The people behind land-for-peace

The Palestinian state pretext that would have Israel back to pre-1967 borders was never aimed at solving the Arab refugee problem.

By SHEILA LAMPERT
US president Jimmy Carter's behavior at Camp David leading up to the signing of the Accords between Israel and Egypt may have ranged somewhere between naive and diabolical, you decide. As the self-described honest broker, his pressure on Menachem Begin to give up complete control of the Sinai, the West Bank and the Golan Heights never ended. And the Camp David Accords he engineered required Israel to turn over 100% of the Sinai to Egypt. Yet our own US Joint Chiefs of Staff report, kept classified until after Carter left office, would have told him that Israel's minimum security required the retention of significant portions of all three. Mikhail Gorbachev's views of security for the then Soviet Union were at odds with Carter's view of Israel's security needs. He insisted that we in the West did not understand that for the Soviets (280 million people on eight million square miles) security was their most basic need. So his objection to a re-unified Germany was uncompromising. As he saw it, a united Germany with 80 million people might want to expand. But like Carter, he deemed Israel's return to pre-1967 borders perfectly acceptable. Borders that would leave its four million Jews a country of 8,000 square miles, with a third of its length under 25 miles wide, its center under 10 miles wide, and its Jerusalem capital on the border and vulnerable to attack. That there were concrete plans for Israel's destruction made no difference to either one. White House perceptions of US security needs under presidents Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush when faced with a minor enemy state located some 2,000 miles from Washington, DC, also differed from Carter's notions of Israel's needs. Grenada's leaning toward Cuba, and perhaps eventually the Soviets, warranted a US invasion. Panama's Assembly putting strongman General Manuel Noriega in power and declaring the country "at war with the US" called for another US invasion. Decades after leaving the White House, Carter described himself as "knowing about as much about the Middle East as anyone." How is it possible that, while serving as president with a host of military and Middle East advisors, he didn't know of the Chiefs of Staff report, or that the impossible-to-defend pre-1967 borders would be suicidal? And if Carter knew, what does his pressuring Begin to return to those suicidal borders say about his agenda, his ethics, his morals? He has gone on to call Israel an apartheid state; but apart-hate, much like beauty, is in the eyes of the beholder. Still, if his expertise, his morality and his "vision" are acceptable, consider joining the Saudis in funding the Carter library. The Palestinian state pretext that would have Israel back to pre-1967 borders was never aimed at solving the Arab refugee problem created by Arab wars. That problem could and would have been solved during the 19 years that the West Bank and Gaza were in Arab hands and the refugees were a small fraction of their present number. Or at any time since by sparsely populated Arab League states that occupy more land than the US with Mexico and a few Central Americas thrown in more land than 2,000 Gazas plus 2,000 West Banks. The destruction of Israel as Step I and the destruction of Lebanon as Step II are summed up by the Arab slogan: "First the Saturday people, then the Sunday people!" The goal: cleansing the Sea of Islam of unclean dhimmi islands. With Lebanon under the Syrian thumb, that order may change. Islam itself provides the overall takeover plan by dividing the earth into two parts: Dar al-Islam, the domain where Muslims already rule, and Dar al-Harb, the domain of war, where Muslims have yet to take control. Muslims know they are obligated to war for control of non-Muslim lands. But is anyone else paying attention? President George W. Bush, a man of unquestioned good will towards Israel, has so much on his plate, from Iraq and Iran to Afghanistan and Pakistan, and more, he cannot be fully focused on the Jewish state. That's why, when he is pressuring Israel to leave areas essential to its survival, his advisors deserve careful scrutiny. Like those at the James Baker Center. As secretary of state James Baker had to know that Arabs and Jews were not one people, that Israelis were outnumbered 30:1 and outspent countless times for military equipment, that Israel's borders were rarely quiet. Yet Baker demanded Israel's return to the indefensible pre-1967 borders that leave one-third of the country under 25 miles wide, its center just nine miles wide and its capital, Jerusalem right on the border. But consider his satellite interview from Seoul. Although North and South Koreans were one people (although the South outnumbered the North 2-to-1 and according to John Pike outspent the North 3-to-1 for defense, and although their shared border had been quiet for decades, Baker maintained that the US could not leave the South because Seoul was 25 miles from the border and vulnerable to attack from the North. Except for Israelis being outnumbered by a factor greater than 30 times and facing far greater amounts of more sophisticated weapons, since then nothing has really changed. Yet Baker's demands that Israel return to the suicidal pre-1967 borders, the ones Abba Eban labeled "Auschwitz borders," have not been recognized for what they are and discarded. Instead those demands, the cornerstone of the Saudi Middle East "Peace" Plan are voiced through the James Baker Center that guides the Middle East policy of today's White House. And the voices now chanting those demands have been supported by more petrodollars than could have been imagined back in the days of the satellite interview from Seoul. Can we call it coincidental that Baker served as senior counsel for and shareholder in the heavily-influenced-by-the-Saudis Carlyle Group, where in 2001 shareholder stakes averaged 180 million dollars? As coincidental perhaps as Condaleeza Rice's serving for many years on the directorate of the heavily-influenced-by-the-Saudis Chevron, for unspecified but no doubt hefty fees? (see Robert Baer's book Sleeping with The Devil) Truly he who pays the piper calls the tune. All that remains is for Ehud Olmert, a publicity addict and reputedly on-the-take prime minister, to appear on stage at Annapolis and dance to the music.