President Clinton Addresses the Israel Policy Forum

We first thought Mr. Clinton’s worst remark was, “When they came home, the land was not all vacant. Your land is also their land; it is the homeland of two people. And, therefore, there is no choice but to create two states and make the best of it.” As if the UN hadn’t in 1947 created the framework for three states, two of which (Jordan and Arab Palestine) would have encompassed more than 80 percent of the British Mandate. And as if the Arabs hadn’t rejected that and launched the first of the wars they lost because they refuse to accept the legitimacy of Israel.

We first thought Mr. Clinton’s worst remark was, “When they came home, the land was not all vacant. Your land is also their land; it is the homeland of two people. And, therefore, there is no choice but to create two states and make the best of it.” As if the UN hadn’t in 1947 created the framework for three states, two of which (Jordan and Arab Palestine) would have encompassed more than 80 percent of the British Mandate. And as if the Arabs hadn’t rejected that and launched the first of the wars they lost because they refuse to accept the legitimacy of Israel.

On further study, the worst parts were a) the parallel assignment of blame and b) the President’s personal appropriation of other people’s tragedy.

Mr. Clinton created a series of phony analogies, first equating “the tolerance of violence and incitement of hatred in classrooms and the media in the Palestinian communities…” with “humiliating treatment on the streets or at checkpoints…” The checkpoints (provided for in the accords) will disappear with the Palestinian independence Mr. Barak has already agreed to; but the Jew-hatred will live on.

“The violence confirms the need to do more to prepare both publics for “peace, not to condition people for the so-called glory of further conflict.” Only the Palestinians glorify death and destruction.

“On the Palestinian side, there must be an end to the culture of violence and the culture of incitement that, since Oslo, has gone unchecked. Young children still are being educated to believe in confrontation with Israel, and multiple militia-like groups carry and use weapons with impunity.” Its persistence sends the wrong message to the Israeli people…” [Actually, Palestinians get wrong message; Israelis get killed.] The corollary? “The Israeli people also must understand that… “the settlement enterprise and building bypass roads… (are) inconsistent with Oslo… These, too, make it harder for the Palestinians to believe the commitments made to them will be kept.” Roads vs. “the culture of violence and incitement”?

But if all politics is local, the President clearly believes all politics is personal: “Anybody that ever kneeled at the grave of a person who died in the Middle East knows that what we’ve been through these last three months…” There is no “we” here; neither we Americans in general or the President in particular have been the victim of pain inflicted by violence. And he misunderstands completely that the worst of the violence is not a spontaneous manifestation of conflict, but professional terrorism against civilian targets organized by Yasser Arafat.

The President has NOT been through what three children who lost their limbs on a school bus blown up by Palestinian terrorists have been through. Or the five children of an Israeli schoolteacher who was killed in her car. Or three young soldiers beaten, burned and mutilated in Ramallah. Or the Rabbi beaten to death trying to save Torah scrolls from Jacob’s Tomb. Or their families. Or even the rest of the Israeli public. THEY watched their Prime Minister make wrenching proposals in the name of a secure modus vivendi with their nearest neighbors, and THEY saw those proposals rejected in favor of hatred and the ruination of the next generation of young Palestinians through vicious propaganda foisted on them by their “leadership.” THEY have, not we, Mr. President which is why only THEY are entitled to determine how much security is enough, and under what circumstances, not you and not America.

It truly is hard to imagine how he could miss the essential point by so great a distance: Only if the Arabs accept the legitimacy of Jewish sovereignty in the Middle East, with the attitude and behavior adjustments that requires, will there be peace and security for all of the parties, including the Palestinians.