By Stan Goodenough
Oct 22, 2009
The Obama administration continued its efforts this week to pull or push Israel into moving ahead with Washington's decreed solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Known as the "two state solution," it calls for the cutting in half of the historical homeland of the Jewish people and the creation of an Arab state called Palestine on the high ground overlooking what would be left of Israel.
Utilizing a special conference of foreign leaders being hosted in Jerusalem by Israeli President Shimon Peres, the White House instructed its ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice, to try and woo the Netanyahu government into moving ahead with the land-for-peace process.
Rice gave what The Jerusalem Post Thursday described as "a warm and empathetic speech towards Israel."
It was important to decided, Rice gently chided her guests, "whether we are serious about peace or whether we will lend it only lip service."
"The time has come to relaunch negotiations without preconditions that address the permanent-status issues: security for Israelis and Palestinians, borders, refugees and Jerusalem, she said.
President Barack Obama and his officials have a "clear goal," she stressed: "a comprehensive peace, including two states living side by side in peace and security - a Jewish State of Israel, with true security for all Israelis, and a viable, independent Palestinian state with contiguous territory that ends the occupation that began in 1967 and realizes the potential of the Palestinian people."
This, insisted Rice, was "in the interests of the United States, of Israel and of the Palestinians."
Obama - recently awarded the once-prestigious Nobel Peace Prize despite having not ended wars anywhere on the planet - has expressed his wish to be the one who successfully secures peace in the Middle East.
Covering the American's speech, Post reporter Herb Keinon maintained that "ending the Israeli occupation" (leftist-speak for surrendering land to the murderous leaders of the PLO and Hamas) "is generally agreeable to Israel."
A great many Israelis have wearied of weathering decades of unrelenting international pressure on the Jewish state to embrace the discredited "peace process"
Rice's suggestion that Israel does little more than talk disregards the record of enormous and often dangerous risks successive governments in Jerusalem have taken to demonstrate their good faith in the pursuit of peace.
Israel has withdrawn from 99 percent of the formerly "IDF-occupied" Arab population centers in Samaria and Judea, giving the Arabs there freedom to govern themselves. Four years ago, the Israeli government forcefully uprooted 10,000 of its own citizens, and handed the entire Gaza Strip to the Arabs.
Earlier in the decade Israel agreed to give the "Palestinians" all this territory including parts of the Jewish capital of Jerusalem. Israel's holiest site - the Temple Mount - was offered too.
By vivid contrast, the Arab side has taken not a single step towards ending hostility towards Israel; on the contrary "Palestinian" mosques, schools and media feed their people on a daily dose of Israel-hatred and talk about the day when "all of Palestine will be liberated, from the Jordan River to the mediterranean Sea."
Not only "radical" Hamas leaders, but "moderate" PLO chairman Mahmoud Abbas regularly incites his people against the Jews.
The lull in terrorist attacks on Israel buses, shopping malls and restaurants is attributable to ongoing and intensive anti-terrorism measures employed by the Jewish state, whose forces nightly arrest terror suspects in "the West Bank" and have successfully helped keep the cap on the kind of eruptions that cost hundreds of Jewish lives earlier in this decade.
For the Obama administration, however, the key lies in forbidding and putting an end to Jewish settlement in the heart of the Land of the Bible.
"Being serious about peace means understanding that tomorrow need not look like yesterday," Rice said, as if addressing a class of school students.
If Israel would only realize this, it would be able to "find peace, security, and prosperity with not just its immediate neighbors but in the region as a whole."
And then, Israel could "truly and fully take its rightful place among the nations."