The Redhunter

The president pressed Israel, in unusually frank terms, to reach a final peace agreement with the Palestinians, citing the boundaries in place on the eve of the June 1967 Arab-Israeli War as the starting point for negotiation about borders.

The formulation goes beyond principles outlined by President George W. Bush, who stated during his first term that "it is unrealistic to expect" Israel to pull back to the 1967 boundaries, which were based on cease-fire lines established in 1949. Obama said the negotiations about final borders, which he indicated may include land swaps to accommodate Israel's large settlement blocs, should result in "a viable Palestine, a secure Israel."

Which is completely impossible with an Israel confined to the 1967 borders. If an independent Palestinian state was to be formed, especially one in which Hamas had a role, all we'd end up with is yet another terrorist state dedicated to the eradication of Israel.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu knows this perfectly well. From an Associated Press story carried in the Washington Times today:

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday rejected a key aspect of President Obama's Middle East policy speech, saying that a return to his country's 1967 borders would spell disaster for the Jewish state.

In a statement released late Thursday, Mr. Netanyahu called the 1967 lines "indefensible."

I have been to Israel. I stood on a mounaintop on the Golan Heights and looked out into Syria. I went through part of the "West Bank" and saw the so-called "settlements." You don't have to be a military genius to know that it would be pretty easy to overrun the country if you broke through a line or two of defense. And with their rocket arsenals Hizbollah and Hamas can pretty much hit the whole of Israel - weapons Egypt and Syria did not have in 1967 and 1973.

We've heard recently of a "reconciliation" agreement between Fatah/Palestinian Authority and Hamas. If true, this spells a serious shift toward radicalism/Jihadism/rejectionism whatever you want to call it, but it's bad news for Israel.

Jackson Diehl, Deputy Editorial Page Editor of The Washington Post, explains how the Obama Administration and our lovely European "allies" have responded:

Mahmoud Abbas's formula for war
The Washington Post
by Jackson Diehl
May 18, 2011

The Obama administration and its allies appear suitably alarmed by all this. But their principal reaction so far might be summed up as, "Now we really have to put the screws to Netanyahu."

"It's more vital than ever that both Israelis and Palestinians find a way to get back to the table," Obama declared after a meeting with Jordan's King Abdullah on Tuesday. Senior European diplomats who have recently phoned or met with Netanyahu have made clear what that means: Unless he can engage Abbas in negotiations before September, their governments will probably vote for the U.N. declaration of statehood.

Embedded in these demands is what might be called the soft bigotry of wishful thinking about Arab strongmen. U.S. and European leaders indulgently swallow the private assurances they receive from suit-wearing, English-speaking men like Abbas, rather than judging them by their actual behavior.

Insanity.

And someone needs to remind our president that Egypt, the military colossus of the Arab world, is under new management. The Muslim Brotherhood may not end up in total control, but it will have a lot of influence, and they will never agree to anything other than the total destruction of Israel.

Meanwhile, not too far away, Iran marches on towards acquiring nuclear weapons and the missiles to put them on. It may we awhile yet before they have that capability, but given enough time, it'll happen.

It is true, as Charles Krauthammer points out, that the idea of returning to the 1967 borders has "been the working premise for negotiations since 2000. But no president had ever before publicly and explicitly endorsed the 1967 lines." This because they know that although it's all very nice in theory in practice it could only lead to disaster.

Elliot Abrams gets it right:

Obama's Empty Speech
In "balanced" terms, Obama treated Assad as a potential democrat, and proposed a non-plan for Israeli-Palestinian negotiations
National Review
by Elliot Abrams
May 19, 2011

(Obama's) idea was to put off Jerusalem and refugees, two impossible issues, and instead negotiate borders and security. But in fact, the border issues in the farther northern and southern areas are often simple, and most of the time the Israeli security fence is actually on or very near the 1949 armistice line, often mistakenly called "the 1967 border." The far harder matter is the Jerusalem area, and if Jerusalem is not solved, borders cannot be solved. It won't work. Nor will it work to solve security issues in isolation from others, such as whether Palestinians really accept the permanent existence of the Jewish state at all. Hamas's prime minister, Ismail Haniyeh, said last week he had "great hope of bringing to an end the Zionist project in Palestine," and Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas said, "We will never give up the right of return," by which he means flooding Israel with millions of Palestinian "refugees." In 2004 President Bush told Prime Minister Sharon that "an agreed, just, fair, and realistic framework for a solution to the Palestinian refugee issue as part of any final status agreement will need to be found through the establishment of a Palestinian state, and the settling of Palestinian refugees there, rather than in Israel." That Bush position, contained in a letter to Prime Minister Sharon, was then endorsed by both houses of Congress. President Obama's failure to restate it will rightly strike Israelis as a dangerous shift in position, and one can only hope that he clarifies the matter when he addresses AIPAC on Sunday.

The Israelis aren't going to give up what they call Judea and Samaria (the "West Bank") because they know it would put their very existence at risk. The Palestinians don't just want a homeland, they want to eradicate Israel. Everyone in the Middle East understands these two realities. Why can't Obama?