U.S. plan includes return to `67 borders (Palestinian State)

Ha'aretz Daily ^

[RCW2001]

U.S. plan includes return to `67 borders

By Aluf Benn

The U.S. State Department's latest draft for a regional peace initiative includes the establishment of a Palestinian state along the June 4, 1967, lines, with some minor border corrections, and a three-year timetable for its implementation.

The initiative will include a demand for structural reform in the Palestinian Authority and a declaration that the right of return of refugees will not be implemented inside the State of Israel. The United States will reiterate the position of the current administration, which calls for a two-state solution and regards Israel as the Jewish state.

The American initiative is meant to produce a political horizon as the basis for convening the regional conference, which would be the first step toward renewing the political process.

The initiative was formulated in the State Department, which favors deepening U.S. involvement in the region and presenting a detailed framework for ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Other sections of the administration have reservations about the initiative, and President George W. Bush has yet to receive it.

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is slated to meet with Bush on Monday. Sharon rejects any return to the 1967 lines as the basis for negotiations with the Palestinians and is expected to reiterate his long-standing conditions for any peace talks - an absolute end to the terror, violence, and incitement; fundamental reforms in the PA, with the aim of pushing Arafat out of an executive role of authority and transferring the governmental authority into the hands of a Palestinian "prime minster;" and a new executive branch for the PA.

The Prime Minister's Office is hoping that U.S. Vice-President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld will be able to persuade Bush to reject the State Department's approach. Cheney and the Pentagon are opposed to any involvement in trying to find a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Senior officials in the Pentagon believe that after an American action against Iraq, and the establishment of a new regime in Baghdad, conditions will be more convenient for renewing the peace proces.

In Washington, Sharon will also be meeting with Paul Wolfowitz, the administration's leading proponent of an aggressive stand against Iraq.

[MissAmericanPie]

No way can Israel return to those borders and survive. Is this our idea of a War on Terror, to establish a terrorist state? Whose sick idea is this, Collin Powells?

[Shermy]

Well, when I read "State Department Plan" that rang some warning bells.

[Red Jones]

bump

[etcetera]

So begins the selling out of Israel...

[BenF]

The U.S. State Department's latest draft for a regional peace initiative includes the establishment of a Palestinian state along the June 4, 1967, lines, with some minor border corrections, and a three-year timetable for its implementation.

Another Final Solution to the Jewish problem?

[meenie]

This leaves Israeli settlements within the Palestinian state to irritate the Israelis and no right of return for the Palestinians to arouse them. This is no plan.

[monkeyshine]

The initiative was formulated in the State Department

That's all I need to read to know it's a worthless document.

[rageaholic]

Rageaholic's Peace Plan: push Israeli borders out another 50 kilometers in all directions. Bulldoze flat and use as buffer zone. Repeat as necessary. Begin negotiations for return to 2002 borders.

[bybybill]

Who is the jerk that wrote this nonsense and how does he know these things? I don`t believe a word he wrote.

[StopGlobalWhining]

Israel was already at the 1967 borders, back in 1967. That didn't stop their Arab neighbors from attacking then, so why should anybody believe that if they pulled back to those borders they wouldn't be attacked anew?

Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, and the Al Aqsa Homicide Brigade have all declared that they will never permit an Israeli nation to exist within the 1948 UN borders.

So what justification do naive Westerners have for expecting that there can be peace as long as the Israelis and Palestinians live side-by-side?

Would you want to live across the border from the kind of family who had hopes that their young child would someday kill himself for the purpose of killing you?

The only way for both peoples to live in peace is to separate them.

[Thinkin' Gal]

Whose sick idea is this, Collin Powells?

The State Dept must be constipated from consuming large quantities of Arafat cheese snacks.

The setting up of a terrorist state in Yesha = abomination that maketh [Judea] desolate.

[StopGlobalWhining]

Get them apart. If they haven't been able to live together now for more than 3,000 years, it is foolish and deadly to think that Westerners can impose a peaceful solution today.

Here's my suggestion in good faith, previously posted here, for the children.

The Free Nation of New Palestine"

[JSteff]

Geezzzzz! How stupid. Why not a return to the 1000 bc or 500 bc border? Israel, or rather the Jewish people have held that whole stretch of land for the longest total time of all groups going back 4000 or so years.

If someone who moved in next door to you started encroaching on your land 4 days ago would that then mean the fair thing if it went to court was to go back to the land borders of two days ago. How stupid does it get?

[brat]

THAT is suicide, George. Stop the BS and let Israel do what she must do.

[traditionalist]

Israel, or rather the Jewish people have held that whole stretch of land for the longest total time of all groups going back 4000 or so years.

The above is factually incorrect. The time period during which the Israelites (Jews were only a small subset of the Israelites) held the land is quite brief, extending a period of only a few hunderd years, begining with the establishment of the Davidic monarchy and ending with Assyrian and Babylonian conquests. For most of the latter half the 4000 years you mention, begining with the Roman expulsion up until the Jewish colonization of Palestine under the British, Jewish presense in the Holy Land was marginal.

[traditionalist]

Israel was already at the 1967 borders, back in 1967. That didn't stop their Arab neighbors from attacking then, so why should anybody believe that if they pulled back to those borders they wouldn't be attacked anew?

Oh, perhaps maybe the fact that Egypt and Jordan, two of the neighbors that attacked Israel in '67, have made peace with it.

[traditionalist]

If someone who moved in next door to you started encroaching on your land 4 days ago would that then mean the fair thing if it went to court was to go back to the land borders of two days ago. How stupid does it get?

I don't see how this analogy applies to the case at hand. Would you care to elaborate?

[traditionalist]

THAT is suicide, George.

Please explain.

[traditionalist]

The only way for both peoples to live in peace is to separate them.

Agreed. But how on Earth do you expect to do this without creating a Palestinian state?