Negotiations in the Middle East are at an impasse. What two former Israeli Prime Ministers have recognized -- that there can be no settlement in the Middle East as long as Israel claims all of Jerusalem -- has been rejected by Benjamin Netanyahu and his rightist cohort. Offers by Ehud Barak to Yasir Arafat, and later by Ehud Olmert to Mahmoud Abbas, of a Palestinian capital in East Jerusalem (both of which were declined), have now been taken off the table by Netanyahu. This is the impasse that has been created by Netanyahu's exclusion of East Jerusalem -- captured by the Israelis in the 1967 war -- in any settlement freeze. And the Palestinians on their part will not enter into "indirect" negotiations -- with George Mitchell as the go-between -- as long as all settlements are not frozen.
As Netanyahu put it in his speech to AIPAC last week, Jews were building in Jerusalem 3,000 years ago, and they are building in Jerusalem today. What happened in the interval, as during the seven regimes between the beginning of the Common era and 1948 is in effect brushed out, including that of the benighted (excuse the pun) Crusaders -- not to speak of the fact that nothing can match architecturally the Dome of the Rock and the Al-Aqsa Mosque, originally built by Muslims, respectively in the seventh and eighth centuries. How then can the Israelis claim all of Jerusalem for themselves?
How can Netanyahu get out of the impasse he has created, after years of careful fudging by U.S. and Israeli diplomacy? By what the French call a "fuite en avant." It is like preemption but not quite. It is "the acceleration of a (political) process judged necessary although dangerous." In other words, Netanyahu might seek to change the game, in order to transcend the current impasse. He can best do this by -- heaven forbid! -- attacking Iran. In the resulting turmoil, the whole dimension of the Middle East "peace process" would be altered. There would be no more talk of an "impasse," at least in the context as we know it. It would end all talk of settlements and East Jerusalem. It would also be disastrous for U.S. interests in the region, already undermined, as Gen. David Petraeus has pointed out, by Washington's longstanding and one-sided support for Israel.
I do not think, however, that Netanyahu and company are that desperate. Not yet.
Editor's Note: Dr. Charles Cogan was the chief of the Near East-South Asia Division in the Directorate of Operations of the CIA from August 1979 to August 1984. It was this Division that directed the covert action operation against the Soviets in Afghanistan. He is now a historian and an associate of the Belfer Center's International Security Program at Harvard University's Kennedy School.
1) Mahmood Abbas has refused to negotiate despite please from Netanyahu to come to the table
2) Both Fatah and Hamas refuse to recognize Israel's right to exist - even though it is a legitimate country recognized by the United Nations
3) The Arabs in Israel, and formely known as Palestine refused to take their own state that was offered to them in 1947, somehow had no interest in declaring themselves as a state when Jordan controlled the West Bank and Egypt controlled Gaza, have consistently turned down offers of statehood from successive Israeli prime ministers. They want a state only if there is no Israel.
This has nothing to do with homes for Jews in Jerusalem and has everything to do with Arab genocidal intentions towards the Jews in Israel.
I would need a lot more information than that provided to consider this idea less than insane. As of today, Iran does not have a nuclear weapon and does not pose a direct threat to Israel.
The last time someone launched a major military assault against a country that was only "suspected" of WMD... Oh wait, that was George Bush and didn't that work out well for everyone.
Thanks for (inadvertently?) admitting the real impasse was created when twice the Palestinians rejected the offer of East Jerusalem; did you put it in parentheses so you hoped we wouldn't notice? When an offer is rejected twice, taking it off the negotiating table is standard procedure; it indicates an impasse which by definition was created by the rejection, not by the withdrawl after the rejection.
A little more detail, please.
Would you please spell out Netanyahu's bright, peaceful, secure vision that would stop him from gambling the country's existence on the 50/50 outcome of the WWIII given his antipathy towards the region's natives.
The United States should propose a solution that offers Israel an opportunity to join NATO and to be protected under the NATO unbrella with a NATO based situated in Israel, in exchange for a return of the occupied territiories as mandated by the U.N. security council resolution.
This way Israel's security needs could be met, Palistinian land needs could be met, and NATO could act as a buffer between the two taking over border controls and goods inspections into Gaza.
Isn't that a lot more sensible that starting another never ending war?
By the way, feel free to confirm that here:
http://www.un.org/en/peacekeeping/contributors/
The UN has become a disfunctional organization that gives equal voice to any petty dictator and contains a block of 80 or so Moslem countries whose sole position seems to be anit-Israel resolutions.