Israel

How’s that movement to boycott Israel going? Here are just a few announcements made in 2017, and I am sure I have missed many others. “Ryanair Launches 15 New Flight Routes Between Israel and Europe.” Ryanair will add twice weekly flights to Eilat from Baden-Baden, Berlin, Brussels, Frankfurt, Milan and Polish cities Warsaw, Gdansk and Poznan, and will add seven new routes to Tel Aviv from Baden-Baden, Gdansk, Milan, Poznan, Krakow and Wroclaw in Poland, and Paphos in Cyprus. “WOW air Announces Service to Tel Aviv.” WOW, a low-cost carrier based in Reykjavik, Iceland, has announced that it will be starting service from there to Tel Aviv, Israel in September. “BUDGET AIRLINE RYANAIR ANNOUNCES NEW TEL-AVIV-ROME ROUTE.” The story continues, “The Irish low-cost carrier Ryanair will add flights connecting Ben-Gurion Airport and Rome to its winter 2017 schedule, the company announced on Thursday. With the addition of daily flights from Rome, Ryanair will be flying between Tel Aviv and eight Europe destinations this winter: Baden Baden (twice weekly), Gdansk (twice weekly), Krakow (twice weekly), Milan Bergamo (four times weekly), Paphos, Cyprus (daily), Poznan (twice weekly), Rome (daily) and Wroclaw (twice weekly). The company projects serving some 330,000 customers each year on these 28 weekly flights.” “EASYJET ANNOUNCES NEW ISRAEL-ITALY ROUTES.” EASYJET will fly from Naples to Tel Aviv twice a week, and from Venice three times a week. “Air India plans Tel Aviv flight.” The flight will go from Mumbai. “WOW air Announces New Canadian Route to Tel Aviv.” These flights will go from Montreal and Toronto to Israel; four flights a week. “WIZZ AIR FURTHER EXPANDS ITS LOW-FARE NETWORK FROM ISRAEL.” The story announces that “Wizz Air, the largest low-cost airline in Central and Eastern Europe announced today three new low-fare routes from Tel Aviv to Lublin in Poland, Kosice in Slovakia and Craiova in Romania.” The BDS movement remains a menace, especially on places distant from the real world—such as American and European college campuses. But the reality appears to be that more and more people in more and more places wish to visit Israel, and reject the claims and propaganda offered by those urging boycotts. They are voting with their feet—and their flights.

During the Obama years, concerns about Israel’s security situation focused on the Iranian nuclear weapons program. Today, the focus is changing: to the growing Iranian military presence in Syria, the growing military strength of Hezbollah, and the possibility of a devastating Israel-Hezbollah conflict. That is the subject of a new article in Strategic Assessment, the magazine of Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies. Entitled “Political and Military Contours of the Next Conflict with Hezbollah,” it was written by Gideon Sa’ar and Ron Tira. Tira is a strategist who was a long-time Israeli Air Force officer and pilot; Saar is an influential Israeli politician who was for 11 years a Likud member of the Knesset. It’s dangerous to try and summarize a complex and in many ways worrying text, but I will try. First, war is possible: “A conflict could break out due to a miscalculation, a failure in strategic communication, or uncontrolled escalation.” Hezbollah’s build-up of precision weapons presents an enormous threat to Israel, as does the growing Iranian presence in Syria. Together, this may constitute “an attempt by Iran and Hezbollah to reach a strategic balance with Israel, or even to gain the capability to launch a strike that will cause significant damage to critical (military and civilian) systems in Israel.” How so? In certain senses Israel is unusual in its vulnerability to precision weapons, as on the one hand it is a Western country with advanced critical infrastructure, and on the other hand, it is a small country with concentrated critical infrastructures and little redundancy. Regarding electricity generation in Israel, for example, out of a capacity to generate about 17,600 MW of electricity, 28 percent is installed in only two sites (with 10 cumulative production units – turbines, for example). The six largest electricity generating sites in Israel (including private ones) account for 51 percent of the national capacity for electricity generation (using only 26 production units). Thus the threat represented by even a small number of precision missiles that breach Israel’s countermeasures and strike critical systems, such as electricity generation, could be unprecedented. The picture is similar with regard to other critical systems, such as national electricity management; natural gas infrastructure; sea water desalination (only five facilities supply about half of Israel’s drinking water); and many other examples from civilian and military fields. How should Israel then act? “Israel must define red lines, including Hezbollah’s acquisition of precision weapons, and particularly the manufacture of precision missiles on Lebanese soil, as well as the future deployment to Syria of high impact Iranian weapon systems (such as advanced surface-to-air missiles, coast-to-sea/coast missiles, and precision surface-to-surface missiles), and be prepared to move forward in an escalation process – as much as is necessary – to foil these buildups.” In addition to the Hezbollah build-up, the presence of Iranian forces in Syria is a new development that did not exist when Hezbollah and Israel last fought, in 2006. Therefore, Israel must examine whether to define a red line of Iranian military buildup in Syria, and if so, be prepared to advance in escalation as far as is necessary in order to prevent such buildup. Growing Iranian military presence in Syria could force Israel to look at the Syrian and Lebanese theaters as one whole. Israel will have to consider whether to continue accepting Iranian activity via its proxies and covert forces, and operate against these proxies – or to act directly against Iran. Why is all this happening now? Sa'ar and Tira theorize that the JCPOA, the Obama administration nuclear deal with Iran, may be the culprit: Indeed, it is possible that the temporary and partial suspension of the Iranian nuclear program is incentivizing what looks like an attempt to reach a strategic balance against Israel in other spheres (to some extent as compensation for suspension of the nuclear program), resulting in a dynamic of escalation. These processes could very well put the regional system at a crossroads, and raise the probability of war. There is one other new development: the role of Russia in Syria, which was not present during the 2006 conflict. As the authors note, “any hostilities on Israel’s northern border could include or spill over into Syria for a range of reasons.” The Russian presence makes the entire context different: Israel has the ability to pose a real threat to the Alawite regime, and to degrade the forces defending it significantly. An extension of the fighting to Syria, and in certain cases fighting in Lebanon that projects into Syria, could interfere with Russian attempts to stabilize its own order in Syria. Therefore, Russia could try to limit Israel’s political, strategic, and even operational freedom to act. At the same time, Russia is a new element affecting the conduct, restraint, and deployment of all parties, the nature of any possible settlement in Syria, and the possible termination mechanisms for ending a conflict. Russia’s new role in the arena could both coerce Israel and enable it to achieve political and strategic objectives using short, limited, and gradually escalating applications of force, combined with political dialogue with Russia and the United States – and it is possible that in certain circumstances such a framework should be the defining idea of Israel’s concept for fighting in this arena. All of this means that Israel must now decide, in any conflict, exactly who is the enemy: “The obvious enemy is Hezbollah, but Israel can also de ne the enemy as the Lebanese Republic, a contention that is increasingly valid as Hezbollah becomes the main shareholder in Lebanon. The enemy could be defined as the Iranian-Hezbollah axis and the Alawite regime – and this intensifies as the Shiite axis expands its ambitions to establish itself in Syria.” The next war is a war that will not be “won” by Israel or Hezbollah. Israel’s realistic war aims will not match the damage it will suffer—and the damage it will necessarily inflict. As Sa'ar and Tira write, there is only a limited range of “positive” and achievable objectives that Israel can hope to attain from Hezbollah and from Lebanon. While the purpose of an armed conflict is always political, in many contexts it is hard to find a political objective that is both meaningful and achievable at a reasonable cost, and that is the reason for the basic lack of value that can be found in an Israel- Hezbollah military conflict. That’s because Russia cannot be expelled, Lebanon will remain roughly half-Shia, and Hezbollah will survive—as will its relationship with Iran. After the war, the best assumption would be that Hezbollah will rebuild, as it did after 2006. But Hezbollah would achieve nothing positive in such a conflict, suffering immense damage and bringing immense destruction upon Lebanon. Its only possible “gain” is the damage it would inflict on Israel. In a way this is the only “good news:” Therefore, at the fundamental level, both sides have only modest “positive,” vital, and achievable wishes from one another (for example, there is no valuable asset that both sides want – as both Israel and Egypt perceived Sinai and the Suez Canal in 1973). Therefore both sides should have large question marks over the cost-benefit ratio of a high intensity conflict. This is an important stabilizing and restraining factor. If war comes, Israel must try to do the most devastating damage to Hezbollah as quickly as possible, while of course trying to limit the damage done to Israel and its infrastructure. This argues for trying to limit the length of the war, because “there is strong linkage between the depth of damage to be inflicted on Hezbollah and the military and civilian price to be paid by Israel for inflicting that damage.” Put another way, “it can be assumed that there is a direct link between the duration of the conflict and the civilian and military price to be paid by Israel.” This does not necessarily imply that Israel should, on day one of a conflict, send the whole IDF into Lebanon (something it did not do in 2006, and which led to criticism that there was too much reliance on the Air Force in the early days of the war) because “since 2006 the nature of the threat has changed, and the ground offensive that was relevant in 2006 would probably not achieve the same benefit today.” One clear piece of advice Tira and Sa'ar offer is that all of these issues should be discussed now, not once a possible conflict commences. They conclude their article by writing that the next round of fighting will presumably not end “elegantly.” Israel will not necessarily be the one to fire the last shot, Hezbollah will likely not “capitulate” and will continue to build up its capabilities, and Hezbollah presumably will continue to promote the narrative of its own “victory.” This is an “advanced,” mature, and not glorious narrative, which must be prepared in advance. To create coherence on the Israeli side, such a narrative should be introduced in advance to Israel’s political, military, and public arenas. In other words, there will be no 1967-like smashing victory in such a war. Some of the possible gains will not even be visible until time passes: whether the war constitutes a permanent setback to Iran’s ambitions in the Levant and especially in Lebanon, limits Hezbollah’s arms build-up in the period after the war, and strengthens Israel’s deterrence so that another conflict does not occur or is very long postponed. Tira and Sa'ar have written a rich, careful, thoughtful, and in many ways disturbing analysis. But as I hope is clear from this effort at summarizing their views, it is an analysis that well rewards a careful reading.

Indian Prime Minister Modi is now visiting Israel, in the first visit ever from an Indian head of government. He is, predictably, being very warmly received--and judging from public events and statements, is returning the feeling. His visit is a good occasion to consider all the efforts--and there are very many--to isolate Israel. One thinks back to the old Arab boycott, which was for years observed by multinationals from all over the globe; the current BDS movement; and to the recurrent UN votes against Israel. But as the Modi visit shows, Israel is winning the fight. This week, for example, UNESCO's World Heritage Committee passed another offensive resolution about Jerusalem, condemning Israel for archeological excavations there. (Needless to say, there has never been a resolution condemning destruction of archeological artifacts or of Jewish religious sites by any Arab nation or group.) What's interesting about the vote is that the resolution did not get a majority. It passed with ten in favor (Azerbaijan, Indonesia, Lebanon, Tunisia, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Turkey, Vietnam, Zimbabwe, and Cuba), three against (the Philippines, Jamaica, and Burkina Faso), and eight abstaining (Angola, Croatia, Finland, Peru, Poland, Portugal, South Korea and Tanzania). So, ten in favor, eleven not in favor. Look also at the composition of the votes: Israel lost all the Muslim-majority states except Burkina Faso. Of those countries where there is no Muslim majority, the vote was three nasty dictatorships (Cuba, Zimbabwe, Vietnam) in favor, Philippines and Jamaica against, and eight abstentions. Or visualize it another way: No European or Sub-Saharan African state voted for the resolution. Among other things, it seems that Prime Minister Netanyahu's diplomatic efforts in Africa are paying off. I suppose it will be a while before more Muslim states, and especially Arab states, stop this indefensible voting pattern--and recognize its harmful effects on otherwise valuable organizations like UNESCO. But meanwhile, they have anyway lost the battle. Modi's visit--combined with the fact that he is not also going to Ramallah--is a triumph for Israel, as is its growing commerce with India and China and the extremely fast-growing Chinese investment. BDS and isolation of Israel is the sad cause of European and American leftists and anti-Semites, who are increasingly being isolated by people and governments that find them and their cause backward, foolish, and bigoted. This fight against BDS needs to continue wherever BDS efforts are made, such as on American campuses and in some European cities, but those engaged in combatting BDS should realize something symbolized by the Modi visit: they are winning.   

Much was made of the information that President Trump gave to Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov when they met on May 10. The Washington Post story began this way President Trump revealed highly classified information to the Russian foreign minister and ambassador in a White House meeting last week, according to current and former U.S. officials, who said Trump’s disclosures jeopardized a critical source of intelligence on the Islamic State. The information the president relayed had been provided by a U.S. partner through an intelligence-sharing arrangement considered so sensitive that details have been withheld from allies and tightly restricted even within the U.S. government, officials said…. It was during that meeting, officials said, that Trump went off script and began describing details of an Islamic State terrorist threat related to the use of laptop computers on aircraft How much damage was done? Hard to tell, because the President did not reveal how the information was acquired. That task was left to The New York Times and to the American officials who leaked highly classified information to the Times. Those officials committed a crime. Read this portion of the recent Times story: Even one of the rare successes against the Islamic State belongs at least in part to Israel, which was America’s partner in the attacks against Iran’s nuclear facilities. Top Israeli cyberoperators penetrated a small cell of extremist bombmakers in Syria months ago, the officials said. That was how the United States learned that the terrorist group was working to make explosives that fooled airport X-ray machines and other screening by looking exactly like batteries for laptop computers.The intelligence was so exquisite that it enabled the United States to understand how the weapons could be detonated, according to two American officials familiar with the operation. The information helped prompt a ban in March on large electronic devices in carry-on luggage on flights from 10 airports in eight Muslim-majority countries to the United States and Britain. It was also part of the classified intelligence that President Trump is accused of revealing when he met in the Oval Office last month with the Russian foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, and the ambassador to the United States, Sergey I. Kislyak. His disclosure infuriated Israeli officials. I don’t know whether the President’s disclosure infuriated Israelis, but I know that the Times’s unprincipled and irresponsible disclosure damaged not only Israel but our own safety. It helped ISIS. Now, read this from a story in the Israeli newspaper Yediot Ahronoth (originally in Hebrew), by Israel’s most distinguished military correspondent, Alex Fishman. Fishman severely criticizes what President Trump did, saying that if he revealed to Lavrov what we think he did, that’s “an intelligence disaster.” But he goes on to discuss the Times story: The leak in the New York Times saying that the sensitive information came as a result of a cyber-attack could cause intelligence damage of another kind and of a much greater scale. Daesh is good at compartmentalization and knows that there is no intelligence agency that is not trying to penetrate it. It therefore reasonable to assume it ordered a communications blackout: its members refrain from using digital communication and if they do, it is encrypted….Any penetration of Daesh, including computerized, often entails risk to life. Any penetration requires classical intelligence work, which includes: setting a target, learning the system and finding its weak points, and developing functions that will hide the Trojan horse that is inserted to collect secret intelligence. Every exposure of Daesh activity ends, as far as intelligence is concerned, with a bomb on the head, literally. But then came the New York Times to reveal to Daesh that it had been hit by an Israeli cyber-attack. And now, all that remains for Daesh is to do is to try and expose the system that had penetrated their computers. And not only ISIS: countries that wish to learn about Israeli capabilities will be digging through Daesh’s computers to catch the virus, or Trojan horse, or worm, or whatever it is. The moment a cyber “tool” is discovered, there is a great chance that the weak point will also be found. And that weak point—which no doubt also exists in the computer systems of countries and organizations hostile to Israel—will be fixed. This means an intelligence collapse of the attacker [Israel] who invested long years in developing the tool and placing it. Cyber warfare has enormous advantages over conventional intelligence. However, it entails long-term risks and damages for the attacker. If there is a trace of truth to the latest reports, then somebody is waging their battle against Trump at Israel’s expense and is deliberately causing serious damage to an ally of the United States, bordering on betrayal Strong words, but well deserved. The officials who leaked to the Times leaked information of the highest sensitivity and classification, which is why I called it a crime. That leak, and the decision of the Times to print the story, endanger Israeli security, and American security. To what end? What is achieved? Fishman has it right: it’s just a small part of a campaign against Trump. And it seems advancing that cause, for the leakers and the newspaper, trumps our security and that of an ally.

I’v written before, in 2014 and 2016, about the remarkable failure of any British royal to visit Israel except briefly for a funeral. Prince Philip attended Rabin’s funeral and Prince Charles attended that of Shimon Peres, but an official visit–to see and honor the country–appears to be beyond the pale. This indefensible practice should not, it seems, be blamed on the royal family, but instead on the Foreign Office. The FCO, as it is known, has just done it again. This year is the 100th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration. Moreover, there will this year be commemorations of the British Commonwealth troops who fell in the Palestine Campaign in 1917. But it is not to be, the British tabloid The Sun reports: Prince Charles was set to travel to Israel to honour thousands of British war dead at the centenary of the WW1 Palestine Campaign and the historic Balfour Declaration. But insiders say the controversial trip – unofficially pencilled in for later this year – has now been binned. It is feared the decision may have been taken to avoid upsetting Arab nations in the region who regularly host UK Royals…. But the Royal Visits Committee – part of the FCO – who decide where and when Royals will be sent around the world have decided against it. It is understood the invite never even reached the Royal household or Prince Charles. Now, we all know that relations between Israel and the Sunni Arab states have been improving for some years. It is plain silly to believe that they would be horribly “upset” if Charles visited Israel during his next regular jaunt to Arab capitals. So the decision by the FCO reflects plain ignorance–or it reflects something far worse. One might have hoped that those ostensibly in charge of the FCO, Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson and above him Prime Minister Theresa May, would weigh in and ask the “Royal Visits Committee” to explain its decision. If they do not, it will appear that Her Majesty’s Government is happy to tolerate a policy that increasingly seems to be based on sheer prejudice.

Peace between Israel and the Palestinians does not, fundamentally, depend on who is doing the negotiating, how skilled they are, and other such diplomatic matters. Fundamentally it depends on the desire for peace. A new study of Palestinian textbooks finds that Palestinian children are being taught to glorify and value terrorism and violence. The study, called "Palestinian Elementary School Curriculum 2016–17: Radicalization and Revival of the PLO Program," was conducted by the Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education (in Jerusalem) and can be found here. The study's summary begins with this:               The new Palestinian curriculum, which includes new textbooks for grades 1–4, is significantly more radical than previous curricula. To an even greater extent than the 2014–15 textbooks, the curriculum teaches students to be martyrs, demonizes and denies the existence of Israel and focuses on a “return” to an exclusively Palestinian homeland.   Within the pages of the textbooks children are taught to be expendable. Messages such as: “the volcano of my revenge”; “the longing of my blood for my land”; and “I shall sacrifice my blood to saturate the land” suffuse the curriculum. Math books use numbers of dead martyrs to teach arithmetic. The vision of an Arab Palestine includes the entirety of what is now Israel, defined as the “1948 Occupied Territories.”   That is not the way to prepare children for peace. Here is how the grade 4 math textbook teaches math:               The number of martyrs of the First Intifada during 1987–93 totaled 2026 martyrs, and the number of martyrs of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Intifada in the year 2000 totaled 5,050 martyrs while the number of the wounded reached 49,760. How many martyrs died in the two Intifadas?   Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas will be in Washington this week. The teaching and glorification of terrorism and violence should be at the top of the agenda with him. For decades, such matters were considered peripheral to the serious business of diplomatic negotiations. But the negotiations start, stop, and go nowhere. Meanwhile another generation of Palestinian children learn in schools and play in parks named after murderers. That's what is really serious, and that's what Mr. Abbas should be confronted with this week.                        

Today the New York Times ran an op-ed by Marwan Barghouti, and described him as "a Palestinian leader and parliamentarian." Period. In his op-ed, Barghouti states that he was first arrested at age 15, then again at age 18, and he alleges physical abuse by Israeli interrogators. But nowhere does the Times tell readers what he was convicted of doing. Here is an account of the proceedings from the Washington Post in 2004: Barghouti was found guilty of ordering attacks that killed a Greek Orthodox monk in the West Bank in 2001, an Israeli at the Jewish settlement of Givat Zeev in 2002 and three people at the Seafood Market restaurant in Tel Aviv in 2002. He was also convicted of one count each of attempted murder and membership in a terrorist organization.... Television news footage of the trial showed Barghouti, a member of the Palestinian legislature, responding to the convictions in a low voice, saying in Hebrew, "This is a court of occupation that I do not recognize. "A day will come when you will be ashamed of these accusations," said Barghouti, 44. "I have no more connection to these charges than you, the judges, do. The judges cannot judge on their own. They get their order from above." The three-judge panel said there was insufficient evidence to prove Barghouti's guilt in another 21 deaths that were originally part of the indictment.... Israeli Justice Minister Yosef Lapid said, however, that the verdict "demonstrates the independence of the Israeli courts. The fact that in most of the accusations he is found not guilty is clear evidence that his case was given a fair trial." The Israeli newspaper Haaretz gave further detail:   The court ruled that Barghouti was directly responsible for a January 2002 terror attack on a gas station in Givat Zeev in which Israeli Yoela Chen was murdered. The attack, the judges said, was carried out at his direct order in revenge for the assassination of Raed Carmi. Barghouti had admitted his responsibility for this attack.   The attack in which a Greek monk was murdered in Ma'aleh Adumim on June of 2001 was also carried out at the instruction of Barghouti, the judges said. The former Tanzim leader, the court ruled, also approved the March 2002 attack at Tel Aviv's Seafood Market restaurant in which three people were murdered, as well as a car bomb attack in Jerusalem.   Didn't Times readers have the right to know any of this? They did, and the by-line the Times allowed Mr. Barghouti is a shameful abdication of responsibility to readers.

Israeli settlement activity has been in the news this past week because the Trump administration is steadily defining its policy. What has emerged is a good policy: sensible, flexible, and realistic. Which is to say, it’s a lot like Bush policy. Obama policy had made construction in the settlements a sore point for eight full years. This was one reason among many for the constant tension between the government of Israel and that of the United States during all of Mr. Obama’s term in office. What are the terms of the agreement between the Netanyahu government and the Trump administration? First, there is no written agreement and that’s a good thing. There are understandings. That means there can be some arguments, but no accusations that "you’re violating what you signed!" Second, the Trump administration understands that Jerusalem is Israel’s capital and does not view construction there as "settlement activity." Third, there will be no new settlements built except the one being created for the people evicted from Amona, a settlement deemed illegal by the Israeli Supreme Court. Netanyahu apparently persuaded the administration that he had made that commitment last year, before the Trump presidency, and needed to keep it. Fourth, new construction in settlements in the West Bank will be in already built-up areas, or if that’s impossible, as close to them as possible. Fifth, there will be some restraint in the pace of settlement expansion. Sixth, apparently Netanyahu agreed not to permit new "outposts" to be built--small groups of houses erected without government permission. And finally, there will be no annexation of land in the West Bank. This is very close to the Bush-Sharon understandings of 2003 and 2004. Our "deal" was no new settlements, no seizure of additional land for settlements, construction in already built-up areas, and no financial inducements to move to a settlement (e.g. a cheap, government-provided  mortgage). The goals are the same: to limit the physical expansion of settlements so that the Israeli footprint in the West Bank does not become larger and larger; to keep most population growth in the larger blocks that will remain with Israel in any final status agreement; and to prevent this issue from occupying center stage and being a constant irritant to the two governments. This is smart. The alternative approach, that of the Obama administration under George Mitchell, Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, and Barack Obama, was not. By treating all construction--in Jerusalem, the major blocks, and the smallest outlying settlements--exactly the same, that Obama approach created a huge Israeli consensus against U.S. policy. The Trump approach is politically sensible: most Israelis do not think of construction in Jerusalem or the big settlements like Ma’ale Adumim to be anything like construction in some tiny settlement far beyond the Israeli security barrier. So this deal should be sustainable. There will no doubt be arguments, as noted, over some questions: for example, is some new apartment house really as close to the already built-up area as it can be? But we dealt with such matters in the Bush years. The prime minister’s office would call, we’d discuss what was planned, and we would not allow these things to sour the terrific relationship between the president and the prime minister, or between the two governments. That’s the way it should be, and that appears to be what President Trump has in mind.  

The Trump administration’s Middle East policy is developing, and most recently a key adviser to the President, Jason Greenblatt, visited Jerusalem and Ramallah. The full content of his talks with Israeli and Palestinian officials is secret, as it should be. Still, it is clear that the President would like to move the parties forward toward a peace agreement. According to various press reports there was a good discussion of how Israeli settlement activities might be limited, and of steps that might be taken to improve the Palestinian economy. These are important subjects to cover, but there is another one that simply must be on the table (and perhaps it was). The list of subjects must include with what the Palestinians will give, not just what they will receive. Prof. Efraim Inbar, founding director of the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, put it this way in a critical commentary on Mr. Greenblatt’s visit:   He stressed how important it was to President Trump to stimulate the Palestinian economy and improve the quality of life for Palestinians. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu assured Greenblatt that he is fully committed to broadening prosperity for the Palestinians and sees it as a means of bolstering the prospects for peace. According to the press release, the two discussed concrete measures that could support and advance Palestinian economic development. It is odd to offer carrots to the Palestinians before they have committed to returning to the negotiations table they left in March 2014. The impulse to give out carrots displays the conventional wisdom of the international community (including Jerusalem): that the Palestinians must be well fed to prevent their erupting into violence. This attitude has led to continuous financial support to the PA despite the growing awareness that a large proportion of that aid is channeled to terrorists and their families. Short-term calculations of this kind only prolong the conflict. Indeed, the campaign of terror that started in September 2000, dubbed the Second Intifada, took place after several years of economic progress during which the Palestinian standard of living was the highest in history. The many carrots provided did not overcome the Palestinians’ appetite for political achievements; nor did it channel their energies from terror to the negotiating table.   The channeling of aid to terrorists and their families to which Prof. Inbar refers is the payment to convicted terrorists by the PLO. Congress is increasingly hostile to continuing American aid while that continues, and already the UK has stopped giving any cash to the Palestinians for this reason. There is also the matter of "incitement," meaning statements and actions by the Palestinian Authority (PA) that glorify terror and demonize Israel and Jews. In the last few decades, under presidents of both parties, the United States has said this must stop but has never penalized the PA when it did not. To repeat, Trump policy is just taking shape and we do not know what forms of pressure were or will be put on Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. But what we do know for sure is that, as Prof. Inbar says, it would be a mistake to give the PA and PLO concessions in return for nothing and then hope for the best. It would be a mistake to reward Abbas merely for returning to negotiations he should never have left and that are not a favor to the United States or to Israel. As Trump policy develops, let’s hope it treats the Palestinians as political actors (not objects of charity) with the power to make consequential decisions. And wrong decisions should have consequences, as should correct ones.  

Should the United States be giving military assistance to the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF)? According to the U.S. ambassador to Lebanon (speaking last summer),  "In this year alone we provided over $221 million in equipment and training to the Lebanese security forces." That number presumably includes aid to Lebanon’s police and Internal Security Forces, but given the small size of the country it is a hefty sum. Lebanon is a friendly country, an ally against jihadi groups like Al Qaeda and ISIS, and a sort of democracy. But it is also the home of the terrorist group Hezbollah, which largely dominates its politics and makes its democracy a sometime thing. It’s fair to say that nothing happens in Lebanon without Hezbollah’s approval, no matter how elections turn out. Lebanon’s new president is legitimizing Hezbollah’s military role--which is independent from control by the Lebanese state (despite repeated UN Security Council resolutions demanding that there be no militias in Lebanon outside state control). The collaboration between Hezbollah and the LAF may be growing: a Times of Israel article on February 12 about the Lebanon/Israel border area said "On the Israeli side, officials are following, almost in astonishment, the deepening cooperation between the Lebanese army and Hezbollah." Lebanese President Michel Aoun responded by saying of Hezbollah “As long as the Lebanese army is not strong enough to battle Israel … we feel the need for its existence.” When Israel’s UN envoy wrote to the UN Security Council about Hezbollah violations of resolutions concerning Lebanon, the response from Aoun’s office was "Any attempt to hurt Lebanese sovereignty or expose the Lebanese to danger will find the appropriate response." So, Aoun appears to be defining Hezbollah’s interests as Lebanon’s interests, and defining Hezbollah not as a militia whose existence clearly violates UN Security Council resolutions but rather as a necessary defense against Israel. In fact he said more: that Hezbollah is needed to "battle" Israel. Such rhetoric may be dismissed as a price the Christian president must pay, if it is only rhetoric. More dangerous is the news that cooperation between Hezbollah and the Lebanese Army may be increasing. In this context, should U.S. aid to the LAF continue? I find it a difficult question. Stopping the aid might only further weaken the LAF, which is not under Hezbollah command--though it certainly refuses to confront the terrorist group. The commander of the LAF is always a Christian and the chief of staff is always a Druze, and the Global Security web site suggests that Shia Lebanese "comprise 25% of the enlisted ranks. At the same time, the Army was able to bring the Christians to 25% and the Sunni/Druze component to 50% of the enlisted ranks."  It can be argued that weakening the LAF could further weaken non-Hezbollah influence in Lebanon. If it is true that LAF-Hezbollah cooperation is increasing, the United States should demand that that trend be halted and reversed. It is one thing for the LAF to refuse to confront Hezbollah, and quite another to assist it in any way. Our aid should give us the leverage to achieve that much. My own bottom line for now is that we should not end aid to the LAF, but should make it very clear that this aid is in danger. Lebanese officials must come to realize that even if the withholding of aid weakens the LAF, that’s the inevitable outcome unless they keep farther away from Hezbollah than current trends appear to suggest.