Opposition leader Shaul Mofaz (Kadima) told the The New York Times that he would “respond to 100% of the territorial demands of the Palestinians” if elected Prime Minister.
“I intend to replace Netanyahu,” Mr. Mofaz, 63, said. “I will not join his government.”
Mofaz said that he believed Israel should keep the main settlement blocs, but that he would give the Palestinian Authority as much land from sovereign Israeli ground as he kept from Judea and Samaria.
He added that he believes it is possible to reach an agreement on the borders and security within one year.
When asked about Israeli residents of Judea and Samaria living in communities he would cede to the Palestinian Authority, Mofaz said, “If they’re given the right incentives they will leave their homes. Those who do not, we would have to evacuate [them].”
“This is a wildly radical program that undermines our security and will lead the State of Israel into one hundred years of conflict rather than one hundred years of peace,” Ariel countered. “Mofaz should find another way of trying to achieve popularity for his [declining] party without undermining Israel’s security.”
Yesha Council Chairman Danny Dayan said, “A man who will give the Palestinians 100% of what they demand in a territorial power play and evict tens of thousands of Israelis is unfit to be prime minister of Israel.”
“But do not worry,” Dayan said. “Kadima will not be chosen to lead the nation again.”
Kadima is currently Israel’s largest party with 28 Knesset mandates. However, recent polls indicate Kadima would only win 12-15 seats if elections were held today. It may be an effort to gain Kadima voters from other left of center parties that is causing Mofaz to voice extremist views, sources have said. He has also made anti hareidi remarks.,
Likud, which has 27 Knesset mandates at present, is currently polling at 32 seats. Other rightist parties are also polling beyond their present numbers.
@ Wallace Brand:
I agree that iambic pentameter wouldn’t make it in the present milieu. Even Shakespeare reserved that strictly for “noble” types (all his other characters’ deliveries were couched strictly in prose).
Anyway, here’s an example, though I’m sure there’s more out there. [It’s not exactly ‘succinct,’ but it would be counterproductive here to not include it in its entirety.]
It’s thirty years old. The author set it to his own music sometime during the Lebanon War, I think; some guy named Zimmerman.
@ Wallace Brand:Yes, sir, you hit the nail on the head. Anytime we believe a lie, we call one who tells truth a liar, but to a bigger lie we say, “Oh, what a marvelous revelation!”
@ Shem:”….why don’t we just be up front and call it lies, obfuscations, prevarications and duplicity? ” You can, to those who are not already in the grasp of the poetic truth. Your’s is an OBJECTIVE description. Poetic truth is SUBJECTIVE, in the eye of those who hold these lies and duplicity as truth. Objective descriptions as lies, or even the truth of the matter, don’t make a dent in subjective beliefs of poetic truths. To those who do not benefit from these poetic truths (those benefitting meaning arabs local to Palestine and some arabs elsewhere), it is likely the result of a main stream media repetitive barrage of the poetic truths by Arab propagandists and the Soviet dezinformatsia.
@ CuriousAmerican:One Lebanese journalist wrote that they had such confidence in the ability of the Israeli pilots that dined out at restaurants in the midst of the bombing, secure in the knowledge that the Israeli pilots would only hit the Muslim militant areas of Lebanon.
According to the old saying, “more truth than poetry,” why don’t we just be up front and call it lies, obfuscations, prevarications and duplicity? ANY concessions at all to the Arabs is not considered as to Israel’s credit, but as WEAKNESS, and when they see that, they want more, and they keep chipping away. Any concessions, however small, that they might make, is made in the spirit of a quote I saw of Yasser Arafat (of lousy memory), “Kiss the hand of your enemy until you can cut it off.” Isn’t there more truth than poetry in that?
@ dweller:What sort of poetry would you suggest. Iambic pentameter won’t do it I think. In your reply be succinct.
Gaza is a rather curious open prison. It has a private club where you can dine in luxury. http://jdlcanada.wordpress.com/2012/01/11/why-peacekeepers-love-going-to-gaza-to-care-for-the-starving-palestinians/ It has a new shopping mall. http://www.tomgrossmedia.com/mideastdispatches/archives/001127.html Its shops are full to overflowing with goods. I has a new Olympic sized swimming pool. http://libertyledger.com/2010/05/27/the-truth-about-gaza/ It has wonderful beaches on the Mediterranean that are much used by the Arabs. http://current.com/groups/gaza/89622397_beautiful-sandy-beaches-of-gaza.htm If you looked into it, you would find it is not much like Auschwitz. That it is an open prison is a “poetic truth.” Poetic truths like that are marvelous because no facts and no reason can ever penetrate. Supporters of Israel are up against a poetic truth. We keep hitting it with all the facts. We keep hitting it with obvious logic and reason. And we are so obvious and conspicuously right that we assume it is going to have an impact and it never does. http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/2586/palestinian-victimhood-narrative The surrounding Arab countries have a greater number of people below the poverty level than Gaza. I think possibly Israel has too, but I have not checked that..
@ Wallace Brand:
Don’t understand him.
If a literal, truthful narrative is overwhelmed in the West by sheer poetry, then perhaps what’s called for is more poetry.
Better poetry.
If poetry has become the coin of the realm, then so be it.
To cite the dedication I once found in the intro to a Mathematics text,
“What one fool can do
— ANY fool can do.”
@ CuriousAmerican:
If you concede that it was “never free,” then you implicitly acknowledge that it was an “open-air prison” long before anybody associated that expression with Israel, and long before the Jews started returning to Gaza after the 1967 war.
Yet whenever the expression is used, it clearly is intended as a reproach to Israel specifically.
As long as that is the case, it most certainly IS a buzzword; you betcha.