Peace in our time? Just ask Obama and Kerry

So the US administration under President Barack Hussein Obama’s leadership and Secretary of State John Kerry’s guidance reckons it can force through a peace deal between the Jewish state of Israel and the racist Palestinian Authority, an organisation that openly embraces ethinic cleansing.

And with its various behind-the-scenes machinations the increasingly embattled US administration, which has failed abysmally in the region from Libya to Lebanon, from Saudi Arabia to Syria, from Egypt to the Emirates, reckons it has solved the entire Middle East problem.

No really – just ask Obama and Kerry.

But a few questions arise, for those among us who tend to view strategic issues without the help of rose-tinted spectacles:

1. WHO exactly will provide the ”security arrangements” that Obama and Kerry are determined to impose?

The UN? No thanks, we’ve seen how ineffective they have been and still are – in the Sinai, in the Lebanon, in Syria.

The EU? No thanks, same problem as with the UN – we’ve seen how unutterably useless they have been in Gaza.

The US? Not after the US suffered massive loss of life in multiple Beirut bombings and took the admittedly understandable decision to abandon its security undertakings on behalf of the Lebanese government. Although perfectly understandable from the US standpoint, what this means is that the US offers NO guarantee of security for Israel despite all the fancy words, and Israel does not have the luxury of allowing others to backtrack while the Jewish state picks up the tab in terms of loss of Israeli lives.

So will the ”security arrangements” be the sole responsibility of Israel, and with recognition of Israel’s absolute security role by both the PA and the Arab world as well as the UN? If that is the case, there is a good chance for success. But is Mahmud Abbas going to agree to this? Not likely, in fact not possible without also signing his own death warrant at the hands of what Obama and Kerry insist on calling his ”peace-loving” regime compatriots.

2. WHO will provide the ”compensation” that the US touts? Will Israel compensate the Arabs who fled the area as a result of the pan-Arab war against the fledgling Jewish state? Definitely possible, provided this signifies the end of all future claims against Israel.

But WHO is going to compensate the Jews who were ethnically cleansed from Arab countries?

3. What about Jerusalem? Is the racist Palestinian Authority (PA) still going to insist on having its capital in Jerusalem? If so, that’s a non-starter. A PA capital in Jerusalem is the very symbol of its refusal to give up its manufactured claims on the Jewish state. It is merely a recipe for continuing the conflict.

4. An agreement is an agreement only if all sides abide by it. If the racist PA shows in word and deed and symbolism that it still has claims on the Jewish state BEYOND the signing of a brokered agreement, then that agreement isn’t worth the paper on which it is written.

And no, this does not mean that the US or any other honest broker should not try to bring the two sides to an agreement. But the problem is that it ISN’T two sides; there is an increasingly isolated Israel on one side, and on the other the racist PA backed by the entire Arab world and Iran as well as a whole variety of terrorist organisations and paramilitary agencies, with additional tacit support from Western governments bowing to the twin pressures of political expediency and economic blackmail. If the various anti-democratic interlocutors are not all brought into the binding agreement as signatories – and the terms then enforced with extreme prejudice – then that agreement is an absolute, total non-starter.

The US and other honest brokers ought to focus their dwindling financial and goodwill resources on bringing terror supporters such as Iran to heel. The PA will follow suit because its support base will dry up, and pragmatism will replace extremism in what is currently a racist Palestinian Authority leadership that openly embraces ethnic cleansing as both a strategic weapon and a holy cimmandment. Israel will as usual do whatever is required to fulfil its part of the commitment just as it did with Sinai, southern Lebanon, Area C and Gaza. It is never Israel that has failed to live up to its undertakings; that refusal has been the sole preserve of its Arab interlocutors – the very groups that the US cannot/has not/will not bring to heel.

I would recommend to Obama and Kerry exactly what I would recommend to any 7-year-old schoolchild: when you have a problem that you have to solve, it is always best to begin at the beginning and work consistently through to the end, rather than merely do what is easiest and then close your books and go out to play while your responsibilities remain unattended.