Herbert Zweibon

The fire-breathing speech by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad calling for Israel to "be wiped off the map" focused attention on Iran as the greatest danger to Israel. There is nothing new in the sentiment, which was repeatedly articulated by the Ayatollah Khomeini and those who followed him. But Iran's nuclear weapons program lends force to the threat. Several years ago Ahmadinejad's supposedly "moderate" predecessor Hashemi Rafsanjani made the chilling assertion that while Iran could withstand a second strike, "the use of a nuclear bomb against Israel would leave nothing on the ground."

We do not make light of the approaching danger from Iran. But that existential danger makes it all the more distressing that the United States itself undermines Israel's sovereignty and fosters her vulnerability to the more immediate dangers posed by neighboring enemies. Case in point: in November Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice successfully pressured an unwilling Israel to sign agreements that abrogate Israel's basic rights.

Indeed so terrible are these agreements that it is reported that, in an unprecedented move, all Israel's security branches sent strong written protests to both Sharon and Minister of Defense Shaul Mofaz. On Frontpage P. David Hornik has chronicled some of the most egregious provisions of these agreements. At the Rafah crossing between Egypt and Gaza traffic is to be "monitored" by Egyptians on one side and the Palestinian Authority on the other. A contingent of European Union personnel will monitor the monitors, but the EU has already made clear they will serve as rubber stamps. All Israel will have are surveillance cameras which will send video feeds to a liaison office at Kerem Shalom. Writes Hornik: "Incredibly, the liaison office...on sovereign, supposedly undisputed Israeli territory--is to be staffed by Israeli as well as European and Palestinian personnel. In this theater of the absurd, Israel not only loses the right to a presence on the Gaza-Sinai border; it also loses the right independently to monitor the monitors by video feed on its own territory without being monitored there, in turn, by other Europeans and Palestinians!”

Then there is the Karni crossing from Gaza to Israel. Under the agreement up to 400 trucks from Gaza will go through daily by the end of next year. What is more, bus convoys, starting this month, and truck convoys, next month, will go to Judea and Samaria: i.e., as Netanyahu told the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, “Kassam rockets and mortars will be transported through Judea and Samaria to be launched at Israel…The biggest danger is that the Palestinians would be able to transfer the Strella missiles, which are already in Gaza, to the area overlooking Ben Gurion Airport and threaten planes landing and taking off.”

But the problems with the crossings pale in insignificance compared to the agreement’s biggest blow: a green light for the Palestinians to build a seaport in Gaza. Four years ago Israel captured the Karine A cargo ship, attempting to smuggle weapons from Iran to Gaza. Notes Hornik: “It need not have bothered. Under the new deal, the Karine A will be a harmless fishing boat compared to the munitions, certain to include long-range missiles sooner or later, that the Palestinians will be able to bring in routinely.”

This administration repeatedly sounds the theme that we cannot now leave Iraq because to do so would be to create a terror base in the Middle East. Yet it is becoming ever more obvious that the Bush administration (for all the empty bubble about Palestinian “democracy”) in the real world is making every effort to establish an anarchic terror base alongside Israel, where Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, al Qaeda, Hamas and assorted groups of the same ilk will vie with one another. If one terror base is desirable, why not two?