After decades, perhaps centuries, in which we, Jews, have been able to count on the Arabs to rescue us from the catastrophic errors of our own leaders by committing even worse errors—as the late Abba Eban put it: The Arabs never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity—we may be up against the first Arab who is a whole lot better than us at using opportunities, and how.

Mahmoud Abbas, whom Arabs and Israelis call by his nom de guerre Abu Mazen, has figured out how to outmaneuver his opponent, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and how to defeat the greatest democracy with the strongest army in the region. Frankly, the only real hope Israel has at the moment is that some Palestinian idiot would assassinate the crafty Abbas, and leave Netanyahu to deal with leaders to whom he can measure up.

Secretary of State John Kerry is coming to town next week, ready to twist Israeli arms, and we might as well face up to it: the Obama and Kerry visits have been planned as a one-two punch, with Abu Mazen being heavily prompted to let America do the job for him.

When Barack Obama was making nice with our children in Jerusalem, he made a statement that, at the time, sounded like a rebuke to the Palestinians, who had been insisting that the precondition to renewing talks on peace with the Israelis is a new settlement freeze.

That one was right out of Abba Eban’s book of missing opportunities. Netanyahu tried a settlement freeze early on in his second term. It didn’t bring the Arabs to the table, but it did create a fervent resentment against him among settlers, who responded by doubling Naftali Bennett’s Jewish Home Knesset faction, all at the expense of Bibi’s Likud party.

Palestinian sovereignty and Israeli security are “the core issue,” Obama told Abbas in Ramallah. “If we solve those two problems, the settlement problem will be solved.”

It wasn’t a rebuke, it was golden advise, it was the kind of strategic thinking the Palestinians had not been able to generate, with the glaring exception of the UN assembly statehood vote – which was Abu Mazen’s brainchild, he managed to break the fundamental rules of the Oslo Accords and got away with it relatively unscathed.

Now the PA president has announced that he won’t be asking for settlements freeze as a precondition, he wants to see a map instead. Let Mr. Netanyahu bring to the first meeting of the new round of negotiations his version of where the new Palestinian state should be.

It sounds so harmless. After all, what’s more logical than starting the wheeling and dealing with each side showing where they think the new border should run in the future. One side wants this much, the other side wants only this much – and they’ll reach a compromise.

In reality, this demand robs Netanyahu of his entire arsenal of negotiation moves. In Netanyahu’s play book, you get to map drawing in the distant future, years from now, after a lengthy series of small moves, tweaks, minute gestures, back and forth. If he shows his map at the start, then the future borders become the one and only topic of negotiations, everything else is moot, the battle has been lost before it began.

Meanwhile, AFP reports, President Mahmoud Abbas will temporarily refrain from unilateral action against Israel at the UN and other international arenas, to give U.S.-brokered peace talks a chance to resume.

For a couple of months, the Palestinians will nobly “refrain from taking a case against Israel to the International Criminal Court,” an anonymous Palestinian source told AFP.

But the same official warned that if Israel failed to halt settlement building, the PA would immediately begin working through the international bodies again.

“Settlement building in E1 is a red line and erecting so much as one stone in the area … would destroy the two-state solution,” he said.

Speaking of stones, the PA has been utilizing those very well, along with firebombs, sending bands of angry, unemployed youths to literally get themselves killed by challenging IDF units all across Judea and Samaria. Two Arab teenagers have already been killed, and young Arabs in the Hebron area continued to clash with Israeli troops all day Thursday, protesting the death of Maysara Abu Hamdiyeh, who was serving a long prison sentence for attempted murder, in Israeli custody. Abu Hamdiyeh died from cancer which the Israeli prison system failed to cure.

Dan Senor, American author of Start Up Nation and former adviser to U.S. presidential candidate Mitt Romney, sent out an electrifying message on Israel’s election day, January 22, claiming that two U.S. officials in Israel quietly conceded that President Obama’s statements to Atlantic columnist Jeffrey Goldberg were an intentional effort to hurt Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu in the election.

If what Senor claims is true, and President Obama was attempting to influence the Israeli election, it is possible that it could become the subject of a congressional investigation.

The statements at issue were revealed in an article Goldberg wrote for Bloomberg on January 14.  That article, the headline of which was, “Obama: Israel Doesn’t Know What its Best Interests Are,” was filled with insider dish from Goldberg, and it was ugly.

Among the things that Goldberg claimed Obama has said about Netanyahu were that his policies were “self-defeating,” that “Israel doesn’t know what its own interests are,” and that “Netanyahu is moving his country down the path toward near-total isolation.”  Goldberg wrote that Obama made these comments frequently, and to several people.

The particular impetus for Obama’s dissing of the Israeli Prime Minister, according to Goldberg, was the decision to go ahead with building Jewish homes in Mevaseret Adumim (often referred to by the impersonal designation “E1.”)  The decision to go forward with building in this area came on the heels of the United Nations vote upgrading the status of the Palestinian Authority to non-member observer state in November of last year.

Goldberg, a centrist liberal Jewish writer who is considered to have credible access to the White House, opined in his article that

On matters related to the Palestinians, the president seems to view the prime minister as a political coward, an essentially unchallenged leader who nevertheless is unwilling to lead or spend political capital to advance the cause of compromise.

It is tempting to believe that Goldberg suffers from excessive hubris and confused his own views for that of the president’s.  But Senor’s tweet reveals that U.S. officials understood that what President Obama was doing was issuing a not so subtly veiled threat to the Israeli people that the U.S. may be willing to really put daylight between itself and Israel unless they choose a less intractable prime minister.

This is the Senor message and several responses.

On Saturday, Palestinians tried to set up another illegal outpost. This latest attempt was in the Jordan Valley, near the town of Maskiot.

Border Police took down the 19 tents. No Arabs were arrested, and injuries were reported on either side.

Last week, Arabs set up an illegal outpost in E1, near Maaleh Adumim, which was eventually taken down.

On Friday, the Arabs built an illegal tent outpost next to Ramot in Jerusalem.

Israeli security forces have begun removal of the illegal Arab tent encampment in E1, the area between Maaleh Adumim and Jerusalem.

Last week, Israel security forces were taken by surprise by an Arab initiative to try to illegally settle on the E1 location, and create facts on the ground.

At the time, the Israeli Supreme Court blocked the removal of the sham village, but eventually allowed Israel to evacuate the provocateurs, but not touch the tents.

On Wednesday, the Supreme Court accepted the State’s position that the E1 tent village was illegal, and rejected the Arab claim that it was a temporary “tourist initiative” that would stay until May.

During the early hours of Sunday morning, the Israeli police successfully managed to evacuate, without violence, 100 Arab activists/provocateurs who entered the E1 area between Jerusalem and Maaleh Adumim and set up an illegal tent camp, claiming the area as a new Arab village.

The government’s plan to evacuate the activists on Friday was derailed by an Israeli Supreme Court injunction.

500 policemen took part in the evacuation on Sunday morning.

Due to the court’s injunction, the police left the tent city up, while the State explained to the court that the sole purpose of the tent camp was to create an international incident.

It’s unclear how it happened that the Israeli Intelligence services were completely unprepared for this provocation, as the activists had been openly talking about their plans to set up the tent city in E1 for the past week on Twitter and Facebook.

If someone tells you that all of your property belongs to him and he will get it and dispossess you no matter how long it takes, then would you suggest that he take half of it now in the name of peace?

I am always confused when what the US and European media constantly refer to as Israel’s “hardline, right-wing” government says that it is committed to a “two-state solution” with the PLO as partner — the PLO that has murdered more Jews than any organization since the Nazi party. What is so “hardline” about this?

The government is called “hardline” because it has announced that it will permit construction of apartments for Jews in places like E1 that are under complete Israeli control, according to the Oslo Agreements (even though the PLO showed its contempt for those agreements by unilaterally turning to the UN for recognition as a “state”), and in its capital.

But since the PLO wants all of those places to be part of its Jew-free state (the media, normally hypersensitive to the slightest breath of racism, never seem to notice this), then these announcements are considered “obstacles to peace.”

The biggest obstacle to peace, of course, is the Palestinian intention to establish an Arab state from the river to the sea.

In 1993 the Israeli Left managed to con the government into letting the PLO return, and since then, the rapidly diminishing Left (now pretty much confined to some academics and members of the Ha’aretz editorial board) has been joined by the Europeans and the US in an effort to force Israel to implement the first stage of the PLO conquest by giving up Judea and Samaria and half of its capital.

The US and Europeans are affected by economic pressure from Arab oil producers, the political muscle of Europe’s growing Muslim population, the entrenched Saudi influence in the US, and plain old Jew hatred. The Israeli Left, such as it is, is either paid off — leftist NGOs are financed by the Europeans and the US-based NIF — or suffer from terminal cases of the Oslo Syndrome.

I’ve explained over and over again that the “two-state” solution is not a solution to anything — rather it would be a security disaster — and that there is no reason to make any concessions to the Palestinians as long as their oft-stated goal remains ending the Jewish state.

Everyone who understands the situation knows this. Certainly the Netanyahu government knows it better than most. So why does it continue to pay lip service to the destructive idea that peace could be had through concessions to the PLO?

In a piece about Naftali Bennett of the Jewish Home party — who is considered more “hardline right-wing” than Netanyahu –  David Horovitz notes,

[Bennett] charged that the policy of Netanyahu’s government on settlements and the Palestinians is “schizophrenic” — by which he apparently meant that the prime minister talks a lot about major expansion of building beyond the Green Line, while also insisting he wants to move forward with the Palestinians, positions that manage to annoy the international community, the Palestinians, the settlers and just about everybody else in between.

Is it right-wing extremism to expect consistency? I don’t think so.

It’s time to dump the obligatory genuflection to the need for a Palestinian state and get on with building the Jewish one.

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It’s an interesting question my mother asked me.

I’ve seen media twist words before – I’m not naive. I know the way the game is played. I’ve seen instances where reporters leave out parts of a statement to make it seem so different than what was intended. Should I open myself up to having my words distorted, to allowing them to take the beauty of where I live and turn it into something wrong, ugly, even stolen?

Years ago, I took a reporter around Maale Adumim and then to the Jewish communities in Gaza. She had once worked for this very media organization now asking to interview me. I took her to the home of a woman who has two children who were injured in terror attacks. The reporter didn’t ask about how her children were coping with their injuries and their trauma…she asked how it felt to live in a house that was stolen?

No, this woman didn’t live in a house that was stolen, not even on land that was occupied. She moved here more than 20 years ago and bought an apartment. She made it a home and raised her children here. There was so much she could have spoken about, but that first question was so telling. It was phrased with cruelty and ignorance, with the reporter’s agenda clear to all.

Before we left the city, I was already regretting my decision to take her to Gaza. I wanted to show her the amazing things Israel does. In Maale Adumim, I took her to a beautiful new children’s park nearby – built in sections so that children of varying ages can play, so many safety issues addressed – soft ground under climbing equipment, things that could withstand the sun, railings and fences and benches for the parents to sit and watch. Surrounded by gardens and paths where it is pleasant to walk, it’s a gathering place all week long for so many.

She didn’t compliment the park’s planning  - she asked why Palestinians can’t come there. She asked why the Palestinians don’t have similar parks in THEIR neighborhoods in a tone that made it clear she blamed us, that it was OUR responsibility to build for them the things they didn’t bother building for themselves. I told her she should ask them. The money we pay in taxes goes to building parks here – where does the money go in Palestinian areas, and what happens to the parks and schools we do build in their areas?

In Gaza, I took her to several families – to a man who lost an arm in one war and then several fingers on his remaining hand when he was attacked years later by a terrorist. He told her of the body of a young mother that he found in a car on the side of the road – and how the terrorists had sat in waiting. The dead woman was bait for whatever target came next. They relied on the goodness and caring of the next person to stop and see if she needed help. He was badly wounded, saved more by a malfunctioning grenade than the soldiers who followed and eliminated the terrorist.

I took her to the greenhouses to show her the incredible farms and produce and to meet other people and see other places. And finally, I took her to the home of a family who had lost a son in war and was about to not only lose their home but would be faced with digging up their son’s grave and having it moved rather than leaving it to be desecrated in Gaza. It was the one time I begged her not to ask anything about politics, “please, don’t do that to them – don’t ask them about stolen land and how it feels to lose their home…” She was very good, actually, and I appreciated that she simply asked them to tell her about their son.

To discuss a hill where no one lives…

I just can’t get over this. I’m trying to understand the urgency. Britain’s Foreign Minister says there is an “urgent need to restart the peace process.”

I’m all for peace but honestly, what is so urgent today, this week versus last month. One hundred rockets rained down on Israel in a single day – and I heard nothing from the European Union about urgently seeking peace. A mother was attacked in her home, stabbed as she defended her children – silence. Two years ago, an infant was murdered beside her mother, her father and two of her brothers…silence, no urgent need.

Why? What is it about that mountain that brings such urgency? Have they ever actually seen it – it is, to be honest, incredibly humble as far as mountains go and rather an embarrassment on the scale of causes of a world crisis.

And then, I thought – it isn’t actually that mountain – it really isn’t, and it never was. If you drive down the highway from Jerusalem to the Dead Sea – it’ll take you 25 minutes. About three minutes out, on the left side for all of 4 seconds, you’ll pass E1. Actually, I’m not sure it would even take 4 seconds to pass it and it might be less than 3 minutes from Jerusalem. Most likely, your eyes will be drawn to the right where up on the top of the mountains is Maale Adumim.

E1 (the area in the background), as seen from Maale Adumim

You probably wouldn’t even think to look to the right – there’s nothing there…except for a narrow 2 lane road and one big building with a lot of windows.

So, if it isn’t the mountain, why are 27 world leaders meeting? They’ll never tell you the truth – but it really is about Israel itself. You see, to be honest, the Palestinians and more specifically, the Arabs, don’t want us here. They never did; they never will. Hamas will tell you honestly – their goal is to replace ALL of Israel with yet another deeply Islamic country.

The more moderate Arabs will tell you they only want to talk about an interim issue. First, they say, let’s get Israel out of any land it conquered from the 1967 war. No, no, they aren’t accepting the pre-1967 borders, they are simply rejecting the post-1967 borders.

So, they say – let’s go back to 1967 (then we’ll talk about 1949 and then, if they’re successful, they’ll go back to 1945, or perhaps 1942 – when there was no Israel and Jews were dying in Europe.Whatever it takes.

As a footnote, it was mentioned that the 27 leaders would discuss Syria as well. I am astounded that each day as many as 100-200 people are dying in Syria…there is talk of chemical weapons being used – and the European Union, which was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace today…thinks the most pressing issue facing them is a stupid little mountain that would not impact on the Arab population – even if 6,000 apartments were built there.

View of E1 in the Background…Nothing There…Nothing…

It really is so very simple. There is a direct highway that runs from Abu Dis and Azariya to our west – directly east all the way to the Dead Sea. Just passed Maale Adumim, there is a left turn that links that road to all the major Arab areas to the north of Jerusalem and further down that road – without a single check point between Abu Dis and the Dead Sea, there is Jericho. Just after Jericho, there is another left turn, giving the Arabs full access to the Jordan Valley and beyond.

In short, whether Israel builds 3,000 houses on E1 or not, the bottom line is unfettered movement for the Palestinians. The roads are major highways that will not be shut down – how can they be? They are the same roads Israelis use to get where they need to go everyday.

With no understanding of facts on the ground, the European Union has caved into the hysterics of the Palestinians…again.

And this time, if you look carefully, you’ll see Syria’s Assad, Egypt’s Morsi, Nasrallah in the north, and a million or so Palestinians laughing hysterically because as blood flows freely in Damascus…the European Union continues to focus on a hill that goes nowhere.

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