The Time has come to tell the Arab world, the Europeans, and the Democratic Party that the Palestinian Arabs will not be awarded their so called “right of return” meaning the mass immigration of millions of Arabs into the State of Israel. Obamas’ deliberate call for Israel to return to the pre-1967 lines – the so-called “Auschwitz borders” -- from which we were relentlessly attacked in our first two fragile decades of statehood, and to concede her right to defensible borders as a precondition for negotiations is an admission of failure of Obama’s Middle Eastern policies due to his supporting the ouster of many of the regions Arab leaders.
Obama has weakened American interests in the Middle East; all of America’s traditional allies in the Arab world distrust him. The King of Saudi Arabia refuses to talk to the President of the United States. According to Obama logic, pressing Israel will score points for him in the Arab world. Obama acts as if he really believes the Palestinian Arab propaganda, exposing his rookie understanding of what is important in the Middle East. For 63 years, the Arabs have used the Palestinian Arab narrative to weaken Israel militarily, psychologically, and strategically distracting attention from themselves due to the lack of human and democratic rights for the Arabs of the Middle East.
Despite Israel, being the only place in the Middle East where Arabs are entitled to full democratic rights has done nothing to accommodate the Arabs. Even if Israel had a perfectly equal society – which doesn’t exist anywhere in the world – the “original sin” of Israel’s establishment would remain intact, that is rejecting the very existence of the Jewish nation-state. Arabs view Israel’s inception as a colonialist conspiracy against the Muslim world by establishing a fundamentally illegitimate entity. In their view, the only way to correct the wrong is through national suicide of the Jewish majority – that is, replacing the Jewish State with an Arab one. By siding with the Arabs Obama is hoping that he will regain favor in the eyes of the Arab nations, unfortunately his only accomplishment will be to strengthen the viewpoint that Obama cannot be trusted and that he consistently betrays allies.
During Obama’s speech he gave the impression of being a real mensch, a guy who shows empathy. He is pained by the suffering of Israelis, but also by the suffering of the Palestinian Arabs. For Obama, Israeli parents who lost their children and Palestinian Arab parents who lost their children are two sides of the same equation. The conflict exacts a symmetric, bloody toll from both sides. That’s true, of course: The pain felt by parents who lost their children is the same. However, according to the same Obama logic, the suffering of the children who lost their parents in the 9/11 World Trade Center terror attack is similar to the pain felt by bin Laden’s young children after they lost their father, who was killed without a trial.
Obama represses the fact that while children on both sides suffer, the culprits can only be found on one side of the equation, the Palestinian Arab side. Why did Obama not have pity for the young al-Qaeda children when he ordered the bin Laden assassination? It’s not because he doesn’t care about children, but rather, it’s because protecting American citizens is more important to him. In the exact same way, Israel too must safeguard its own children. When it imposes a blockade on the Gaza Strip it protects the children of Sderot, and when it strikes terror cells it protects school buses. Obama’s failure to speak against the true narrative of the Palestinian Arab intolerance for peaceful coexistence with Israel is a futile attempt to score points with the Arab world at Israel’s expense.
So where does all this leave us ? Obama’s latest formula for Israeli-Palestinian Arab peace is so unworkable and so counter-productive as to indicate a complete breakdown. No international player, and certainly no Palestinian Arab negotiator, is now going to defy the Obama framework and declare that the Israelis cannot possibly be required to sanction a dangerous pullback toward the ’67 lines unless or until the Palestinians formally relinquish the demand for a “right of return.” PM Netanyahu spoke about the impossibility of a “right of return.” “It’s not going to happen,” he said, as President Obama sat impassively alongside him at Friday’s meeting between the two. “Everybody knows it’s not going to happen. And I think it’s time to tell the Palestinian Arabs forthrightly it’s not going to happen.” But Obama did no such thing. In the same week as the “Nakba” assault on Israel’s borders, when it came to this central demand by the Palestinian Arabs that simply cannot be accepted because it would spell the demographic demise of our state, Obama was dismayingly, insistently, resonantly silent; not a word. So we can look ahead to another period of diplomatic deadlock, of Israel being led by Prime Minister Netanyahu and appearing recalcitrant publicly being accused of not playing ball and not living up to the expectations of the Obama administration. What remains to be seen is whether Obama will sanction and tolerate a Palestinian Arab Tsunami in the UN in September.