A growing, and public, consensus is emerging among top military officials both in the United States and in Israel that the lack of a two-state solution poses a strategic threat to both Israeli and American vital national security interests.Hmmmm...Didn't President Obama himself make this declaration on June 4, 2008?
In widely discussed testimony on Capitol Hill last week, Gen. David Petraeus, the U.S. commander overseeing the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, stated that "enduring hostilities between Israel and some of its neighbors present distinct challenges to our ability to advance [American] interests" in the Middle East.
Let me be clear. Israel's security is sacrosanct. It is non-negotiable. The Palestinians need a state that is contiguous and cohesive, and that allows them to prosper — but any agreement with the Palestinian people must preserve Israel's identity as a Jewish state, with secure, recognized and defensible borders. Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided.That's one reason I voted for him, and I bet I'm not the only American voter to have believed what he said.
Interestingly, General Petraeus seems now to have taken on the historic role of General George C. Marshall, who opposed Israeli independence in 1948. Richard Holbrooke, of all people, wrote about it in the Washington Post:
Truman blamed "third and fourth level" State Department officials -- especially the director of U.N. affairs, Dean Rusk, and the agency's counselor, Charles Bohlen. But opposition really came from an even more formidable group: the "wise men" who were simultaneously creating the great Truman foreign policy of the late 1940s -- among them Marshall, James V. Forrestal, George F. Kennan, Robert Lovett, John J. McCloy, Paul Nitze and Dean Acheson. To overrule State would mean Truman taking on Marshall, whom he regarded as "the greatest living American," a daunting task for a very unpopular president.Guess what? Marshall was wrong, Truman and Clifford were right, and as a result of staunch support for Israel some 60 years later the US had both Arab and Israeli allies in the Middle East.
Beneath the surface lay unspoken but real anti-Semitism on the part of some (but not all) policymakers. The position of those opposing recognition was simple -- oil, numbers and history. "There are thirty million Arabs on one side and about 600,000 Jews on the other," Defense Secretary Forrestal told Clifford. "Why don't you face up to the realities?"
