Much is being made by the left about a hidden recording of Mitt Romney's speech in a fundraiser back in mid May in Boca Raton, Florida. The big news is what he had to say about a lot of potential Obama voters, which I'll address shortly.
But of equal note were his remarks about the Israeli-Arab conflict, which struck me as some of of the most sensible and useful statements on the matter I've ever heard out of a public figure:
"I'm torn by two perspectives in this regard. One is the one which I've had for some time, which is that the Palestinians have no interest whatsoever in establishing peace, and that the pathway to peace is almost unthinkable to accomplish. Now why do I say that?
Some might say, well, let's let the Palestinians have the West Bank, and have security, and set up a separate nation for the Palestinians. And then come a couple of thorny questions.
And I don't have a map here to look at the geography, but the border between Israel and the West Bank is obviously right there, right next to Tel Aviv, which is the financial capital, the industrial capital of Israel, the center of Israel. It's—what the border would be? Maybe seven miles from Tel Aviv to what would be the West Bank…The other side of the West Bank, the other side of what would be this new Palestinian state would either be Syria at one point, or Jordan. And of course the Iranians would want to do through the West Bank exactly what they did through Lebanon, what they did near Gaza. Which is that the Iranians would want to bring missiles and armament into the West Bank and potentially threaten Israel. So Israel of course would have to say, "That can't happen. We've got to keep the Iranians from bringing weaponry into the West Bank."
Well, that means that—who? The Israelis are going to patrol the border between Jordan, Syria, and this new Palestinian nation? Well, the Palestinians would say, "Uh, no way! We're an independent country. You can't, you know, guard our border with other Arab nations." And now how about the airport? How about flying into this Palestinian nation? Are we gonna allow military aircraft to come in and weaponry to come in? And if not, who's going to keep it from coming in? Well, the Israelis. Well, the Palestinians are gonna say, "We're not an independent nation if Israel is able to come in and tell us what can land in our airport."
These are problems—these are very hard to solve, all right? And I look at the Palestinians not wanting to see peace anyway, for political purposes, committed to the destruction and elimination of Israel, and these thorny issues, and I say, "There's just no way." And so what you do is you say, "You move things along the best way you can." You hope for some degree of stability, but you recognize that this is going to remain an unsolved problem. We live with that in China and Taiwan. All right, we have a potentially volatile situation but we sort of live with it, and we kick the ball down the field and hope that ultimately, somehow, something will happen and resolve it.
On the other hand, I got a call from a former secretary of state. I won't mention which one it was, but this individual said to me, you know, I think there's a prospect for a settlement between the Palestinians and the Israelis after the Palestinian elections. I said, "Really?" And, you know, his answer was, "Yes, I think there's some prospect." And I didn't delve into it.
Governor Romney finished by saying: "The idea of pushing on the Israelis to give something up to get the Palestinians to act is the worst idea in the world."
What Governor Romney said is what any intelligent observer would figure out after watching the events on the ground since Oslo.
As Yasser Arafat's former political commissar in Jerusalem,Faisal Al-Husseini famously admitted, Oslo was never anything more than a Trojan Horse designed to fool the Jews into giving Arafat a base to attack them. The so-called two state solution of two states living in peace side by side was never on the agenda, and Arafat himself admitted it on Jordanian TV by referring to to Oslo as a version of the peace of Hubidiyeh, a treaty Mohamamed made with the Quraysh in Mecca that was supposed to be a long time peace but only lasted until Mohamamed gathered enough forces to take the city and massacre them.
That's exactly what Arafat intended for Israel, and what the people whom identify themselves as Palestinians still intend today. That's why even a so-called moderate like Arafat's former right hand man Mahmoud Abbas continues to say he will refuse to make any concessions at all to Israel in negotiations.Or to put it even more plainly, the Palestinians refuse to enter 'negotiations' unless al their demands are agreed to in advance..and they use the failure of Israel to do so as an excuse for avoiding negotiations!
Only an Israelphobe like Barack Obama would allow them to continue to get away with this scam.
It's also a fact that the Palestinians have already declared that the Oslo Accords, the whole basis for the two state solution null and void as far as they're concerned..not to mention th eRoad Map, which they've also never abided by anyway.
In truth. the whole idea of land for peace everywhere Israel has tried it, whether it's been in Gaza, in the Sinai, or in Judea and Samaria (AKA the West Bank) has proven to be a lousy, one sided deal for them.
Nor are the Israelis going to allow a future 'Palestine' within easy firing range of their air ports and major cities to be militarized unless they're suicidal.
Governor Romney is also wise to distance himself from the musings of this former secretary of state, whomever that was ( It sounds like the clueless Condi Rice).
If there is ever another Palestinian election, the winner by far is going to be Hamas, just like it was the last time by over a two third's majority.The corrupt, kleptocrat Fatah Old Guard already know they're on the way out, Their stolen money is salted away in the EU or the Emirates, and most of them already hold Jordanian passports and citizenship as their exit tickets.
In a monstrous irony, this is happening even while the Bedouin monarchy that rules Jordan is actively stripping Palestinians who live in Jordan of their Jordanian citizenship who've held it for years.
So the truth of the matter is exactly as Governor Romney expressed it:
The majority of the people who consider themselves Palestinians are far more interested in revanchist fantasies than they are in peace, which is how they've been programmed by their mosques, schools and media since Arafat originally took over. And that certainly applies to their leaders.
For the Israelis to once again by that decrepit used car called Oslo and allow a Palestinian state on their borders for Iran and Syria to arm with heavy weapons and missiles would be the ultimate folly, and they aren't going to but into it.
So that makes the best hope for at least continued cold peace the status quo, with the hope that as life gets better for the Palestinians living in autonomy in the Arab occupied areas of Judea and Samaria, the idea of war will be less appealing.
Even more likely to my mind is a Muslim Brotherhood led takeover of Jordan that ousts King Abdullah and the Bedouin led monarchy. That would put Jordan under the control of its majority Palestinian population and make Jordan what it was intended to be all along since the British carved it out of 80% of the Palestine Mandate in 1923..the partition of Palestine between Arabs and Jews and and the actual Palestinian Arab state.
-selah-
ff said:
ReplyDeleteIt sounds like the clueless Condi Rice
from gov. romney's comments:
And, you know, his answer was,
you know something about condi that we should?
it sounds like the even more clueless james baker.
ReplyDeleteYour facts are a bit skewed, the Palestinian Authority actually offered massive concessions to Israel, including virtually all of east Jerusalem, including all settlements there but one. The Israelis never offered anything in return and in fact demanded on continuing their illegal settlements deep within West Bank, in what is meant to be a Palestinian territory. That is the problem, the entire middle east peace process for millions of people is held up by the settlers counting tens of thousands.
ReplyDeleteMight I note all of the Palestinian talk you've linked has followed the talks.
http://www.aljazeera.com/palestinepapers/2011/01/2011122112512844113.html
Al Jazeera, AKA Jihad TV? Now there's an unbiased source.Their version of what occurred is disputed by so many other sources I can hardly believe you bother.
ReplyDeleteThe Israelis never offered anything in return and in fact demanded on continuing their illegal settlements deep within West Bank, in what is meant to be a Palestinian territory.
Meant to be by whom Mikal? You?
The San Remo Agreement in 1924 and Article 30 of the UN Charter clearly state that Jews have the right to settle on all land west of the Jordan River.
Not only that, but virtually all the Jewish communities in area A - Gush Etzion, Ariel, you name it..were on Jewish owned land bought from private landowners.
So, in your version of things, those evil Jews refused to allow a new partition of Jerusalem after experiencing how the Arabs treated their holy sites for nineteen years.
Not only that, they refused to give the Arabs back what the Arabs took by force from them in 1948,and lost again in 1967 after another attempt at genocide!
Talk about chutzpah...
I realize you like the idea of Jews being prohibited from yet another apartheid Arab state, but Israel gets absolutely nothing out of the deal, except to give the Arabs a closer target to shoot at.
Ain't gonna happen.That train left the station a long time ago.
What's holding up the Middle East peace process is the Arab refusal to live with Jews in peace and equality. The Palestinians have already proven they can't be trusted to do that, or live up to any agreements, so why should Israel give them anything more than what the Arabs have already managed to con them out of?
That's more than the Palestinian's Arab brothers ever gave them, and it certainly hasn't bought Israel any 'peace'.
Nor will it.Just read the Qu'ran and the Hadiths.
Stupid once (Oslo) Stupid twice ( Gaza) but I think the lessons been learned.
Al Jazeera is in fact a reliable source, if it makes you happy then the leaked details of the negotiations made quite an uproar and then led to what you could read - great display of intransigence by Palestinian leaders, which you subsequently happily ran with as a show of just how dastardly they are.
ReplyDeleteThe Palestinians even offered to compromise on the issue of refugees! It could have effectively made peace between Israel and Palestine. Yet Israel has refused for the sake of those settlements inhabited by couple tens of thousands.
http://www.france24.com/en/20110124-mideast-negotiations-leaked-documents-reveal-palestinian-concessions-jerusalem-refugees
The settlements in West Bank are illegal on the basis of Security Council Resolution no. 466, might I note that Israel has not relinquished its membership in United Nations yet?
The middle east peace process is held up by Israelis effectively expanding onto the Palestinian land in the west bank. If the Arabs are to live with the Jews in equality, surely this does not amount to Israeli checkpoints criss crossing the West Bank, settlers illegally expanding across it and so on. I wonder how would you feel if Mexicans or Chinese would carve up your country by military checkpoints, close off the air space, with illegal immigrants building outposts that would be subsequently embraced by occupying power and absorbed into their mainland, then declared another reason why the checks on domestic population must be kept in place.
I also note that you fill your posts with strawmen eg. "I realise you like the idea of jews being prohibited from yet another apartheid state", and that you have censored my last post underneath your previous post from September 16th, despite the fact that it contained nothing offensive or vulgar, and that it merely was pointing out some of the facts that stood in the way of your facts.
I understand that this is the advanced civilization of free speech and freedom of expression that is being defended from the vile Palestinians who hate peace? lol
I fully respect the right of Israelis to their homeland, but clearly, West Bank is not their homeland and the Palestinians need theirs, for the sake of which they were willing to make great territorial concessions from what would otherwise be their rightful possessions as explained in the beginning.
PS: I meant Security Council Resolution no. 446. It was a most embarrassing typo, however you can read for yourself: "that the policy and practices of Israel in establishing settlements in the Palestinian and other Arab territories occupied since 1967 have no legal validity and constitute a serious obstruction to achieving a comprehensive, just and lasting peace in the Middle East"
ReplyDeleteMichal,
ReplyDeleteI'm afraid this response doesn't cut it in the least.You answered hardly any of the central arguments I made except to repeat the same stale talking points. I deep sixed the comment you refer to because it was the same old stuff and added nothing.
Let's reiterate. You want the Israelis:
A)to uproot half a million people to satisfy your racist need for apartheid if they go along with Arafat II's demands, which he says are not subject to negotiation. Negotiation did I say? He wants these demands met before any negotiations!
B) to put themselves in a strategically vulnerable position just like Gaza.
and
(C) to trust the people who ID themselves as Palestinians to keep an treaty agreement when they've never kept one with Israel in the past, and when 'land for peace' has never worked in the past.
Obviously you not only support ghettos and restricted neighborhoods where Jews are not allowed to live, you think Jews are stupid enough to sign on to the diktat.
You say you support the Jew's right to a homeland. Yet you want them to take steps that will place that homeland in severe jeopardy, possibly even destroy it and at th every least lead to the death of a lot of it's inhabitants.
Permit me to say I doubt your sincerity.
The Palestinians were willing to 'compromise' on being able to swap what's left of Israel with genocidal 'refugees'? My, that was gracious of them considering that Israel doesn't recognize their right to do so, and that it would be suicidal for them if they did.
And what about the Arabs, who ethnically cleansed almost a million Jews from their countries with the Palestinians enthusiastic help?
Compensation for the property and bank accounts that was stolen is probably close to about 4.5 billion dollars in today's money. The Arabs want peace so much, let them go first..as a goodwill gesture, LOL!
Checkpoints, Michal? If it weren't for the Arabs' murderous attacks on Israeli civilians, they wouldn't exist. In this case, we both know which came first.
UN Resolution 466 refers to South African attacks on Zambia to destroy ANC terrorists who were using it as a base.It has nothing to do with Israel, and even at that it wasn't a Chapter 7 binding Resolution. It says jack about the Israeli communities in Judea and Samaria being illegal. Except in your mind.
It does not supersede the San Remo Agreement or Article 30 of the UN charter, which says Jews have an unlimited right to live in Judea and Samaria.
You want to talk UN Resolutions? How about 1701, which called for Hezbollah to be disarmed? Again, you take care of that first.
And where do you get off saying that Judea and Samaria are not the Jewish homeland? Jews have had a continuous presence there for over 3,000 years, and the only time it was interrupted is the 19 years when Jordan invaded and drove the local population out, in many cases from land they legally owned.
If this was the so-called Palestinian homeland, why wasn't there this great push for independence when Jordan occupied it in 1948 and began colonizing it with its citizens?
(Continued)
ReplyDeleteYou heard nothing about Arab 'Palestinians' until after 1967, when the Jews retook their ancient homeland after Jordan attacked them and started shelling civilians in West Jerusalem.
There are 22 Arab countries where the Palestinians could live, including Jordan, which is composed 80% of Arabs who ID themselves as 'Palestinian'. Is it Israel's fault the Arab countries would rather keep the pot boiling for war, use these people as dupes and not integrate them into their countries but keep them in refugee camps?
The Israelis were willing (and did) give the Arabs who live in Judea and Samaria quite a bit after Oslo. They built schools, hospitals, universities ( yes, Beir Zeit was built by Israel)and they even did something no Arab country was willing to do...they gave them some land to call their own, maybe not as much as they wanted, but something.
The Israelis reward was a war waged on their civilians.Do you even know half of the atrocities they committed, against unarmed women and children?
The Palestinian Arabs who live in Judea and Samaria warrant no further concessions or gimmees by their behavior.They proved that by voting for the genocidal Hamas last time out.That if nothing else proves peace with the Jews is not on their agenda.
Any other country but Israel would have solved the terrorism problem by simply driving them over the border, back into Jordan.
In fact, how this is ultimately going to end is with the Muslim Brotherhood taking over Jordan and it becoming the Palestinian state it wqs always supposed to be, the Jew-free, genocidal reichlet the denizens of the Arab Occupied parts of Judea and Samaria obviously want.
The Israelis are not going to turn suicidal, and the Palestinians are not going to do anything to convince them that this time, they really do want peace.
Israel stays, Michal, and that includes a united Jerusalem, as well as Judea and Samaria.
Deal with it.
Security Council Resolution no. 446,eh?
ReplyDeleteI'll assume it actually was a typo.
Lessee, we have a non-binding resolution ( made during the Jimmy Carter years, of course) that the U.S. abstained from at a time when the U.N labelled self determination for Jews, AKA Zionism as racism.My,how impressive was that!
A clear reading of the Fourth Geneva convention as well as the international law I already cited ( not to mention simple rights to private property)pretty much makes toilet paper out of 446, but hey, it's the UN.
On a good day, you could probably get a non-binding resolution passed there that Jews have horns and tails.
I notice, also, that this particular interpretation of the Geneva Convention was not applied when thousands of ethnic Germans were relocated from Poland and Czechoslovakia after WWI and the borders were redrawn, and certainly not when th eArab countries ethnically cleansed their Jews.
But hey, that's the UN..one 'international law' for Israel another for everyone else. Because, you know, it's Jews.
A) No one said anything about uprooting half a million people.
ReplyDelete-No one is forcing the Israeli settlers out. Why are you accusing me of championing apartheid when you're clearly pushing for the separation here?
-In fact, the Palestinian authority offered the Israelis annexation of settlements at least near Jerusalem and along the border areas. Quoting from wiki:
"According to the documents, in a meeting with Livni in Jerusalem, Qurei proposed that Israel annex all settlements along the border except for the large cities and towns of Giv'at Ze'ev, Ma'ale Adumim, Ariel, and Efrat.[9]"
-There are actually, going by wiki 327 750 settlers.
-These settlers are on what should have been Palestinian land starting from initial division of Palestine following British withdrawal, over armistice treaties, over UNSC resolutions 242 or 446.
-This issue has been clearly up for negotiations. Arafat is dead, therefore saying Arafat wanted these demands met before negotiations is inapplicable.
B) Well, West Bank is not Gaza. It would put nominally put them in a tricky strategic position, but I have no doubt the IDF is a force powerful enough to repel any attacks on Israel. The Palestinians could always lose out on their gains if they proved they couldn't keep the deal.
C) There are two sides of story to every agreement that has broken down, eg. if Israeli you could blame the violent palestinians for responding so passionetly to Sharon's visit on the temple mount, if you were a Palestinian, you could blame the Israelis for the provocation and point out their disproportionate use of violence against the protesters. I'd rather not get swamped in this issue.
Eg. when you talk about Jews from Arab countries but naturally say nothing about expelled Palestinians who, along with voluntary refugees, have all been banned by law from returning back to their lands, that have been assigned to curators in the meanwhile.
-The Palestinian refugees wouldn't "swamp" Israel, the 100 000 of them is about 1.5% of Israeli population in total, which you've already observed to contain about 20% of Arabs. Now I hope you're not racist about Arabs or Muslims or anything.
-$4,5 billion in compensation is actually 1.5 times what Israel gets in military aid from the US. It's not a terribly great sum of money when you think about it in these terms, although certainly is a lot for the Palestinians.
I have no idea why are you talking about San Remo, nor why are you talking about Article 30 of UN charter. By my observation it says: "The Security Council shall adopt its own rules of procedure, including the method of selecting its President."
http://www.un.org/en/documents/charter/chapter5.shtml
I would guess that Security Council has a fairly good idea of what is and is not permitted under international law and the UN charter in particular.
ReplyDeleteI am sorry to hear that Hezbollah has not disbanded despite the Security Council resolution. Such are regrettably the realities we live in. However, I note that you believe the resolution to be just, and that you are using it as an argument, therefore suggesting you believe in the capacity of UNSC to explain international law and take certain decisions.
I also don't dispute that many jews call Judea and Samaria their homeland, however I am saying that many more Palestinians have called it their homeland for a lot longer time, than many of the settlers who are despite international and sometimes even Israeli law expanding forever into it. They did not certainly live on that land for 3000 years. They're settlers. They're settling somewhere where they haven't been before. Even then, no one doubts their right to live on that land as far as I am aware, what is said that the land obviously belongs under Palestinian authority, and ought not to be annexed into Israel as the newest bit of 3000 years old homeland.
The argument that Arabs have 22 countries where they can go to instead is every bit as racist and disgraceful as the usual Hezbollah or Hamas tirades about how Jews can go back to Germany and Poland where they came from, and reading your posts I even suspect you knowingly copy and mirror the rhetoric of particular people.
The elections you refer to were tightly contested, and as far as I can see the land is controlled by Fatah. Even then, where there is extremism, it does not appear out of thin air, but has very concrete causes, eg. the settler behaviour, the indiscriminate bombardment of civilians in Gaza, the harassment at the checkpoints, the poverty, the lack of prospects and so on. No doubt, lack of state sovereignty and self-sufficiency in Palestine is contributing to the malaise among Palestinian populace, which will remain anti-Israeli in as long as it continues to suffer under the conditions they do.
Your course of offering nothing to the Palestinians but more rockets to choke on is at its core essentially the same "security solution" Bashaar Assad is conducting. It is not a solution, it perpetuates the conflict because its root causes remain unaddressed and in this limbo will in fact grow. Which of course will mean you will have a lot of violent Palestinian behaviour to happily point at as a further reason to be even more "strict" with them and so on. Don't mind all the limbs of all confessions flying through the air.
You complain about behaviour of the Palestinians, but the offer at the negotiations shows their willingness to make peace if nothing else does.
Sheer Bolshoi, Michal.
ReplyDeleteOf course you're promoting apartheid. The Palestinians themselves have said they won't allow a single Jew to live in their proposed reichlet.
Not to mention the PA's 'reconciliation' with the genocidal Hamas.
BTW, I wouldn't call a 70% vote for Hamas 'hotly contested.
The root cause of the conflict is that the Arabs want the Jews gone, by any means necessary. Not just from Judea and Samaria, but from the world.
Oh, and let's look at the peace loving behavior of these people...making a saint out of Yasser Arafat and heroes out of murderers.
Sell it somewhere else.