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Is the U.S. Picking Another Fight with Israel?

(Washington Times) Steven Rosen - According to Bloomberg News, "The administration has signaled that it might abandon the decades-long U.S. policy of protecting Israel at the UN and back a [French] Security Council resolution laying out terms for a two-state solution....Robert Malley, the Middle East director for President Barack Obama's National Security Council, told at least one European nation" that the administration may support a resolution "defining the parameters for a Mideast peace agreement." This resolution would be a triumph for those who have long wanted the Great Powers to dictate Israel's future, as demanded by the Arab League since Israel's creation. The French resolution demands "a full phased withdrawal of Israeli security forces," without reference to Israel's right to secure borders previously guaranteed by Resolution 242 in 1967. Most Israelis believe that full withdrawal of the IDF from the West Bank under today's conditions would lead quickly to a takeover by Hamas, which is being armed by Iran. A Hamas state in the West Bank would result in a West Bank swarming with rockets and suicide bombers, bringing war to Israel's adjacent heartland. Beyond the security issue, the French UN resolution would threaten the homes of 41% of the Jews living in Jewish neighborhoods of Jerusalem outside the 1949 Armistice Line. In the past forty years, every American president has used the veto to block anti-Israel resolutions at the UN Security Council, with eight presidents casting 42 vetoes in Israel's defense. A dozen leading House Democrats, all Jewish, have told deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes that Obama should stop acting as if only Israel is holding up the peace process, while not expressing a word of disappointment about Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. The writer, former foreign policy director of AIPAC, is director of the Washington Project at the Middle East Forum.
2015-04-28 00:00:00
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