No, Ed, I'm afraid that we cannot join to "condemn the Zionists for not moving toward a solution", or agree on any other type of bothsidesism, unless you can come up with a plausible explanation for this timeline:
-- 1948 United Nations Partition Plan, accepted by "the Zionists", rejected by the Palestinian leadership in the name of the P…
No, Ed, I'm afraid that we cannot join to "condemn the Zionists for not moving toward a solution", or agree on any other type of bothsidesism, unless you can come up with a plausible explanation for this timeline:
-- 1948 United Nations Partition Plan, accepted by "the Zionists", rejected by the Palestinian leadership in the name of the Palestinians;
-- 1979 Egypt-Israel peace negotiations offered the Palestinians autonomy, which would almost certainly have led to full independence. Rejected by the Palestinian leadership in the name of the Palestinians;
-- The Oslo agreements of the 1990s laid out a path for Palestinian independence, but the process was derailed by terrorism.
-- 2000, Prime Minister Ehud Barak offered to create a Palestinian state in all of Gaza and 97 percent of the West Bank. Rejected by the Palestinian leadership in the name of the Palestinians;
-- 2008, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert offered to withdraw from almost the entire West Bank and partition Jerusalem on a demographic basis. Rejected by the Palestinian leadership in the name of the Palestinians;
In the immortal words of Abba Eban, "The Palestinians have never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity. And I only mention without further description the anti-Semitic and pro-Nazi machinations of Mohammed Amin al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and Palestinian leader, through the entire pre-World War II and immediate post-war period.
I don't think that it's possible any longer for the Israelis and Palestinians to live side by side in peace in the way that normal states, even hostile normal states, do, not for decades, anyway. I believe that what must happen after Hamas is utterly destroyed is for Israel to be required to remove all settlements from the West Bank (they should never have been permitted in the first place), and for Israel, basically behind the pre-1967 Lines of Control with some adjustments at Jerusalem, and a demilitarized but sovereign Palestine, consisting of the West Bank and Gaza, to live side by side with each open to the world but hermetically sealed off from each other, as East and West Germany were at the height of the Cold War. The arrangements for connection between Gaza and the West Bank should be much the same as those that subsisted between West Germany and West Berlin: an internationally guaranteed highway and rail connection and an internationally guaranteed air corridor, with the land connections subject to Israeli monitoring. I would look to the Arab World, particularly the Gulf States and Saudi Arabia, to do the main heavy lifting on the rebuilding and economic recovery of Palestine, perhaps with some US support. Palestine could administer any "Right of Return" as it sees fit, on the understanding that all "Returns" will be strictly to the Palestinian State as defined above.
I fully realize that this is not a recipe for a "cold peace". It's more like a recipe for a "frozen peace". But at least it WILL be a peace, and by forcing the two states to ignore each other, it will allow them to develop their ties to the rest of the world unhindered.
No, Ed, I'm afraid that we cannot join to "condemn the Zionists for not moving toward a solution", or agree on any other type of bothsidesism, unless you can come up with a plausible explanation for this timeline:
-- 1948 United Nations Partition Plan, accepted by "the Zionists", rejected by the Palestinian leadership in the name of the Palestinians;
-- 1979 Egypt-Israel peace negotiations offered the Palestinians autonomy, which would almost certainly have led to full independence. Rejected by the Palestinian leadership in the name of the Palestinians;
-- The Oslo agreements of the 1990s laid out a path for Palestinian independence, but the process was derailed by terrorism.
-- 2000, Prime Minister Ehud Barak offered to create a Palestinian state in all of Gaza and 97 percent of the West Bank. Rejected by the Palestinian leadership in the name of the Palestinians;
-- 2008, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert offered to withdraw from almost the entire West Bank and partition Jerusalem on a demographic basis. Rejected by the Palestinian leadership in the name of the Palestinians;
In the immortal words of Abba Eban, "The Palestinians have never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity. And I only mention without further description the anti-Semitic and pro-Nazi machinations of Mohammed Amin al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and Palestinian leader, through the entire pre-World War II and immediate post-war period.
I don't think that it's possible any longer for the Israelis and Palestinians to live side by side in peace in the way that normal states, even hostile normal states, do, not for decades, anyway. I believe that what must happen after Hamas is utterly destroyed is for Israel to be required to remove all settlements from the West Bank (they should never have been permitted in the first place), and for Israel, basically behind the pre-1967 Lines of Control with some adjustments at Jerusalem, and a demilitarized but sovereign Palestine, consisting of the West Bank and Gaza, to live side by side with each open to the world but hermetically sealed off from each other, as East and West Germany were at the height of the Cold War. The arrangements for connection between Gaza and the West Bank should be much the same as those that subsisted between West Germany and West Berlin: an internationally guaranteed highway and rail connection and an internationally guaranteed air corridor, with the land connections subject to Israeli monitoring. I would look to the Arab World, particularly the Gulf States and Saudi Arabia, to do the main heavy lifting on the rebuilding and economic recovery of Palestine, perhaps with some US support. Palestine could administer any "Right of Return" as it sees fit, on the understanding that all "Returns" will be strictly to the Palestinian State as defined above.
I fully realize that this is not a recipe for a "cold peace". It's more like a recipe for a "frozen peace". But at least it WILL be a peace, and by forcing the two states to ignore each other, it will allow them to develop their ties to the rest of the world unhindered.