Land, Peace Exchange Equality

Extracts from Guy Bechor's Mideast rules must change

Land for peace formula dead, Israel must adopt doctrine based on equality

Ever since the Six-Day War we’ve been hearing, like a mantra, the buzz about “land for peace.” The tiny Israel, a small dot on the globe, shall give up “land,” and in exchange it shall receive “peace” from the Arab side.

This mantra was so absolute that it was accepted here as an unqualified truth that cannot be denied...s mantra is no longer valid.

While Israel paid with hard, irreversible currency when it handed over land to the Arab side, the Arabs paid with soft, completely reversible currency - that is, words and agreements.

...Now we are seeing how blatantly unequal this formula is; what’s more, it also hints at ostensible Israeli guilt, while the Arab side is seemingly doing Israel a favor...The absence of equality between the two parts of this equation should have rung warning bells in Israel a while ago. Now, the time has come to adopt a formula based on equality, as is common among the nations of the world, where no side is doing a favor to the other: Either land in exchange for land, or peace in exchange for peace...Words in exchange for words, land in exchange for land, and interests in exchange for interests.

...The waves of violence in the Arab world and the threat on the status quo, as well as the Palestinian Authority’s defiance in the face of all agreements with Israel, require new, fresh thinking...This is a golden opportunity for Israel to reexamine its strategic doctrine vis-à-vis the Arab world, thereby making a genuine contribution to the better management of the conflict with the Arab side, a conflict that has lasted for too long.

That makes sense.

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I'm in a JTA Story

Six years on, lessons of Gaza withdrawal resonate for West Bank  By Linda Gradstein · July 4, 2011

SHILOH, West Bank (JTA) -- Yisrael Medad remembers when just eight families lived in the red-roofed homes in this Jewish settlement deep in the hills of the West Bank.

Now some 2,500 Israelis live here, and Shiloh has playgrounds, schools and a yeshiva. The red-roofed homes sprawl over several hills, and new homes continue to be built. At the bottom of the hill is the archaeological excavation of the biblical Shiloh, where the tabernacle is believed to have been built. Shiloh is often cited as one of the settlements likely to be uprooted under any final peace deal with the Palestinians. It is relatively isolated, about 28 miles north of Jerusalem, and halfway between the Palestinian cities of Ramallah and Nablus.
But with little movement in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, Shiloh is not likely to disappear anytime soon. And even in the long term, any discussion of dismantling Jewish settlements in the West Bank is haunted by Israel’s experience six years ago this summer, when the removal of some 9,000 settlers from their homes in the Gaza Strip was followed by a Hamas takeover of Gaza and rocket attacks against Israel. “The expulsion from Gaza should serve as a warning for any withdrawal from Judea and Samaria,” said Hamutal Cohen of the Committee for the Residents of Gush Katif, which was the largest bloc of Jewish settlements in Gaza. “The government totally failed with 9,000 settlers. How can they manage with tens of thousands?”

...Yossi Klein Halevi, a journalist and a fellow at Jerusalem’s Shalom Hartman Institute, says support for Jewish settlers in the West Bank has gone mainstream in a way that support for settlements in Gaza never did.  “Two generations have grown up in Israel who see the settlements not only as part of Israel but as the heart of Israel,” Halevi told JTA. “Any withdrawal from the West Bank would involve mass refusal of soldiers to follow orders, and I am deeply worried about the ability of the army to continue to be an effective fighting force.”
Halevi estimates that Jewish settlers and their supporters make up 40 percent of some combat units; an Israeli army spokesman said the IDF does not release figures “on such a sensitive subject.” Orthodox men, who constitute a wellspring of support for the settlements, continue to volunteer for combat units in large numbers.

...It’s not clear whether Jews who live in settlements like Shiloh would have the option of staying on under Palestinian sovereignty or whether they would want to remain. Some Palestinian officials, including Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, have welcomed the idea, but PA President Mahmoud Abbas has expressed reservations.

“If a Palestinian state is created and my security could be ensured, I would definitely choose to stay,” said Medad of Shiloh, who has lived in the settlement since 1981.

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Should The US Yield on Samoa?

Found here:-

The U.S. Navy secured Deeds of Cession of Tutuila in 1900 and of Manu’a in 1904...Samoa is many thousands of miles away from America, Americans have no natural nor historical ties to the land, but–in the name of American national interests–eastern Samoa became American territory as a result of the Tripartite Convention dividing the archipelago between Germany and America in 1899.

Okay…now let’s consider Samaria.

Together with Judea, they both make up what is now called the “West Bank.” The latter name did not exist until the early 20th century...In 1922, to reward Hashemite Arab allies in the Arabian Peninsula...the Brits chopped of almost 80% of the original Mandate of Palestine that they had received on April 25, 1920 and handed it over to the Hashemites.

...Jews had lived and owned property in Judea and Samaria for–literally–thousands of years...Places such as Hebron, Beth-El, Shilo, Bethlehem, Shechem, and so forth are known to the world today because of their introductions via the Hebrew Bible. Most Arabs came into the area after their own imperial conquests in the 7th century C.E. They ruled,first out of Damascus and then Bagdad, for a few centuries and were then conquered themselves by the next imperial successors.

...Alright, now consider this next…

The current American Administration and the perpetually anti-Israel State Department insist that no Jews should be allowed to live in Judea or Samaria. Furthermore, they also demand that Israel abandon what UNSC Resolution 242 promised it after the June ‘67 War–secure, defensible borders instead of the previous ‘49 armistice lines which made it virtually invisible on a world map.

America can grab lands thousands of miles away in the name of its own interests, but no Jew may live in Judea or Samaria...
I have a deal…and I hope Israeli leaders are listening closely.

Forget fair…

Only Jews worry about this sort of thing when they’re fighting for their very lives against enemies who won’t grant them any peace at all except the peace of the grave–regardless of the size Israel will shrink itself to. And the rest of the world couldn’t care less…

...Unlike Samoa to America, Judea and Samaria are literally a stone’s throw away from Israel’s heartland, are an integral part of Jewish history, and are positioned to allow a hostile army entering from the east to cut Israel in half. The Arabs have indeed already tried that one on for size.

Finally, this can’t be repeated too often…

Look at what came after Israel’s total withdrawal from Gaza years ago to see what a total Israeli withdrawal from the “West Bank” will mean for Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Haifa, Ben-Gurion Airport, the Knesset, and so forth once Israel has been forced back to the ‘49 armistice lines–not borders–imposed on it by the United Nations and which made it a mere 9-15 miles wide at its strategic waist, where most of its population, industry, and so forth are located.

And the next time you hear voices out of Washington insisting upon a Jew-free Judea and Samaria, please give a long, hard thought to American Samoa.

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"Contiguity"? No, "Integrity" - From Oslo to Obama

A good many good people are disturbed about President Obama's use of "contiguity".
Here on Thursday:

The Palestinian people must have the right to govern themselves, and reach their potential, in a sovereign and contiguous state.

And again at AIPAC:

The borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps -- (applause) -- so that secure and recognized borders are established for both states. The Palestinian people must have the right to govern themselves, and reach their potential, in a sovereign and contiguous state...

There was this:

"The president didn't say that Israel has to go back to the '67 lines. He said with agreed swaps," Mitchell told Amanpour in the interview.  "Swaps means an exchange of land intended to accommodate major Israeli population centers to be incorporated into Israel and Israel's security needs. Agreed means through negotiations. Both parties must agree...That's not going to be a border unless Israel agrees to it and we know they won't agree unless their security needs are satisfied, as it should be," Mitchell said of the 1967 borders.

And someone thought out loud:

242 says the parties will negotiate borders (P's have replaced Jordan as a party). This was always US position. '1967 lines plus swaps' implies a presumption that anything east of the lines is 'Palestinian' by default, because Israel has to compensate them for anything that it keeps. That's a significant shift.

'Contiguity' of Palestine is new. Bush called for 'contiguity' only of the W. Bank.

Jackson Diehl of the Washington Post explained:

The basic question is this: By saying that a division of territory between Israel and Palestine should be “based on” the “1967 lines” between Israel and the West Bank, with agreed “swaps” of land, did Obama move beyond the previous U.S. position on the subject?

The short, technical answer to this question is: no. The longer, political response is that by stating the principle, Obama gave a boost to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who has tried to make Israeli acceptance of it a condition for peace talks, and a slap to Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, who has resisted it.

That Obama would do this on the eve of Netanyahu’s arrival in Washington for a White House meeting — and apparently without warning the Israeli leader — is a gaffe that has understandably angered Netanyahu and many of his U.S. supporters... Apparently at the last minute, Obama chose to include the 1967-lines idea in his speech. The result has been the draining of attention from the speech’s central discussion of Arab democracy, a cheap talking point for GOP opponents — and yet another pointless quarrel with Bibi Netanyahu

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But they have forgotten that we all knew, or should know, - the language of the Oslo Accords on "integrity":-

ARTICLE IV
JURISDICTION

Jurisdiction of the Council will cover West Bank and Gaza Strip territory, except for issues that will be negotiated in the permanent status negotiations. The two sides view the West Bank and the Gaza Strip as a single territorial unit, whose integrity will be preserved during the interim period.

That's one reason that agreement was so deadly - it let the Pals. presume they had all the ground they wanted from the beginning. Thank you Rabin, Perers, Beilin, et al.

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