You have to be grateful to the Palestinians for saving Israel from Ehud Olmert:
Speaking to the BBC’s Hard Talk program, which will be broadcast Monday, Olmert said he offered the Palestinians the best deal they were ever and will ever be given. He lamented that the Palestinians rejected the deal, which he said would have been implemented despite the corruption charges that forced him out of office, for which he will stand trial beginning on Friday…
Olmert confirmed that he had offered the Palestinians land amounting to 100 percent of the West Bank – which would have been composed of 93 to 94% of West Bank land and the rest made up by territory from pre-1967 Israel – the return of more than a thousand Palestinian refugees to Israel’s final borders, and the internationalization of Jerusalem under Israeli, Palestinian, American, Jordanian and Saudi Arabian administration.
He said that had the Palestinians accepted the offer, the international community would have immediately endorsed it, and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu would not have been elected.
I don’t think the full details of Olmert’s offer have been made public, but what he said to the BBC is shocking.
Would Olmert have transferred much of the West Bank to the Palestinian Authority (PA) while Hamas continued to control Gaza? What guarantee would there be — could there be — that Hamas would not not take over the PA, too?
How would the return of even one ‘refugee’ be justified? Would Israel accept the ‘right of return’ in principle but limit it in practice? Mahmoud Abbas suggested that this indeed was the proposal. In that case, Israel would have accepted the Palestinian version of history, in which Israel, born in sin, bears the guilt for the refugees’ condition.
But the ‘best’ part of the plan is to give Israel’s most implacable enemy in the Middle East, the corrupt and fanatical Saudi monarchy, a part in the administration of Jerusalem. Should this medieval kingdom, which gained control of the holy cities of Islam by aggression and conquest, now be given authority over the holy city of Christians and Jews?
Would parts of Jerusalem be off-limits to Jews and female drivers?
Considering that in recent history only one administration, that of Israel, has allowed all faiths access to their holy sites in Jerusalem, and that Arab control has been racist and vandalistic — and I refer not only to the Jordanian occupation in which synagogues were made into stables and latrines, but to the present behavior of the Waqf — why do we need to internationalize Israel’s capital?
The capital city of Germany was divided in 1945, after Hitler caused the most destructive war in history. What has Israel done, except be a Jewish state that has so far survived 61 years of continuous struggle against those who want to snuff it out, to deserve similar treatment?
The crazy Palestinian demands — which even Olmert’s proposal did not satisfy — are made by the PA, more or less identical with the PLO — a gang of terrorists that was stupidly given international legitimacy in 1993, who have contributed nothing to civilization except the popularity of terrorism as a political tool.
Why does anyone take them seriously? Why the rush to appease the unappeasable?
The answer to that, of course is that they are backed by the wealth and influence of Saudi Arabia, the hypocritical antisemitism of Europe and the US State Department, and — increasingly — by the rockets of Iran.
But one wants a real solution, which will provide for the aspirations of the Palestinians without dismembering Israel, it will have to be found by looking in a different direction, away from the PLO, as this comment on the previous post suggests.
Technorati Tags: Israeli-Arab conflict, Olmert, Israel, Palestinians
Olmert discredited by the Lebanon War had no authority and power to negotiate at the time he did negotiate. His ‘generosity’ involved his clear- cut breaking of promises he had long made both to the people of Jerusalem and to the people of Israel as a whole.
The damage of his concessions is that the Americans talk about re- starting negotiations from the point they were left off. Well even that Abbas is not ready to do with Netanyahu.
In any case Olmert’s behavior in these negotiations was unprincipled.
Here’s an example of how he broke promises. In March 2007, I wrote this post
http://fresnozionism.org/2007/03/olmert-has-it-exactly-right/
in which Olmert was quoted in an interview with the Jerusalem Post as follows:
JP: Do you accept the Clinton parameters from 2000 on the refugees?
EO: No. I will not agree to accept any kind of Israeli responsibility for the refugees. Full stop. It’s a moral issue. It’s a moral issue of the highest standard. I don’t think that we should accept any kind of responsibility for the creation of this problem. Full stop.
JP: What role should or could we play in solving the refugee problem? What solution is acceptable? Would you rule out…?
EO: …Any refugee coming to Israel. Full stop. Out of the question.
JP: Not for family reunification?
EO: Are you talking about family reunification, or are you talking about a solution for the refugees? Refugees, no way. Family reunification we have now to some degree. Even now it’s becoming more of a problem than a solution. But this is not the solution to the refugee problem. And I’ll never accept a solution that is based on their return to Israel, any number.
JP: Our understanding of the Clinton parameters was that it involved a certain recognition by Israel, in principle, of a right to return, but that Israel would have the sovereign right to deny them a return. That was accepted by the Barak government. Is that acceptable to you?
EO: No.