The Tehran-Caracas Nuclear Axis

Ahmadinejad and Chávez: new evidence of a radioactive relationship.

Here's one from the Department of We Are The World: Hugo Chávez and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will address the U.N.'s climate summit in Copenhagen. Say what you will about these two gentlemen—the support for terrorists, the Holocaust denial, the suppression of civil liberties—at least nobody can accuse them of being global warming "deniers."
On the contrary, the two leaders, who met in Caracas last month for at least the 11th time, have been nothing if not cooperative when it comes to environmentally friendly and carbon-neutral technologies. Bicycles, for instance: In 2005, Chávez directed his government to "follow seriously the project of manufacturing Iranian bicycles in Venezuela." An Iranian dairy products plant (no doubt ecologically sensitive) also set up shop hard on the Colombian border, in territory controlled by Colombia's terrorist FARC.

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Ahmadinejad and Chávez: A new document sheds light on this radioactive relationship.

Then there was the tractor factory Iran built in Ciudad Bolivar. In January, the Associated Press reported that Turkish authorities had seized 22 containers labeled "tractor parts." What they contained, according to one Turkish official, "was enough to set up an explosives lab."

But perhaps the most interesting Iranian venture is a supposed gold mine not far from Angel Falls, in a remote area known as the Roraima Basin. The basin straddles Venezuela's border with neighboring Guyana, where a Canadian company, U308, thinks it has found the "geological look-alike" to Canada's Athabasca Basin. The Athabasca, the company's Web site adds, "is the world's largest resource of uranium."
In 2006, Chávez publicly mocked suspicions of nuclear cooperation with Iran, saying it "shows they have no limit in their capacity to invent lies." In September, however, Rodolfo Sanz, Venezuela's minister of basic industries, acknowledged that "Iran is helping us with geophysical aerial probes and geochemical analyses" in its search for uranium.
The official basis for this cooperation seems to be a Nov. 14, 2008 memorandum of understanding signed by the two countries' ministers of science and technology and given to me by a credible foreign intelligence source. "The two parties agreed to cooperate in the field of nuclear technology," reads the Spanish version of the document, which also makes mention of the "peaceful use of alternative energies." Days later, the Venezuelan government submitted a paper to the International Atomic Energy Agency on the "Introduction of a Nuclear Power Programme." (Online readers can see the memorandum for themselves in their Farsi and Spanish versions. One mystery: The Farsi version makes no mention of nuclear cooperation.)
Iran would certainly require large and reliable supplies of uranium if it is going to enrich the nuclear fuel in 10 separate plants—an ambition Ahmadinejad spelled out last month. It would also require an extensive financial and logistical infrastructure network in Venezuela, not to mention unusually good political connections. All this it has in spades.

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Consider financing. In January 2008, the Bank of International Development opened its doors for business in Caracas. At the top of its list of its directors, all of whom are Iranian, is one Tahmasb Mazaheri, former governor of the central bank of Iran. As it turns out, the bank is a subsidiary of the Export Development Bank of Iran, which in October 2008 was sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department for providing "financial services to Iran's Ministry of Defense and Armed Forces Logistics."
Or consider logistics. For nearly three years, Venezuelan airline ConViasa has been flying an Airbus 340 to Damascus and Tehran. Neither city is a typical Venezuelan tourist destination, to say the least. What goes into the cargo hold of that big plane is an interesting question. Also interesting is that in October 2008 the Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines, also sanctioned by Treasury, announced it had established a direct shipping route to Venezuela.
Finally, there are the political connections. What do Fadi Kabboul, Aref Richany Jimenez, Radwan Sabbagh and Tarek Zaidan El Aissami Maddah have in common? The answer is that they are, respectively, executive director for planning of Venezuelan oil company PdVSA; the president of Venezuela's military-industrial complex; the president of a major state-owned mining concern; and, finally, the minister of interior. Latin Americans of Middle Eastern descent have long played prominent roles in national politics and business. But these are all fingertip positions in what gives the Iranian-Venezuelan relationship its worrying grip.
Forty-seven years ago, Americans woke up to the fact that a distant power could threaten us much closer to home. Perhaps it's time Camelot 2.0 take note that we are now on course for a replay.
Write to bstephens@wsj.com

Obama Gives Britain the Cold Shoulder

Ideology and history explain the new U.S. disregard.

By CON COUGHLIN

Britain is the only European country President Barack Obama can really count on to respond positively to his plea for NATO to provide extra forces for Afghanistan. So why is it, then, that the Obama administration can barely conceal its disdain for a nation that, by its deeds, time and again proves itself to be America's staunchest and most reliable ally?
Shortly before Mr. Obama's Afghan policy speech at West Point earlier this month, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown announced Britain was sending another 500 troops to that beleaguered country, bringing the total number of British troops to around 10,000. Yet the president never mentioned Britain's support—even though, unlike most other European countries, British soldiers are prepared to undertake combat operations, and have incurred significant casualties in so doing.
While NATO officials trumpeted the fact that they had secured an additional 7,000 troops from a variety of NATO and other states to support Mr. Obama's surge strategy, there been only silence from France and Germany. For domestic political reasons, both French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel are reluctant to increase their military contributions.
This makes Britain the most important European contributor to Mr. Obama's war against the Taliban, in which British soldiers are fighting alongside U.S. Marines in southern Afghanistan. Add to this the close and long-established intelligence-sharing operation that exists between the two countries, which has prevented a number of major terrorist atrocities, and it is easy to understand why the bond between America and Britain has long been the cornerstone of the trans-Atlantic alliance.
That is not how the Obama administration sees it.
Before he became president it was said that Mr. Obama harbored a deep grudge against Britain for its colonialist past. It is alleged that his paternal grandfather, Hussein Onyango Obama, was tortured by the British during the Mau Mau rebellion in Kenya in the 1950s, when it was controlled by Britain. In his autobiographical book "The Audacity of Hope," Mr. Obama unflatteringly compares the British Empire to South Africa's apartheid regime and the former Soviet Union.
Soon after his inauguration, he sent back to the U.K. a bust of Sir Winston Churchill that had been loaned to President George W. Bush after the 9/11 attacks. The sculpture had enjoyed pride of place in the Oval Office.
There is also an important ideological reason that Britain's leading policy makers find themselves increasingly shunned by the U.S. Key foreign-policy advisers to Mr. Obama are keen advocates of a federal Europe, one in which the European Commission based in Brussels is the main center of power and influence, rather than the individual capitals, such as London, Paris and Berlin. In this context, Britain's dogged attachment to a "special relationship" with America is regarded as an embarrassing relic of a previous era.
Michèle Flournoy, the U.S. undersecretary of defense for policy, is a leading supporter of an integrated European defense policy, which was anathema to the Bush administration because it would challenge the future of NATO. Philip H. Gordon, the State Department's assistant secretary for European and Eurasian Affairs, is another committed Europhile.
Before taking office Mr. Gordon wrote that America should "support the European project" and warned that Britain's historic resistance to closer European integration could seriously damage London's standing in Washington. "Fully in Europe, Britain has every chance to remain America's preferred and privileged partner," he said. "Marginalized from the EU [European Union], Britain could find itself less influential in Washington as well."
Yet in recent years, whenever the EU has been faced with a major international crisis, whether in the Balkans or the Middle East, the major European powers have tended to put their national interests first. This was graphically illustrated in Bosnia and during the build up to the Iraq war. And in Afghanistan, Europe divides between those who are prepared to fight, such as Britain, and those that are not, such as France and Germany.
For this reason alone, Mr. Obama and his advisers may regret their disregard for their most important battlefield ally in Afghanistan.
Mr. Coughlin is executive foreign editor of London's Daily Telegraph.

 

Americans Detained in Pakistan Found to Have al Qaeda Links

By ZAHID HUSSAIN

ISLAMABAD -- Five young Americans detained in eastern Pakistan had developed contacts with al Qaeda operatives through the Internet and were on their way to North Waziristan to join a militant training camp, said a senior intelligence official here.

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Five Americans were arrested in Sargodha, Pakistan, at the house (pictured) of an activist of Jaish-e-Mohammed, an outlawed Pakistani militant outfit with known links to the Taliban and al Qaeda.

All of them -- students in their 20s from northern Virginia -- were arrested this week in the garrison town of Sargodha at the house of an activist of Jaish-e-Mohammed, an outlawed Pakistani militant outfit with known links to the Taliban and al Qaeda.

The suspects had arrived in Pakistan last month. They are being interrogated by Pakistani intelligence agencies and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the intelligence official said.
The intelligence official said that information gleaned from their laptop computers and other material recovered from the suspects established their links with the militant network operating from the lawless tribal region bordering Afghanistan.
He said the men came in contact with al Qaeda through its local operatives in Pakistan. Police have also seized some jihadist literature from the house where they were arrested.
"We watched them for one and a half days and then arrested them," Usman Anwar, police chief of Sargodha, told reporters. He said they admitted that they had come to Pakistan with the intention of joining jihad. Police also arrested an employee of the federal highway department.
A U.S. official briefed on the probe said that initial evidence and interviews collected by investigators indicate the men were seeking to join a "jihadist operation against U.S. soldiers," tough it's unclear if their goal was to attack troops in Afghanistan.
A Pakistani security official said the five men were detained Monday. They had flown to Karachi on Nov. 30 and then traveled to Lahore on Dec. 5, and then on to Sargodha, he said. Investigations are under way and no charges have been filed against them, he said.
Analysts said the latest arrests gave credence to the fears that Pakistan has become the main hub of global al Qaeda, threatening the security of the U.S., Britain and other Western countries. The arrests are likely to fan worries in Western countries that the sons of immigrants from Muslim countries are being drawn to violent Islamist militancy, a process made easier by the Internet.
Pakistan is home to a number of militant groups waging a violent struggle against the government, mostly in the northwest. They have developed close links with al Qaeda.
Two of the men arrested were of Pakistani origin while the other three have origins in Egypt, Eritrea and Ethiopia. They are all naturalized Americans. Analysts said the arrests showed how the appeal of al Qaeda has penetrated some young Muslims in America and other Western countries.
"Al Qaeda is very successful in recruiting in the Muslim diaspora particularly among Pakistanis," said Raffat Hussain, a professor in the department of strategic studies at Quad-e-Azam University in Islamabad. "Its target is the young generation which feels alienated by the perceived repression of Muslims across the world."
Scores of radical Muslims from the West are believed to have received training in al Qaeda camps in recent years and have now been fighting on both sides of the border Afghanistan and Pakistan border. In September, Pakistani security forces arrested Mehdi-Muhammed Ghezali, a Swedish national and a former Guantanamo Bay prisoner, who was trying to go to Waziristan to join al Qaeda.
The traffic of foreign fighters has slowed because of a Pakistani military offensive in South Waziristan and some other tribal regions, but they are still trickling in. A senior intelligence official said many British and German citizens have joined the militants fighting in Afghanistan. Most of the new militants are Germans of Turkish origin, the security official said.

Petraeus Says Afghan War Is Tougher Fight Than Iraq

Dec. 9 (Bloomberg) -- General David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in the Middle East and Central Asia, struck a note of caution on the war in Afghanistan, saying making headway against the insurgency probably will take longer than in Iraq.
“Achieving progress in Afghanistan will be hard and progress there likely will be slower in developing than was the progress in Iraq,” Petraeus told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee today. “Nonetheless, as with Iraq, in Afghanistan hard is not hopeless.”
Violence will increase as additional troops from the U.S.- led 43-nation alliance enable a stepped-up offensive against Taliban insurgents, he said. He predicted “greater turmoil” within the Afghan government as it moves to combat corruption with international assistance.
Petraeus testified along with Karl Eikenberry, the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, and Deputy Secretary of State Jacob Lew in the second of three days of hearings this week on President Barack Obama’s revised strategy in Afghanistan.
Petraeus’s caution contrasts with the optimism that Army General Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan, voiced repeatedly yesterday before two other congressional committees. With the caveat that the battle won’t be easy, McChrystal said, “I believe we will absolutely be successful.”
$40 Billion
Obama needs Congress to approve funds to carry out his policy, which is aimed at reversing Taliban gains in Afghanistan, training Afghan forces and preparing the country’s government to take more control. The buildup may cost as much as $40 billion next year, according to Representative John Murtha, who heads the House spending panel which appropriates money for defense.
Republicans question whether the 30,000 extra U.S. troops approved by Obama are sufficient and the timeline too hurried. Democrats say the U.S. could become mired in a war already surpassing eight years.
Petraeus said he fully supports the policy and cautioned lawmakers to “withhold judgment” on whether it is successful until December 2010, when the strategy and will be assessed with an eye to beginning a drawdown of U.S. forces in July 2011.
Skepticism Voiced
The top Democrat and Republican on the committee expressed concern that, while resources flow to finance the fight in Afghanistan, the leadership of the insurgency will find haven across the border in Pakistan.
“I am convinced that what happens in Pakistan, particularly near the Afghan border, will do more to determine the outcome in Afghanistan than any increase in troops or shift in strategy,” said panel Chairman John Kerry, a Massachusetts Democrat.
Senator Richard Lugar, an Indiana Republican, said the “most salient question” is whether gains in Afghanistan “will mean much if Taliban and al-Qaeda sanctuaries in Pakistan remain or if instability within Pakistan intensifies.”
Petraeus said Pakistan has taken “an important step forward” in waging military campaigns against extremists on its territory. The measures “facilitate our efforts to degrade the extremist groups in the border region and to defeat al-Qaeda,” he told the committee.
Still, “these operations have not directly engaged the sanctuaries of the Afghan Taliban groups in Pakistan,” Petraeus said. Pakistan also hasn’t confronted all of the elements of an extremist syndicate that includes the Pakistani Taliban, the Lashkar-e-Taiba group that carried out the November 2008 attack on Mumbai, India, and the militant Haqqani network, he said.
‘Beacon and Symbol’
“Although most Taliban fighters confronting our forces are local Afghans motivated by local circumstances, the Afghan Taliban leadership is organized, is ideologically motivated and has become a beacon and symbol for other dangerous extremist elements,” Petraeus told the panel.
Eikenberry also took a more cautious note yesterday and today than McChrystal on the prospects for success in Afghanistan, saying the U.S. is concentrating on what is “essential and attainable.”
“Afghanistan represents a daunting challenge,” Eikenberry told the committee. “Success is not guaranteed but it is possible.”
While the added troops will improve stability and make room to improve governance and expand the nation’s security forces, the U.S. faces the risk that the Afghan government will “struggle” to take over “on a timely basis.”
He also cited Pakistan as an important factor.
“The effort we’re undertaking in Afghanistan is likely to fall short of our strategic goals, unless there is more progress in eliminating sanctuaries used by the Afghan Taliban and their associates inside of Pakistan,” Eikenberry said.
To contact the reporter on this story: Viola Gienger in Washington at vgienger@bloomberg.net

Obama to Accept Nobel Peace Prize as War President, Address Afghanistan Troop Surge

 

Trip to Norway Reignites Debate Over Obama's Qualifications for Prestigious Award

There is a bit of irony that just 10 days after announcing the deployment of 30,000 more American troops to Afghanistan, President Obama will accept the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize tomorrow in Oslo, Norway.

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President says award is a result of the "efforts of people around the world."

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The award, which the Nobel committee said was for Obama's "extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples," comes as he presides over wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and faces an American public that is increasingly skeptical about the U.S.-led efforts there.
Obama will walk a delicate line in his acceptance speech, and the White House said he will acknowledge that he accepts the peace prize as a war president. Aides said he will address Afghanistan and the decision to add troops there and present it in the overall context of the award he is accepting.

"We'll address directly the notion, I think, that many have wondered, which is the juxtaposition of the timing for the Nobel Peace Prize and his commitment to add more troops into Afghanistan," White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said. "That's obviously something that he will address."
The award was seen internationally, and at the White House, as a mixed blessing – given for the promise of what an Obama presidency could do across the globe and an acknowledgement of what his election represents, but also carrying with it the added pressure to produce tangible results.

Obama is just the third sitting U.S. president to win the prestigious award and the first to win it in his first year in office. The previous sitting U.S. presidents who won were Theodore Roosevelt in 1906 and Woodrow Wilson in 1919.
The peace prize sparked considerable debate over Obama's qualifications: was his resume too thin? Was the committee actually rewarding the United States for its election of Obama? Was the award more for what Obama represents than what he has accomplished?
Obama provided a preview of the humble tone he will likely strike in Oslo when he spoke at the White House the day the award was announced.
"To be honest, I do not feel that I deserve to be in the company of so many of the transformative figures who've been honored by this prize," Obama said in brief remarks Oct. 9. "I do not view it as a recognition of my own accomplishments, but rather as an affirmation of American leadership on behalf of aspirations held by people in all nations."

Ceremony Reignites Debate Over Obama's Qualifications for Nobel Prize

The award opens up again the debate over whether Obama deserved the Nobel Prize after less than a year in office. The deadline for nominations was Feb. 1, meaning the president was nominated after being in office for just 11 days.
Danielle Pletka, vice president of foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, said that Obama needs to accept the award with humility, given his thin resume so far in office.
"I think the best thing he can do is to take the prize and accept it in the name of those who the Nobel committee apparently didn't want to consider and who really are deserving," Pletka said, citing the Iranian people and Rebiya Kadeer, president of the World Uighur Congress as examples of others who she thinks have done more in the last year to advance world peace.

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Republican strategist Kevin Madden said the fact that Obama accepts the prize as the commander in chief of a military engaged in two wars is "the elephant in the room. They're going to have to acknowledge it."
"What you're going to see is the White House project an image that says, 'this isn't about me, and this is about the people who actually have done something. This is a shared reward, a shared responsibility,'" Madden said on "ABC News Now's Top Line." "And sort of deflect away from his most recent actions, which was to essentially increase troop movement in Afghanistan."
The news that Obama was awarded the prize came as a surprise even to the White House back in October. Press aides said they had heard from news reports that the president had been nominated for the Peace Prize, but they do not believe Obama himself even knew of his nomination. The Nobel committee took a forward approach with the prize, citing the "hope" that Obama's presidency brings to the global community.
"Obama has, as president, created a new climate in international politics," the citation from the Nobel committee reads. "Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world's attention and given its people hope for a better future."
The director of the Norwegian Nobel Institute said this fall that the decision to award Obama with the peace prize was unanimous.
"President Obama has changed, very dramatically, international politics," Geir Lundestad told "GMA's" Diane Sawyer Oct. 9. "We feel he has emphasized multilateral diplomacy, he has addressed international institutions, dialogue negotiations. He has inspired the world with his vision of a world without nuclear arms. He has changed the U.S. policy dramatically. There's a whole list."
Michael Worek, author of "Nobel: A Century of Prize Winners," said Obama's win was "extraordinarily unprecedented."
"It's like giving an Oscar award halfway through the movie when you haven't seen how it ends," Worek said. "We're saying, 'well, Obama has just started, we don't know if he's going to be successful.' Yes, he's said good things, but is it going to work?
"I think in America we feel he's been given his Oscar too early."
But Worek said the award was given not for what Obama has done but what the international community expects he will do.
"It's rewarding hope and they use that word in their release, they use vision twice and hope once," Worek said of the Nobel committee's citation. "It says Obama has captured the world's attention and given its people hope for a better future."
"I will applaud President Obama if he one day does something that earns him the Nobel Peace prize, but he hasn't done that yet, and if they want to honor this symbolically, let them honor the people of America that elected Barack Obama," Pletka said.

 

Massive TSA Security Breach As Agency Gives Away Its Secrets

Online Posting Reveals a "How To" for Terrorists to Get Through Airport Security

By BRIAN ROSS and MATT HOSFORD
Dec. 8, 2009

In a massive security breach, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) inadvertently posted online its airport screening procedures manual, including some of the most closely guarded secrets regarding special rules for diplomats and CIA and law enforcement officers.

In a massive security breach, the Transportation Security Agency (TSA) inadvertently posted online...

In a massive security breach, the Transportation Security Agency (TSA) inadvertently posted online its entire airport screening procedures manual, including some of the most closely guarded secrets regarding special rules for diplomats and CIA and law enforcement officers.

(Transportation Security Agency)
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The most sensitive parts of the 93-page Standard Operating Procedures manual were apparently redacted in a way that computer savvy individuals easily overcame.
The document shows sample CIA, Congressional and law enforcement credentials which experts say would make it easy for terrorists to duplicate.
The improperly redacted areas indicate that only 20 percent of checked bags are to be hand searched for explosives and reveal in detail the limitations of x-ray screening machines.
"This is an appalling and astounding breach of security that terrorists could easily exploit," said Clark Kent Ervin, the former inspector general at the Department of Homeland Security. "The TSA should immediately convene an internal investigation and discipline those responsible."

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"This shocking breach undercuts the public's confidence in the security procedures at our airports," said Senator Susan Collins, R-Me., ranking Republican member of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. "On the day before the Senate Homeland Security Committee's hearing on terrorist travel, it is alarming to learn that the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) inadvertently posted its own security manual on the Internet."
"This manual provides a road map to those who would do us harm," said Collins. "The detailed information could help terrorists evade airport security measures." Collins said she intended to ask the Department of Homeland Security how the breach happened, and "how it will remedy the damage that has already been done."

TSA Document Leaked Online

A TSA spokesperson says the document posted online is an outdated version "improperly posted by the agency to the Federal Business Opportunities Web site wherein redacted material was not properly protected."
The TSA requested the document be taken offline, but by then it had spread around the Internet and is still available today.
The document contains a list of items for which screening is not required including wheelchairs, footwear of disabled individuals, casts and orthopedic shoes.
The redacted portions also indicate which law enforcement personnel are specially screened or exempt from some screening procedures, and indicate what requirements they must meet to be eligible for special screening.
TSA screeners are also told to require extra screening for any passenger whose passport was issued by Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Libya, Syria, Sudan, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Somalia, Iraq, Yemen or Algeria.
The document also reveals that during peak travel times, TSA screeners who check identification can reduce from 100 percent to 25 percent the times they use black lights to authenticate documents.
"Screening is like a big puzzle and this SOP gives you directions on putting the puzzle together," said Robert MacLean, a former Federal Air Marshal who was fired for revealing holes in TSA's security after the 9/11 attacks. MacLean added that TSA's assertion that the documents posted are old holds no merit. "How much in screening procedure changes in 17 months?" asked MacLean. "It's a one-dimensional process."
The TSA says it is taking the release of the sensitive information "seriously" and is conducting a full review.
"TSA has many layers of security to keep the traveling public safe and to constantly adapt to evolving threats," the agency said in a statement. "TSA is confident that screening procedures currently in place remain strong." The document also provides a glimpse of the special treatment available for governors, lieutenant governors and the mayor of Washington, D.C., as well as their spouses and family and staff.



 

Israel's Settlement Freeze

Prime Minister Netanyahu has broken with his party to restart the peace process.

By MICHAEL B. OREN

Distracted by the crucial debate over Afghanistan, many Americans may have missed a pivotal event in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. On Nov. 25, Israel's government announced a 10-month construction freeze in Judea and Samaria—the areas generally known as the West Bank. Though some projects already begun will be completed and essential public buildings like medical clinics and schools will be approved, no new housing permits will be issued.
"We hope that this decision will help launch meaningful peace negotiations," declared Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu "and finally end the conflict between the Palestinians and Israel." The Obama administration praised the decision and recognized its significance. Special Envoy George Mitchell hailed the decision as "substantial," and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called it "unprecedented."
By contrast, Palestinian leaders rejected Israel's gesture as grossly inefficient. Without an indefinite cessation of all Jewish building in the West Bank and Jerusalem, they say, peace talks cannot resume.
What Mr. Mitchell and Mrs. Clinton understand, but what the Palestinians miss, is that Mr. Netanyahu has shown more flexibility on this issue than any previous head of his Likud Party, which is staunchly pro-settlement. Indeed, he has gone further than any prime minister in limiting a right that many Israelis consider incontestable and a vital component of their national security.
Twice—in 1948 and 1967—the West Bank served as the staging ground for large-scale attacks against Israel. While defending itself, Israel captured the territory and reunited with its ancestral homeland: Haifa is not in the Bible, but Bethlehem, Hebron, and Jericho decidedly are. Hundreds of thousands of Israelis rushed to resettle their tribal land.
These communities widened Israel's borders, which at points are a mere eight miles wide. American policy makers recognized Israel's need for defensible borders and, in November 1967, they supported U.N. Resolution 242, which called for withdrawals from "territories" captured in the war, but not from "all the territories" or even "the territories."
All successive Israeli governments supported the settlements. Only with the signing of the 1993 Oslo Accords did then-Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin agree to restrain construction in outlying communities that he considered unnecessary for Israel's defense. But the settlements continued to expand. Meanwhile the peace process progressed. The Palestinians never made a construction freeze in Jerusalem and the settlements a precondition for talks—until earlier this year.
Mr. Netanyahu initially responded that Jews, like all people, can build legally in Jerusalem, and that it's unreasonable to disallow settlers from building even an extra room for a newborn. Still, he promised not to establish new settlements, not to appropriate additional land for existing ones, nor even to induce Israelis to move to them. Yet the Palestinians balked. The peace process was moribund, awaiting an intrepid stroke.
Mr. Netanyahu has now taken that initiative. By suspending new Israeli construction in all of the West Bank, the prime minister has done what none of his predecessors, including Rabin, ever suggested.
At home, Mr. Netanyahu's decision has been fiercely criticized, even by some members of his own party. The Knesset has considered a vote of no-confidence in his leadership. And the most recent poll shows that more Israelis oppose the freeze than support it.
The prime minister has nevertheless persisted—his coalition is among the strongest and most representative in Israel's history—but the opportunity generated by his action will not endure indefinitely. Together with the Obama administration, which has repeatedly asserted its commitment to restarting talks without preconditions and to achieving a permanent two-state solution, Israelis hope that Palestinians will once again join them in talks.
By taking risks and accomplishing the unprecedented, Mr. Netanyahu has demonstrated his commitment to peace. Now the Palestinians must match that dedication and seize this propitious moment.
Mr. Oren is Israel's ambassador to the United States.