Is the United Nations insane? Another declaration about Palestinian statehood

 As Einstein (or whomever) said, insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.  If that's true, the UN is insane.

Another UN resolution, another exercise in futility

From 1947 to today, every chance for Palestinian statehood has been rejected. No declaration in New York will change that reality.

 

The U.N. General Assembly has once again stepped onto the stage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with grand declarations and high-minded pronouncements. Just last week, it voted to endorse a seven-page declaration that outlines “tangible, timebound and irreversible steps” toward a two-state solution.

 The resolution was backed by Gulf Arab states and European powers, boycotted by the United States and Israel, and condemned by Jerusalem as a “publicity stunt.”

 And a stunt it is.

 

Seal of the United Nations

It is worth reminding ourselves—and the diplomats in New York—that this is hardly the first time that the United Nations has promised to deliver a Palestinian state. In fact, the very body that gathered this past Friday voted for just that in 1947. Resolution 181, known as the Partition Plan, proposed the division of British-ruled Palestine into a Jewish state and an Arab state, with Jerusalem under international control.

 The Jewish leadership reluctantly accepted the plan, understanding that it was far from perfect but represented a historic opportunity. The Arab world, on the other hand, rejected it outright and chose war instead.

 The Jewish state was born. The Arab state never was.

 Seventy-seven years later, that international body is still talking about creating one. What does that say about the seriousness of these resolutions?

 The fundamental fact that diplomats prefer to ignore is that the Palestinians have had multiple opportunities to establish their own state, and each time they have chosen rejectionism and violence. The 1947 partition plan. The 2000 Camp David talks, when Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak offered Yasser Arafat nearly everything he claimed to want. The 2008 Annapolis process, when Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert went even further.

 In each case, the answer from the Palestinian leadership was “no”—or worse, a new wave of terrorism.

 The current resolution, like so many before it, tries to skirt this history. Instead, it pretends that peace is only a matter of more conferences, more paperwork and more signatures on symbolic declarations. But there is nothing tangible, time-bound or irreversible about demanding concessions from Israel while holding the Palestinians to no standard of accountability whatsoever.

 Consider the grotesque irony of the United Nations condemning both Hamas’s atrocities and Israel’s defensive actions in the same breath. On Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas launched the deadliest attack on Jews since the Holocaust, massacring civilians, kidnapping children and burning entire families alive in their homes. Yet somehow, in the halls of Turtle Bay, Israel’s efforts to dismantle the Hamas terror organization are given equal moral standing with the terrorists’ crimes. That moral equivalence alone should disqualify the United Nations from being taken seriously as an arbiter of peace.

 The United States and Israel rightly boycotted the July conference that produced this declaration, co-hosted by Saudi Arabia and France. It was clear from the outset that it would be another round of diplomatic theater, aimed not at resolving the conflict but at isolating Israel. No one in Riyadh or Paris truly believes that a U.N. vote will erase decades of Palestinian rejectionism. But it plays well in Arab capitals and provides European leaders with a chance to posture as peacemakers without dealing with the hard truths.

 The hard truth is this: Palestinian statehood cannot be willed into existence by international resolutions. It can only come about through direct negotiations with Israel, based on recognition of the Jewish nation’s legitimacy and a commitment to peaceful coexistence.

 Neither of those preconditions exists today. The Palestinian Authority glorifies terrorists, pays stipends to murderers in Israeli jails and rejects recognition of Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people. Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad openly declare their goal to destroy Israel and its people. How, then, can any serious person talk about “irreversible steps” toward a two-state solution?

 U.N. diplomats love to use the language of inevitability. They speak as though history bends inexorably toward their preferred outcome. But history has already spoken. The Arabs could have had a state in 1947, but they chose war. They could have had a state in 2000 and 2008, but they chose terrorism. Even today, the Palestinian leadership refuses to make peace, preferring to keep its people in perpetual grievance.

 What the world body is really doing with resolutions like this one is perpetuating that grievance. Each new declaration tells the Palestinians that they don’t have to compromise, don’t have to reform, don’t have to recognize Israel. Just sit back, and the world will deliver you a state on a silver platter. That message is not just misguided. It is dangerous. It fuels more rejectionism, more extremism and more violence.

 Meanwhile, Israel continues to build a thriving, democratic society under constant threat. It has made peace with Egypt, with Jordan, and through the Abraham Accords, with several Arab states. Those breakthroughs happened not because of U.N. resolutions but because leaders in Cairo, Amman, Abu Dhabi and Manama decided that peace and progress were preferable to endless war.

 If Palestinian leaders ever make the same decision, peace with Israel will follow. Until then, the United Nations can churn out as many declarations as it likes. They will be as meaningless as the ones that came before.

 The United Nations loves words like “tangible,” “timebound” and “irreversible.” But for nearly eight decades, its resolutions on Israel and the Palestinians have been anything but. What is truly irreversible is the reality that Israel exists, will continue to exist and will defend itself against those who seek its destruction. That is the one fact the United Nations should accept—if it truly wishes to be relevant.

 (This column first appeared on jns.org.  To read it on line go here.)

Stephen M. Flatow

 

 

Turkey’s Erdogan Calls Zionism A “Crime Against Humanity” at UN Conference at View from Geneva

Just finished reading Gil Troy's fabulous book, "Moynihan's Moment" about Sen. Pat Moynihan's efforts to stop the UN from adopting its infamous "Zionism is racism" resolution and his battle to combat that belief during the remainder of his life. 

Today's news about Turkey's prime minister calling Zionism a crime against humanity demonstrates that the fight started by Moynihan must still be waged.

By the way, it took place at a UN event.

Here's the blog posting from UN Watch - Turkey’s Erdogan Calls Zionism A “Crime Against Humanity” at UN Conference at View from Geneva

From the New York Sun - Understanding Israel can't be pushed

Well, opening the editorial page of the New York Sun, brought this:
Hope for Talks in Middle East Lies in Recognition That Israel Can Not Be Pushed

Some highlights-

The recent exchange of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit for a thousand Palestinian prisoners in Israeli hands is regarded as a cautiously hopeful sign even by Israeli hawks, as it appears the only possible de-escalation from the absolute collapse of the peace process that was almost implicit in the Palestinian bid for full membership as a state in the United Nations. The Israeli Right was fiercely opposed to Palestinian statehood from 1948 until relatively recently, when it realized that the Palestinians could not be induced to leave territory Israel occupied after the 1967 war; could not be physically expelled, because neither domestic nor international opinion would tolerate such an outrage; and could not be assimilated, both because of natural Arab resistance, and because of the danger of Israel’s ceasing to be a Jewish state and homeland, which has always been its only raison d’être. (There were Israeli bi-nationalists, jolly progressives who wanted to share; Canaanites, i.e. complete secularists; and territorialists who had wispy dreams of settling in Uganda or Ethiopia — but none of them ever had any grasp of reality.)

In 1917, in the desperate days of World War I, British foreign secretary Arthur Balfour promised “a Jewish homeland” in what was called, resurrecting Roman terminology, Palestine. In the same declaration, it was assured that this would not compromise the rights of the Muslim and Christian Arabs in the same and adjoining territory. As Britain was selling the same real estate to two different and hostile parties, before it was itself in possession of it, there was never going to be a solution that didn’t divide it in two. Nor has there been.

Apart from Anwar Sadat and the kings of Morocco and a few relatively enlightened people in the Persian Gulf, no Arab leader has really accepted the legitimacy of the Jewish state, despite promises at Oslo and elsewhere, and this was confirmed by Mahmoud Abbas in his address to the U.N. a few weeks ago. Every agreement except the Sinai-Suez Camp David agreement with Sadat (who was rewarded with assassination by the Muslim Brotherhood, now contending with the military for control in Egypt) has been designed to exploit Israel’s desire for peace with promises of what amounted to a truce, in exchange for concessions on the ground by Israel. And a vast swath of world opinion, partly thirsting for Arab oil, has cravenly accepted this protracted Arab confidence trick: land for a truce that is cancelable without notice.

Actually, this is a disservice.  Read the full article and learn something.

Well, that's what I have to say.

Stephen M. Flatow

Alisa kfar darom terrorism

In contrast to Holocaust denial, these Muslims learn

Samuel G. Freedman writing in the Religions column of the New York Times covers a man bites dog story.

One afternoon this week, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran addressed the United Nations General Assembly, once again casting doubt that the Holocaust had occurred. Almost exactly 24 hours earlier, an otherwise obscure college student in Morocco named Elmehdi Boudra was convening a conference devoted not to denying the Holocaust but to remembering it.  

Why Morocco?

Uncommonly among Arab and Muslim nations, Morocco has accepted the reality of the Holocaust, rather than either dismissing it outright or portraying it as a European crime for which those countries paid the price in the form of Israel’s creation. Partly, no doubt, because of Mohammed V’s stand against the Vichy regime, the current king, Mohammed VI, called in a 2009 proclamation for “an exhaustive and faithful reading of the history of this period” as part of “the duty of remembrance dictated by the Shoah.”

I didn't know about the Moroccan king's role in saving lives during the Holocaust, did you?  In any event, read the full column to get a flavor of what is also out there in the Muslim world.

stephen flatow alisa flatow israel

Lake Failure - an editorial from The New York Sun

We tend to not remember that The New  York Sun remains on the Internet. This editorial was posted on September 24, 2011 in response to the Palestinian effort to have the United Nations to declare a state of Palestine.

(For the young, Lake Failure is a parody on the name of the community in the suburbs of New York City that hosted the United Nations at the end of World War II.)

Call it Lake Failure — and what a bitter sea it is. This was reflected in the crabbed remarks of the president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas. After delivering his request for the recognition of a Palestinian Arab state, he treated the world to yet another speech of rejection of Israel. He’d already, at a meeting Friday of 200 representatives of the Palestinian Arab community in America, made it clear that the Palestinian Arabs would never recognize a Jewish state. “They talk to us about the Jewish state, but I respond to them with a final answer: We shall not recognize a Jewish state,” Mr. Abbas was quoted by ynetnews.com as telling the meeting.

You can read the full editorial here, Lake Failure.  What do you think?

stephen flatow alisa

Defeat the So-called Unilateral Declaration of Independence

SPEAK OUT IN OPPOSITION TO THE PALESTINIAN

UNILATERAL DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE.

SIGN THE PETITION THAT WILL BE SENT TO THE UN.

On September 20, the Palestinians are going to the United Nations to pursue unilateral statehood recognition. Israel does not oppose a Palestinian state, only its unilateral declaration. The Israeli government is dedicated to mutually negotiated resolutions that result in two states for two peoples, living side by side in peace and security. Both the United States and Israel believe that unilateral action will not lead to peace, but will instead complicate any peace process and possibly lead to violence.

• A UN resolution will not resolve the core issues - including borders, Jerusalem, the status of refugees, or the sharing of water.

• The Palestinian Authority recently signed an agreement with Hamas, a terrorist organization that calls for the destruction of Israel and continues to fire rockets into Israeli towns and schoolyards.

• A unilateral declaration of Palestinian statehood is counter to all internationally accepted frameworks for Mideast peace, which all call for a mutually negotiated and agreed upon resolution of the conflict and prohibit unilateral action by either side.

Mahmoud Abbas must sit down at the negotiating table instead of standing up at the UN.

Sign the Petition - Now

Well, that's what I think.


stephen flatow alisa udi

Cohen- Price of Delusion. Libya and Qadaffi

Roger Cohen’s column in the Times begins with his take on Qaddafi-

“Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi is a vain man. Like the other Arab dinosaurs he has his dyed hair, his designer shades, his spoiled children and his compound full of sycophants. He doesn’t want, one day, to be dragged from a rat hole like Saddam
Hussein or hauled from a bunker like the Ivory Coast’s Laurent Gbagbo.”

“Qaddafi is not mad,” he writes, but deluded. And who or what helped along his delusion?

Qaddafi is a child of the United Nations, that austere body in New York City that gives the plenum to people like Qaddafi, Hugo Chavez and Ahmadinejad. It is the U.N. and its various councils that empower people like Qaddafi by giving them the veneer of legitimacy that allows them to murder their own people and to sponsor terrorism.

And of the rebels?

“Right now, three squabbling generals jostle for control. The Brits, holed up in a Benghazi hotel compound with one of the generals, are trying to help with that. The United States is offering nonlethal stuff worth millions of dollars: body armor, canteens, uniforms, wire cages for sandbags that can be used to make walls.”

But you sense from Cohen that he blames the U.S. for the rebel’s lack of progress in ousting Qaddafi.

“This embryonic force is not going to defeat Qaddafi in the foreseeable future. Nor can it, alone, apply enough pressure on him for his entourage to see the writing on the wall and act accordingly. That burden falls to NATO. But NATO hesitated as President Obama and America drew back. It is now trying to correct that lapse by escalating operations to take out supply and communications lines.”

I say that the U.N. created Qaddafi, let it now get rid of him. Small chance of that happening as its fecklessness is on display as it considers adding Syria to the UN’s Human Rights Council.

What will be in Libya will be. And I do not hold out much hope of a democratic future.

The full article is here.

Moral Equivalency at the United Nations

The UN announced today that the military chief of United Nations peacekeepers in Lebanon discussed with senior Lebanese and Israeli military officials recent incidents in Lebanon's south.

"Commander Major General Claudio Graziano also reviewed the situation in the village of Ghajar, where Israel still occupies the northern part although it should have withdrawn in compliance with Security Council resolution 1701."

That's OK for starters.

You'll remember that Resolution 1701 increased the UN's military presence in south Lebanon, "and called for an end to hostilities, respect for the so-called Blue Line separating the Israeli and Lebanese sides, disarming militias including Hizbollah, and an end to arms smuggling."

Here comes the equivalence-

"Hizbollah has not disarmed, and last month Special Coordinator for Lebanon Michael Williams said sporadic rocket launches into Israel, almost daily Israeli flights over Lebanon, the active maintenance of an arms depot by Hizbollah and the apparently Israeli surveillance equipment left on Lebanese territory raised the spectre of a potential escalation."

So, is it Hizbollah's failure to disarm, sporadic rocket launches and arms supplies, or Israel's overflights and surveillance equipment that bring the "spectre of escalation?"

It seems to me that the UN has gone out of its way to equate Israel's defensive steps with Hizbollah's rearmament and rocket launches into Israeli territory. I think it's clear that the UN is bending over backwards to be "overhanded" when, in fact, it is not living up to its mandate to supervise the disarmament of Hizbollah and blocking its potential rearmament.

Read the full release here.

United Nations Continues to Weigh-in on Gaza Crossings

The U.N. weighed in with another demonstration of hand wringing over Israel's refusal to allow unfettered access to Gaza. Accusations flew across the Security Council table on March 25, 2009 as Israel was accused of making the humanitarian situation worse in Gaza.

B. Lynn Pascoe, Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs, lamented that a " a worrying situation of impasse and uncertainty existed. Despite international engagement and support, very little concrete progress had been made on key issues outlined in Council resolution 1860 (2009), including the establishment of a proper ceasefire regime in Gaza, unimpeded access for humanitarian assistance, opening of the crossings, prevention of illicit trafficking in arms and ammunitions, and intra-Palestinian reconciliation."

No mention was made by Mr. Pascoe of the fate of Gilad Schalit, an Israeli soldier held hostage by Hamas for more than 3 years.

As the Palestinian representative charged that

"Everyone was now aware of the human and physical tolls of destruction deliberately inflicted by the occupying Power [Israel] over three weeks, the magnitude of which was unprecedented since the beginning of the occupation in 1967."

Gabriela Shalev, Israel's Ambassador to the UN, responded by agreeing that

"civilians on both sides, including children, had indeed borne the burden of the conflict. Children in the cities of southern Israel asked their parents why more than 1,000 rockets had been fired into their communities. Osher Twito, who had loved playing soccer, had been eight years old when he had lost both legs a year-and-a-half ago and asked his parents that question every day. Each side had stories to tell, but they should only be used to advance the cause of peace.

Interestingly, representatives from Uganda, Turkey, China, Costa Rica, Viet Nam and Russia did not waste their time criticizing Israel. Instead, they focused on the need to stop rocket attacks against Israeli civilians.

Here's the full briefing to Security Council.

United Nations Creates Refugees

The United Nations has announced that the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) "tasked with assisting Palestinian refugees will be able to improve living conditions for thousands living in Lebanese camps thanks to a new partnership with the United Arab Emirates."

The money, $6,000,000, is coming from the United Arab Emirates Red Crescent (UAERC) and will go to UNRWA in accordance with two agreements signed on March 16, 2009. According to the UN,

"$5 million will go to rehabilitating 343 of the most structurally unsound, hazardous and unhygienic shelters in Bourj El Shemali camp in South Lebanon.The project is part of the Camp Improvement Initiative launched by the Lebanese Government and UNRWA in 2006 to improve the living conditions of Palestine refugees in Lebanon’s 12 refugee camps. Another $1 million will enable UNRWA to construct 149 temporary housing units for Palestinian families who were displaced from the Nahr El Bared camp nearly two years ago."

For those who may have forgotten, the UN points out that "the camp was basically a complete town of over 30,000 inhabitants before it was destroyed by intense fighting between the Lebanese national army and Fatah el-Islam gunmen between May and September 2007."

UNRWA Commissioner-General Karen AbuZayd welcomed both agreements, noting that much of the world’s attention recently has been on the situation of Palestine refugees in Gaza. “However, we must not forget refugees elsewhere in the region who may be living in deplorable conditions,” she stated.

This is not the first venture for UAERC. It has previously "funded major construction projects including Khan Younis in Gaza, Jenin in the West Bank, and more recently Neirab in Aleppo, Syria."

UNRWA notes that there are 4.6 million Palestinian refugees in camps in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. Long used as pawns by the Arab nations in the Mid East, this latest "humanitarian" gesture does nothing to bring peace to the region. In fact, it will stoke the fires of hatred now being bred in the refugee camps. What other people keep their brethren in conditions of squalor? None. What other people keep their brethren out of society, employment and citizenship rights? None.

Rather than investing $6 million dollars to rebuild camps destroyed in internecine fighting, would not the money be better spent integrating these so-called refugees into the society of their host country?

For the full story, go to UN News Centre

Palestinians Need Israel to Win. If Hamas gets away with terror once again, the peace process will be over.

The "usual suspects" are lining up to condemn Israel's response to Hamas attacks from Gaza against the southern part of the country. There will be much hand wringing in world capitals and the media, never a friend of Israel in its conflict with Palestinian terrorists, will soon be picking up the cry against Israel's "disproportionate use of power" or the toll of civilian casualties.
As the father of a terror victim, I admit to my prejudice--by always hoping the Palestinians will see the error in their ways and cease and desist their terror attacks that lead to much hardship for their own people.

From the December 29, 2008 Wall Street Journal--

Messrs. Michael Oren and Yossi Klein Halevi weigh-in on the war between Israel and Hamas now taking place in Gaza.

• Israel's current operation in Gaza is essential for creating the conditions that could eventually lead to a two-state solution.
• While a majority of Israelis now believe in the need for a Palestinian state, it's also clear from the failure of the Oslo peace process that "no amount of concessions would grant international legitimacy to Israel's right to defend itself."
• The parallels between the Gaza operations and the Lebanon campaign of two years ago are there. Israel withdrew unilaterally from Lebanon in 2000 and Hezbullah's build-up of arms and rockets was unchallenged. Israel's unilateral decision to leave Gaza in 2005 resulted in rocket and mortar attacks against Israel's southern cities.
• "Israelis across the political spectrum agreed that the state had the right, indeed the duty, to protect its people. But one question remained: Would the international community consent?
• "Without Hamas's defeat, there can be no serious progress toward a treaty that both satisfies Palestinian aspirations and allays Israel's fears. At stake in Gaza is nothing less than the future of the peace process.

Here's the full article:

A quarter century has passed since Israel last claimed to go to war in the name of peace. "Operation Peace for Galilee" -- Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon -- failed to convince the international public and even many Israelis that its goal was to promote reconciliation between Israel and the Arab world. In fact, the war had precisely the opposite results, preparing the way for Yasser Arafat's disastrous return to the West Bank and Gaza, and for Hezbollah's ultimate domination of Lebanon. And yet, Israel's current operation in Gaza is essential for creating the conditions that could eventually lead to a two-state solution.

Over the past two decades, a majority of Israelis have shifted from adamant opposition to Palestinian statehood to acknowledging the need for such a state. This transformation represented a historic victory for the Israeli left, which has long advocated Palestinian self-determination. The left's victory, though, remained largely theoretical: The right won the practical argument that no amount of concessions would grant international legitimacy to Israel's right to defend itself.

That was the unavoidable lesson of the failure of the Oslo peace process, which ended in the fall of 2000 with Israel's acceptance of President Bill Clinton's proposal for near-total withdrawal from East Jerusalem and the territories. The Palestinians responded with five years of terror.

Yet much of the international community blamed Israel for the violence and repeatedly condemned its efforts at self-defense. The experience left a deep wound in the Israeli psyche. It intimidated Israeli leaders from taking security measures liable to be denounced by the United Nations and the European Union, or worse, result in sanctions against the Jewish state.

One consequence was an Israeli reluctance to respond to periodic Hezbollah provocations following Israel's unilateral withdrawal from Lebanon in May 2000. This hesitancy allowed the Shiite terror organization to amass a rocket arsenal with the proclaimed intent of devastating Israel's population centers.

Finally, when Hezbollah unleashed its weapons in July 2006, Israel was widely accused of responding disproportionately. It was pressured into prematurely ending its defensive operations in Lebanon, and compelled to accept an international "peacekeeping" force that has permitted Hezbollah to rearm far beyond its prewar levels.

Israelis are now asking themselves whether their Lebanon nightmare is about to repeat itself in Gaza. The parallels are indeed striking. As in Lebanon, Israel in 2005 unilaterally withdrew to its international border with Gaza and received, instead of security, a regime dedicated to its destruction. The thousands of rockets and mortar shells subsequently fired on Israeli neighborhoods represented more than a crude attempt to kill and terrorize civilians -- they were expressions of a genocidal intent.

Israelis across the political spectrum agreed that the state had the right, indeed the duty, to protect its people. But one question remained: Would the international community consent?

That question grew urgent in the days before Dec. 19, when the tenuous cease-fire between Israel and Hamas expired. Nearly 300 missiles landed in Israel, paralyzing much of the southern part of the country. Yet Israeli leaders held their fire.

Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni flew to Cairo to implore Egyptian leaders to urge restraint on Hamas, and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told viewers of Al-Arabiyah Television that Israel had no interest in a military confrontation. If Israel was guilty of acting disproportionately, it was in its willingness to seek any means, even at the risk of its citizens' lives, to resolve the crisis diplomatically.

Yet the U.N. Security Council abstained from condemning Hamas and convened only after Israel resolved to act. The U.N.'s hypocrisy, together with growing media criticism of Israel, is reinforcing Israeli concerns that territorial concessions, whether unilateral or negotiated, will only compromise the country's security and curtail its ability to respond to attack. This fear is compounded when Israelis consider withdrawals from the West Bank, which is within easy rocket range of its major population and industrial centers.

Gaza is the test case. Much more is at stake than merely the military outcome of Israel's operation. The issue, rather, is Israel's ability to restore its deterrence power and uphold the principle that its citizens cannot be targeted with impunity.

Without the assurance that they will be allowed to protect their homes and families following withdrawal, Israelis will rightly perceive a two-state solution as an existential threat. They will continue to share the left-wing vision of coexistence with a peaceful Palestinian neighbor in theory, but in reality will heed the right's warnings of Jewish powerlessness.

The Gaza crisis also has implications for Israeli-Syrian negotiations. Here, too, Israelis will be unwilling to cede strategically vital territories -- in this case on the Golan Heights -- in an international environment in which any attempt to defend themselves will be denounced as unjustified aggression. Syria's role in triggering the Gaza conflict only deepens Israeli mistrust. The Damascus office of Hamas, which operates under the aegis of the regime of Bashar al Assad, vetoed the efforts of Hamas leaders in Gaza to extend the cease-fire and insisted on escalating rocket attacks.

In the coming days, the Gaza conflict is likely to intensify with a possible incursion of Israeli ground forces. Israel must be allowed to conclude this operation with a decisive victory over Hamas; the untenable situation of intermittent rocket fire and widespread arms smuggling must not be allowed to resume. This is an opportunity to redress Israel's failure to humble Hezbollah in Lebanon in 2006, and to deal a substantial setback to another jihadist proxy of Iran.

It may also be the last chance to reassure Israelis of the viability of a two-state solution. Given the unfortunate historical resonance, Israel should refrain from calling its current operation, "Peace for Southern Israel." But without Hamas's defeat, there can be no serious progress toward a treaty that both satisfies Palestinian aspirations and allays Israel's fears. At stake in Gaza is nothing less than the future of the peace process.

Mr. Oren is a fellow at the Shalem Center in Jerusalem and a professor at the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. Mr. Klein Halevi is a fellow at the Shalem Center's Adelson Institute for Strategic Studies.

Saudi King's Interfaith Conference - a Follow-up

Last week we wrote about the Saudi king's interfaith conference at the United Nations. Today New York Post writer Benny Avni weighs in with a column called UN Masquerade.

Recognizing that the "king won much praise last week for convening talks at the United Nations ostensibly meant to promote peace and 'religious tolerance'" Avni advises that

"if you take a close look at King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz al Saud's agenda, some of it is hardly praiseworthy. In fact, if he gets any traction at the UN (or anywhere else), it'll mark a giant step backward for both peace and tolerance."

Writing about what he calls a "scary agenda," Avni points out that the king

"wants the world's moral blessing to restrict any and all speech about Islam,its adherents and regimes that promote them - except, of course, that which is approved by official censors. He also wants to throw the UN's moral weight behind punishments meted out to those who violate such restrictions, even if he doesn't say that explicitly.

"Meanwhile, Abdullah failed to make even the slightest gesture toward softening his own regime's brutal intolerance of other religions and cultures. Some parley on "religious tolerance."

Looks like the king is a wolf in sheep's clothing. Let's hope the world is smart enough to see through his latest PR stunt.

Read UN Masquerade