Monday, May 30, 2011

Hazy Shade of Winter, Part 1

Earlier this month:


Jim Carafano, deputy director of the Heritage Foundation, says "I honestly don't know what the administration was thinking."

This has been Obama's policy all along, ever since he won the election. How did everyone miss this?

We examine excerpts from Barack Obama links Israel peace plan to 1967 borders deal; notice that the link is dated November 16, 2008!

Barack Obama is to pursue an ambitious peace plan in the Middle East involving the recognition of Israel by the Arab world in exchange for its withdrawal to pre-1967 borders, according to sources close to America's president-elect.

Obama intends to throw his support behind a 2002 Saudi peace initiative endorsed by the Arab League and backed by Tzipi Livni, the Israeli foreign minister and leader of the ruling Kadima party.

The proposal gives Israel an effective veto on the return of Arab refugees expelled in 1948 while requiring it to restore the Golan Heights to Syria and allow the Palestinians to establish a state capital in east Jerusalem.

On a visit to the Middle East last July, the president-elect said privately it would be "crazy" for Israel to refuse a deal that could "give them peace with the Muslim world", according to a senior Obama adviser.

[snip]

[Dennis] Ross [a senior Obama adviser and former Middle East envoy] and Daniel Kurtzer, a former American ambassador to Israel, accompanied Obama on a visit to Israel last July. They also travelled to Ramallah, where Obama questioned Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian leader, about the prospects for the Arab plan.


According to a Washington source Obama told Abbas: "The Israelis would be crazy not to accept this initiative. It would give them peace with the Muslim world from Indonesia to Morocco."

[snip]

Livni, the leader of Kadima, which favours the plan, is the front-runner in Israeli elections due in February. Her rival, Benjamin Netanyahu, the leader of Likud, is adamantly against withdrawing to borders that predate the Six Day war in 1967.

The 1967 "borders" scheme would result in Israel's destruction. Anyone with any amount of knowledge regarding the situation in the Middle East should know this, and any President who doesn't know this could ask his intelligence and military analysts to explain it to him. (See Defensible Borders for a Lasting Peace for excellent background.)

Is Obama so incompetent that he thinks this might work?

Or does he want to destroy Israel?

Or, maybe both?

The amazing thing is that 78% of the US Jewish vote went to Obama in 2008 (see 2008 Jewish Vote for Obama Exceeds All Expectations and 78% of American Jewish Vote Goes To Obama-Biden); within days, Obama was planning a Mideast "Peace" that would obviously result in Israel's eventual and likely fairly prompt destruction.

We now consider an excerpt from Israel's Requirement for Defensible Borders by Maj.-Gen. (res.) Yaakov Amidror:

Could the Arab-Israeli wars of 1948, 1956, 1967, and 1973 return? It could be argued that conditions have entirely changed; Israel has peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan that have withstood the test of time. After 2003, the threat of Iraq seems to have been neutralized. In addition, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, Syria finds it more difficult to arm itself sufficiently. However, this is only a relatively static snapshot of Israel's strategic situation over the last ten years.

Long-Term Strategic Threats

The determination of defensible borders must be based on an assessment that takes into account potential long-term strategic threats as well. In this context, the following questions need to be considered:

1. Is there any way to guarantee that Iraq will not evolve into a radical Shi'ite state that is dependent on Iran and hostile to Israel (differences between Iraqi and Iranian Shi'ites notwithstanding)? Indeed, King Abdullah of Jordan has warned of a hostile Shi'ite axis that could include Iran, Iraq, and Syria.

2. Is it not conceivable that a Palestinian state will arise in the West Bank that will ultimately take over Jordan? It is worth recalling that just as Iraq has a Shi'ite majority, Jordan already has a Palestinian majority. Can Israel defend itself if it is attacked by a Palestinian state that stretches from Iraq to Kalkilya?

3. Is it not possible that in the future, militant Islamic elements will succeed in gaining control of the Egyptian regime?

None of these possible scenarios can be discounted; each of them, and certainly their combination, requires thinking about how to defend Israel against a classical military threat.

A combination of these scenarios is exactly what is developing - and what had been developing for months prior to Obama calling for Israel to withdraw inside the 1967 "borders".


First, we consider reports about the situation in Jordan. From Jordan's New Generation of Salafi-Jihadists Take to the Streets to Demand Rule by Shari'a dated May 5, 2011:

Jordan has not escaped the political turmoil and street confrontations that have enveloped the Middle East during the so-called "Arab Spring." The ongoing debate between the Jordanian government and protestors seeking political reform in Jordan escalated on March 24 when one man died and scores of others were injured in clashes that erupted between progovernment and pro-reform protesters at the Interior Ministry Circle in Amman. The pro-reform protestors claimed that security forces turned a blind eye to the attacks against them.

Prime Minister Marouf Bakhit blamed the Muslim Brotherhood for the violent developments (Jordan Times, March, 25). In an interview with Jordanian television, Bakhit accused the group of creating chaos in the country and taking orders from Islamist leaders in Egypt and Syria, while warning them "not to play with fire" (Petra News [Ammon], March, 27).

Jihadists on the Street

Some Jordanian Islamists have joined street protests for the first time in their history. These include the Salafi-Jihadists, whose members have held demonstrations in several cities of Jordan demanding the release of their imprisoned colleagues while stressing that their movement has paid a high price for Jordan's alliance with United States in the so-called "War on Terror." The jihadists, who demanded that Jordan be ruled by Shari'a, have shown that they are large in number, organized and defiant. The jihadists hailed the recent release of four of their colleagues and cancelled a pre-planned demonstration in Amman a few days later, adding that "the State [of Jordan] knows our strength" (al-Jazeera.net, April 12).

On April 15, Salafi-Jihadists were among other Jordanian groups demonstrating after Friday prayer in various Jordanian cities. After demonstrating in Amman, Ma'an, Salt, and Irbid, jihadists then went into the streets of Zarqa, the hometown of Abu Mus'ab al-Zarqawi, the late leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq who was killed in June 2006.

The protest ended with clashes between jihadists and pro-government and security forces that resulted in some 80 injured policemen. Jordan's police chief, Lieutenant General Hussein Majali, stated that eight civilians had been hurt when police fired tear gas to stop Salafist demonstrators from attacking shoppers in Zarqa: "It was clear that the demonstrators had plans to clash with police. They carried swords and daggers and were provocative, seeking to drag police into a bloody confrontation" (AFP, April 15). Jordanian security services responded to the violence by conducting a series of raids in Zarqa and the nearby town of Rassifeh that rounded up some 70 Islamists, including prominent leader Shaykh Abdul Shahatah al-Tahawi (AFP, April 16).

The Hashemite dynasty in Jordan is facing the same instability as other regional governments, with the same players involved.

Next we consider New Nazi Party for Egypt by IPT News, May 27, 2011:

Egyptian leftist news portal Al-Badeel reports that a group of Egyptian activists will form a Nazi party for upcoming elections. The Egyptian Nazi group claims it will bring together prominent figures and ex-military officers, to promote fascist single-party rule.

Founding member Emad Abdel Sattar summed up the group's belief in single-party rule. The party "believes in vesting all powers in the president after selecting him or her carefully," and within the party "preparations are under way to choose the most competent person to represent the party." The appeal of authoritarianism comes from recent chaos in the streets, burning Coptic churches by Salafi Muslims, and random violence against civilians, according to the report.

Members are "increasing at an unexpected rate, and several people came to ask about the nature of the party and its plans," it says. The group has an ambitious plan to rapidly advance development in Egypt, in a single year, and rejects the "marginalized liberal parties, which are like dead bodies."

Nazis aren't the only group in the country that rejects long term democracy. Salafi Muslim groups support the reestablishment of the Caliphate, starting in Egypt, while the Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party has sent mixed messages.

These are developments in two countries that have peace treaties with Israel; what about the countries that have continued to call for Israel's destruction?

As this series continues, we will examine what the concept of "defensible borders" means to Israel, and how developments in the region threaten renewed wars of annihilation against Israel, even as the "leader" of Israel's most important ally calls on Israel to change and make suicidal sacrifices in the hope of achieving peace with neighboring powers who consider it their religious duty to destroy Israel and kill Israelis.

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