T. Belman. It would appear that neither side is willing to change their position on Israel/Palestinian relations.
Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid is expected to announce Israel’s intention to join the Creative Europe program, which grants generous support to cultural initiatives but bars funding for projects in settlements
Foreign Minister Yair Lapid said on Monday that although he supports a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it is currently unfeasible. Lapid made the remarks as the main guest at a meeting of the European Union Foreign Affairs Council, which was attended by 26 EU foreign ministers.
“It is no secret that I support a two-state solution. Unfortunately, there is no current plan for this. However, there is one thing we all need to remember. If there is eventually a Palestinian state, it must be a peace-loving democracy. We cannot be asked to take part in the building of another threat to our lives,” the Israeli foreign minister said.
Lapid said that Israel has a new type of peace with the Arab world, noting the inauguration of the Israeli embassy in Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates ten days earlier. The Israeli foreign minister expressed the hope that Israel would also open embassies in Morocco, Bahrain and Sudan in the coming weeks.
Lapid added that he seeks to expand the scope of Israel’s peace agreements, including to the Palestinians. “What we need to do now is ensure that no steps are taken that will prevent the possibility of peace in the future, and we need to improve the lives of Palestinians. Whatever is humanitarian, I will be for it. Everything that builds the Palestinian economy, I am for it,” he said.
Earlier on Monday and against the backdrop of the worsened relationship between Israel and the EU, the European Union’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, said: “Today’s meeting with Lapid is a great chance to restart relations with Israel from a bilateral point of view, but also regarding the situation in the Middle East.”
Also on Monday, Lapid met with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg in Brussels, where he stressed the common values that Israel and the alliance share. Lapid expressed Israel’s willingness to expand cooperation in a range of fields, including intelligence, cybertechnology and climate change.
In the course of his visit, Lapid is seeking to promote Israeli-European dialogue through the Association Council, which governs Israeli-European partnerships in areas such as commerce and foreign policy. The council has not been convened in recent years due to a dispute between the two sides.
Lapid is also expected to announce Israel’s intention to join the Creative Europe program, which grants generous support worth hundreds of millions of euros to cultural initiatives in participating countries, including film production, book translations and the establishment of cultural institutions. Then-Culture Minister Miri Regev opposed Israel’s joining the initiative in 2017 because it was conditioned on prohibiting the use of program funding in West Bank settlements, East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights
In Israel, the current expectation is that unlike the hard line pursued by Regev, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and right-wing parties in the coalition government will support joining the initiative. In 2013, Bennett supported a compromise that allowed Israel to join a comparable EU initiative, Horizon 2020, providing funding to scientific projects, even though that initiative also barred funds going to areas beyond Israel’s 1967 borders.
A diplomatic source told Haaretz that the fact that Lapid was invited to meet with the foreign ministers just a month after he assumed office is “a significant event that attests to the wish of member states to open a new page in their relations with Israel, but it’s unclear to what extent they can or are willing to update relations between the two sides.”
According to another source familiar with the details of Lapid’s visit, “[former Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu deliberately led to a deterioration in the ties with European countries in recent years, on the backdrop of their critical stance, preferring to promote relations with countries that cooperated with him, mainly Hungary, Greece, Cyprus, Poland and Romania. Lapid has a clear goal of rehabilitating relations with other states. The Europeans were also waiting for a change in government.”
This source added that “it’s unclear if this move will be entirely successful. Lapid can advance numerous achievements, but in order to moderate the European Union’s attitude toward Israel, European ministers will demand to see significant progress in the diplomatic process, and that is something the Bennett-Lapid government is not ready for at this point.”
I absolutely agree with Bear and peloni here. The much-touted two-state “solution” is no solution at all. It would be two-state suicide for Israel. Martin Sherman’s idea is the much better one. Why should Israel give away any of Judea and Samaria, which, under international law, belong to Israel? For more on why this is so, read Karen Stahl-Don’s fine paper, “The British Mandate: Defining the Legality of Jewish Sovereignty over Judea and Samaria under International Law.” And be sure to read Footnote 57, too. It’s very important in terms of the Zionist caveat in their agreement to the Partition Plan (UNGA Resolution 181).
@Ted you are correct but there is a third way which is nuanced. You say in theory but not in the real world the two state concept would be a solution. Reality is that Hamas is the strongest Pal-Arab group wants to destroy Israel and so do the other groups who are weaker such the PLO. Israel learned from leaving Gaza that terror groups will use the ground you vacate to attack Israel. So unless the Pal-Arabs change culture and education and accept that Israel is a permanent neighbor the two state concept is faulty in the real world and just leads to war as been happening periodically since Israel left Gaza in 2005.
So would it not be better start exploring new concepts for peace and prosperity for the inhabitants of the area. Start with exploring how can we can get a democratic regime in Jordan so that it with its ~80% Pal-Arab population could become Jordan/Palestine.
Israel can either stand up and say “never” every time the US or EU mentions the two-state solution or “peace process” OR she can kick the can down the road by saying “yes, but “. The first option creates conflict with US and EU but sends a clear message.
The second option avoids the conflict til another day.
There is a time and a place for each option.
Let’s be clear about one thing. the EU is not interested in peace. If it was, it would be open to out of the box thinking.
Instead it is in favour of forcing Israel to not make a move while it makes all the moves in Area C. This is what the promotion of the two-state solution is all about. Prevent Israel from acting.
Any supporter of the two-state solution in Israel is considered leftwing. They are happy to go along with embracing such a solution that they know will never come to be, because their great fear is a one state solution in which another 2 million Arabs get citizenship.
The right on the other hand want to extend Israeli sovereignty to Judea and
Samaria. They believe they can provide a path to citizenship for these Arabs which does not endanger the Jewish state. For them, keeping the land is the most important thing.
For the left their primary goal is to exclude Arabs from citizenship even at the expense of relinquishing the land.
I on the other hand want to have my cake and eat it too. i want to keep the land and get the Arabs to emigrate. So did Rabbi Kahana. So does Martin Sherman, Feiglin and Smoltrich and many others.
@Bear
I see your point here Bear.
In two sentences, you offer a better sense of a potential peaceful outcome than all resulting volumes of ‘agreements’ from the faux negotiations by Indyk, Malley or any of these self-styled experts, whose expertise seems only to be in actively preventing what they claim to seek.
So, yes, it would be good if this current FM could channel you in the upcoming negotiations with their US counterparts, as I believe you would be a much greater champion of reason than are likely to be present among the parties on either side of the table in the soon to be held negotiations, which will likely be as pointless as any of the previous such sessions.
Unfortunately, I believe there is little hope of Lapid’s success in his efforts, or at least what I would characterize as success. And the failures in these negotiations with the US over the years has greatly changed the board upon which Israel and the Pals stand with regards to any acceptable settlement.
Indeed, the great tragedy is that so much time(decades) and finance(billions) and lives(thousands) has been spent towards their pursuit of a chance of peace(none) by the US and Europeans to manage this state of alternating cold and hot wars between the parties, that there is a greater distance between any peace and reality now than before .
And these will only become separated by an ever widening distance as these same unwise policies are pursued ad infinitum, intentionally preventing the parties from ever finding a common thread within this ever expanding sea of conflict. Israeli concessions=>Negotiations=>Pals refusals=>War=>Israeli concessions,…..
Very sad – terribly predictable by all, but, still, very sad.
So Lapid sounded a little Bibi at Bar Illan here. He knows in the real world this simply can not happen but does not say it directly.
Israelis need to learn to just stand up and say the two state concept is a formula for war from less safe borders for Israel. There needs to be the discussion of a different concepts such as Jordan which ~80% Pal-Arab already could have democratic elections and it will de-facto become the “Palestinian State”.
@Edgar G….
My computer playing tricks again..The intended 4th word at the beginning of my post should be “schnorr”.
He’s there to rr money. It’s as if th the rhousands of assassnations, slaughters, suicide bombers, tens of thousands of permanently mamed, ravenng Arab bloodthirsty mobs tearng Jews to pieces never happened.
The mere fact that he supports an Arab “State” on Israeli territory should bar him forever from any prominent position in Israeli poilics,
(which in other words, would be until he becomes intelligent enough to get his “Bagrut”)..,