Getting Abbas to the negotiating table is a ruse. It is the reason given for Israel to make major concessions. In fact such concessions would be gratuitous, because nothing of value would be received in return. Getting Abbas to the table is of absolutely no value when he isn’t prepared to compromise. We should be demanding that if he wants us at the table he should abandon the right of return and east Jerusalem. Fat chance. So long as Bibi is silent on these things, I don’t trust him.
When Abbas doesn’t like something he says so clearly. Bibi, on the other hand, is unprepared to reject such concession outright and publically. Bibi should state his position as clearly as Abbas does; no dividing Jerusalem, no unilateral concessions, no prisoner release. Reciprocity would be nice but there are no concessions that Abbas could make that would be nothing but promises. Ted Belman
DEBKAfile Exclusive Report May 28, 2013,
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.
Lurch… I like that 🙂
Anyway, what else has Lurch to do but the harm the Jews. Or at least try.
I will move out of the frame prepared for us by Soetoro, Lurch and their islamic controllers.
Their plan has nothing to do with peace. The Brutish made sure that peace would be impossible before they left… after WWII. In the process or leaving they aborted a large number of Piltdown like, fabricated “peoples” in our region. They did that to foment the conflicts we observe.
OK, If not peace then what does Lurch and his associates want?
Of course destroy us all, but that is not all of it.
THEY WANT THE OIL, shale oil in quantities equal to Saudi Arabia’s reserves. They want the OIL that is under Eretz Israel, including Y & S.
THE OIL. Netanyhu is dealing to sell out also on that.
Do no allow the snake oil seller to drive out of focus with his histrionics.
He will NOT build, he will destroy.
He will abandon Jerusalem.
He will give away Y & S AND THE OIL reserves.
Kerry is as bad for Israel as all of Obama’s other appointees past present and probably future.
He should be sent packing with a note to his sponsor that Israel cannot tolerate outspoken enemies from other countries within its borders.
In the future Israel should investigate all foreign negotiators, diplomats and statespersons before allowing them entry and should reject any anti Israel representatives.
Israel should tell lurch Kerry to go home and stay out of their business.
I don’t understand this whole thing.
1. Why should Israel concede anything to Abbas just to get him to sit at the table? Haven’t we been doing this endlessly and in doing so lost valuable assets and gained absolutely nothing?
2. Doesn’t Abbas have everything to gain in sitting at the table? Why does he need to be cajoled?
3. What in the world does Israel have to gain in concluding any agreement with the palys? What do they have to give us other than a worthless piece of paper? Have they honored any agreement concluded with Israel in the past? Why should they be expect to in the future?
I can see that happening while we’re all waiting for the arrival of Godot.