In his address to the Knesset last week, President Bush sounded
like a different man from the one who called Israel an “occupying force” at the Annapolis Conference on
Palestinian Statehood last November, and demanded that the Middle
East’s lone functioning democracy make unilateral concessions to
its terrorist enemies as a show of “good faith.”
Perhaps in the hope of bolstering his legacy by pushing the
region toward a peace more lasting than any of his predecessors has
been able to achieve, Bush had invited Israel, the Fatah leadership
of the Palestinian West Bank, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and other
regional players to the conference. He asked them to put their
differences aside in order to work toward the best possible outcome
for both the Israelis and the Palestinians.
The fact that the meeting took place at all was a demonstration
of the administration’s willingness to subjugate consistency and
the keeping of its word for legacy building. To attract any states
other than Israel to the meeting, the administration had to
willingly drop several previously-required stipulations, including
that attendees simply recognize Israel’s right to exist.
Not only was that most basic of requirements waived for
attendance at Annapolis, but President Bush used his address at the
conference to betray his own word, as well as Israel’s rights as
the besieged lone free country in the region.
The Israelis “must show the world that they are ready to begin”
working toward peace, said Bush, by “bringing an end to the
occupation that began in 1967 through a negotiated settlement.” His
call for Israel to retract its borders to the indefensible 1949
armistice line not only demand that Israel almost completely
compromise its ability to defend its civilian population but,
worse, it directly contradicted the president’s 2001 promise to
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon that such a demand would
never be made of the Jewish state.
AT ANNAPOLIS, encouraged by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice,
Bush decided to ignore his letter to Sharon. He also shrugged off
his 2001 promise that the Israeli concessions proposed by President
Clinton in 2000 were “off the table.”
Instead, echoing the language used by Israel’s enemies in the
region, Bush demanded that “occupation” be ended and the state’s
borders be shrunk far past a defensible minimum simply as a
starting point for peace negotiations. This, again, came
without even requiring the other parties at the meeting to so much
as acknowledge Israel’s right to exist at all.
It should come as no surprise that, after Annapolis, the “peace
process” in the Levant has seen no progress. Israel, the lone free
and successful nation in a region known for the opposite, still
stands, a City on a Hill shining its light into a barren land,
while those who would see it destroyed make daily threats, and fire
their rockets into civilian populations.
To the south, Hamas continues to wage low-intensity war. Its
fighters tearing up water pipes and firing them into the southern
Israeli cities of Sderot and Ashkelon, as well as at the Israeli
power plant that supplies much of its electricity. Then its
spokesmen complain to all who will listen about the lack of
infrastructure.
To the north, Hezbollah has reasserted its position of
nongovernmental dominance in Lebanon, and continues to use the
platform there to launch attacks to the south and to the east,
where the U.S. continues to labor in hopes of pacifying and leaving
free the country of Iraq.
Further to the east is Iran, whose leaders continue to fight a
proxy war against both Israel and Iraq,while being ever more vocal
about the “coming end” of the “stinking corpse” that is the country
that they refer to as the “Zionist entity.”
THE PRESIDENT BUSH who addressed the Israeli Knesset last Thursday
appeared to be far more in touch with the reality of the Middle
East than the man who got lost in some disorienting fog in
November.
Rather than calling on Israel to make unilateral concessions to
those who call daily for a genocide that would result in its
citizens’ extermination, Bush praised Israel’s strong national
defense. Rather than spending his time talking about the
Palestinian people’s “many gifts and talents,” or echoing Dr.
Rice’s repeated assertions that those same Palestinians who shower
Israel with daily rocket attacks want the same things that both
Americans and Israelis want for their own lives and children, Bush
warned against any attempts to “explain away” the murderous words
and actions of Hamas, Hezbollah, and their ilk, saying:
[T]he founding charter of Hamas calls for the
“elimination” of Israel. …[T]he followers of Hezbollah chant
“Death to Israel, Death to America!” That is why Osama bin Laden
teaches that “the killing of Jews and Americans is one of the
biggest duties.” …[T]he President of Iran dreams of returning the
Middle East to the Middle Ages and calls for Israel to be wiped off
the map…There are good and decent people who cannot fathom the
darkness in these men and try to explain away their words. It’s
natural, but it is deadly wrong. As witnesses to evil in the past,
we carry a solemn responsibility to take these words seriously.
Jews and Americans have seen the consequences of disregarding the
words of leaders who espouse hatred. And that is a mistake the
world must not repeat in the 21st century.
The warnings and admonitions from Bush this time around suggest
that he learned his lesson from the failure of the Annapolis
appeasement conference to provoke real results in the region.
His Knesset speech also seemed to signal that Bush has returned
to his his rightful place, vis-a-vis Israel, in the
pantheon of American presidents — that is, as one of the more
stalwart supporters that the Jewish state has had, and the leader
of the greatest international ally Israel could hope for.
