MOSHE ARENS: FRANCE IS SELLING OUT ISRAEL (PLUS CA CHANGE…?)
http://www.haaretz.com/
France is selling out Israel – just like it abandoned Czechs in 1938
Just as France betrayed Czechoslovakia to the Nazis, it wants Israel to abandon territory and buoy Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Islamic State.
French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius intends to propose a UN Security Council resolution that would present a framework for negotiations to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. That framework will include the 1967 lines as a basis for negotiations on the border between Israel and the future Palestinian state.
In other words, Fabius, and his superior, President Francois Hollande, want Israel to abandon the territory of Judea and Samaria and turn it over to the Palestinians. The fact that control of this territory is considered of great importance to Israel’s security by the democratically elected Israeli government seems to be of little concern to them.
They do not busy themselves trying to find a solution to the endless slaughter going on in Syria, Iraq, Libya or Yemen. Their excuse is that they don’t know how to handle these problems.
But as regards the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, they claim they know exactly what the solution is, and they have no compunctions about attempting to impose their solution on Israel. “It is necessary to move forward to have a solution to this problem,” Fabius announces grandiloquently.
Seventy-seven years ago at Munich, French Prime Minister Edouard Daladier felt equally confident he knew the solution to the German-Czechoslovak crisis brewing at the time. He told hapless Czechoslovak Prime Minister Edvard Benes that the Sudeten area, which the democratically elected Czechoslovak government considered essential for its defense, should be turned over to Germany.
His position was backed by French Foreign Minister Georges Bonnet. They were in complete agreement with Neville Chamberlain and his foreign minister, Viscount Halifax. The rest of the tragic story is well known. One wonders if Hollande and Fabius realize they are treading in the footsteps of Daladier and Bonnet.
They are not alone. The Brussels bureaucrats of the European Union are busy lining up the EU member states in support of Fabius’ position. Among them we may even find the Czech Republic and Slovakia, who may by now have forgotten their bitter experience of the past.
Like Chamberlain and Daladier, who insisted they had Czechoslovakia’s best interests at heart, Hollande and Fabius insist they have the best intentions and Israel’s interests at heart. It just so happens they think they know better than the people of Israel what’s good for them.
Hollande and Fabius are so sure of themselves they refuse to acknowledge that if Israel left Judea and Samaria, this would by no means be the end of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Further claims against Israel would be put forth by Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and various and sundry terrorist organizations claiming to represent the Palestinians.
President Mahmoud Abbas, who Hollande and Fabius presumably see as the Palestinian negotiator, would probably be brought down once he could no longer depend on the Israel Defense Forces for support in the area. And the vacuum left by an Israeli withdrawal would most likely be filled by Hamas, or possibly even the fighters of the Islamic State, who consider the area part of the Islamic caliphate they are constituting and aim to bring the territory of the State of Israel under their control as well.
What a glorious end of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that would be. All hell would break loose, and at that point Hollande and Fabius would probably admit they had no solution to this conflict. But the damage would be done.
Before calling on Israel to withdraw to the armistice lines delineated by the IDF and the Jordanian army in 1949 — an armistice violated by the Jordanians in 1967 — Hollande and Fabius might do well to think again before treading in the footsteps of Daladier and Bonnet.
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