The WashingtonPost's Jennifer Rubin is a right-winger, a predictable neocon, and about asaggressive a defender of Binyamin Netanyahu as exists anywhere in themainstream media. In fact, her entire political worldview seems to be dictatedby her devotion to the concept of Greater Israel. Nonetheless, she is provocativeand worth reading.
In fact, it is precisely those attributes that makeher worthy of attention. Reading Rubin provides insight into what the Israel-firstcrowd is thinking because she is one of the first people her ideological alliescall when they want to influence the media narrative. Now that the Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg has sharply deviatedfrom Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's line, Rubin is one of our best sourcesof insight into what the lobby (and people to its right) are up to.
This week AIPAC issued a rarepress release, ostensibly to criticize the Palestinian Authority for notresponding positively to Netanyahu's "commitment to direct negotiations andpeace" nor to the "painful decisions" it says he is making to accommodate thePalestinians.
In a sense, the press release was pure boilerplate. Itcan hardly be considered news when AIPAC offers a litany of Palestinian actionsit views as designed to subvert peace combined with a list of sacrifices the Israelisare prepared to make. AIPAC is attacking the Palestinians. So what?
But Rubinasserted that the AIPAC criticism contained in the press release was not directedat the Palestinian Authority at all, but at President Obama.
Here is Rubin's explanation of what AIPAC is up to(emphasis mine):
In a rare release,AIPAC sent out a defense of the Israeli bargaining position. While the critique was ostensibly phrasedin opposition to the Palestinians' tactics, make no mistake: these were theU.S. positions that AIPAC was criticizing.
For example, the memostates: "PA President Mahmoud Abbas is blocking the resumption of talks bysetting onerous preconditions on issues that are supposed to be solved throughnegotiations. . . The Palestinians have now stepped up their preconditions bydemanding that Israel publicly commit that a Palestinian state will be based onthe pre-June 1967 lines with mutually agreed land swaps." But wait, that'sObama's precondition ("1967 borders with land swaps").
Rubin then noted the response to the AIPAC releaseby some of those attending a conference of Orthodox Jews in Washington:
The reaction among a number of informed attendees was amazement and sadness. Hadit come to this: that an indictment of the PA reads like an indictment of theadministration because in many respects the positions of the two are identical?
Bad news, Jennifer. It has indeed come to this. TheObama administration agreeswith the Palestinian Authority "that a Palestinian state will be based on thepre-June 1967 lines with mutually agreed land swaps."
Of course, that has been U.S. policy ever sinceIsrael captured the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem (and other territory) inthe June 1967 Six-Day War. It is encapsulated in United Nations SecurityCouncil Resolution242 (passed that year), which established the "land for peace" principleand which was endorsed by the United States, Israel, and the Arab states.
Security Council Resolution 242 provides for"[w]ithdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the recentconflict." In exchange, Israel is granted "[t]ermination of all claims or statesof belligerency and respect for and acknowledgement of the sovereignty,territorial integrity and political independence of every State in the area andtheir right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries free fromthreats or acts of force."
That's the deal. Land for peace. And it has been incorporatedboth in U.S. policy and in every agreement Israel has reached with thePalestinians since the Oslo Agreement in 1993. It has also been endorsed byevery Israeli prime minister since 1967.
One reason why prime ministers ranging from Rabin toBegin and Sharon have endorsed it is that they have been assured that any territorialwithdrawal would have to be "mutually agreed" upon and that the United Stateswill never support any withdrawal that would jeopardize Israel's security. Here is whatObama said on the security issue in his AIPAC speech:
As for security, everystate has the right to self-defense, and Israel must be able to defend itself —by itself — against any threat. Provisions must also be robust enough toprevent a resurgence of terrorism, to stop the infiltration of weapons, and toprovide effective border security. And a full and phased withdrawal of Israelimilitary forces should be coordinated with the assumption of Palestiniansecurity responsibility in a sovereign and non-militarized state. And theduration of this transition period must be agreed, and the effectiveness ofsecurity arrangements must be demonstrated.
The only recent amendment to the basicland-for-peace idea is the concept of "land swaps." Because successive Israeligovernments have insisted that it will not give up Jewish settlements adjacentto Israel, they devised the concept of "land swaps" under which Israel wouldhold on to certain territories in the West Bank in exchange for yielding land parcelsinside Israel. In other words, there would be no full return to the pre-June1967 borders, but rather a return to those borders with certain mutuallyagreed-upon modifications.
None of this is remotely controversial except amongIsrael's radical rightists, who oppose any and all land concessions toPalestinians, and among their counterparts, Palestinian extremists who recognizeno Jewish right to any part of historic Palestine.
And that is why Obama probably didn't think twicebefore he said,"The borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines withmutually agreed swaps, so that secure and recognized borders are establishedfor both states."
Why would he think anyone could take umbrage atthat?
And in fact no one would, except those who are flat-outopposed to peace between Israelis and Palestinians and believe that Israel mustnot cede any part of the West Bank. After all, how can peace be achievedunless it is built on the pre-June 1967 lines? (The alternative would be towork off the pre-May 1948 lines, which would put the Negev and parts of theGalilee on the table.)
So what was that AIPAC press release all about?
Rubin believes it was intended as a warning to Obama,although AIPAC itself saysshe is wrong.
In any case, AIPAC's commitment to maintaining thestatus quo goes well beyond an occasional warning to the president. Besides,Obama does not need additional warnings to remind him what AIPAC will do if hedares go beyond rhetoric in addressing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
He recalls how AIPAC enlisted its congressionalcutouts to back Netanyahu's position on settlements (and not the U.S. position)in 2009 and 2010, when he had the temerity to suggest a 90-day settlementfreeze. He has no illusions about what he is up against when he deviates, inany way, from Netanyahu's policy. He gets it.
So the AIPAC message was probably not designed tokeep Obama in line. It was designed to make sure that the 3 percent ofAmerican Jewish voters and donors who make their decisions on who to backfor president based on Israel understand that the "pro-Israel" litmus test for2012 is the 1967 lines.
It was to ensure that they carry that message toeach and every candidate for office from president on down. And it is tocorrect the impression still held by many of them that the acceptable (toAIPAC) position is support for negotiations over the lands Israel captured in 1967,as stipulated by Presidents Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush,Clinton, Bush and Obama.
That has now changed. AIPAC now favors negotiations,but not "based on the pre-June 1967 lines." In other words, AIPAC favors negotiationsonly in the abstract. It expects all those who want the benefits of beingdeemed "pro-Israel" to fall in line. Sadly, virtually all will.
Meanwhile, Israel's geostrategic position is rapidlydeteriorating, along with its popularity worldwide. The Palestinians havefinally recognized that the United States is not an "honest broker" and haveabandoned negotiations in favor of seeking recognition by the U.N. As for theUnited States, its standing in the Muslim world has never been lower — thankslargely to the unsurprising perception that the U.S. government is inNetanyahu's pocket.
But, hey, it's only a game — although, in this case,a deadly one. Party on, Democrats and Republicans.