“OK, here’s my idea for how we can stick it to Bibi…”
As you may remember, Shimon Peres and Yossi Beilin carried on pre-Oslo agreement negotiations with the PLO behind the backs of Prime Ministers Shamir and Rabin, and then presented the deal as a fait accompli to Rabin. One doesn’t know how Rabin felt about it in his heart (although the look on his face when he shook hands with Arafat on the White House lawn might give us a clue), but publicly he had no choice but to embrace the initiative and do his best to minimize the damage.
Communicating with the PLO was still against the law in Israel in 1992, and while a Foreign Minister — as Peres became in Rabin’s administration — is certainly permitted to engage in secret diplomacy, to do so in such a sensitive context without notifying the PM is unethical and borders on treason.
But Peres got his Nobel prize (and Israel got the Second Intifada and more than a thousand fresh graves) as a result. And now he — along with one of the most cynical of Israeli politicians, the drooling-with-lust-for-power Tzipi Livni, he has apparently engaged yet again in private diplomacy.
Livni confirmed that she and Peres, now a private citizen, approached US Secretary of State John Kerry and suggested that he delay the UN Security Council vote on a PLO proposal to force Israel to withdraw from Judea and Samaria until after Israeli elections, because a vote now would help her opponents Benjamin Netanyahu and Naftali Bennett. According to a report in Foreign Policy Magazine, Kerry told EU envoys at a recent meeting in that the US would indeed follow their advice.
“Kerry has been very, very clear that for the United States it was not an option to discuss whatever text before the end of the Israeli election,” according to a European diplomat.
The diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the luncheon was confidential, said that Kerry explained that Israel’s liberal political leaders, Shimon Peres and Tipzi Livni, had expressed concern that a Security Council move to pressure Israel on the eve of election would only strengthen the hands of Israeli hardliners, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and Naftali Bennett, an implacable foe of a Palestinian state and leader of the right-wing Jewish Home party. Netanyahu is also fiercely opposed to the Palestinians effort to secure Security Council backing for its statehood drive.
It’s hard to imagine worse behavior for a political candidate than to conspire with a foreign power — one whose objectives in this area are clearly opposed to Israel’s — in order to advance her candidacy, which is what Livni has done (with the help of practiced conspirator Peres).
The State Department has recently strongly suggested that the US would veto such a Palestinian resolution. Postponing the vote might well be against Israel’s interest, since it’s hard to predict what the US attitude will be in the future.
But apparently Livni and Peres think it is in the interest of the Labor party. Because nothing is more urgent for the impotent Left than getting into power.
I had predicted this past October that after the mid-term elections here in the U.S., the PA statehood resolution would be submitted to the UNSC and it would pass.
Apparently, I was nearly right.
After all, if the U.S. had intended to veto it all along, then what Livni/Peres have done as detailed above would have been unnecessary. If the U.S. would have vetoed it anyway, this episode would have had no impact on the upcoming Israeli elections. If anything, a UNSC vote and U.S. veto would have strengthened left/liberals in Israel who still maintain that Obama can be trusted as an ally of Israel, with the obvious subtext that Netanyahu/Bennett are “hotheads” whose “baseless paranoia” concerning Obama comprises the root cause of the unprecedented strains in state-level U.S.-Israeli relations.
It is good that what Vic details above is in the public domain. One would hope that this news is spread among as many members of the Israeli public as possible, since such a subterfuge as this would now backfire as a result.
Fortunately as well, it is good that any prospective UN vote of this nature has now been put past the swearing in of the new U.S. Congress, which takes place in less than two weeks as of this writing. While Congress could not absolutely stop Obama from witholding a veto, a genuinely and staunchly pro-Israel Congress of the type we now have could exert significant pressure against the same.
Foreign policy is the President’s realm in the US. Our President has intentionally signed off on an Iranian nuclear weapon, implicitly endorsed Assad’s continued use of chemical weapons, allowed the survival of Da’esh (as you say for ISIS) by half-hearted airstrikes, prosecuted Hamas’ agenda and the furtherance of Qatari and Turkish interests in Gaza, declared an opening to Cuba, pursued nuclear weapons reductions with Russia while the latter is in violation of prior treaties, spurred Chinese adventurism in the waters surrounding that country no matter how they impinge on our allies in the vicinity by ignoring Chinese provocation, …–this paragraph could literally go on for a 1,000 more words and not reach the end of the perfidy.
There should be absolutely no illusion about our President wanting to cripple Israel by any means to impose conduct the norm of which is out of some fevered mind. It is a sign of the Administration’s sophistication and ability to command attention for its benighted policies–to be taken seriously–and lack of a determined opposition in the foreign policy arena, that it can continue to promote and self-congratulate for its military cooperation with Israel as an asset while at the same time damning it for using weaponry to defend itself, and doing little to keep diplomatic pressure from off Israel’s back, no matter its quarter, and most likely egging on the assault at the UN.
Into this riot, the Palestinian, read Arab, quest to destroy Israel is a constant prod to be wielded by our President that directly saps Israeli legitimacy, supports terrorism and rewards Muslim revanchist ambitions everywhere.
Obama is protected from impeachment and being called out for his treason (may none dare call it such?) by being the first black President. The media here will not dwell on any scandal with any sort of perspicacity; this is our American tragedy of the moment… two more years of Obama smashing up our Republic. Somehow, the the ordinary citizen must believe that we will survive this President.
How is it that Livni and Peres escape a political demise and public opprobrium when Israeli survival is at stake? Their treason seems broadly acceptable to a significant portion of the electorate. Do Israelis really believe that their prospects improve as a nation by the constant interference in their democracy by the double-dealing of these supposed statesmen and their European parliamentarian and American co-conspirators, by the enmity our own President injects into their polity? Is this minority willing to be complicit in undoing the country? Are they the minority?