Gil Hoffman, JPOST, interviews Mofaz
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Which side is to blame for the current diplomatic stalemate: Netanyahu, as your predecessor Livni repeatedly suggested, or the Palestinians?
Both sides are to blame. Unfortunately, over the past three years, the current Israeli government has not taken steps to advance negotiations. It was a huge mistake of the government of Israel to not accept Obama’s plan [that he presented at the State Department last May].
The negotiations are stuck because of the lack of trust between the two leaders. As prime minister I could repair this.
An agreement with the Palestinians is in our clear interests because it will guarantee that Israel will remain a Jewish and democratic state. Israel and the PA should accept the quartet statement [released Wednesday] and advance negotiations. Time is not on either side.
The biggest danger for Israel is not the Iranian threat but Israel becoming a bi-national state. Losing the Jewish majority endangers Israel more than anything. I will not let it happen.
Why is your plan, which calls for a two-stage withdrawal from 60 percent of the West Bank and then from 100 percent via land swaps, the answer?
An agreement cannot be reached in one step, so it is important to have an interim agreement to build trust, give the Palestinians a state and guarantee Israeli security along the way to a permanent agreement. Then, in a year, we can reach agreements on borders and security because the gaps are not wide.
I would guarantee the Palestinians territory the same size of the pre-1967 West Bank and Gaza Strip with land swaps. In any agreement, we will keep the settlement blocs. They will be part of Israel as our eastern border.
I am very pragmatic and ready for historic concessions but I will insist on security arrangements. The Palestinian state will be demilitarized and will not have an army that can threaten Israel. It can have security forces to defend their people. But no air force, tanks or missiles that can threaten us. I understand security.
You presented your plan in 2009. The region has changed a lot since then. Do you still advocate implementing stage one now?
Especially now. The dramatic changes in our region require us to set our strategic goals for ourselves: Strengthening our peace agreements with Egypt and Jordan and reaching an agreement with the Palestinians.
How do you get to 60% and then 100%?
In the interim agreement, we will give them Areas A and B, which make up some 40% of the West Bank, plus another 20% from area C to make the land contiguous from Jenin to Hebron with 99.8% of Palestinians inside and without evacuating settlements. After the land swaps, my settlement blocs will enable 250,000 Jews to stay. We will keep Ariel, Ma’aleh Adumim and Gush Etzion. The Jordan Valley can be leased for 25 years, and Hebron’s Jews can stay as a special case.
Giving the Palestinians 100% via land swaps sounds like former prime minister Ehud Olmert’s plan. Have you endorsed it?
No. He wanted to already make decisions on Jerusalem, refugees, water and electromagnetic fields. The Olmert plan could not have worked.
Why do you think Israel should have accepted Obama;s plan, which was seen as very controversial?
Obama’s idea of deciding borders and security first, and Jerusalem and refugees later, was part of my plan. I presented it to his advisers Dennis Ross, Jeffrey Feltman and Dan Shapiro in 2009. I do not say he adopted my plan in its entirety. But as prime minister, I will persuade Obama to accept my entire plan.
If borders are decided before the refugee issue, and Israel already made its concessions in the West Bank, why would the Palestinians have an interest in conceding on refugees?
The refugees are a clear red line for me. Not a single Palestinian refugee will go into Israel’s final borders. In negotiations, you start with terms of reference before stage one. That is when we will be clear that there is no compromise on refugees. Reaching an interim agreement will build trust for the final status agreement, create a new atmosphere with the Palestinians and Arab states, and dramatically improve economic ties with them.
But can it be reached with the current Palestinian leadership, or should we wait for the Palestinian election that has been delayed so many times?
For my plan, the world will be a partner and the Palestinians will not have a choice. I have gotten support from world leaders and I have met with senior Palestinian officials who have called the plan pragmatic and rational but cannot say so publicly. Any Palestinian leader elected who accepts the Quartet conditions can be a partner.
Do you see yourself as leader of what was called the peace camp? Would you expect to be the main speaker at Yitzhak Rabin memorial rallies? What do you think about former Meretz leader Yossi Beilin’s calls for dismantling the PA?
I am the head of the pragmatic camp that wants to reach peace, fix our electoral system, make sweeping socioeconomic changes and equalize burdens of IDF service. I am against the Geneva initiative and I disagree with Beilin’s ideas that would lead to a bi-national state, which is the worst thing possible for Israel. If they invite me to speak at Rabin rallies, I will.
You praise Obama’s diplomatic initiatives on the Palestinian issue. Do you also agree with his handling of Iran?
I believe the Obama administration is committed to stopping the Iranian nuclear program. But I do not endorse [Obama’s idea this week] to allow Iran to have a civilian nuclear program. It would be too hard to monitor. Iran has military ambitions and abilities, so we cannot close our eyes. Allowing Iran to obtain a even nuclear capability would change the balance of power in the Middle East. America realizes why Israel cannot accept this.
Has Netanyahu handled the Iran issue smartly?
His government has made progress. But it should not have dealt with the issue so publicly and spoken about it in such an operative way. The world will take steps to prevent a nuclear Iran. Now is the time to advance sanctions to stop the program. I am also in favor of regime change in Iran, but preventing nuclearization must be the top priority.
If sanctions and all other nonmilitary options fail, could you order the bombing of Iran, the country where you were born and your childhood home?
There is no connection. The military option is the last option and Israel must be ready for it. This is not the time yet. There is time for sanctions and for the world to do its part on Iran. If we see Iran getting closer to a military nuclear capability, the US acting against its own interest and allowing a sword on our neck, I will be the first to support Israel taking action. On this there would be no coalition and opposition. But the sword is not there yet.
Do you think Obama will release Jonathan Pollard from prison?
Time will tell. The time has come to release him. He no longer poses any danger to American security. His fate should not be connected to the US election. He should be released for humanitarian, reasons and because he paid his debt to the legal system in America.
The time has come to put this issue behind us.
Do you see Livni staying in politics with so many key issues up in the air?
That is her decision. I have said that her place is in Kadima but that everyone has a replacement. The election results were clear. The party will be run differently now.
If you get elected prime minister, would you also see yourself as the leader of world Jewry?
Any prime minister must see all of world Jewry as part of us, take responsibility for all of them and maintain connections with them. Their connection to the land of Israel is deep and nothing can change that.
I spoke at last year’s Jewish Federations of North America general assembly in Denver and I was very impressed by the commitment of American Jewish leaders to Israel’s future. They are the flesh of our flesh. Israel is the home of all the Jews in the US and the world.
What exercises my mind are: 1) how did Mofaz get beyond cleaning latrines in the IDF, 2) how can any Israeli elector trust Mofaz when he admits that he has cleared his policies with the same nations that are hostile to Israel and 3) how can Mofaz trust the US president who has toned down his rhetoric against Israel, but clearly does not intend to honour any of his public comments as revealed by his Medvedev gaffe.
The “Palestinians” are a politically concocted people, most recently admitted by Hamas minister Fathi Hammad. As long as they persist in their lies, they are not peace partners, but enemies that are waging war. A fool like Mofaz, who intends to lease land has as poor a grasp of reality as Ashkenazi who advocated giving up the Golan to make peace with Syria.
Jews won wars started by mohammedans. Neither Jews nor the international community can allow jihadis to continue to start war after war and pay no price for doing so. Mordechai Kadar proposed that Arabs retain Gaza and their 7 cities. That’s all they should have and not one square centimetre more, always provided they behave themselves, and if they don’t, not even those. Sherman proposed that they should be encouraged to leave and that would indeed be the best plan; just as Jews returned to the land of their ancestors, so too should the immigrants from Egypt and elsewhere return to the land of their fathers and mothers.
@ Laura:
Mofaz has had and have to this day access to top secret MOSSAD executive reports. He knows precisely, just as the rest of the GOI does and other GOI’s did before, the true nature and goals of the enemies. But that islamic enemy and those aligned with islam are their “partner”.
I know him for years since when the tiny general begged us, LIKUD Central Committee Members to vote for him to be on the LIKUD list for MK’s. Just as the rest of the flotsam that bolted with Sharon, Mofaz never had any intention to abide to policies likely to promote Jewish security and Heritage as all political general do in Israel.
Dayan giving the key to Temple Mount to the islamics was only doing what that element, including Rabin, Weitzman, Dayan, Lipkin, Halutz, Ben Eliezer, Sneh, Barak. Mofaz and others, were trained to do. Harming Jewish interests and if at all possible, Jewish people not aligned with their treasonous camp as well.
I thank you for your response.
In all due respect, I prefer decapitation. However, seeing so many politicians beg for their scuzzy lives and those of their daughters and sons at the barrel of a rifle does interest me. Their crimes are numerous from the debasement of our worthless currencies to allowing these ugly muslim creatures infect the West. Without these savages the West was already messed up.
The irony is that now the West is tacitly depending upon a group of people to halt or arrest the nuclear desires of Iran, who have been the target of so much hate.
@ the phoenix:
Mofaz is living in a dream world.
dear james,
I understand the spirit in which point #2 was written. I agree that capital punishment should be instituted should we deal with “treason” (and as it stands now… the list is quite long, and getting longer). A less gruesome implementation may achieve same result (firing squad?, gallows?)
Re “islam”….
There is no way to win as long as they are so well metastasized into the rest of the organism that our western society is. They enjoy the protection of our laws while laughing in our faces as they are overtly destroying us. They are protected by the very same people you want to decapitate (no loss to society I might add).
This is just plain common sense and it applies equally well to fix a dilapidated house infested by rot and mildew, as well as trying to save the life of a cancer patient involved in a serious car accident… You must amputate, remove , close and let the healing begin…it is not pretty but at the end the patient survives!
We cannot continue to pretend that these bastards are the same as us. They are NOT! They are the enemy within and as such there is NO way we could even have a remote chance to survive as this is an asymmetric fight. They can destroy us from within, but we must take the high road and not call a spade a spade…
So once we agree on capital punishment as you’ve said, for treason, and that would include all those that aid and abet the enemy, we must proceed with deportations left right and center.
A musloid infected with this abominable disease (islam) is not reformable. For if he truly understands this sh*t that he was born into, he would leave islam . In a normal western society we should help those apostates for they truly saw the light. Such people are practically nonexistent in a musloid hellhole country since they would be killed as per the kkkoran…
The solution is to remove as many of them from our midst and not allow any infiltration of these scum that seek asylum (yeah right!) and once in the west, they try to instill their sharia sh*t……..
Let musloids live in musloid lands (dar al islam) and we “infidels” we’ll live happily ever after in dar al harb
@ James B – Canada:
ISSUES that must disappear:
1) Anglo American empire – to finance these criminal hateful arab muslim regimes. UK is financially kaput. Good. Now the American power has to sink and this is already happening. The high cost of food and oil and wood is due to the US currency debasement and the money printing ( QE I,II,III, etc.. ). US “economy” is on life support. Time is not on the side of the Americans. Within 3 years or less, only funny money to the palies. US dollar is going to be hammered in the next 1,000 days or less. The Euro and the Yen will be equally demolished.
2) Knesset salaries – big problem. Must be cut to be in line with reality. The pay is too attractive for too many lifers and mooches who are useless anywhere else. Less politicians. Bring back decapitation for politicians and their families if they are found to be corrupt. Politicians found guilty must immediately watch their family members be decapitated before it is their turn.
3) Islam – I do not know how to rid the West and the planet of this disease. The arabs and persians and other hairy creatures love it and they deserve it but we do not. Cannot see how the avoidance of violence will rid us of this filth.
NormanF Said:
The problem is not with the personality of the Israeli Prime Minister or with Israel’s peace policies. Its with Arab intransigence and rejectionism.
The “problem”, Norman , is the kkkoran. Sprinkled with commands to the idiots that believe this crap, to go and kill all/any Jew that might be hiding behind a rock…
This collection of stories plagiarized by the illiterate pedophile murderer and robber , caught on as a totalitarian way of life, masquerading as a religion. Remember, these musloids are inbred for 1400 years . The genetically havoc is such that their intellect has been diminished no a nonexistent state, while their compulsion to kill, rob, maim and destroy has been given free reign and a very short fuse….anything to ‘please allah’….
All this to say, that we are not dealing with ‘normal’ people in our sense of the word. The “problem” is not realizing that we can NOT apply the same logic when we deal with musloids.
The ‘smarter ones’, will apply taquyia and kitman to fool the useful idiots (oh, you know, the liberal thinking, enlightened politically correct multiculturalists…….spit!)
The problem is the Palestinian Arabs want to destroy Israel. Shaul Mofaz can offer them all the concessions he thinks Israel can afford to give them but at the end of the day they will not make peace with Israel no matter where the borders are drawn.
And with the changes in the region – the Islamist Winter – the prospects for peace on his terms are exactly zero. The problem is not with the personality of the Israeli Prime Minister or with Israel’s peace policies. Its with Arab intransigence and rejectionism.
Mofaz cannot change it by being more pliable than Netanyahu. Israel cannot put its security in the hands of any Arab regime. He will find his proposed plan a non-starter with the Israeli public for this very reason. It cannot work, period.