Israel Makes Green Line Red So Obama Will OK Crossing It

“I’m surprised they didn’t think of this several years ago when Obama first let Assad cross red lines,” said commentator Chava Daum.

Tel Aviv, August 26 – Israeli publishers will begin printing the 1949 cease-fire lines with Egypt and Jordan in red, instead of the original green, so that US President Barack Obama will no longer object to Israel’s policies on either side of it.

Officers of the Israeli and Jordanian militaries joined a United Nations representative in 1949 to determine the exact contours of the areas controlled by each country after the hostilities of Israel’s War of Independence ceased. The officers drew a line in green along a map of the region to demarcate the respective zones, which became, to the west, Israel, and to the east, the Jordanian-occupied West Bank. Jordan annexed the territory, but that move was only recognized by Britain and Pakistan. Israel drove Jordan out of the area in June 1967, and Israelis began reestablishing communities there. However, most of the world does not recognize Israel’s claim to the area, known by its Biblical names of Judea and Samaria, and demands that Israel remove its soldiers and civilians from Judea and Samaria in favor of an emerging State of Palestine.

Among those objectors is President Obama, whose insistence on the sacrosanct nature of a green 1949 cease-fire line is not matched by repeated violations of Obama’s own red lines on the part of Israel’s neighbors. The president made repeated statements regarding Syrian use of chemical weapons in its bloody civil war, stating that such actions constituted a red line that, if crossed, would prompt American military intervention to assist opponents of the Assad regime. When multiple instance of Assad’s forces using such weapons came to light, Obama demurred.

Similarly, the Obama administration, primarily through Secretary of State John  Kerry, helped facilitate Iranian advances toward a nuclear weapon by repeatedly redrawing red lines so as to avoid confrontation with Teheran, eventually abandoning its originally stated goal of blocking Iranian atomic weapons capability in favor of removing international sanctions with no practical path for reimposing them if Iran violates the terms of last month’s JCPOA agreement.

Given Obama’s refusal to act when red lines are crossed, Israel decided to make the Green Line red, thus removing the potential for American action in the face of continued Israeli policies that run counter to stated US positions. “I’m surprised they didn’t think of this several years ago when Obama first let Assad cross red lines,” said commentator Chava Daum. “Israeli strategic thinkers tend to be creative in unexpected ways, so, in retrospect, this was an obvious one.”

“Come to think of it, this might have been Iran’s approach in negotiations all along,” she mused.