Last week, President Shimon Peres warned that written peace agreement on Jerusalem will cause a “world war.” Now, leading Kadima Knesset Member and former IDF Chief of Staff Shaul Mofaz says conflict is the fate of a United Nations declaration recognizing the Palestinian Authority as a country.
In a speech at the Bedouin city of Hura in the northern Negev President Peres said that there is a de facto peace in Jerusalem, where “the entire prayers rise up together, and the government doesn’t intervene. People are living and working peacefully… but if they try to put it into writing, a world war will break out.”
The prospect of war being an inevitable result of diplomatic moves was underscored by Mofaz, who said that a United Nations declaration of the Palestinian Authority as an independent country based on its own unilateral definition of its borders also would cause a conflict.
“The possibility of a unilateral declaration – it could bring Palestinians out on to the streets for protests and, G-d forbid, it could lead to a conflict,” he told the French news agency AFP Monday.
“Given the great changes in the region, it is very difficult to predict what will happen. In this situation, an Israeli-Palestinian conflict could lead to a harsh reality.”
He is scheduled to lead a delegation of five Knesset committee members on a three-day visit to France and Germany and said that he will tell French officials “very clearly we are against the unilateral process at the U.N., and against support for this unilateral process.”
France has said, without commitment, it might vote in favor of a United Nations resolution on behalf of the Palestinian Authority if Israel and PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas do not resume talks by September, a prospect that is all but hopeless.
Mofaz’s own diplomatic solution to the Arab-Israel maze is to immediately recognize the Palestinian Authority as a state with temporary borders, an idea that already has been put in writing in the Roadmap Agreement in the Bush administration and later rejected by Abbas.
Top Israeli officials are mooting surrender. Hey, if we can’t stop them, let’s join ’em! Oslo has worked wonders for Israel’s legitimacy and standing in the world. In the immortal words of its architect, Reb Shimon, “all we’re sayin’ is, let’s give peace a chance!”