Far Right in Israel Sabotages Obama's Two-State Solution, But Possible Prisoner Release Offers Hope (Maybe)
The news that right-wing parties are forming a coalition likely dooms the prospects for Mideast peace any time soon, complete with a continuation of building and expanding of disputed settlements on the West Bank. As Daily Beast International Editor Salameh Nematt warned in January, and Reuters reports today:
Far-right leader Avigdor Lieberman would become Israel's foreign minister if an outline coalition pact with Prime Minister-designate Benjamin Netanyahu goes into effect, a spokeswoman for Lieberman said on Monday.
Netanyahu's deal with the Yisrael Beitenu Party, initialed by the parties late on Sunday, was his first step to forging a right-wing government that could be on a collision course with the Obama administration's goals of seeking a Palestinian state.
This move, in turn, helped undercut any unity talks between the elected extremist Hamas party now dominant in the Palestinian government and Fatah, the relatively more open-to-negotiation faction:
Hamas officials said over the weekend that the Egyptian-sponsored reconciliation talks with Fatah have failed to produce agreement over the establishment of a Palestinian "unity government." Salah Bardaweel, a Hamas negotiator and legislator, held Fatah responsible for the failure.
He said that Fatah's demand that the new government abide by all previous agreements that were signed between Israel and the Palestinians was the main reason behind the collapse of the talks...Bardaweel said that the Hamas negotiators were surprised when their Fatah counterparts told them that there would be no "unity government" unless it accepted the Oslo Accords and recognized Israel's right to exist.
"This is their way of foiling the talks," he charged. "They set impossible conditions."
Recognizing Israel's right to exist is apparently an insurmountable obstacle for Hamas. Similarly, scaling back on the Israeli settlements or recognizing the rights of Palestinians for self-determination are equally anathema to the right-wingers in charge of Israel now.
Mideast analyst and journalist, Salameh Nematt, the International Editor of the Daily Beast, predicted these pitfalls last year in a column on Hillary Clinton's challenges, her "Gaza problem," and more recently as a guest on the Web radio show I co-host. Strikingly, in mid-January, besides outlining all the complications arising from the attacks on Gaza, he pointed to a possible way out to achieve unity among Palestinians: back-channel talks that were then starting to seek the release of a controversial Palestinian activist, Marwan Barghouti, now in Israeli prison for four life sentences for his role in the Intifada.
(Earlier this week, though, Israel said stubborness by Hamas over prisoners had led to an impasse, making the release of Barghouti and numerous other Palestinian prisoners in exchange for an Israeli soldier less likely.)
Bargouti's admirers call him the "Palestinian Mandela," and while many in Israel view him as just a terrorist, he'd have the potential to form a unity government willing to negotiate with Israel. As the Toronto Star reported last week :
RAMALLAH, West Bank - The man most Palestinians would choose as their new leader -- if they could -- is a gifted grassroots politician, fluent in three languages, who's currently behind bars.
But Marwan Barghouti could experience a swift change of address if a pending deal goes ahead to release hundreds of Palestinians from Israeli-run jails in exchange for an Israeli soldier taken hostage by armed militants from the Gaza Strip nearly three years ago.The swap might take place within the next few weeks and could have a profound impact on the future of Middle Eastern politics if it entails freedom for the man some refer to as the Nelson Mandela of Palestine.
"The negotiations are more secretive than before," a Barghouti advocate, Sa'd Nimr, told the Star in an interview yesterday. "I hope this is a positive sign."
Director of the Palestinian campaign to free Barghouti, Nimr has been following every twist and turn of ongoing, indirect negotiations in Cairo aimed at securing the release of Sgt. Gilad Schalit, 22, an Israeli soldier being held captive in the Gaza Strip.
Freedom for the Israeli soldier would almost certainly entail liberation for Barghouti, who speaks Arabic, English and Hebrew and is seen as a champion of honest and democratic rule in a society that has known few truly honest or democratic rulers.
As revered among Palestinians as he is reviled by many Israelis, Barghouti remains popular despite having spent the past seven years in prison, following his arrest in 2002. Two years later, an Israeli court convicted him of having masterminded the deaths of five civilians.
But even Barghouti's release can't end the Israeli-Palestinian logjam if the Israeli right wingers now headed to power still hold fast to their hard-line views. And the biggest stumbling block, Nematt and other experts point out, is the Israeli building of settlements, a violation of international law and a UN Security Council resolution. 60 Minutes had a powerful exploration recently of the impact these settlements have on Palestinians and the Mideast peace process. Without U.S. pressure on Israel to end the building of settlements, there's not likely to be much progress on peace, no matter how talented Special Envoy George Mitchell may be. "You [Israel] can't negotiate over the settlements while you're still building the settlements," Nematt says.
Here's how it plays out in the territories now. Keep these settlements in mind as the crisis in the Mideast no doubt worsens in the next few months:
Alon Ben-Meir: The Palestinians at a Pivotal Crossroads
President Obama's push for a solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict has given the Palestinians an historic opportunity to end their disastrous state of affairs.
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My understanding is that about 1/3rd of the US foreign aid budget goes to Israel. Cutting this in half or more could be justified by the current financial crisis, and it would have the benefit of advancing the peace process by denying Israel cheap and easy funds that they can use for expanding the settlements or buying war material and ordinance.
That would mean 2/3's of US foreign aid goes to Egypt and Israel, a statistic I cannot believe. Egypt, in case you didn't know, gets about the same amount of US aid as Israel, yet receives nothing in return.
From what I can tell:
Israel=2.58 Billion
Egypt=1.84 BIllion
Sources: USAID and the Department of State 2005
The goal of the US must now become ending the settlments before anything else. They are morally corrupt and strategically of no value. In fact they needlessly inspire terrorism against Both Israel and the US.
Groups ranging from the Iraq study group to the head of the CIAs bin laden unit have recognized that the settlements are a key inspiration of terror against both Israel AND the US, and that they played a not insignificant role in helping to inspire funding, backing and recruiting for 9/11.
It will only be AFTER the ongoing act of war that the existance and violently enforced growth of the settlements constitutes is put to an end that peace can be achieved. Without that, the current "peace" process is really better called the settlements expansion process, because it only has ever acheived larger settlements and more terror for the US and Israel over the last 4 decades.
In 1967 the Jordanian army invaded Israel and was driven back. IN the course of defending Israel the IDF was able to capture the West Bank and to free sall of Jerusalem. Until that took place Jews were prohibited from wroshipping at our holiest sites. Now, under Israeli rule, all religions are respected and given access to their sites for worship. Plus, Jerusalem is the capital of Israel and should not be given up.
In 1973 Israel would ahve been cut in half and destroyed without the strategic depth provided by the West Bank and the Golan.It makes no sense for Israel to give up this necessary space.
If Arabs want peace there is something each Arab nation needs to do. Accept israel and our right to exist.
Lieberman is unacceptable as a choice of prime minister. Just like Europe told Austria that it was unacceptable to have a neo-fascist in power in that country, the US and the world needs to let Israel know that a McCarthy style racist is not the right choice and it will have repercussions.
Only deep into the article did he even mention that Hamas and Fatah have NOT reconciled! THAT is just as big a blockade to a 2-state solution as anything else...but it's better to bash Israel in the headline....right??? You folks have no shame!! As Hamas does not recognize Israel's existence....uh...isn't THAT an impediment to a two-state solution??
What rights of Palestinians does Israel recognize?
Israel gave up any rights to Gaza and allows them to be ruled by a gang of cowards. Hamas attacks Israel and the IDF is obligated to respond. If Hamas would act responsibly Israel would forget about Gaza.
We used to have the misimpression that Israel was building settlements to exchange land for peace. "Land for Peace." That was the construct. No longer the case, Israel has shown that it is interested in land, period.
Israel won all the land in wars with the Arabs...Why should it give any of it back...since that land is from where the Arabs attacked Israel in the past??? Why give the Arabs a "do-over"??? That would be foolish on the part of the Israelis!
Arafat was offered land for peace in 2000. He would have gotten 97% of what he sought....he turned it down... and began an intifada, instead!!
Israel has given up the vasy majority of the land gained as a result of the 1967 war.
The two-state solution is dead.
It died along with Yitzahk Rabin.
The bombing of Lebanon, resulting in a de facto defeat for the IDF, poured cement into the grave, because it showed that victory over Israel is possible, that it's not invincible. Hope is more dangerous than atom bombs.
The continued building of settlements, which it would take a civil war won by Israeli moderates to un-do, makes a viable Palestinian state impossible. The two peoples are now thoroughly intermixed on the West Bank.
Israel's new Ghetto Wall, in addition to furnishing one of history's greatest ironies, will solve nothing. A dwindling, steadily older Jewish population hemmed in and running an apartheid state over an ever increasing Palestinian population.
The recent Gaza incursion merely adds an exclamation point. Faced with the ineffectiveness of bombing the Palestinians, israel repeats the action. And probably more is coming from the new government. This is a policy with only one exit -- an exit from the area like the Crusader states to which Israel is often compared.
The only way out of this is a single democratic state that embraces both peoples. If the South Africans can do it, so can the Israelis and Palestinians.
Gee...you FORGOT to mention the continued rocket fire into Israel over the past 4 years...or the FACT Hamas and the PLO still will NOT recognize Israel's existence as impediments to peace??? Just an honest mistake, I guess??? The Arabs want a one-state solution....Palestine without Israel...just like their kids' schoolbooks show as the "real" map of the area!!!
I guess I'm just a victim of my perceptions of what constitutes a peoples' war.
For example, North Vietnam and the Viet Cong refused to recognize the legitimacy of the South Vietnamese stooge state imposed by the US after France cleared out. I, along with lots of other Americans, supported the indigenous people there against our neo-colonial imposition.
That make it clear for you? As long as their land is occupied, their relatives and countrymen are exiled and they are governed by an apartheid state, the Palestinians have the right to use force to liberate themselves. In exactly the same way as the Polish residents of Warsaw were entitled to take up arms against the "legitimate" government imposed by Germany.
Of course, the pathetic rockets they have been firing for the last 4 years are wildly inaccurate and have caused few casualties. The israelis responded by killing over a thousand people and still maintain a blockade that constitutes illegal collective punishment.
Frankly, I hope the Palestinians can get their hands on much more accurate rockets and anti-aircraft weapons, Then they can precisely target valid military targets -- tanks, airfields, the nuclear site at Dimona -- rather than hitting civilians. Attacking civilians is counterproductive and only stiffens resistance -- a lesson israel has yet to absorb.
OY VAY,ARVAY!!! Stop blaming only the Israeli Jews...you sound like Skialethia and chaos4700!!
The central fact in this situation and the origin of the problem is the insertion of this alien "nation" without the consent of its indigenous population, subsequent ethnic cleansing by the Israelis thats resulted in hundreds of thousands of refugees and the imposition of an apartheid state. And let's not forget the irrational bombing of Lebanon and Gaza, the ongoing settlements in clear violation of US policy, the introduction of destabilizing nuclear weapons into the area - - - all of which have earned the US the enmity of some one billion people - - -
Is that enough for you, or should I continue?
And what, precisely, would be wrong with a single democratic state with equal rights for all?
Israel is incapable of this.
arvay - I agree
The two state solution is history.
Demographics will turn Israel into a Muslim, Jewish, and Christian state.
The CIA predicts it will happen within 20 years.
Just saw that. In historical terms, 20 years is nothing.
Well said.
:-)
Not reeally, a two-state solution has been in existence since 1922. The Mandate authorities took over 70% of the proposed Jewish Homeland to create Transjordan as a gift to the Hashemite kingdom and fdor those Arabs unwilling to live among the Jews.
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