Your move, Mr Abbas

http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | The prospects are dim but the process is right. The Obama administration is to be commended for structuring the latest rounds of Middle East talks correctly. Finally, we're leaving behind interim agreements, of which the most lamentable were the Oslo accords of 1993.

The logic then was that issues so complicated could only be addressed step by step in the expectation that things get easier over time. In fact, they got harder. Israel made concrete concessions -- bringing in Yasser Arafat to run the West Bank and Gaza -- in return for which Israel received growing threats, continuous incitement and finally a full-scale terror war that killed more than a thousand innocent Israelis.

Among the victims was the Israeli peace movement and its illusions about Palestinian acceptance of Israel. The Israeli left, mugged by reality, is now moribund. And the Israeli right is chastened. No serious player believes it can hang on forever to (Judea and Sumaria - AKA) "the West bank."

This has created a unique phenomenon in Israel -- a broad-based national consensus for giving nearly all the West Bank in return for peace. The moment is doubly unique because the only man who can deliver such a deal is Likud Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu -- and he is prepared to do it.

Hence the wisdom of how the Obama administration has shaped the coming talks: No interim deals, no partial agreements. There are no mutual concessions that can be made separately within the great issues -- territory, security, Jerusalem, the so-called right of return -- to reach agreement. The concessions must be among these issues -- thus if Israel gives up its dream of a united Jerusalem, for example ....

.... The talks are well designed. Unfortunately, Abbas knows perfectly well how to undermine them.

What's standing in the way? Israeli settlements? Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, one of Israel's most nationalist politicians, lives in a settlement and has said openly that to achieve peace he and his family would abandon their home. What about the religious settlers? Might they not resist? Some tried that during the Gaza withdrawal, clinging to synagogue rooftops. What happened? Jewish soldiers pulled them down and took them away. If Israel is offered real peace, the soldiers will do that again ....

In your dreams they will, Mr Krauthammer. Dragging Law-abiding innocent Israelis from their Greater Israeli Territorial Gaza homes required more Israeli soldiers than were ever engaged in any of Israel's defensive wars. Over all, the operation was the most demanding the IDF has ever undertaken.

The ethnic cleansing and/or, by-any-other-name, genocide that would be required to "move" Judea's and Sumaria's Israelis from their Lawful homes would require a better force than Israel will ever be able to perpetrate such an atrocity.

Brian Richard Allen Lost Angels - Califobambicated 90028 And The Very Far Abroad

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