by Dore Gold
Whatever government Israel elects on March 17 will have to be firm in resisting the pressures that are likely to mount. The most immediate demand to be made is that Israel withdraw to the 1967 borders, with "limited" land swaps, as the U.N. draft resolution recommended. In past interviews, such as the one he gave to the New York Times on Feb. 7, 2011, Abbas clarified that his idea of a "limited land swap" involved 1.9 percent of the West Bank. This miniscule land swap in no way could offset the huge concession he was demanding of Israel -- to agree to the 1967 borders.
There are increasing
indications that Western powers will seek to renew Israeli-Palestinian
negotiations right after the Israeli elections. A Haaretz diplomatic
correspondent reported on March 6 that senior White House officials had
told him that a new initiative was under consideration. EU foreign
affairs chief Federica Mogherini is also expected to appoint an envoy to
deal with the renewal of negotiations.
At the end of December
2014, the U.N. Security Council rejected a draft resolution that
demanded a 12-month deadline for completing negotiations. The future
borders between Israel and a new Palestinian state, according to the
proposal, were to be based on the 1967 borders with "limited" land
swaps.
The new resolution, if
adopted, could be argued by some as superseding U.N. Security Council
Resolution 242 from November 1967, which never required Israel to
withdraw from all the territories it captured in the Six-Day War.
Instead, it called for "secure and recognized boundaries" instead.
In the years that
followed, American presidents further clarified the meaning of
Resolution 242 by explicitly stating that it did not require full
withdrawal. Though the Palestinians initially failed to replace 242,
they are expected to renew their efforts to drum up U.N. support for
their draft resolution, now that new members have joined the Security
Council in 2015.
Why should Israel be
concerned about all these initiatives? After all, according to those who
were involved in the last round of talks, it was Palestinian Authority
President Mahmoud Abbas who rejected U.S. Secretary of State John
Kerry's framework agreement in March 2014 during a meeting with U.S.
President Barack Obama in the Oval Office. The pressure should be on the
Palestinian side.
But unfortunately,
since 2009, a pattern has emerged. At that time, Abbas wanted
negotiations with Israel to pick up where they left off with former
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who offered unprecedented
concessions before he resigned. There was no signed agreement between
Israel and the Palestinians, but Abbas wanted to pocket Olmert's
proposed concessions and then demand that Israel go even further.
Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu refused to accept the Olmert document. In an effort to
persuade Abbas to come to the negotiating table, the Obama
administration came up with a series of gestures that Israel would offer
the Palestinians: a 10-month construction freeze in the settlements,
prisoner releases, and declarations by the U.S. or the Quartet that were
to be based on Palestinian territorial demands (lately these have been
misrepresented as Israeli positions for political purposes).
None of these gestures
ultimately worked. The Palestinians refused to enter into any sustained
negotiations with Israel. It appeared that Abbas wanted the West to
establish what the results of the talks would be before the talking ever
began. It was assumed by most observers that he wanted that outcome
guaranteed in advance.
But a simpler
explanation for his behavior would be that he was simply not interested
in reaching an agreement with Israel. He was under pressure both from
Hamas and from Fatah militants. There was also his competition for
Palestinian leadership with Mohammed Dahlan. Today Abbas refuses to take
responsibility for the Rafah passageway in the Gaza Strip -- an
essential precondition for rebuilding the area after being hit during
Operation Protective Edge. It appears that he just wants to be left
alone.
Perhaps the most
important factor affecting Abbas was the fact that as the end of his
career approaches, he is wary of taking any steps could tarnish his
legacy, such as conceding what the Palestinians call "the right of
return." There is no reason now to believe that these considerations
will change. But the U.S. and its European allies are likely to press
Israel to make the negotiations more attractive to Abbas by holding out
the prospect of new Israeli concessions.
Whatever government
Israel elects on March 17 will have to be firm in resisting the
pressures that are likely to mount. The most immediate demand to be made
is that Israel withdraw to the 1967 borders, with "limited" land swaps,
as the U.N. draft resolution recommended. In past interviews, such as
the one he gave to the New York Times on Feb. 7, 2011, Abbas clarified
that his idea of a "limited land swap" involved 1.9 percent of the West
Bank. This miniscule land swap in no way could offset the huge
concession he was demanding of Israel -- to agree to the 1967 borders.
This land swap would
not provide enough territory to protect Israeli settlement blocs. Leaks
to Al Jazeera of past negotiations under Olmert indicate that the
Palestinians refused to concede the large settlements of Ariel and Maale
Adumim. In short, Abbas' land swaps would leave thousands of Israelis
on territory that the Palestinians expect to be theirs. The concept of
1967 borders with land swaps is a non-starter.
The pressure on Israel
to agree to a nearly full withdrawal on the basis of the 1967 lines also
directly impacts Israel's security -- yet another reason for any
Israeli government to resist such a demand. Ironically, just as this
pressure can be expected to increase, the current chaos in the Middle
East makes such a withdrawal more dangerous than ever. The vacuum
created by the breakdown of several Arab states, like Syria and Iraq,
has allowed for the growth of a new breed of terrorist organizations,
like Islamic State, that are far more challenging than the organizations
Israel fought in the past.
For example,
historically, terrorist attacks were typically conducted by small
squads. Since 2014, Islamic State has been operating like a proper army
with battalion-size units. In Syria, Islamic State and Jabhat al-Nusra
used advanced anti-tank missiles and crushed Syrian armored units,
seizing all their equipment. The most advanced models of Syrian T-72
tanks may now be seen on YouTube flying the al-Qaida flag and operated
by jihadist crews.
In the summer of 2014,
Islamic State cells defeated four divisions of the Iraqi Army and took
all their new American equipment, including Abrams tanks. Islamic State
may not be able to maintain all the weaponry it captured or conduct
maneuver warfare, but it demonstrated that it could stand up to an
actual army.
To make matters worse,
Middle Eastern borders are melting away, allowing terrorist
organizations to move across international lines and easily obtain
reinforcements. This not only applies to the Syrian-Iraqi border and the
old Sykes-Picot line, but also to the Iraqi-Iranian border. On March 8,
Ali Younesi, adviser to Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, declared that
Iran was an empire and that "there was no way to divide the territory
of Iran and Iraq." Younesi was not a peripheral figure but a former
intelligence minister. Therefore, those in the West who argue that
Israel can afford to withdraw to the 1967 borders because the
conventional threat along what used to be called Israel's eastern front
has vanished are simply wrong. The conventional threat has changed and
evolved.
A third reason why a
future Israeli government will have to remain steadfast in the face of
pressure is connected to Jerusalem. The 1967 borders run right through
the heart of Israel's capital. If accepted in any way, the 1967 borders
would award the Old City of Jerusalem to the Palestinians, giving them
all the holiest Jewish, Christian and Muslim sites.
In 2009, when Sweden
held the rotating EU presidency, it drafted a statement on the peace
process that included a call for dividing Jerusalem. Ten years earlier,
when Germany held the EU presidency, its ambassador to Israel tried to
revive the idea of the internationalization of Jerusalem, contained in
U.N. General Assembly Resolution 181. Jerusalem is a magnet for some of
the most dangerous proposals that have come from the EU, which Israel
must forcefully reject.
These suggestions
should look absurd from a Western perspective in light of recent
developments. Since the Taliban attack on the ancient Buddhist statues
in the Bamian Valley in Afghanistan in the late 1990s, the religious
sites of other faiths have increasingly come under attack across the
Middle East. Churches have been bombed or set on fire by jihadists in
Egypt. The same has occurred in Syria and Iraq. In the previous decade,
Joseph's Tomb was attacked by Palestinian mobs and the Church of the
Nativity in Bethlehem was invaded by joint Hamas and Fatah forces. This
environment of intolerance has been backed not just by groups on the
periphery of society but by mainstream elements as well.
Unfortunately, many in the
international community who will be pressing Israel to accept their
proposals do not appreciate correctly how the dramatic shifts in the
Middle East have altered Israel's basic requirements in any revived
peace negotiations. There is a tendency to take old peace proposals from
the 1990s and to try and rework them and make them relevant for today,
ignoring how much the Middle East has changed. The next Israeli
government will find itself pulled between the determination of the
international community to implement its latest ideas and the
necessities of Israel's security on the ground in a much more chaotic
and unstable Middle East.
Dore Gold
Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=11905
Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.
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