Dead-End Settlement (Extract)

By EHUD YA’ARI
Extract from an article in Issue 14, October 27, 2008 of The Jerusalem Report. To subscribe to The Jerusalem Report click here. Outgoing prime minister Ehud Olmert seems to think Israelis want nothing more than to hear him tell them what his political legacy is - in the breaks between his interrogations by the police, that is. On the eve of Rosh Hashana, he did it yet again, this time in an interview in Israel's largest daily, Yedioth Ahronoth. Israel, he told the paper, must contract, more or less, to the borders of June 4, 1967, in order to reach a peace treaty with the Palestinians - a treaty which, by the way, it is by no means clear they can or even wish to implement. With typically arrogant irresponsibility, Olmert became the first prime minister to pride himself on publicly saying these things. And while Olmert, the corruption-tainted political hack, adorns himself with the feathers of a far-seeing statesman, everyone who hears his statements seizes the opportunity to gain whatever they can from them. It turns out that President Bush promised Palestinian Authority President Mahmud Abbas, when the two met in the White House on September 25, that there will be no retreat from anything that has already been achieved in the talks with Olmert, and that in no event will the Palestinians be blamed for the failure - as expected - of the attempt to reach a permanent-status agreement by the end of 2008. The import is clear: What Olmert promised the impotent Abbas, at the height of the Israeli premier's exposure to fire from the police and the prosecution, is liable to become the starting point for the next round of negotiations with regard, for example, to both concessions in Jerusalem and the exchange of some 1 percent of West Bank territory. Olmert had no worthy political reason for handing his adversaries his corrected and updated doctrine, which only served to satisfy his wish to appear as a man who carries a valuable message and not only envelopes stuffed with cash. From the moment that it became clear to him that the Palestinians weren't ready to reach an agreed draft agreement with him, his duty was to leave the conduct of the negotiations up to the incoming government. Instead, he chose to shackle his successors. Olmert deserves no gratitude for this unsolicited confession. As if the damage he wrought during his term was not enough, he now finds it necessary to compound it. What a pity. These angry lines are written by someone who has a general personal liking for Olmert, whatever our political disagreements. The anger stems from the fact that while slamming doors shut, he is continuing to call for the elusive comprehensive solution. On the other side, the voices that think otherwise are multiplying. We should be listening to them. In my previous column, I described the extent to which the Palestinians are agonizing over the next phase in the conflict and that, in all their deliberations, their point of departure is the anticipated dead-end in the permanent-status talks. We should recall that one of the Palestinian working papers drawn up recently effectively proposes a long-term hudna (truce), similar to the one currently in force between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip, but with the Palestinian Authority instead. Support for a comprehensive settlement that is less than peace is growing rapidly, particularly in intellectual circles. Longtime readers will recall that more than once, this column has called for an armistice regime anchored in the establishment of a Palestinian state in non-final borders. This is the only approach that offers long-term stability and a way to stem the Palestinian flight from the two-state solution, without succumbing to the inability to reach agreed solutions on the core issues of the conflict. Proposals such as the one put forward by former national security adviser Maj. Gen. (res.) Giora Eiland in a policy paper published recently by the Washington Institute, are simply non-starters, for the simple reason that Jordan will not agree to resume responsibility for the Palestinians and Egypt will not agree to his idea of a settlement based on the expansion of the Gaza Strip into northern Sinai in exchange for territorial compensation in the Negev. Eiland deserves praise for grasping that there's no point in trying to formulate a permanent settlement, but regrettably his prescriptions won't work. Extract from an article in Issue 14, October 27, 2008 of The Jerusalem Report. To subscribe to The Jerusalem Report click here.