U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said in Madrid on Monday that the French proposal for foreign troops to maintain order on the Temple Mount is “not needed.”
It was a rare public statement that put Kerry and Israel on the same side and which was expressed hours before Israeli officials spoke to their French counterparts in Jerusalem that the idea is, to be polite, insane.
Kerry told reporters:
We don’t contemplate any change, but nor does Israel. Israel understands the importance of that status quo. What is important is to make sure everybody understands what that means. We are not seeking some new change. We are not seeking outsiders or others to come in….
We need to have clarity.
It is ironic that his remarks were made in Madrid, where the United States launched the “peace process” with the presence of then-Prime Minister Yitzchak Shamir, Jordanian and Egypt leaders, and President George H. W. Bush.
The “clarity” that Kerry said is lacking today has been messing ever since the Madrid conference. It is speculation to ask what would have happened if there had been no “peace process,” but the facts are that since 1991, the ensuing Oslo Accords set the stage for the Oslo War, aka the Second Intifada.
Israel has erased every red line except for the Temple Mount and the “refugee” issue. Concessions have cost the lives and limbs of thousands of Israelis who have been victims of Palestinian Authority “resistance,” the Arabic code word for terror.
The Arabs in Gaza, Judea and Samaria have paid a price not only in casualties but also with a miserable political and economic life that had flourished under the “occupation” until the Egyptian-born Arafat wore his camouflage of a “Palestinian” when he blew in from Tunisia.
Here is what President Bush told Congress several months before the Madrid Conference:
Peace will only come as the result of direct negotiations, compromise, give-and-take. Peace cannot be imposed from the outside by the United States or anyone else
And now Secretary of State John Kerry, even if he had enough common sense to dismiss the absurd French proposal, announces that “clarity” is needed.”
There never has been clarity since 1991 because the Americans and the Europeans cannot understand that Israel and the Arabs world never were talking the same language. The Arab understanding of “peace” is the Jewish State of Israel becoming the Arab state of Palestine.
Ever since, the United States has done the opposite and has imposed conditions on Israel, leaving a “consensus” that a future Palestinian Authority country would include all of Judea and Samaria except for large Jewish population centers such as Maaleh Adumim and Gush Etzion. Israel would have to rely on the PA to protect Jews form terrorists.
That “consensus” no longer exists because the Palestinian Authority, contrary to Bush’s statement, understands “compromise” as “you give, I take.”
It only was a matter of time until the Temple Mount became the excuse for terror and lies that Israel is trying to change the “status quo,” at the same time that the entire Arab world is trying to change it by declaring, “No Jews allowed.”
Today, Kerry’s simple words that rejected the French proposal for foreign troops are nothing short of a shock for the Arab world. The Palestinian Authority, which called for U.N. intervention to stop alleged “excessive violence” by Israel, never intended that and never would accept non-Muslims guarding the Temple Mount.
But the fact that Kerry said out loud that Israel understands the need to preserve the status quo is a clear signal to Mahmoud Abbas that he also has to do so.
The Arab arson of Joseph’s Tomb and the attacks by Palestinian Authority police on Jews who arrived at the holy site have finally forced the Obama administration to take a stand, and it clearly is not with an ISIS-like theology against non-Islamic holy sites.
Madrid is where the “peace process
