Really- this is new? "Who ever hear of that before last year"? Let's see. More than 30 years ago, foreign minister Yigal Allon – who had been Yitzchak Rabin’s commander and mentor in the Palmach during 1948 – wrote up his plan for “defensible borders” for Israel in Foreign Affairs and discussed it. Shimon Peres told Ma'ariv in June 1976: "One must ensure that Israel will not only have length but width. We must not be tempted by all kinds of advisers and journalists to return to a country whose waist is 14 kilometers wide."
The late Mordechai Gur, as Chief of Staff of the Israel Defense Forces, told Newsweek in May 1978 that as a military man he had no doubt that to defend Israel it was necessary to remain in the high ground of the mountains of Judea and Samaria – from Hebron to Nablus. He also explained that Israel needed to remain in the Jordan Valley. And the late Moshe Dayan, Israel's former Chief of Staff, Minister of Defense, and Minister of Foreign Affairs, was unequivocal in this regard: "Whatever settlement is reached with the Palestinians and the Jordanians, the key positions that guarantee Israel's defense must be left to the free and exclusive use of the Israel Defense Forces. Those positions are the Jordan Valley and the mountain spine."
And finally, the words of the late Yitzhak Rabin in his last appearance in the Knesset, one month before his abominable murder: "We will not return to the lines of June 4, 1967 – the security border for defending the State of Israel will be in the Jordan Valley, in the widest sense of that concept." It was no surprise that this was Rabin's security legacy, for already in 1980 he determined: "Our evacuation of the West Bank would create the greatest threat we can possibly face."
I wonder what Mr. Cole has to say about the numerous references to the "Jewish national home" found in the Mandate for Palestine, that was passed by the League of Nations, which later became the United Nations - and has never been rescinded and reference to a national home for the Jewish People in the resolution of the San Remo Conference, which also remains binding international law. The point that Mr, Cole can't seem to fathom is that Arab recognition of the Jewish rights in the Jewish ancestral homeland is -and always has been-- central to solution of the Arab Israeli conflict. The Arabs have long professed their desire to remove the Jews from the region and the Palestinian Arabs still demand that all Jews leave Judea and Samaria. When the Arabs admit that their mosques (their third holiest shrine) were built quite intentionally atop the ruins of the Jewish Temples (the holiest place to the Jews) and that Jews have every right to pray on the Temple Mount, then we might see progress. Think of Jews as a family with strong, deep history. Others can be - and often have been adopted in , so the family is not racially exclusive. The family also has a religion and robust culture - that has withstood exile from its family property and persecution over thousands of years - but now it has reclaimed the land that was stolen from it- and which was largely neglected and desolate during the Jews' exile. The Jews; founding literature is nothing less than the ideational basis for much of Western morality Mr. Cole loves so much. Indeed It is the height of chutzpa for him -or Mr. Kerry - to preach morality after how the U.S. has treated its own native American population, not so long ago. Massachusetts is an native American name - Whatever happened to the proud People that lived on the land were Kerry's house sits? The discussion of individual rights is a somewhat separate issue that should also be addressed - but Mr. Cole has focused on the national one.
Really- this is new? "Who ever hear of that before last year"? Let's see. More than 30 years ago, foreign minister Yigal Allon – who had been Yitzchak Rabin’s commander and mentor in the Palmach during 1948 – wrote up his plan for “defensible borders” for Israel in Foreign Affairs and discussed it. Shimon Peres told Ma'ariv in June 1976: "One must ensure that Israel will not only have length but width. We must not be tempted by all kinds of advisers and journalists to return to a country whose waist is 14 kilometers wide."
The late Mordechai Gur, as Chief of Staff of the Israel Defense Forces, told Newsweek in May 1978 that as a military man he had no doubt that to defend Israel it was necessary to remain in the high ground of the mountains of Judea and Samaria – from Hebron to Nablus. He also explained that Israel needed to remain in the Jordan Valley. And the late Moshe Dayan, Israel's former Chief of Staff, Minister of Defense, and Minister of Foreign Affairs, was unequivocal in this regard: "Whatever settlement is reached with the Palestinians and the Jordanians, the key positions that guarantee Israel's defense must be left to the free and exclusive use of the Israel Defense Forces. Those positions are the Jordan Valley and the mountain spine."
And finally, the words of the late Yitzhak Rabin in his last appearance in the Knesset, one month before his abominable murder: "We will not return to the lines of June 4, 1967 – the security border for defending the State of Israel will be in the Jordan Valley, in the widest sense of that concept." It was no surprise that this was Rabin's security legacy, for already in 1980 he determined: "Our evacuation of the West Bank would create the greatest threat we can possibly face."
See:http://jcpa.org/article/what-happened-to-the-jordan-valley/?
I wonder what Mr. Cole has to say about the numerous references to the "Jewish national home" found in the Mandate for Palestine, that was passed by the League of Nations, which later became the United Nations - and has never been rescinded and reference to a national home for the Jewish People in the resolution of the San Remo Conference, which also remains binding international law. The point that Mr, Cole can't seem to fathom is that Arab recognition of the Jewish rights in the Jewish ancestral homeland is -and always has been-- central to solution of the Arab Israeli conflict. The Arabs have long professed their desire to remove the Jews from the region and the Palestinian Arabs still demand that all Jews leave Judea and Samaria. When the Arabs admit that their mosques (their third holiest shrine) were built quite intentionally atop the ruins of the Jewish Temples (the holiest place to the Jews) and that Jews have every right to pray on the Temple Mount, then we might see progress. Think of Jews as a family with strong, deep history. Others can be - and often have been adopted in , so the family is not racially exclusive. The family also has a religion and robust culture - that has withstood exile from its family property and persecution over thousands of years - but now it has reclaimed the land that was stolen from it- and which was largely neglected and desolate during the Jews' exile. The Jews; founding literature is nothing less than the ideational basis for much of Western morality Mr. Cole loves so much. Indeed It is the height of chutzpa for him -or Mr. Kerry - to preach morality after how the U.S. has treated its own native American population, not so long ago. Massachusetts is an native American name - Whatever happened to the proud People that lived on the land were Kerry's house sits? The discussion of individual rights is a somewhat separate issue that should also be addressed - but Mr. Cole has focused on the national one.