Israeli and American conservatives are blasting negotiations between far-left Israelis and Palestinians that reportedly produced a "peace deal." There we have it. Those guys don't want peace. Supporting them and their policies is not helpful. Even if you are really pissed off at suicide bombers. It still isn't helpful and you aren't really being a friend of Israel by not withdrawing support for Israel until it comes to its senses. The more I think about it, this proposal could put some pressure on the conservatives in Israel and the US to try to work for peace. After all this guy, Belin sp? is a potential Labor Party candidate to oppose Sharon and it is possible the people of Israel will get tired of Sharon's promise to end the mess by military victory. 1) Israel while having superior means of violence, could be losing. See: *************** Israel Is Losing By Richard Cohen Tuesday, October 7, 2003; Page A25 I talked recently with an American who had just returned from more than 20 years in Israel. We did not talk for the record, so I will withhold his name and what he does for a living. But I will say he is somewhat well-known in Israel and that he loves it dearly but he has left, probably permanently, because he cannot take life there any longer. He is a nonstatistic -- a living victim of terrorism. more 2) in addition the neocons are losing in the US and Bush could use an accomplishment in the Middle East before his reelection campaign. Te misery of Iraqi occupation is not really helping and the thrill of initial military victory is diminishing. 3) Arafat, is not in a good position either, so he might be amenable. I would say the ball is primarily in Sharon's court, though his own tolerance for Israeli death, not to mention a real desire to kill Muslims, should not be underestimated.
finally we agree on something and i do hope no crazy idiot who lost his family busts out with some bombing or crazy hijacking, or what not.... im praying for this to work, even though most members have rejected it already
A view from Israel. http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/349097.html Analysis / Compromising as an intellectual exercise By Aluf Benn Yossi Beilin succeeded twice - once in imparting a bit of renewed relevance to the Israeli left, at least in the media, and again in irritating Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who abandoned his moderate image and lashed out at the "attempts of the left to bring down the government at a time of war." Beilin took advantage of the Sukkot-induced media dry spell to attract widespread attention to the draft he formulated together with a group of Palestinian public figures headed by Yasser Abed Rabbo. Beilin's main goal was to disprove the notion promulgated by Sharon and his predecessor, Ehud Barak, that "we have no partner." Ever since the failure of Barak's negotiations at Camp David and Taba, Beilin has been trying to show, mainly unsuccessfully in terms of the media, that the Palestinians are ready for compromise, especially on the question of the Palestinian refugees' right of return, which is seen by Israel as the death knell of the Jewish state. The Geneva accord, authored by Beilin, Amram Mitzna, Avraham Burg, and their Palestinian counterparts, is another expression of the awakening of the left, that was paralyzed during the period of the national unity government. Sharon is encountering the buds of opposition the likes of which he has not seen since the beginning of his tenure. He therefore reacted with uncharacteristic acidity to reports on Beilin's document. As the Prime Minister's Office explained yesterday, "At a time when the whole world is becoming convinced by our arguments against Arafat, people stand up among us and come to a final agreement with them. This puts us in a ridiculous light." As a Labor Party official put it more succinctly, "If there is a partner on the Palestinian side, we don't need Sharon." The accord itself is an intellectual exercise - its authors do not have the authority to implement it. Even so, the document is worth cautious consideration, at least until the full text is published when the Palestinians will evince their tendency to distance themselves from such documents. Initial revelations indicate that the Palestinians have given up on the right of return. A closer examination shows that this is not exactly the case. The document repeats the menu offered the refugees by the Clinton plan, which allows a certain number of Palestinians to return to Israel, not within a "right of return" but according to a different formula. Details that have come to light so far show that most of the compromising was done on the Israeli side, especially in terms of the determination of borders and the division of Jerusalem. The Geneva accord goes even further than Barak did on some points. It gives up Ariel and transfers authority on the Temple Mount to the Palestinians. It surrenders Israeli control of the border passages between Israel and the Palestinian state (but not its demilitarization); it grants status to an international force in Jerusalem and at border points; and agrees to a border based on the Green Line, with a 1:1 exchange of territories. The Palestinians' main compromise was in recognizing Israel as the state of the Jewish people, and its agreement to annex Ma'aleh Adumim and Efrat to Israel in exchange for the transfer of Ariel to its territory. It also compromised by agreeing to accept sovereignty over the Temple Mount gradually, rather than all at once. The Geneva accord seeks to solve the conflict by dividing the land into two states, and in this it is in line with President Bush's vision of the road map. But unlike that plan, it does not push the Palestinians toward comprehensive democratic reforms, as do the proposals of the Sharon government. As one official involved in the agreements put it, "As far as I'm concerned, it can be a dictatorship like it is in Egypt, but if they can't provide security, there will be no accord."
I was going to argue that you could not make that leap in logic. Rightly, you cannot, since some may want peace, just not at 'any' price. But forget it. Even if it has flaws, every ME peace document deserves respect. Sharon is pissed because he's been claiming that there is no one on the Palestinian side to negotiate with... and now ... OOPS! So I say f**k'm... yeah ... they don't want peace. As I've said before, sharon will never be a part of the solution, and it's becoming clearer that this white house won't be either.
if only bush realized that he would not only be re elected, but also win a nobel peace prize if he solved the israel/palestine situation instead of blabbering about NUCULAR warheads and axis of evil
The thing I liked about the agreement was that it was good for both sides, and both sides gave up something. I also agree with Gator's point about the people being more eager to live in peace than the leadership of both sides. The way I heard them talking about this on NPR was that, at least in Israel, they would get people to sign the petition and submit a petition with more than a million signatures, and hope that the grassroots support would get the govt. to listen. The other great thing about this agreement is that people from both sides got together and came up with this. I've always been for countries like the U.S. to help mediate peace and put forward plans, but this one is home grown, and probably free from outside influence. I'm sad to see some people dismissing it already.
Interesting comments about the proposal and the resistance of Sharon to peace. If you notice Israel has been more active than usual lately in bombin Palestinians, inclduding many innocent civilians, perhaps in response to this initiative. ******* October 21, 2003 The Beilin Agreement With Whom, About What? By URI AVNERY The Beilin-Abed-Rabbo agreement is the latest hit on the Middle Eastern market. This week I made a short visit to Germany, where a book of mine has come out, and was asked about it at every event. At my meetings with President Johannes Rau and Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, too, the subject came up at once. I used the opportunity to argue for support of this initiative by all possible means. To avoid misunderstanding, I pointed out that I have no connections with this initiative. The Israeli participants belong to the left wing of the Labor and Meretz parties, and I do not belong to this circle. But I give this initiative all my blessings _ all the more so because it continues a process that we ourselves started two years ago. In August 2001, Gush Shalom published the draft of an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement. It consisted of 14 paragraphs that included detailed proposals for the solution of all the problems of the conflict. It was an Israeli initiative, but we acted in close consultation with Palestinian colleagues. The main object of the initiative was educational. The al-Aksa Intifada was in full swing, Ehud Barak's myth ("There is no one to talk with!") had captured the public, most of the peace camp had collapsed, hopelessness and impotence reigned supreme. We wanted to light a candle in the darkness. To prove to the public that there is a solution, that there was somebody to talk to and something to talk about. And, most importantly, to tell the people what the price of peace is, and that it was worthwhile to pay it. We saw ourselves as an icebreaker, a compact and autonomous vessel that opens the way for much bigger ships to follow. We published the draft treaty as a full-page ad in Haaretz (August 10, 2001). It did not cause much of a stir. As usual, all the Israeli media boycotted it and even abroad it attracted only limited attention. But we hoped that we had opened a path, and that others would use it in due course. The first who did so were Sari Nusseibeh and Ami Ayalon, the former the president of an Arab university and the scion of an important Jerusalem family, the latter a former commander of the Israeli navy and a former chief of the Security Service. They presented a small number of basic principles for a peace accord, launched a big publicity campaign and called for mass signatures on both sides. Up to now, some 65,000 Palestinians and 85,000 Israelis have signed. Now comes the initiative of a group of important Israeli and Palestinian personalities. Like our initiative at the time, it takes the form of a detailed draft peace agreement. In their content, too, the two documents are quite similar. It can be said that 90% of the proposals are the same. And no wonder - after endless plans, endless rounds of negotiations and endless talks, all the problems lie on the table and everyone knows what the parameters of a possible compromise are. Both drafts are based on the principle of "two states for two peoples", with their capitals in Jerusalem, a border based on the Green Line, removal of the settlers from the Palestinian territories and a practical solution of the refugee problem. The differences are mainly due to Beilin-Abed-Rabbo's desire to sweeten the pill for the Israelis as much as possible. For example: we proposed to cure the historical wound with Israel's acceptance of its responsibility for the creation of at least part of the refugee problem and its recognition of the principle of the Right of Return. We believe that such a declaration is necessary for the cleaning of the wound. The new initiative deliberately ignores the painful question of principle and deals only with the practical solution. Beilin says that the Palestinians have "given up" the Right of Return de jure, too _ a statement the Palestinians will it find difficult to swallow. Like us, the initiators propose in practice to allow a limited number of Palestinians to return to Israel, but they propose a sophisticated key: a number equivalent to the average number of refugees allowed in by other nations. We have proposed a quite simple method: to allow back a fixed quota (say 50 thousand) every year for 10 years. On the question of Jerusalem, too, the new draft tries to sweeten the pill. They avoid saying clearly that the Palestinians will be "sovereign" over their part of the city and the Temple Mount. All the paragraphs about Jerusalem are a bit clumsy, in an attempt, so it seems, to make them more palatable to the Israeli public. The document imposes several limitation on Palestinian sovereignty that may impair the feeling of equality. Also, without seeing the detailed maps it is hard to say how much Beilin wants to swap. It seems that there is a certain disparity between their and our maps. But these differences are not really important. The people who drafted this document knew that they were preparing only a sample agreement. It will be presented to the public in order to show that peace is possible, that it poses no existential danger to Israel that there is a partner on the other side and that there is something to talk about. Even the refugee problem, which frightens so many Israelis out of their wits, stops being so threatening when one tackles it in real terms. It becomes a practical problem with practical solutions. The reactions of the leaderships of the two sides is illuminating. Ariel Sharon has attacked the document furiously, as if it constituted high treason and sticks a knife into the back of the nation. That's no wonder, considering that there is no greater danger to Sharon and his grand design than the danger of peace. Ehud Barak, the man most to blame for the collapse of the Israeli peace camp, has also raged against the initiative. The starling visits the raven, as the Hebrew saying goes. Yasser Arafat, on the other hand, has blessed the initiative. He cannot accept it formally, because a real peace treaty must be negotiated between governments. No national leader can take official responsibility for terms when the leader of the other side does not. But it can safely be said that the agreement is acceptable to him _ all the more so since he took part in its formulation behind the scenes. There is, of course, no symmetry: the Israeli doves are in opposition, while their Palestinian counterparts are in power. Throughout the world, the document was well received by all who wish for an end to the conflict. The great hope is that this initiative, like the "revolt of the pilots", represents the end of the era of despair. The first task of Beilin and his colleagues is to raise the Labor and Meretz parties from their ruins (the Labor party chairman, the birthday darling, has not joined the initiative!) and to set up a strong and combative opposition in the spirit of the document. To quote Churchill again: This is not the beginning of the end, but it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning. link
Has the US and various EU govts weighed in officially on this initiative yet? I've seen too little about it in the media.
Expect the US to be silent or work against it. If it was a UN resolution, the US would probably veto it.
