David Singer: Trump Must Question Abbas-PLO Commitment to Peace with Israel

Here's the latest article by Sydney lawyer and international affairs analyst David Singer.

He writes:

The planned visit to the Middle East at the end of August by President Trump’s Senior Advisor Jared Kushner, Special Envoy for International Negotiations Jason Greenblatt and Deputy National Security Adviser for Strategy Dina Powell, presents a wonderful opportunity for them to test the commitment of the PLO and its leader Mahmoud Abbas to concluding a peace treaty with Israel.

Abbas needs to confirm or reject his following remarks reported on 11 January 2014:

“Referring to Israeli demands to recognize Israel as a Jewish state, Abbas said, “This is a story that we have heard only in the last two years. We won’t recognize and accept the Jewishness of Israel. We have many excuses and reasons that prevent us from doing so.” 

Abbas was speaking during a meeting in his office with dozens of east Jerusalem residents. Israel’s problem is that the Palestinians know more than the Israelis about history and geography, he said.

“We talk about what we know,” he said. “We won’t accept the Jewishness of Israel. We are asking for the 1967 borders.”

Abbas and the PLO should be asked to amplify these remarks by written responses to the following questions:

1. On the Jewishness of Israel:

What excuses and reasons do you have for refusing to recognize and accept the Jewishness of Israel?

2. On the history of Palestine:

Do you accept the historical accuracy of the following statements in Israel’s Declaration of Independence?

“The land of Israel was the birthplace of the Jewish people. Here their spiritual, religious and national identity was formed. Here they achieved independence and created a culture of national and universal significance. Here they wrote and gave the Bible to the world.

Exiled from Palestine, the Jewish people remained faithful to it in all the countries of their dispersion, never ceasing to pray and hope for their return and the restoration of their national freedom.”

3. On the geography of Palestine: 

I. Do you still claim that:

“Palestine, with the boundaries it had during the British Mandate, is an indivisible territorial unit.”

II. Did the boundaries of Palestine during the British Mandate encompass what is known today as Israel, Jordan, Judea and Samaria (West Bank) and Gaza?

III. Did 78 per cent of the British Mandate territory become the sovereign independent Arab State called ”The Hashemite Kingdom of Transjordan” in 1946?

4. On asking for the 1967 borders:

Are you aware that:

I. the “1967 borders” are in fact the “1949 Armistice Demarcation Lines” delineated under an agreement signed on 3 April 1949 between The Government of the Hashemite Jordan Kingdom and the Government of Israel (Armistice Agreement)

II. Article VI (9) of the Armistice Agreement provided:

“The Armistice Demarcation Lines defined in articles V and VI of this Agreement are agreed upon by the Parties without prejudice to future territorial settlements or boundary lines or to claims of either Party relating thereto”.

If Abbas and the PLO can’t provide satisfactory answers – then Trump will be wasting his time trying to jumpstart negotiations – stalled since April 2014 – between Israel and the PLO – since those negotiations will assuredly end up going nowhere like previous PLO – Israel negotiations conducted during the last 24 years. Jailed PLO terrorists and families of deceased terrorists still receive life-time payments for murdering Jews – rebuffing Trump’s demand they cease.

Trump has shown no compunction jettisoning poor performers like Reince Priebus, Sean Spicer, Anthony Scaramucci and Steve Bannon who failed to deliver.

Abbas and the PLO could suffer the same fate if they show no genuine commitment to resolving the Jewish-Arab conflict after 50 years of relentless rejectionism.

Colonel Kemp et al: Israel's Vital Defensible Borders (video)

"The Middle East is imploding in waves of violence whose impact has reached Israel.

To the north, radical Islamists in Syria linked to both the Islamic State and al-Qaeda are approaching Israel’s border on the Golan Heights and threatening Jordan as well. At the same time, Iran is sending thousands of rockets with increasingly accurate guidance systems to Hizbullah in Lebanon to again attack Israeli cities.

To the east, Israel faces an array of potential threats from hostile forces that include Iranian Revolutionary Guards, pro-Iranian Shi’ite militias, and radical Islamist terror armies.

To the south, the Islamic State is in Sinai, threatening both Israel and Egypt. At the same time, Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Gaza are working feverishly, with Iranian assistance, to rebuild their rocket capabilities to enable renewed attacks on Israel.

Israel must have defensible borders to protect itself against a broad range of current and future threats from radical Islamist forces."

A compelling video from the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, in which that doughty student of war and defender of Israel Colonel Richard Kemp features, inter alia:

David Singer: Obama Admits Defeat On Renewed Negotiations For Two-State Solution

Here is the latest article by Australian lawyer and international affairs analyst David Singer.  It is entitled "Palestine – Obama Admits Defeat On Renewed Negotiations For Two-State Solution".

Writes David Singer:

President Obama has finally admitted the death of any renewed negotiations for a two-state solution between Israel and the PLO for the next several years, telling the media on 24 March:

“there still does not appear to be a prospect of a meaningful framework established that would lead to a Palestinian state even if there were a whole range of conditions and security requirements that might be phased in over a long period of time -- which was always the presumption.”

President Obama has apparently accepted Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s contention that such negotiations are not possible whilst conflicts involving radical Islam rage in Syria, Iraq, Libya and Yemen.

President Obama had until now placed his faith in such negotiations:

“Now, I have said repeatedly that core issues can only be negotiated in direct talks between the parties.” 

The rise of Islamic State in June 2014 has created a new ballgame and new dynamic.

Islamic State’s possible spill-over into Gaza and the West Bank cannot be ignored by Obama when Israel is being requested by Obama to withdraw from part of the West Bank and cede part of its own sovereign territory to the PLO in accordance with President Obama’s vision enunciated in May 2011: 

“... the United States believes that negotiations should result in two states, with permanent Palestinian borders with Israel, Jordan, and Egypt, and permanent Israeli borders with Palestine. The borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps - so that secure and recognized borders are established for both states.” 

Abandoning territory – as Israel did in Gaza in 2005 – will require ironclad security guarantees.
President Obama’s pledge to degrade and destroy Islamic State is a work in progress that could take up to three years – as Secretary of State John Kerry openly admitted last September at a NATO Summit attended by President Obama and himself.

Six months later Kerry’s assessment has been thrown into serious doubt by Syria’s President Assad – who in a rare interview with 60 Minutes on 30 March declared: 

"Actually ISIS [Islamic State] has expanded since the beginning of strikes – not like some Americans want to sugar coat the situation - to say that it is getting better, ISIS [Islamic State] is being defeated and so-on. Actually No – they have more recruits. Suggested estimates say they have 1000 recruits every month in Syria and Iraq. They are expanding in Libya and many Al-Qaeda affiliated organisations have announced their allegiance to ISIS.” 

Israel cannot possibly be expected in these circumstances to negotiate with the PLO on establishing secure and recognized borders as stipulated by President Obama and Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338 – until Islamic State is finally degraded and destroyed.

President Obama has announced he is going back to the drawing board.

“the evaluation that’s taking place is specific to what happens between the Israelis and Palestinians going forward. We’ll continue to engage the Israeli government as well as the Palestinians, and ask them where they are interested in going and how do they see this issue being resolved. But what we can’t do is pretend that there’s a possibility of something that’s not there. And we can’t continue to premise our public diplomacy based on something that everybody knows is not going to happen at least in the next several years.” 

President Obama should – in such evaluation process – seriously explore the possibility of first demanding that President Mahmoud Abbas call presidential and parliamentary elections in Gaza and the West Bank – last held in 2005 and 2006 respectively.

Let democracy replace these repressive dictatorships. 

The Daphne Anson blog wishes all Jewish readers Chag Pesach Sameach, and all Christian readers a Happy Easter.

Obama ... Oy Vey!

This article by former US ambassador (2005-6) to the United Nations John Bolton has gone viral, and here's another that deserves a wide readership.

It concerns the Obama Administration's threat, following Bibi Netanyahu's return to power in Israel, to acquiesce in and even encourage recognition by the UN Security Council of a Palestinian State and the restriction of Israel to the pre-1967 lines.

Bolton writes in part:

'America’s consistent view since Council Resolution 242 concluded the 1967 Arab-Israeli war is that only the parties themselves can structure a lasting peace. Deviating from that formula would be a radical departure by Obama from a bipartisan Middle East policy nearly half a century old.

In fact, Israel’s “1967 borders” are basically only the 1949 cease-fire lines, but its critics shrink from admitting this tedious reality. The indeterminate status of Israel’s borders from its 1948 creation is in fact a powerful argument why only negotiation with relevant Arab parties can ultimately fix the lines with certainty. 

That is why Resolution 242’s “land for peace” formula, vague and elastic though it is, was acceptable to everyone in 1967: There were no hard and fast boundaries to fall back on, no longstanding historical precedents. Prior U.N. resolutions from the 1940s, for example, had all been overtaken by events. Only negotiation, if anything, could leave the parties content; externally imposed terms could only sow future conflicts. Hence, Resolution 242 does not call for a return to the prewar boundaries, but instead affirms the right of “every State in the area” to “secure and recognized boundaries.” Ignoring this fundamental reality is fantasy....

Obama is criticizing not just Netanyahu, but the very legitimacy of Israel’s democracy, giving an implicit green light to those prepared to act violently against it. ...

Whether one takes his or Netanyahu’s side, the administration’s approach is now squarely contrary to America’s larger strategic interests. And the global harm that will be done to common U.S. and Israeli interests through Security Council resolutions if Washington stands aside (or worse, joins in) will extend far beyond the terms of one prime minister and one president. ...'

See the entire article here

As Michael Comay, then Israel's ambassador to Britain, declared in 1970:

"The choice before us is not between victory and defeat, but between victory and annihilation.

 We therefore have not the slightest intention of allowing the re-creation of the conditions of vulnerability in which we found ourselves, abandoned and alone, in the summer of 1967."

Meanwhile:

David Singer: Palestine – Mapping The Truth Erases A Long-running Fiction

Here is the latest post by Sydney lawyer and international affairs analyst David Singer.

He writes:

As the accompanying map makes clear:

1. There was a 1950 armistice line that separated Israel from the Gaza Strip

2. There was a 1949 armistice line that separated Israel from the West Bank.

The use of dishonest and untruthful verbiage such as “boundaries” and “borders” has been a major factor in causing what now appears to have led to an irretrievable breakdown in negotiations between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) designed to create a second Arab State in former Palestine – in addition to Jordan.

Absent from this State Department map is there any mention of these aberrant terms.

Instead the map seeks to present an honest and accurate position of the current territorial relationship that exists between Israel, the West Bank (“Judea and Samaria”) and Gaza.

PLO propaganda – aided by sloppy media journalism – have been the drivers in introducing these false and misleading terms into the political diplomatic lexicon.

This campaign of deception and media indolence can at least be traced back to October 2007 – when USA Today under the headline  “Abbas wants return to pre 1967-borders” –  reported PLO Chairman Mahmoud Abbas telling Palestine TV: 

"We have 6,205 square kilometers in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. We want it as it is.”

There were four “small” problems confronting Abbas – that he was not prepared to recognise and USA Today to question or challenge:

1. There had never been any pre-1967 borders – only the 1949 and 1950 armistice lines.

2. Those armistice lines had been agreed between Jordan, Israel and Egypt – long before the PLO came into existence in 1964.

3. The PLO in 2007 at best still only “had” about 40 per cent of the West Bank it had obtained under the 1993 Oslo Accords. Israel “had” the other 60 per cent – also granted under the Oslo Accords.

4. The Jews had a better legal claim to “have” at least that part of the West Bank they had lived in prior to 1949 – before being driven out by six invading armies – as well as those areas defined as State lands and waste lands not required for public purposes as stipulated by article 6 of the Mandate for Palestine and article 80 of the United Nations Charter.

Undeterred by these roadblocks – Abbas continued making these misleading demands – with Islam On Line reporting the following statement by Abbas on 9 December 2009 under the headline “Abbas Names 1967 Borders as Precondition for Talks”:  

“We will renew negotiations if the settlements are completely halted and the 1967 borders recognized as the borders of the Palestinian state"

 The New York Times obligingly gave credence to Abbas’s claims on 19 May 2011 with a story under a banner headline 

“Obama sees ’67 borders as starting point for peace talks” 

followed by this misleading report accompanied by a supposedly accurate map showing the “Green Line Pre-1967 border”: 

“A day before the arrival in Washington of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, Mr. Obama declared that the prevailing borders before the 1967 Arab-Israeli war – adjusted to some degree to account for Israeli settlements in the West Bank  – should be the basis of a deal. While the 1967 borders have long been viewed as the foundation for a peace agreement, Mr. Obama’s formula of land swaps to compensate for disputed territory created a new benchmark for a diplomatic solution.”

Suitably emboldened with the New York Times unquestionably uttering the same nonsense as he was, Abbas sent a letter to the UN Secretary General dated 23 September 2011 applying for membership of the the UN.

Abbas – signing as “President of the State of Palestine [a non-existent legal entity – ed.], Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization”- brazenly repeated his earlier claims – this time seeking to implicate most of the international community in his fantasy. 

“Furthermore, the vast majority of the international community has stood in support of our inalienable rights as a people, including to statehood, by according bilateral recognition to the State of Palestine on the basis of the 4 June 1967 borders, with East Jerusalem as its capital, and the number of such recognitions continues to rise with each passing day.” 

 Abbas was at it again in 2012 – as BBC News reported him saying: 

"Palestine for me is the 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as the capital. This is Palestine"

With Abbas last week choosing the path of the United Nations and the International Criminal Court in preference to resuming negotiations with Israel – he surely has succumbed to his own propaganda and sown the seeds for his own fall from grace.

He has shown himself unwilling to be bound by the procedures laid out in the Oslo Accords, the Bush Roadmap and Security Council Resolution 242 – the internationally laid down parameters under which an end to the Jewish-Arab conflict was to be negotiated and resolved.

An opportunity could now be opening for negotiations between Israel, Egypt and Jordan - the parties to those 1949 and 1950 armistice lines – to try and transform them into lasting and permanent borders.

A little bit of intellectual honesty can go a long way.

David Singer: With The Republican Victory In The Mid-Term Elections, Obama Confronts An Embarrassing About Face Re Palestine

Here, entitled "Palestine – Obama Confronts Embarrassing About Face", is the latest article by Sydney lawyer and international affairs analyst David Singer.

He writes:

The Republican Party’s stunning victory in the American mid-term elections offers real hope that President Obama will now be held to honouring the written commitments made to Israel by President George W. Bush in his exchange of letters with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon on 12 April 2004 – as overwhelmingly endorsed by the House of Representatives 407:9 on 23 June 2004 and the Senate 95:3 the next day.

Those commitments were made in support of Israel’s decision to unilaterally disengage from Gaza – which Israel duly honoured in 2005 – when the Israeli Army and 8000 Israeli civilians left Gaza – many after living there for almost forty years.

That withdrawal brought Hamas to power in Gaza’s one and only election – which has since seen three wars, thousands of deaths and casualties, property destruction running into billions of dollars and 11,000 rockets being indiscriminately fired into Israeli civilian population centres.

Bush’s Congress-endorsed commitments assured Israel that the United States:

1. Would do its utmost to prevent any attempt by anyone to impose any other plan other than the Roadmap envisioned by President Bush on 24 June 2002.

2. Reiterated America’s steadfast commitment to Israel's security, including secure, defensible borders,

3. Was strongly committed to Israel's security and well-being as a Jewish state.

4. Understood that an agreed, just, fair and realistic framework for a solution to the Palestinian refugee issue as part of any final status agreement would need to be found through the establishment of a Palestinian state, and the settling of Palestinian refugees there, rather than in Israel.

5. Accepted as part of a final peace settlement that Israel must have secure and recognized borders, which should emerge from negotiations between the parties in accordance with UN Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338.

6. Acknowledged that in light of new realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli populations centers, it would be unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations would be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949, that all previous efforts to negotiate a two-state solution had reached the same conclusion.

President Obama and his administration sought to circumvent these clearly stated American pledges – thereby encouraging continuing Arab rejectionism of Israeli peace overtures whilst souring the American–Israeli longstanding relationship. Obama’s Secretary of State Hillary Clinton reportedly took the first steps to repudiate these commitments on 6 June 2009:

“Since coming to office in January, President Barack Obama has repeatedly called on Israel to halt all settlement activity in Palestinian areas, a demand rejected by the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The Israelis say they received commitments from the previous US administration of President George W. Bush permitting some growth in existing settlements.

They say the US position was laid out in a 2004 letter from Bush to then Israeli premier Ariel Sharon.

Clinton rejected that claim, saying any such US stance was informal and "did not become part of the official position of the United States government." 

Clinton – doubling as Obama’s attack dog – made Obama’s intentions clear when she stated on 25 November 2009

“We believe that through good-faith negotiations the parties can mutually agree on an outcome which ends the conflict and reconciles the Palestinian goal of an independent and viable state based on the 1967 lines, with agreed swaps, and the Israeli goal of a Jewish state with secure and recognized borders that reflect subsequent developments and meet Israeli security requirements.”

This blatant disregard for Bush’s written commitments – which had never mentioned land swaps – signalled trouble for Israel – if Obama ever confirmed Clinton’s statements.

Eighteen months later Israel’s worst fears were realised when President Obama declared on 19 May 2011:

“The borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps, so that secure and recognized borders are established for both states.”

Israel’s curt response came the same day:

Mr. Netanyahu said in a pointed statement just before boarding a plane to Washington that while he appreciated Mr. Obama’s commitment to peace, he

“expects to hear a reaffirmation from President Obama of American commitments made to Israel in 2004 which were overwhelmingly supported by both Houses of Congress.” 

Prior to Obama’s statement US presidents generally had steered clear of saying any negotiations should start on the 1967 lines.'

“It is clear, however, that a return to the situation of 4 June 1967 will not bring peace.

There must be secure and there must be recognized borders.”

— President Lyndon Johnson, September 1968

“In the pre-1967 borders, Israel was barely ten miles wide at its narrowest point. The bulk of Israel’s population lived within artillery range of hostile armies. I am not about to ask Israel to live that way again.”

— President Ronald Reagan, September 1, 1982

 “Israel will never negotiate from or return to the 1967 borders.”

— Secretary of State George Shultz, September 1988

These presidential statements were reiterating the personally expressed policy positions of those Presidents.

Bush’s commitments – so overwhelmingly endorsed by the Congress – are in an entirely different league.

With the Republicans now firmly back in control of both Houses – the President and Congress need to assure Israel – and indeed every other nation – that commitments jointly made by an American President and endorsed by an American Congress cannot be unilaterally revoked.

America’s honour and credibility – and any hope of ending the Jewish-Arab conflict – demand this happens very soon.

Why Israel Should Not Return To The 1967 Borders (video)

This is a splendid video, very worth watching. Indeed, it should be viewed by all inclined to demonise Israel, for as one tour guide says on camera "This is not what the western press wishes to depict".

Introduced by Tom Trento, the video features footage of two security checkpoints (Ramallah and TulKarm) and brief interviews with the IDF officers on duty at each.

The video shows how, in order to protect its population from terrorist violence, including sniper fire onto cars on a highway,  it is "a country fenced in".

In the words of interviewee Marc Kahlberg, who took part in the disengagement from Gaza that was undertaken in the vain expectation of peace,

"Anyone who says we need to go back to the 1967 border is making a strategical mistake".

Hat tip: reader Shirlee

Analyst David Singer On The Demise Of The Oslo Accords & The Way Forward

Sydney lawyer and international affairs analyst David Singer's latest thought-provoking article via the antipodean J-Wire service is entitled "Palestine –Bye, Bye Oslo, Hello Jordan and Egypt".

Writes David Singer:

'Veteran Middle East correspondent Robert Fisk may have been a little premature when he stated on 20 September:

"It’s over: the ‘peace process’, the ‘road map’, the ‘Oslo agreement’; the whole fandango is history.Personally, I think “Palestine” is a fantasy state, impossible to create now that the Israelis have stolen so much of the Arabs’ land for their colonial projects."

Fisk – in attributing this simplistic reason for signing Oslo’s death certificate – totally ignored the two offers made by Israel in 2001 and 2008 to cede its claims under the Mandate for Palestine and the United Nations Charter in more than 90%  of the land won from Jordan in the 1967 Six Day War.

The real reasons for Oslo’s demise are far deeper and more complex – revealing unbridgeable gaps between Israel and the PLO in reaching any agreement with regard to the following issues after failed on and off negotiations extending over the last 19 years:

Israel’s demands that

Israel be recognized as the Jewish State;

Any Palestinian State be demilitarized;

The final borders determined between it and a Palestinian State be secure and recognized boundaries as stipulated by United Nations Security Council  Resolutions 242 and 338

The PLO’s demands that

Israel cede its claims in 100% of the territory won from Jordan in the 1967 War – with possibly equivalent land swaps to negate the removal of Jews from their homes in the West Bank and East Jerusalem;

Israel agree to accept millions of Palestinian Arabs – and their descendants – who became refugees as a result of the 1948 War

Fisk’s prediction has however been given added weight with the news this week that  Hamas has agreed to join the PLO.

If this was to  actually occur Israel’s Prime Minister made his government’s position very clear when Israel Radio reportedly quoted him as saying that if Hamas joins the Palestinian government, he would refuse to conduct peace negotiations with the Palestinian Authority.

Little comfort can be taken from the news that the Palestinian Authority might now be prepared to resume the long stalled peace negotiations with Israel if it released 100 prisoners. The parties can talk till the cows come in. But after 19 fruitless years – can sufficient pressure be put on both sides to come to an agreement on all their outstanding demands?

The Oslo Accords – and the Palestinian Authority – were born amid great enthusiasm  in 1993.
The Chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee – Francis Sejersted – expressed  the following hopes of the Committee when awarding the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize jointly to Yasser Arafat, Shimon Peres and Yitzchak Rabin:

"In the committee’s view, the so-called Oslo Accords concluded last year between Israel and the PLO meant that developments in the Middle East had taken a new turning. What was revolutionary about them was the de facto mutual recognition by the two parties. Not least by virtue of that recognition, the accords opened up a possible way out of the vicious circle of violence breeding violence, and towards peaceful co-existence."

The Nobel Committee’s optimism was misplaced.

Yasser Arafat had signed a side letter dated 9 September 1993 – nine days prior to signing the Declaration of Principles in which he assured Yitzchak Rabin:

"The signing of the Declaration of Principles marks a new era…I would like to confirm the following PLO commitments: The PLO recognizes the right of the State of Israel to exist in peace and security. The PLO accepts United Nations Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338. The PLO commits itself…to a peaceful resolution of the conflict between the two sides and declares that all outstanding issues relating to permanent status will be resolved through negotiations…the PLO renounces the use of terrorism and other acts of violence and will assume responsibility over all PLO elements and personnel in order to assure their compliance, prevent violations and discipline violators…the PLO affirms that those articles of the Palestinian Covenant which deny Israel’s right to exist, and the provisions of the Covenant which are inconsistent with the commitments of this letter are now inoperative and no longer valid. Consequently, the PLO undertakes to submit to the Palestinian National Council for formal approval the necessary changes in regard to the Palestinian Covenant."

In breach of those commitments:-

The PLO Covenant still remains unchanged and unrevised in 2011.

The PLO has rejected the idea of Israel being entitled to secure and recognized borders as required under Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338

The PLO has unilaterally sought to gain statehood – not through negotiations – but by seeking recognition and admission to the United Nations and UNESCO.

The PLO is demanding pre-conditions for resuming the stalled negotiations with Israel.

Indeed one would be unable to find any improvement in the relationship between Israel and the PLO in 2011 to that which existed in 1994 when Mr Serjested declared:

The situation is still full of tension, marked by violence, killings, and insecurity, and stability is still far to seek

The PLO has been given its opportunity for the last 19 years to create a second Arab state in former Palestine – in addition to Jordan – but quite frankly has missed the boat.

Martin Sherman has summed up the current situation in these terms:

"For almost two decades after the Oslo Accords – despite massive financial aid and political support – they have produced nothing but a deeply divided entity, crippled by corruption and cronyism.

The result is a dysfunctional polity unable to conduct even the semblance of timely elections, and a puny economy, comprising a minuscule private sector and a bloated public one, totally unsustainable without massive infusions of foreign funds."

Sherman’s prescription to abandon Oslo and the two-state solution predicated by the Bush Roadmap is described by him as follows :

 "Since the geography is immutable, the focus must be on the demography.

 It is thus no more than “elementary” that the long-term preservation of the Jewish State must involve the relocation of the non-Israeli Arabs between the river and the sea. Any other option is self-deluded wishful thinking – or at least the burden of proof to show otherwise is on the proponents of such an option, especially in view of the post-Oslo/post-disengagement experiences."

I beg to differ.

Restoring the status quo at 4 June 1967 [i.e. the day before the Six Day War began] – as far as can now be done in direct negotiations between Israel and Jordan (and possibly Egypt) and within the framework of  Security Council resolutions 242 and 338 and their existing peace treaties – will involve no-one – Arab or Jew – having to leave his current home unless he voluntarily wishes to do so.

This is not self-deluded wishful thinking – but It will need some pressure by the Quartet – America, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations – to be placed on Jordan and Egypt to sit down and negotiate with Israel if they refuse to do so voluntarily. [My emphasis]

The alternative -continued  tension, violence, insecurity, killings and instability – cannot be allowed to deteriorate into an inevitable slide into open warfare.

To hope for anything else as we usher in 2012 is pure folly.'

Essential Viewing About The History Of The Israel-Arab Conflict (video)

Danny Ayalon, Israel's Deputy Foreign Minister, with a history lesson much needed that should be heeded:

Jackie Mason Speaks Out! (videos)

He may be a stand-up comedian, but Jackie Mason isn't jesting when he warns about the indefensibility of those 1967 lines:

A tad old for me, and my heart's already lost to Gene Simmons.  Still, Jackie is one helluva guy ...