Dear Friend of Israel, Friend of FLAME:

Were you as outraged as I and most of Israel's supporters were by President Obama's Middle East policy speech last Thursday, which caused a major brouhaha? While most of the President's address last week focused on unrest in the region broadly, his final remarks dealt with the Israel-Palestinian conflict, including his provocative, ill-advised mention of peace negotiations based on "1967 borders."

He was referring, of course, to the ceasefire lines (not borders!) established after Israel's War of Independence in 1949, which Israel then crossed in its defensive war against Jordan and Egypt in 1967. As Prime Minister Netanyahu sternly reminded Obama on Friday, Israel regards those old "borders" as indefensible---in fact suicidal. In addition, today some 300,000 Israelis live in Judea and Samaria, ancient Jewish homelands located to the east of those lines.

In fact, Obama's citation of the 1967 lines was one more misstep in a long string of them affecting U.S. relations with our strongest ally in the Middle East---and causing increasing alienation among the Jewish community and other pro-Israel advocates.

Then this Sunday, I watched Barack Obama address the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) in Washington, DC, trying obviously to mend badly damaged fences with the pro-Israel community.

Obama's speech at AIPAC offered some comfort . . . if we can believe him. In short, he made the following points:

• The U.S. supports the Jewish state of Israel and Israel's security without reservation.
• The U.S. opposes any attempt to delegitimize Israel and any unilateral effort by the Palestinians to form a state by a vote in the U.N.
• Israel cannot be expected to negotiate with the Palestinians as long as long the Arabs are allied with a terrorist group that opposes the existence of the Jewish state---namely Hamas
• Obama believes, as he claims all U.S. presidents back as far as Clinton have, that peace negotiations should start with the 1967 lines as their basis, with "land swaps" to accommodate changes on the ground since 1967, as shall be agreed solely by the Israelis and Palestinians.
• Pressure is mounting worldwide---not just in the Arab world, but also in Latin America, Asia and in Europe---for the conflict to be settled. It behooves the U.S. and Israel to aggressively pursue peace in order to avoid Israel's further isolation in the world community.

The President is a forceful speaker, and the AIPAC crowd roundly applauded most of his points. However, three huge questions remain: 1) How can Israel aggressively pursue peace negotiations when Hamas is part of the Palestinian Authority? 2) Can we trust what Mr. Obama promises? 3) When is Obama going to make demands on the Palestinians to take "bold steps" for peace, as he has of Israel (how about that they recognize the Jewish state, stop rockets from Gaza directed at Jewish civilians, and stop state-sponsored racism against Jews)?

To help you and your friends, family and colleagues understand why Obama's mention of the "1967 borders" last week was such a lightning rod for anger and remains such a non-starter for Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, this week's FLAME Hotline features a hard-hitting opinion piece by Israel's former ambassador to the U.S. and current president of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, Dore Gold.

As you know, Israel is under attack from all corners. We must insist that the U.S. Congress and especially President Obama continue to stand by Israel. We cannot allow the declaration of a Palestinian state in the United Nations and we cannot allow the President to waver in the promises he is making about Israel and the peace process. I would urge you, using the Forward to a Friend button below, to pass Mr. Gold's definitive article to your family and associates. Israel needs us now, and this is one important way we can help.

Best Regards,

Jim Sinkinson
Vice President, FLAME

P.S.

As you know, Israel gets regularly battered in the media, and we pro-Israel advocates too often find ourselves on the defensive. But FLAME has begun to fight back: We're focusing the world's attention on the hypocrisy of unrelenting attacks on Israel by the U.N., in the face of horrible crimes against humanity committed by the Arab world. If you, too, believe we should seize the offense against Israel's enemies, I recommend you review FLAME's latest position paper: "Apartheid in the Arab Middle East: How can the U.N. turn a blind eye to hateful, state-sponsored discrimination against people because of their race, ethnicity, religion and gender?" This piece is just now appearing in magazines and newspapers, including college newspapers, with a combined circulation of nearly 5 million people. In addition, it is being sent to every member of the U.S. Congress. If you agree that this kind of public relations effort on Israel's behalf is critical, I urge you to support us. Remember: FLAME's powerful ability to influence public opinion comes from individuals like you, one by one. I hope you'll consider giving a donation now, as you're able---with $500, $250, $100, or even $18. (Remember, your donation to FLAME is tax deductible.) To donate online, just go to http://www.factsandlogic.org/make_a_donation.html. Now more than ever we need your support to ensure that Israel gets the support it needs---from the U.S. Congress, from President Obama, and from the American people.

P.P.S.	If you are not already a subscriber to the FLAME Hotline, I urge you to become a part of Israel's word-of-mouth public relations campaign . . . by signing on for a free subscription. The weekly Hotline will help you stay abreast of critical issues regarding Israel and help you become a more forceful advocate for her cause. Use the Subscribe Now button below this article.

The Abbas-Obama Border Threatens Israel
Fair observers have never considered the old armistice line as a non-negotiable starting point for peace talks.
by Dore Gold, The Wall Street Journal, May 21, 2011

It's no secret that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas plans to lobby the U.N. General Assembly this September for a resolution that will predetermine the results of any Israeli-Palestinian negotiations on borders. He made clear in a New York Times op-ed this week that he will insist that member states recognize a Palestinian state on 1967 lines, meaning Israel's boundaries before the Six Day War.

Unfortunately, even President Barack Obama appears to have been influenced by this thinking. He asserted in a speech Thursday that Israel's future borders with a Palestinian state "should be based on the 1967 lines," a position he tried to offset by offering "mutually agreed land swaps." Mr. Abbas has said many times that any land swaps would be minuscule.

Remember that before the Six Day War, those lines in the West Bank only demarcated where five Arab armies were halted in their invasion of the nascent state of Israel 19 years earlier. Legally, they formed only an armistice line, not a recognized international border. No Palestinian state ever existed that could have claimed these prewar lines. Jordan occupied the West Bank after the Arab invasion, but its claim to sovereignty was not recognized by any U.N. members except Pakistan and the U.K. As Jordan's U.N. ambassador said before the war, the old armistice lines "did not fix boundaries." Thus the central thrust of Arab-Israeli diplomacy for more than 40 years was that Israel must negotiate an agreed border with its Arab neighbors.

The cornerstone of all postwar diplomacy was U.N. Security Council Resolution 242, passed in November 1967. It did not demand that Israel pull back completely to the pre-1967 lines. Its withdrawal clause only called on Israel to withdraw "from territories," not from all territories. Britain's foreign secretary at the time, George Brown, later underlined the distinction: "The proposal said 'Israel will withdraw from territories that were occupied,' and not from 'the' territories, which means that Israel will not withdraw from all the territories."

Prior to the Six Day War, Jerusalem had been sliced in two, and the Jewish people were denied access to the Old City and its holy sites. Jerusalem's Christian population also faced limitations. As America's ambassador to the U.N., Arthur Goldberg, would explain, Resolution 242 did not preclude Israel's reunification of Jerusalem. In fact, Resolution 242 became the only agreed basis of all Arab-Israeli peace agreements, from the 1979 Egyptian-Israeli Treaty of Peace to the 1993 Oslo Agreements between Israel and the Palestinians.

How were Israel's legal rights to new boundaries justified? A good explanation came from Judge Stephen Schwebel, who would later be an adviser to the State Department and then president of the International Court of Justice in The Hague. Writing in the American Journal of International Law in 1970, he noted that Israel's title to West Bank territory—in the event that it sought alterations in the pre-Six Day War lines—emanated from the fact that it had acted in lawful exercise of its right to self-defense. It was not the aggressor.

The flexibility for creating new borders was preserved for decades. Indeed, the 1993 Oslo Agreements, signed by Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat on the White House lawn, did not stipulate that the final borders between Israel and the Palestinians would be the 1967 lines. Borders were to be a subject for future negotiations. An April 2004 U.S. letter to Israel, backed by a bipartisan consensus in both houses of Congress, stipulated that Israel was not expected to fully withdraw, but rather was entitled to "defensible borders." U.S. secretaries of state from Henry Kissinger to Warren Christopher reiterated the same point in past letters of assurance.

If the borders between Israel and the Palestinians need to be negotiated, then what are the implications of a U.N. General Assembly resolution that states up front that those borders must be the 1967 lines? Some commentators assert that all Mr. Abbas wants to do is strengthen his hand in future negotiations with Israel, and that this does not contradict a negotiated peace. But is that really true? Why should Mr. Abbas ever negotiate with Israel if he can rely on the automatic majority of Third World countries at the U.N. General Assembly to back his positions on other points that are in dispute, like the future of Jerusalem, the refugee question, and security?

Mr. Abbas's unilateral move at the U.N. represents a massive violation of a core commitment in the Oslo Agreements in which both Israelis and Palestinians undertook that "neither side shall initiate or take any step that will change the status of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip pending the outcome of Permanent Status negotiations." Palestinian spokesmen counter that Israeli settlements violated this clause. Yet former Prime Minister Rabin was very specific while negotiating Oslo in preserving the rights of Israeli citizens to build their homes in these disputed areas, by insisting that the settlements would be one of the subjects of final status negotiations between the parties.

By turning to the U.N., Mr. Abbas wants to use the international community to change the legal status of the territories. Why should Israel rely on Mr. Abbas in the future after what is plainly a material breach of this core obligation?

The truth is that Mr. Abbas has chosen a unilateralist course instead of negotiations. For that reason he has no problem tying his fate to Hamas, the radical organization that is the antithesis of peace. Its infamous 1988 Charter calls for Israel's complete destruction and sees Islam in an historic battle with the Jewish people. In 2006, Dr. Mahmoud al-Zahar, the Hamas leader who attended the recent Cairo reconciliation ceremony with Mr. Abbas's Fatah movement, stated openly that Hamas was still committed to its 1988 Charter, noting, "the movement [would] not change a single word." Hamas's jihadist orientation was reconfirmed when Ismail Haniyeh, its prime minister in Gaza, condemned the U.S. for eliminating Osama bin Laden.

All Israeli prime ministers have spoken about negotiations as a vehicle for ending the Arab-Israeli conflict. There would be an end of claims. However, Mr. Abbas has now revealed his intention of using the U.N. for perpetuating the conflict. As he wrote this week: "Palestine's admission to the United Nations would pave the way for the internationalization of the conflict as a legal matter, not only a political one."

Mr. Abbas clearly is not prepared to make a historic compromise. By running to the U.N. and to Hamas, he is evading the hard choices he has to make, and he is leaving any resolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict far more difficult for future generations.