BIBI THROWS IN THE TOWEL

A Limited Palestinian State (Benjamin Netanyahu, June 20, 2003, washingtonpost.com)

In our quest for peace with the Palestinians, three imperatives unite Israelis: Terror must end, our borders must be secure, and the Palestinians must abandon the goal of destroying Israel. That is why we insist that the terror organizations be dismantled, that we not return to the indefensible 1967 lines and that the Palestinians give up their claim to a "right of return" -- a euphemism for destroying the Jewish state by flooding it with millions of Palestinians.

Genuine Palestinian peace partners will accept these elementary conditions for peace. But what will happen when Israel finds such partners? What kind of agreement can we reach?

We are told that Israel is faced with only two options: either continue to rule over millions of Palestinians or cede them full sovereignty over Judea, Samaria and Gaza. Yet both options are unacceptable.

Israel does not want to rule the Palestinians. The only reason our forces are deployed in Palestinian cities and towns is to prevent the savage terror attacks being launched from these places against us. As the terror subsides, we will be able to gradually withdraw those forces.

As for ceding full sovereignty over Judea, Samaria and Gaza, this is doubly wrong. First, most of Judea and Samaria is barren and empty. The combined Palestinian and Jewish populations live on less than one-third of this territory. But the empty swaths of disputed land, comprising the heart of the Jewish ancestral homeland, are vital for Israel's security.

In politics they key to backing down off a limb is to set up a straw man that you can claim to have been fighting against and then declare victory over this Guy. What matters here is that Mr. Netanyahu concedes the inevitability of statehood; it matters little what final form that state takes.

MORE:
Powell said working Gaza, Bethlehem security handover (Arnon Regular, Yossi Verter and Shlomo Shamir, 6/21/03, Ha'aretz)

According to a report published over the weekend in the Los Angeles Times, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell toiled over final details of an agreement between Israel and the Palestinian Authority to hand over control of the Gaza strip and the West Bank city of Bethlehem to the new PA government, sources on all three sides said.

Under the deal, Israel would withdraw from an area more than four times the size of the area initially discussed in the U.S.-backed roadmap. The first stage called for an Israeli withdrawal focusing only on a small northern area of the Gaza Strip, and did not mention the West Bank city at all.

Posted by Orrin Judd at June 21, 2003 9:48 AM