YVES ENGLER AT U OF M EXPLAINS HIS SUSPENSION FROM CONCORDIA UNIVERSITY AFTER NETANYAHU’S ABORTED SPEECH IN 2002

by Rhonda Spivak

The Winnipeg Jewish Review asks Engler at U of M to explain his suspension on the record

Special Report and Comment By Rhonda Spivak

Yves Engler, who has written an anti-Israel book entitled “Canada and Israel: Building Apartheid” spoke in Winnipeg on April 7 at University College at the University of Manitoba, to an audience of about 20 students/supporters.

His talk at the U of M was sponsored by Canada-Palestine Support Network, Independent Jewish Voices, U of M’s Labour Studies Program, and Canadian Dimension Magazine. His talk followed his talk the night before at the Rudolf Rocker Cultural Centre on 91 Albert Street.

Alan Yusim, Director of B’nai Brith, Mid-West Region, was present to hear Engler’s talk at the U of M.

Those who introduced Engler and put on the program made no mention of the fact that Engler had been suspended from Concordia University, and Engler himself didn’t mention this either.

Engler served as Vice President of the Concordia Student Union prior to being removed from office. A student tribunal found Engler guilty of "vexatious conduct" in the aftermath of a riot on Sept. 9, 2002, when Israeli politician Benjamin Netanyahu's speech was aborted by demonstrators. Engler later tried to overturn his suspension; however, he was denied by a student hearing panel and Board of Governors. The university's decision was upheld by a Quebec tribunal.

The day that Netanyahu was supposed to speak, some protesters harassed the predominantly Jewish audience that had arrived for the speech, and there were reports of Holocaust survivors being assaulted. Journalist Lysiane Gagnon accused the university's pro-Palestinian students union of "refusing to blame those who broke windows, threw chairs around, spat at and shoved the Jewish students who wanted to hear Mr. Netanyahu. (Lysiane Gagnon, "Here's to you, Mr. Robinson", Globe and Mail, 2 December 2002, A19).

An article in Concordia’s Thursday Report on March 3, 2005 (http://ctr.concordia.ca/2004-05/mar_03/23/ ) states:

“A student tribunal found Engler guilty of assault and vandalism in the aftermath of a riot on Sept. 9, 2002, when Israeli politician Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech was aborted by demonstrators. Engler was fined $500 and expelled for one term.

“However, when he defied the ban by appearing on campus, President Frederick Lowy added another term to his suspension. Once again he breached the sanction, this time committing vandalism. On Dec. 15, on the recommendation of then Dean of Students Charles Bertrand, Lowy extended the suspension to five years.

“Engler took this decision to an appeals panel, which, like the student hearings panel, is part of the university’s Code of Rights and Responsibilities. His appeal was denied. He asked the Board of Governors to exercise their discretionary powers on his behalf, and this, too, was denied.

“In her judgment, rendered Feb. 1, Justice Sylviane Borenstein of Quebec Superior Court said the decisions taken by the university conformed to its own regulations and followed the rules of natural justice.”

Engler’s talk at U of M was being taped by two different parties, including University of Winnipeg radio.

I asked several times during question period for Engler to talk about his suspension, something which he was reluctant to do. At first he offered to talk to me afterward (where he would not be recorded). Just before the event ended, after persistent questioning he finally did answer the question.

As readers review Engler’s “side of the story” below, note how in his answer he makes great effort to downplay any responsibility the protesters had for breaking windows and vandalizing. Note also how Engler essentially tries to turn the story on its head by saying that Arab protesters broke windows in a good faith attempt to help a left-wing Jewish victim of police brutality. Other reports essentially say the opposite- that police officers were attacked, and that windows were broken by Arab protesters to cause a riot and attempt to prevent Netanyahu from speaking. It’s also worth noting that in the end, Engler tells us that when the University suspended him for five years, it was the maximum punishment allowed.

Here is Yves Engler’s side of the story ( as recorded in his talk at the U of M on April 7)

SPIVAK:

ENGLER: Benjamin Netanyahu on Sept 9 2002...was planned to speak at Concordia. Most people in this room are probably aware that he didn’t end up speaking, and there was a big protest outside...because the police were beating up a Jewish student who was protesting Netanyahu’s speaking engagement, a Jewish student who was a member of the Concordia Student Union, because of that some Arab students outside busted a window to come to the defense of the Jewish student.. which is not part of the large narrative that we hear about the anti-Semitism of the day... but the windows that have been cited in the Globe and Mail as the day of broken glass.. the windows were busted because some Arab students outside were disgusted by what the police were doing to a Jewish student inside...Part of the story that I’m sure you’re not familiar with... What happened with Netanyahu was that Netanyahu and the Montreal police cancelled the talk because the Concordia security messed up...

The Montreal police who were not initially inside the building once the window was broken. They had people coming down from the mezzanine...and they had people coming from outside after the window was busted...they freaked out... released pepper spray, some say tear gas within the university. It got caught in the university’s ventiliation system so people on the tenth or twelfth floor of the university had to come out of their classes... cuz they couldn’t breathe....that’s what shut down Netanyahu’s talk. That’s what happened

SPIVAK: But then why were you suspended?

ENGLER:...If you want to hear my personal element to it...Everyone agrees that I was not there, including the university administration, agrees that I was not on the mezzanine when the stuff went down per se...I was there earlier on....

I was kicked out of the university, because two months after the Netanyahu protest-I wasn’t suspended I was expelled from the university-two months after the Netanyahu protest, a student came forward and claimed...this was after I had been arrested for handing out leaflets for the Free Trade Area of the Americas,six weeks after the Netanyahu protest a student came forward and said I assaulted his girlfriend during the Netanyahu protest.. The girlfriend of course didn’t exist of course and they decided not to bring this to the police of course where they would have had to provide some evidence...There was a student tribunal... and.. they tried to throw me out of university for putting up stickers about the Free trade Area of the Americas and handing out leaflets about the Free Trade Area of the Americas and for two things related to the Netanyahu protest.

Spivak: What were those two things?

Engler: One [was for the] vexatious conduct...which was the alleged assault... and the other one was something do with being on the mezzanine at some point, a very sort of whatever.. The student tribunal found me guilty of two of the charges putting up stickers and the vexatious conduct...and I didn’t know what vexatious meant until I saw that. According to the dictionary it means pushing, harassing, assaulting I think is what vexatious means.

The student tribunal came out the next day and said they were pressured by the University administration to suspending me... What they wanted to bring on was some small number of community service hours... The University said I didn’t fulfill my suspension... They suspended me again, they said I didn’t fulfill my suspension. They suspended me a second time and said I didn’t fulfill it again and they expelled me for 5 years...by law they can’t suspend me for more than a five years suspension. That’s the story...

ENGLER’S AGENDA

When I asked Engler whether he advocated a two state solution or a one state solution, Engler said that “the idea of a Jewish state seems immoral to me”, although he then tried to soften this statement by saying that he also at times questions whether Canada should exist as it does, since, for example “Vancouver and Seattle” have a lot in common and could easily be part of one country.

Engler, who several months earlier had signed a call to support the international campaign for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel, said “the easiest solution [to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict] is a two state [solution]toward a more longer term just solution.”

In my view, Engler’s comment is consistent with the well known “eliminate Israel in stages plan.” How many people seriously think that Israel will agree to a two-state solution, so that rather than this being a final end of the conflict, it is only the first stage toward a one state solution-- where Israel is flooded by the return of Palestinian refugees so that there is no Israel at all, but one large Palestinian state among twenty two other Arab states (where Jews have no right to national self-determination at all.)

In his talk Engler also criticized Canada’s role in building up the Palestinian police force under General Dayton, indicating that this was an attempt to created Palestinian disunity (in that the PA police force would crack down on Hamas).

In my view, it is quite a stretch to suggest that Canada is responsible for causing Palestinian disunity? (as if Palestinian unity would exist but for Canada’s intervention!!)

I asked Engler if he could list some other factors that cause Palestinian disunity (such as Hamas forces in 2007 throwing Fatah forces off of rooftops in Gaza), but he did not answer the question.

SMALL ATTENDANCE FOR ENGLER’S TALK

Before Engler’s talk I overheard Engler openly state that it was unfortunate nobody tried to ban him from speaking because he receives much more attention and more people coming out to hear him when a pro-Israel group tries to ban him. He noted that when he spoke at the Rudolf Rocker Cultural Centre the previous evening, there had only been about 20 people, and he would have had three or four times as many had someone tried to ban him.

Alan Yusim from B’nai Brith ought to be commended for coming to hear Engler. As distasteful as Engler’s views are to the vast majority of the Jewish community, it is important that we be aware of what is really happening on our campuses.

See the story here at Israel Behind the News

The false religion of Mideast Peace and Why I'm no longer a Believer

by Aaron David Miller
From "Foreign Policy"

On October 18, 1991, against long odds and in front of an incredulous press
corps, U.S. Secretary of State James A. Baker III and Soviet Foreign
Minister Boris Pankin announced that Arabs and Israelis were being invited
to attend a peace conference in Madrid.

Standing in the back of the hall at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem that
day, I marveled at what America had accomplished. In 18 months, roughly the
time it took Henry Kissinger to negotiate three Arab-Israeli disengagement
agreements and Jimmy Carter to broker an Egypt-Israel peace treaty, the
United States had fought a short, successful war -- the best kind -- and
pushed Iraq's Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait. And America was now
well-positioned to bring Arabs and Israelis across the diplomatic finish
line.

Or so I thought.

Baker, who lowballed everything, was characteristically cautious. "Boys," he
told a few of us aides in his suite after the news conference, "if you want
to get off the train, now might be a good time because it could all be
downhill from here." But I wasn't listening. America had used its power to
make war, and now, perhaps, it could use that power to make peace. I'd
become a believer.

I'm not anymore.

Etymologists tell us that the word "religion" may come from the Latin root
religare, meaning to adhere or bind. It's a wonderful derivation. In both
its secular and religious manifestations, faith is alluring and seductive
precisely because it's driven by propositions that bind or adhere the
believer to a compelling set of ideas that satisfy rationally or
spiritually, but always obligate.

So Why Have We Failed?

Americans, Israelis, and Palestinians who've tried and failed to make peace
answer three crucial questions.

And so it has been and remains with America's commitment to Arab-Israeli
peacemaking over the past 40 years, and certainly since the October 1973 war
gave birth to serious U.S. diplomacy and the phrase "peace process" (the
honor of authorship likely goes to a brilliant veteran State Department
Middle East hand, Harold Saunders, who saw the term appropriated by
Kissinger early in his shuttles). Since then, the U.S. approach has come to
rest on an almost unbreakable triangle of assumptions -- articles of faith,
really.

By the 1990s, these tenets made up a sort of peace-process religion,
a reverential logic chain that compelled most U.S. presidents to involve
themselves seriously in the Arab-Israeli issue. Barack Obama is the latest
convert, and by all accounts he too became a zealous believer, vowing within
days of his inauguration "to actively and aggressively seek a lasting peace
between Israel and the Palestinians, as well as Israel and its Arab
neighbors."

Like all religions, the peace process has developed a dogmatic creed, with
immutable first principles. Over the last two decades, I wrote them hundreds
of times to my bosses in the upper echelons of the State Department and the
White House; they were a catechism we all could recite by heart. First,
pursuit of a comprehensive peace was a core, if not the core, U.S. interest
in the region, and achieving it offered the only sure way to protect U.S.
interests; second, peace could be achieved, but only through a serious
negotiating process based on trading land for peace; and third, only America
could help the Arabs and Israelis bring that peace to fruition.

As befitting a religious doctrine, there was little nuance. And while not
everyone became a convert (Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush willfully
pursued other Middle East priorities, though each would succumb at one
point, if only with initiatives that reflected, to their critics, varying
degrees of too little, too late), the exceptions have mostly proved the
rule. The iron triangle that drove Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter,
George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and now Barack Obama to accord the
Arab-Israeli issue such high priority has turned out to be both durable and
bipartisan. Embraced by the high priests of the national security temple,
including State Department veterans like myself, intelligence analysts, and
most U.S. foreign-policy mandarins outside government, these tenets endured
and prospered even while the realities on which they were based had begun to
change. If this wasn't the definition of real faith, one wonders what was.

That Obama, burdened by two wars elsewhere and the most severe economic
crisis since the Great Depression, came out louder, harder, and faster on
the Arab-Israeli issue than any of his predecessors was a remarkable
testament to just how enduring that faith had become -- a faith he very
publicly proclaimed while personally presiding over the announcement of
George Mitchell as his Middle East envoy in an orchestrated ceremony at the
State Department two days after his swearing-in.

At first, it seemed that Obama, the poster president for America's
engagement with the world, had found a cause uniquely suited to his view of
diplomacy, one whose importance had been heightened by his predecessor's
neglect of the issue and the Arab and Muslim attachment to it. Even before
the Gaza war exploded three weeks prior to his inauguration, Obama had been
bombarded by experts sagely urging a renewed focus on Middle East peace as a
way to regain American prestige and credibility after the trauma of the Bush
years. The new president soon hit the Arab media running as a kind of
empathizer-in-chief, ratcheting up expectations even as Israelis
increasingly found him tone-deaf to their needs.

Obama surrounded himself with key figures, such as chief of staff Rahm
Emanuel and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who believed deeply in the
peace religion. He named as his chief peacemaker Mitchell, a man with real
stature and negotiating experience; and his national security advisor is
James L. Jones, himself a former Middle East envoy who made the stunning
pronouncement last year: "If there was one problem that I would recommend to
the president" to solve, "this would be it."

All these veteran leaders were not only believers, but had extra reason to
encourage a tougher line toward Israel; they had seen the Benjamin Netanyahu
movie before and were determined not to let their chance at Middle East
peace end the same way. In his first turn as prime minister in the 1990s,
the brash hard-liner Netanyahu had driven Bill Clinton crazy. (I remember
being briefed on their first meeting in 1996, after which the president
growled: "Who's the fucking superpower here?")

Confronted with Netanyahu again, Obama and his team needed no encouragement to talk tough on the
growing Israeli settlements in the West Bank, an issue that experts inside
and outside government were clamoring for Obama to raise as the first step
in his renewed push for peace.

At the time, it looked to be a magical convergence of leader and moment: The
Arab-Israeli issue seemed perfectly suited to Obama's transformational
objectives and his transactional style. If Obama wanted to begin "remaking
America," why not try to remake the troubled politics of peace, too? After
all, this was the engagement president, who believed deeply in the power of
negotiations.

Obama was not alone in his belief, of course. The peace-process creed has
endured so long because to a large degree it has made sense and accorded
with U.S. interests. The question is, does it still? Does the old thinking
about peacemaking apply to new realities? Is the Arab-Israeli conflict still
the core issue? And after two decades of inflated hopes followed by violence
and terror, and now by directionless stagnation, can we still believe that
negotiations will deliver?

Sadly, the answers to these questions seem to be all too obvious these days.
And Obama's first 15 months as a disciple of the old creed tells you why. In
2009, the president pushed the Israelis, the Arabs, and the Palestinians to
get negotiations going and was rebuffed by all three. He later told Time
magazine ruefully that "we overestimated our ability to persuade." In March
of this year, provoked by the Netanyahu government's incomprehensible
announcement of new housing units in East Jerusalem smack in the middle of
U.S. Vice President Joe Biden's visit to Israel, Obama pushed the Israelis
again, harder this time, though it seems without much of a strategy to put
the crisis to good use.

Obama is clearly determined not to take no for an answer. Fresh from his
victory on health care, he's King of the World again and in no mood to let
the King of Israel frustrate his plans. This willfulness is impressive, and
it makes it even more imperative now that he's engaged in the faith to give
that old-time religion a fresh look, based not just on what's possible but
on what's probable. We don't have the right to abandon hope, but we do have
the responsibility to let go of, or at least temper, our illusions.

I can't tell you how many times in the past 20 years, as an intelligence
analyst, policy planner, and negotiator, I wrote memos to Very Important
People arguing the centrality of the Arab-Israeli issue and why the United
States needed to fix it. Long before I arrived at the State Department in
1978, my predecessors had made all the same arguments. An unresolved
Arab-Israeli conflict would trigger ruinous war, increase Soviet influence,
weaken Arab moderates, strengthen Arab radicals, jeopardize access to Middle
East oil, and generally undermine U.S. influence from Rabat to Karachi.
From the 1940s through the 1980s, the power with which the Palestinian issue
resonated in the Arab world did take a toll on American prestige and
influence.

Still, even back then the hand-wringing and dire predictions in
my Cassandra-like memos were overstated. I once warned ominously -- and
incorrectly -- that we'd have nonstop Palestinian terrorist attacks in the
United States if we didn't move on the issue. During those same years, the
United States managed to advance all of its core interests in the Middle
East: It contained the Soviets; strengthened ties to Israel and such key
Arab states as Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia; maintained access to Arab
oil; and yes, even emerged in the years after the October 1973 war as the
key broker in Arab-Israeli peacemaking.

Today, I couldn't write those same memos or anything like them with a clear
conscience or a straight face. Although many experts' beliefs haven't
changed, the region has, and dramatically, becoming nastier and more
complex. U.S. priorities and interests, too, have changed. The notion that
there's a single or simple fix to protecting those interests, let alone that
Arab-Israeli peace would, like some magic potion, bullet, or elixir, make it
all better, is just flat wrong. In a broken, angry region with so many
problems -- from stagnant, inequitable economies to extractive and
authoritarian governments that abuse human rights and deny rule of law, to a
popular culture mired in conspiracy and denial -- it stretches the bounds of
credulity to the breaking point to argue that settling the Arab-Israeli
conflict is the most critical issue, or that its resolution would somehow
guarantee Middle East stability.

The unresolved Arab-Israeli conflict is still a big problem for America and
its friends: It stokes a white-hot anger toward the United States, has
already demonstrated the danger of confrontation and war (see Lebanon, 2006;
Gaza, 2008), and confronts Israel with a demographic nightmare. But three
other issues, at least, have emerged to compete for center stage, and they
might prove far more telling about the fate of U.S. influence, power, and
security than the ongoing story of what I've come to call the
much-too-promised land.

First, there are the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, where tens of thousands
of Americans are in harm's way and are likely to be for some time to come.
Add to the mix the dangerous situation in Pakistan, and you see volatility,
threat, and consequences that go well beyond Palestine. Second, though U.S.
foreign policy can't be held hostage to the war on terror (or whatever it's
now called), the 9/11 attacks were a fundamental turning point for an
America that had always felt secure within its borders. And finally there's
Iran, whose nuclear aspirations are clearly a more urgent U.S. priority than
Palestine. Should sanctions and/or diplomacy fail, the default position --
military action by Israel or even the United States -- can't be ruled out,
with galactic consequences for the region and the world. In any event, it's
hard to imagine Netanyahu making any big decisions on the peace process
until there's much more clarity on what he and most Israelis regard as the
existential threat of an Iran with a bomb.

As Obama surely reckoned, moving fast on Arab-Israeli peacemaking would help
the United States deal with these issues. But that linkage wasn't compelling
when Bush used it to suggest that victory in Iraq would make the
Arab-Israeli conflict easier to resolve; it's not compelling now as an exit
strategy from Iraq either, as if engaging in Arab-Israeli diplomacy will
make the potential mess we could leave behind in Iraq easier for the Arabs
to swallow.

Nor can the Arab-Israeli issue be used effectively to mobilize
Arabs against Iran, because the United States could never do enough
diplomatically (or soon enough) to have it make much of a difference.
Finally, linking the United States' willingness to help the Israelis with
Iran to their willingness to make concessions on Jerusalem and borders isn't
much of a policy either. If anything, it risks the United States losing its
leverage with Israel on the Iranian issue and raising the odds that Israel
would act alone.

Surely the United States can do more than one thing at once, the
foreign-policy equivalent of walking and chewing gum at the same time. But
America must also do multiple things well. Obama can't have an inch-deep and
mile-wide approach in which he commits to everything without a cruel and
unforgiving assessment of what's really possible and what's not. Nor can the
United States afford another high-profile failure based on what a brilliant
and committed Clinton told us shortly before we went to Camp David: "Guys,
trying and failing is a lot better than not trying at all." This is an
appropriate slogan for a high school football team; it's not a substitute
for a well-thought-out strategy for the world's greatest power. Obama
already has made a commitment to the American people to end two wars, keep
them safe from attack at home, and stop Iran from obtaining a nuclear
weapon, not to mention tackling the challenges of a severe recession and
growing deficit.

Governing is about choosing; it's about setting priorities, managing your
politics, thinking strategically, picking your spots, and looking for
genuine opportunities that can be exploited -- not tilting at windmills. And
these days, Arab-Israeli peacemaking is a pretty big windmill.
Even if you could make the case for the centrality of the Arab-Israeli
conflict, could you make peace?

Americans are optimists. Our idealism, pragmatism, and belief in the primacy
of the individual convince us that the world can be made a better place.
Unlike many countries that grapple with existential questions of political
identity and physical survival, Americans today don't live on the knife's
edge or hold (whatever our Puritan or Calvinist beginnings) a dark
deterministic view of human nature.

All this drives our conviction that talking is better than shooting. Rodney
King-like, we believe that if people would only sit down and discuss their
differences rationally and compromise, a way might be found to accommodate
conflicting views. After all, America is the big tent under which so many
religious, political, and ethnic groups have managed to coexist, remarkably
amicably. Perhaps this spirit is best embodied by Obama's Mideast envoy
George Mitchell, who once told me that any conflict created by human beings
could be resolved by them. Mitchell is truly convinced that solutions can be
found and that serious diplomacy is what you do until that time comes. But
he ended his first foray into Arab-Israeli diplomacy with three emphatic
no's: from Israel on a comprehensive settlement freeze, from Saudi Arabia on
partial normalization, and from the Palestinians on returning to
negotiations.

Much of our earlier experience in the tough world of Arab-Israeli
peacemaking seemed to bear out Mitchell's initial conviction. In the time
from the 1973 war to 1991, two Republican secretaries of state (Kissinger
and Baker) and one Democratic president (Carter) succeeded in hammering out
a series of Arab-Israeli agreements that established America's reputation as
an effective, even honest, broker -- seeming to validate the simple
proposition that negotiations can work.

If there was anyone who represented the faith in that proposition, it was
me. I recall giving a talk in Jerusalem in the fall of 1998, after Clinton
had brokered the Wye River accords (never implemented), in which I argued
that Arab-Israeli negotiations and the move toward peace were now
irreversible. That remark, one of the great howlers of the decade, prompted
a note from Efraim Halevy, then Israel's deputy Mossad chief, rightly
questioning my logic, and though Halevy was too polite to say it in his
note, my judgment as well. Still I believed.

And I continued to do so, all the way through the 1990s, the only decade in
the last half of the 20th century in which there was no major Arab-Israeli
war. Instead, this was the decade of the Madrid conference, the Oslo
accords, the Israel-Jordan peace treaty, regional accords on economic
issues, and a historic bid in the final year of the Clinton administration
to negotiate peace agreements between Israel, Syria, and the Palestinians.
But for a variety of reasons, not the least of which was the Arab,
Palestinian, Israeli (and American) unwillingness to recognize what price
each side would have to pay to achieve those agreements, the decade ended
badly, leaving the pursuit of peace bloody, battered, and broken. Perhaps
the most serious casualty was the loss of hope that negotiations could
actually get the Arabs and Israelis what they wanted.

And that has been the story line ever since: more process than peace.
Looking ahead, that process looks much, much tougher -- and peace more and
more elusive -- for three reasons.

First, Arab-Israeli peacemaking is politically risky and life-threatening.
Consider the murders of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime
Minister Yitzhak Rabin. At Camp David, I heard Palestinian leader Yasir
Arafat say at least three times, "You Americans will not walk behind my
coffin." Leaders take risks only when prospects of pain and gain compel them
to do so. Today's Middle East leaders -- Israel's Netanyahu, Syria's Bashar
al-Assad, and Palestine's Mahmoud Abbas -- aren't suicidal. It was
Netanyahu, after all, who once told me: "You live in Chevy Chase. Don't play
with our future."

Second, big decisions require strong leaders -- think Jordan's King Hussein
or Israel's Menachem Begin -- because the issues on the table cut to the
core of their political and religious identity and physical survival. This
requires leaders with the legitimacy, authority, and command of their
politics to make a deal stick. But the current crop are more prisoners of
their constituencies than masters of them: Netanyahu presides over a divided
coalition and a country without consensus on what price Israel will pay for
agreements with Palestinians and Syria; Abbas is part of a broken
Palestinian national movement and shares control over Palestine's guns,
authority, and legitimacy with Hamas. It's hard to see how either can
marshal the will and authority to make big decisions.

Third, even with strong leaders, you still need a project that doesn't
exceed the carrying capacity of either side. In the past, U.S. diplomacy
succeeded because the post-1973-war disengagement agreements, a separate
Egypt-Israel accord, and a three-day peace conference at Madrid aligned with
each side's capabilities. Today, issues such as Jerusalem (as a capital of
two states), borders (based on June 1967 lines), and refugees (rights,
return, and compensation) present gigantic political and security challenges
for Arabs and Israelis. One accord will be hard enough. The prospect of
negotiating a comprehensive peace; concluding three agreements between
Israel and the Palestinians, between Israel and Syria, and between Israel
and Lebanon; dismantling settlements in the Golan Heights and West Bank; and
withdrawing to borders based on June 1967 lines seems even more fantastical.
Bottom line: Negotiations can work, but both Arabs and Israelis (and
American leaders) need to be willing and able to pay the price. And they are
not.

Under these circumstances, the refrain from many quarters is that America
must save the day. If the Arabs and Israelis are too weak or recalcitrant,
then the United States must support and/or push them to make the deal.
Such forceful U.S. diplomacy succeeded in the past. Indeed, it's a stunning
paradox that with the exception of the 1994 Israel-Jordan peace treaty,
every other successful accord came not out of direct negotiations, but as a
result of U.S. mediation. The Oslo accords, often touted as the miracle
produced by direct talks between Israelis and Palestinians, proved to be a
spectacular failure. All that's missing now, the argument goes, is the
absence of American will.

I understand the logic of this view, and having spent more than 20 years in
frustrating talks with the Arabs and Israelis, I can also see how it can be
emotionally satisfying. But because I know a thing or two about failure and
don't want to see the United States fail (yet again), I simply don't buy the
argument. If I genuinely believed America could impose and deliver a
solution through tough forceful diplomacy, I'd be more sympathetic -- but I
don't. And here's why:

Ownership: Larry Summers, Obama's chief economic advisor, said it best: In
the history of the world, no one ever washed a rental car. We care only
about what we own. Unless the Arabs and Israelis want political agreements
and peace and can invest enough in them to give them a chance to succeed, we
certainly can't. The broader Middle East is littered with the remains of
great powers that wrongly believed they could impose their will on small
tribes. Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran... need I continue? Small tribes will always
be meaner, tougher, and longer-winded than U.S. diplomats because it's their
neighborhood and their survival; they will always have a greater stake in
the outcome of their struggle than the great power thousands of miles away
with many other things to do. You want to see failure? Take a whack at
trying to force Israelis and Palestinians to accept an American solution on
Jerusalem.

The negotiator's mystique: It's gone, at least for now. When Americans
succeeded in Arab-Israeli diplomacy, it was because they were respected,
admired, even feared. U.S. power and influence were taken seriously. Today,
much of the magic is gone: We are overextended, diminished, bogged down.
Again Summers: Can the world's biggest borrower continue to be the world's
greatest power? Our friends worry about our reliability; our adversaries,
including Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran, believe they can outwait and
outmaneuver us. Nor does there appear much cost or consequence to saying no
to the superpower. After Obama and Mitchell's fruitless first year, I worry
that the mediator's mystique of a Kissinger or a Baker, or the willfulness
and driving force of a Carter, won't return easily.

Domestic politics: The pro-Israel community in the United States has a
powerful voice, primarily in influencing congressional sentiment and
initiatives (assistance to Israel in particular), but it does not have a
veto over U.S. foreign policy.

Lobbies lobby; that's the American way, for better or worse.

Presidents are supposed to lead. And when they do, with a
real strategy that's in America's national interests, they trump domestic
politics. Still, domestic politics constrain, particularly when a president
is perceived to be weak or otherwise occupied. This president has been
battered of late, and his party is likely to face significant losses in the
2010 midterm elections. Should there be a serious chance for a breakthrough
in the peace process, he'll go for it. But is it smart to risk trying to
manufacture one? The last thing Obama needs now is an ongoing fight with the
Israelis and their supporters, or worse, a major foreign-policy failure.
U.S.-Israeli relations: America is Israel's best friend and must continue to
be.

Shared values are at the core of the relationship, and our intimacy with
Israel gives us leverage and credibility in peacemaking when we use it
correctly. But this special relationship with the Israelis, which can serve
U.S. interests, has become an exclusive one that does not. We've lost the
capacity to be independent of Israel, to be honest with it when it does
things we don't like, to impose accountability, and to adopt positions in a
negotiation that might depart from Israel's. It's tough to be a credible
mediator with such handicaps.

Fighting with Israel is an occupational reality. It's part of the mediator's
job description. Every U.S. president or secretary of state who succeeded
(and some who didn't) had dust-ups, some serious, with Israel. (Remember how
Bush 41 and Baker used housing loan guarantees?

In 1991, the United States denied Israel billions in credit to borrow at reduced interest rates because
of Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir's determination to build settlements.) But
the fight must produce something of value -- like the Madrid conference --
that not only makes the United States look good but significantly advances
the negotiations. In short, we need a strategy that stands a chance of
working. Otherwise, why would any U.S. president want to hammer a close ally
with a strong domestic constituency?

And this was the problem with Obama's tough talk to Israel on settlements.
Not only was the goal he laid out -- a settlements freeze including natural
growth -- unattainable, but it wasn't part of a broader strategy whose
dividends would have made the fight worthwhile. Going after the Israelis
piecemeal on settlements to please the Arabs or to make ourselves feel
better won't work unless we have a way of achieving a breakthrough. That a
tough-talking Obama ended up backing down last year when Netanyahu said no
to a comprehensive freeze tells you why.

And that remains the president's challenge after the Biden brouhaha over
housing units in East Jerusalem. In the spring of 2010 we're nowhere near a
breakthough, and yet we're in the middle of a major rift with the Israelis.
Unless we achieve a big concession, we will be perceived to have backed down
again. And even if the president manages to extract something on Jerusalem,
the chances that Netanyahu will be able to make a far greater move on a core
issue, such as borders, will be much reduced. Unless the president is trying
to get rid of Netanyahu (and produce a new coalition), he'll have no choice
but to find a way to cooperate with him.

Now Obama faces a conundrum. A brilliant, empathetic president, with a
Nobel Peace Prize to boot, has embraced the iron triangle and made America
the focal point of action and responsibility for the Arab-Israeli issue at a
time when the country may be least able to do much about it.


Trying to compensate for the absence of urgency, will, and leadership among
Arabs and Israelis by inserting your own has always been a tough assignment.
The painful truth is that faith in America's capacity to fix the
Arab-Israeli issue has always been overrated. It's certainly no coincidence
that every breakthrough from the Egypt-Israel treaty to the Oslo accords to
the Israel-Jordan peace agreement came initially as a consequence of secret
meetings about which the United States was the last to know. Only then, once
there was local ownership or some regional crisis that the United States
could exploit, were we able to move things forward.

Right now, America has neither the opportunity nor frankly the balls to do
truly big things on Arab-Israeli peacemaking. Fortuna might still rescue the
president. The mullahcracy in Tehran might implode. The Syrians and Israelis
might reach out to one another secretly, or perhaps a violent confrontation
will flare up to break the impasse.

But without a tectonic plate shifting somewhere, it's going to be tough to
re-create the good old days when bold and heroic Arab and Israeli leaders
strode the stage of history, together with Americans, willing and able to do
serious peacemaking.

I remember attending Rabin's funeral in 1995 in Jerusalem and trying to
convince myself that America must and could save the peace process that had
been so badly undermined by his assassination. I'm not a declinist. I still
believe in the power of American diplomacy when it's tough, smart, and fair.
But the enthusiasm, fervor, and passion have given way to a much more sober
view of what's possible. Failure can do that.

The believers need to re-examine their faith, especially at a moment when
America is so stretched and overextended. The United States needs to do what
it can, including working with Israelis and Palestinians on negotiating core
final-status issues (particularly on borders, where the gaps are narrowest),
helping Palestinians develop their institutions, getting the Israelis to
assist by allowing Palestinians to breathe economically and expand their
authority, and keeping Gaza calm, even as it tries to relieve the
desperation and sense of siege through economic assistance.

But America should also be aware of what it cannot do, as much as what it can.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson, who probably didn't know much about the Middle East,
said it best: "There lives more faith in honest doubt, believe me, then in
half the creeds."

And maybe, if that leads to more realistic thinking when it comes to America's view of Arab-Israeli peacemaking, that's not such a bad thing.

Aaron David Miller served as an advisor on the Middle East to Republican and
Democratic secretaries of state. He is currently a public policy scholar at
the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and the author of The
Much Too Promised Land: America's Elusive Search for Arab-Israeli Peace.

See the original article in Foreign Policy
See more on this at Israel Behind the News

The Philadelphia Bulletin: Is Obama Moving to Topple Israel's Prime Minister

Jerusalem - The administration of President Barack Obama has launched what officials termed a psychological warfare campaign meant to topple Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.

Sources in the Obama Administration and the US Congress have confirmed to the Middle East Newsline that the White House and State Department have sought to destabilize Netanyahu's government by forcing him to agree to an indefinite freeze on Jewish construction in areas taken by Israel in the wake of the 1967 war as well as the establishment of a Palestinian state by 2012. They said the campaign sought to replace Netanyahu with opposition leader and former foreign minister Tsipi Livni.

"Bibi is extremely vulnerable to pressure," a source familiar with the White House effort said. "We know this from his first term in office and believe he will collapse this time as well."

The sources said the administration's strategy aimed to delegitimize Netanyahu in his government and right-wing constituency. They said Obama and his aides have sought to portray Netanyahu as a weak and unstable politician who will destroy relations with Washington as Israel seeks U.S. support for a military option against Iran.

"There seems to be a general belief in the circle around the president that the democratically-elected government in Israel is drunk at the wheel," Steven Rosen, a veteran pro-Israeli lobbyist now with the Middle East Forum, said. "They clearly will use pressure tactics to bring Israel around."

In April 2010, former U.S. ambassador to Israel, Martin Indyk, began a series of attacks on Netanyahu in the Israeli media. Indyk, a former assistant secretary of state under then-President Bill Clinton, has called

for the toppling of Netanyahu while his right-wing partners accept a more pliant prime minister.

"Indyk was sent by Obama and encouraged by his American Jewish supporters, particularly [former Rep.] Robert Wexler, to do this," the source said.

In January 2010, Wexler resigned from Congress to become head of the Center for Middle East Peace and Economic Cooperation. The center was founded by Obama supporter Daniel Abraham and a delegation met Netanyahu in February.

The sources said the administration's campaign has included invitations to Defense Minister Ehud Barak to the White House, where he met with Obama on April 26. Barak has been regarded as the most pro-U.S. minister in Netanyahu's Cabinet and has been lobbying ministers to accept Obama's proposals.

"It's not going to be easy to turn this thing around," Rosen told a briefing on April 21. "Some of my friends in Jerusalem believe this crisis will go on for an extended period."

The anti-Netanyahu has alarmed pro-Israeli members in Congress, particularly from the Democratic Party. Several of the Democrats have reported a sharp drop in funds by Jewish donors for congressional elections in November.

"This [campaign against Netanyahu] is counterproductive and has to stop," Sen. Charles Schumer, a New York Democrat who has threatened to issue a condemnation of the White House, said.

Some in the pro-Israeli community detect an anti-Semitic tinge to the White House campaign, despite the involvement of Jewish aides. On April 21, National Security Advisor James Jones stunned an audience at the pro-Israel Washington Institute when he told a joke of a Jewish merchant who tricked a thirsty Taliban fighter into buying a tie.

"I wish that I had not made this off the cuff joke at the top of my remarks," Jones later said. "I apologize to anyone who was offended by it. It also distracted from the larger message I carried that day: That the United States' commitment to Israel's security is sacrosanct."

Former State Department official Aaron Miller said Obama has surrounded himself with aides who blame Netanyahu for the suspension of the Arab-Israeli peace process. Miller said many of the aides had encountered Netanyahu during his first tenure as prime minister from 1996 to 1999.

"They had seen the Benjamin Netanyahu movie before and were determined not to let their chance at Middle East peace end the same way," Miller said in the magazine Foreign Policy. "Confronted with Netanyahu again, Obama and his team needed no encouragement to talk tough on the growing Israeli settlements in the West Bank, an issue that experts inside and outside government were clamoring for Obama to raise as the first step in his renewed push for peace. Fresh from his victory on health care, he's [Obama] king of the world again and in no mood to let the king of Israel frustrate his plans."

View this story in the Philadelphia Bulletin
View this story at Israel Behind the News

The Philadelphia Bulletin: Netanyahu on Iran: We Must Not Be Deterred in Confronting Evil

by David Bedein

peaking in the official memorial service Holocaust Memorial Day, which occurred on Monday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed the nations of the world: “If we have learned anything from the Holocaust, then it is that we must not remain silent or deterred when confronted with evil.” In a speech that addressed events in Iran, and although the prime minister had decided not to attend the nuclear conference hosted by President Barack Obama, Mr. Netanyahu called on all enlightened nations to rise to the task, to condemn Iran’s destructive intentions forcefully and to employ real force to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. The Israeli prime minister said that the world had gradually come to resign itself to Iran’s declarations about its intention to destroy Israel and that there were no signs of the kind of international determination required to halt Iran’s increasing strength. “Iran’s leaders are in a rush to develop nuclear weapons and openly declare their intention to destroy Israel,” said Mr. Netanyahu. “But in face of these repeated declarations that they will wipe the Jewish nation off the face of the earth, we see, in the best of cases, flaccid disapproval, which too is slowly withering. No harsh condemnation, no raised voices. Business continues as usual. And there are even those who attempt to place the blame on Israel. Today, 65 years following the Holocaust, we can say in earnest: it is the absence of outrage that is most outrageous.” Israeli President Shimon Peres also touched upon Iran’s nuclear efforts: “The U.N.’s ears must be attentive to the threats of annihilation made by one of its members against another, otherwise the foundation of the U.N.’s charter will be rendered obsolete,” said the president. “It is both our right and duty to demand that the nations of the world not repeat apathy that cost the lives of millions.” President Peres also said that weapons of mass destruction in the hands of those capable of mass destruction and with voices encouraging mass destruction" were the combination most lethal to world peace. He said that they made the world an uncontrollable environment. He said that some of the Iranians were shamed and mortified by the dictatorship that had taken them over, and that also Arab countries were aware that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s anti-Israel incitement was aimed at obscuring his real aim" Iranian hegemony over the entire region.

See this report in the Philadelphia Bulletin
See this report at Israel Behind the News

The Philadelphia Bulletin: Netanyahu Locked in Heated Debate with Obama

by David Bedein

U.S. Order to Wiretap Israeli Embassy Revealed

“Ambush” is the word that was widely used in the Israeli media to describe the reception that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was given at the White House on Tuesday.

The Israeli media cited a number of steps that were taken by the White House in order to “humiliate” the prime minister, who received “the treatment reserved for the president of Equatorial Guinea,” to use one pundit’s description, or that of “the last of the wazirs from Lower Senegal,” as another pundit put it.

President Obama abruptly left Mr. Netanyahu in the middle of their meeting to go eat dinner with his wife and daughters, reportedly urging the prime minister to meet and consult with his aides “so that if he changed his mind he could inform the president right away.”

“I’m still around. Let me know if there is anything new,” the Israeli media quoted the president as saying.

President Obama reportedly made a list of demands from Mr. Netanyahu, which include Israel’s consent to extend the settlement construction freeze beyond its Oct.1 expiration date and to expand the areas of Jerusalem that it annexed after the 1967 war.

The president also reportedly asked to secure Israeli consent to redeploy its military forces in a way that would restore the situation on the ground that existed prior to the Palestinian uprising in September of 2000.

After 25,000 Palestinian terror attacks between 2000 and 2005, which took the lives of 1,370 people, Israel redeployed its forces throughout Arab populated areas in Judea and Samaria, to reduce Arab terror infiltration.

Mr. Obama also reportedly demanded that Israel release of hundreds of Palestinians who have been convicted of murder and attempted murder.

Throughout the visit, Mr. Netanyahu held personal consultations at the Israeli embassy in Washington, and not on the phone, for fear of being wiretapped.

Most recently, an Israeli lawyer in the employ of the U.S. Justice Department, Mr. Shammai Leibovitz, revealed to reporters in Washington that his supervisors asked him to log translate transcripts of Hebrew language wiretapped phone conversations that emanated from the Israeli embassy in Washington.

Mr. Leibowitz refused to abide by this request and was fired from his position after he met with a reporter and has been indicted for sharing classified documents from the Justice Department with the media.

See this report in the Philadelphia Bulletin
See this report at Israel Behind the News

When Obama Meets Netanyahu

by Daniel Pipes for danielpipes.org and cross-posted from the National Review Online

On learning that Barack Obama invited Binyamin Netanyahu to visit him on March 23, presumably to discuss such momentous topics as the timing of announcements of housing units in Jerusalem and urging him to make nice to the PLO's Mahmoud Abbas, I can't help imagine what I would say to the president.


Netanyahu has previously met Obama.

1.Let's put aside Palestinian issue - which even the past year shows has little chance of a breakthrough.
2.Instead, better to focus on the supremely dangerous Iranian nuclear buildup.
3.It's too late for resolutions, agreements, or sanctions to deal with that buildup.
4.The only decision left is whether or not to take out the nuclear infrastructure.
5.American forces have the greatest capabilities and should undertake this operation.
6.If they don't, Israeli forces should do the job.
7.That will be difficult; the IDF intelligence, planes, and payloads may not be adequate.
8. Therefore, only Israel's submarine-based nuclear weapons can assure operational success.
9. No one wants that, so better the U.S. government take action.

Faced with such logic, I hope Obama would put aside the Palestinian issue, at least temporarily.


See the original post on Daniel Pipes' Blog
See this and related posts at Israel Behind the News

Israel's New Enemy: America?

"Enemy: "a person who feels hatred for, fosters harmful designs against, or
engages in antagonistic activities against another; an adversary or
opponent." - Dictionary.com

Despite Vice President Joe Biden's recent pledge of unswerving fidelity to
Israel during his recent visit there, the rhetoric and pressure directed by
the Obama administration against the only fully functioning democracy in the
Middle East more accurately resembles the behavior of an enemy. Increasingly
under this administration - but also present in Republican administrations -
America's policy toward Israel is full of "harmful designs" and
"antagonistic activities." The intentions may not be deliberate, but the
outcome would lead to the same injurious end.

The latest pretext for putting more pressure on Israel to do more in the
"pursuit of peace" comes from a decision by Israel's Interior Ministry to
construct 1,600 new housing units in the east Jerusalem neighborhood of
Ramat Shlomo, which is located in "disputed territory." To the Palestinians
and their Arab and Muslim neighbors, most especially Iran and Syria, all of
Israel is "disputed territory." It is difficult to understand why the U.S.
State Department thinks not building a few houses is going to dissuade
Israel's enemies from wanting less than they want now.

The failure of this formula has been evident for decades, but U.S. policy
continues to employ it, always with the same results. Whether Israel's
concessions have been unilateral - most recently with its abandonment of the
Gaza Strip, which predictably led to terrorist attacks from that territory -
or negotiated deals which the Palestinians have never lived up to, Israel
always ends up getting its pocket picked. Then, the United States, the U.N.,
Europe and Russia demand that it put more valuables in its pocket so the
thieves can continue their thievery.

Every weekday NewsAndOpinion.com publishes what many in the media and
Washington consider "must-reading". HUNDREDS of columnists and cartoonists
regularly appear. Sign up for the daily update. It's free. Just click here.

A Washington Post headline illustrates the deteriorating relationship
between the two nations, "U.S. Pushes Netanyahu to Accept 3 Demands." There
is no similar demand that the Palestinians and especially Hamas, which has
said it will agree to nothing less than the eradication of Israel, should
accept anything, not even the minimal acceptance of Israel's right to exist.
Meanwhile, Hamas has called on Palestinians to launch a third "intifada."

After apologizing to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for the "offense" of
the housing announcement during Biden's visit, Netanyahu reminded the
Israeli parliament that Israel has been building in east Jerusalem for four
decades. He said, "The building of those Jewish neighborhoods in no way hurt
the Arabs of East Jerusalem and did not come at their expense."

That doesn't matter when the wrong formula is employed. In this twisted
thinking, whatever Israel does is unjustified so long as the
Palestinian-Arab-Muslim side is unhappy. What part of annihilation does the
State Department not understand? What State is blind to is that the
"Israeli-Palestinian conflict," as it is erroneously labeled, is part of a
worldwide religious war against all things Jewish, Christian, secular,
modern and Western.

Making demands of only one side before serious negotiations begin,
especially on matters of Jerusalem, so-called "refugees" and borders,
effectively pressures Israel into making concessions on all three, which
would severely damage its prospects for continued existence.

How about first making these demands of the Palestinian-Arab-Muslim side:
(1) A pledge of no more war with Israel, or terrorism; 2) a declaration by a
powerful Islamic cleric that their God no longer requires them to kill
people who don't believe as they do; and 3) no more teaching in Palestinian
textbooks and in their media that Jews created AIDS and descend from monkeys
and pigs?

After those three demands are met, the State Department can start making
demands of Israel. Not before. Anything less puts America on the wrong side,
along with Israel's (and America's) enemies. Or hasn't State noticed that we
share the same enemies?

See the original article in the Jewish World Review
See this and related postings at Israel Behind the News

The Philadelphia Bulletin: Israel to Conduct Nationwide Civil Defense Drill

by David Bedein

The most extensive nationwide civil defense drill in Israel’s history will be launched starting next Sunday.

It will start with a “battle in Gaza” that will spread as a second front in the “war” opens in northern Israel. In addition, the forces will train for an uprising and rioting by Israel’s Arabs.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the Israeli media: “[T]his is a routine drill, which was planned several months ago and is held every year in order to coordinate between civil and military systems.”

The drill will begin on May 31 and will last five days.

The Israeli Defense Ministry will coordinate the exercise with the assistance of the Israel National Emergency Authority. It aims to train the Israeli home front, from the government level down to the civilian level, and will simulate a comprehensive regional war.

According to the planned scenario, Hamas, Hezbollah and Syria will become involved in the war, while Palestinians will carry out terror attacks and Israel’s Arabs will riot en masse.

The Israeli government will announce various scenarios, while the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) will mobilize forces as the events unfold. The proposed scenario simulates an escalation lasting three months, reaching its peak with an overall attack on Israel.

The outline of the drill has been presented to the government ministers. The overall war scenario will begin with a mock escalation in Gaza, which will lead to an Israeli military ground offensive. After 60 days of fighting in Gaza, tensions in the north will heat up. At that time, the scenario proposes forcing the army to enlist reserve forces and launch a war on the northern front.

During the war, barrages of missiles will hit the Israeli home front.

Simultaneously, a terror offensive will develop, and extensive riots will take place across the country.

Air raid sirens will sound across the country.

The drill will kick off on Sunday with an exercise involving Israeli government ministers at their weekly cabinet meeting.

Monday will involve the IDF’s Home Front Command, the Emergency Economy, the Israel Police, government ministries and local authorities.

On Tuesday, an air raid siren will sound across the country; roads will be blocked and citizens and school students will practice entering bomb shelters.

On Wednesday, the Israeli security cabinet and the national information system will go into full operation.

On Thursday, the last day of the drill, the Israeli military will hold field exercises, in coordination with the Israel Home Front Command headquarters.

As part of the drill, cooperation between departments of the Israeli government and the military will be examined.

In addition to war scenarios, Israel will also witness a simulated a major terror attack, natural disaster, epidemic malfunction in a hazardous materials facility.

Last week, the Israel Air Force (IAF) held a three-day drill that included various scenarios and staged fronts the force may have to handle.

Pilots also practiced a number of combat maneuvers. The drill incorporated scenarios relevant to the current threats faced by Israel. As part of the drill, members of the Israeli Air Force were briefed on Iran’s test-launch of its new missile, the Sajjil-2, which has been said to pose a threat to Israel’s security.

View this story in the Philadelphia Bulletin
View this story at Israel Behind the News

Israel's Tri-Dimensional Strategy

by Dr. Emmanuel Navon
www.navon.com

Benjamin Netanyahu did a good job confusing his audience last night by talking almost exclusively about archeology and tourism during his "Herzliya Speech." Not that anyone was expecting to be told the exact date and time of Israel's speculated military operation against Iran. But the trick was well done, and I can picture Uzi Arad enjoying the frustration of his successor.

My conclusion from this year's Herzliya Conference is that Israel must adopt a tri-dimensional strategy with regard to the Arab-Israeli conflict.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is still a matter of ideological debate. The debate is no longer about territorial integrity versus peace (both sides to that debate have long been defeated by reality), but about 1967 versus 1948. In other words, can the Arabs in general and the Palestinians in particular be trusted that they will leave Israel alone if and when the results of the 1967 war are settled, or will they always insist on settling the results of the 1948 war?

Dan Meridor hasn't made up his mind on that. At the Herzliya Conference, he told the story (which I've heard from him before) of a meeting he had with Mahmoud Abbas before the 2000 Camp David Summit. Abbas told Meridor he took his son to Nazareth, showed him the house where he was born and said: "We are not coming back to this house." This gave Meridor the impression that the Palestinians had given up on the "right of return."

But then at Camp David Abbas was the one, of all people, who insisted on not budging on the "right of return." Meridor says he's still not sure whether the Palestinians are after us for 1967 or 1948. "If it's 1967, the conflict can be settled" he says. "If it's 1948, it can't." He also says the status-quo is untenable, implying that the conflict must be settled. He did not say what he would recommend doing if and when it becomes clear to him that the conflict is not about 1967 but about 1948.

Dan Schueftan (from Haifa University), for his part, has no doubt that the conflict is about 1948 and therefore that there is no solution to it. Because the conflict with the Palestinians has no solution, Israel must free itself from the Palestinians by getting out of most of the West Bank, "not because the Palestinians deserve it, but because Israel does not deserve to be stuck with them" he says.

Eliot Abrams (from the Council on Foreign Relations) did not clearly state his opinion on the 1948 vs. 1967 debate, though he did say that there would have been no Israeli offer that could have satisfied Arafat, and that Abbas is playing for time because he knows he's a lame duck and doesn't want to be remembered as the first Palestinian leader who gave up on the "right of return." If this doesn't mean that the conflict is about 1948, what does it mean?

The debate at the conference was basically between Dan Schueftan and Eliot Abrams on the one hand, and Danny Rothschild (the Conference's new Chairman) and Daniel Kurtzer (a former US ambassador to Israel) on the other. Rothschild and Kurtzer are of the opinion that the conflict is about 1967 and therefore can it be settled (why, in that case, was the Arab world at war with Israel before 1967 and established the PLO in 1964 is a question for them to answer).

This is why they recommend responding positively to the "Arab Peace Initiative." Kurtzer basically told his audience not to believe any of his co-panelists on that (except for Rothschild) but to only trust him (this reminded my of an op-ed Evelyn Gordon wrote in The Jerusalem Post when Kurtzer was still ambassador to Israel. The title was: "Dan Kurtzer Behaves like an Israeli." Indeed).

Olmert's offer to Abbas in September 2008 basically endorsed the "Arab Peace Initiative." Yet Abbas rejected it. Kurtzer tried to exonerate Abbas by saying that Olmert was a lame duck at the time. But, as Eliot Abrams revealed, the Bush Administration encouraged Abbas to take the offer. As Abrams argued, if Abbas was serious and sincere about ending the conflict with a pre-1967 Israel, he would have pocketed the offer and then could have blamed the new Israeli government for not honoring it (especially since, in September 2008, the prospect was that Tzipi Livni would replace Ehud Olmert, not that new elections in Israel would be held).

There is a major weakness and contradiction in Danny Rothschild's argument. Because the status quo is demographically suicidal, he says, Israel must extricate itself from it. He rejects the idea of doing so unilaterally because he claims the security challenges of a unilateral withdrawal from the West Bank would be as suicidal as the demographic ticking bomb.

So we simply must have a deal with the Palestinians. What he is saying is that Israel should expect the Palestinians to save Israel from the Palestinians.

That doesn't make sense, however, because Israel's nightmare (i.e. letting time and demography make the two-state solution irrelevant) is the Palestinians' dream. In fact, Saeb Erekat just published a paper recommending the replacement of the two-state solution by the one-state solution. It is precisely because the Palestinians know that Israel is petrified by the idea of becoming a bi-national state that they are playing for time.

If Israel wishes to separate itself from the Palestinians, it should not expect the Palestinians' cooperation in doing so. This is why I've been convinced since 2000 that only Dan Schueftan's idea makes sense.

Shueftan's strategy can only be implemented, however, if Israel completes the (expensive) technology to protect itself from short-range missiles, effectively deters Iran and its proxies, and takes the "soft war" to the enemy's court.
Operation Cast Lead proved that Israel has the military capability of deterring rocket attacks from unilaterally evacuated areas, but also that the Palestinians completely outmaneuver Israel in the diplomatic and media arenas.
It took the Goldstone Report for Israel to finally realize (with a 40 year delay) that the Arab world has been waging a "soft war" against Israel through the media, the UN and NGOs since the 1973 war.

When she was Foreign Minister, Tzipi Livni endorsed her Ministry's idiotic stance that the "soft war" is about "branding" and convincing the world that Israel is cool.
The British judge that issued an arrest warrant against her two months ago was obviously not impressed by the fact that Israel has nice beaches and impressive high-tech companies. It is about time that Israel's leadership realizes that the Goldstone Report (which Prime Minister Netanyahu described as a strategic threat to Israel) is the result of the "soft war" and that this war must be fought with a clear and consistent strategy. It is an embarrassment to Israel that the "soft war" has been mostly fought so far by private organizations (such as Palestinian Media Watch, UN Watch, NGO Monitor, and BICOM, to name a few), while our Foreign Ministry only knows how to whine about its puny PR budget.

As for Iran, deterrence is and will continue to be a tricky issue. At the conference yesterday, Switzerland's former ambassador to Iran, Tim Guldiman, basically said that we should continue to negotiate with Ahmanadinejad while not even thinking of toppling his regime. This statement, of course, tells a lot about Switzerland's interests in Iran. In April 2009, Swiss President Hans-Rudolf Merz warmly hosted Ahmadinejad.

Meanwhile, the Swiss energy company EGL signed in 2008 a deal with Iran to import 5.5 billion cubic meters of natural gas annually between 2011 and 2035 (a move that undermines US efforts to put economic pressure on Iran). No wonder Guldiman was very vocal about leaving Ahmadinejad alone.

François Heisbourg, Chairman of the International Institute for Strategic Studies and of the Geneva Centre for Security Studies, argued that talks with Iran have become pointless, that even a complete embargo on refined oil would not threaten the mullahs' regime (because it would only affect about 50% of the country's oil consumption), and that if a military strike was able to delay the Iranian nuclear program for as long as the 1981 Israeli strike in Osiraq managed to delay the Iraqi nuclear program, it would definitely be worthwhile considering.

Israel's week points are not only Palestinian demographics, Arab propaganda, and Iran's nuclear program, however. Another weak point is the world's dependence on oil.
Two panels at the Conference were devoted to this topic. James Woosley (a former CIA Director who is a strong advocate of US energy independence) was very vocal about his claim that the West is funding its enemies and digging its own grave by not weaning itself from oil.

Yossi Hollander (an Israeli entrepreneur who now invests most of his time and money in the anti-oil lobby) convincingly showed that oil is a curse to the world economy and a major reason for US "tolerance" vis-à-vis Saudi Arabia.
Gal Luft (an Israeli energy expert based in Washington) argued that it takes political leadership to turn scientific knowledge into energy revolutions.
He took the example of Napoléon Bonaparte who decided he had enough with France's dependency on salt and offered a prize for the discovery of an alternative to food preservation.

This is how vacuum cans were born and made France "salt free." Hence the title of Luft's book Turning Oil into Salt.

The knowledge to dethrone oil is there; we just need leadership, and Israel should lead the way not least because it is the main geopolitical victim of oil supremacy. It is encouraging that Netanyahu has adopted the idea and set-up a team (headed by Prof. Eugene Kandel from the Hebrew University) to make Israel a world leader in alternative energies. It is, after all, thanks to Shimon Peres' personal involvement that Shai Agassi started Better Place.

So Israel's strategy must be threefold: 1. Prepare the ground for a de facto separation from the Palestinians; 2. Proactively and professionally wage the "soft war" it has been loosing for nearly four decades; 3. Lead the way in the energy revolution. If Israel manages to extricate itself from the Palestinians, to neutralize Arab propaganda, and to help the world wean itself from oil, its geopolitical situation would improve dramatically.

As for Iran, don't count on Switzerland. But if a nuclear winter eventually embraces our region, at least we Israelis will be able to enjoy, in the meantime, the new archeological and tourist sites promised last night by Netanyahu.

Dr. Emmanuel Navon (formerly: Mréjen) is a consultant, an academic and a public speaker specialized in International Relations. He was born in 1971 in Paris, where he went to an English-speaking school and graduated from Sciences-Po (MA in Public Administration), one of Europe's most distinguished universities. While at Sciences-Po he interned at the French Foreign Ministry, specializing in International Organizations, and at the French Finance Ministry, specializing in International Political Economy.
In 1993, he moved to Israel, pursuing graduate studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he earned a Ph.D. in International Relations. During his graduate studies he consulted to the Israeli Foreign Ministry on UN Reform and was selected to join the Shalem Center as a research fellow.
He was awarded the Yehoshafat Harkabi Prize for his MA Thesis and the Yaacov Herzog Prize for his Doctoral Dissertation.

Upon the completion of his academic studies, he worked as a consultant for Arttic, the leading group in Europe and Israel specialized in the preparation and management of technology-related partnerships.

There, he built European-Israeli consortia and consulted to large Israeli companies such as the Israel Aircraft Industries, Israel Electric, and Teva. After Arttic, he served as Vice-President of GoldNames, an investment company focusing on serving the Internet domain name asset class. He was instrumental in building the company's presence in the French-speaking market, and became well acquainted with Israel's high-tech industry.

With the sudden deterioration of Israel's international image and economic activity at the turn of the new millennium, Dr. Navon engaged in writing and public speaking, making the case for Israel in the foreign media and on university campuses. He was appointed CEO of the Business Network for International Cooperation (BNIC), an organization founded by Israeli high-tech legends Yehuda Zisapel and Eli Ayalon, to train Israeli business leaders for pro-Israel advocacy overseas.

In 2005, Emmanuel Navon left BNIC and founded his own company, The Navon Group Ltd. (which became The Navon-Levy Group in 2007), an international business consultancy dedicated to the strengthening of Israel's economic and strategic ties with emerging markets, especially in Africa.

In addition, he teaches at Tel-Aviv University 's Abba Eban Graduate Program for Diplomacy Studies, where he organized and chaired, between 2004 and 2008, the "Ambassadors' Forum," a regular encounter where foreign diplomats and leading Israel public figures jointly discussed current international affairs.

Dr. Navon is the author of A Plight among the Nations -Israel's Foreign Policy Between Nationalism and Realism (VDM Verlag, 2009) and of numerous articles. His blog is read by thousands of people around the world.

He is a proud reservist in the IDF, and a no less proud member of Likud (Israel's largest conservative party), and of the Movement for Quality of Government in Israel (an Israeli NGO committed to clean politics).

He sits on the boards of TrackBull Mutual Funds, an Israeli investment firm specialized in EFTs, and of EMET (Endowment for Middle East Truth), a brave and politically incorrect Washington think tank.

Dr. Navon is a regular political commentator for television channels, radio stations and newspapers in Israel, in the United States, in Europe, and in Canada. He is fluent in English, Hebrew and French, and is conversant in German.

He lives in Efrat, Israel, with his wife and their four children.

The Philadelphia Bulletin: Netanyahu Calls for Israeli Presence on Palestinian Border

by David Bedein

Jerusalem - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has made it clear that his consent to the establishment of a demilitarized Palestinian state depended on an Israeli presence on its eastern border, such as in the Jordan Valley. This was due to the concern of rocket smuggling from the Jordanian border.

Mr. Netanyahu added, “We are surrounded by an ever-growing arsenal of rockets in Iranian pockets from north and south.”

In his annual address to the Israel Foreign Press Association, delivered Wednesday, Mr. Netanyahu stressed that Israel must ensure that, at the entrances to the areas abutting Israel, there be an efficient way to stop missile smuggling. This, he said, required an Israeli presence on the eastern side of the Palestinian state.

The Israeli prime minister sounded pessimistic about renewing negotiations with the Palestinians.

“Instead of starting negotiations, the Palestinians have climbed up a tree and appear to be staying there,” he said. “The more ladders they bring them, they just climb higher up.”

Special U.S. envoy to the Middle East, George Mitchell, met this week with Mr. Netanyahu, President Shimon Peres and Defense Minister Ehud Barak.

Mr. Mitchell arrived in Jerusalem from Lebanon and Syria, where he met with Syrian President Bashar Assad, who told him that, as of now, he “doesn’t see that Israel is interested in peace. There is no point to negotiations with a government that constantly declares that it is not interested in reaching a peace agreement with its neighbors, which imposes a siege on Gaza and which threatens aggression.”

Palestinian officials said yesterday that they would propose to Mr. Mitchell that the U.S. represent their interests in the talks on the permanent status arrangement with Israel and basically mediate between the sides.

Chief Palestinian Liberation Organization negotiator Saeb Erekat rejected the statements that were made by Mr. Netanyahu as if Israel would have to maintain a presence in Judea and Samaria as part of a final status arrangement.

Mr. Erekat said that “Netanyahu was trying, once again, to establish facts on the ground on his own instead of by means of negotiations.”

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The Philadelphia Bulletin: New Israeli Subs to Station in the Persian Gulf

by David Bedein

Jerusalem - This week, a delegation of seven Israeli government cabinet ministers, headed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, held a joint cabinet meeting with their counterparts in Berlin, Germany.

The reported subject under discussion: Israel’s intention to station new German-made submarines in the Persian Gulf on a permanent basis. This was reported on Sunday by the German newspaper Der Tagesspiegel.

The German newspaper reported that Israel requested from Germany to consent to subsidize the construction of a sixth submarine for Israel, manufactured in Germany.

In 2011, Israel is scheduled to receive new Dolphin submarines from Germany that are powered without fuel, and run on an electric engine that creates power from water in an innovative chemical process.

Since 1991, Germany has funded the manufacture of five Dolphin submarines for Israel in the amount of 900 million EURO. In addition, the German army, the Bundeswehr, has increased its military acquisitions in Israel. The German government already approved the construction of the sixth submarine for Israel in 2006.

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The Philadelphia Bulletin: Israel Wants to End Incitement as Part of the Peace Process

by David Bedein

Jerusalem - For the first time since the genesis of Middle East peace negotiations, more than 30 years ago, the government of Israel has placed the cessation of official Arab incitement to murder Jews as a condition for the continuation of Middle East peace negotiations.

As Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared after last week’s government weekly cabinet meeting, “It is not only missiles and rockets that endanger security and push peace further off. Words can also be dangerous.”

Referring to recent ceremonies held by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in honor of Palestinian terrorists who had murdered Jews. Mr. Netanyahu observed that “Sadly, there has been a retreat in this area in recent months, both within the Palestinian Authority and by its leaders. Whoever sponsors and supports naming a square in Ramallah after a terrorist who murdered dozens of Israelis on the coastal road - encourages terrorism. Whoever declares those responsible for the murder of the late Rabbi Meir Hai, father to seven children, as holy martyrs - pushes peace further away.”

Mr. Netanyahu also made reference to the new Palestinian curriculum, which represents the first official curriculum since the Third Reich to inculcate war against the Jews.

In Mr. Netanyahu’s words, “incitement continues in the Palestinian media and education system; in its official media outlets and in the schools under its supervision. These serious actions represent a harsh violation of the Palestinians’ international obligation to prevent incitement. I say to the chairman of the Palestinian Authority: Stop the incitement. This is not how peace is made. Peace is made by educating towards reconciliation, by encouraging good neighborly relations and by developing mutual respect. Therefore, the cessation of Palestinian incitement is a necessary condition, not for entering into discussions, but so that we may complete them in a way that will bring about genuine peace between our two peoples.”

While Israeli concern over incitement is not new, the fact that Israel has conditioned the cessation of incitement as a condition for continuing Middle East negotiations is unprecedented.

View this story in the Philadelphia Bulletin
View this story at Israel Behind the News

Israel Wants End To Incitement As Part Of Peace Process

Israel Wants End To Incitement As Part Of Peace Process

by David Bedein

For the first time since the genesis of Middle East peace negotiations, more than 30 years ago, the government of Israel has placed the cessation of official Arab incitement to murder Jews as a condition for the continuation of Middle East peace negotiations.

As Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared after last week’s government weekly cabinet meeting, “It is not only missiles and rockets that endanger security and push peace further off. Words can also be dangerous.”

Referring to recent ceremonies held by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in honor of Palestinian terrorists who had murdered Jews. Mr. Netanyahu observed that “Sadly, there has been a retreat in this area in recent months, both within the Palestinian Authority and by its leaders. Whoever sponsors and supports naming a square in Ramallah after a terrorist who murdered dozens of Israelis on the coastal road - encourages terrorism. Whoever declares those responsible for the murder of the late Rabbi Meir Hai, father to seven children, as holy martyrs - pushes peace further away.”

Mr. Netanyahu also made reference to the new Palestinian curriculum, which represents the first official curriculum since the Third Reich to inculcate war against the Jews.

In Mr. Netanyahu’s words,

“incitement continues in the Palestinian media and education system; in its official media outlets and in the schools under its supervision. These serious actions represent a harsh violation of the Palestinians’ international obligation to prevent incitement. I say to the chairman of the Palestinian Authority: Stop the incitement. This is not how peace is made. Peace is made by educating towards reconciliation, by encouraging good neighborly relations and by developing mutual respect. Therefore, the cessation of Palestinian incitement is a necessary condition, not for entering into discussions, but so that we may complete them in a way that will bring about genuine peace between our two peoples.”

While Israeli concern over incitement is not new, the fact that Israel has conditioned the cessation of incitement as a condition for continuing Middle East negotiations is unprecedented.

The Philadelphia Bulletin: Israel battles with Iran over Pacific Islands

by David Bedein

JERUSALEM - Israel does not intend to give up on the Pacific Ocean islands and let them fall into the hands of Iran, as happened with the Solomon Islands. The support of the Solomon Islands, however, was “bought” by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s country for a grant of only $200,000.

Next month, the presidents of three of the island states that are considered strong supporters of Israel - Micronesia, the Marshall Islands and Nauru, will be coming to Israel for an official visit. They will meet with Israeli President Shimon Peres and, perhaps, also with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and will be paid royal honors.

Israeli officials ascribe great importance to the support of these Pacific islands, mainly because it can be transferred easily from one side to another. A year ago, Iran signed a memorandum with the Solomon Islands stating that it would fund scholarships in the amount of $200,000 for students living there to study medicine in Cuba. The payment was not long in coming: The Solomon Islands voted in the United Nations (U.N.) for adopting the conclusions of the Goldstone Report, which blasted Israel for its counterattack in Gaza last year.

The vote surprised Israel because the Solomon Islands were considered a strong ally.

“This is part of a long-term effort to preserve and nurture relations with countries with which we would like to keep in contact,” explained Michael Ronen, the director-general of the Israeli Foreign Ministry’s Pacific desk. Mr. Ronen, who also serves as the ambassador to these islands, emphasized that Israel does not intend to offer money, as Iran did. “I will defeat the Iranians on my court by offering humanitarian and medical assistance, which Israel has made sure to give these islands throughout the years, without promising money or making my assistance conditional upon political support, as the Iranians have done,” he said.

The Pacific Ocean region has sixteen countries, including Australia and New Zealand. All the rest are tiny countries. Since size does not matter, the votes of 13 of these countries matter in votes that take place in the U.N. Tiny Micronesia’s vote is equal to that of enormous China.

Israel was among the first of the countries outside the Pacific region to recognize the independence of the island nations in the 1980s and formed diplomatic relations with them. Since then, Israel has worked a great deal in those countries, sending them medical equipment, vaccines, medicines and medical specialists. Thus, for example, an Israeli ear, nose and throat specialist has been in Nauru for the past three weeks at the request of the Nauruan government. Equipment worth $130,000 was sent to Samoa as assistance in coping with the damage from the latest tsunami. Israel also assisted the Solomon Islands, despite its vote in favor of the Goldstone Report, and continued to send it medical equipment in order to help it cope with diabetes, which is widespread there. The result of this ongoing assistance has been that in the U.N. votes, these countries have supported Israel or abstained from voting against it.

However, in recent years, countries such as Iran, Syria, Venezuela and Cuba have tried to change this situation by means of money, and Israel is trying to stop this from happening.

“Israel extends its hand to all countries, great and small,” Mr. Ronen said. “In the Pacific region, we have found tiny and far-flung states that know a great deal more about us than we know about them, and that have shown us extraordinary friendship. In the U.N., there is an almost absolute majority against Israel and, therefore, we are making every effort to keep them with us.”

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The Philadelphia Bulletin: Israel Cuts Off Arms Shipment To Hezbollah

by David Bedein

JERUSALEM - Israeli naval forces, led by Israel's elite Naval Commando Unit, stormed the Francop cargo ship before dawn on Wednesday and, after searching its containers, found large quantities of weapons and ammunition on board.

This cargo, earmarked for Hezbollah, originated in Iran. The seized weaponry was hidden inside containers, which supposedly were filled with goods.

A senior Israeli government official said, "Our work now is to show the world what Israel has to deal with. The photographs of arms and ammunition will prove that Israel is defending itself against fierce terrorism, and you don't fight terror with silk gloves. What country would allow terrorist groups to arm themselves in a way that endangers the lives of the citizens in its heartland?"

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu chose to frame the issue somewhat differently and said, "Anyone who still needed proof that Iran continues to send arms to terrorist organizations received it today, clearly and unequivocally. Iran is sending these arms to terrorist groups in order to strike at Israeli cities and kill civilians. The time has come for the international community to apply real pressure to Iran to stop this criminal activity and give support to Israel when it defends itself against terrorists and their patrons."

Meanwhile, a senior Israeli military source predicted Iran would attempt to find other ways to supply Hezbollah with weapons. He said Iran had settled on a maritime strategy after having confronted difficulty when smuggling over land. The source stressed the seizure of the arms ship was proof that Iran was continuing to invest great energy in smuggling munitions despite the restrictions placed on it. He said it was quite possible Iran had in the past made use of civilian commercial vessels as a cover to supply weapons to various destinations.

Israeli Navy Chief of Staff Brig. Gen. Rani Ben Yehuda said yesterday the amount of munitions apprehended on the ship would have allowed Hezbollah to fight Israel for about a month.

Detailing The Capture

Former Israeli Navy Commander Maj. Gen. Yedidia Yaari still remembers how, seven years ago, he planned and commanded the operation to capture the arms vessel Karine A, which was bound for the Palestinians, at sea.

This time, however, Maj. Gen. Eliezer Marom sat in the war room in the north, commanding from afar the capture of the Francop, which carried hundreds of tons of arms for Hezbollah - 10 times the quantity of arms aboard the Karine A.

The waves were high and the winds reached speeds of 50 knots. But the intelligence information in Operation Four Species was accurate. Using aircraft and Navy missile boats, they tracked the German vessel continuously. The Navy commander gave the order to begin the operation, despite the weather conditions, and had to relax the safety instructions for the ships. Once the missile boats spotted the vessel and contacted it, the information was passed to Defense Minister Ehud Barak. Mr. Barak then issued the order to board the ship.

The countries involved - Antigua, under whose flag the vessel sailed, and Cyprus, the country of its operating firm - were informed. Several hours later, the picture became clear: A ship of the Iranian national merchant fleet had left the port of Bandar Abbas carrying hundreds of containers, in which hundreds of tons of arms were concealed.

The ship's Polish and Ukrainian crew steered the vessel through the Strait of Hormuz and the Suez Canal to the Egyptian city of Domiat.

The containers were unloaded from the Iranian vessel in Domiat and loaded onto the German vessel, Francop, which set out for Cyprus on Tuesday.

One hundred miles out, two Saar 5 missile boats surrounded the German vessel and contacted the Polish captain. The Israeli Navy asked him to inspect the vessel's cargo. The captain agreed to do so at around midnight, and allowed the naval commandos and soldiers of the Combat Engineering Corps's Yahalom unit to search the ship. The troops from the Yahalom unit, covered by naval commando troops, opened the containers and discovered the boxes of arms behind containers of pencils, toilets and polyurethane, a material used in the plastics industry.

The captain and crew were informed of the findings, and, after brief coordination with the Cyprus-based firm and Antigua, were brought to the Ashdod Port, where port workers began to unload the cargo.

A high-ranking security official said last night, "The Iranians hid the fact that the containers concealed arms, thus endangering the ship's crew and all the ports at which the vessel had stopped. Containers carrying explosives are treated completely differently from those carrying civilian material."

As one of the crew members watched the port workers unloading the cargo, he remarked, "We look at the containers, see all the ammunition, and don't believe it."

Gift From Heaven

Officials in Jerusalem had not dared even to dream of better timing for the capture of the vessel carrying so much arms and ammunition bound for Hezbollah. For all practical purposes, in light of the discussion of the Goldstone report that began in the United Nations yesterday and the campaign against Iran, the capture of the ship was, for Israel, like a gift from heaven.

In light of the capture of this ship, Israeli government officials expressed hope that "now the international community will understand whom we're dealing with," as a high-ranking minister said.

Israeli Foreign Ministry officials have been preparing for a major public relations battle in the UN's institutions and Security Council.

High-ranking ministry officials said they intended to bring the subject to the attention of the UN's member countries by means of both photographs and written messages. Jerusalem officials claim the fact that the weapons captured on the ship originated from Iran proves what Israel has been saying for a very long time: Iran has been consistently violating the UN Security Council resolutions, including Resolution 1747, which forbids Iran from exporting arms and is a blatant violation of Resolution 1701, which had led to the end of the Second Lebanon War and determined that southern Lebanon, between the Blue Line and the Litani River, would be demilitarized and that Hezbollah would disarm.

"None of the papers that we signed, including the Security Council resolutions, are being upheld. They are not worth the paper that they were written on. We have been saying loudly that Hezbollah and Hamas were being armed by Iran, and now we have clear proof that this is the situation that we're dealing with," a high-ranking diplomatic official said. "Iran continues to send arms to Hamas and Hezbollah, ignoring the UN and the international community."

The Israeli PR campaign made an effort to list the long line of UN Security Council resolutions Iran has been violating by such activities as the one thwarted yesterday.

The important aspect of this success, and this is no small thing, is a certain element of deterrence and encumbrance. The Francop is the visible tip of the iceberg. The smuggling routes are known. It is clear the intelligence was good enough to follow the cargo as it made its way on the Iranian ship, that led it from Bandar Abbas to Egypt, and then to the Francop and then to the point where it was detained. It is far more convenient to stop the vessel in the Mediterranean Sea, where a NATO policing force, which Israel is a part of, patrols the seas, and far from Egypt's coast, near which any operation is extremely sensitive.

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The Francop

The Francop

Name of vessel: Francop

Length: 137 meters

Width: 22 meters

Capacity: 8,622 tons

Year of manufacture: 2003

Ownership: United Feeder, which has a fleet of 41 ships and concentrates on shipping goods in the Mediterranean Sea and the Black Sea.

1. Oct. 26: Dozens of containers filled with arms and ammunition made their way from Iran to Egypt on a ship belonging to Iran's national merchant fleet.

2. In the Egyptian port of Domiat, the containers were unloaded in order to trick anyone who might be trying to track the shipment.

3. The vessel Francop, on which the camouflaged arms were loaded, made its way to Cyprus, from which it was to proceed to its final destination: Syria.

Distance from Israeli coast: 130 miles

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