Clear vision impeded

Editorial

Though Icelandic volcanic ash kept one member of the band HaGroovatron from reaching Vancouver in time for Monday’s Yom Ha’atzmaut celebration, the show went on spectacularly. The festivities were an opportunity for Vancouver’s community to come together to celebrate 62 years of Israel and its incomparable contributions to the world. But reading the papers the next morning (or anytime, lately) gives one less of a sense of celebration.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad cockily insists his country has nothing to worry about – and he may be right.

“Iran’s armed forces are so strong today that enemies will not even think about violating our territorial integrity,” he said recently.

He’s probably at least half-right, in a flip-side-of-the-coin sort of way. It is likely not the strength of the Iranian military that most likely precludes imminent action, but the overextension of American might. Even if that overextension did not influence military decisions, the path ahead would not be much clearer.

A split may be emerging in the Obama administration over the approach to Iran. Last week saw the leak of a January memo by U.S. Defence Secretary Robert Gates, which seems to indicate that the United States does not have a feasible plan should Iran not respond to the conciliatory approach being pursued by President Barack Obama. Obama behaves as though he expects Ahmadinejad to wake up one morning filled with fraternity toward Jews. American Jews, meanwhile, are beginning to wish for the same thing from the Obama administration.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said recently that “Israel should prove to the Palestinians” its sincerity in seeking peace. A spokesperson for Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu replied appropriately and clearly: “We have nothing to prove. Netanyahu accepted the two-state solution and declared a 10-month moratorium on settlement building in the West Bank. It’s now time for Obama to exert similar pressures on the Palestinians. Until now, they have made not one single move.”

In the category of diplomatic immunity to reason, Ehud Barak, Israel’s defence minister and former prime minister, last week spoke of Israel’s occupation of the West Bank in a language normally employed by Israel’s enemies.

“The world isn’t willing to accept the expectation that Israel will rule another people for decades to come,” Barak said. “It’s something that doesn’t exist anywhere.”

Of all Israelis to make so blatantly misleading a statement, Barak is the one whose career should preclude such nonsense. Leaving aside whatever he learned as Israel’s most-decorated soldier, his term as prime minister saw the betrayal of Israel by the partners for peace with whom he and his predecessors had negotiated for seven years. Anyone with Barak’s experience dealing with untrustworthy partners-cum-adversaries should know better than to paint the occupation of the West Bank as an active choice on Israel’s part.

True, there is a small Israeli faction opposed to moving toward a two-state resolution, which could lead them to oppose any change in status for the West Bank. This rump is important and powerful now, as Netanyahu is relying on it to keep afloat his cross-spectrum coalition. But the long-range direction of the country’s policy and public opinion is toward two states independently living in peace.

Barak’s comments imply this is not the case. Rather, they suggest that the allegations flung at Israel by enemies in Europe, North America and across the Arab world are true: that Israel is an expansionary entity whose only reason for keeping control of the West Bank is nefarious and imperialistic. In fact, as Barak should know, the barrier to peace is the refusal of the Palestinian leadership to live in peace.

When Barak oversaw the collapse of the peace process in 2000, it was Fatah, now fêted as “moderates,” who overturned the negotiating table. After Ariel Sharon pulled a Nixon-in-China and disengaged unilaterally from the Gaza Strip, it was the “radical” Hamas who turned Gaza into an Islamofascist firing range. Neither Fatah nor Hamas has demonstrated a genuine will to live in peace with Israel and, under such circumstances, an impulsive withdrawal from the West Bank could be suicidal.

These lessons should be obvious, to people like Barak especially: an unoccupied West Bank would be as serious a threat as Gaza, only closer to major population centres, bigger and with more international sympathy.

If there is an ideological rump on the right, defined by Avigdor Lieberman, Barak seems to be trying to hold together the embarrassingly tiny vote he received in his last run for prime minister – an ideological rump of the left no more representative of the broader Israeli public opinion than the extremists of the right. Volcanic ash is not the only thing impeding clear vision in the world.

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