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The peace deal: falling on deaf ears — 75 Comments

  1. Professor Moshe Sharon

    The veteran expert on Islam says that Western officials fail to grasp that the Arab and Islamic world truly see Israel’s establishment as a “reversal of history” and are therefore unable to ever accept peaceful relations with it. From Moslems’ perspective, “Islamic territory was taken away from Islam by Jews. You know by now that this can never be accepted, not even one meter. So everyone who thinks Tel Aviv is safe is making a grave mistake. Territory which at one time was dominated by Islamic rule, now has become non-Muslim. Non-Muslims are independent of Islamic rule and Jews have created their own independent state. It is anathema. Worse, Israel, a non-Muslim state, is ruling over Muslims. It is unthinkable that non-Muslims should rule over Muslims.”

    http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/112066

  2. Follow the money. Who pays the “palis”? If the Saudis who have been paying these guys to make trouble stop, who pays them? They are not in it for ideals, but loot. If Iran is supporting them, choking off Iran’s loot is a double blessing. As long as someone paid to kill Jews, they were happy. If someone pays to not kill Jews (Saudi) they will be happy.

    Gaza is a problem, but just give it back to Egypt.

  3. It appears that to the feasible extent possible the Israeli gov’t is going to implement favorable elements of the peace plan in law, creating a fait accompli while the Palestinians dither. That’s a bad idea on the Palistinians’ part, I think, letting the strategic initiative go. But this seems their habit longstanding.

  4. I saw a comment on another site saying that this peace deal is going to fail, but that it is important for Israel and the West to keep proposing new peace deals every few years.

    The left keeps wanting to cast Israel as the aggressor/bad guy. The peace deals help push back on that, even if they never come to fruition.

  5. The Arab support is not surprising for those of us who have been paying attention, but I think a lot of people haven’t.
    I agree this is the tip of the iceberg.
    It seems to me that what’s new here is the attempt to call the bluff of the Palestinians — they are running a shakedown scheme, and everybody knows it, but nobody wants to admit it. I think the strategy is to get the world to acknowledge that the Palestinians really do not want a state. They will do anything they can to keep from getting one! Pretending otherwise has, in a certain sense, been the biggest obstacle.
    I think Trump and his team (I wish I knew more about who is making the good decisions lately!) are playing a long game here, and that this is just the first move. We now have a public coalition of Arabs not just working together with the US and Israel, but agreeing in advance to what they think seems fair. I expect that will provide a much more stable platform for whatever comes next.

  6. Just another reason for the Democrats to get Trump out of the White House?….

    Palestinian rules!

  7. “If you want to understand the true obstacle to Mideast peace, look no further than the Jordanian parliament’s unanimous approval last week of a bill to ban natural-gas imports from Israel, just days after the gas began arriving”…

    The Jordanian vote is a reminder that hatred is strong and peace is fragile. If would-be peacemakers don’t start confronting this hatred rather than pretending it doesn’t exist, long-term prospects for peace are dim. And in the meantime, any treaty will have to include defensible borders.

    https://evelyncgordon.com/jordanian-vote-shows-why-defensible-borders-still-matter/

  8. The problem with giving Gaza back to Egypt is that Egypt doesn’t want it, either.

    I doubt the PLO/Hamas will accept this deal, since peace is not what they want. Sdferr, above, is probably right. Israel will implement those aspects of this plan which are favorable to it, and then next time a “peace plan” is offered, it will contain less for the PLO/Hamas than this one does.

  9. The problem, which became brutally evident nineteen years ago, and which can be understood from examining survey research of the Arab population on the West Bank and Gaza, is that perhaps 1/3 of the Arab population in these areas would like a settlement with Israel. North of 1/3 insist that it is non-negotiable that Israel cease to exist. About 30% are willing to ratify a settlement with a corporate entity called ‘Israel’, but insist it is non-negotiable that a seven-digit population of Arabs be allowed to settle in Israel at their discretion. You take stances like this when you’re in a position to dictate terms to your enemy. Since 1920, the Arabs have never been in such a position, and since the foundation of UNRWA in 1949, the rest of the world has been willing to supply them with sustenance which inhibits them from forming an honest appraisal of their actual situation. As is, they’d prefer to pretend rather than make practical improvements in their situation. Which is their problem.

  10. The problem with giving Gaza back to Egypt is that Egypt doesn’t want it, either.

    Why should they? It was never a juridical part of Egypt, about 50% of the personal income flow in the territory consists of UNRWA doles, the population there is politically obnoxious, and you can tell from listening to them that they are not Egyptian Arabs and they are not of the Bedouin communities on the Sinai which have been appended to Egypt for over a century.

  11. If the Saudi’s paid the Egyptians enough I am sure they would love to clean out a nest of snakes next to their border. No one cares about arab on arab killing (see Yemen, Syria, Iraq). So giving Gaza back to Egypt solves several problems.

    Egypt could pretend they were providing border security for the palis, so Hamas would not need any weapons. That stops the rockets. With Gaza under Egyptian control there is no need for a physical connect with Gaza and the west bank. Hamas dies. A win-win-win.

  12. I hope that over time some of the Palis start to listen to the investment offers and try to start their own businesses that give jobs to others. When the Iranian money stops flowing to Hamas, they may get hungry. Of course, it won’t happen tomorrow.

  13. Art Deco, what you say is exactly what I heard from (Muslim) Egyptians when I lived there. They didn’t want anything to do with Gaza. The Gazans were considered troublemakers. When Egypt ruled Gaza for a while, it was uncaring and rather brutal.

  14. Cut the money from Iran, the UN and other sources and the Palestinians would be eager for the deal, IMO.

    The only other thing that might matter is if they learn to love their children more than they hate Israel.

    Not holding my breath on either one happening soon.

  15. The Palestinians never miss a chance to miss a chance.
    But this time Israel doesn’t care.
    Every time the Palestinians reject a deal, the next deal that is offered provides less for them than the one they rejected.

    Notice too that WALLS WORK!

  16. So giving Gaza back to Egypt solves several problems.

    It solves no problem. Egypt occupied Gaza from 1948 to 1967. They held it for 19 years, haven’t held it for 52 years. Again, the occupants speak a vernacular on the Levantine spectrum and have no particular association with Egypt other than Egypt was a governing authority there consequent to the vicissitudes of battle during Israel’s War of Independence. They aren’t loyal to Egypt and have no notable affinity for Egypt other than they are an Arab population.

    If Syria ever rebuilds its civil society, the optimal solution might be to incorporate Gaza as a self-governing dependency of Syria and for the West Bank to have a similar status. Allowing Gazans Syrian citizenship and a franchise to relocate to Syria for work might allow the surplus population to go where the jobs are and the residual population to develop an actual labor market rather than a spot market supplementing the UNRWA dole. Of course, the whole idea is an eschatological concept right now.

  17. “The PLO/PA stance on Jerusalem is unequivocal. According to them, Jerusalem, especially but not limited to the Temple Mount, is holy Islamic territory that no terrestrial body has the right to forfeit to non-Islamic rule…” Maurice Hirsch

    NO, according to Allah, who has declared in the ‘sacred’ Qur’an that, once land is Muslim it MUST forever remain part of the Ummah, i.e. Muslim.

    That is a theological imperative Entrance into Allah’s ‘paradise’ is conditional upon Muslim’s accepting of that command and working unrelentingly toward correcting any violation by non-Muslims of that command.

    BTW, that theological imperative applies to ALL of Israel.

    Plus, ongoing indoctrination of young Muslim generations into Islam’s tenets ensures that the murderous aggression will continue… until Israel fully faces up to the situation and takes effective action.

    You gain leverage over an enemy by directly attaching to their actions, what for them is intolerable consequence.

  18. Neo
    With due respect to what you stated in the last paragraph here, let remember there are many UN resolutions and also international law, a territory is considered “occupied” when it is actually placed under the authority of the hostile army and other things which is ignored with this proposal by President trump peace plan.

    Both parties failed to find common ground to settle their differences despite each one have his argument about his rights on the land.

    let read:
    The Myth of Annihilation and the Six-Day War

    Who Started the Six Day War of June 1967?

    How the Israeli Generals Prepared The Conquest Long Before 1967

  19. Geoffrey Britain on January 29, 2020 at 7:41 pm said:

    The same argument by Israelit, Holly Hebrew/Torah book and Promise Land from G-God to Jewish people.

  20. A lot of good comments here.

    I observed to my wife this morning that, in response to this deal – and the vociferous Palestinian rejection – I’d expect President Trump to make it clear that this was the best deal they’d ever get, and that any newer deal would leave them wishing for this one.

    My wife pointed out to me (as Edward points out above) that this has been true for some time. In 1967, Moshe Dayan was ready to offer just about the entire West Bank, in return for a peace deal. This was vehemently rejected. Some years later, Israel shrugged and started building modern Israeli towns in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip (and in the Sinai, and in the Golan Heights). The Palestinians objected mightily to this, causing Israelis to say “you should have accepted what we offered you years ago”. Occasionally, an act of brutal Palestinian terror resulted in a new Israeli community established on the site of the terror attack, often named for the victims… which Palestinians likewise objected to mightily. (You can probably imagine the Israeli response.)

    And so the land claimable by the Palestinians keeps shrinking. They continue to insist on impossible conditions… and meanwhile, their longtime sponsors and supporters seem to be tiring of them.

    We have heard for years that time is not on Israel’s side… but that’s not true. Israel has built an economic powerhouse out of practically nothing, and the world has grown dependent on Israeli products and inventions. Israel has even become, at long last, an energy exporter. Upon what Palestinian products does the world depend?

    The Palestinians are playing a losing game… and, increasingly, they seem to know it. This deal just makes it obvious.

  21. Two days before Israel would embark on the Six Day War, army brass and top politicians held a tumultuous meeting in which a group of Israeli-born generals, watching the build-up of Egyptian forces in the Sinai desert, seemed to be accusing prime minister Levi Eshkol of suffering from a perilous, Diaspora-related hesitancy that could have existential repercussions for the state.

    The details of the June 3, 1967, meeting between the IDF General Staff and the government of Israel were released for the first time Thursday by the Israeli army and Defense Ministry archive, revealing the width of the gap separating the political and military leadership at the time.

    Some have contended that the army was on the cusp of a coup at the time. The protocol does not support that, but it does illustrate the lengths the army went to force Eshkol to war.

    Revealed, the war before the Six Day War

  22. Daniel Schwartz on January 29, 2020 at 8:44 pm said:
    The Palestinians are playing a losing game…

    Not just the Palestinians, all Arab, as those regimes for more than 60 years claimed that they will get back Palestine…

    And we saw what they did more distraction and wars to their nations.
    There was also miss the opportunity after 1948 with UN resolution split small portion of land for the Jews and a big part for the Palestinians

  23. Art Deco:

    Gaza “Palestinians” become Syrians? Why should they bother when then can just move to Germany? Didn’t the “Palestinians” already try Jordan and Lebanon? April 1st is a few months off.

  24. Israelis were warned on illegality of settlements in 1967 memo

    This is a nonsense statement.

  25. Not just the Palestinians, all Arab, as those regimes for more than 60 years claimed that they will get back Palestine…

    Egypt signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1979 and Jordan did in 1994. The Christian factions in Lebanon would be content to do so.

  26. Sarah Rolph on January 29, 2020 at 2:15 pm said:
    The Arab support is not surprising for those of us who have been paying attention, but I think a lot of people haven’t.
    * * *
    LI shows who supports the plan, and who doesn’t.
    https://legalinsurrection.com/2020/01/mixed-reaction-to-trump-middle-east-peace-plan-in-europe/

    Hen Mazzig
    @HenMazzig
    UPDATED reactions to Trump’s Palestine plan so far:

    IN FAVOUR

    • Britain
    • Israel
    • Egypt
    • UAE
    • Saudi Arabia
    • Oman

    OPPOSITION

    • Turkey
    • Palestinian Authority
    • Iran
    • Yemen

    AGNOSTICS

    • EU
    • Qatar

    11:54 PM – Jan 28, 2020

    https://legalinsurrection.com/2020/01/trumps-middle-east-peace-deal-what-does-it-mean/

    Mark Dubowitz
    @mdubowitz
    Interesting.

    Saudi Arabia, UAE, Bahrain, Oman, Egypt support Middle East peace plan.

    Sanders, Warren & ten other Democratic senators do not.
    https://twitter.com/ChrisVanHollen/status/1222306072737779712

    Senator Chris Van Hollen
    @ChrisVanHollen
    Trump’s one-sided plan is a recipe for even deeper division and undermines efforts to achieve a viable and sustainable two-state solution that supports the legitimate rights and aspirations of both Israelis and Palestinians.

    Our Senate letter to President Trump:

    (View image on Twitter to see the signatures, which include Sanders, Warren, Klobuchar and 7 others)

    5:50 PM – Jan 28, 2020

    NOTE: the block function isn’t working for the cut-and-pasted excerpts.

  27. Both parties failed to find common ground to settle their differences despite each one have his argument about his rights on the land.

    1. The Arab governments, meeting in Khartoum in 1967, refused to countenance any settlement with Israel.

    2. Israel attempted local devolution by holding municipal elections on the West Bank and Gaza in 1972 and 1976. The local population elected revanchists.

    3. Egypt and Israel signed the Camp David Accords in the fall of 1978, accords which provided for an autonomous local authority on the West Bank and Gaza. The PLO had a lunatic reaction to the preliminaries of this and rejected it tout court.

    4. Israel and the PLO concluded the Oslo accords in 1993. Much of the Israeli political spectrum was dubious about the accords but elected by 1996 to work within their framework. Over the next seven years, you have a parallel process of incremental concessions by Israel while the PLO develops criminal syndicates on the West Bank and in Gaza (e.g. car theft rings). There is a decline in the level of public order in Israel. By 2000, the Clinton administration calls a summit to hammer out a final settlement. The PLO abandons the summit and launches the 2d intifada, a years long terror campaign which costs more than 1,000 lives in Israel.

    5. Israel unilaterally withdraws from Gaza. Local Arabs seize and destroy horticultural facilities left to them. The new de facto authority in Gaza begins to appropriate international aid to set up artillery and build infiltration tunnels.

    6. General elections in the West Bank and Gaza. A plurality is won by Hamas, who make their dispositions toward Israel quite unambiguous. Another bloc of votes is won by a red-brown collection of parties who have a different idiom from that of Hamas, but agree on certain outcomes.

    7. Ehud Olmert calls a summit with Mahmoud Abbas. The previous history of negotiations in mind (where the response to concessions by Israel had been demands for more concessions), he unrolls a map and gives Abbas a take-it-or-leave it offer of the whole of the West Bank and Gaza. Abbas rejects the offer.

    “Both parties…common ground” is a smarmy formulation.

  28. https://www.jpost.com/Opinion/The-Trump-Plan-How-Israel-Should-Respond-615681


    How, then, should Israel respond? Given the opportunities and risks, Israel should respond favorably to the plan while taking appropriate action to maximize the plan’s benefits and to mitigate its risks. The response should include the following elements:

    -Israel should extend its sovereignty to all the areas in which, according to the plan, the United States has agreed to recognize Israeli sovereignty. This should be done by cabinet decision immediately upon signing, even prior to Israeli elections. Knesset approval of the decision is not required by law, but can be considered. Failure to move boldly on extending sovereignty would be perceived as a loss of nerve with long-term repercussions and would almost certainly, and deservedly, cause the Prime Minister grave electoral damage.

    -Israel must make clear that its acceptance of the plan does not constitute recognition of a Palestinian state or the right to such a state, but rather is predicated on the obvious fact that the Palestinians are not anywhere close to satisfying the conditions set down for such a state.

    Israel is agreeing to this plan because of its trust in this particular American administration. Consequently, it should be agreed by Israel and the United States that Palestinian progress towards satisfying the conditions will be reviewed within several months. If it is found that no progress has been made, Israel will, in coordination with the Trump administration, extend its sovereignty to further areas of Judea and Samaria that are required for its long-term security.

    Israel should ask the [Trump] administration to anchor the plan in a binding agreement with Israel so that the conditions for Palestinian statehood could not be easily reversed or ignored by subsequent administrations.

    In short, there is no doubt that this plan is the best one Israel has ever been offered. It is based upon a more realistic understanding of the motivations of the various actors in the region. Nevertheless, despite all good intentions, it could play out poorly under future administrations – leading inadvertently to a hostile Palestinian state on Israel’s doorstep. Thus, Israel must accept the plan as a foundation for continued discussions with the United States, while at the same time moving decisively to maximally assert its own interests and to head off potential abuse of the plan. If the Israeli government responds with appropriate wisdom and courage, the Trump Plan could very well prove to be a historic turning point.
    Moshe Koppel is chairman of the Kohelet Policy Forum.

    As to that last point, the proposed map really bothers me.
    I would be very concerned about having the Palestinian State-let areas intermixed to such a great degree with Israel, and the tunnel for me would be a deal-breaker. Despite its appeal, that presumably being that there would be limited surface transport across Israeli land between the two Pali sections, unauthorized extensions under Israeli territory are a foregone conclusion, even though I’m sure it will be heavily monitored.

  29. FB,

    I merely related the reason WHY the militant ‘Palestinian’ Muslims refuse to accept any peace plan.

    Since Israel has sincerely offered many peace plans… clearly their belief that Israel is the Promised Land granted from God to the Jewish people is NOT the same as Allah’s command that once land is part of the Ummah it must forever remain so.

    Nor does Allah tolerate democracy, so Jews have no vote in a Muslim society. Whereas, the average Muslim has a better life in Israel than they do in any Muslim dominated society. Muslims serve in the Knesset, please provide an example of the reverse…

  30. https://www.jpost.com/Arab-Israeli-Conflict/This-peace-plan-comes-with-a-map-why-is-this-significant-analysis-615692

    What is significant, is that this is the first time any plan has come with an actual map.
    By HERB KEINON JANUARY 28, 2020 22:49

    Maps have been talked about, maps have been suggested, maps have been drawn up and shown in private meetings. But during the Oslo negotiations, and at Camp David between Ehud Barak and Yasser Arafat, no formal, clear maps delineating Israel’s future borders and the borders of a future Palestinian state were presented to the public.
    In one famous case, then prime minister Ehud Olmert unveiled a formal map in 2008 during a private meeting with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas that showed he was willing to withdraw to borders very similar to the 1967 lines, with land inside Israel to be swapped to the Palestinians in return for Israel’s annexation of large settlement blocs.
    Under Olmert’s plan, Israel would cede more than 94% of the West Bank and compensate the Palestinians on almost a one-to-one basis for the remaining 6%. Israel would also withdraw from the Arab neighborhoods of east Jerusalem and put the Temple Mount and Old City under international control.
    Olmert showed Abbas the map of this plan but would not give it to him, and the Palestinian leader sketched it from memory on a napkin after the meeting. That “napkin map,” revealed in 2013, was the closest thing the country has seen to a formal proposal with the lines drawn clearly on a map.
    Until Tuesday night.
    The map that US President Donald Trump put out on Tuesday to accompany the “Deal of the Century” indicates that Israel will cede some 70% of Judea and Samaria.
    Olmert’s map showing a willingness to cede 93.7% of the territory, and to compensate the Palestinians with 5.8% inside the Green Line, was never formally presented. Trump’s map now has been. With the presentation of the map, a significant line has been crossed and a barrier broken.

    The presentation of a map does not a deal make, obviously, and there is no guarantee that there will be a Palestinian state. But if there ever is one, this map shows the territory that Israel feels it can live with within the context of that state. It shows, for the first time, the territory Israel feels is vital for it to retain in a situation where it cedes land to the Palestinians to separate from them.

  31. https://www.jpost.com/Arab-Israeli-Conflict/US-President-Donald-Trump-presents-his-Deal-of-the-Century-615690

    “For years, the international community said that if Israel annexes any land in Judea and Samaria, there will be sanctions against us in the UN Security Council,” Netanyahu explained in a press briefing at the Blair House. “Now, American will prevent those sanctions.”

    “The idea of dividing Jerusalem is buried,” Netanyahu said. “The idea of returning to 1967 lines as we knew it is buried. The right of return is buried; not even one refugee will be entering Israel.”

    A senior Israeli source said Netanyahu was presented with various security scenarios about the threats following Trump’s presentation and instructed the IDF to be prepared for any of them.

    As for the threat of a destabilized Jordan following the annexation of the Jordan Valley, the source said the US is in touch with Jordanian King Abdullah II, and Israel has taken the various possibilities into consideration.

    The US will accept Israeli sovereignty over all Jerusalem neighborhoods within the security fence.

    “They say it’s the toughest deal ever to make,” Trump said of peace between Israel and the Palestinians. “In business, when I had a tough deal, people would say it’s tougher than Israel and the Palestinians. Actually, there’s nothing tougher than this, but we have to get it done. We have an obligation to humanity to get it done.”

    Towards that goal, Trump said the White House is presenting the “most serious, realistic and detailed plan ever presented, one that could make Israelis, Palestinians and the region safer and more prosperous.”

    “We are not here to lecture, we are not here to tell other people how to live, what to do, who to be, or how to worship,” he said. “Instead, we are here to offer partnership, based on shared interests and values, to pursue a better future for us all.”

    Trump said the plan will “more than double Palestinian territory… No Palestinians will be uprooted from their homes.”

    If the Palestinians choose to accept the plan, some $50 billion will be infused into this new Palestinian state, Trump said.

    Netanyahu in his speech said he has agreed to negotiate peace with the Palestinians on the basis of Trump’s peace plan. He noted several key reasons, including especially that rather than “play lip service to Israel’s security,” the president “recognizes that Israel must have sovereignty in places that enable Israel to defend itself by itself.

    “For too long, the heart of Israel has been outrageously branded as illegally occupied territory,” Netanyahu said. “Today, Mr. President, you are puncturing this big lie. You are recognizing Israel’s sovereignty over all Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria – large and small alike.”

    Ya know, this really is yuge.
    But the Palestinians have never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity.

  32. “And so the land claimable by the Palestinians keeps shrinking. They continue to insist on impossible conditions… and meanwhile, their longtime sponsors and supporters seem to be tiring of them. …
    The Palestinians are playing a losing game… and, increasingly, they seem to know it. This deal just makes it obvious.”- Daniel Schwarz

    Indeed.

  33. Paul in Boston on January 29, 2020 at 8:28 pm said:
    The solution may just be time. As Spengler points out, once the Palestinian population ages out, there won’t be any more war, the converse of the European saying, there are lots of young men, there’s a war coming.

    https://pjmedia.com/spengler/the-palestinian-problem-is-dying-of-natural-causes/
    * * *
    Spengler talks about the June 2019 plan introduced at Bahrain.
    It was instructive to me to compare the reports about its provisions to this new plan. That was the first deal; Trump has already altered it.
    You can finish the quote.

    https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/2019/0524/Mideast-peace-plan-s-rocky-start-Did-US-misread-Arab-politics

    https://wben.radio.com/articles/ap-news/bahrain-conference-peace-critical-us-plan-mideast-0

    https://www.vox.com/2019/6/25/18744323/bahrain-kushner-middle-east-peace-plan-israel-palestine

    Biggest take-away: the nay-sayers got the political solution they asked for because it’s the only way to make the economic solution work.

  34. The Palestinian birth rate in the ‘occupied’ territories is 4.1 children per woman. In 2040 there will be more 20 to 24 year olds than there were in 2010. Concluding that demographics will reduce Palestinian ‘resistance’ is it best problematic.

  35. https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1222513504156114946.html

    Doc Zero

    The old conventional wisdom is that the Palestinians have hideous leadership, which they might someday get rid of, if the rest of the world keeps reaching out to them. Trump is a rare Western leader who sees the absurdity of that belief.

    There is no scenario in which the monsters who rule the Palestinians will ever be persuaded to give up their racket for the good of their people. They’ve got money, weapons, ideological fervor, and opportunities to murder Jews. Why give that up for some “peace deal?”

    The only way to break this vicious cycle of murder and failure is to make the Palestinian leadership understand the racket is ending. Step one has to be something like Trump’s deal, which dispenses with most of the old illusions. It won’t be accepted, but it’s still important.
    There’s nothing surprising about the savage Palestinian reaction to Trump’s proposal, but the reaction of certain people in the West is more important. It’s flushing out terror-symps in U.S. Democrat Party and across the world. Those people must be isolated, shamed, and defeated.

    Palestinian leaders don’t give a damn about their people – they teach the people to see themselves as disposable cannon fodder in a holy war. The only way the stalemate breaks is ending the racket that keeps the leadership rich and makes bloody eternal jihad possible. /end

  36. https://libertyunyielding.com/2020/01/29/the-deal-of-the-century-notes-on-the-map-and-security/

    The Trump concept has the advantage that it doesn’t require Israel to relinquish security responsibility at any border to a third-party consortium. Rather, the plan’s goal is for Israel’s final-status border to be defensible by Israel, and to be recognized by the other nations of the region. Trump’s plan makes no apology for this, and in fact, as Eugene Kontorovich noted on Tuesday, the proposal has a signal feature: recognition that Israel is not “occupying” the West Bank, and would not be “annexing” it, but in fact has a valid entitlement to it.
    The point traces ultimately to the most recent internationally recognized instrument – the San Remo agreement of 1922 – which assigned the West Bank of the Jordan to a Jewish state in the British Mandate of Palestine.

    In other words, Israel is already entitled to the territory she currently has de facto control of in Judea and Samaria, and can legitimately retain it under any two-state plan.

    In effect – recalling Harsanyi’s point about dropping delusions in favor of reality – this is the key, right here. Acknowledging that a defensible-border delineation for Israel is not a casus belli, and violates no expectations from recognized precedent or law, is the indispensable premise for a two-state outcome. Only that premise allows both Israel and a Palestinian state to make territorial accommodations that would, in the absence of that premise, be odd and unreasonable.

    A particular concern is the proposed network of tunnels for Palestinian transport, some in the mountains and one longer one running from Judea to Gaza.

    My own view is that the longer Judea-Gaza tunnel, especially, would be a non-starter. In the shorter mountain tunnels, Israel would have to be vigilant about preventing undesirable things from being brought to them (they would be obvious places for clandestine storage). With the Judea-Gaza tunnel, the tunnel itself would be the corridor not only for moving undesirable things between non-contiguous territories, but potentially for spawning a whole group of launch points for attacks against Israel.

    All the obvious things about keeping rockets and mortars out of the hands of Palestinian terrorists would still be there to be said. But Israel’s control of the perimeter necessary to suppress that threat would remain what it is now. That latter condition is what makes the distribution of territory in the “Deal of the Century” at least rational for consideration.

    Could the Palestinian Arabs organize to convincingly live by the terms of a peaceful modus vivendi with Israel, as laid out in the Trump proposal? Not under Mahmoud Abbas.

    The other observation brings us back full circle. The Trump proposal may or may not bring results in the form of negotiation and action. But it will inevitably have a result that is more important over time. It is forcing us all to have thoughts we cannot unthink about the peace process. The “Oslo” era, with the void at its center in terms of recognizing that Israel is here to stay, is over. The peace process can never go back to what it was.

  37. https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/01/trump-israeli-palestinian-peace-plan-much-needed-dose-of-reality/

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    Previous articles
    WORLD
    The Israeli–Palestinian Peace Plan Is a Much-Needed Dose of Reality
    By DAVID HARSANYI
    January 28, 2020 6:40 PM


    Trump’s plan may be no likelier to lead to a deal than its predecessors, but it dispels with poisonous fictions that have held back negotiations for decades.
    It’s worth noting that some of the harshest critics of Donald Trump’s new Israeli–Palestinian peace plan — many of them Middle East “experts” who’ve worked in the Clinton and Obama administrations — are the same people behind catastrophic efforts that resulted in more hopelessness, intifadas, and extremism. These professional peace-processors have managed to harden the Israeli public against even the most abstract negotiations because, inevitably, all of them end in violence.

    As with the plans that came before it, it’s unlikely that Trump’s plan will succeed. But it is the best of any recent offerings because it doesn’t make any false promises. “Trump Outlines Mideast Peace Plan That Strongly Favors Israel,” read the New York Times headline, reflecting the general tone of media coverage. That’s wrong. The plan favors reality, laying out the only plausible path to a new Palestinian state.

    It’s been a dangerous waste of time basing negotiations on delusions. And the reality is that there will never be a Palestinian “right of return” to Israel, since such a policy would destroy the Jewish character of the state. The refugee situation is a 70-plus-year scandal of the Arab world’s making in which thousands of Palestinians are condemned to poverty so they can be used as a cudgel in the propaganda fight against Israel.

    Palestinians are not getting their great-granddad’s house in Jaffa back any more than the hundreds of thousands of Sephardic Jews who were expelled from Muslim lands after Israel’s 1948 war of independence are reclaiming their property. The difference is that one of these groups accepted reality long ago.

    Nor will Palestinians ever take control of Jerusalem proper. Any Israeli politician who broaches the notion of handing over the fulcrum of Jewish cultural, religious, and political identity to Fatah is engaging in an act of political suicide. Palestinians have never administered Jerusalem, and they have no legitimate claim over Jerusalem. The current state of affairs is the status quo, whether Palestinians decide they want a state or not.

    Likewise, Israelis will never pull back to pre-1967 lines, giving up its claims to the West Bank, because no sane nation would reinstitute unsecure borders next to an unreliable potential terror state. The vast majority of Israelis (“settlers”) who now reside in towns (“settlements”) built in historically Jewish areas (“the occupied West Bank”) aren’t going to be displaced because the United Nations, John Kerry, or Ben Rhodes has declared Judea and Samaria a no-Jew zone. Those towns are part of a de facto border whether Palestinians agree to a deal or not.

    And finally, there is no way that Israel, a liberal democracy responsible for the security of its citizens, can hand over the Jordan Valley — an area with immense strategic importance irrespective of the Palestinian situation — to a newly created state that allies itself with unsavory nations and entertains the idea of entering into a unity government with Hamas, the theocratic terror group. Perhaps after peaceful coexistence for a few decades this could change. But right now, that’s the status quo, whether Israel officially assumes sovereignty over the Jordan Valley or not.

    Israel, in fact, probably feels less external pressure than ever to enter into a deal. Anyone who’s followed this issue understands the historic significance of Bahrain, UAE, and Oman sending envoys to White House unveiling of Trump’s peace deal. Arab nations are coming to terms with the reality of the Jewish State in ways that Americans progressives have not.

    Nor is there more internal political pressure to enter into a bad deal. Benny Gantz, the Kahol Lavan leader and chief rival to Benjamin Netanyahu, “hailed” the Trump plan because, despite the effort of the American Left to cast Netanyahu as the sole impediment to peace, no major Israeli party on either the right or the left is going to agree to a right of return, a return to pre-1967 lines, or a surrender of Jerusalem.

    In the past, Palestinian negotiators, who have never once crafted a peace plan of their own — or any deal that wasn’t contingent on the complete capitulation of Israel — sat back and rejected one concession after the next. They offered ever-growing lists of grievances while American leaders tried to pacify them. It’s about time someone injected a dose of this reality into this situation. Trump’s plan allows Palestinians to have a state in the world that exists. Or not.

  38. “Trump’s plan allows Palestinians to have a state in the world that exists.”

    Maybe. Maybe not.

    The main problem is that it doesn’t address the real issue, which is that…
    the Palestinians don’t want a state.

    (As Dr. Seuss might say, “No they DO NOT!”)

    More specifically, they don’t want a state as long as any final agreement for such a Palestinian state ensures that it must exist side by side with a viable Zionist Entity.

    That is, the pretense that they DO want a state is a tactic to “fundamentally change” their “Partner in Peace”(TM) so that it EITHER a) disappears OR b) is too weakened to effectively defend itself (IOW see “a”).
    (Besides, the “peace process” also enables Palestinian leaders to rake in an enormous amount of personal income, which they can squirrel away in the usual places.)

    “Too weakened”.
    “Weakened” can operate on several levels: militarily, morally, or losing the support of minions of “humane”, “concerned” people (especially in the universities and the media)—including its erstwhile allies—around the globe…casting a particular group—or country?—as “pariah” being a tried and tested method for preparing for its destruction; i.e., for making its destruction a moral necessity.

    And so…since the Palestinians do NOT want a state—but plan, via “wanting a state” to, in fact, destroy their “Partner in Peace”(TM)—how could any “peace plan” possibly achieve what it intends to achieve?

    How indeed!

    Ah, but that’s an easy one. The answer? Define “peace” to mean the disappearance of the Zionist Entity. Let time (and glorious hatred) do its work; be very, very patient while keeping up the pressure (and inventing new and more impressive slanders…while repackaging the old ones!) et VOILA!

    Any other questions?

  39. Indeed, one may well wonder whether the “Deal of the Century” has been formulated to induce the “Palestinian” leadership to manifest their intransigence, thereby justifying Israel moving ahead with reunification (“annexation”). Under that premise, once the “Palestinian” leadership from Gaza to Ramallah rejects the Trump plan outright, there presumably remains no further obstacle with the Trump White House for Israel to proceed with reunifying the Jewish communities of Judea and Samaria, once and for all. And that massive reunification of Judea and Samaria with the Israeli heartland will be a very big deal indeed. The deal of the century.

    https://spectator.org/the-deal-of-the-century/

  40. “…manifest…”

    Perhaps that was the idea (though I doubt it); but if so, it will NOT convince a world that has up until now refused to be convinced. What after all has changed? Arafat gave up two offers. Abbas, one. Hamas, well….

    The sheer “beauty” of the “peace process” is that:
    1. The Palestinians don’t have to agree to anything and can do anything and say anything they want to (threats, violence, lies, delegitimization of Israel, rewrite history, etc.).
    2. They will never be seriously criticized for their stance. In fact, they will always be defended as the ever-aggrieved party, as the most-suffering-of-all-time people.
    3. Israel WILL be criticized as the party that is most gumming up the works—e.g., intransigent, militaristic, pro-war, against peace, a danger to the region, a danger to the world, etc., etc.

    Every time. All the time.

    (After all, as the experts scornfully insist, how can—and why should—Israel actually be rewarded for agreeing to “give up” what never was legally hers in the first place?)

    Which all goes to point out the extraordinary genius of Yassir Arafat….

  41. Declare the simple truth; the Palestinial leadership is opposed to any peace.
    Then, annex the West Bank, as legally the 1922 internationally accepted declaration allows.

    Given Islam’s theological support for shia taqiyya and sunni muruna, reliable vetting of ‘moderate’ Muslims is impossible. So deport every Muslim living in the West Bank, Gaza and Israel proper. Offer financial compensation for Muslim property owners and moving expenses for all.

    Declare that the day that Israel suffers a WMD attack is the day that Mecca ceases to exist.

  42. Art Deco on January 29, 2020 at 9:08 pm said:

    This is a nonsense statement.

    If international laws and UN resolutions been ignored then that becomes “nonsense” ….isn’t?

  43. Geoffrey Britain on January 30, 2020 at 2:10 pm said:

    Well, if someone came to you and apply what you said in your statement did you agree to leave your home, your neighbourhood, your region and your homeland?

    Don’t forget the other side who hold similar thinking “Ultra-Orthodox”
    Just like their uncle brothers……..

  44. If international laws and UN resolutions been ignored then that becomes “nonsense” ….isn’t?

    There is no such thing as international law. There is no authority to define, enforce, and adjudicate such a ‘law’. There is merely international convention. To say that the ruling authority in a territory is acting ‘illegally’ with reference to some standard dreamed up by cookie-pushing public nuisances is a nonsense statement. Israel makes the law on the West Bank. There was no competing authority there until 1993.

  45. Then, annex the West Bank, as legally the 1922 internationally accepted declaration allows.

    This is also a nonsense statement.

  46. Who Started the Six Day War of June 1967?

    Sure, expel the UN buffer force, set up an impromptu alliance with two other Arab states, put your troops on the border, blockade a major sea lane, and whisper sweet nothings of this variety:

    Preparations have already been made. We are now ready to confront Israel. They have claimed many things about the 1956 Suez war, but no one believed them after the secrets of the 1956 collusion were uncovered – that mean collusion in which Israel took part. Now we are ready for the confrontation. We are now ready to deal with the entire Palestine question.

    The issue now at hand is not the Gulf of Aqaba, the Straits of Tiran, or the withdrawal of the UNEF, but the rights of the Palestine people. It is the aggression which took place in Palestine in 1948 with the collaboration of Britain and the United States. It is the expulsion of the Arabs from Palestine, the usurpation of their rights, and the plunder of their property. It is the disavowal of all the UN resolutions in favour of the Palestinian people.

    Look ma, no belligerency!

  47. Art Deco on January 30, 2020 at 3:53 pm said:

    Ok, so why then the voices so loud and every member rush to UN to condemns with Russia invaded part of Ukraine?

    What about China and Hongkong Saga?

    What about China and South China Sea claim?

    Then, your theory all these are “a nonsense “

  48. Art Deco
    What your view about Saddam invaded Kuwait?

    Why did all stand against him? if we go back in history and land of Arabia what’s the history tells us?

    Map No Binding. 97×67 cm. manuscript ink and colours with a big manuscript logo of the Ottoman military staff. After the map made by the British military staff in 1907, published by the lithographic press in 1911 and preserved in the Topographic maps section under no. 2563. Made by the Ottoman military staff according the mentioned British map and edited according the Ottoman year book (Salname) with the new boarders delimitation in 1915. This map seems to be the official map which contains the new boarders were agreed between the Ottoman state and England regarding Kuwait and Nejd in 1913. Possibly unique.

    Ottoman manuscript map of Iraq and Vilayet-i Basra containing Kuwait and the northern parts of Nejd

  49. Public relations, FB, can be put on for show, or explication, or merely efforting a gain of favor in one sector or another, all without the force of law in the international sphere. Currying allies, warning off enemies and so on, you know. But again, displays aren’t law, not anything like it.

  50. Art Deco on January 30, 2020 at 3:53 pm said:
    There is no such thing as international law. There is no authority to define, enforce, and adjudicate such a ‘law’. There is merely international convention. To say that the ruling authority in a territory is acting ‘illegally’ with reference to some standard dreamed up by cookie-pushing public nuisances is a nonsense statement. Israel makes the law on the West Bank. There was no competing authority there until 1993.

    The Ottoman Administration of Iraq 1890-1908

    This is a study of the nature of Ottoman administration under Sultan Abdulhamid and the effects of this on the three provinces that were to form the modern state of Iraq. The author provides a general commentary on the late Ottoman provincial administration and a comprehensive picture of the nature of its interaction with provincial society. In drawing on sources of the Ottoman archives, bringing together and analyzing an abundance of complex documents, this book is a fascinating contribution to the field of Middle Eastern studies.

    The Resilience of a Frontier: Ottoman and Iraqi Claims to Kuwait, 1871-1990

  51. sdferr

    Here each one free for exchanging his views, you like it or not it’s your problem

    Please do not play with words

  52. Play with words? What the hell are you talking about? I’m not “playing”. These words have meaning, carry ideas and the relations of ideas. So, go from that.

  53. What your view about Saddam invaded Kuwait? Why did all stand against him? if we go back in history and land of Arabia what’s the history tells us?

    You do what you do for reasons of state or you do it for abstract justice. Nothing else need concern you.

  54. Ok, so why then the voices so loud and every member rush to UN to condemns with Russia invaded part of Ukraine?

    Because talk is cheap.

  55. Possession is 9/10 of the law. International law works that way too in the long run unless force is applied to change the facts on the ground. History is tragic that way.

    see “Molon labe”

  56. I think FB is absolutely right. Israel has to give back all land that it occupies. Of course, to be fair, so does everybody else. Let’s see, the Turks have to give back northern Cyprus, the Chinese have to give back Tibet, India has to give back Goa, the Russians have to give back Chechnya, and eastern Poland. Of course, the Poles have to give back East Prussia, the Italians have to give back South Tyrol, the French have to give Alsace back to the Germans, then the Germans have to give it back to the French (whew, that’s a hard one!), the Spanish have to give back Catalonia, the British have to give back the UK to the Normans, the Normans have to give it back to the Saxons, the Saxons have to give it back to the Britons and the Picts, the Scots have to give Scotland back to the Irish, the U.S. has to give back the Southwest to Mexico, but the Mexicans have to give it back to the Spanish, then the Spanish have to give it back to the Indians,– I guess all of the Americas have to give their land to the Indians. Which Indians, though? The Iroqouis? The Creeks? The Commanche? The Apache? The Mohicans? That’ll be a tough one!

    I’m running out of steam here, guys. Somebody is going to have to pitch in and help . . .

    What? What’s that you say, FB? Oh, the give back business only applies to Joooooos! Why didn’t you say so in the first place, would have saved me a heap of trouble!

  57. Richard Saunders on January 31, 2020 at 4:21 am said:
    I think FB is absolutely right. Israel has to give back all land that it occupies.

    Sadly you read me very wrong Richard.

    I am not going more to replay what “nonsense” that you listed which in the first place I did not say that and don’t try to put your word in my mouth.

    What we have both sides/parties have ruining in a circular from 1948 for generations.
    This created new generation have hatred / to kill not friendly towards other side, this must be broken and make people understand to live on the land they share.

    As I said none of the regimes in the past like that and they use their people to fights war that brought nothing just more distraction, of course using occupation/ Zionist / Jews and Jerusalem city to convinced their people to build hatred and going for war.

    This makes those regimes feel safe and put the attentions of their nation outside the box. Inside that box it humiliation, abusing human rights, prisoners and killing with different excuses for Nation security.

    Those regimes they had more resources and revenues that a country small like Israel and under continuance war threat that state build itself to stand against many nation threat here those nations lost their direction under regimes that mislead their nations of “Palestine” and let those nations undeveloped and poor under educated and behind most the world countries and nations.

    Today we have few regimes still going this hole
    MEIR SPEECH

    The General’s Son

  58. What we have both sides/parties have ruining in a circular from 1948 for generations.

    Actually, no. That sentence right there is an indicator that you haven’t understood the most salient aspect of this dispute, and that you cannot learn.

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