[Rhodes22-list] World Politics

[Brad Haslett]

Happy sailing everyone!  I've already mowed my yard twice this Spring and
the CoraShen is begging to be put through her measures.  One last suggestion
for daily reading - Glick from the J Post is perhaps one of the best
editorialists on the planet.  You read, then decide.  Here she is today.
Rest easy everyone, I'm going flying, sailing, teaching, flying again, yada,
yada, yada, you solve the world's problems.  Brad

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<http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2007/03/mideast_peace_is_wrong_respons.html>
 March 27, 2007 Now is Not the Time for Mideast 'Peace' Plans *By* *Caroline
Glick* <http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/author/caroline_glick/>

In an open act of war, Iran Friday kidnapped 15 British soldiers in the
Persian Gulf. Iran's act of aggression occurred just as the British voted in
favor of a UN Security Council resolution imposing increased sanctions
against Teheran for its illicit nuclear weapons program.

Several theories have been raised to explain Iran's behavior. Some say that
the Iranians acted against the British in the hope that Britain would
respond by abandoning its alliance with the US and swiftly pulling its
forces out of Iraq.

Another theory is that in kidnapping the sailors the Iranians are seeking to
reenact their ploy from last summer. Then, Iran ordered its Lebanese proxy
Hizbullah to kidnap IDF soldiers in order to divert the international
community's attention away from Iran's nuclear program. As is the case with
the British servicemen, so last summer's attack on the IDF took place as the
Security Council was expected to convene and discuss sanctions against Iran
for its pursuit of nuclear weapons.

Yet another theory has it that Iran kidnapped the sailors to use as a
bargaining chip to force the US military to release Iranian operatives who
the US has arrested in Iraq in recent months. Whatever the case may be, it
is absolutely clear that the Iranians intentionally fomented this
international crisis with the expectation that their aggression would in
some way be rewarded.

AGAINST THIS backdrop, and given the stakes involved, it could have been
expected that the US and its allies would be concentrating their attention
on how to weaken Iran and its terror proxies and curtail Iran's ability to
acquire a nuclear arsenal. But, alas, the US is doing just the opposite.

The Iranians acted as US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was en route to
the region. Since Friday, Rice has shuttled between Egypt, Israel, the
Palestinian Authority and Jordan, and is on her way to Saudi Arabia. She is
not working to coordinate moves to check Iran's increasing bellicosity.
Rather, Rice is laboring to empower Teheran's terrorist allies in Hamas, the
Islamic Jihad and Fatah. This she does by promoting the so-called Arab peace
plan, which demands that Israel agree to dangerous and strategically
catastrophic concessions to the Palestinian terrorist government.

In behaving thus, Rice is walking in the well-worn footsteps of her
predecessors. Indeed, it seems almost axiomatic that when the going gets
tough for US administrations, administration officials get tough on Israel.

AFTER THE Republicans won control of the Congress in 1994, then president
Bill Clinton was hard-pressed to advance his domestic agenda. And so Clinton
- who had almost no interest in foreign policy in his opening years of
office - turned his attention to Israel and the so-called peace process, in
which Israel was expected to give land, arms and legitimacy to the PLO in
exchange for terrorism.

Clinton's penchant for forcing Israeli concessions to the PLO in the name of
peace became more pronounced as things became more difficult for him during
his impeachment hearings in 1998. As the House of Representatives poised to
vote on articles of impeachment, Clinton twisted then prime minister
Binyamin Netanyahu's arm until he signed the Wye Plantation memorandum, in
which Israel pledged to transfer wide swathes of Judea and Samaria to Yasser
Arafat's terrorist government.

Clinton forced Netanyahu's hand in spite of the fact that, by 1998, it was
clear that Arafat was actively enabling Hamas and Islamic Jihad to carry out
terror attacks against Israel and indoctrinating Palestinian society to wage
jihad for Israel's destruction.

But negotiating with Netanyahu was inconvenient. Netanyahu refused to
implement the Wye agreement in light of Arafat's support for terrorism and
forced Clinton to acknowledge that Arafat was doing nothing to combat
terror. Unhappy with this state of affairs, Clinton set out to overthrow
Netanyahu's government.

IN AN ACT of unmitigated contempt for Israeli democracy and electoral laws,
Clinton sent his own election advisers James Carville, Stanley Greenberg and
Robert Schrum to Israel to run Labor party leader Ehud Barak's campaign in
the 1999 elections.

The culmination of Clinton's campaign was the failed Camp David summit in
July 2000. There, and in subsequent desperate discussions with Arafat at
Taba, Barak agreed to hand over the Temple Mount to Arafat in addition to
Gaza, Judea, Samaria and a pile of money.

Israel paid dearly for Barak and Clinton's behavior. In the Palestinian
jihad that followed Arafat's rejection of Barak and Clinton's plaintive
offers, more than 1,000 Israelis were murdered - more than 70 percent of
whom were civilians. Israel's international standing fell to all-time lows
as global anti-Semitism rose to levels unseen since the Holocaust.

America too, paid dearly for Clinton's behavior. Rather than pay attention
to the burgeoning terror nexus which had placed the US directly in its
crosshairs - in 1993 at the World Trade Center; in 1996 at the Khobar
Towers; in 1998 at the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania; and in 2000 at
the *USS Cole* - Clinton remained scope-locked on the so-called peace
process.

Rather than acknowledge the existence and threat of the global jihad to US
national security, Clinton pressured the global jihad's primary victim -
Israel - into transferring its heartland and capital to the godfather of
modern terrorism.

But while Israel and America bled, Clinton himself paid no price for his
behavior. Rather than be blamed for the war he contributed so richly to
enabling, Clinton is upheld as a hero at best, or at worst a tragic figure
who devoted his presidency to the cause of peace.

Today, Rice's newfound mania for peacemaking comes when local conditions
negate any possibility of peace. Just last month the Saudis promised the
Palestinians a billion dollars and so paved the way for the Mecca accord,
where the Iranian-sponsored Fatah terror group surrendered to the
Iranian-sponsored Hamas terror group. In so acting, the Saudis brought about
the formation of a Palestinian government openly committed to the use of
terrorism as a tool to ensure Israel's destruction.

International conditions also ensure that Rice's peacemaking will fail to
make peace. Regionally, Iran ups the ante daily against the US-led coalition
in Iraq. Domestically, the Democratic-controlled Congress works daily to
prevent the US from fighting its enemies. Globally, states as far-flung as
Russia, China and Venezuela make deals with terror governments to check US
power.

The program that Rice has come to the region to advance does not even have
the benefit of a peaceful facade. The Palestinians make clear every single
day that they do not and will not accept Israel's right to exist in any
borders, and that they will not work to combat terrorism against Israel. The
Arab League, and its member states, for their part, have repeatedly
announced that they will brook no change in their "peace" plan which, if
implemented will bring about Israel's rapid destruction.

In behaving as she does, Rice, like Clinton before her, is aided by a
politically weak and strategically incompetent Israeli government that is
willing to sacrifice Israel's long-term security for the benefit of
prime-time photo opportunities with bigwig American leaders and Arab
potentates.

Sunday, the Olmert-Livni-Peretz government has announced that it is open to
negotiating on the basis of the Arab plan. As one government official told *The
Jerusalem Post*, Israel will "not dismiss" the plan.

THIS IS Israel's position in spite of the fact that the Arab plan calls for
Israel to surrender east, north and south Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria and
the Golan Heights to Hamas and Syria and for Israel to permit four to five
million hostile, foreign-born Arabs posing as Palestinian "refugees" to
immigrate to its truncated territory. As the "peace" plan makes clear, all
these suicidal Israeli moves must come before the Arab states will be
willing to have "regular" (whatever that means) relations with the
indefensible, overrun Jewish state.

Commenting on the government's position, the official explained, "We would
not reject this out of hand."

It is not surprising that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Foreign Minister
Tzipi Livni are behaving in this manner. After all, these are the same
leaders who brought about Israel's defeat in Lebanon in last summer's war at
the hands of Iran's Hizbullah proxy army. Last summer, Olmert followed
Livni's lead in rejecting military victory as an option. Heeding Livni's
unwise, defeatist counsel, Olmert postponed the essential ground offensive
in south Lebanon until it was too late to make a difference and instead
opted for a negotiated cease-fire.

As is the case with the Arab "peace" plan, the cease-fire Israel
enthusiastically acceded to last summer was strategically disastrous for the
country. UN Security Council Resolution 1701 placed Israel on the same plane
as the illegal Hizbullah terrorist organization; prevents Israel from taking
steps to defend itself; does not require the safe return of IDF hostages
Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser; enables Hizbullah to rearm and reassert its
control over south Lebanon; and lets Hizbullah's state sponsors Syria and
Iran completely off the hook for their central role in Hizbullah's illegal
war against the Jewish state.

Recent history shows that the US and Israel will both pay heavily for the
opportunism of our weak political leaders. It can only be hoped that the
Israeli and American people have learned enough from our experiences to
demand that our leaders stop their reckless behavior before the price of
their cowardice and perfidy become unbearable.
  **