Our World: As Ahmadinejad Watches, By Caroline Glick
Excerpts;
IN HER discussions with Israeli leaders, Rice has proposed that in the framework of a settlement of the current crisis, Israel give Mt. Dov on the Golan Heights to Lebanon. There has been almost no public debate about the reasonableness of the US position. Yet even the most superficial analysis makes it clear that such a move would be catastrophic for Israel’s long-term viability.
Mt. Dov, which Hizbullah refers to as the Shaba Farms, is not and has never been Lebanese territory. In 2000, following Israel’s withdrawal from Lebanon, the UN certified that Israel had removed itself from all Lebanese territory.
The UN further confirmed that Mt. Dov was territory Israel wrested from Syria during the course of the 1967 Six Day War. The UN stated that the fate of the territory would be determined in the course of negotiations toward a peace treaty between Israel and Syria.
Hizbullah cut the Lebanese territorial claim to Mt. Dov out of whole cloth as a pretext for continuing its war against Israel after Israel left Lebanon. Its claim that Mt. Dov is Lebanese territory has been rejected by the international community. Yet today, the US is prodding Israel to give Mt. Dov to Lebanon as a confidence-building gesture toward the Lebanese government, which of course supports Hizbullah’s demand. By adopting this Hizbullah demand, the US is breaching the decades-old foundation of the Law of Nations, which stipulates that states cannot win territory from other states through armed aggression.
ADDITIONALLY, by supporting Hizbullah’s demand, the US is in effect suing for a Hizbullah victory in this war. Hizbullah has never demanded Mt. Dov for itself. It demands the vast territory that connects the Syrian Golan to the Upper Galilee for Lebanon. And the Lebanese government, which the US seeks to strengthen, supports this Hizbullah demand just as it supports all of Hizbullah’s demands. If Lebanon receives the territory, Hizbullah will be the clear victor in this war.
Moreover, by even suggesting that Israel consider giving Mt. Dov to Lebanon, the US is undermining the very notion that Israel has a right to recognized borders. If after Israel removed itself to the international border Lebanon can receive support for additional territorial claims against Israel, that means there is no line to which Israel can remove itself in the Golan, or in Jerusalem, or in Judea and Samaria or Gaza and safely assume that its borders will be recognized by the rest of the world.
In short, by backing Lebanese claims to Mt. Dov, the US is paving the way for future territorial claims for West Jerusalem, the Galilee, Haifa, indeed for all of Israel.
Israel will never be able to trust that any peace treaty it signs is final. An act of aggression by its enemies may pave the way for additional claims, which in the interests of strengthening the Palestinian, Egyptian, Jordanian, or Syrian governments the international community is liable to support.
IT WOULD seem that, in spite of themselves, both the US and the Israeli government have managed to maneuver themselves into diplomatic positions that undermine their own national interests. Somehow, between the US’s early and misguided decision to ignore the Lebanese government’s support and responsibility for Hizbullah and the Olmert government’s clearly halfhearted prosecution of the war, both governments have gotten lost. The goals that now form the basis of their diplomatic agendas serve only to advance the interests of their enemies.
A clear break from the current path must be made immediately. Ahmadinejad is looking on and laughing.
To read the entire article, click Our World: As Ahmadinejad Watches