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LOL. This amounts to the Obama regime greasing the usual Israeli kicking of the peace can down the road–it’s de facto policy for decades. God forbid the USA actually stick to its official policy on Israeli settlement expansion as a condition to serious peace talks. Next up, Israeli bombing of Iran. There’s really nothing else in the Middle East likely to happen. Obama will give the green light. 30 Years from 2010 the archives will be opened, way to late, as is always the reality.
link to ynetnews.com
What else can we Americans do to genuflect at Israel’s non=borders? Oh, yes, yes, we can learn to do the more complicated sign of the star of David with our hands….a sign of the cross the cross, is after all, way too simple. Holy water? Why yes, a swimming pool for every Jewish Israeli, a mud spot for every Palestinian; how else can we show our humanity and awareness of world history?
A major problem has been the long term open (and over-) funding of Israel’s tribal wars by dumb big brother US.
I would like to open a challenge:
Can anyone think of a single instance where the Israelis have contributed anything at all to the security of the United States ?
Anything, anything will do. Please try hard.
The Israelis are simply entitled to ever more cash in hand from the dumb goy USA.
Why? Because they live–like that Israeli teen Phil saw on the bus in Israeli. All full of pimples and nerdy entitlement–why wouldn’t any gentile American want to send their tax money and children to furnish more immunity from common decency?
The goal of negotiations is to reach an agreement. If Mitchell visits both sides he could conceivably be carrying proposals from one to the other. Abbas doesn’t want to “negotiate”, but he does want to reach an agreement. Obviously if the “negotiations” yield nothing there will be no reason to go public with them.
The task of Abbas now is to refuse to sign away Palestine’s birthright. There is no agreement with Netanyahu that would not be surrender.
What if Abbas could sign a map of what would be the borders of the state of Palestine that would be based upon the borders of 67 but with agreed land swaps?
I think it’s insulting to people’s intelligence when you claim that Abbas doesn’t want to negotiate, but is merely interested in reaching an agreement NOW. As if the man, or the Palestinian people by extension, are unreasonable buffoons who don’t understand basic concepts of “negotiation”.
The Palestinians have been negotiating for the last 20 years trying to reach an agreement with the Israelis. The Israelis, however, have been negotiating for the last 20 years for the sake of negotiating, prolonging the talks and building more and more facts on the ground.
You can believe whatever you want to believe. It doesn’t change the fact that Israeli leadership is playing a game, while the Palestinians are actually serious.
Even an outsider would know that given Israel’s immunity at the Security Council, it’s Hasbara propaganda and its military power, it stands to lose in any “peace treaty” with Palestinians. If it did, it would actually have to abide by international law and give back land. The Palestinians, being the weaker party, under occupation have everything to gain, including their freedom and dignity. So who’s got a vested interest in making these sham negotiations work? The answer is obvious.
You make a good argument Avi, but Abbas sold his soul a long time ago. Attirbuting Palestinian altruism is an ilsult to the Palestinians as a whole.
Any map Abbas could sign off on would be unacceptable to Netanyahu.
And there are still, besides boundaries, the questions of the refugees, control of borders, of Palestine’s military.
It’s a trap. It’s a trap like the “treaties” the US signed with the Indian tribes, agreements they had no intention of keeping, except for forcing the tribes off their lands and onto reservations.
Why else is Netanyahu so desperate these days to get the “peace process” started again? He needs that signature to disposses the Palestinians once and for all, and claim they agreed to it.
It makes perfect sense that this “‘no plan’” is the plan that Witty endorses and insists is the only one that can succeed.
“Any map Abbas could sign off on would be unacceptable to Netanyahu.”
Possibly so. I’m no expert on the “Geneva Accord” map (nor have I seen Olmert’s map) and I have not heard sufficient criticism of either map to understand what would be the extent of the concessions involved with any particular land swap. But if I ever study those maps, do you have a particular land swap objection in mind? (I would think that on the Jerusalem area the agreement would be that in said area, so many dunams would go to each side.)
The idea that a whole package deal is going to be reached shortly is ridiculous, but the idea of settling the border issue first is not a bad idea if it could be accomplished. And I am not convinced that it cannot be accomplished.
I think that it is useful for advocates of the one state solution if no borders are agreed upon.
First off, the land swap proposal is absurd. You can’t tell people in one area that next week they’ll be governed by an entirely different entity.
Second, the problem with Israel’s proposals for the last twenty some years has been the refusal to discuss Jerusalem’s final status. When Ehud Barak offered Arafat that gem of a deal, he wasn’t including Jerusalem or any of the illegally annexed nearby towns under occupation.
Third, why don’t you educate yourself before starting an argument and taking a position? I’d like to know what else you’re not familiar with, or what else you haven’t read. Perhaps that’s where the disconnect is happening.
Well, that’s exactly what Israel does. The village of Ghajar on the border with Lebanon is about to be split in half, regardless of what the residents want.
And it’s a fact that many people overlook, that Palestinian citizens of Israel typically don’t want to change citizenship. Of course after a new more years under Avigdor Lieberman they may change their minds. But this land swap notion, from the Israeli point of view is just another version of ethnic cleansing, getting rid of more Arabs.
Sadly Potsherd, the village of Ghajar, as you probably know already, is just a microcosm of the greater “forced separation” imposed by colonialism: Britain, France and most recently Israel.
In the occupied Golan Heights, Syrian (now Israeli) residents are not allowed to visit their relatives in Syria and vice versa. So, for decades now, families gather near the town of Majdal Shams, on either side of the border fence, separated about 1000 or 2000 feet from each other by barbed wire as they shout to each other over megaphones, communicating latest family news, deaths, who got married, each others health etc. That hill became to be known as “The Shouting Hill”.
Someone is bound to ask the obvious question: why not call them on the phone, instead? Well, until recently, there was no way to make a direct phone call from Israel to Syria. But, in the advent of Skype, and European based operators, such communication has became possible, although it doesn’t replace the human contact, even when they’re a few thousand feet apart.
This short report discusses the reality of the situation there:
link to youtube.com
By the way, the movie The Syrian Bride, explores this very issue.
I did mean to say that Abbas did not want to negotiate. I said (or I meant) that Abbas has nothing to gain by publicly negotiating.
The land swap issue has little to do with changing anybody’s citizenship. Have you looked at the “Geneva Accord” map. I have not studied it lately, but its proposals did not raise any ire that I recall on the basis of changing anybody’s citizenship.
If as I suggested regarding Jerusalem the borders are left vague and the borders of the rest of the country are fixed, what is wrong with such a signing?
It leaves the State of Israel intact and that is a major no-no for people on this site.
I think this is a good representation:
link to geneva-accord.org
“‘It leaves the State of Israel intact and that is a major no-no for people on this site. “‘
Tell me Yonira, are the Zionists extremists commited to Israel’s expasion not also opposed to Israel remaining intact?
yonira, go back to Hebrew school
WJ,
The problem with the Geneva Initiative is that Israel would be taking over vast sources of water and leaving the Palestinians with tumbleweed to kick around in the desert. Have you ever been to Lachish or Netousha? They don’t call it Netusha (Abandoned) for nothing you know.
Aren’t the majority of the aquifers under the land which has been designated for the Palestinian state? Also desalination is a source of water which will only become more popular as prices drop. I don’t think the Palestinian state will go thirsty.
Compare the aquifer map here
link to mideastweb.org
With the proposed Geneva Accord map here
link to geneva-accord.org
and see whose side they overlap on.
Of course it means a change of citizenship. If lands are transfered to a Palestinian state, the residents will be Palestinian citizens. The lands supposed to be transfered are lands with a high Arab population that Israel wants to get rid of.
Sorry, first line should read I did NOT mean to say that Abbas did not want to negotiate.
The Geneva Accord presumed a land swap that would facilitate a contour that resembled the settlement patterns by ethnicity with the large Jewish settlements remaining part of Israel. The extent and maze of the settlements hadn’t proceeded as far as they have now.
Now, the logic of plebiscite applied in small jurisdictions results in at best an indefensible maze that is also extremely vulnerable for Palestinian sovereignty.
As Akiva Eldar (and I) have mentioned for years, the Israeli frontier at the green line is something like 600 miles total with all of Israel’s borders. In contrast the fence is longer than that, and in what would otherwise be 90 – 100 miles of border. (I don’t know the exact dimensions, but the point is of the maze.)
I prefer the green line (maybe with some minor modifications – preferably to even reduce the maze, and create a setting of moderate but still undeniable minority populations in each community, resulting in a genuinely civil democracy in each national state, rather than any attraction for ethnically pure Israel and Palestine, or ethnically equal Israel and Palestine (with both valuing their democracy within their ethnicity as more important than acceptance of the other, and some of the others’ imcompatible ways.)
Let’s see, how do we square Witty’s plan and POV with simple justice? I mean, actually, this involves more than a map on Witty’s goy-protected kitchen table, no?