#1008 5/17/20 – Good News, American Jews: Basis of Trump’s Peace Plan Antedates Trump

WHILE YOU STAND ON ONE LEG:  It seems to me inevitable that American Jews’ attitude toward President Trump affects to some extent our assessment of his “Deal of The Century.”  But I would have us see that “Deal,” which conflicts with UNSC 2334, not as a novel assertion by Trump of Jewish homeland equity over “the green line,” but as based on even liberal Israelis’ assertion of Jewish homeland claims asserted, e.g., by Rabin and Allon.  

Good News, American Jews:  Basis of Trump’s Peace Plan Antedates Trump

Among the terms of respect and endearment of the current occupant of what was once the Oral Office vouchsafed to me these days by Gentle Readers aware of my conservative political leanings have been “moron … disgusting human being … xenophobic, mysogenistic and narcissistic … .”  (I don’t even know what that next-to-last one means, but from the context it doesn’t seem flattering.)

But I write this week not to praise Trump but to put into perspective his Deal-Of-The-Century Arab-Jewish peace plan – not its nitty-gritty but its acknowledgement that the Jewish people has western Palestine, Jewish homeland, equity beyond “the green line.”  If it’s true that this is respected, indeed liberal, Jewish homeland advocates’ long-standing position, not just some disgusting, xenophobic, mysogenistic, narcissistic moron’s latest mouthing, then perhaps more grassroots American Jews presently frightened off by our horrified communal leaders from taking a good look at it will take more of a look at it.

Trump did not invent the claim of a Jewish connection to Judea, Samaria and historic Jerusalem antedating, as the media confines it, “their capture by Israel in 1967.”  Nor was he, or Bibi, or the Likud, the first to recognize that the 1949 ceasefire lines were indefensibly lowland and narrow and that it would be inviting invasion, and surrendering the homeland’s core Jewishness, for Israel to withdraw back to them.  The liberal Eban called those 1949 ceasefire lines “Auschwitz lines.”  Post-’67 War UNSC 242 recognized that those lines were not secure boundaries.  Every Israeli leader who spoke at the liberated Western Wall in June 1967 swore Israel would never walk out of historic Jerusalem.  Allon’s “Allon Plan” envisioned the Jordan Valley as Israel’s eastern defense line.  The Trump plan itself quotes Rabin as a precedent for its view:

     “Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin, who signed the Oslo Accords and who in 1995 gave his life to the cause of peace, outlined in his last speech to the Israeli Knesset his vision regarding the ultimate resolution of the conflict.  He envisioned Jerusalem remaining united under Israeli rule, the portions of the West Bank with large Jewish populations and the Jordan Valley being incorporated into Israel, and the remainder of the West Bank, along with Gaza, becoming subject to Palestinian civil autonomy in what he said would be something ‘less than a state.’  Rabin’s vision was the basis upon which the Knesset approved the Oslo Accords, and it was not rejected by the Palestinian leadership at the time.”

There are material differences between Allon’s and Rabin’s plans (see, e.g., Atlas and Langfan, Jerusalem Post, 8/31/92), and between both and Trump’s.  But the underlying claim is the same.  As the Trump plan puts it, Judea-Samaria and historic Jerusalem are “territory to which Israel has asserted valid legal and historical claims, and which are part of the ancestral homeland of the Jewish people.”  This is in direct conflict with, e.g., UNSC 2334, which calls them not disputed territory but “Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, including East Jerusalem,” to which the UN “will not recognize any changes to the 4 June 1967 lines, including with regard to Jerusalem”; with the EU product [and people] labeling act, which calls Jews there of “foreign origin”; and with the American Jewish Reform and Conservative religious movements, which decry Israeli “annexation” in “the West Bank” and call for borders that “hew precisely” to “the 1967 borders” save for any agreed-in-writing “territorial adjustments.”

The choice confronting American Jews today is not between supporting either “The Deal of The Century” or a western Palestine “Two-State Solution.”  As down-to-earth Israeli grandmother pundit Arlene Kushner (highly recommended by me, www.arlenefromisrael.info) observed this week (posting 5/13/20), Trump’s “Peace To Prosperity” plan provides for immediate application now of Israeli law to only 30% of Judea-Samaria, with a potential Palestinian Arab state “to be established within the next four years if certain criteria are met.”

American Jews’ choice is between asserting the Jewish people’s homeland claim to Judea-Samaria and historic Jerusalem or conceding these parts of the land of Israel as “occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem.”

It’s not for us, but for Israeli Jews, who defend Israel’s boundaries, and have done so with extraordinary sacrifice and courage, to decide whether to defend on the east the half-century existing defensible natural boundary of the Jordan River, encompassing the entire historic Jewish homeland within it, or the old 1949 ceasefire line boundary, leaving Judea-Samaria and historic Jerusalem outside it, and falling, in the heavily-populated lowland middle, less than ten miles from the Sea.