About Mark Silverberg Mark Silverberg is an attorney
with a Masters Degree in Political Science and International
Relations from the University of Manitoba, Canada. A former
member of the Canadian Justice Department and a past Director of
the Canadian Jewish Congress (Western Office) based in
Vancouver, he served as a Consultant to the Secretary General of
the Jewish Agency in Jerusalem during the first Palestinian
intifada. He is a member of Hadassah's National Academic
Advisory Board, a foreign policy analyst with the Ariel Center
for Policy Research (Israel) and the International Analyst
Network (U.S.), and has been interviewed on Israel National
Radio as an authority on American foreign policy in the Middle
East. His editorials and articles on Middle East affairs have
appeared in the Hebrew and English editions of the NATIV Journal
of the Ariel Center for Policy Research (Israel), American
Thinker, Israel Insider, the Conservative Voice, Israel Unity
Coalition, Midstream and Outpost magazines and Arutz Sheva
(Israel National News). He has lectured extensively on subjects
of counterterrorism, jihadism, homeland security issues and
intelligence matters and is a Featured Writer with the New Media
Journal
(Chicago) and a Contributing Editor for Family Security Matters.
He is the author of "The Quartermasters of Terror: Saudi Arabia
and the Global Islamic Jihad (Wyndham Hall Press, 2005).
Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s speech at Bar-Ilan University's
Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies on June 14th was more than an
exercise in judicious phraseology. It returned realism to Israeli
foreign policy and set out a clear and precise diplomatic formula that
reflects the worldview of the Israeli majority. Rather than dwell on
issues secondary to Israel's survival, he set forth the principles upon
which a lasting peace could be achieved. His speech was historic, if
only because it set aside rhetoric in favor of political realities.
With the experience of Gaza fixed in his mind, Netanyahu insisted that
any future Palestinian state must be denied an army, denied the right to
import weapons, denied control over its air space, and denied the
capacity to enter into alliances with terrorist regimes like Iran. By
imposing these conditions, he put the world on notice that Israeli
support for Palestinian statehood would no longer come at Israel’s
expense.
Instead of leaving the complex issues of Jerusalem, refugees and
recognition of a Jewish state for “final status talks” in the hope that
the peace process would create new "facts on the ground", he laid out
the basic principles upon which there could be no compromise – no “right
of return”
for Palestinian refugees (other than to their own state), Palestinian
recognition of the right of the Jewish people to self-determination - a
right the Palestinians demand for themselves, but deny to the Israelis -
and no division of Jerusalem. These demands were based on Jewish
national and historical connections to the Land stretching back 3,500
years. On the other hand, despite Arab claims to the contrary, there has
never been a Palestinian Arab state at any point in history much less
with Jerusalem as its capital.
Netanyahu’s approach breaks from established tradition. In the past, the
Arabs offered “peace proposals” as incentives for the US and Europeans
to pressure Israel into making strategically important concessions that
would have led to the gradual destruction of the Jewish state. Israel
then made counterproposals that inevitably were rejected by the Arabs,
at which point, the Western powers came up with new “peace initiatives”
and the cycle repeated itself. This time, however, Netanyahu demanded
that Israel be recognized as a Jewish state in the first instance,
inferring that the Arab world must move beyond Dar al Islam (the
theological doctrine that all lands once ruled by Islam remain part of
the Islamic trust and must be re-conquered) and accept the fact that the
land now dominated by Israel has been irrevocably lost to the Jewish
people just as Andalusia - the Moorish Kingdom of Southern Spain - was
lost to Christendom over five hundred years ago. Only when this
psychological and political barrier has been crossed can the
Arab-Israeli conflict be resolved.
The problem, of course, is that the Arab world is not prepared to forego
Dar al Islam or accept a Jewish-majority state in the Middle East
anytime soon. The Palestinian reaction to his speech included insults
like "worthless and meaningless," "nothing but a hoax," that it had
"destroyed all peace initiatives and [chances for] a solution," and some
even went as far as accusing Netanyahu of being "a liar and a crook."
The chief Palestinian negotiator, Saab Erakat, announced that, "In a
thousand years, no Palestinian leader will accept this."
In the Arab mindset, Israel, as a Jewish State, remains an enemy to be
destroyed. The Palestinians understand very well that if they are denied
the right to flood Israel with Arab refugees, denied Jerusalem as an
Arab capital, and are forced to accept the right of the Jewish people to
self-determination in a Jewish state in their midst, their master plan
for the phased destruction of Israel would be at an end, and they would
have no option other than to share the land with the Jews.
Netanyahu’s fundamental principles for resolving the Arab-Israeli
conflict may do little to pacify the Arab world, the international
media, or the diplomatic corps in Brussels or Washington, but at least
he has set forth his parameters for future negotiations. Arab acceptance
of the three conditions he outlined will not necessarily guarantee
peace, but the absence of their acceptance absolutely guarantees future
wars. Nations can compromise on many things, but never the terms of
their existence.
