Tuesday, December 1, 2009
Here's a lengthy interview in The Australian with former Israeli PM Ehud Olmert. There's a fair amount of interest here, but I thought the offer that was made during peace talks to Abbas was worth emphasizing again. Abbas, in typically Palestinian Arab fashion simply walked away, unable or unwilling to make a deal or even a counter-offer: Ehud Olmert still dreams of peace
...Olmert explains this position to me in unprecedented detail. His offer to Abbas represents a historic watershed and poses a serious question. Can the Palestinian leadership ever accept any offer that an Israeli prime minister could ever reasonably make?
It is important to get Olmert's full account of this offer on the record: "From the end of 2006 until the end of 2008 I think I met with Abu Mazen more often than any Israeli leader has ever met any Arab leader. I met him more than 35 times. They were intense, serious negotiations."...
..."On the 16th of September, 2008, I presented him (Abbas) with a comprehensive plan. It was based on the following principles.
One, there would be a territorial solution to the conflict on the basis of the 1967 borders with minor modifications on both sides. Israel will claim part of the West Bank where there have been demographic changes over the last 40 years."
This approach by Olmert would have allowed Israel to keep the biggest Jewish settlement blocks which are mainly now suburbs of Jerusalem, but would certainly have entailed other settlers having to leave Palestinian territory and relocate to Israel.
In total, Olmert says, this would have involved Israel claiming about 6.4 per cent of Palestinian territory in the West Bank: "It might be a fraction more, it might be a fraction less, but in total it would be about 6.4 per cent. Israel would claim all the Jewish areas of Jerusalem. All the lands that before 1967 were buffer zones between the two populations would have been split in half. In return there would be a swap of land (to the Palestinians) from Israel as it existed before 1967.
"I showed Abu Mazen how this would work to maintain the contiguity of the Palestinian state...
Read at the link for the other details. This portion concludes:
...Olmert says he showed Abbas a map, which embodied all these plans. Abbas wanted to take the map away. Olmert agreed, so long as they both signed the map. It was, from Olmert's point of view, a final offer, not a basis for future negotiation. But Abbas could not commit. Instead, he said he would come with experts the next day.
"He (Abbas) promised me the next day his adviser would come. But the next day Saeb Erekat rang my adviser and said we forgot we are going to Amman today, let's make it next week. I never saw him again."
Olmert believes that, like Camp David a decade earlier, this was an enormous opportunity lost: "I said `this is the offer. Sign it and we can immediately get support from America, from Europe, from all over the world'. I told him (Abbas) he'd never get anything like this again from an Israeli leader for 50 years. I said to him, `do you want to keep floating forever - like an astronaut in space - or do you want a state?'
"To this day we should ask Abu Mazen to respond to this plan. If they (the Palestinians) say no, there's no point negotiating."...
...And most important, if the Palestinian leadership cannot accept that offer, can they accept any realistic offer? Do they have the machinery to run a state? Is their society too dysfunctional and filled with anti-Semitic propaganda to live in peace next to the Jewish state? Could they ever deliver on any security guarantees?...
Right now, the answer to all of those questions is no.
Meanwhile, Netanyahu says the current settlement freeze is a one-time offer
...Should the Palestinians not return to the negotiations table, he said, "We will resume building. The future of Judea and Samaria will be determined by a final status agreement and not one day before then," said Netanyahu...
Listed below are links to blogs that reference this entry: Olmert's Offer.
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We've mentioned the generous offer Ehud Olmert made for peace a couple of times now. This is the offer that Abbas basically had no response to (because in reality they have been exposed over and over again as uninterested in... Read More
I was browsing about Jeffrey Goldberg's Atlantic blog last night and noted a few things I wanted to comment on. I generally like Goldberg's material, though his left-lean sometimes colors things in a way I don't agree with, he's well... Read More
I fear the Obama Administration may have unwittingly hardened Palestinian positions when they made the Freeze or Else demand, regardless of the fact that certain areas in question would obviously remain part of Israel in exchange for land swaps.
There's no doubt that Obama has given Abu Mazen all the pretext he could ever want as a fig leaf for digging in and making absurd demands. It's not so clear that it was unwitting, i.e., an unintended consequence of a well-intentioned policy.
Perhaps you mean unwitting as in not having his wits about him. Right on. Obambi's been pretty darned witless and clueless in all his disastrous foreign policy initiatives. (Have you seen Iran unclench their fist? And let's hear it for all the cooperation the Obamateur has got from the Arab nations. Our naïve Apologist in Chief actually thought that his Steppin Fetchit routine in Cairo last June would have born fruit.)
Those of us who voted against him don't have buyer's remorse; we fervently hope, that like his mentor Carter, it will be one term and done. And good riddance. Aside from good reasons to vote for John McCain and Sara Palin, there were lots of good reasons to vote against the Dems' silly ticket of Obama and the idiotic Gaff-O-Matic.
Those of us who weren't taken in with the magical hope and change mantra saw him rightly as an empty suit with a thin resumé, a sketchy past and a whole bunch of unsavory associates -- not to mention being turned off by the cult of personality, his blatant pandering to whatever audience he was speaking to -- Remember his appearance at last year's AIPAC conference? -- or his phony-baloney Obamacropolis stunt or his becoming a completely unhinged blithing idiot when someone kicked the plug on his teleprompter in the middle of supposedly extemporaneous remarks at Colorado State Fair.
Nappy,
Going by the history of the State Department bailing out the Arabs everytime they lost something to the Israelis I would give some points to "purposely providing" more pressure for the Arabs to apply.
Looking back at American foreign policy since the end of the Second World War one discerns a certain damage done to America as the maliciousness has come back to bite.
Nappy,
...we fervently hope, that like his mentor Carter, it will be one term and done.
And we fervently pray that there will be no legacy like Carter's that left an apocalyptic sect loose on the world.
C'mon you guys. The racist comment about Obama's speech in Cairo isn't warranted.
And, the damage done to our relations with the Middle East and the greater Muslim world during previous administrations shouldn't be blamed on Obama and his attempt at outreach was admirable and I think will bear fruit over time.
I do think he was innaccurate in his conflation between Israel's existence and the Shoah. However given that huge numbers of people in the Middle East don't even believe in the Shoah it was a step in the right direction and so was his condemnation of terrorism as "cowardice" and his argument against antisemitic incitement. He also reasserted America's "unbreakable" bonds with Israel.
He did this in Cairo as it was broadcast to a huge global audience and this should be respected and applauded.
How many American leaders ever tried to do something like that? To go and speak openly and freely to an Arab audience in an Arab capital, reiterate our "unbreakable" friendship with Israel and simulaneously complain about terrorism and antisemitic incitement?
The fact is previous administrations have armed some of the worst antisemites in the Middle East including Saddam Hussein whose Ba'ath Party was modeled on the Nazis.
And, you cannot blame Obama for the Arabs' refusal to open more doors to Israel. They started blockading the Yishuv in the early 1930's. Change will come slowly in a region that resists change at all.
Now. Just as we have people here in the US who hold to hardened positions (ahem) so there are people in the Middle East with hardened positions and they won't change.
But - there are also young people, thinkers, creative people, people who are willing to entertain new ideas, and their voices will be heard over time, in the Arab world and in Iran.
I am not a fan of Jimmy Carter. However, he did not invent radical Shi's ideology. It is doubtful that John McCain himself could have changed the outcome in Iran had he been in office and not Carter.
Regardless no American president - no American! can tell Asian and African people or Israelis for that matter what to think.
We are not capable of changing the arc of history in MENA/Central Asia by ourselves or with the use of military power - only the people who live there can do that. We can support the progressives as much as possible but we cannot change that which can only be changed from within.
A wise friend of mine describes events in the Middle East as reflecting a "slow civil war" in Saudi Arabia, as the Western educated and progressive forces there confront age-old tribal and religious forces that are determined not to change at all.
I don't think Obama has a sinister agenda vis a vis the Israelis. I think he is more openly pro-Palestinian than other Presidents perhaps but Republican leaders have harmed Israel severely and also been openly antisemitic.
And, they have supported the oil industry and other Anglo/American interests and pursued anti-Soviet foreign policy at the expense of little people in the Middle East and Central Asia including Israel.
Republican presidents and their apparatchiks have not been such good friends to Israel or the Jews so please. Let's have some balance.
Think for example of the Reagan/Bush Administration's reaction to Israel's destruction of Iraq's nuclear reactor.
In case you've forgotten they were furious and immediately sent Iraq more weapons including, according to some reports, chemical weapons.
Remember the SCUDs? The gas masks? Israel forbidden to react?
So you can complain about Obama's overly hopeful gaffes all you want but I remember James "f*** the Jews" Baker, I remember Bush's fury at Israel, I remember Richard "let them bleed" Nixon, I remember the Brits also refusing to resupply the Israelis in 1973 though the situation was absolutely desperate - and I remember SCUDs, possibly loaded with WMD's, falling on Israeli civilians.
Obama lacks experience but these reactions against him are extreme. In fact I think this reflects the same sort of hardened attitude that is preventing progress in the Middle East.
People who are digging in against progress and change here and reacting with such extremism against Obama's very existence have no business criticizing hardliners overseas.
By the same token those who applaud reformers in Iran and Egypt have no business attacking would-be reformers in America.