Israel-Palestine: Is Peace Possible On Obama’s Watch?
One line of speculation by some commentators, Israeli and other, is that Kerry went along with the recommendation of retired U.S. General John Allen that Israel must be allowed to maintain a military presence along the Jordan River (the border area between Jordan and the West Bank) and at all crossing points for a good tactical reason. What was it? Kerry believed that if his framework plan said “Yes” to what Netanyahu is demanding on the security front in the Jordan Valley, persuading Israel’s prime minister that he could not say “No” to ending the occupation of most of the West Bank ought to be less than a mission impossible.
Allied to that way of thinking, or so it seems, is the theory promoted by Norman Finkelstein (on Russia Today and elsewhere). According to it Israel’s leaders have long had a withdrawal fallback position. What is it? If and when pressures for an end to occupation become too great for Israel to live with comfortably, it will withdraw to behind the so-called separation wall. (As Jeff Halper said in London on 23 December, the wall was not built for security reasons as Israel has always asserted. “It was built to define borders of the Israeli Bantustan that is being created for the Palestinians.”)
That would leave Israel, in defiance of Security Council Resolution 242, in permanent occupation of about 10 percent of the West Bank. This annexed 10 percent on what would be Israel’s side of the wall includes the biggest and most highly populated illegal Jewish settlements including Ariel, Gush Etzion, Emmanuel, Karnei Shomron, Givat Ze’ev, Oranit, Maale Adumin and those of East Jerusalem. These illegal settlements sit on top of the West Bank’s main water aquifers. (Sharon once said that the main reason why Israel grabbed the West Bank in 1967 was the Zionist state’s need for water).
In exchange, under the heading of “land swap”, 10 percent of the land of pre-1967 Israel would be transferred to the Palestinian state. According to a recent report in Maariv, one idea under consideration in Israel is “transferring parts of the territory in the triangle southeast of Haifa – along with the hundreds of thousands of Israeli-Arab citizens who live there – to a future Palestinian state in return for annexing West Bank territory including settlement blocs.”
The accuracy of that report was confirmed days later when Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman said at a conference attended by Israeli ambassadors and heads of missions across the world that he would not agree to any peace agreement with the Palestinians without the exchange of the triangle area southeast of Haifa for the annexation of the West Bank settlement blocks. Probably to avoid the charge that he was openly advocating the need for more ethnic cleansing, Liberman emphasized that he was not talking about a population transfer. He said: “Everyone will stay in their own houses, in the same places. Just the borders will move.”
It might be that Kerry thinks or is at least hoping that Netanyahu would accept a withdrawal to the wall. In the Finkelstein scenario he does, knowing that would give him the scope to launch a propaganda blitzkrieg. Its message to the world and America especially would be something like this. “By withdrawing from 90 percent of Judea and Samaria, part of our God-given ancestral home, we are making huge concessions. There could not be more dramatic proof of the Jewish state’s wish for peace. So world, don’t ask us to give up more land and compromise our security further. Stop the anti-Semitic demonization of Israel and the pressure.”
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