The World According To Missygirl

By Caroline B. Glick
It is hard to believe, but it appears that in the wake of the
Palestinian unity deal that brings Hamas, the genocidal,
al-Qaida-aligned, local franchise of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood,
into a partnership with Fatah, US President Barack Obama has decided to
open a new round of pressure on Israel to give away its land and
national rights to the Palestinians. It is hard to believe that this is
the case. But apparently it is.

On Wednesday, The Wall Street Journal
reported that while Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is in Washington
next week, and before the premier has a chance to give his scheduled
address to a joint session of Congress, Obama will give a new speech to
the Arab world. In that speech, Obama will praise the populist movements
that have risen up against Arab tyrannies and embrace them as the model
for the future. As for Israel, the report claimed that the Obama
administration is still trying to decide whether the time is right to
put the screws on Israel once more.

On the one hand, Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes told the Journal
that Arab leaders are clamoring for a new US initiative to force Israel
to make new concessions. Joining this supposed clamor are the
administration-allied pro-Palestinian lobby J Street, and the
administration-allied New York Times.

On the other hand,
the Netanyahu government and Congress are calling for a US aid cutoff
to the Palestinian Authority. With Hamas, a foreign terrorist
organization, now partnering with Fatah in governing the PA, it is
illegal for the US government to continue to have anything to do with
the PA. Both the Netanyahu government and senior members of the House
and Senate are arguing forcefully that there is no way for Israel to
make peace with the Palestinians now, and that the US must abandon its
efforts to force the sides to sign an agreement.

The
Israeli and congressional arguments are certainly compelling. But the
signals emanating from the White House and its allied media indicate
that Obama is ready to plough forward in spite of them. With the new
international security credibility he earned by overseeing the
successful assassination of Osama bin Laden, Obama apparently believes
that he can withstand congressional pressure and make the case for
demanding that Israel surrender Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria to Hamas
and its partners in Fatah.

The signals that Obama is setting his
sights on coercing Israel into agreeing to surrender its capital and
heartland to Hamas and its partners in Fatah came in three forms this
week. First, administration officials are trying to lower the bar that
Hamas needs to pass in order to be considered a legitimate political
force.

After Fatah and Hamas signed their first unity deal in
March 2007, the US and its colleagues in the so-called Middle East
Quartet - Russia, the EU and the UN - set three conditions that Hamas
needed to meet to be accepted by them as legitimate. It needed to
recognize Israel's right to exist, agree to respect existing agreements
with Israel, and renounce terrorism.

These are not difficult
conditions. Fatah is perceived as having met them even though it is
still a terrorist organization and its leaders refuse to accept Israel's
right to exist and refuse to abide by any of the major commitments they
took upon themselves in previous agreements with Israel. Hamas could
easily follow Fatah's lead.

But Hamas refuses. So, speaking to Washington Post columnist David Ignatius two weeks ago, administration officials lowered the bar.

They
said Hamas had made major concessions to Fatah in their agreement
because it agreed to accept provisions of the 2009 unity deal drafted by
the Mubarak government that it rejected two years ago and because Hamas
agreed that the unity government will be manned by "technocrats" rather
than terrorists.

Even if these contentions are true, they are
completely ridiculous. In point of fact, all the 2009 agreement says is
that Hamas will refrain from demanding to join the US-trained and funded
Fatah army in Judea and Samaria. As for the "technocratic" government,
who does the Obama administration think will control these
"technocrats"? And as to the truth of these contentions, in an interview
last week with the New York Times, Hamas terror-master Khaled Mashal denied that he had agreed to the terms of the 2009 agreement.

Indeed, he said that Fatah agreed to add annexes to the agreement reflecting Hamas's positions.

The
second pitch the administration and its friends have adopted ahead of
Obama's address next week is that Hamas has become more moderate or may
become more moderate.

Robert Malley, who in the past advised Obama's presidential campaign, made this argument last week in an op-ed in the Washington Post. Malley claimed that by joining the government, Hamas will be more moved by US pressure. A New York Times
editorial last Saturday argued that Hamas may have moderated, and even
if it hasn't, "Washington needs to press Mr. Netanyahu back to the peace
table."

Adding their voices to the din, Middle Eastern leaders
like Amr Moussa, the frontrunner to serve as Egypt's next president, and
Turkish Prime Minister Recip Erdogan, have given interviews to the US
media this week in which they denied that Hamas is even a terrorist
organization.

Here it is important to note that none of the
administration's statements about the Hamas-Fatah deal and none of the
media coverage related to it have included any mention of the fact that
Hamas deliberately murders entire families and targets children
specifically. No one mentions last month's Hamas guided rocket attack
which deliberately targeted an Israeli school bus. Hamas murdered
16-year-old Daniel Viflic in that attack. No one has mentioned the café
massacres, the bus bombings, the university campus massacres, the
breaking into homes massacres, the Passover Seder massacres Hamas has
carried out and bragged about in recent years. No one has mentioned that
when seen as a portion of the population, Hamas has killed far more
Israelis than al-Qaida has killed Americans.

The final pitch the
administration and its surrogates are making is that the deal needs to
be seen as part of the overall regional shift towards popular rule. This
pitch too is difficult to make.

After all, the first casualty of
the Arab world's shift towards popular rule is the 30-year-old Camp
David peace treaty between Israel and Egypt. Now that Egypt's citizens
have gotten rid of US-ally Hosni Mubarak, they have committed themselves
to getting rid of the peace he upheld with Israel throughout his long
reign.

Again, despite the difficulties, the Obama administration
is clearly willing to make the case. Regarding Egypt, they argue that
the Muslim Brotherhood's rise to power is a good. This was the point of
Obama's Passover and Israel Independence Day messages.

As for the
regional shift, the fact that Obama reportedly intends to place the
so-called Palestinian-Israeli peace process into the regional context
signals that he sees potential for an agreement between Israel and Syria
as well. His advisers telegraphed this view to Ignatius.

Obama's
advisers made the unlikely argument that if Syrian leader Bashar Assad
survives the popular demonstrations calling for his overthrow, he will
feel compelled to distance his regime from Iran because his
Sunni-majority population has been critical of his alliance with the
Shi'ite mullocracy.

This argument is unlikely given that the same
officials recognize that if Assad survives, he will owe his regime's
survival to Iran. As they reminded Ignatius, US intelligence officials
reported last month that Iran has "secretly supplied Assad with tear
gas, anti-riot gear and other tools of suppression."

What is
perhaps most remarkable about Obama's apparent plan to use the rise of
the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt as an excuse for a new round of
diplomatic warfare against Israel is how poorly coordinated his steps
have been with the PLO-Fatah. Mahmoud Abbas and his predecessor Yasser
Arafat always viewed the US obsession with getting the Arabs and Israel
to sign peace treaties as a strategic asset. Anytime they wanted to
weaken Israel, they just needed to sound the fake peace drum loudly
enough to get the White House's attention. US presidents looking for the
opportunity to "make history" were always ready to take their bait.

Unlike
his predecessors, Obama's interest in the Palestinians is not
opportunistic. He is a true believer. And because of his deep-seated
commitment to the Palestinians, his policies are even more radically
anti-Israel than the PLO-Fatah's. It was Obama, not Abbas, who demanded
that Jews be barred from building anything in Jerusalem, Judea and
Samaria. It is the Obama administration, not the PLO-Fatah, that is
leading the charge to embrace the Muslim Brotherhood.

Like his
belated move to demand a permanent abrogation of Jewish property rights
in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria, Abbas arguably embraced Hamas because
Obama left him no choice. He has no interest in making peace with
Israel, so the only thing he can do under the circumstances Obama has
created is embrace Hamas. He can't be less pro-Islamic than the US
president.

All of this brings us to Netanyahu and his trip to
Washington next week. Obviously Obama's decision to upstage the premier
with his new outreach-to-the-Arab-world speech will make Netanyahu's
visit more challenging than it was already going to be.

Obama is
clearly betting that by moving first, he will be able to coerce
Netanyahu to make still more concessions of land and principles.

Certainly,
Netanyahu's earlier decisions to cave in to Obama's pressure with his
acceptance of Palestinian statehood and his subsequent acceptance of a
Jewish building freeze give Obama good reason to believe he can back
Netanyahu into a corner. Defense Minister Ehud Barak's hysterical
warnings about a diplomatic "tsunami" at the UN in September if Israel
fails to capitulate to Obama today no doubt add to Obama's sense that he
can expect Netanyahu to dance to his drums, no matter how hostile the
beat.

But Netanyahu doesn't have to give in. He can stick to his
guns and defend the country. He can continue on the correct path he has
forged of repeating the truth about Hamas. He can warn about the growing
threat of Egypt. He can describe the Iranian-supported butchery Assad
is carrying out against his own people and note that a regime that
murders its own will not make peace with the Jewish state. And he can
point out the fact that as a capitalist, liberal democracy which
protects the lives and property of its citizens, Israel is the only
stable country in the region and the US's only reliable regional ally.

True, if Netanyahu does these things, he will not win himself any friends in the White House.

But
he never had a chance of winning Obama and his advisers over anyway. He
will empower Israel's allies in Congress, though. And more importantly,
whether he is loved or hated in Washington, if Netanyahu does these
things, he will be able to return home to Jerusalem with the sure
knowledge that he earned his salary this month. •