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Visiting Privileges: The Obama-Netanyahu Meeting

(Tablet) Lee Smith - Shortly before Benjamin Netanyahu's arrival in Washington, his one-time adviser Dore Gold, Israel's former ambassador to the UN, made the rounds to deliver a message. "The Israeli people have gone through a very tough time this last decade," Gold tells me, before laying out the position he has presented to members of President Barack Obama's national security council staff and the State Department, as well as to think-tank researchers and journalists: that Israel cannot return to the peace process as it is currently configured. The book Israel's Critical Security Needs for a Viable Peace is a collection published this year under the auspices of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs with essays about security and diplomacy by leading figures in Israel's security establishment, like Maj.-Gen. Aharon Ze'evi Farkash, former head of IDF intelligence, and Maj.-Gen. Uzi Dayan, former IDF deputy chief of staff. The volume's findings represent a broad consensus across the Israeli political spectrum, and the fact that Lt.-Gen. Moshe Yaalon - former IDF chief of staff and currently the vice prime minister - wrote the introduction is evidence that the ideas have won approval at the highest political levels. The book pushes three common ideas: First, Israel must not withdraw to the 1949 armistice lines; second, Israel needs defensible borders; third, Israel must rely on itself to defend itself and not on foreign forces as proposed by U.S. national security adviser Gen. James Jones, who has talked about replacing the IDF with international forces in the West Bank.
2010-07-07 08:36:23
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