THE PRESIDENT MOVES TOWARD A EUROPEAN NONSOLUTION OF THE MIDDLE EAST CRISIS

Most commentary on the section of President Obama’s May 19 speech dealing with the Palestinian-Israeli peace process has focused on his vision of borders along the 1967 lines with certain adjustments and land swaps. Mention of the 1967 lines is not insignificant. Security Council Resolution 242 as drafted by the US and Britain implicitly recognized that Israel would keep some territory captured from Arab aggressors in 1967. As President Johnson said at the time an Israeli return to its position as of June 4 1967 would not be a “prescription for peace but for renewed hostilities.”

And the Obama administration has added tension to any mention of the 1967 lines by treating so-called “east Jerusalem” in which several hundred thousand Jews currently live as no different from West Bank settlements.

But the really significant parts of the president’s speech lay elsewhere. In calling for a “full and phased withdrawal of Israeli military forces” from the entire West Bank he ruled out a permanent Israeli security presence in the Jordan Rift Valley. Yet without such a presence Israel is indefensible and renders the president’s support for an Israel that can “defend itself — by itself — against any threat” a mockery.

Equally important was what was missing. As usual Israel was urged to “act boldly.” No parallel call was made to the Palestinians. By placing the “fate of Palestinian refugees” as an issue to be resolved after borders are drawn Obama spared the Palestinians from having to recognize Israel as a Jewish State or make any up-front concessions.

The president acknowledged that it “is a legitimate question” how after the Fatah-Hamas pact Israel can be expected to negotiate with a party that does not recognize its right to exist. It is not only “legitimate” but unanswerable. The Hamas Charter calls for the killing of all Jews (Article 7) and the destruction of Israel (Article 12). These are religious principles not subject to negotiation.

Fatah is not far behind. Palestinian schoolbooks and media continue to show the entirety of Israel as Palestine. Its leaders insist they will never renounce the “right of return.” Just last week the Palestinian Authority voted to provide monthly stipends to convicted terrorists in Israeli jails — the longer the sentence the bigger the stipend. And town squares and schools are still being names after arch-terrorists. Not surprisingly every Palestinian poll has shown a large majority rejecting anything like the vision outlined by President Obama.

President George W. Bush’s greatest contribution to Middle East peace was to reject the Europeans’ demand for a guarantee of a Palestinian state by a specific date — a recipe for ensuring the Palestinians would never negotiate. Bush insisted on “performance-based” goals for each phase of the Quartet Roadmap. The Palestinian state in his view must be earned not received as of right.

By placing the emphasis on the determination of borders President Obama has moved closer to the European position that the creation of a Palestinian state is the primary goal. Yet the case for such a state whether on political or moral grounds has never been weaker. Contrary to what the president has constantly insisted its creation would have little impact on regional instability. A Palestinian state would not help any other Arab state feed its impoverished people end the subjugation of women or raise rates of literacy.

In a region without a single functioning democracy the high priority of Palestinian “self-determination” is far from self-evident. Given the players in power a Palestinian state would develop into precisely the kind of tyranny millions across the Middle East are currently rejecting.

Nor is it clear why Palestinian claims are more pressing — especially considering that they rejected offers of statehood in 1948 2000 and 2009 — than those of Kurds or Tibetans two linguistically distinct peoples about whom the world is largely silent.

Finally the Palestinian state would join Lebanon Syria and Egypt as another failed state and terrorist haven on Israel’s border. Just three years ago Fatah and Hamas were busy throwing one another off buildings and they would soon be back at it. Another state incapable of maintaining a monopoly on lethal weapons or of protecting its borders against the infiltration of arms or terrorists even if it wanted to would constitute a mortal threat to Israel – a trip wire for all-out Middle East war not a step toward peace.

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Which Side Paid for the Wedding?

One of the people I admire most recently shared with me the story of his chasunah. He was learning in Israel when he met his wife who grew up in Meah Shearim. His family in America assumed that the kallah’s family would pay for the modest wedding. Her family however had no money.

So he and his kallah decided to pay for the wedding themselves out of her meager savings as a teacher in a development town and some savings he had put aside. The wedding took place in the Old City of Jerusalem which ruled out any possibility of musical accompaniment for the single singer. The photographer took only black-and-white photos. And for food there were cold cuts.

The chassan’s parents thought that the kallah’s family had paid for the wedding and the kallah’s parents assumed the opposite. Neither was ever the wiser.

When it came time to marry off their own children my friends never suggested that their children should make due with the same style wedding as they had. They did not try to turn what had been necessity for them into the ideal.

But knowing them I’m confident that they did not feel that they had been denied anything by the simplicity of their wedding. And I’m also sure that they have more pleasure looking at the grainy black-and-white photos of the wedding they paid for themselves — perhaps with one or more of their fifty or so descendants on their laps — than any present-day chassan and kallah do watching their lengthy wedding video which is likely to be buried in some closet after one or two viewings.

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But Enough about Me …

One of the highlights of a conference I attended last week on Democracies and the Right of Self-Defense was a dialogue between Professors Asa Kasher and Michael Walzer on what risks a nation can impose on its soldiers in order to increase the safety of enemy civilians. Kasher is the principal draftsman of the IDF Code of Arms and Walzer the author of numerous books on “just war” theory.

Kasher began with the question: Under what circumstances may a nation draft soldiers and ask them to put their lives at risk? He concluded that a nation must give infinite value to the lives of its soldiers over those of noncitizens of that state. As an example of a failure to do so he offered the loss of thirteen Israeli soldiers in a booby-trapped home in Jenin which they had entered in search of civilians before destroying the terrorist hideout.

Since I have argued in print many times that such is the historical practice of all nations and should be that of Israel I approached Professor Kasher after the panel and asked him for his source for that principle. He smiled and told me “I’m not a rabbi; I don’t need a source. I base myself on general philosophical moral principles.” I pointed out however that Professor Walzer basing himself on the same principles had barely mentioned the distinction between citizens of one’s own country and those of another in determining what kind of risk can be placed on enemy civilians in war.

That exchange with Kasher put me in mind of a lecture I once heard from a former professor of mine at Yale Law School and one of America’s most celebrated legal academics. He must have used the phrase “I would maintain” at least 130 times in an hour presentation.

After years in kollel the word “I” used in argument grated like nails on a blackboard and all I longed for was to return to a beis medrash where no one cares for your opinion but only for what concrete proofs you can adduce.