Indeed the land-for-peace formula will be exposed as a twofold fiction. First, it is based on the false proposition that the peace process is a two-way street. Israel gives land, the Arabs give peace. But the inevitable death of the Egyptian-Israeli peace accord under an Egyptian jihadist regime makes clear that the land-for-peace formula is a one-way street. Israeli land giveaways are permanent. Arab commitments to peace can be revoked at any time.
The conflict is not about land.
The plain fact is that Hamas, Fatah/Palestinian Authority and Hezbollah are united in one goal: the elimination of Israel as an independent, Jewish state. This has also been Syria's goal since modern Israel was founded in 1948. Syria is an Iranian client and I am sure no pixels need be expended to explain Iran's hostility to the Jewish nation. Israel's enemies want to destroy the country as a political entity. Hamas has said bluntly, over and again, that all Jews must be expelled or killed.
The conflict is over Israel's very existence, not its "borders."
Less than two weeks after a mysterious explosion destroyed an Iranian missile development base, and the same day the Israeli Military reported on the effect of that explosion, Iran's official news agency FARS reported that a loud blast was heard in the city of Isfahan at 2:40 pm local time (6:10am EST).
Iran operates a uranium conversion plant near Isfahan, which has a major role in the nuclear weapons process. first went into operation in 2004, taking uranium from mines and producing uranium fluoride gas, which then feeds the centrifuges that enrich the uranium.
Since 2004 (thank you France) , thousands of tons of uranium flouride gas were stockpiled at Isfahan and subsequently sent to the enrichment plant in Natanz. Search and rescue teams called to the scene confirmed the blast, but as of yet no injuries have been reported.
Iran's uranium enrichment plant is located just outside the city of Isfahan – one of Iran's largest cities.
According to the FARS report, a security official confirmed that the explosion had occurred, but refused to give further details.
Which makes these two pieces all the more relevant:
President Obama says that the basis for peace between Israel and the Palestinians should be the (so-called) pre-1967 borders "with land swaps." Set aside the now the fact that there is no such thing as "pre-1967 borders" because even if there were, reverting to the pre-'67 lines would not mean peace for Israel.
The conflict is not about land.
The plain fact is that Hamas, Fatah/Palestinian Authority and Hezbollah are united in one goal: the elimination of Israel as an independent, Jewish state. This has also been Syria's goal since modern Israel was founded in 1948. Syria is an Iranian client and I am sure no pixels need be expended to explain Iran's hostility to the Jewish nation. Israel's enemies want to destroy the country as a political entity. Hamas has said bluntly, over and again, that all Jews must be expelled or killed.
The conflict is not about land. The conflict is over Israel's very existence, not its "borders." In 2000, Israeli PM Ehud Barak and staff met with Yassir Arafat and staff at Camp David. The conference was sponsored by President Clinton. Using the pre-67 lines as a basis, Barak proposed a modification of the lines based on defensibility, but offered a hectare-for-hectare swap to the PA for each modification. Barak also offered to dismantle dozens of Jewish settlements in the West Bank. Israel also offered the PA control over two of Jerusalem's four historic quarters, but Arafat demanded actual sovereignty over East Jerusalem and all its holy sites, including the Western Wall, the holiest site of Judaism. There were other issues, too, mainly the "right of return," but basically Barak offered Arafat about 95 percent of what Arafat had been demanding all along.
Arafat's response was simply to leave and return to the West Bank without making a counter-proposal of any kind. Subsequently, President Clinton and his chief Middle East envoy, Dennis Ross, both wrote that Arafat was solely responsible for the conference's failure. Ross said that Arafat's staff told him that Arafat was shocked by Barak's offer because it was so generous and that Arafat said before he flew away that if he accepted Barak's offers, he (Arafat) would be murdered by other Palestinians within a week.
Why? Because Fatah/PA and Hamas have never sought and do not want a "Palestinian state" with Israel as a Jewish state alongside. They are driven instead by their desire to incorporate all Israel under Arab rule and sovereignty. Fatah would grant the Jews who remained severely restricted religious and political rights. Hamas says that all Jews who do not leave must be killed.
This issue is not over what happened in 1967. It is over what happened in 1948 - the creation of the modern state of Israel.
The situation on the ground
Hamas controls Gaza. Fatah/PA controls the West Bank. Hezbollah controls Lebanon. Hamas and Hezbollah are longtime allies. Hamas was a sub-faction of Palestinian terrorism until 2005, when Israel completely pulled out of Gaza. Hamas took over Gaza in 2006 by force, killing PA officials and Fatah fighters who tried to oppose them. Only now have Hamas and Fatah/PA become realigned with one another. But make no mistake. The end of Israel has always been their goal. That is explicitly the reason Hamas was founded. Hamas is not a nationalist organization. It is a terrorist one. It does not seek to build but only to destroy. Its very charter states plainly:
"Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it."
"The Islamic Resistance Movement believes that the land of Palestine is an Islamic Waqf consecrated for future Moslem generations until Judgement Day. It, or any part of it, should not be squandered: it, or any part of it, should not be given up. "
"There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavors."
Fatah's goal is no different. True, in 1988 Yassir Arafat, Fatah's supreme commander in the 1950s and 1960s, declared in English before Western cameras that he explicitly recognized Israel's right to exist. This apparent breakthrough ultimately led to the Oslo Accords in 1993, which in turn made possible the founding the the PA as a proto-state for Palestinians, of which Arafat served as first president.
However, what Arafat did not say to Western media or audiences in English is what he made abundantly clear to his domestic audiences in Arabic: that the right of Israel to exist, that Arafat claimed to recognize, was not its right to exist as a Jewish state separate from an Arab nation of Palestine. In fact, Palestinian curricula for kindergartens on up graphically made clear that "Palestine" consists of all of Israel, the West bank and Gaza - that is to say, the very same geography that Hamas claims.
Fatah's reputation as moderates is unjustified. While Hamas has launched thousands of rockets at southern Israel in the last several years, it was from the West Bank, always under Fatah's rule, that the vast majority of suicide bombers entered Israel. These bombers killed multiples more Israelis than Hamas's rockets.
The conflict is not about land. It is about Israel itself. To close, here is a video of
Hamas MP and Cleric Yunis Al-Astal the Jews were brought to Palestine for the “great massacre” in preparation for the United States of Islam caliphate for which Palestine will be the capital.
The WSJ's Bret Stephens points out that President Obama's plan for Israel and the Palestinians pretty much ensures another war if it is carried out even approximately.
Obama's insistence that the "pre-1967 borders" must be the starting point for boundary agreements between Israel and the presumptively-coming Palestinian state is simple verbal legedermain. In fact, he so misrepresents the facts that he must purposely be doing so. Not even this president can unintentionally make such a fundamental error.
And that error is: there is not, and never has been, any such thing as "pre-1967 borders." There are no borders between Israel and any of the neighboring countries or territories. (There are independent agreements between Israel and Egypt and Jordan on the territorial demarcation line between them, but as I understand, these lines do not constitute "borders" as the term is used in international law, and do not correspond to the pre-1967 lines anyway.)
What the president referred to as "pre-1967 borders" actually date to 1949 and the end of Israel's war for independence (well, existence). And those lines were, and remain, nothing but the cease-fire line agreed to by Israel and the Arab countries attempting to destroy it aborning. Some of you may remember when the eastern line was called the Green Line - so named because it was drawn on the map with a green pencil.
But cease-fire lines were all the lines were. To call them borders is simply ludicrous. As Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pointedly told President Obama, those lines are "indefensible." They would leave Israel less than 10 miles wide at one point and would return the Golan Heights in the northeast back to Syria. However, the Heights are the key militarily significant terrain for all of Israel - and for Syria if it wants to attack Israel again. That's why Israel made sure it captured them in 1967 and why Israel will never return them to Syria.
It bears repeating that the United Nations resolution establishing Israel in 1948 also established a nation for Arabs in Israel who did not want to live in the Jewish state, although none would be required to displace. (It also bears repeating that Jews were already living in the land. In fact, Jews have lived there continuously since about 1200 bce.) The Arab states completely rejected all of the UN's plan and promptly attacked the Jewish rump state. Unable to prevail, they agreed in 1949 to cease military operations across the cease-fire lines that Obama dishonestly calls "borders."
What happened in June 1967 was that Syria, Jordan and Egypt, in coordination, planned and massed to attack Israel. Israel was too weak to defend - Egypt alone had more than twice as many jet planes as Israel - so it had only one choice, preemptively attack them first. This it did, beating being attacked by probably mere hours.
Fighting against Egypt, Syria and Jordan, the latter's forces augmented by an Iraqi division and warplanes, Israel destroyed their air forces on the first day. Land campaigns against the Arab forces followed. At the end of six days, Israel had crushed the Egyptian army, seized Gaza and the Sinai peninsula, thrown Syria out of the Golan Heights and had captured the West Bank, including Jerusalem.
Under terms worked out with Egypt at Camp David, sponsored by the Carter administration, Israel returned all of Sinai to Egypt while retaining administrative control of Gaza. Gaza was vacated by Israel lock, stock and barrel under the government of PM Ari Sharon in 2005. Israel presently retains possession of the Golan Heights and much of the West Bank.
A pregnant Palestinian woman with a valid medical certificate for treatment at an Israeli hospital, where she had already been treated and was known to the Israeli hospital staff, is halted by Israeli soldiers at a military crossing point.
The Israeli soldiers isolate her in an outdoor, enclosed security area and with camera rolling actually make her remove her clothing.
This is just unbelievable. You have to watch the video all the way to the end.
Update with video spoiler: Based on email I have received, I think I should point out that what is unbelievable here is that this woman actually is carrying a bomb and tries to detonate it inside the security area. Let those who say Israel faces no real threat be educated.
