Leaving aside that the PA demands that Israel concede that negotiations be based on’67 lines, the bigger is is whether a deal can be made that isn’t based on ’67 lines with mutual swaps. Is Bibi prepared for such a deal? Furthermore, Israel should never agree to time lines because failure to meet them will bring pressure if not consequences from the Quartet. Ted Belman
By JPOST.COM STAFF AND HERB KEINON
Vice Premier Silvan Shalom said that the cabinet’s response to the Quartet initiative for restarting peace talks “must take a positive direction,” but expressed two reservations to the proposal in an interview with Army Radio Wednesday.
“There are two problematic items,” Shalom said of demands found within the Quartet initiative. “The first is that everything needs to be done within a year.”
The second, he said, is that “the need to reach agreements on borders and security within three months – something that is impossible to do without knowing what happens with all the other issues, primarily the right of return and Jerusalem.”
On Tuesday evening, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu convened the inner cabinet of eight ministers to discuss the Quartet’s proposal, amid wide expectations that Israel would formally accept the proposal.
After a five-hour long meeting the ministers said that they supported the proposal but did not come to an official conclusion that it would be approved.
Netanyahu said over the weekend in New York that he viewed the Quartet proposal favorably, but would wait to issue a formal response until he met with his senior ministers.
Even Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, representing the right flank in the inner cabinet, said this week that while he had reservations about the Quartet statement, “the fact that it calls for negotiations without preconditions is a great achievement for Israel.”
Following Netanyahu and PA President Mahmoud Abbas’s speeches to the UN on Friday, during which Abbas said he was filing a request to the Security Council for full UN membership for “Palestine,” the Quartet issued a formula for renewing talks.
The statement urged the parties “to overcome the current obstacles and resume direct bilateral Israeli-Palestinian negotiations without delay or preconditions.” It proposed a “preparatory meeting” between the parties within a month to agree to an agenda and “method of proceeding in the negotiation,” and suggested that the two sides commit to the objective of reaching an agreement “within a time frame agreed to by the parties but not longer than the end of 2012.”
The statement also said the expectation is that the parties will come up with a comprehensive proposal on territory and security within three months, and to have made “substantial progress” within six months. To facilitate this, an international conference will be held in Moscow “at the appropriate time.”
Government sources said Netanyahu was convening his senior ministers to discuss the proposal soon after his return from New York on Monday, because there was a “diplomatic benefit” to being the first to respond positively, and thereby placing the onus on the other side.
Netanyahu has in the past objected to the idea – as presented in the Quartet proposal – of isolating security and territories from the other core issues of Jerusalem and refugees, saying that if an agreement on the territorial issue was reached, the Palestinians would have no incentive to compromise later on the issues of refugees and Jerusalem. Rather, his position in the past was that all issues should be discussed simultaneously.
Asked in Tuesday’s Rosh Hashana interview with The Jerusalem Post whether his initial positive response to the Quartet formula represented a change in his position, the prime minister replied, “This isn’t an attempt to isolate those two issues. For us, security is intertwined with the end of the conflict, with the recognition of Israel as a Jewish state, and obviously with other issues of territories, boundaries and so forth. There are many ways to approach this, but at the end of the day you are going to have to have a comprehensive solution to this problem, because it is a comprehensive problem.”
Netanyahu said there was a long-standing agreement in the negotiation process that “nothing is agreed until everything is agreed,” and he didn’t see that principle changing.
The Palestinians have not yet formally responded to the Quartet formula, but in contrast to Israel, their initial responses were negative because the formula said nothing explicitly about a settlement construction freeze, or about starting the negotiations with the pre-1967 lines as the baseline for the talks.
In addition to Netanyahu and Lieberman, the other members of the inner cabinet are Defense Minister Ehud Barak, Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz, Interior Minister Eli Yishai, Strategic Affairs Minister Moshe Ya’alon, Intelligence Agencies Minister Dan Meridor and Minister-without-Portfolio Bennie Begin.
I hate for Israel to get a lesson, via the UN’s direct democracy, on Alexis de Tocqueville’s criticism of pure democracy, known as “the tyranny of the majority”. See also Ben Franklin’s quote:
and
Was it really wise for Israel to be so eager for the partitioning of the Sudan? Empowering the UN to partition 1 country gives the UN permission to partition other nations including your own, including mine. This is why Ron Paul is opposed to not only the process of partitioning(it’s a principled, philosophical disagreement with partitioning as something that empowers government & tyranny as opposed to being a racist as he is oft maligned)but also UN membership and the national sovereignty undermining philosophy of globalism. Government coercion i.e. government seizing land, re-distributing said land, the question of property rights and government “picking winners and losers”. Unless both sides agree to voluntary partitioning, perpetual dispute is created.
No kidding! I remember Bill Clinton’s “Take it or Leave it” dictate to Barak and Arafat, for his proposal that Israel give up its historic heartland. Barak even sweetened the deal, and Arafat flatly refused it. Israelis don’t like to be forced to do things; but the Arabs will stubbornly refuse, even if it means losing their lives.
So many years, so many “peace” plans!
1948-1967 is 19 years, the time Israel was straitjacketed by the “Green Line” borders.
1967-2011 is 44 years, the time Israel has owned the land it does today.
The amazing thing is not that Israel still holds the land, but that they refuse to seriously settle it. How has the “peace” process done anything for anyone’s benefit? Third- and fourth-generation “refugees” — who would not be called refugees by any country in any period of history, except only now, to be used in a war against the Jews — still live without rights in Arab state after Arab state, while Jews who accepted Jewish authority have been prospering. Jews, meanwhile, aren’t even allowed to add bedrooms to their houses. When will the world end this inhumanity, in the mocking name of “peace”, and allow Israeli Jews and Arabs to get on with a normal life with one another? The Arabs have had 44 years to live in peace, and to teach their children to live in peace; but instead, they have chosen the path of war because of the “peace” process.
It’s about time Israel annexed and settled its own country, and dealt with its enemies as enemies.
Just Passing Through
By Moshe Feiglin
Why can’t Israel take advantage of its military and technological edge and see itself as a regional power? How could it have addressed the UN?
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/10670