Kerry wants major Israeli concessions “for the sake of buying the Palestinian leader’s consent to sit down and talk.” Is he nuts. Sitting down at the table is of absolutely no value. Abbas is not willing to make concessions so why would we pay him to sit at the table. Like they say, you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink. Ted Belman
US Secretary of State John Kerry put a package of proposals for reviving the moribund Israel-Palestinian peace process before Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and peace negotiator Justice Minister Tzipi Livni and then returned to Amman Monday, May 27.
He keeps the package’s contents firmly under his hat. However, according to some of the details revealed here for the first time by DEBKAfile’s sources, Kerry’s top-secret plan places on Israel the onus of major concessions including strategic and national assets, for the sake of buying the Palestinian leader’s consent to sit down and talk. Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) is not required to pay anything real in return – although it was who stalled the peace negotiations in the first place.
As the first of these concessions, Kerry wants Israel to permit the Palestinians to build in Jericho for their prospective state an international airport for direct civilian flights to and from America and Europe. Those flights would cross Israeli air space and be coordinated with Israeli flight control authorities.
Our exclusive sources further disclose that, while Palestinian authorities would be in charge of security at the future Jericho airport, Israel would maintain control of passengers and freight traffic by means of computer and surveillance camera networks.
In 2006, a similar remote system was installed at the Gaza Strip’s Rafah border post under European controllers after Israel’s withdrawal from the territory. It soon broke down when the foreign controllers were scared away by Palestinian threats.
Kerry envisages the transformation of the entire Jericho region north of the Dead Sea and near the Jordanian border into a busy hub for galvanizing the economy of the future Palestinian state. He wants Israel to hand over to the Palestinians the Kalia region on the northern shore of the Dead Sea. Kibbutz Kalia, albeit part of sovereign Israel from its inception in 1948, is nonetheless one of the assets Kerry wants Israel to cede to the Palestinians.
The fate of the veteran Israeli kibbutz is left up in the air.
Israeli concessions would not end at the northern Dead Sea coast, according to the secret Kerry plan; it would be just the first in a series of land and sovereignty handovers granted the Palestinians in trilateral negotiations among Israel, the Palestinians and the United States.
The Palestinians would also be awarded by the process a three-year economic reconstruction program for boosting their Gross National Product by 50 percent and slashing unemployment from 21 to 8 percent.
The Middle East Quartet’s Special Envoy Tony Blair will head the program, Secretary Kerry reported to the world economic forum meeting in Jordan Sunday, May 26. His goal is to raise $4 billion for investing in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
“This is the biggest, boldest and most ambitious program ever granted the Palestinians since Oslo, 20 years ago,” Kerry told the forum.
Prime Minister Netanyahu has not divulged his views on the Kerry proposals – merely for winning Palestinian consent to talk peace. Since the payment of sovereign Israeli territory would be no more than the down- payment for pulling the Palestinians to the table, how many more high-value security and national assets will Israel will be required to part with along the road toward meeting the Palestinians’ ever-rising price tag?
Abu Mazen has gone on record as rejecting any economic proposals unaccompanied by political concessions. However, Kerry is still hard at his shuttle diplomacy and his talks with the Palestinian leader continue.
If only it were so!
The Israelis may realize it, but their government remains as clueless as ever!
Kerry is too late, there are no more concessions that Israel can make to the Palestinian terrorists. Unlike a decade ago, Israelis now realize that the Palestinian Authority, that is the PLO terrorist entity, has no interest in reaching a peace settlement with Israel, the PLO/PA only want to destroy Israel and murder all the Jews. Abbas only wants fire and Jewish blood, lots and lots of Jewish blood!
@ Laura:
Better still kick his ass out of Israel and tell him to go to Washington and try to locate the military medals he threw away and not waste their time.
Israel should tell lurch where to shove his proposal.
You know what this sounds like? This sounds like the EU sponsored talks that are going on between Serbia and the Kosovo Albanian nationalists over Kosovo. The Serbs are obliged to do everything and the Albanians nothing and the whole mess in Kosovo is propped up from abroad. There is nothing going on the territory to support itself and nothing to protect the Serbs. And the Serbs in Kosovo are not expected to object to their treatment there.
There is currently an agreement that was “initialed” under weird circumstances and implementation is crawling forward. It remains to be seen exactly what the Serbs are getting from this arrangement. The Albanian hand is so bad, it could be the Serbs are ahead of the game.
If Kerry’s proposals are really this bad, then Israel has nothing to lose by rejecting it in the same way that the Albanian hand is so bad in Kosovo, that Serbia has nothing to lose in any “agreement”.
Israeli unilateral concessions will never buy peace! The Arabs will be happy to pocket those concessions but they won’t negotiate.
Its not in Israel’s national interest to reward Arab extremism and rejectionism. If the PA wants to negotiate, fine.
But Israel shouldn’t have to bribe the other side to do something that should be in their interests as well. Its high time Israel told Secretary Kerry peace is impossible, the best thing to do for the future is to manage the conflict and he should turn his full attention to more serious problems that await him in the world.
Headline: Civil Administration ‘stealing’ Jordan Valley land for PA city. – http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/168412 – New PA city for 10,000 Arabs will close off a large portion of the valley to Israelis. In addition to that, another Arab village is planned for the area. The chairman of the Jordan Valley Regional Council blames the Civil Admin. for trying to steal lots that belong to Israeli towns. Arabs who will be owning the land are criminals who started out by squatting in tents, then building makeshift shelters, and then ilegally constructing homes. Now the govt is giving them the stamp of approval. ~~~ That’s the usual modus operandi in this old cooperation between Arabs and Israeli authorities to slowly swindle the Jewish people off their land. Please refer to my first two talkbacks on “Steinitz: This govt is in favor of Two States” a couple of columns below.
SPEAKING OF BRIBERY – Regarding Abbas being bribed to talk – has anyone ever considered that Arab or American money could be making its way into the pockets of a few Jews with political influence in Israel? A few years back, when the outspoken David Bedein still had a radio show at A7, he mentioned in passing that some key executive in a US pro-Jewish organization had received a gift of investments from the PA. When this became known, he quietly resigned. Are there any others? It’s possible. (Incidentally, do you ever hear US Jewish organizations denouncing the PA?) It is well known that the PA has a department specifically tasked with bribing influential people. I make clear that I’m not accusing anyone at all. All I’m saying is that maybe we should consider the possibility that one or a few influential Israeli Jews may be motivated not by leftist ideology alone. They are human beings like everybody else and money is a powerful means of persuasion.