agreement and the occupation continues. However the settlements should never been allowed to happen in the first place, and Netanyahu should not receive the reward of being allowed to continue to expand the settlements if peace attempts fail.
LD- I notice that you never comment on the fact that the Palestinians have violently failed to comply with their already-existing obligations under previous agreements. To wit, they have not renounced violence and, in fact, make hundreds of attempts every week to infiltrate into Israel to try to murder innocent Israeli civilians. They have not recognized Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state and, in fact, have stated that they will never do so. They have not stopped inciting their people against Israel and, in fact, incite them to violence. Palestinian schools use maps that do not show Israel. Mein Kampf and The Protocols of the Elders of Zion have been on the Palestinian best-seller lists for decades.
Unless you acknowledge and direct at least equal criticism to the Palestinians for their routine and violent transgressions that far exceed any actions or omission by Israel, your comments expose your anti-Israel bias.
Ken,
I believe I said that the occupation could continue up till the time a peace agreement is reached. My point is that the expansion of the settlements should stop even absent a peace agreement.
Little “peace in our time” David, there will never be a peace agreement with islamist terrorist.. only moderate peace seeking muslims can or would do that and they are not in power.
Turbo,
OK, let the occupation continue. But that does not mean we need to grind the defeated under our boot.
Stop the settlements. The Palestinians might not be so inflamed if the Israelis stopped pouring gasoline on the fire.
LD- I cannot understand why all of your assumptions give the benefit of the doubt to the terrorist Palestinians and attack only the Israelis, who consistently do everything in their power to take only defensive positions and minimize collateral damage.
And, btw, the Palestinians collaborated with the Nazis during WWII to help find and send Jews to the ovens. The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem traveled across Europe to advance this mission. And the Jews weren’t occupying anything at that time.
Ken,
But the people of Germany, after they were conquered, were allowed to have their own nation.
LD- Your understanding of history is as inaccurate as Obama’s. First of all, Germany was an existing country before WWII. There has never in all of human history been a country of “Palestine.” “Palestine” is a contrivance by the Arabs to steal land from Israel. The 1967 lines are lines of aggression when Jordan and Egypt were among the 5 Araba countries that attacked Israel in 1947-48 with the intent of “pushing the Jews into the sea.” So, if you buy into the idea that an agressor country is entitled to keep land that it conquers, the land that you and Obama refer to as “Palestinian” actually belongs to Jordan and Egypt. However, both countries have relinquished any claim to those territories, and so, it reverts back to Israel (if it was ever not legitimately Israel’s in any event).
Second, after WWII, German was partitioned and occupied by the victorious allies and (for some unfathomable reason) France. German regained its sovereignty when it demonstrated that it had renounced violence, repented for its crimes, and was willing to be a responsible member of the civilized world. The “Palestinians” have never done any of these things. They routinely resort to violence against civilians, refuse to apologize for their crimes against humanity, and refuse to recognize Israel as a Jewish state.
BTW, I notice that you still refuse to condemn, or even criticize, the Palestinians for those crimes against humanity. Instead, you maintain that they should be given a new state from which they can more effectively launch attacks against Israeli civilians. Because you refuse to condemn the Palestinians for their murderous tactics or hold them to any standards of basic human decency, choosing instead to defend them by asserting revisionist history propaganda, your comments lack any moral authority.
Ken – That is mostly spot on, except where do you conclude that Obama has an inaccurate view of history? He might (in fact, I actually suspect he does, though not as extremely wrong as LD’s or as you would, no doubt, assert).
His speech makes clear that using the 1967 borders as a starting point in negotiations is a way to move forward. He is silent with respect to the legitimacy or, for lack of a better word, morality of claims on the West Bank. He notes, accurately, that Israel currently occupies the West Bank (legally, in my view, since Israel came into possession of the territory as the result of an attack upon it but it is an occupation nonetheless), and that Palestinians have never had a national homeland in the sense that term is commonly understood. That is all true, is it not?
Again, Obama simply seems to be saying that settling border issues, presumably in return for recognition of Israel on the part of the Palestinians, could be a way to move the peace process forward. Now, as it turns out, I actually do not agree — this so-called land-for-peace formulation has been on the table for a long time, and the Palestinians are simply not interested in it, possibly because they think that time is on their side, and possibly (on the part of some) due to sincere nationalistic and ethnic aspirations, but more likely because they have trapped themselves in a box constructed of their own propaganda which forces them to pander to the most extreme elements in their political coalition or risk removal from the inside (hey, who does that remind me of???).
But more to the point of the immediate debate, and as I will repeat for the umpteenth time, Obama being wrong does not make him anti-Israel. It just makes him wrong.
Ken,
Before the 1967 war, the West Bank did not belong to Israel. It is occupied territory. Jordan did not rescind claims to the West Bank with the idea it would become part of Israel.
Now, if Israel does want the international community to consider Israel’s claims to the West Bank, just exactly do you propose should happen to all the millions of Palestinians already living there?
This land for peace bullshit is.. bullshit.. The Palestinians cant accept land for peace because if they did their sugar daddy Iran would cut off funding. This is about removing jews from land they have been hardwired to want since the invention of islam.. After they become judenfrei then they will move offensive operations elsewhere that shahid’s live. The mid east leadership is allergic to democracy, it is like holy water to a witch.
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