By Isaac Yetiv
Dear Madam:
Your intempestive intervention in the Jerusalem incident , and your outrageous 43 minutes phone call upbraiding the Prime Minister of a sovereign nation that is the only democracy in the Middle-East and our only reliable military ally, Israel, are not only shameful and undiplomatic, but have deleterious effects on the illusive “peace” you pretend to pursue in the region, because they embolden the Arab side to persist in its refusal to negotiate in good faith , not even via “proximity talks.”
I understand V.P. Biden anger at the silly, untimely, unnecessarily provocative declaration of the Israeli Ministry of the Interior, about building in East Jerusalem. But you knew, or should have known, that this was the result of the “coalition regime” that has plagued Israel since its creation. Every Cabinet member feels he can say, or do, anything he wishes in his “fief,” knowing full well that any rebuke or action from the PM may lead to the dissolution of the government. It is politically clear that Netanyahu didn’t know about the declaration because it was no less embarrassing to him.
Rather than accept, as Biden himself did, the PM’s apology, you came later with your own cannons.Even if you were ordered by the president, you grossly overstepped your functions.
Why? because you believe that ” a crisis is something terrible to waste” and that, by attacking the PM, you put him on the defensive,and he will ipso facto change his mind about building in East-Jerusalem. Your plan, I must say, is as malicious as it is inane. A mistake in FORM cannot inform and deform the SUBSTANCE.
This malady of the present administration to placate the enemy at the expense of allies is very detrimental to our national interest. You yourself begged the TALIBAN to come to the table, and were shamefully rebuffed. You gently left the door open for talks with the Iranian dictatorship of the Mullahs, and were dismissed offhand. The same with China and with our pseudo-friends Karzai and Maliki who are openly courting our enemies. But when it comes to tiny Israel, all hell breaks loose: a silly peccadillo of a junior partner in the coalition was seized as an opportunity to force its government to accept your demands as a proxy for the worst regimes and terrorist organizations. You did this without any regard for the dangers looming over Israel, from the Arab world, from genocidal Iran, from 80,000 rockets of Hizballah and Hamas. No puerile declaration of “unshakable commitment to the security of Israel” can undo the harm you have done .
Now on substance: Maybe you don’t know, but you surely can ask the bureaucrats in your department, even the automatically anti-Israel Arabists among them, that the Oslo Agreements do not prohibit building by both sides, and no Israeli government, left or right, will accept the diktat of anyone to do ,or refrain from doing, anything that they consider vital to Israel’s security and existence.
How childish it is for anyone, after what happened since the Oslo agreements, to still believe that peace will break out if only Israel could stop the “settlements!”You can’t even plead ignorance; you were there in 2000 when your husband, and PM Barak, offered the most generous plan for peace,which was lamentably rejected by Arafat. (Your husband told the story that, when Arafat hypocritically told him that he (Clinton) was a great president, he responded that NO, he was not, and that he (Arafat) was to blame for it). In 2008 PM Olmert made a better offer ,which was rejected by your darling DU JOUR Mahmoud Abbas, the “moderate Abbas” who still demands the return of 4.5 million Arab refugees as a condition for “peace.”
Wake up, Mrs Secretary, and wake up your government. The only constant implacable cause of non-peace in the Middle-East is the 100-year refusal of the Arabs to accept a Jewish state in their midst. History has proven it again and again. Your dream of creating an Arab anti-Iran coalition is the last agitation of an oniric state-of-mind that brought us the “land-for-peace” lie, the anti-Israel quartet, the “road map” and other pusillanimous and sterile inventions.
Thank you for your attention.
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Yetiv is a former Haifa city councilmember who today lectures on Mideast affairs in San Diego County, where he resides.