Olmert to ‘Post’: Israel to Have Final Borders by 2010
Excerpts;
“Israel’s permanent borders will be set within the next four years, a period during which construction will also begin in the controversial E1 section between Ma’aleh Adumim and Jerusalem, Acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told The Jerusalem Post Wednesday.”
“Olmert also said he had no intention of meeting Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas after the elections.”
“Olmert said he was opposed to ‘artificial distinctions.’ ‘The PA is one authority, the minute the dominant force in the PA is Hamas, then why [meet]?’ he asked. ‘We do not meet as two graduates from the same high school. There can only be a reason for a meeting if it serves a political purpose. If the government is a Hamas one, what political purpose can it serve?'”
“Olmert said he intended within the next four years to ‘get to Israel’s permanent borders, whereby we will completely separate from the majority of the Palestinian population and preserve a large and stable Jewish majority in Israel.’ This was the first time that Olmert has put a time frame on what he has said in the past was Israel’s most pressing issue: determining its final borders.”
“Olmert’s pledge to build E1 within the next four years came six months after he became the first senior Israeli official to publicly confirm that Israel had frozen the controversial building plans in the wake of American pressure.”
“The long-planned construction of 3,500 housing units on the outskirts of Ma’aleh Adumim, as part of a decade-old government proposal to link the suburban Jerusalem settlement to the capital, has been subject to fierce Palestinian and international condemnation and to American resistance.”
“Olmert’s chief political rival, Likud leader Binyamin Netanyahu, has repeatedly used the freeze on building in E1 to call into question the government’s determination to strengthen both Jerusalem and the major settlement blocs.”
“Olmert said that if he won the election, he would wait a “reasonable” amount of time to see whether Hamas would recognize Israel, disavow terrorism and disarm, accept previous PA-Israel agreements and act according to the guidelines of the road map.”
Rattling the Cage: Kadima’s Cockamamie Idea
Excerpts;
“The best thing I can say about Kadima’s new settlement evacuation plan for the West Bank is that it’s so pointless, so half-assed, that it’ll never get off the ground. All it offers Israel is a huge amount of pain in return for negligible gain, if that.”
“The plan laid out this week by Avi Dichter, the former Shin Bet chief who is Kadima’s brightest star on security, calls for Israel to evacuate settlements containing about 15,000 settlers on the far side of the West Bank security barrier. The settlements emptied out, however, would not be handed over to the Palestinians as was done in Gaza.”
“Instead, the IDF would move in to take the settlers’ place. In essence, the evacuated settlements – which include pockets of fanaticism like Yitzhar, Itamar, Kfar Tapuah, Har Bracha, Maon and Sussiya – would become IDF bases.”
“The 15,000 uprooted settlers would then be consolidated with the other 225,000 or so Israelis living in the West Bank into seven large settlement blocs. The whole process, Dichter says, would take about four years.”
“On first hearing, this plan might even sound attractive – it dismantles unwanted, isolated settlements, but without diminishing Israel’s security, and without giving the Palestinians any ‘prizes for terror.'”
“On second hearing, though, the plan reveals a shortcoming: It achieves not a single goal that Kadima and Ehud Olmert, along with the majority of Israelis, want to achieve.”
Commentary;
Recognizing what sees obviously the political agenda of the article’s author, this article is still interesting nonetheless, because it seems to strongly question Olmert’s true motivations in making the next disengagement [i.e. expulsions] in Yesha.
For example, Derfner writes in this same article, that the Olmert plan presented by former Shim Bet head Avi Dichter “doesn’t alter Israel’s demographics – its mix of Jews and Arabs – in the slightest; four years from now, after the evacuated settlers were replaced by soldiers, the number of Palestinians living under Israel’s control would have grown just as if Israel had left the West Bank untouched.”
“The plan doesn’t end the occupation or even curtail it; actually, with more soldiers in the West Bank, the occupation could even harden.”
“The policy unveiled by Dichter is a odd package, but what’s even odder is that he is Kadima’s premier strategist for how Israel should deal with the Palestinians. As head of the Shin Bet, Dichter made no secret of his adamant opposition to the Gaza disengagement; today he’s planning the future of the West Bank for a party that came into being because of the Gaza disengagement.“
It seems that Larry Derfner, with what seems his particular perspective on Yesha land, can’t understand the logic behind this Olmert disengagement plan.
This author, on the other hand, grasps well the logic; the expulsions in Gush Katif and the Shomron emboldens the secular powers-to-be such that the current Olmert plan is nothing more than another step in a “full court press” effort to disengage, to divest Israelis of their Jewishness. Inherent in that is divesting them of Jewish land. What Olmert, Peres, Dichter, etc. don’t understand and have not the mental capacity to intellectualize is this; to the Arab, the Islamic, a Jew is a Jew is a Jew and they see that Israel doubts it’s title and rights to possess Jewish land in Chevron, in Gush Katif, in Yehuda and Shomron. The Arabs then assert what they see as the validity of their false, bogus claims and ask what rights does Israel have to be in Tel Aviv, Jaffa, Haifa and more?
This author shares Derfner’s sentiment; “This is not an encouraging sign of what’s likely to come after Election Day.” MB