Netanyahu Surprises at 10th Annual Herzliya Conference
The day after Fayyad’s speech, Maj.-Gen. (res.) Amos Gilad, director of policy and political-military affairs and the Defense Ministry’s former coordinator for the administered territories, expressed to me his admiration for the courage Fayyad showed in traveling to the center of Israel to discuss Palestinian aspirations. In his 14th floor office in the Ministry of Defense in Tel Aviv, Gilad also praised Fayyad for presiding over an unprecedented improvement in the Palestinian security forces. Coupled with Israeli security forces achievements, it’s now possible, Gilad noted, for Palestinians to travel from Hebron in the south of the West Bank to Nablus and Jenin in the north without encountering a single Israeli roadblock.
But in the end, said Gilad, Fayyad’s speech evaded the fundamental obstacle: “As long as Hamastan exists, there can be no peace.” And for the moment, the Palestinian Authority has no answer to Hamastan, or the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip.
To be sure, things have gone badly for Hamas since they defeated Fatah in June 2007 and seized control of Gaza. The crossings to Israel mainly serve to allow humanitarian supplies in. Gaza’s economy is in tatters. Israel inflicted substantial losses on Hamas fighters last year in Operation Cast Lead. And Hamas has failed to obtain international recognition.
Still, argues Gilad, the Palestinian Authority is not remotely capable of reestablishing government in Gaza. Yet the Palestinian Authority, he observed, will never sign a comprehensive agreement that does not include Gaza. The problem for political negotiations is that nobody has any reasonable ideas about how to bring Gaza under Palestinian Authority control anytime soon without in the process exposing Israel to Hamas rockets that the Israeli defense establishment now believes can reach Tel Aviv. And that is entirely unacceptable to Israel.
Nor is that the only major problem. Gilad pointed out that from his office window we could in the distance see the hills of the West Bank. Even a few rockets or mortars launched from there by Hamas terrorists on Israel’s commercial and population center in Tel Aviv, he said, could shut down Ben Gurion International Airport and paralyze the nation. To prevent such attacks, the Israeli defense establishment believes that, even with the impressive progress that Fayyad has made in standing up Palestinian security forces, Israel will need to maintain a significant military presence in the West Bank for many years to come. Under these circumstances, however, no comprehensive political agreement is conceivable because an Israeli military presence in the West Bank is entirely unacceptable to the Palestinians.
Gilad’s analysis is sobering but not disheartening. Notwithstanding the elusiveness of peace, there is much to be done. Israelis and Palestinians needn’t choose between top-down political negotiations and bottom-up development programs. Both should be pursued — but with eyes wide open. To reduce the elusiveness of peace it is necessary to shed the illusions of peace.
Well,Cousin Bibi has nothing to lose by at least making the offer…he knows going in that the odds of the Palestinians actually agreeing to anything meaningful are only about 1 in 10 at best anyway…so by doing this,he effectively shows pragmatism and if his offer is spurned,then nobody can say that at least he didn’t try
This article is so unrealistic it deserves no comment.
Prime Minister Netanyahu has accepted the line that Israel is to blame for the wars of the Arabs against it. It is not. The Arabs could make peace instantly by ceasing to fight against Israel.
The Arabs, miscalled “Palestinians,” do not deserve yet another state, especially one in the historic land of the Jews. Calling them “Palestinian” is the effect of Soviet propaganda, which with Gamal Nasser in 1964 in Cairo established the “Palestine Liberation Organization,” followed by history rewrite. “Palestine” has always meant “the land of the Jews” or “the Holy Land” since the Roman Emperor Hadrian renamed Judea “Palestina” in 135 A.D., after defeating the last of the Jewish rebellions under Bar Kochba (and he outlawed Judaism), and “Palestinian” always meant “Jew.” That is why the Zionists wanted the “Palestine Mandate” and the British were awarded the “Palestine Mandate” as homeland for the Jews.
“This article is so unrealistic it deserves no comment.”
If anyone believe anything in there, there a bridge in New York for sale…
No, Bibi is drowning the fish, stretching time until Obama
will have lost all teeth and credibility to finish off
Iran and it’s proxies…at least that’s what one hope if Netanyahu has
any brains left…however, with Israelis, you never can tell,
Jews self-hate has no bottom, most of them went willingly to the Shoah!
(Syria has solved it’s Muslim Brothers problem ages ago!
WHAT THE HELL THEM JEWS ARE WAITING FOR??? A NUKE DOWNTOWN TEL AVIV???)
What #2 said.
The only peace any human ever finds is the peace of the grave. IIRC, that was Plato’s observation about 2400 years or so ago.
Since then peace has come to be defined as a lack of war. Moving the goalposts again. As far as the Arab-Israeli conflict, it takes two to make peace. So long as the Arabs idea of peace is genocide against Jews, there won’t be peace. For some reason, Jews don’t like being the target of genocide. Experience perhaps?
Regardless, as long as the Arabs pretend to negotiate, there is no reason for the Jews to not pretend to negotiate. If I was negotiating for Israel, I would focus on Arabs adding Israel to their maps and publicly acknowledge Israel’s right to exist DAILY, in ALL media. In Arabic, Yiddish, English and French.
Right now the Arabs are waging a agi-prop offensive and it’s working much better then any of their many military offensives. Maybe if the Arbs are shown that their propaganda attack has no more chance then their military ones did, they might get serious. The first sign of them getting serious will be the background map on the evening news showing the state of Israel, AS IT EXISTS TODAY.
Until then both sides can continue to negotiate, between spasmodic outbursts of organized murder. Rational people understand that the negotiations won’t accomplish anything until the underlying conditions change. Fools will get their hopes up, but then again fools often do strange things.
The so called Palestinians,(really Arabs from Jordan and Egypt), already have a home. It is called Jordan, and they got kicked out of there for being the nice sweet individuals they are.
I suspect Israel knows the so called Palestinians are about to make more war. Yet, trying to talk peace shows the world,(again), it is not the Jews who are the problem. Of course, the world will blame the Jews anyway.
Let’s see, Netanyahu offers an olive branch and the “Palestinians” in their endless victim mode demand that “Israel do its part” to help the Palestinians to gain statehood with East Jerusalem as its capitol. Such progress!!
When will these apologists for Islam have seen enough?
A far more sober assessment of the same conference.
Islam has bloody borders — that’s an undisputable fact. Everywhere it has invaded, it sets about provoking and spreading itself and only military superiority has in the past stopped its progress. Israel is too small to sustain a hostile and alien nation within its borders. Population swap is the only answer. Otherwise, Islam will continue to keep on keeping on in its jihad against Israel and as we can now see everywhere — in future, the world.
If anyone is interested, there is far more accurate & realistic assessement
by a real expert on the Middle-East at Rubin Reports, the blog by Prof. Barry Rubin, ”Palestinian Prime Minister to Israeli Audience ….” which is well worth reading. Mr Rubin knows what he is talking about. Actually, looking through the Archives on this blog is pretty informative.
The chances of peace are ZERO.
There will be no ”peace” no matter what Israel does, no matter the concessions, with negotiations or without negotiations, with or without a Palestinian state. The Palestinians cannot accept the existence of ANY sovereign Jewish state within ANY borders.
#8 Barry Meislin.
Sorry, I just looked at the link & it’s the same article as I recommended.
#10 Terry, Eilat-Israel.
Keep tellin’ it like it is.