New Israeli/Palestinian peace plan

[IrishHand]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/2988373.stm
In part...all italics mine...

New Mid-East peace plan launched

International mediators have presented their long-awaited "roadmap" to peace in the Middle East to both sides in the conflict.

Copies of the plan were delivered on Wednesday to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, and his Palestinian counterpart Mahmoud Abbas - also known as Abu Mazen - whose appointment was a key step towards its launch.

It is intended to be a phase-by-phase route to ending conflict, and could lead to full Palestinian statehood as early as 2005.

A bomb attack in Tel Aviv in which three people were killed by a suicide bomber failed to delay its publication.

The "roadmap" was drafted by envoys from the United States, European Union, United Nations and Russia.

It calls initially for an immediate ceasefire, a crackdown on Palestinian militants, an Israeli withdrawal from Palestinian towns and the dismantling of Jewish settlements erected since 2001.

However officials on both sides have reacted guardedly to the launch of the plan.

Israeli foreign ministry spokesman Mark Sofer told the BBC: "Before anything can happen we are hoping and praying that Abu Mazen takes the bull by the horns and implements what he said he would... He has to really bring an end to terrorism."

Palestinian legislator Hanan Ashrawi, for her part, urged the international community "to make sure that Israel complies by stopping this policy of assassinations, incursions, killings, home demolitions, land confiscations, expansion of settlements".

---------------------------------
ROADMAP: WHAT WE KNOW
Phase 1: End of terrorism, normalisation of Palestinian life and Palestinian political reform; Israeli withdrawal and end of settlement activity
Phase 2: Creation of an independent Palestinian state; Palestinian elections and international monitoring of compliance with roadmap
Phase 3: Permanent status agreement and end of conflict; agreement on final borders, Jerusalem, refugees and settlements; Arab states to agree to peace deals with Israel
---------------------------------

I think it really is sad that both sides had the same response - basically "you stop what you're doing, then we'll stop." Thoughts?

[Cyrus]

"ROADMAP: WHAT WE KNOW
Phase 1: End of terrorism, normalisation of Palestinian life and Palestinian political reform; Israeli withdrawal and end of settlement activity
Phase 2: Creation of an independent Palestinian state; Palestinian elections and international monitoring of compliance with roadmap
Phase 3: Permanent status agreement and end of conflict; agreement on final borders, Jerusalem, refugees and settlements; Arab states to agree to peace deals with Israel."

I don't know where that particular road map came from, but even if it's an accurate one, i.e. what Dubya's camp has in mind, this I say to you :

It is to Israel's interest that #2 never happens, no matter what the concessions it gets or the pressure it comes under. A truly autonomous Palestinian state created anywhere alongside Israel is simply not an option for Israel's leadership. Especially if that state is created anywhere in the West Bank of the Jordan river.

The best solution for Israel is no solution. Just a protracted continuation of the current "hot peace" status. The objective is to ram through Israel's total intransigence and to persuade the Arab world that nothing will be acceptable short of total capitulation to Israel, to the point of it becoming the pre-eminent economic power in the area. The Reform Zionists, such as Zabotinsky, have promoted since the beginning of the previous century the concept of an Iron Wall that must be built between Arabs and Jews in the Middle East. Unqualified American support provided all that Israel needed to enforce its expansionist and militarist policy ever since its creation and to build a truly formidable such Wall.

Bottom line : The prospects for peace in Israel and Palestine (a true peace and not some Orwellian misnomer) are not very bright.

(On the contrary, the Cyprus issue seems to be closer to a de facto solution, or at least a way out, than it was since 1974! The Turkish-Cypriot authorities a week ago eased "temporarily" the restriciton of movements between the two areas of the island and this resulted in mass visitings by both Greek- and Turkish-Cypriots to the other side. A truly mass exchange of comings and goings and an effective re-unification of that divided country. Different wall that one.)

[IrishHand]

I don't know where that particular road map came from
It was a part of the BBC article I linked. Per the article itself: The "roadmap" was drafted by envoys from the United States, European Union, United Nations and Russia.

[B-Man]

Ridiculous. It is to Israel's best interest to achieve true peace with all of its neighbors, rather than having suicide bombers relentlessly target its discos, coffee shops, marketplaces, etc.

Now, is is possible to make peace with people who really just want to push you into the sea? People who teach their children that suicide bombings are a noble cause, and that suicide bombers will be rewarded with 72 virgins in paradise? I sincerely doubt it. Until the Palestinians stop indoctrinating their children with hatred and anti-semitism, there will never be peace, because no matter what concessions Israel makes, a large faction of the Palestinians will not stop their war.

In the absence of a peace agreement and a crackdown on terrorism by the Palestinians that is enforced in deeds, rather than in mere words, a Berlin-type wall to keep the terrorists out is a great idea. You don't see many terrorists coming from Gaza, do you? Most of them come from the West Bank. Something should be done about that.

I would much prefer to see a mutual peace agreement than a unilateral withdrawal by Israel and the building of a wall. But since a mutual peace agreement seems impossible in the current climate, I think a unilateral withdrawal and the construction of a Berlin-type wall is the best achievable solution in the short term.

[Cyrus]

There is nothing to prove about what I stated in my post. What I stated --and beyond-- about Israeli policies has been revealed and extensively documented by western historians, journalists and academics. All of them honest and decent persons to a fault, quite a few of them Jewish.

About the doctrine of the Iron Wall ("Jews must build around Israel an Iron Wall upon which the powerless Arabs shall gaze with impotence"; "Israel must always negotiate with Arabs from a position of absolute and unchallenged military supremacy") : Check out "Israel and the Arab World" by Avi Shlaim. See Israel's history as revealed by the major Israeli leaders themselves. Moshe Dayan is particularly and shockingly candid.

About the invention of "Ancient Israel" and the collateral denial of any Palestinian claim to nationality or sovereignty. Check out "The Silencing of Palestinian History" by Keith Whitelam, ably assisted by Frank Frick, et al.

About the Jerusalem issue and its history of consistent Zionist policy of total annexation, check out "The Struggle for the Holy City" by Bernard Wasserstein.

If you care for a sober and even-handed history of the 1948 War check out "The War for Palestine : Rewriting the History of 1948", edited by Eugene Rogan and Avi Shlaim.

The much-maligned and much-abused struggle of the Palestinians for national liberation is extensively and quite revealingly documented in "Search for a State" by Yezid Sayigh.

As to the infamous Oslo accord myth about Israeli generosity, one could find no braver volume than "The Other Israel: Voices of Refusal and Dissent" edited by Jonathan Shainin, David Grossman, and others.

Two books by Norman Finkelstein, to round things up. The first is about the Holocaust industry, i.e. the shameless flogging of the Holocaust by Zionists in order to promote Israeli policies -- or worse (e.g. to make a few bucks!) : "Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering". The second is about the distorted reporting about the conflict in the western media and it's quite an eye-opener: "Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict".

Really, there is nothing to debate.

[MMMMMM]

Why would it be in Israel's interest to not have peace, if peace were achievable?

[Chris Alger]

Because peace isn't as important as keeping territory acquired by military force. At least, according to many Israelis and every Israeli government to date. That's why they used military force to acquire it in the first place.

[Chris Alger]

"Now, is is possible to make peace with people who really just want to push you into the sea?"

How is it possible for Palestinians to make peace with people who not only want to expel Palestinians from most of their homeland and scatter them about the world but have done exactly that?

"You don't see many terrorists coming from Gaza, do you?"

More than 800 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed by Israeli security forces since 9/17/2000. You might not see many terrorists coming out of Gaza, but evidently there are quite a few from Israel getting in.

[Cyrus]

"Why would it be in Israel's interest to not have peace, if peace were achievable?"

This is so easy that it doesn't merit a game-theoretic approach : because war and hot peace have yielded rewards that are much beter than what regular peace promises. End of story.

Now, for the underlying assumptions of that logic. First off, we are talking about the Israeli leadership throughout that country's existence (a few excpetions, such as the quickly exonerated Sharett only prove the rule). And not about the Israeli people. The latter have been conditioned to lean towards militarism and brutality in dealing with Palestinians only because of the relative impunity of such behavior. So, it is Israeli leadership, with a reluctant but unable to form an alternative Israeli people behind it, that has forged the steadfast official policy of continuous hot peace interrupted by episodes of violently aggressive wars.

Second, the rewards we are talking about are, once again, defined in the terms of Israeli leaders, who have been acting according to Reformist Zionist ideology. An ideology that explicitly (see Ze'ev Jabotinsky's Writings, inter alia) calls for a confrontational and beligerent Israel, always in attacking mode against the neighbors and in alliance with the World Superpower du jour. Attacking until the Arabs cry 'uncle' and not just sue for peace but completely capitulate.

So, the rewards, in Zionist eyes, are snatching more land from the Holy Land that is "occupied by infidels". The Israeli man in the street could perhaps prefer a modicum of peaceful living instead of more land, more land and even more land (Netanyahu recently hinted at Israel's historical claims that supposedly reach well into Jordan) but when you get that land relatively cheaply (i.e. no punishment) you start to like it. And you start voting for it.

Third, Israelis are no different, whether they are Jews or not, than any other human being, Dr Goebbels to the contrary. As much as it is an obvious obsolete notion to consider any people as Supreme or Chosen, it is also naive to assume that a people will choose to sacrifice something for relatively nothing. The something is the people's stated national objectives; the nothing is what the U.N. demands, i.e. peace.

For an introduction to Israel's steadfastly beligerent strategy in dealing with the Arabs and the Palestinians, as revealed from recently released Israeli documents, I recommend humbly, if repeatedly, Avi Shlaim's ground-breaking "Iron Wall".

[Chris Alger]

As long as the multipartisan political consensus in Israel remains unchanged, and as long as it is politically infeasible for the US to impose terms by cutting (or threatening to cut) aid -- in pretty big chunks -- then the road map is slated for the same doom of every other initiative to realize Palistinian rights has met.

The lack of any Israeli government initiative proves that Israel prefers the status quo. The roadmap, according to US diplomatic interpretations, does not eliminate Israel's power to maintain the status quo -- it simply has to induce what Sharon calls Palestinian "terrorism:" any militant or violent resistence to the occupation. Powell appears to agree, arguing that the PA must stop all terrorism and "all violence." To proceed, the Palestinians must lock up or kill all the militants and then see what deal the Israeli militants are willing to provide. Of course, if the Palestinian resistence stops then the whole issue will drop off most US screens. Israel can return to its "death of a thousand cuts" policies against the Palestinians. (Recall that settlements expanded more dramatically under Barak than Netanyahu, as US diplomats and the media trumpeted Israel's "breathtaking" willingness to compromise).

Which isn't to say there won't someday be a Palestinian statelet run by Abu Mazen and his cronies, subject to Israeli oversight. It just won't be the independent country that most Palestinians are willing to accept (e.g., modified Green Line borders, no settlements, a capital in East Jerusalem, right of return, territorial continuity, actual sovereignty, etc.). Anything feasible will be more like the traditional Central American mode of government: well-heeled local elites keeping a lid on the population (in this case, probably hemmed in by their "canton" boundries) for the benefit of the regional bully.