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发帖数: 38600 | 1 September 17, 2011
Israel: Adrift at Sea AloneBy THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
I’VE never been more worried about Israel’s future. The crumbling of key
pillars of Israel’s security — the peace with Egypt, the stability of
Syria and the friendship of Turkey and Jordan — coupled with the most
diplomatically inept and strategically incompetent government in Israel’s
history have put Israel in a very dangerous situation.
This has also left the U.S. government fed up with Israel’s leadership but
a hostage to its ineptitude, because the powerful pro-Israel lobby in an
election season can force the administration to defend Israel at the U.N.,
even when it knows Israel is pursuing policies not in its own interest or
America’s.
Israel is not responsible for the toppling of President Hosni Mubarak of
Egypt or for the uprising in Syria or for Turkey’s decision to seek
regional leadership by cynically trashing Israel or for the fracturing of
the Palestinian national movement between the West Bank and Gaza. What
Israel’s prime minister, Bibi Netanyahu, is responsible for is failing to
put forth a strategy to respond to all of these in a way that protects
Israel’s long-term interests.
O.K., Mr. Netanyahu has a strategy: Do nothing vis-à-vis the Palestinians
or Turkey that will require him to go against his base, compromise his
ideology or antagonize his key coalition partner, Foreign Minister Avigdor
Lieberman, an extreme right-winger. Then, call on the U.S. to stop Iran’s
nuclear program and help Israel out of every pickle, but make sure that
President Obama can’t ask for anything in return — like halting Israeli
settlements — by mobilizing Republicans in Congress to box in Obama and by
encouraging Jewish leaders to suggest that Obama is hostile to Israel and is
losing the Jewish vote. And meanwhile, get the Israel lobby to hammer
anyone in the administration or Congress who says aloud that maybe Bibi has
made some mistakes, not just Barack. There, who says Mr. Netanyahu doesn’t
have a strategy?
“The years-long diplomatic effort to integrate Israel as an accepted
neighbor in the Middle East collapsed this week, with the expulsion of the
Israeli ambassadors from Ankara and Cairo, and the rushed evacuation of the
embassy staff from Amman,” wrote Haaretz newspaper’s Aluf Benn. “The
region is spewing out the Jewish state, which is increasingly shutting
itself off behind fortified walls, under a leadership that refuses any
change, movement or reform ... Netanyahu demonstrated utter passivity in the
face of the dramatic changes in the region, and allowed his rivals to seize
the initiative and set the agenda.”
What could Israel have done? The Palestinian Authority, which has made
concrete strides in the past five years at building the institutions and
security forces of a state in the West Bank — making life there quieter
than ever for Israel — finally said to itself: “Our state-building has not
prompted Israel to halt settlements or engage in steps to separate, so all
we’re doing is sustaining Israel’s occupation. Let’s go to the U.N., get
recognized as a state within the 1967 borders and fight Israel that way.”
Once this was clear, Israel should have either put out its own peace plan or
tried to shape the U.N. diplomacy with its own resolution that reaffirmed
the right of both the Palestinian and the Jewish people to a state in
historic Palestine and reignited negotiations.
Mr. Netanyahu did neither. Now the U.S. is scrambling to defuse the crisis,
so the U.S. does not have to cast a U.N. veto on a Palestinian state, which
could be disastrous in an Arab world increasingly moving toward more popular
self-rule.
On Turkey, the Obama team and Mr. Netanyahu’s lawyers worked tirelessly
these last two months to resolve the crisis stemming from the killing by
Israeli commandos of Turkish civilians in the May 2010 Turkish aid flotilla
that recklessly tried to land in Gaza. Turkey was demanding an apology.
According to an exhaustive article about the talks by the Israeli columnist
Nahum Barnea of the Yediot Aharonot newspaper, the two sides agreed that
Israel would apologize only for “operational mistakes” and the Turks would
agree to not raise legal claims. Bibi then undercut his own lawyers and
rejected the deal, out of national pride and fear that Mr. Lieberman would
use it against him. So Turkey threw out the Israeli ambassador.
As for Egypt, stability has left the building there and any new Egyptian
government is going to be subjected to more populist pressures on Israel.
Some of this is unavoidable, but why not have a strategy to minimize it by
Israel putting a real peace map on the table?
I have great sympathy for Israel’s strategic dilemma and no illusions about
its enemies. But Israel today is giving its friends — and President Obama
’s one of them — nothing to defend it with. Israel can fight with everyone
or it can choose not to surrender but to blunt these trends with a peace
overture that fair-minded people would recognize as serious, and thereby
reduce its isolation.
Unfortunately, Israel today does not have a leader or a cabinet for such
subtle diplomacy. One can only hope that the Israeli people will recognize
this before this government plunges Israel into deeper global isolation and
drags America along with it. | x********v
发帖数: 2535 | 2 其实把以色列人全部移民到美国，是对以色列人最好的解决办法。 | r**********g
发帖数: 22734 | 3 那还不如元首的办法好
【在 x********v 的大作中提到】
: 其实把以色列人全部移民到美国，是对以色列人最好的解决办法。
| x********v
发帖数: 2535 | 4 那样对以色列人不好啊。移民美国是对以色列人好。
【在 r**********g 的大作中提到】
: 那还不如元首的办法好
| r**********g
发帖数: 22734 | 5 有啥不好，反正上帝选了他们，早日去和上帝团聚有什么不好
【在 x********v 的大作中提到】
: 那样对以色列人不好啊。移民美国是对以色列人好。
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