{"id":18779,"date":"2016-05-20T00:36:54","date_gmt":"2016-05-20T07:36:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/?p=18779"},"modified":"2016-05-18T17:26:33","modified_gmt":"2016-05-19T00:26:33","slug":"stop-negotiating-says-pipes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/2016\/05\/20\/stop-negotiating-says-pipes\/","title":{"rendered":"Stop negotiating, says Pipes"},"content":{"rendered":"

Gina Faigen, daughter of the late Dr. Morris H. Faigen, who founded the annual Faigen Family Lecture Series, with this year\u2019s speaker Daniel Pipes. (photo by Jocelyne Hall\u00e9)<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Israel should stop trying to find a negotiated solution that provides a mutually agreeable resolution to the conflict with Palestinians, says Daniel Pipes, and instead declare victory and force the Palestinians into the realization that they have been defeated.<\/p>\n

Pipes, a commentator and historian who is president of the Philadelphia-based Middle East Forum, made the comments in Vancouver May 9 at the fifth annual Faigen Family Lecture.<\/p>\n

The idea of land for peace, in which Israel gives up concrete real estate for the \u201cephemeral idea\u201d of peace, has failed, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe can all agree that the Israelis do not have more peace for giving up Gaza and parts of the West Bank,\u201d said Pipes. \u201cIt\u2019s not working.\u201d Instead, he said, Palestinians view Israeli concessions as a sign of weakness and this has led not to increased peace, but to increased hostility.<\/p>\n

\u201cRather than mediation and compromise and painful concessions, such has been the case, how about something different?\u201d Pipes asked. \u201cHow about Israel wins and the Palestinians lose? How about Israeli victory?<\/p>\n

\u201cVictory is not a term you hear much,\u201d he continued. \u201cPeople talk about a peace process, negotiations, but this is a conflict, this is a war. It\u2019s been a war for a century. And an end comes to a war when one side acknowledges that it\u2019s lost, that the gig is up, that it cannot win.\u201d<\/p>\n

Germany lost the First World War, Pipes said, but they didn\u2019t feel defeated. They wanted another round and they got it in 1939. After 1945, the Allies realized they had to demilitarize Germany and Japan, to demonstrate that they had been conclusively defeated.<\/p>\n

\u201cDefeat is sanitary,\u201d said Pipes. \u201cDefeat allows you to move on.\u2026 I think that\u2019s what the Palestinians need. Not only for Israel\u2019s sake \u2013 obviously for Israel\u2019s sake \u2013 but also for the Palestinians\u2019 sake. Only by being defeated can the Palestinians stop obsessing over harming Israel and instead start building their own polity, culture, society. It\u2019s good for everyone, Palestinians as well.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pipes clarified: \u201cI\u2019m not calling for killing Palestinians.\u201d The idea is to impose on Palestinians the sense that they have lost.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s no point in getting into the details,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

He would like to see Western governments adopt policies that would urge the Israelis to win the conflict.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t go to the negotiating table. It doesn\u2019t work. We need to win,\u201d he said. \u201cLet\u2019s give up on this failed, decades-old effort to have the Israelis give more and the Palestinians take more and give nothing in return.\u201d<\/p>\n

Questioned by an audience member on what victory would look like, Pipes said: \u201cYou\u2019ll know that Israel has won when the Jews of Hebron have no more need for security than the Arabs of Nazareth \u2026 when an irate Palestinian writes a strongly worded letter to the editor.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pressed on how such a victory would be achieved, Pipes at first demurred.<\/p>\n

\u201cI did not talk about how to get there because I would encourage you to see things this way,\u201d he said, before giving some examples.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe other day there was shooting out of Gaza. The Israelis replied with shooting back into Gaza,\u201d he said. \u201cWouldn\u2019t it be more effective to cut off the water and electricity for a day? The next time two days? Wouldn\u2019t that send a signal? Why don\u2019t the Israelis do that? Because they don\u2019t have a plan for victory.\u201d<\/p>\n

Until 1993, Pipes said, Israel strove for victory.<\/p>\n

With the Oslo process that began in 1993, and after, Pipes said, Israel adopted a policy of appeasement. When that failed in about 2000, they adopted a policy of unilateral withdrawal from Lebanon and Gaza.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd, since about 2006, there\u2019s been no policy at all,\u201d he said. \u201cI think we should return \u2013 it\u2019s not my idea \u2013 return to the old ways.\u201d<\/p>\n

Palestinians need to realize that their strategy isn\u2019t working, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re engaging in suicide stabbings and other atrocities because they think this will help the Palestinians win,\u201d he said. \u201cIf you can convince them there\u2019s no chance of this working, why would a sane individual \u2013 and these are, they\u2019re perfectly normal \u2013 why would they give up their lives? They believe that they are on a path to victory. Convince them that they are not on the path to victory and I think they will be less likely to engage in this kind of violence.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pipes acknowledged that people say the Palestinians will never accept defeat.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut I say, the Germans did, the Japanese did,\u201d said Pipes. An audience member noted that the Palestinians have an international support network that the Germans and Japanese did not.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey do,\u201d Pipes responded. \u201cAll those professors of English.\u2026 In the end, what really counts is, for example, water and electricity.\u201d<\/p>\n

While Israelis and Americans are trying to find creative ideas to hasten peace, \u201cPalestinians aren\u2019t playing around with creative ideas,\u201d he said. \u201cThey\u2019re killing.\u201d<\/p>\n

If the Palestinians can be convinced to give up the fight against Israel, Pipes believes that the rest of the Arab and Muslim world will similarly give up. He called Palestinians \u201cthe tip of the spear,\u201d saying it\u2019s hard to be more anti-Zionist than the Palestinians.<\/p>\n

Though Pipes believes Arab and Muslim states may be tiring of losing to Israel, \u201cI don\u2019t see any fatigue at all\u201d among leftists who are rallying against the Jewish state.<\/p>\n

About the United States, Pipes said President Barack Obama seems to think that U.S. foreign policy before him has been a force for ill rather than for good in the world. Obama is making overtures to the traditional enemies of the United States, including Cuba and Iran, and paying less attention to allies, such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia, said Pipes.<\/p>\n

Were Donald Trump to find himself president of the United States, Pipes worries that the \u201cconsummate dealmaker\u201d would, like all his predecessors, fail at facilitating an agreement between the Palestinians and the Israelis.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe would call them in, he would give them his instructions, they would reject him and he would blame guess who?\u201d Pipes speculated. \u201cI suspect he would turn against Israel.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Faigen Family Lecture Series \u2013 which is held in partnership with Vancouver Hebrew Academy \u2013 was founded by the late Dr. Morris H. Faigen, who passed away in 2012. The evening was introduced by his daughter, Gina, who said her father wanted a forum for conservative perspectives on Israel but also one where people with a more liberal perspective, like her, could engage.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Gina Faigen, daughter of the late Dr. Morris H. Faigen, who founded the annual Faigen Family Lecture Series, with this year\u2019s speaker Daniel Pipes. (photo by Jocelyne Hall\u00e9) Israel should stop trying to find a negotiated solution that provides a mutually agreeable resolution to the conflict with Palestinians, says Daniel Pipes, and instead declare victory […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":18762,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4329],"tags":[5836,4330,1172,2721],"class_list":["post-18779","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-israel","tag-faigen-lecture","tag-israel","tag-palestinians","tag-peace"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18779","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18779"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18779\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18762"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18779"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18779"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18779"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}