Important statement by Israeli filmmaker Dror Moreh, director of wrenching film, The Gatekeepers, to the Hollywood Reporter’s Scott Feinberg. This is important because it is bringing the news to America about the occupation and the death of the two-state solution, news that the New York Times doesn’t want to tell us:
Most striking to me is the fact that the former Shin Bet heads and Moreh himself have arrived at very different outlooks for the future — and not the ones that you might have guessed. The Shin Bet heads interviewed in the film, though somewhat dark and conservative by nature, seem to feel that it is essential for Israel to maintain dialogue with the Palestinians, and that peace is ultimately achievable. Moreh, meanwhile, a gregarious man with a sunny disposition who cares enough about Israel’s future to have devoted years to studying it, has arrived at a different conclusion. As he conveys in the film, and said to me, “Regrettably, I feel that we are past the point of no return.”
Nevertheless, the fact that Israel recently announced new elections gives him at least a little hope.
By the way, Moreh once did campaign ads for Ariel Sharon, in 2001. You can change too, liberal American Zionists.
As ever, the issue is between what Israel will do of its own free will (my guess is — maintain an apartheid bantustan system for Palestine, as now, but ever smaller)) and what it would do if international pressure were mounted against it (such pressure, if in the interest of rolling back settlements, would change the situation).
If any Israelis think peace is possible without international pressure, I’d like to hear what justifies their such belief — which to me seems preposterous.
Palestinians to seek UN recognition next month
via yahoo
http://news.yahoo.com/palestinians-seek-un-recognition-next-month-152509581.html
what gets me about this is this
despite American and Israeli threats of financial or diplomatic retaliation, officials said Sunday.
I thought the US was a fair and honest broker there for the last decades..
boy was I fooled……
hehehehe
Shin bet optimistic about peace ie the 2SS while Israel threatens the equivalent of breaking ‘Abbas’ legs if he dares go to the UN for non state observer status. Shin Bet want to walk the thin line between yesha and the Hague.
The Shabak has benefited immensely from the alliance with the Palestinian Authority. It has taken some of the load off of them. So now the P.A. does the torturing and the administrative arrests in some parts of the occupied West Bank and all the Shabak or the IOF have to do is ‘coordinate’ with them, their obedient sub-contractors.
So of course the Shabak thinks that ‘dialogue’ is important and that ‘peace’ is achievable. The question is, “peace” on whose terms?
And how come the Shabak does not believe that open dialogue with Hamas is also important, the same Hamas that the organization helped prop up when it needed a counterweight to Fatah?
It’s simple. The Shabak is looking for partners in crime, not peace and justice.
Despite relentless settlement growth, it is important to realize that the two-state solution is still a realistic solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict.
According to Shaul Arieli, one of Israel’s leading experts on the demarcation of the future Israeli-Palestinian border, “It is true that over the years the settlements have driven a network of wedges between the clusters of Palestinian villages. But these wedges have not created a Jewish dominance that would make unilateral annexation by Israel possible. Some 85 percent of the settlers live in the settlement blocs that cover less than six percent of the area of the West bank. In the rest of the area, there is a clear Palestinian dominance. The number of Israelis living outside the blocs is only 2.6 percent of the population, while inside the blocs, it soars to 95 percent. The built-up area of the Israeli settlements outside the blocs covers less than 0.4 percent of the area of the West Bank. With regard to the use by Israelis of transportation infrastructures in the West Bank, those who do not live there drive only on 293 kilometers (which are 10 percent) of the roads outside the settlement blocs and the settlers drive on another 19 percent. The other 71 percent of the roads are used exclusively by Palestinians. On the other hand, inside the settlement blocs, 83 percent of the roads are used by the Israelis. This is a reality of de facto separation.
“Furthermore most of the settlers who work are working inside Israel and therefore will not have to change jobs when a final status agreement is signed. Moreover, the number of households that will have to be absorbed in Israel, according to the Israeli or Palestinian proposals at the 2007 Annapolis peace talks, will not be greater than 30,000, while the reservoir of housing units planned in Israel stands at more than ten times that number.
“The devotees of the Greater Land of Israel are making efforts to hide this reality of separation on the West Bank. They aspire to banish to the eastern side of the Jordan the Palestinian inhabitants of the West Bank.” http://detailedpoliticalquizzes.wordpress.com/israel-palestine-quiz/