New Settlements

The old reason for the Jordan River buffer was adding strategic depth in preparation for a potential ground war with Iraq.

New Republic editor in chief Martin Peretz explains that the new settlement is a good idea because "there needs to be a sliver of land between what will ultimately be a Palestinian state and Jordan."

This Peretzism was so goofy it actually made me smile. I suspect he will explain a few months from now why there also needs to be a new buffer sliver between the Paelstinian state and the old sliver; and then why there needs to be a third sliver to protect the second sliver from the Palestinian state. It's funny how many slivers Israel keeps getting.

The old reason for the Jordan River buffer was adding strategic depth in preparation for a potential ground war with Iraq.

Peretz probably just made up his reason. Not that it's better than anyone else unless they come right out and say that the Jordan Valley is the eastern border of Israel and the Palestinians can call whatever land they get to live on inside of it anything they want.

As I understand it, the 'no new settlements' policy only ever maent that any new settlement would officially be considered part of whatever older settlement it was closest to.

Of course the Israelis deny the Maskiot settlement is 'new'.

'Israeli officials said the settlement was not new, but a revival of a 1982 settlement, which had become a military training site by the mid-1990s.

'“This was set up by the Israeli government nearly 25 years ago,” said David Siegel, spokesman for the Israeli Embassy in Washington. “It’s not a new settlement.”'

For the record, I agree that Israel building new settlements is an awful move, and that Martin Peretz is a loony (he's also wreaked havoc on TNR, formerly one of my favorite magazines).

On a slight tangent, however, I'm curious to know Matt's stand on Israel-Palestine. Can anyone point me to some old Yglesias posts laying out Matt's idea of how this issue should be resolved? It's an issue I almost always steer clear of myself, since there seem to be no easy answers.

How bizarre.

Maybe Israel announced this new settlement just so Bush could offer some empty rhetoric opposing it?

Peretz' idotic ideas speak for themselves. But Christ, his writing form is even worse. I'm still trying to figure out what that last sentence means. Or maybe I'm the idiotic one.

The biblical language, the declarative sentence fragments, the deep and confused morals and philosophy in each portentous word (seriously: "Also called Palestine, and part of it." So Jordan is Palestine which is why they need a buffer between them to keep Israel safe on the other side which is also really what Palestine is so there should be settlements to scuttle a nascent Palestinian state which is the same as Jordan and Israel?). Marty Peretz thinks he's Herman Melville's secret love child with Mark Twain. But, y'know, without the irony in regards to the moral philosophy, or the talent. He definitely lacks the talent. It's like someone let loose the smarter freshman comp students at a large high school and told them that history is no judge. And that they have all the sewing money in the world to support their not-quite-sophomoric scribblings.

Anyone read Joe Lieberman's new column in the Post?

Don't bother.

To keep the Jordan valley as Israels security border is the current policy of the Israeli government.

Here's for example a quote from an interview with Olmert (march 2006):

And the Jordan Valley?

"In any case, our security border will be along the Jordan. There are
strategic considerations for this that we cannot relinquish."

The time for a two-state solution is running short, and every additional land theft makes it more and more unlikely.

The Palestinians could be brought to accept a two-state solution. But Israel's idea of a two-state solution is a truncated, poverty-stricken, demilitarized bantustan shot through by settlements, checkpoints, and access roads. That's not going to be acceptable, and no Palestinian leader could sell it to his people. A real two-state solution will have to be a contiguous state in all of the West Bank and Gaza. No settlements held back, no access roads, no checkpoints, no water theft from the Palestinians. It will have to include East Jerusalem. The right of return to Israel will probably have to be given up, but it will not be given up for free; it will be sold dearly. Palestinian refugees will have to be fully compensated for the property they lost; the world community will probably wind up shouldering some of this financial burden (the U.S. pays most of Israel's bills anyway, so this too will probably be larded on the American taxpayer). In short, Palestine will have to be a prosperous and independent nation, and there will have to be a recognition that their displacement from Israel proper in 1948, while probably now irreversible, was a great historical wrong that they will be compensated for.

What if this doesn't happen? If settlement expansion continues, we will eventually see the focus of Palestinian groups change from a two-state solution to a one-state solution. Instead of claiming sovereignty in the West Bank and Gaza, they will point out that these areas are already de facto part of Israel. After all, if Israel settles its people there, exercises police and military powers, and controls the natural resources, then the West Bank and Gaza are part of Israeli territory in all but name. And if that is the case, then all people indigenous to that territory should be considered Israeli citizens with full voting rights. Of course, that would mean the end of Israel as a Jewish state. Instead, it would be a Palestinian Arab state with a sizable Jewish minority. This prospect no doubt makes Zionists recoil in horror. But the more incursions Israel makes into the West Bank, the more difficult it will be to justify to the world community the exclusion of Palestinian Arabs from the Israeli polity.

KC - when I flipped to the op-ed page this morning (I'm in the outer DC burbs), I decided to hack my way through Lieberman's op-ed out of sheer cussedness. AFAICT, the only reason Atrios hasn't already declared Lieberman 'wanker of the day' is that he's probably not awake yet.

Reading it quickly became a game of 'how many disproven canards can I find in this piece?' Let's count 'em.

1) All the Muslim extremists are on the same side. Joe gets into that one in the very first paragraph:

On one side are extremists and terrorists led and sponsored by Iran, on the other moderates and democrats supported by the United States. Iraq is the most deadly battlefield on which that conflict is being fought. How we end the struggle there will affect not only the region but the worldwide war against the extremists who attacked us on Sept. 11, 2001.

2) "the war is winnable." Sure, Joe: on what basis do you say that?

Here's his basis: "the recent coming together of moderate political forces in Baghdad" (Who?? Hakim isn't a moderate, even by comparison with a thug like al-Sadr!) and:

3) The notion that we can improve security in Baghdad by military means, and
4) that would tip things our way in Iraq.

This is freakin' crazy. We've already been upping the ante in Baghdad for the past six or seven months, and by all accounts, things have gotten worse. But a few more troops will surely put us over the top. Only a fool would believe this. This is Joe Lieberman speaking. But I repeat myself.

And of course, security in Baghdad was much better a year or two ago than it is now. Lot of good it did us then. The overall situation is much, much worse than it was a year ago. Even if we improve security in Baghdad to where it was this time last year, Iraq as a whole is still much worse than a year ago, and we couldn't win then.

5) Al-Qaeda (allied with Iran!) is behind the violence:

a conscious strategy by al-Qaeda and Iran, which have systematically aimed to undermine Iraq's fragile political center. By ruthlessly attacking the Shiites in particular over the past three years, al-Qaeda has sought to provoke precisely the dynamic of reciprocal violence that threatens to consume the country.

6) "Iraq is the central front in the global and regional war against Islamic extremism."

Yeah, he really said that. Shee-yut, how dumb can a guy be? This is why we wanted Ned Lamont: we figured that a guy with a brain would be a huge improvement over Joe.

Anyone paying attention realizes that the conflict in Iraq is between Sunni and Shi'ite Arabs, between competing Shi'ite factions (principally the Sadrists and Hakim's outfit, the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, or SCIRI), and between Kurds and Sunni Arabs. Al-Qaeda's involvement is incidental (as evidenced by the infinitesimal effect of Zarqawi's death this past summer) and if we leave Iraq, everybody there is going to be too busy fighting each other, just like they are now, to follow us home.

7) Training more Iraqi troops will help.

Which ones, the Sadrist troops or the Badr Corps (SCIRI) troops? What evidence is there that we're capable of identifying any troops to train that aren't allied with one faction or another? All we're doing is arming and training various sides in Iraq's kaleidoscopic civil war.

8) Our troops believe we can win this if we just get more troops. Joe knows this because he even talked to colonels as well as generals.

Excuse me, Joe, but what do most colonels want to be? Sheesh. Did you talk to any noncoms? The grunts might've had a different message.

9) There is a substantial and growing alliance of moderates in Iraq. (He won't say who they are, of course.)

I saw firsthand evidence in Iraq of the development of a multiethnic, moderate coalition against the extremists of al-Qaeda and against the Mahdi Army, which is sponsored and armed by Iran and has inflamed the sectarian violence.

10) We're making progress in winning over Sunni tribal leaders in Anbar.

How many times have we heard this one during the war? It's less likely now than ever.

I give up. Gawd, what a tool.

Why don't these articles ever come with maps? Here is the only one I could find online.

American interests require some sort of settlement of the Isreal-Palestine thing, though I think it is a mistake to declare it the central issue that wuill solve everything bad for us in the Mideast. (This is first untrue and second gives too much negotiating leverage to the Palestinians, who have not, heretofore, been terribly reasonable.)

This would be a useful time to demonstrate we are not simply a tool of Isreal and take some action, rather than just scold. A recommendation to Congress that Isreali aid be cut or suspended until this particular idea is dropped would be a good idea.

Peretz's life work seems to be the normalisation of jewish chauvinism.

Back in the real world, obviously, if Israel insists on such a policy there's never going to be peace with the Palestinians, but I assume that's fine by him.

Why not? In Matthew-world, everything is up for negotiation, right? So maybe the negotiations will permit the Israelis to keep the settlements.

"This would be a useful time to demonstrate we are not simply a tool of Isreal and take some action, rather than just scold. A recommendation to Congress that Isreali aid be cut or suspended until this particular idea is dropped would be a good idea."

Posted by: Appalled Moderate

For most purposes in the Middle East, we *are* a tool of Israel. The only time that we're not is when oil is directly at stake. Lebanon was an excellent example. It instantly went from a shining example of democracy in the Middle East to 'have some more bombs, Israel - we'd hate to have you run out'.

Peretz actually didn't make up the reason he stated--it's just that as with most things related to this conflict, his rhetoric is held over from arguments that Israeli governments started making several decades ago. The whole bit about how the forked-tongue Jordanians REALLY want Israel to retain control of that border is based on circa 1970 reasoning, in which Jordan preferred Israeli control of the border with the West Bank to the PLO in the wake of Black September. Peretz' argument is just one of the old justifications that Israeli governments would give for why they would never agree to a Palestinian state.

It was always a stated Israeli position that they would have to retain some of the Jordan Valley for security-related reasons, but as with the "one united Jerusalem forever" rhetoric, it was conceded by the Barak government in the 2000 negotiations.

It was always a stated Israeli position that they would have to retain some of the Jordan Valley for security-related reasons, but as with the "one united Jerusalem forever" rhetoric, it was conceded by the Barak government in the 2000 negotiations.

Conceded by the Barak government in the 2000 negotiations, but un-conceded by the Olmert government, right?

MY, I think that's right.

BTW, the new settlements could also be seen as a fuck you to the Iraq Study Group.

Conceded by the Barak government in the 2000 negotiations, but un-conceded by the Olmert government, right?

Correct.

Though it's certainly possible that actual negotiations could change that. One of Barak's campaign platforms in '99 was "one Jerusalem, united, forever," but in the midst of some leaks to the Israeli press along the lines of "but these Arab neighborhoods aren't really what we consider Jerusalem," he agreed to forgo that "principle" at Camp David.

Though it's certainly possible that actual negotiations could change that.

Oh, sure, there's a difference between ex ante bargaining positions and what someone will accept ex post. That said, commencing construction of a new Jordan Valley settlement seems like the kind of thing you wouldn't do if you were seriously contemplating giving up the idea of a Jordan Valley security zone.

The Israelis spent the 1990s, post-Oslo, vastly increasing the number of settlers in the occupied territories. They dont seriously contemplate making peace with the Palestinians.

True enough. Though it just emphasizes how pointless a sop to the settlers that this move represents. There's no way Israel will be able to keep any settlements there in any final status talks, but it's not like the whole thing would rise or fall on this one specific thing. Nor is the "removing settlements is ethnic cleansing" wingnut contingent in Israel going to be satisfied with any such maneuver.

That "true enough" was of course in response to MY's comment, not the trolling that followed.

Everything's up for negotiation, right? Maybe the Palestinians will decide to allow the Israelis to keep the new settlements, in return for some other concessions by the Israelis. But, as I pointed out above, that would mean Matthew's statement "if Israel insists on such a policy there's never going to be peace with the Palestinians" is wrong.

That said, commencing construction of a new Jordan Valley settlement seems like the kind of thing you wouldn't do if you were seriously contemplating giving up the idea of a Jordan Valley security zone.

Why not? It is just another bargaining chip.

Why not? It is just another bargaining chip.

Not really, Al. There's no way anyone outside of Israel (including the US) is going to support any claim they might make to keeping settlements in that area. It's not a real bargaining chip if you're going to be forced to give it up no matter what. Something you could keep, but might be willing to part with, is the only thing that can be justified along those lines.

Al,

Leaving aside your present dumbassery, I have to tell you how much I appreciate your contention that the Somali Islamists "initiated the present campaign" by Ethiopia. Because, of course, that's true in very much the same way that Afghanistan's Islamists "initiated" the Soviet invasion in 1979.

So, while I'm always happy to point out you're a standard-issue Stalinist hack, I didn't imagine you'd be polite enough to explicitly make the case for it yourself. Thank you!

"It's not a real bargaining chip if you're going to be forced to give it up no matter what."

The point is to use these extra settlements to make the earlier settlements - about which the same sentiments were made when they were being constructed - seem normal and reasonable by comparison.

The point is to use these extra settlements to make the earlier settlements - about which the same sentiments were made when they were being constructed - seem normal and reasonable by comparison.

That may or may not be the point, but it's still not going to work -- the whole Jordan Valley initiative is just doomed.

Let them all settle wherever, west of the Jordan. That's their mutual homeland. Israel should just annex the West Bank and Gaza. They won't let go anyway, the Palestinians aren't going anywhere, and the choice is really between rapproachment and peace, or partition and death, with Israel ultimately turning into Dunkirk after offering nothing better for its citizens than more sectarian fragmentation and another separated existence.

That may or may not be the point, but it's still not going to work -- the whole Jordan Valley initiative is just doomed.

It's a nearly fourty year old project and I don't see it's trajectory moving toward failure at all. It's always survived in one form or another even in aborted settlement proposals. I think it's clarifying to see it rejected without window dressing.

That said, commencing construction of a new Jordan Valley settlement seems like the kind of thing you wouldn't do if you were seriously contemplating giving up the idea of a Jordan Valley security zone.

...

It's not a real bargaining chip if you're going to be forced to give it up no matter what.

I announce my plans to bulldoze next year a redwood on land I plan to develop. Oh you don't like that and are taking me to court? Great. I just parked my bulldozers today on my own land in front of 10 redwoods and announced another parking structure for my CrappyStuff store and I'm gonna knock those redwoods down in two days. Wanna settle?

That said, I wonder what military experts would say about having to defend small slivers of land that are presumably surrounded by the opposition.

Good comment.Thanks admin.

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