I Reject Any Conspiracy Theory Concerning Daniel Shaprio

I doubt the outlandish idea that President Barack Obama ordered or suggested to his Ambassador to Israel to remain in the country to make sure the incoming Administration's overtly pro-Israel orientation will be sabotaged.

On the other hand, one cannot ignore the constant interference Daniel Shapiro provides.

In the Wall Street Journal on October 24, he published an op-ed, "Move the Embassy to Jerusalem and Promote Peace", containing these lines:

Mr. Trump must be clear on two points: The embassy will relocate to West Jerusalem, the area of the city under undisputed Israeli sovereignty. He also must explain that East Jerusalem’s status will need to be negotiated, and the U.S. expects the outcome to include a Palestinian capital in the city’s Arab neighborhoods, as part of a unified city.

Since 1948, and under Obama, the United States refused not only to move its embassy to the city but quite ridiculously refused to recognize Israel's undisputed sovereignty over any part of the city.  As I blogged previously, that policy ignores the facts on the ground, ignores the fact that as it is based on the internationalization of Jerusalem recommended by the UN in November 1947, before there was a state in Palestine at the end of the Mandate, an idea the Arabs rejected - and went to war over - and thus was a dead letter the moment it was voted on and ignores the plebiscite element in the corpus separatum plan after a decade in which Jerusalem's residents were to vote to which state it would join - the Jewish or the Arab one.

Can anyone think what the results of that vote would have been?

As for the rest of his content, the US need not expect a Palestinian capital.  It could suggest the autonomy plan or one of a federation or another. The negotiations are between Israel and its possible peace partner which could even be Jordan.  The Arabs who refer to themselves as 'Palestinans' seem not to be quite able to make peace among themselves.

In addition, that Arab neighborhoods reference, a throwback to the Clinton parameters and the Holy Basin idea, should be rejected. The Arabs should be thwarted from their habit of demanding the most, refusing to back down and even after achieving some success, expect not to be punished for their diplomatic refusals and terror and again and again, raise their maximalist demands.

Too bad INSS provides Shapiro with a platform.

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You're Wrong and Unhelpful Yourself, Mr. Ambassador

Former U.S. Ambassador to Israel Daniel Shapiro spoke to a crowded ASEAN Auditorium at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts this week.

Among the things Shapiro said was this about "expanding settlements in the West Bank Judea and Samaria"

“It’s unhelpful both because it changes the map over time … but also because of the political impact and the way it suggests to Palestinians that decisions are being made before they are at the negotiating table.”

You see, Mr. Ambassador, calling the territory of regions of the historic Land of Israel as the "West Bank", a geo-political term of obfuscation created in April 1950 when the illegal occupier of Judea and Samaria, Jordan's King Abdallah I annexed that land to his kingdom, is unhelpful, an interference with the neogtiaons for a peaceful settlement, discriminatory to Jewish rights and claims as well as being unauthentic as even the United Nations 1947 Partition Plan used the terms Judea and Samaria to delineate the borders of the future two states (a compromise plan rejected by the Arabs, incidentally, and due to their subsequent aggression, the map changed).

Using "West Bank" has quite a negative impact.

It affords the Arab side an ability to claim, before they are at the negotiating table, that they have a right to all of that territory.

But I suspect you intended that.

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Ambassador Daniel Shapiro Goofs It

JPost calls out new US Ambassador Danny Shapiro on his interview replies on Jay Pollard.

Here.

Despite the importance of the issue to Israelis, it would have been understandable had Shapiro diplomatically declined to address such a sensitive matter. But that’s not what he did.  In bypassing the questions, Shapiro passed the buck and called Pollard’s fate “an issue for the American legal system.”

If only it were so...

...Shapiro is different. His status as the president’s most trusted adviser on the Middle East predates Obama’s election. As an expert on US-Israel relations, he should know better.

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He started off on the wrong foot.

Caption Contest: PM Netanyahu & Amb. Dan Shapiro

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Source

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