Israel and the US

[Stavros]

Olmert: Abbas never responded to my peace offer

Former prime minister Ehud Olmert said Sunday that during his tenure he offered Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas an unprecedented peace offer, based on a return to the 1967 borders and a fair demographic land arrangement which would see heavily Jewish areas in the West Bank remain under Israeli control.
"I offered a land swap, I offered a solution for Jerusalem, where the Jewish part would remain under Israeli authority and the Arab sections would be given to the jurisdiction of a Palestinian state,"

http://www.haaretz.com/news/olmert-a...offer-1.263328

One of the curious aspects of these old stories is that they are always concerned to promote the belief that Israel has been willing to 'negotiate' with 'the Palestinians' but that, to quote Abba Eban of yesteryear The Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity -except Eban forgot to add the crucial end to his quip -The Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity to give Israel what it wants.

Condoleeza Rice mentioned this chestnut in her memoirs, noting at the same time that Tzipi Livni who successfully ousted Olmert from the leadership of Kadima (Olmert has been bogged down in corruption trials having been found gulty in one with another yet to complete) was placed in charge of negotiations even though Olmert “admitted that she didn’t know the issues as well but she came up to speed very quickly.” Rice herself demonstrated her firm grasp of foreign policy by suggesting Palestinian refugees could be re-located to Argentina and Chile (presumably with the full support of those states)....

In the event, the meetings, I believe there were three, were mostly informal dinners, at one of which Olmert offered Abbas
-shared sovereignty of Jerusalem with leadership based on a numerical majority -which, given the extensive boundaries of Jerusalem is pre-designed to give Israel a permanent majority, although the Palestinians would have the post of Deputy Mayor (Shukran). It isn't clear to me if Jerusalem as a result would be an 'open city', whatever the intention might have been.
-no absolute right of return for Palestinian refugess, but 1,000 would be allowed for five years, ie 5,000 (Shukran).
-a territorial solution to the Occupation of the West Bank, with Israel claiming 6.4% of the territory occupied since 1967, with 'safe passage' from the West Bank to Gaza possibly via a tunnel but not a road; the key point is that Olmert showed Abbas a map of what the Israel and Palestinian state would look like, but this was not for negotiation at all, it was a final take it or leave it offer, and Olmert would only allow Abbas to take the map away if he signed it first.

There are other versions with more or less detail, but it seems that Olmert's concept of negotiation is that you present your opponent with a plan over an infirmal dinner, not in a formal setting, and moreover, one that on a key feature of any future settlement, is non-negotiable!

Abbas was being asked to sign something that would have tied him in to something more formal, without having the opportunity to discuss it with his own people, without the opportunity -some might even say, the Right- to make a counter-offer, for example, on settlements and settlers. No, not a bit of it.

Shortly after these talks Olmert was out of office, and once Netanyahu entered it, the talks and the proposals were instantly scrapped, no surprise there.

When someone can offer a serious process of negotiations which are not fixed in advance to privilege the Israeli position, who knows, real talks might even take place.

Article on Rice's memoirs here:
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Ne...4#.UL4WNoaa8YI

Another version of what really happened is here:
http://daledamos.blogspot.co.uk/2011...-claim-he.html

A detailed version from al-Jazeera's Transparency Unit here
http://transparency.aljazeera.net/en...046718794.html

[greyman]

Harkabi, then the head of Israeli Military Intelligence was very clear about how Israel should approach negotiations. It is an old quote but still relevant:-

" We must define our position and lay down basic principles for a settlement. Our demands should be moderate and balanced, and appear to be reasonable. But in fact they must involve such conditions as to ensure that the enemy rejects them. Then we should manoeuvre and allow him to define his own position, and reject a settlement on the basis of a compromise position. We should then publish his demands as embodying unreasonable extremism."
(Yehoshafat Harkabi, 2 November 1973)

The whole aim of Zionism included the expulsion of all Arabs from Greater Israel.

"Between ourselves it must be clear that there is no room for both peoples together in this country. We shall not achieve our goal if the Arabs are in this small country. There is no other way than to transfer the Arabs from here to neighboring countries - all of them. Not one village, not one tribe should be left."
Joseph Weitz, head of the Jewish Agency's Colonization Department in 1940.

The only possible conclusion is that Israel has been avoiding peace for all of its existence, and that continues today.

[Stavros]

I am not sure this is true, the first generation of Israeli leaders may have been more liable to international pressure and to take what they had, the weakness of the Palestinian leadership in the 1940s was crucial to the failure to establish any forward movement at the time -to understand this you would have to trace the development of politics among Palestinians in the 19th century, because although there was a growing class of merchants on the coast, in Jaffa and Haifa, and internally at Hebron and particularly in Nablus, Palestinian society was fractured by regional, clan/tribal, economic and religious differences which others exploited. The introduction of British rule in 1918 consolidated the position of emerging merchants in Nablus but undermined the growth of others, complicated by the immigration pattern of European Jews, land sales whose sigificance at the time was not fully known -with the Zionists fighting the British and the Arabs, the Arabs fighting the British and the Zionists, with divisions within the Zionist camp -socialists -vs- Revisionists, and within the Palestinians also the absence of any political representation of depth and meaning left the Palestinians high and dry in 1948 when the Jordanians invaded from the east, as Palestinians were forced at gunpoint from their homes in the west. Between the end of the war and the Rhodes Armistice of 1949 there might have been a consolidation, but it never happened. Moshe Sharett was the kind of Israeli leader who might have reached out to the Palestinians but he was sidelined by the Lavon Affair int he 1950s. In addition, the Hashemite obsession with Jerusalem and the effective annexation of the West Bank further undermined Palestinian representation and thus the voices of many Palestinians were either ignored or 'bought' through the grace and favour system in Amman which traded security for the freedom of the merchants to grow their businesses and support for the King. One way or another, the constant interference of outsiders in a weak Palestinian polity meant it failed to emerge with any stength of collective identity capable of negotiating on an equal footing with the Israelis -who exploited this weakness and division and have done so since, noting with glee the rift between the West Bank 'stay behinds' and those mostly in Fateh and other minority groups who never really lived there anyway -but the fundamental weakness of Israel's position is that the occupation of the West Bank is and will remain a security nightmare, a demographic migraine, but cannot be solvedf through wholesale transfers of population -where are the Palestinians going to go? And perhaps someone could point out that the Christian churches and their congregations have been living on the West Bank now for over a thousand years, doesn't that count at all?

[yosi]

Hamas to Obama: We Won't Recognize Israel

(CNSNews.com) – “The U.S. administration will fail, just as all others have in the past, in forcing Hamas to recognize [Israel],” a Hamas spokesman declared Sunday after President Obama once again pressed the terrorist group to relinquish violence and recognize Israel’s right to exist.

http://cnsnews.com/news/article/hama...cognize-israel

does this explain why Abbas refused Olmert peace offer?

[Stavros]

Hamas to Obama: We Won't Recognize Israel

(CNSNews.com) – “The U.S. administration will fail, just as all others have in the past, in forcing Hamas to recognize [Israel],” a Hamas spokesman declared Sunday after President Obama once again pressed the terrorist group to relinquish violence and recognize Israel’s right to exist.

http://cnsnews.com/news/article/hama...cognize-israel

does this explain why Abbas refused Olmert peace offer?

No, because Olmert did not offer sincere, free and open, negotiations, he presented Abbas with a proposal on a take it or leave it basis; that is not negotiation by any definition of the word. That Hamas is in conflict with Fateh is run-of-the-mill Palestinians politics and the report you cite which is from last year, merely suggests that Hamas doesn't want to look or sound weak.

Memo: dont be fooled by the headlines, the devil is in the detail.

[yosi]

No, because Olmert did not offer sincere, free and open, negotiations, he presented Abbas with a proposal on a take it or leave it basis; that is not negotiation by any definition of the word. That Hamas is in conflict with Fateh is run-of-the-mill Palestinians politics and the report you cite which is from last year, merely suggests that Hamas doesn't want to look or sound weak.

Memo: dont be fooled by the headlines, the devil is in the detail.

Can you negotiate with someone who doesn't want to recognise that you exist? you need 2 to tango , you cannot tango with someone with an attitude of: "this town ain't big enough for the both of us , it isn't me whose gonna leave".....

Hammas is supported and financed by Iran that want to wipe Israel off the map.

so it's not only suggesting that Hammas doesn't want to look or sound weak , it's much more than that , it's a religious war , a Jihad ,in the eyes of the extreme muslims - and Iran is ruled by extreme muslims , there is no place for a jewish state in the middle east.

[greyman]

This conflict far pre-dates the existence of Hamas, an organisation that Israel initially supported in order to undermine Fatah. If Israel was honestly looking for a peace deal, it would not continue to do the one thing that is certain to prevent it.

<Iran that want to wipe Israel off the map.>
Oh please! That was a mistranslation and you know it. Ahmadinejad, for all his faults said no such thing.

<it's much more than that , it's a religious war , a Jihad ,in the eyes of the extreme muslims - and Iran is ruled by extreme muslims>
And Israel is ruled by extreme Jews who regard Gentiles as being less than human. Anyway, it's not a religious war but a dispute over land.

[yosi]

<Iran that want to wipe Israel off the map.>
Oh please! That was a mistranslation and you know it. Ahmadinejad, for all his faults said no such thing.

.

mistranslation?

[greyman]

Yes, mistranslation.

<Experts confirm that Iran's president did not call for Israel to be 'wiped off the map'. Reports that he did serve to strengthen western hawks.>
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisf...jun/14/post155

[Ben]

UN tells Israel to let in nuclear inspectors:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012...ear-inspectors