When Netanyahu recently announced that this land belongs to the Jewish people, all of it, it merely harked back to the 1996 document, “A Clean Break” and the Likud Orwellian dictum: ‘no land for peace, peace for peace.’ A Clean Break essentially meant a break from the Oslo Accords, which had promised, falsely, to achieve peace between the Israelis and Palestinians through a two state solution. It was the Clinton era, the settling of the Palestinian territories by Israelis doubled, and then ended in the Camp David/Taba hoax.
So when Netanyahu recently committed himself to giving the Palestinians ‘economic peace’ rather than promoting the two state solution, the past returned. Economic peace means peace for peace, which means no two state solution.
A Clean Break will undoubtedly, once again, guide Likud policy in negotiations with the Palestinians as well as Washington. Only one change is notable. Instead of Iraq being the security issue, pushed by Neocons Wolfowicz and Feith (along with Richard Perle, a Clean Break author), today it is Iran. But there is also a new player on the field: Obama.
Obama’s recent pronouncement on two states suggests that a confrontation with the Likud government of Israel is inevitable. If understood correctly, it is a confrontation with an old if outmoded Neoconservative pro-Likud policy agenda.
Some idea of that agenda is given by this old report, July 8, 1996: Neoconservative Think Tank Advocates Aggressive Israeli Foreign Policy which provides clues as to where Netanyahu will be coming from.
The Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies, an Israeli think tank, published a paper titled “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm.” [Washington Times, 10/7/2002; Chicago Sun-Times, 3/6/2003] The paper, whose lead author is neoconservative Richard Perle, is meant to advise the new, right-wing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Other authors include: (Richard Perle was primarily responsible for the content of the paper) Meyrav Wurmser, the future director of the neoconservative Hudson Institute’s Center for Middle East Policy; her husband David Wurmser, the future chief adviser for Middle East policy for future vice-president Dick Cheney; neoconservative Douglas Feith, who will be the prime architect of the Iraq war; and a number of lesser-known neoconservatives, including James Colbert, Charles Fairbanks, Jr., Jeffrey T. Bergner, Jonathan Torop, and Robert Loewenberg.
(Here are some papers by this group:)
Rebuilding Zionism by Abandoning Past Policies – It advocates making a complete break with past policies by adopting a strategy “based on an entirely new intellectual foundation, one that restores strategic initiative and provides the nation the room to engage every possible energy on rebuilding Zionism….” [Guardian, 9/3/2002]
Aggressive, Militant Israeli Policy towards Arab Neighbors – Much along the lines of an earlier paper by Israeli Oded Yinon (see February 1982), the document urges the Israelis to aggressively seek the downfall of their Arab neighbors–especially Syria and Iraq–by exploiting the inherent tensions within and among the Arab States. The first step is to be the removal of Saddam Hussein in Iraq. A war with Iraq will destabilize the entire Middle East, allowing governments in Syria, Iran, Lebanon, and other countries to be replaced. “Israel will not only contain its foes; it will transcend them,” the paper says. [Perle, 7/8/1996; Guardian, 9/3/2002; Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 3/19/2003] Iraq is first on the list of nations to be transformed. Saddam Hussein must be overthrown, the authors say. But Iraq has long served as a counterweight to the Shi’ite theocracy of Iran; with the two at loggerheads, neither could pose as serious a threat to Israel as it could if not opposed by the other. To counter this, Perle and his co-authors propose restoring the Hashemites (an ancient Arab dynasty; King Faisal I of Iraq was a Hashemite) to power. Instead of the largely Shi’ite Iraqis aligning themselves with their fellow Shi’a in Iran after Hussein’s overthrow, the Hashemite government would align itself with the pro-Western Jordan, long a Hashemite regime. Unfortunately, the authors propose no plan to actually make such an extraordinary regime succession happen, nor do they seem concerned with some Iraqi Shi’ites’ alignment with Islamist terrorists or with many Shi’ites’ close ties to Iran. [Unger, 2007, pp. 145-148]
Abandoning Oslo Accords, Militant Palestinian Policy – Other suggestions for Israel include abandoning the Oslo Accords, developing a foreign policy based on a traditional balance of power strategy, reserving its right to invade the West Bank and Gaza Strip as part of a strategy of “self-defense,” abandoning any notion of “land for peace,” reestablishing a policy of preemptive strikes, forging closer ties to the US while taking steps towards self-reliance, and seeking an alternative to Yasser Arafat as leader of the PLO. [Perle, 7/8/1996]
Similar to American Christian Right’s Vision – According to author Craig Unger, the ideology of “ACB” is, in essence, a secularized version of the theology of the American Christian Right. Christian Zionists insist that Jews were ordained by God to reclaim the Biblican land of Judea and Samaria in the West Bank; the paper asserts that claim as well. The paper echoes Christian fundamentalists by demanding “the unconditional acceptance of Arabs of our rights, especially in their territorial dimension.” Perle and his fellow neoconservatives want to push the boundaries even further: the Bible can be interpreted to countenance Jewish dominion over all or parts of Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, and even Saudi Arabia. Thusly, the authors claim that Israel and the US, by waging war against Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon, would reshape the “strategic environment” in the Middle East and greatly expand Israel’s influence in the region.
Influence in Upcoming Bush Administration – Perle will later become chairman of President Bush’s influential Defense Policy Board and will be instrumental is moving Bush’s US policy toward war with Iraq after the 9/11 attacks, as will Feith and the Wurmsers. [Unger, 2007, pp. 145-148]
The Perle task force to advise Netanyahu was set up by the Jerusalem based Institute for Advanced Stategic and Political Studies, where Wurmser was working. A key part of the plan was to get the United States to pull out of peace negotiations and simply let Israel take care of the Palestinians as it saw fit. “Israel,” said the report, “can manage it’s own affairs. Such self-reliance will grant Israel greater freedom of action and remove a significant lever of pressure used against it in the past.”
This old material is not as old as one might think.’Peace for peace’ still remains Netanyahu’s vision for the Palestinians, even though it is now voiced as ‘economic peace.’
These Haaretz articles show that to be the case:
Netanyahu: I will hold peace talks with Palestinian Authority
Prime Minister-designate Benjamin Netanyahu vowed Wednesday to engage in peace negotiations with the Palestinian Authority, in an apparent bid to ease concerns that he will try to freeze past peace efforts once he takes office.
(snip)
Netanyahu has said in the past that instead of talking about contentious issues such as the status of Jerusalem, the first step to a lasting peace needs to be the fostering of the Palestinians’ economic situation.
Netanyahu’s opening gambit: A special body on ‘economic peace’
As soon as he is sworn in as Israel’s next prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu plans to hold a series of consultations aimed at crystallizing his new government’s policy on the Palestinians.
Netanyahu’s first act toward this end will be the formation of an administrative body whose task is to promote economic peace with the Palestinians. The department will have a mandate to concentrate the government’s activities vis-a-vis the international community, particularly with the Quartet’s special envoy to the region, Tony Blair, and the Palestinian Authority. Netanyahu’s government will seek to advance some 25 economic initiatives in the West Bank.
As Yoggi Berra put it: it’s deja vu all over again. ‘No land for peace; peace for peace.’
