Kerry Recycles “Peace” Policy of Republican John Foster Dulles

UPDATE 10-20-2014 see new  link below

A lot of folks are rightly angered by John Kerry’s latest anti-Israel outburst:

“I think that it is more critical than ever that we be fighting for peace, and I think it is more necessary than ever… As I went around and met with people in the course of our discussions about the ISIL (Islamic State) coalition, the truth is we – there wasn’t a leader I met with in the region who didn’t raise with me spontaneously the need to try to get peace between Israel and the Palestinians, because it was a cause of recruitment and of street anger and agitation that they felt,” Kerry said. [Jerusalem Post 10-17-2014]

But they wrongly think that these essentially stupid remarks by Kerry, trying to make Israel share the guilt for the creation and success of the  fanatic Islamist ISIL gang are due to Kerry’s stupidity or ignorance. Rather what Kerry represents is old US policy going back to the bad old days of John Foster Dulles in the 1950s. Dulles and his brother Allen were Republican insiders holding high posts in the Eisenhower administration. John was secretary of state and Allen was head of the CIA. Just parenthetically, it may be that never before or since has one family [also counting their sister Eleanor] held so much power over American foreign policy. In 1955, Dulles proposed cutting away part of Israel’s territory:

In December 1955 Secretary of State John Foster Dulles called for reparations and repatriation for refugees and cession of the southern Negev so that Jordan and Egypt would be able to touch each other. [Jonathan Adelman, The Rise of Israel, a History of a Revolutionary State (Oxford: Routledge 2008), p 103]

But first came the “peace” plans of Count Bernadotte, the UN appointed mediator, who really intended to impose British and US policies on Israel:

In 1948, the Americans seemed to collaborate with the British in supporting the mediator Count Bernadotte’s plans  that focused on replacement of Israel by a bi-national state. These plans . . .  included demilitarization or international control of Haifa, surrender of large areas of southern Palestine to the Arabs in return for the western Galilee [an area assigned to the planned Arab state in the partition plan], the incorporation of the Negev [an area mostly assigned to Israel in the partition plan] into Transjordan, the internationalization of Jerusalem [stipulated in the partition plan]  and the joint control of Jewish immigration by Jews and Arabs through the union of the two territories in a dual  state. In 1949 at the Lausanne Conference the United States called for Israeli withdrawal from the southern Negev [mostly assigned to Israel in the partition plan] , repatriation of 200,000-250,000 refugees and no direct contacts between Israel and the Arabs [because the Arabs rejected direct contact]. [Jonathan Adelman, The Rise of Israel, A History of a Revolutionary State, (Oxford: Routledge 2008) p 103]

Since Bernadotte, the typical “peace” plan of the Western powers [sometimes of the Communist powers too] has called for Israeli concessions of territory. That has been true whether Republicans or Democrats sat in the White House. In this respect, Obama is little different from arch-WASP John Foster Dulles. In the 1950s, as today, there were sinister enemies of the United States in foreign parts, in exotic places far from America as well as in American countries too, south of the border. The big enemies in the Dulles brothers’ days were the Communists. Today, the big enemy is ISIL and other Islamist fanatic jihadists. Dulles and his State Department wanted to build treaty organizations, perhaps on the model of NATO, that would stand as a bulwark against Communism. Israel was widely blamed in the United States in those days for being an obstacle to enlarging the Baghdad Pact. It was said that the Arabs, as Muslims, were staunch anti-Communists, but Israel, being Jewish as it was, and with its semi-socialist economy at that time, and because the USA tolerated Israel’s existence, deterred or discouraged Arabs from joining the Baghdad Pact (Iraq, Pakistan, Turkey, Iran and UK with de facto US sponsorship) which was open to any member of the Arab League but later became  the CENTO, Central Treaty Organization, after Iraq –the only Arab member– dropped out. Israel was obviously not invited to join the Baghdad Pact but neither was it invited to join CENTO although the latter was theoretically open to any state concerned with peace in the region [western Asia]. So in those days, the Arabs really really wanted to join the Baghdad Pact because of their staunch anti-Communism but were repelled from taking a firm anti-Communist stance because of their distaste for Israel. Today, Kerry tells us that the Arabs and other Muslims really really want to fight ISIL and join the anti-ISIL coalition –today’s counterpart of the Baghdad Pact [pact and treaty organization = coalition for practical purposes]– but because of the “Israel-Palestinian” conflict they hold back due to the leaders’ fear of the Arab Street which hates Israel more than ISIL and is deterred from joining the anti-ISIL coalition –the updated version of the Baghdad Pact– because the “Israeli-Palestinian” conflict has not been solved or resolved

Old Wine in New Bottles

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David Goldman on Kerry’s claim see link here.

Ben Dror Yemini on Kerry’s repeated “mistakes” here. I ask if these mistakes may have been “accidentally on purpose.”

Ynet-  10-18-2014  – Ynet reports that PLO/PA spokesmen support the link that Kerry made between the Arab-Israel conflict and ISIL here.

Evelyn Gordon on Commentary blogs. “Muslims fight for ISIS but not Palestine” here.