Bin Laden, Obama and Israel

The only good issue ever raised by the dead terrorist, Osama bin Laden was the idea that without a Palestinian state, the world cannot know peace.

Released by al-Qaida Sunday, May 8, bin Laden’s posthumous message to Barack Obama and the Americans, appears likely, after the death of its author, to be understood as his speeches usually are —highly demagogical and commonplace. Yet, stripped of its usual excesses, this proposal should, for once, inspire reflection. Because, at the risk of offending certain people given the detestable personality of its author, I think we can safely say that we can ignore neither the content of the message, even though it is trite and has been heard before, nor the impact it could have on the people of the near and Middle East.

What bin Laden said in this final address to those against whom he swears an infinite hatred, to those he subjected, on Sept. 11, 2001, to the most dramatic of humiliations, and to those who finished him by finding him and executing him after nearly 10 years of tracking: there will be no security in the United States if there is no security in Palestine. And he addressed Obama and his fellow citizens, “It is unfair that you live in peace while our brothers in Gaza live in insecurity.” In other words, Americans — and with them all Westerners — cannot live in peace while the Palestinians do not have a state with recognized borders, an indispensable prerequisite for a peaceful life.

One Hundred and Ten States Will Recognize a Palestinian State

This message from the most hated of terrorists may be contested. He cannot be neglected in the aftermath of his death, because he is the person for whom the Arabs revolted, for whom all the terrorist acts were committed and behind all the saber-rattling threats for the destruction of the Israeli state. This message is taking a different form with the same conclusion: today 110 states represented in the United Nations have decided to push for Palestine to declare statehood at the U.N.’s September session. It is one that many European countries, including France and Great Britain, have tried to advance in the same U.N. General Assembly by formally recognizing a Palestinian state. This result is finally, paradoxically, being accepted now, according to recent polls, by 80 percent of Israelis surveyed.

So why isn’t the international community taking steps to impose what they have agreed upon? Why did the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, just tour the European capitals to vigorously plead against the idea in favor of recognition?

America’s Conspicuous Absence

The main reason is the fear of tomorrow, explain Israeli news experts. Because it’s no longer the concept of a Palestinian neighbor state that panics the Israeli people and their leaders, it is the immediate and long-term consequences. One example: the birth of a Palestinian state could only take place by more or less returning to the borders that existed before the Six Days War in 1967. Such a redistricting involves at a minimum the transfer and resettlement of 100,000 Israelis. Not the squatters who have held onto settlements and who, in principle, are outlaws that the international community has strongly condemned in recent years. No, we’re talking about moving Israelis who have lived for nearly 50 years on territory long considered a part of the Israeli state.

Ehud Barak once said that Israel was like a “mansion in the jungle.” This fear of being surrounded can only disappear gracefully through a peace obtained not by mutual satisfaction, but through consent, even if a little forced, between the Palestinians and the Israelis. To force the hands of these countries, the Europeans, whatever their good intentions, won’t be sufficient. To accomplish this, we need the full weight of America. However, since Obama’s election, America has been conspicuously absent from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It’s for this reason that bin Laden’s posthumous message is for the first time, not as useless as it seemed.