Posted on 12/21/2002 2:12:11 PM PST by freeforall
PUBLISHED BY AMERICANS FOR A SAFE ISRAEL
Road Map to Oblivion
Herbert Zweibon
Two decades ago, critics of the Carter administration referred to his senior Mideast advisers as "the Gang of Four" -- a reference to the terminology then being used in China to discredit a group of government officials. Today, Israel faces a new Gang of Four, called the "Quartet."
Composed of the European Union, the United Nations, Russia, and the United States, the Quartet is promoting a plan known as the Road Map. It would produce, by next year, a Palestinian state more or less along Israel's 1949 armistice lines, in exchange for another list of worthless promises from the Palestinian leadership. It is, in short, a road map to disaster.
The fundamental premise of the Road Map is an Israeli evacuation of most or all of Judea, Samaria, and Gaza, and the rise of a Palestinian state in the vacated areas. Not only does this formula cavalierly dismiss Israel's historic and legal rights to these areas, but it flies in the face of Israel's security needs: the Jewish State cannot be adequately defended against invasion if it does not control the Judea-Samaria mountain ranges.
Every Israeli general knows that. Every American general knows it, too. The problem is that the Road Map has been fashioned not by military experts but by government officials who are consistently unsympathetic -- in some instances, even openly hostile -- to Israel.
One of the four members of the Quartet is the European Union, most member-nations of which are notoriously unfriendly to Israel. Also in the Quartet is Russia, which despite its own problems with Islamic terrorists, remains concerned primarily about advancing its political, military, and business relationships with the Arab world. Russian weapons continue to pour into countries that will undoubtedly use them against Israel one day. The United Nations, the third member of the Quartet, is so hopelessly biased against Israel that the idea of it offering advice on Middle East "peace" is a bitter joke.
But the driving force behind the involvement of - the Quartet in Mideast diplomacy is the group's fourth and most important member, the United States. What has happened is precisely what we feared when, in the July-August Outpost, we condemned the Bush speech calling for a new leadership of the Palestinian Authority as prelude to establishing a Palestinian state. Although at the time that speech won almost universal praise, we pointed out that Bush's "vision" for a peaceful, democratic Palestinian Authority (next year, no less!) was of a piece with the New Middle East of Shimon's fantasies. And we pointed out the likelihood that when this became obvious, the administration was likely to forget its demands on the Arabs and focus exclusively on achieving a Palestinian state.
Readers of the article by an Israel Defense Forces intelligence officer in this issue will understand why Israel needs to avoid creating a Palestinian state at all costs. That state is part of the Palestinian Authority's road map -- for Israel's destruction. And even if we imagine an admittedly unlikely scenario where the Palestinian Authority decided for tactical reasons to suspend terror attacks, and was able to make that decision stick, this would not change the broader PA strategy of using statehood as a means of achieving the next stage in Israel's destruction.
The primary concern of Israel's Prime Minister must be Israel's survival, not endorsing pie in the sky, even if emanates from an otherwise sensible U.S. President. Israel cannot endorse a road map which inevitably leads to removing Israel from the map.
Herbert Zweibon is chairman of Americans for a Safe Israel.
Middle East list
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The heck with the rest of them until they move towards freedom and sanity.
Would you care to elaborate on that? On the surface that appears to be about as BIGOTED a statement as I've ever seen on FR.
Let's get right to your point. Who are the swine?
Back you up on WHAT? Don't dance around with another thousands word, what does 2,000 years of history suggest???
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