By Ted Belman
The Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs sent out a newsletter on the direct talks which said
- Components of peace
Israel approaches these negotiations with great hope, in a belief that a workable peace agreement can indeed be achieved. From Israel’s perspective, such an agreement should address three basic principles: security, recognition of Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people, and a complete end to the conflict.
Today at the WJC meeting, after listening to the panel on Israel’s security needs, I complained that all we hear about from Israel is that we demand security. Big deal that that is the first order of business.
What this tells me is that if they agree to our security needs, Netanyahu will accept the ’67 borders with mutual swaps of land so that we get to keep the settlement blcks of Gush Etzion, Ariel and Maaleh Adumin.
These security needs include, demilitarization, IDF on Jordan border and international force within the new Palestine to make sure that terrorist infrastructure doesn’t grow.
The problem is once you have security what purpose is there to keep the land. If we are on the Jordan River, from a security point of view, what difference does it make where the border is.
I complained and said we should first establish borders we can live with in terms of evacuation of Israelis then we should insist on our security needs.
Some people I spoke with thought Bibi was very concerned about Iran and was trying to get Obama’s help in exchange for accepting something like the above.
The only reasonably defensible borders today are strangely enough the biblical promised borders of from the Nile to the Euphrates, including southern Lebanon and Syria.
Only now we can see the logic behind having those borders.