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Mosby

(16,160 posts)
Mon May 6, 2013, 05:48 PM May 2013

Kerry Betting On The Wrong Horses

The Arab League foreign ministers who met with US Secretary of State John Kerry in Washington last week were convinced that they had a mandate from the Palestinians to talk about possible land swaps between Israel and a future Palestinian state.

Ahead of their departure to the US, the ministers had met with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in Doha, Qatar, and discussed with him the land swap idea.

At the meeting, the Arab League decided to dispatch a high-level delegation to Washington to brief the US Administration on the Arab position regarding the resumption of peace talks with Israel. Headed by Qatar's Hamad bin Jasim al-Thani, the delegation which met with Kerry also consisted of Palestinian Authority Foreign Minister Riyad Malki.

Yet the Palestinians seemed to be surprised, following the meeting with Kerry, to hear the Qatari representative talk about possible land swaps between Israel and the Palestinians.

The Palestinian Authority's initial response was to issue a statement in English -- not Arabic -- voicing support for the land trade proposal. The statement said that this was an old idea that had been discussed in the past between Israeli and Palestinian negotiators.

But following strong condemnations from many Palestinians, the Palestinian Authority leadership took a step backwards.

First, the Palestinian Authority said that it was only prepared to discuss "minor" adjustments to the border between Israel and a future Palestinian state.

Later, as the denunciations grew, the Palestinian Authority took yet another step backwards, saying it was opposed to making any "down payments" to Israel before the peace talks resumed.

In other words, the Palestinian Authority is not prepared to talk about any territorial concessions to Israel before the Israeli government accepts the pre-1967 lines as the basis for a two-state solution.

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3699/arab-league-john-kerry

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Response to aranthus (Reply #1)

shaayecanaan

(6,068 posts)
3. The Palestinians think that the pre-67 boundaries should be the basis of negotiations
Mon May 6, 2013, 10:06 PM
May 2013

Obama is of the same mind, as was George Bush:-

&feature=player_detailpage#t=64s

Ehud Olmert was also in agreement. The problem is that the current Israeli government has departed from that understanding.

shaayecanaan

(6,068 posts)
7. There is a definite border to base negotiations on...
Tue May 7, 2013, 01:10 AM
May 2013

that border is the 1948 armistice lines, otherwise known as the pre-1967 borders.

There have been two sets of negotiations in which Israel and Palestine have exchanged offers based on the 1967 lines. The first of these was at Taba, whereby:-

The two sides agreed that in accordance with the UN Security Council Resolution 242, the June 4 1967 lines would be the basis for the borders between Israel and the state of Palestine.


http://www.mideastweb.org/moratinos.htm

The second of these was in 2008, when Ehud Olmert and Mahmoud Abbas exchanged two offers, both broadly based on the 1967 borders. Abbas' offer would have allowed Israel to keep 1.9% of the West Bank, and 60%+ of the settlements. Olmert's offer called for Israel to keep 5.9% of the West Bank. Olmert was removed from office as PM shortly thereafter. Both Tzipi Livni and Netanyahu pointedly indicated that they would not be bound by the offer that Ehud Olmert made.

delrem

(9,688 posts)
8. That border makes sense to me only if the Palestinian Nabka is recognized as it happened.
Tue May 7, 2013, 02:29 AM
May 2013

so Palestinian refugees are given a fair deal.

Otherwise you've got a continuing, lingering, social problem.

So "otherwise" is rejected.
Full stop.

A "solution" to a social problem like this can only be one that enunciates a common purpose, "common purpose" to mean that it addresses the lives and purposes of all parties to the understanding.

Otherwise there's no getting the show on the road.

"A solution" must address the issue of Mutual Respect. What could argue against the notion that "one of mutual respect" is the commonality equating persons in communities where peace exists.

Unfortunately, Israel denies the Nabka, as well as any recognizable border. How can Palestinians expect shit from such a government, expostulating from such a backward and hostile political ideology?

How can Palestinians force a conclusion that is fair to them and yet is acceptable (and profitable) to Israel?

A phrase that's become very much in vogue in 21st C. war-talk is "a preemptive strike". This phrase is uttered positively by those who think they have the upper hand, while it is usually questioned by others. The notion 'preemptive strike' is of the same *purposeful* kind as any notion that demands justification through all of time or from first principles. Absent this judgement we're left with the ridiculous premise "might is right".

The notion 'preemptive strike' falls in the realm of dynamic propositions, proposals to action, which by nature have to be judged after the fact, to follow up on the self-evident principle that action before the fact ought to present *some* justification to be examined.

It's clear that "Palestinians", except if they were of the Jewish communities, got royally fucked over. Still are. After this fact the only suggestion that I have is that Israeli *citizens* unite as one true people, which includes those who are very unorthodox (Christian, Islamic, Buddhist, Jain, just pile on in there).




Shaktimaan

(5,397 posts)
10. Israel denies the nakba?
Tue May 7, 2013, 04:00 AM
May 2013

How so? It's pretty obvious the nakba occurred. But why just recognize Palestinian refugees? What about the Jewish ones after all?

Yes the Palestinians were royally fucked over. No one disputes that fact. But it was mostly other Arab states doing the fucking. The Palestinians were used as pawns and cannon fodder as they were fed propaganda about returning to Israel and claiming it for themselves. Just look at the original PLO manifesto.

Point being, the Palestinians deserve a state and compensation. Demanding that Israel foot 100% of that bill though is unreasonable. The Arab league did far more to hinder their national goals than Israel ever did.

aranthus

(3,385 posts)
16. In a way, yes it does.
Tue May 7, 2013, 04:31 PM
May 2013

The Nakba isn't merely about the fact of refugees. It's about the Palestinians' victimization by Israel. Inherent in the concept of Nakba is that Israel is 100% at fault for it. Israel justifiably denies this. So in Palestinian eyes, it could be considered to be denying the Nakba, even though Israel certainly recognizes that there were and are Palestinian refugees.

aranthus

(3,385 posts)
5. I understand that the Palestinians want the green line as the starting point.
Mon May 6, 2013, 11:49 PM
May 2013

but how is that a concession by Israel? Israel calls the entire West Bank "Disputed Territory." If so, then it should all be the subject of negotiation. It is Israel that is asking the Palestinians to concede those areas that Israel wants without anything in return. If there are going to be land swaps, then why shouldn't the starting point be the Green Line?

azurnoir

(45,850 posts)
6. Israel calls the West Bank Judea and Samaria
Tue May 7, 2013, 12:19 AM
May 2013

that is in itself a statement, what entitles Israel to one inch of land that was never at least in the last 2 millennium Israel's?
Land that was never Israel's in the original partition ?

Shaktimaan

(5,397 posts)
11. So it wasn't Israel's.
Tue May 7, 2013, 04:04 AM
May 2013

It wasn't palestine's either. Or theirs in the partition agreement. (East Jerusalem?)

So how to decide then? By majority population? Does that mean all of Jerusalem goes to Israel? The city was majority Jewish (by a lot too) for the past 150 years before the 1948 war.

Mosby

(16,160 posts)
13. I confused the pre-67 with the 67 borders
Tue May 7, 2013, 02:53 PM
May 2013

I think Livni did too.

the green line should be a good starting point, so long as it's an official "starting point" and not a declaration that it's the border. Both sides need to be clearer about this.

 

Scootaloo

(25,699 posts)
14. I need you to explain something to me.
Tue May 7, 2013, 03:42 PM
May 2013

What, exactly, entitles Israel to demand "concessions" of land within the west bank?

As a corollary, what is the logic behind the notion that Israel gets to decide both what land it takes from the west bank and what land from Israel it "swaps" in exchange?

aranthus

(3,385 posts)
15. The same thing that entitles the Palestinians to demand land or anything else.
Tue May 7, 2013, 04:25 PM
May 2013

Israel is a sovereign state. It can demand anything it wants. That doesn't mean that it is entitled to get what it wants. But states make demands all the time.

As for the borders issue. The Green line isn't a border. It's an armistice line. It's where the armies happened to be when the fighting stopped. That's why the final border needs to be set by negotiations between the Israelis and the Palestinians.

Mosby

(16,160 posts)
17. It's a matter of what's "workable"
Tue May 7, 2013, 04:43 PM
May 2013

Israel isn't entitled to land swaps per se but land swaps make a solution possible. Its not realistic to demand that every settler pack up and leave the WB, there isn't anywhere else for most of them to go, especially given how many people we are talking about.

Its perfectly reasonable for the Palestinian team to negotiate for areas that they want, just like the Israelis will do for areas where there are settlement blocks.

delrem

(9,688 posts)
18. Israeli settlements aren't the product of negotiation.
Tue May 7, 2013, 09:28 PM
May 2013

They're the product of a systematic campaign (a gov't policy) to isolate and Balkanize Palestinian communities, to use settlement of land as a strategic weapon in a demographic war, and to create "facts on the ground". Settlements are only half of it, the other half being Palestinian population transfer to isolated concentrations in resource and space delimited economic backwaters, coupled with annexation of Palestinian land for Israeli state purposes.

It's perfectly reasonable for Palestinian refugees to demand return of their stolen lands. But you won't hear that from folk who support the right for Israel to transfer Arab populations, annex their lands and create settlements on them - settlements that depend for their existence on annexing the local water resources and increasingly the local farm lands, and strictly (militarily) enforcing apartheid rule on the Palestinian population.

Likud doesn't support a "two-state solution"
http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/likud-officials-call-to-omit-netanyahu-s-two-state-declaration-from-party-platform.premium-1.489731

Given the clear evidence that Likud's objective w.r.t. "peace negotiations" is best left unsaid, since that objective negates the possibility of "peace", it's obviously disingenuous for anyone to discuss "peace negotiations" without accounting for that fact.

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