At last, an Obama administration official has come out in favor of a fence. He promises it will bring security to people on both sides of the border.
Unfortunately, Philip Gordon, National Security Council coordinator for the Middle East, North Africa and the Gulf, was not speaking of a border fence between the United States and Mexico, but a fence between the West Bank and the 1967 Israeli border. That fence, he said, would be built after Israel relinquishes the territory in exchange for an empty promise of “peace” with the Palestinians.
Apparently Gordon hasn't noticed that missiles fly over fences. If anyone needs more proof that the land-for-peace formula was stillborn when first proposed, Gaza is the latest example. Israel's withdrawal from Gaza in 2005 ensured Hamas would establish a terrorist base from which it now fires missiles at Israeli cities.
Perhaps the most laughable part of Gordon's speech to the Ha'aretz Israel Conference for Peace was this: “Israel should not take for granted the opportunity to negotiate that peace with (Palestinian President Mahmoud) Abbas, who has shown time and again that he is committed to nonviolence and coexistence with Israel.”
Not really. Among the region's great fictions is that Abbas is more moderate than Hamas and other militants. He may occasionally talk that way for Western consumption, but his words to his own people prove otherwise.
Last week in a Facebook posting, as reported by Palestinian Media Watch, an Israeli research institute that studies Palestinian society, Ofir Gendelman, the spokesman to the Arab media in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office, asked Abbas in Arabic if he saw reconciliation with Hamas as a means to fight Israel. Gendelman's post included a cartoon of Hamas and Fatah fighters smiling, shaking hands and aiming rifles at an Israeli soldier. “To his question about uniting to fight Israel,” writes PMW, “Fatah posted its answer: ‘Yes, this is what we want.'”
Palestinian leaders have no intention of agreeing to the Western “two-state” peace plan. A recent poll commissioned by The Washington Institute for Near East Policy found that 60 percent of Palestinian Arabs living in the West Bank and Gaza have a “five-year national goal” of “reclaiming all of historic Palestine from the (Jordan) river to the (Mediterranean) sea.”
In his speech, Gordon claimed Palestinians have “a right to be a sovereign, free and secure people in their own land.” Where does that “right” come from? Using such logic, perhaps the United States should cede Texas to Mexico. The rest of America might be ceded to Britain or to Native Americans.
Israel's self-defense actions in Gaza are more than justified. Polls show sympathies shifting in favor of Israel. Hamas may have made a tactical and political mistake in its latest assault on Israel, allowing those who can be persuaded to understand their true intentions.
Cal Thomas is a columnist for USA Today.
