20.3.07

Arab League Asks Israel for Alternative Peace Plan

For a while the old new peace Arab Peace Initiative was on the news. It was the topic of discussion in Palestine and Israel. Many op-eds in Israeli and Palestinian newspapers took up this issue. Israel, of course rejected the initiative (before it was formally (re)proposed), despite earlier positive signs from Ehud Olmert who declared that the initiative contained some positive aspects.
Ammr Mousa, The Arab League secretary general, called on Israel today, to come up with it's own vision for a peace plan. Of course, even this much is wishful thinking on the part of Mr. Mousa. Israel would never come out with its own peace proposal. In my opinion, it is so for two reasons:1) any peace offer by Israel will fall short of fulfilling the internationally accepted bases of a peaceful solution in the Middle East. It will thus be a political disaster for Israel to put forward any such proposal. 2) On the other hand, what would Israel stand to gain from a peaceful settlement of the conflict that it is not getting now.
In short, Israel wants peace, not with its neighbours, but without them!
The problem is the status quo to a large extent provides this. If you leave out the fireworks that fall into Sderot every now and then, Israel is really living very peaceful times. The conflict is not really affecting its daily life. (before someone comes out to disagree, please compare the average Israeli person with the average Palestinian)
To Israel, it is as if all the Arab World does not exist. As a matter of fact, the Arab world only exists for two uses in Israeli mentality: 1) to use the "they want to throw us into the sea" cliche; 2)To use the " We are the size of New Jersey, and they are the size of the other 49 states", or was it Rhode Island? I can't remember exactly.
Anyway, in the 59 years over which Israel existed, there was never a single moment when it gave an offer to solve the conflict, especially on the Palestinian/Israeli front. Israel, up until the last round of negotiations in January 2001, refused to place proposals. The most publicised offer Israel made, By Barak in Camp David was miles short of achieving any kind of peaceful settlement, and was a way of perpetuating the conflict. Yet, this offer was more in the form of communications between Barak and Clinton and not a real official offer.

1 comment:

marcel said...

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