Many people here have had strong views about the viability of the current, sort of secret, talks going on between the Netanyahu government of Israel and the Abbas government of the West Bank, ostensibly on the premise that they are working toward a two state solution.
Bits of two recent articles in the New York Times seem to this writer to raise issues about the bona fides of those talks, sad as I am to say it. This article appeared in this morning's New York Times and included the following:
At another point, Mr. Mubarak said that about six months before he was forced from office, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “tested the waters” about a plan to displace the Palestinian population of Gaza into the Egyptian Sinai Peninsula.
“No, no,” Mr. Mubarak said he had replied. “Forget about it unless you want to start another war between you and us. The borders can’t be touched.”
Danny Danon, a high figure in the Likud coalition also wrote this article which also appeared this week in the Op Ed section of the New York Times, advocating Israel's withdrawal from the Oslo accords, and said, among other things,
What should replace Oslo’s false promise? We should implement what I have called a “three-state solution.” In the future, the final status of the Palestinians will be determined in a regional agreement involving Jordan and Egypt, when the latter has been restabilized. All the region’s states must participate in the process of creating a long-term solution for the Palestinian problem.
In the short term, the Palestinians will continue to have autonomy over their civilian lives while Israel remains in charge of security throughout Judea and Samaria, commonly referred to as the West Bank. Following an initial period, the Arab residents of Judea and Samaria could continue to develop their society as part of an agreement involving Israel and Jordan. Similarly, Gaza residents could work with Israel and Egypt to create a society that granted them full civil authority over their lives in a manner that was acceptable to all sides.
When two leading Israeli politicians of the ruling coalition participating in the peace talks are quoted in the Times in the same week, to the effect that one is advocating a solution for Palestinians which may not involve the West Bank and does involve Jordan and Egypt, places where Palestinians have never lived, and the other is quoted by Hosni Mubarak as recently test running the removal of Palestinians from Gaza and their resettling in Sinai, the prospects for their government to in fact negotiate a two state deal which leaves resident Palestinians in place does not look good. And this is a more than usually public announcement of views as this is also the week the UN General Assembly is meeting, where every last attendee can read this in the Times.
Discussion below the squib.
The problem of Israel and Palestine is a continuing and spreading one. Even Anthony Bourdain, a chef, dealt with it in his travelogue program last night on CNN, in an episode captioned "Jerusalem" , discussing, inter alia, settlers and anti Arab graffiti, in between the recipe for roasted watermelon and the dispute about who invented falafel.
I have three concerns here which I propose for discussion. The first is the notion that at least these very prominent Israeli politicians who are in a position to determine policy, are both very recently discussing or trial running a flat out removal of Palestinians from the areas in dispute, moving the problem by moving the people they don't want to keep to another nation altogether, in each case a nation also full of its own people who have still a third culture which they have the right to have respected, rather than being a dumping ground for people in the millions who never lived there prior to their removal to there.
This is being done at a time when the current Israeli government is also in process of moving a substantial group of Israeli Bedouins, citizens of Israel, from the places they have either long lived, or had to move to when a prior Israeli government moved them there, so that the current government may redevelop areas in southern Israel for occupation by Israelis who are not Bedouins or Arabs, into towns when they have not before lived in such towns.
And also this is happening not long after another prominent Israeli politician proposed removing Arab Israeli citizens from whatever would be Israel, to Palestine or another place as a part of any deal reached.
In this light, the two state peace talks don't look so promising, and their failure might possibly be used in future as a pretext for taking the One State but No Arabs in it solution here being dry run in the Times.
My second concern here is the attempt to eliminate all of the interim agreements that are part of Oslo, particulary the parts which involve allocations of water and the like, and replace them with the aftermath of prior wars in which the claims of Israel as winner would be the only ones on the table. The fact that the PLO recognized the legitimacy of the State of Israel in the Oslo accords becomes irrelevant when the entire deal is chucked, leaving Palestinians with no bargainiing position to replace the temporary matters which were put off by the terms of Oslo until a final peace deal was done.
My third concern is these politicans' contempt for all of the cultures which surround them save their own, as if it is a fair and rational thing to propose simply removing an entire ethnically distinct people to some other nation and leave it to the people and that nation there to make some sort of settlement as to how to go forward, but in any event relieving the pols' own state of any responsibility for it, and, of course, making more readily available all of that free acreage and all of that water in a dry land. This is particularly a concern as Jordan has been bombed by Israel over water in the Sixties, and because neither the Sinai nor the small part of Jordan which is not true desert has the space for their own citizens as well as several million Palestinians on a permanent basis. And both Lebanon and Syria have their own heaps of refugees from Palestine, whose method of arrival there was further in the past but not acceptable in any terms, then or now, whose numbers may be increased by this if it goes forward.
I am aware that J Street, the US organization, is having a national conference soon at which Ms. Livni, the designated co negotiator for Israel in the current talks, is slated to speak, which may shed light on this, but view the current position being reported as having been taken by high Israeli pol who also have a say with Ms. Livni to be relevant.
I invite discussion on these issues, under my usual rules, which I mention here because the current round of commenters in IP may be new to them: no violation of Godwin's rule by supporters of either side against the other or supporters of the other, all commenters to discuss the issue presented by the diary and not sling individual insults at other commentators instead or otherwise threadjack, commentators encouraged to cite the sources and evidence for their factual statements and link them if possible. No, Anthony Bourdain's program is not a separate subject of this diary. Yes, I report violators.