World Jewish Congress president suggests markers for new US Mid-East policy
Ronald S. Lauder, President of the World Jewish Congress (WJC), has an important piece in the Wall Street Journal in which he offers a series of warnings and suggestions as the Obama administration works out its new Middle East policy.
This is an opportune time for the WJC president to set out his stall. Administration officials have said that a new plan for peace between Israel and the Palestinians and wider Arab world could be published within weeks. Lauder hits all the right notes.
His most powerful points centre on the continued refusal of the Palestinians to recognise Israel as a Jewish state and the wider and deeper problem of Palestinian rejectionism generally. It must never be forgotten, he argues, that
“…the core historic reason for the conflict is the Arab world’s longstanding rejection of Israel’s existence. The two-state solution was accepted by Israel’s pre-state leadership led by David Ben-Gurion in 1947 when it agreed to the partition plan contained in United Nation’s General Assembly Resolution 181. The Arabs flatly rejected it. As Secretary of State Hillary Clinton knows all too well, President Bill Clinton’s peace plans in 2000 foundered due to Palestinian rejection of the Jewish state, even as Israel, once again, accepted their right to statehood.”
To read the full article, click here:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204908604574334912175685516.html
Tags: Israel
August 13th, 2009 at 2:28 pm
Days before this op-ed appeared two of the Obama administration’s unofficial advisers confirmed that the recent Fatah convention confirmed that the Palestinians will never recognize the existence of a Jewish State. In other words Obama is on a course to force Israel to recognize a Palestinian state but will not pressure the Palestinians to reciprocate.
Mr. Lauder’s public statement could not have been better timed.