New elections a new chance for Mideast peace

By J. Zel Lurie

J. Zel Lurie
J. Zel Lurie

DELRAY BEACH, Florida (Press Release) — This column is being written on Dec 4th, my 101st birthday. There will not be a big party tonight like the one that marked my first century. Only five members of my family will be there but a couple of hundred residents of Harbors Edge will dance and frolic on my birthday.

There will be little talk here about the new Israeli elections scheduled for March 17th. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right wing coalition government was doomed from the start. It’s twenty month reign was the shortest of any Israeli government.

Natenyahu was forced to give up his traditional ally, the ultra religious Shas party by Yair Lapid and Naftali Bennett. They pushed through the Knesset a law that canceled the automatic draft exemption of ultra religious youth.

Once this law was passed the right wing coalition split. Naftali Bennett who represents the Jewish settlers  on the West Bank came out strongly against any move towards peace. Netanyahu who had campaigned against a peace settlement in the 2012 elections reversed himself in words but not in action. He broke up the peace negotiations advocated by Secretary of State John Kerry.

Kerry greeted the announcement of new elections by saying he hoped that the new elections  would “produce the possibility of a government that can negotiate and move towards resolving the differences between Israelis and Palestinians.”

The two-state solution is not dead, as Naftali Bennett wrote in an op-ed piece in the New York Times a few weeks ago. The new elections are Israel’s last chance to revive it.

The average Israeli revels in the slogan “the whole world is against us.” The five European nations who voted symbolically to recognize the Palestinian state, are not against Israel. They oppose Netanyahu and the Jewish settlements in the West Bank.

Let us remember that the West Bank and the Gaza Strip comprise 28% of Mandatory Palestine that the UN partitioned 50/50 in 1947.

Let us remember that since 1967 Arabs in the West Bank have been oppressed by army occupation.

Let us remember that Mahmoud Abbas president of the Palestinian Authority has come out strongly for peace that will protect Israel’s security. His intelligence branch has succeeded in squelching a potential third intifada. The violence of the last few months in which 11 Israelis were killed occurred in East Jerusalem where Palestinian intelligence has been banned.

Meanwhile a real enemy has developed on the Syrian border. The chaos in Syria has produced two main groups, ISIS which has declared war on western infidels but whose main objective is to brutally proselytize fellow Sunni Muslims to support their program of restoring the Middle Ages Caliphate. The second group is those affiliated with Al-Qaeda whom U.S. intelligence says are more dangerous to the West than ISIS.

One of these Al-Qaeda groups, the al-Nusra Front, sits on the Golan Heights Frontier. They have expelled the United Nations peace observers who had two posts there, and who now sit in Israel.

The IDF has created a new battalion called Bashan to man the quiet Golan Heights Frontier. Its commander told the press a few weeks ago that Al-Nusra might attack next week or next month or next year, but attack they will.

The Israeli voter relies on the IDF to protect the frontier. The Israeli budget and Netanyahu’s desire to build another Jewish settlement in East Jerusalem are the issues that split Netanyahu and Lapid. I hope that in the election campaign these important issues will give way to the need for peace negotiations.

Netanyahu told the Knesset on December 3 that the only issue in the campaign is who will lead the government.

The only issue in the campaign should be those that support two states for two peoples and those who oppose it.

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Mazal Tov on his 101st birthday to J. Zel Lurie, who after an active life as a journalist in Israel and the United States now lives in retirement in Delray Beach, Florida.  He may be contacted via jzel.lurie@sdjewishworld.com

1 thought on “New elections a new chance for Mideast peace”

  1. I see that Lurie will remain delusional to the very end: “He [Netanyahu]broke up the peace negotiations advocated by Secretary of State John Kerry.”? What? Wasn’t there someone across the table, allegedly representing the Palestinians, who sabotaged the little success Kerry had achieved? It’s astounding to hear all leftist analysts like Lurie remain completely blind to the core responsibility of Mahmoud Abbas for the stalling, sabotage and eventually complete collapse of negotiations that had never actually gotten anywhere since the Palestinians never changed their tune: 100% of all our demands must be met, and 0% for Israel. And that’s Netanyahu’s fault? Please… The elections will prove that the Israeli electorate is far more realistic than dreamers à la Lurie, and they should since they’re the ones dealing daily with the refusal of the Palestinians to make concessions leading to peace. If they keep up their long-standing rejectionist attitude, there will never be a Palestinian State. And by the way, Mahmoud Abbas just declared himself that the peace process was dead. Just in time to tell the Israelis that there is no point in electing a government willing to make as many concessions to the Palestinians as the previous ones have made in the past. Thanks, Mahmoud.

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