By J. Zel Lurie
DELRAY BEACH, Florida — If one is looking for reasons of the collapse of the nine-month peace negotiations, one needs to go no further than the remark by Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu after he talked with Pope Francis in Jerusalem. Netayahu said, “I long for the day in which Pope Francis’s call to recognize the state of Israel, the right of Jews to a state of their own, to live in security and peace, will be accepted by our neighbors.”
This repeats the lie which the majority of Israelis came to believe. They are supported by all major American Jewish organizations, with the exception of J Street. The majority of congressmen go along.
Who does not accept the state of Israel with its Law of Return which grants automatic citizenship to every Jew who makes Aliyah? Egypt, the largest Arab neighbor, signed a peace treaty with Israel thirty years ago. Jordan followed suit. The Palestine Authority, which is under Israeli occupation, is anxious to make peace and get rid of the occupation.
A dozen of years ago, the Arab League on behalf of all its members offered to exchange ambassadors with Israel as soon as Israel ended the occupation of Palestine. This offer was ignored by Israel and by the American Jewish organizations and the U.S. Congress. The League published a full-page ad in the New York Times and elsewhere, but it hardly made a dent. No one offered to negotiate the conditions of peace with the Arab League and the Palestinians.
Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian President, has said time and again that he recognizes Israel’s need for security and according to Gershon Baskin, in the Jerusalem Post of May 21st, Abbas has made extraordinary concessions during the course of negotiations. He has agreed that Israeli troops will be stationed in the Jordan Valley, although it will be sovereign Palestine territory. True, they will have to get out after five years, but they may be replaced by NATO troops.
Israel has not agreed to the five year limit. In fact, Israel has agreed to nothing that Abbas offered.
The essential reason that Israel wants its troops in the Jordan Valley is the intricate machines which detect missiles and troops aimed at Israel. These machines for the most part date back to the 1970s. Five years should give Israel time to replace them with modern technology on some hill within Israel. The additional distance from the border would be of no consequence to modern technology.
On the future border between Palestine and Israel, Abbas made another extraordinary concession. He said that all the Jewish settlements within the security fence which Israel has erected would be named Israeli sovereign territory. This is 80% of the Israeli settlements and this would add about 150,000 Palestinians to Israel. The remaining 20% of Jewish settlements outside the barrier would have to be evacuated just as those in Gaza were evacuated by Ariel Sharon.
Baskin concludes, “In nine months of negotiations what did Netanyahu offer? Nothing! There was not one Israeli proposal. Not one Israeli initiative was put on the table.”
Netanyahu’s claim that Israel’s Arab neighbors refused to accept it is a lie with one small exception and that is Hamas which rules the Gaza strip, but Hamas leaders said over and over again that they will go along with any deal that the Palestine Liberation Organization makes with Israel.
The slogan that “Israel has no partner for peace” which Netanyahu furthered after talking to the Pope should be replaced by the truth “Israel is no partner for peace..” The Israel coalition government has no aim except to increase the Jewish settlements in the West Bank. They have more or less doubled the number of units built during the nine months of negotiations. Recently, the city of Ariel boasted that it had constructed a record number of housing units.
What can we do to change this picture? The Pope suggests prayer. I doubt that prayer will help. It can’t harm. We need to keep talking, to try to change people’s perception and their memories of the suicide bombers unleashed by Yasser Arafat. Those days are long over. Security cooperation between Israel and the Palestine Authority is holding fast.
A new era has yet to be born. New Israeli elections are several years away.
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J. Zel Lurie is a freelance writer now residing in retirement in Delray Beach, Florida. The centenarian may be reached via jzel.lurie@sdjewishworld.com
The current stale, highly-polemical positions that stymie any real progress towards peace can be overcome only with a fresh (but already fully legitimized) perspective that both illuminates and eventually creates commonalities in the just demands of all the peoples of the Holy Land.
That perspective is found in “Common Lands, Common Ground: The indigenous agenda, Israel, Palestine and breaking the post-Oslo Peace Accords logjam” @ http://goo.gl/XZIKoa
The essay encapsulates many of the ideas expressed repeatedly by Pope Francis, underscoring his powerful message of inter-faith respect.
Prime Minister Netanyahu’s concern, as recently expressed in an interview with Bloomberg, that “something must be done to prevent the collapse of Israel as a Jewish-majority democratic nation,” is also clearly and fairly addressed.
“Common Lands, Common Ground’ shows how Israel can legitimately claim it is the first (or one of the first) modern indigenous nation-states and that the Palestinians would find their demands better expressed if they recognized that fact as well as their own undeniable situation as a people seeking legitimate guarantees to a homeland. Specific issues such as Israel’s s Law of Return are used to build the kind of bridges needed beyond the efforts of Pope Francis.
The world is so sick of Netanyahu’s tantrums, blustering, war-mongering and lies. His newest tantrum about a Palestinian unity government is falling on deaf ears and the US, EU, and UN are already welcoming it. The unity government is going to be Israel’s nightmare since it will give the Palestinians more world clout. Israel always used the lack of unity with the Palestinians as a reason not to make peace. I guess since the world isn’t listening to him anymore he will just make more threats, to withhold tax moneys, cut off water and electricity to the Palestinians and of course threaten to bomb Iran. It is time that American Jews to cut off support for Israel, to save its future. I doubt if there is another UN resolution on the settlements that the US would veto it now, and this will lead to sanctions.
Lurie is getting more delusional than ever. It would take too long to rebut everything he says, and pretty much everything he says is eminently rebutable, but to take just one example, he is still peddling the old lie that the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative made by the Arab League in 2002 was “ignored” by Israel. Typical half-lie that makes it sound like a whole truth: in fact, this alleged Peace Initiative was an all-or-nothing proposal that left no room for discussions, let alone negotiations (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_Peace_Initiative). What it attempted to do was to impose through the back door of an allegedly whole-package agreement elements that Israel cannot and will never accept, such as return of the refugees and division of Jerusalem. It was a trap, and Israel did the only thing it could do, which was to ignore it and reject it. Only fools
still believe that there was anything even remotely conducive to a peace agreement in this blatant attempt to corner Israel into a diktat badly disguised as a peace offer.
J. Zel Llurie evidently believes whatever the the PA and Hamas say. Has he never heard of the Arab tactic of taqiyya? Say whatever your enemy wants to hear, and then do what you want.
Taqiyya –
“It’s part of Lying and cheating in the Arab world is not really a moral matter but a method of safeguarding honor and status, avoiding shame, and at all times exploiting possibilities, for those with the wits for it, deftly and expeditiously to convert shame into honor on their own account and vice versa for their opponents. If honor so demands, lies and cheating may become absolute imperatives.” [David Pryce-Jones, “The Closed Circle” An interpretation of the Arabs, p4]