Israel

  Once upon a time, the term “Paris Peace Conference” was a serious one, and referred to the historic Versailles Conference that ended World War I. That conference began on January 18, 1919, and it is striking that the French would wish to make a mockery of their own history by convening a useless conference on almost exactly the same date—today, January 15. Today nearly 70 countries, and nearly 40 foreign ministers including the one from the United States, are gathering in Paris. Why? Well, why not—from the point of view of the foreign ministers. You do have to sit through an entire day of boring speeches, of course, but then you get the whole weekend in Paris. I’ll bet most arrived Friday for a good dinner, then you have Saturday free for shopping, then another dinner….who would say no merely because the event will be useless or harmful to the cause of peace? For John Kerry this is his swan song, and he is fresh from Vietnam where he walked down memory lane yet again, at God knows what cost to American taxpayers. But thinking of Kerry should lead us to recall who will be engaged in this event. There is Kerry, who will be unemployed in five days. There is French President Francois Hollande, who has announced he won’t even run for re-election in May. There is Palestinian President Abbas, elected in 2005 for a four year term and now entering his 12th year. And Abbas won’t actually be at the conference, just nearby in some gorgeous hotel suite. Israel is boycotting the conference. No one will represent the new American administration. What is the point of this endeavor? According to the French, it is to show support for the two-state solution and urge both parties, meaning Israel and the PLO, to negotiate. That is a demonstration of bias, because it is the PLO not Israel that has been refusing negotiations and rejecting peace plans again and again for years—indeed decades. To treat the government of Israel and the PLO as if their desire for peace were identical is wrong and unfair. If the participants at the conference truly wished to advance peace, they would be pressuring the Palestinians to stop rewarding and inciting terrorism by glorifying terrorists, and pressuring them to start negotiating seriously. This will not happen. There is every reason to believe Mr. Abbas will leave Paris satisfied with the circus and feeling zero real pressure to do anything at all. The other point, perhaps the real point, of the conference is to pressure Israel to stop all settlement growth. In this sense it is a follow-up to UN Security Council resolution 2334 of December, and shares its conclusion that the real barrier to peace is the increasingly rapid, uncontrollable, endless, limitless growth of Israeli settlements. But this is false, as the statistics show. Settlement populations are growing, at about four percent a year, but the notion that they are rapidly gobbling up the West Bank and making peace impossible is a fiction. There may be a third objective for the conference: pressing President-Elect Trump not to move the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. We can expect language about leaving Jerusalem as a final status issue and doing nothing at all that changes the status quo. If you believe the President-Elect will be dissuaded by such a declaration from a conference such as this, well, I don’t agree. So the conference will soon be nearly forgotten, and go down as yet another feeble effort to undermine Israel’s legitimacy. Of course if you ask the French, they will angrily deny that this was their purpose. I agree that it was not the purpose, but it is the effect, predictably. Like Resolution 2334, it is another diplomatic blow against the Jewish State, trying to isolate it and criticize it and undermine its ideological and diplomatic defenses. And meanwhile, this very month, we will see the PLO pay more money to prisoners convicted of terrorist acts and name more schools or parks or squares after murderers and would-be murderers. But there will be no Paris conference about all of that.  

What happens when UN Security Council resolutions are ignored? That depends, really—on whether you are any of 192 other members of the United Nations, or are Israel. Defenders of Israel often claim that it is treated differently by the United Nations from any other nation. That claim is accurate, and a brief look at Lebanon offers some proof. It continues to violate Security Council resolutions, year after year—but no one complains, and no one ever argues that Lebanon must be punished with boycotts or prosecutions for doing so. In fact they are often congratulated for their defiance. The United Nations Security Council has been saying for decades that the Government of Lebanon must exercise control of its territory. Resolution 1559 of 2004 “Calls for the disbanding and disarmament of all Lebanese and non-Lebanese militias” and “Supports the extension of the control of the Government of Lebanon over all Lebanese territory.” By “Lebanese militias” the UN was referring to Hezbollah, but dared not speak its name. In any event, the Government of Lebanon did not comply. Resolution 1583 was adopted unanimously in 2005 and in it the Security Council   Reiterates its strong support for the territorial integrity, sovereignty and political independence of Lebanon within its internationally recognized boundaries and under the sole and exclusive authority of the Government of Lebanon;   Calls upon the Government of Lebanon to fully extend and exercise its sole and effective authority throughout the south, including through the deployment of sufficient numbers of Lebanese armed and security forces, to ensure a calm environment throughout the area, including along the Blue Line, and to exert control over the use of force on its territory and from it….   As the French ambassador said about that resolution when it was adopted, “in keeping with the present demands of the United Nations, Lebanon must extend its authority throughout the south, in particular, by expanding and deploying its forces and by disarming the militias.” But the Government of Lebanon did not comply. Resolution 1701 of 2006, adopted to end the war between Israel and Hezbollah,   Welcomes the efforts of the Lebanese Prime Minister and the commitment of the Government of Lebanon…to extend its authority over its territory, through its own legitimate armed forces, such that there will be no weapons without the consent of the Government of Lebanon and no authority other than that of the Government of Lebanon….   Emphasizes the importance of the extension of the control of the Government of Lebanon over all Lebanese territory…for it to exercise its full sovereignty, so that there will be no weapons without the consent of the Government of Lebanon and no authority other than that of the Government of Lebanon.... Calls upon the Government of Lebanon to secure its borders and other entry points to prevent the entry in Lebanon without its consent of arms or related materiel….   But the Government of Lebanon paid no attention, or more accurately was unwilling to comply because it was afraid. In the last week of December, 2016, Lebanon got a new government under Prime Minister Saad Hariri, and as is customary the new Cabinet issued a “Ministerial Statement” outlining its plans. Those plans openly defied the Security Council’s many resolutions on Lebanon and bowed to Hezbollah pressure. Here are the relevant lines:   In our conflict with the Israeli enemy, we will spare no effort or resistance in order to liberate the remaining occupied Lebanese territory, and to protect our homeland from an enemy who still covets our land, our water and our resources….The Government affirms the right of Lebanese citizens to resist the Israeli occupation, repel the Israeli aggressions and recapture the occupied territories.   Note that it does not say the government of Lebanon has the right to resistance, or the state, or the Army, which would at least have endorsed the authority of the state in principle. The actual language legitimizes Hezbollah as a state within a state and legitimizes its military operations outside the control of the state. It was approved because Hezbollah demanded this, and the opposing forces (who got no visible Western support) were too weak to prevent it. So Lebanon is in violation of Security Council resolutions, and deliberately so. There was plenty of discussion about this issue--what exactly would the Ministerial Statement say about Hezbollah and its "right" to arms--and some key figures resisted the language Hezbollah wanted. But Hezbollah got its way (on this and several other key issues). What was the U.S. reaction? Here it is, from the White House:   The United States congratulates Prime Minister Hariri on the Lebanese parliament’s approval of his cabinet on December 28….The United States stands steadfast in its support for a strong, stable, prosperous, and sovereign Lebanon as the new government works to strengthen state institutions, prepare for timely national elections, and uphold and implement Lebanon’s international commitments.   But of course the Lebanese government had just announced, very clearly, that it was NOT going to “uphold and implement Lebanon’s international commitments.” Now, some critics will say this is not comparable to the situation in Israel and the new Resolution 2334 on Israeli settlements, because the Netanyahu government has the power to act to freeze settlements. Why does it not do so? Ah, well, it’s a coalition government and some members of the coalition would oppose a freeze; indeed they would leave the coalition over this and the government might well collapse. But that’s pretty much the situation in Lebanon. “Hariri cabinet capitulates to Hezbollah demand” was the headline in Gulf News. Had Hariri not agreed, he’d never have become prime minister or his new government would have collapsed. Of course the two situations are not comparable-- not when you consider that Hezbollah is a murderous terrorist group that kills people every day, and was likely involved in killing Saad Hariri’s father Rafik in 2005. As the New York Times reported in 2015 about Rafik Hariri’s murder by car bomb and the UN tribunal investigating that event, “the tribunal is producing overwhelming, albeit circumstantial, evidence that Hezbollah murdered the most important politician Lebanon had ever produced, and indiscriminately slaughtered many others in the process.” So one can sympathize with Saad Hariri and other Lebanese politicians when they bow to Hezbollah. The people who might leave Netanyahu’s cabinet will go home, not pick up machine guns and plant car bombs. But the fact remains that Lebanon is defying the Security Council very clearly and very deliberately, and no one says a word about it (except to applaud). No one is threatening a boycott of Lebanese goods until it complies. No one is suggesting that Lebanese politicians are violating international law by their complicity with and now official defense of Hezbollah. And actually, some pressure from the West might be useful in empowering and emboldening Lebanese politicians who are trying to resist Hezbollah, and risking their lives by doing so. But that’s not the point here. The point is that plenty of countries defy the UN but in very, very few cases is this even noticed, and in fewer still is anyone punished. Israel remains a special case, whose maltreatment in the UN is a disgrace—and one that, until the Obama administration decided to allow Resolution 2334 to pass, the United States fought and prevented in the Security Council. It may be a vain hope that the UN will depart from past practices and stop persecuting Israel, but it seems very likely that under the Trump administration the United States will return to past practices and defend Israel again. That would be a good start for 2017.  

Since the adoption last week the Security Council resolution on Israel, I’ve had my say in The Weekly Standard and The Washington Post condemning the Obama administration’s decision to allow the resolution to pass. The resolution rewards the PLO for refusing to negotiate and adopts its tactic of replacing serious, face-to-face negotiations with useless dramas in New York. It is a danger to Israel. And by refusing to veto, the Obama administration abandoned the usual American practice of defending Israel from what Jeane Kirkpatrick called "the jackals" at the United Nations. Over this past weekend, administration spokesmen have tried to defend this abandonment of Israel in truly Orwellian terms, inverting the meaning of their action. This was done to help Israel, you see, and to defend it; we know better where its interests lie than does its elected government (and main opposition parties); we abandoned Israel because we are its friend. These were main themes of the President’s aide Ben Rhodes when he spoke to reporters Friday, and among other things said the following, describing:   a resolution that expresses the consensus international view on Israeli settlement activity....this is consistent with longstanding bipartisan U.S. policy as it relates to settlements....one of our grave concerns is that the continued pace of settlement activity -- which has accelerated in recent years, which has accelerated significantly since 2011....   let’s be clear here: We exhausted every effort to pursue a two-state solution through negotiations, through direct discussions, through proximity discussions, through confidence-building measures, through a lengthy and exhaustive effort undertaken by Secretary Kerry earlier in the President’s second term. We gave every effort that we could to supporting the parties coming to the table. So within the absence of any meaningful peace process, as well as in the face of accelerated settlement activity that put at risk the viability of a two-state solution, that we took the decision that we did today to abstain on this resolution.... where is the evidence that not doing this is slowing the settlement construction?   If you enjoyed the children’s exercise where the child is asked to find all the things wrong in a picture--signs upside down, dogs with horns, etc--you will enjoy pondering Mr. Rhodes’s misleading narrative. Yes, the resolution "expresses the consensus international view on Israeli settlement activity," which calls them illegal, and that is the point: until the Obama administration, the United States’s position was that they were unhelpful but not illegal. Therefore the resolution is not "consistent with longstanding bipartisan U.S. policy." As to the pace of settlement activity, Mr. Rhodes is simply wrong. I’ve reviewed the statistics here, in Foreign Policy. There, Uri Sadot and I concluded that   A careful look into the numbers shows that neither the population balance between Jews and Palestinians, nor the options for partition in the West Bank have materially changed....Israeli population in the settlements is growing, but at a rate that reflects mostly births in families already there, and not in-migration of new settlers.   In fact settlement growth has not "accelerated significantly" since 2011, whatever Mr. Rhodes says. His most disingenuous remark is about the failure of negotiations. Indeed the Obama/Kerry efforts failed, because the Palestinians refused to come to the table even when Israel undertook a ten-month construction freeze. One of Mr. Obama’s officials, Martin Indyk, said this in 2014 about those negotiations:   "Netanyahu moved to the zone of possible agreement. I saw him sweating bullets to find a way to reach an agreement," said Indyk. Abbas, for his part, did not show flexibility, Indyk added. "We tried to get Abu Mazen to the zone of possible agreement but we were surprised to learn he had shut down."   So what is to be done when the Palestinians refuse to negotiate? Punish Israel. Join the jackals in Turtle Bay. Adopt the PLO view that action in the United Nations will replace face-to-face talks. That was Mr. Obama’s decision. Mr. Rhodes’s twisted formulation "where is the evidence that not doing this is slowing the settlement construction?" is a kind of epitaph for Obama policy. He explained: "we have a body of evidence to assess how this Israeli government has responded to us not taking this kind of action, and that suggests that they will continue to accelerate the type of settlement construction that puts a two-state solution at risk." Settlements expand if we veto resolutions, he is saying, so we have decided not to veto resolutions. This is precisely wrong, a true inversion of the truth. The Obama account of settlement expansion is invented and avoids the facts to build a case against Israel. Netanyahu is not popular among settlers exactly because he has restrained settlement growth and as noted adopted a ten-month freeze. In 2009 Hillary Clinton said "What the prime minister has offered in specifics on restraints on a policy of settlements ... is unprecedented." What has been the Obama reaction to his restraint, to his freeze, to the PLO refusal to negotiate? The reaction has been to blame Israel and assault Netanyahu year after year, including with childish epithets. And this attitude culminated finally in the abandonment of Israel at the United Nations. Supporters of strong Israel-American relations can only be glad that the 22nd Amendment limits presidents to two terms in the White House.

The United Nations Security Council was scheduled to vote today (Thursday, December 22) on an Egyptian-sponsored resolution on Israeli settlement activity. Egypt, the Arab representative on the Security Council right now, pulled the resolution this morning, so there will be no vote. There are several mysteries here, including why Egypt did that, and how President Obama planned to vote: yes, abstain, or veto. First, it’s important to realize just how bad the resolution was. Here’s part: The Security Council--   ■ "Reaffirms that the establishment by Israel of settlements in the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, including East Jerusalem, has no legal validity and constitutes a flagrant violation under international law and a major obstacle to the achievement of the two-state solution."   ■ "Reiterates its demand that Israel immediately and completely cease all settlement activities in the occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem." ■ "Calls upon all States, to distinguish, in their relevant dealings, between the territory of the State of Israel and the territories occupied since 1967."   Why is this so bad? The first paragraph above calls all settlement activity illegal under international law. That could have an impact in Europe and elsewhere in how Israeli settlers and officials are treated. Are they all criminals? Can they be brought before the International Criminal Court? Prosecuted in local courts? The second paragraph refers to East Jerusalem, and suggests that all Israeli housing construction must stop--even including construction in the Jewish Quarter of the Old City. That’s madness. The third paragraph above, treating everything beyond the old "Green Line" or 1949 armistice line as illegal and demanding that all states do so, begs for boycotts. It logically means that any product from East Jerusalem, the Golan, or the West Bank be boycotted and prevented from being sold. So it would be a terrible, unfair, unbalanced resolution and one with the potential to damage Israel. That’s one reason an American veto should have been automatic--but it wasn’t. The Obama administration refused to say whether it would veto, and I’ve been told by some well-informed journalists that it would not have vetoed. This would have been Mr. Obama’s parting shot after eight years of tension with Israel. Refusal to veto would also have violated decades of American policy that calls for direct Israeli-Palestinian negotiations as the only way forward to peace. The President-Elect recognized this, and Mr. Trump said   The resolution being considered at the United Nations Security Council regarding Israel should be vetoed. As the United States has long maintained, peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians will only come through direct negotiations between the parties and not through the imposition of terms by the United Nations. This puts Israel in a very poor negotiating position and is extremely unfair to all Israelis.   I had actually thought Mr. Obama would veto, because a refusal to do so would certainly do damage to his party--a party that has suffered electoral defeats at the congressional and state level throughout his presidency. But if the information I received was right, he was more interested in departing with another smack at Israel. The remaining question is why President Sisi withdrew the resolution. Press reports all say it was Israeli pressure, which is a negative way of saying he did so because he values Egyptian-Israeli bilateral relations and was asked to pull the resolution by Prime Minister Netanyahu. That’s a good thing; the United States should itself value cooperative Israeli-Egyptian relations. Others have suggested that Sisi wanted to avoid a confrontation with the incoming Trump administration, which was clearly against this text. That’s also a good thing. But note this: none of the news stories suggest the Egyptians acted because of the Obama administration. Just as with the Russian-Turkish-Iranian meeting to discuss Syria (The New York Times’s story began "Russia, Iran, and Turkey met in Moscow on Tuesday to work toward a political accord to end Syria’s nearly six-year war, leaving the United States on the sidelines...."), the Obama administration apparently played no role in Egypt’s decisions. In large part this is because the Obama administration has left friends confused as its objectives and foes without fear of consequences for opposing the United States. Defenders of the administration will say it’s just lame duck status that explains the lack of concern for the wishes of the White House, but I can’t agree. At the very end of the George W. Bush administration, there was a vigorous negotiation in the Security Council over a resolution on the fighting in Gaza, and the United States was at the center of it--right up into January, 2009. Now it’s December, 2016 and we are being ignored. That’s the result of eight years of policy choices, not lame duck status.    

President-Elect Trump’s choice of David M. Friedman as his ambassador to Israel has occasioned both appropriate news coverage, and a barrage of nasty, ignorant, politically biased comments. Most of those comments (including the poison-pen editorial in The New York Times) have informed readers that Mr. Friedman is unfit for this post because he is a "bankruptcy lawyer" lacking diplomatic experience. I was previously unaware that being a "bankruptcy lawyer" was equivalent to a crime of moral turpitude, but that is in any event an odd description of Mr. Friedman. In fact he is one of the top lawyers in that field in the United States, year after year being so listed in articles about the very best American lawyers. The New York Times tells us that he has since 1994 been a partner at a firm called Kasowitz, Benson, Torres, & Friedman, but does not bother to tell readers that he is in fact the Friedman of Kasowitz, Benson, Torres, & Friedman--a firm whose name was changed when he joined it, and which he has helped build to about 350 lawyers in seven cities. He is also a self-made man, the son of an Orthodox rabbi who came to the practice of law without the benefit of wealth or fancy connections. To the Times all that is irrelevant; presumably they would prefer a fellow at a white-shoe Wall Street firm whose father or grandfather had been a diplomat, who belonged to the right clubs, and who rather than soil himself with the actual practice of law opens doors and makes connections. But I doubt most Americans take that view, and Mr. Trump did not. I’ve met Mr. Friedman once; we connected because I have a son who works in the Kasowitz firm. What do you learn from one meeting? Only that you’re dealing with one smart cookie, and that his involvement with Israeli affairs for decades has given him a far better insight than the average diplomat. Of course that Mr. Friedman is a "bankruptcy lawyer" is not his only, nor his primary, disqualification in the eyes of the Left. You may be sure that if he were a lawyer handling traffic violations but belonged to J Street, they would all be applauding. Their real problem is that Mr. Friedman’s views are anathema to them. He thinks J Street is actually an anti-Israel rather than a pro-peace organization, that settlements are not an obstacle to peace, and other terrible things. He even thinks the U.S. embassy should be moved to Jerusalem. That these views are apparently shared by the President-Elect and will be American policy is of course what really troubles the Times and others, and they label all these "extremist views" and call Mr. Friedman "dangerous." It is also objected that Mr. Friedman’s views are not those of all Israelis, because he is a man of the Right. Of course, the Times and the Left never object when the United States sends an envoy who is on the Left; that’s considered being a good diplomat. In the George W. Bush years, Prime Minister Sharon complained repeatedly about the leftist leanings of the American envoy, and in other decades it was pretty obvious that Washington and the U.S. ambassador favored the Labor Party and were even working to drive out a Likud prime minister. I cannot recall complaints in The New York Times.  I do not share all of Mr. Friedman’s views, but I am delighted that the United States will soon have an envoy who can do what the Israeli ambassador in Washington can do: call home and speak to the top guy. I’m very pleased that we’ll have an ambassador who has known the country to which he is accredited for decades and won’t need briefing books to learn its geography. I think it’s great that we’ll have someone deeply committed to Israel’s security (consider this story, told by a friend of his: "he decided to buy a home in Jerusalem on the day in 2002 that a Palestinian suicide bomber blew himself up at Café Moment, a popular bar in the city, killing 11 Israelis.") and to its well-being (he organized a fund that built a village in the Negev for disabled Jewish and Bedouin kids). Traditional diplomat? Not at all. On the right? For sure. And, brilliant lawyer and deeply committed Zionist. He will have to forge new relationships with Israeli Arabs and Israeli leftists, figure out how to interact with the State Department and other parts of the United States Government, and learn more about Israel’s relations with Russia, and with Egypt and Jordan. So would any new envoy. But they would not come to the position with the knowledge and commitment or the sheer intellectual power that Friedman brings, nor would they have the total confidence of the President of the United States. The coming years could bring more tumult in Arab lands, attacks on Israel by ISIS or Hezbollah, a succession crisis in Ramallah, or even a new Israeli prime minister. Israel and the United States are very much better off when the American ambassador can do far more than deliver messages from Washington, and can instead bring to the U.S. Government and right to the Oval Office his considered analyses of the worst problems-- and the best solutions.

This past week the United Nations General Assembly commemorated once again the "International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People" and took the occasion to pass six anti-Israel resolutions. Ranging from the despicable to the absurd, these resolutions of course have nothing to do with reality in the Middle East, nor do they bring peace one minute closer. Let’s take a look at one--the resolution entitled "The Syrian Golan." This resolution (formally known as Agenda item 34 or document A/71/L.8) had many cosponsors. They included, and I quote, such world leaders as "Bolivia (Plurinational State of)" and "Venezuela (Bolivarian Republic of)," plus Zimbabwe, Comoros, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, and of course a bunch of Arab states. The heart of the resolution is this: The General Assembly   Determines once more that the continued occupation of the Syrian Golan and its de facto annexation constitute a stumbling block in the way of achieving a just, comprehensive and lasting peace in the region...   Demands once more that Israel withdraw from all the occupied Syrian Golan to the line of 4 June 1967 in implementation of the relevant Security Council resolutions;   What precisely would happen were Israel tomorrow morning to withdraw from what the UN calls "the Syrian Golan?" Would Islamic State try to overrun it and slaughter Druze living there? Would Iranian-backed militias take part of it? More likely, would the butcher Bashar al-Assad’s Iranian-backed army try to seize it? Or, most likely of all, would Hezbollah forces seize it? How would that affect the people living there? Or the people living in northern Israel? Or the people living across the border from the Golan in Jordan? It seems that neither "Bolivia (Plurinational State of)" nor "Venezuela (Bolivarian Republic of)" cares much. But who voted against this mindless resolution? According to the UN, there was "a recorded vote of 103 in favour to 6 against (Canada, Federated States of Micronesia, Israel, Marshall Islands, Palau, United States), with 56 abstentions." Amazing, isn’t it? The United States and Canada joined Israel--and got the support of three tiny Pacific island nations. That means the nations of the EU abstained; not one single European country could bring itself to acknowledge the truth about this resolution. The UN press release notes this, though:   The representative of Syria thanked Member States that had voted in favour of the resolutions....the favourable vote sent a clear message to Israel that its killing, settlement expansion and forcible annexation of land ran counter to international principles.   It’s hard to think of a better example of why the United Nations has become the theater of the absurd. The representative of a regime that rules perhaps ten percent of Syria and has murdered half a million of its own people, including with poison gas, condemns Israel for its "killing." The General Assembly spends a day passing six resolutions denouncing Israel. And representatives of democracies all around the world hide and abstain.