Aletho News

Is Obama more Zionist Than Dubya Bush

By Yousef | Permission To Narrate | March 2012

Remember last year when there was a great deal of commotion about President Barack Obama’s reference to the 1967 lines being used as the basis of negotiated land swaps between Israel and Palestine?

It was hard to forget. Obama’s political foes and even some of his friends accused him of throwing Israel under the bus. Netanyahu used the opportunity to slam Obama for this and stated that “Israel will not return to the indefensible boundaries of 1967”. In fact, when he said this before Congress they gave him one of 29 standing ovations.

As Republican candidates vie for the party’s nomination, they have not shied from using this issue to attack Obama as well, following Netanyahu’s lead.

But, successive administrations have stated the same thing time and again about the US position which is in line with UN Security Council Resolution 242. Most reasonable observers knew at the time that Obama’s statements where in no way a major shift in policy.

Or was it?

If it was, Jeffery Goldberg, for one, didn’t notice. He wrote, in a post titled ‘Did Obama Say Something so Different than Bush?‘ (emphasis mine):

In 2005, Geoge W. Bush stated that it is “unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949” (the 1967 boundaries of Israel, in other words). Today, Barack Obama said that he believes “the borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps, so that secure and recognized borders are established for both states

Seems straightforward enough. The immediate predecessor to Obama, George W. Bush, talked about the 1949 Armistice line which Goldberg tells us equals the 1967 line. So essentially, Bush and Obama had the same position, right? Here is an excerpt from President Bush’s speech in the Rose Garden in 2005 (emphasis mine):

Any final status agreement must be reached between the two parties, and changes to the 1949 Armistice lines must be mutually agreed to. A viable two-state solution must ensure contiguity of the West Bank, and a state of scattered territories will not work. There must also be meaningful linkages between the West Bank and Gaza. This is the position of the United States today, it will be the position of the United States at the time of final status negotiations.

If we go by Goldberg’s translation, 1949 Armistice lines = 1967 lines. This formula is not just the Goldberg standard. Here is the New York Times on this issue (emphasis mine):

Those commitments came in a letter from President George W. Bush which stated, among other things that “it is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949,” another way of describing the 1967 boundaries.

To be sure, NPR checked with Glenn Kessler, author of the Washington Post’s “Fact Checker” column to, well, check the facts:

President BARACK OBAMA: We believe the borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps.

CONAN: And Glenn, is that a substantial change from what presidents have said before?

Mr. KESSLER: Yes, it is. I mean, in the context of diplomacy, what President Obama said that was different was that he actually referenced 1967, the 1967 lines, the de-facto border that had basically existed since the end of the 1948 war of independence.

CONAN: So if he had said the armistice lines of 1948, would that have been different?

Mr. KESSLER: No, what I did is I researched and looked at what all previous presidents had said, and actually they never said anything about lines one way or the other.

I’m not sure what kind of research Glenn did to miss the statement by President Bush buried deep down in this dusty archive. But its not just the fact the Bush made reference to the 1949 armistice line that contrasts with Kessler’s statements. He seems to be saying, like the New York Times, Jeffery Goldberg and even some Palestinians that the 1949 Armistice Line = the 1967 line.

Well, to be perfectly accurate, we are all wrong. The 1949 armistice line is not the same as the 1967 line. Here is why, check out the map of Gaza below (enlarge). The red line you see is the actual armistice line from 1949. The blue line is what we see on maps today which often is referred to as the Green Line or the 1967 line. So what happened to all the area, some 200km², in purple?

Essentially, the Israelis just took it. The blue line is actually the 1950 modus videndi line. This was an agreement between Egypt, which filled the vacuum of power in Gaza at the time, and the Israelis that established a temporary buffer zone (the purple area) on the Arab side of the actual armistice line. The agreement divides the territory up into areas A,B and C and resulted in a permanent Israeli land grab. (Why does this sound so familiar?) Dr. Salman Abu Sitta, an outstanding Palestinian historical geographer, made a great presentation about this, the Nakba, and other Israel land grabs here at the Palestine Center.

There are areas other than Gaza where the lines diverge. This ironically includes the villages in the triangle area in the north eastern part of the West Bank which Israel was not supposed to enter and today, for reasons of ‘demographic threat’ probably wishes it never had. I’d encourage you to watch the whole presentation.

President Obama actually visited this purple area grabbed by the Israelis in the map above. President George W. Bush, despite all the damage his policies did in the region, clearly chose to use the language of the 1949 armistice line over the 1967 lines for a reason. By doing this, Bush actually signified the correct dividing line on which negotiations should be based. By reversing from the Bush language of “1949 armistice lines” to 1967 borders, Obama actually supported a Zionist land grab.

I wonder what his right-wing detractors have to say about that?

In sum, this is just another example of how, over time Zionist expansionism has taken more and more of Palestine, constantly changing the starting point and re-leveraging their negotiating position. It also goes to show you that over time, the temporary becomes permanent and a lie told often enough becomes truth. (At least we have the internet to set things straight.)

Is it any wonder why the Palestinians want a complete stop to any such expansion before even thinking of negotiations?

Related article

• Despite Domestic Cuts, U.S. Aid To Israel Up By $25 Million In Proposed Budget

March 11, 2012 - Posted by aletho | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular | George W. Bush, Obama, Palestine