Sharon offers more land to Palestinians - and more settlers

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is ready to turn over more territory to the Palestinians and accept an independent Palestinian state if elected to a third term, according to a draft platform of Sharon's Kadima Party published Monday. The platform could form the basis of the next Israeli government. Polls show the centrist Kadima, which Sharon formed last month, has the best chance of winning March 28 parliamentary elections.

.......

The platform still falls short of Palestinian demands. Sharon wants to keep control over all of Jerusalem and has also said he wants to retain large blocks of West Bank settlements.

Israel is planning to build an additional 228 housing units in West Bank settlements, according to a tender published Monday in Israeli newspapers.

The plan is to build 150 housing units in the ultra-Orthodox settlement of Beitar Illit and another 78 homes in Efrat, according to the tender.

Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat condemned the decision. "They suspend the peace process and they suspend the negotiations and they suspend the contacts and the only thing they are continuing with is settlement construction," he said.


http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=10&categ_id=2&article_id=21049

More unilateral "peace process".
:popcorn::popcorn:

...wouldn't this make the first time that an Israeli leader got elected on a platform that explicitly called for a Palestinian state in at least some of the occupied territories? From what I recall, Peres adopted such a plank in Labor's platform for the 1996 elections following the assassination of Rabin, but he lost in an upset to Netanyahu (possibly because his platform admitted that he would allow such a state?). Since then, it seems that even Labor platforms have promised "peace" without specifying the price of an independent Palestine.

Now, I'm sure that any proposal Sharon comes up with would fall far short of Palestinian aspirations. But I can't help thinking that it would be a major sea change for Israeli voters to actually elect someone on that platform -- it might indicate that they've gotten over the psychological hump of explicitly accepting a Palestinian state, rather than quietly sidestepping the matter à la Oslo.

the Palestinians and ejects them as well from Jerusalem. It is another sidestep, really. It would break up the Palestinian land to such a degree that it results in an unworkable state, hardly a benefit to the Palestinians.

It further violates the terms of the "roadmap" peace plan, which had international support. The "roadmap" says that settlement activity must be frozen and all the illegal settlements must be removed. Yet Israel has continued the illegal settlement building unabated. The settlements are in violation of international law regarding occupations as well.

There will inevitably be an effort to sell all this as a wonderful gift to the Palestinians, and a magnanimous step toward resolution of the conflict, but it in no way is really such. This will not lead to peace.

In fact, in my earlier post, I expressed my cynicism about Sharon and my expectation that any proposal he came up with would "fall far short of Palestinian aspirations."

What I still maintain is that, if Sharon is re-elected on such a platform, it will be a major step for the Israeli electorate. Up until now, every winning candidate (even Barak in 2000) has run on a platform that drew "a line in the sand" against any form of Palestinian state. If Sharon runs on such a platform, and wins, it will mean that a plurality of Israeli voters actually were willing to cast their ballots for someone who was promising to allow just such a state. That's a major psychological barrier to get over, because, once one has voted for a candidate who would accept Palestinian independence, the matter becomes merely on what terms such a state should be established, not on whether such a state should be established at all. While Sharon's eventual offer may be a non-starter, there would be hope that, eventually, a formula might be found which would be acceptable to both sides...a formula which is near-impossible to find as long as one side's voters consistently say "never" to the whole idea.

that's going on, where Palestinian lands are simply stolen under the guise of "security" or sometimes under no guise at all (why bother, nobody seems to care), that the slow, step-wise process that you envision may be co-opted by what will be pitched as a very good deal for the Palestinians, but will in fact destroy their culture. By building the Wall, Israel has effectively made a long-term approach unworkable. The Palestinians need relief from the Wall NOW.

I do see what you are saying, and it's true that Israelis voting for a Palestinian state would indeed be a good thing, but my concern is that the state will be configured in a uni-lateral way to satisfy Israeli needs, with little concern for the Palestinians. Even if the Palestinians could wait for a slow process to take place, the land grab will probably be treated as a fait accompli by the time any real negotiations take place, if there really ever would be any. This is hardly a win-win proposal.

A recent poll said that almost half of the Israeli public also would consider dividing Jerusalem (there's a thread about it here in I/P). But has Kadima made THAT a part of their new approach? If the poll is accurate, the Israeli public seems to be way ahead of the politicians on the road to peace. I can't help but wonder if Kadima is proposing these half-measures to try to limit the compromises that Israel needs to make, rather than making all the concessions truly necessary for a just peace. If at this point half of Israelis feel that Jerusalem is negotiable, and if Kadima is really interested in peace, why isn't Jerusalem part of the package?