He Also Equated
Israel & Terrorists

NEW YORK- The Zionist Organization of America has criticized Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz for publicly praising a plan that would push Israel back to the indefensible pre-1967 borders and tear Jerusalem in half.

The Jerusalem Post reported (Oct. 31, 2003) that in an October 30 speech at Georgetown University, praised a plan being promoted by Israeli leftwing activists, known as the “Geneva Understandings,” which requires Israel to return to the pre-1967 borders and would turn half of Jerusalem —including Judaism’s holiest site, the Temple Mount— into the capitol of a Palestinian Arab state. Wolfowitz said the points in the Geneva Plan “look very much like” the Bush administration’s Road Map plan.

According to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (Oct. 31, 2003), Wolfowitz said the Geneva plan “is the plan that best reflects the road map.” He also said President Bush “is ready to pressure Israel” on issues such as Jewish communities in Judea-Samaria-Gaza.

To make matters worse, Wolfowitz repeatedly seemed to equate Israel and Palestinian Arab terrorists, by implying that Israel’s counter-terror actions were comparable to Palestinian Arab terrorist attacks. He said, according to the Post: “The bombings and the violent response to the bombings in the last several months have certainly been a big setback, and we’ve got to get it back on track.”

The Post reported: “He had harsh words for both sides, criticizing Israel for continuing settlements in the occupied territories and causing Palestinian suffering in those territories. He said Palestinians must stop terrorist attacks on Israel.” However, Wolfowitz made no reference to the much more widespread illegal Arab construction activity in the territories.

Wolfowitz also said “both sides” have “extremists” who oppose the Road Map and must be “isolated.”

ZOA National President Morton A. Klein said: “By praising the Geneva plan, Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz is suggesting, for the first time, that the U.S. position is to redivide Jerusalem and force Israel back to the indefensible pre-1967 borders. We urge President Bush to publicly disavow Wolfowitz’s comments and to make clear that the U.S. has never supported, and does not support, giving half of Jerusalem to Arafat and a retreat to the nine-miles-wide borders of 1967.”

* The late Abba Eban said that the 1967 border would leave Israel so vulnerable that “it has for us something of a memory of Auschwitz.” (Der Spiegel, November 5, 1969)

* A study by the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff in June 1967 concluded: “From a strictly military point of view Israel would require the retention of some captured Arab territory in order to provide militarily defensible borders … [including] control of the prominent high ground running north-south through the middle of West Jordan [Judea-Samaria],” as well as the entire Gaza Strip and the entire Golan Heights.

* Lt.-Gen. Thomas Kelly, director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the 1991 Gulf War, said: “It is impossible to defend Jerusalem unless you hold that high ground [in Judea-Samaria]. I look out from those heights and look onto the West Bank and say to myself, ‘If I’m the chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces, I cannot defend this land without that terrain.’” (Jerusalem Post, Nov. 7, 1991)

Main Points of the Geneva Accord:

* Israel withdraws to the indefensible pre-1967 borders. Only tiny modifications of the border are allowed, and even then Israel would have to give the Palestinian Authority an equal amount of territory from within the pre-1967 areas.

* Most of the 200,000 Jews living beyond the 1967 border (including parts of Jerusalem that are technically over the boundary line) would be forcibly expelled from their homes and towns.

* A sovereign Palestinian Arab state would be created immediately in Judea-Samaria and Gaza.

* There is a timetable for Israeli withdrawals, but no reference to any timetable for the PA to disband terrorist groups (which it calls “irregular forces or armed bands”) and no reference whatsoever to confiscating the tens of thousands of illegal weapons in the hands of terrorists. The process could drag on for years, even decades, while terrorists murder Jews and the government of “Palestine” insists it is “doing its best” to find the weapons.

* Jerusalem would be redivided. The eastern part of the city would become the capitol of “Palestine.”

* The new state of “Palestine” is required to be “a non-militarized state,” but the job of monitoring compliance is given to an “International Verification Group,” which would be dissolved after five years.