'Deal' would trade Temple Mount for refugees (Leftist government idea, not Sharon's)

Israeli sovereignty over the Temple Mount and the so-called Palestinian "right of return" within newly drawn borders of Israel would both be relinquished, in a new grassroots peace plan known as the "Geneva Initiative" hammered out last weekend in Jordan by politicians, intellectuals, retired military personnel, and activists on both sides of the conflict.

The agreement, more than two years in the making, was penned by Shahar Party leader Yossi Beilin and former Palestinian Authority minister Yasser Abed Rabbo. Copies of the plan are supposed to be mailed to all Israeli homes after it is signed in Geneva in the near future.

Sources close to former minister Yossi Beilin, who headed the Israeli negotiation team, said the Prime Minister's office was continually kept updated on developments in the negotiations, and the agreement comes as no surprise to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, Army Radio reported Monday.

Participants did not represent either government, but the document is believed to have the support of PA Chairman Yasser Arafat and PA Prime Minister Ahmed Qurei. Palestinian participants in Jordan included a broad range of representatives, including Fatah leaders Kadura Fares and Muhammad Hurani.

Beilin is now pushing to bring as much international and Arab support as possible behind the document in advance of its signing.

The Israeli Right and Sharon attacked the Israeli participants, saying they are pathetic and harming Israeli interests.

"There is a road map, and it is not helpful to make people think there might be something else," Sharon told The Jerusalem Post.

Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom said he doesn't expect a lot from the group that brought about the Oslo Accords.

Shalom told US Ambassador Dan Kurtzer: "There is a government in Israel and everything anyone else does is virtual at best."

"Leftist governments always operated on two paths: negotiations in the morning and terror at night," Shalom said.

Transportation Minister Avigdor Lieberman said on Israel Radio Monday morning the agreement should not be signed in Geneva, but rather in Munich.

Former Palestinian Minister for Prisoner Affairs Hisham Abd al-Raziq was quoted in Monday's Al-Quds newspaper as saying that the unofficial "Geneva Initiative" completed Sunday by Palestinian and leftist Israeli negotiators did not include a Palestinian concession on the "right of return."

Later, Israel Radio quoted al-Raziq as saying that Palestinian refugees would be allowed into Israel only with the government's agreement.

Former prime minister Ehud Barak on Monday called the plan "delusional" and slammed the Labor Party for allowing some of its members to be part of the initiative.

Israeli MKs who participated in the talks – such as Amram Mitzna, Avraham Burg, and Haim Oron – stressed they did so as individuals. They are hoping the government will use it as a blueprint toward a workable plan that will end the violence that has plagued the region for the last three years.

Mitzna said Sunday upon his return from Jordan that it destroys the myth put forward by Sharon's government "that there is no one to talk with and nothing to talk about."

The agreement, he said, draws borders similar to those in 1967, with an additional 2.5 percent of territory, in order to include settlements close to the Green Line such as the Gush Etzion bloc. It will, however, exclude large settlements like Ariel further outside the line. People in those communities will have to be resettled back into Israel, he said.

Palestinians will relinquish their claim to a right of return into Israel, and compensation will be made to refugees through an an international foundation with the participation of Israel, Mitzna said.

The Palestinians will fight terrorism and end the violence. The new state will be a demilitarized one, with a strong police force but no heavy weapons, he said.

Jerusalem would be divided with Arab neighborhoods under PA sovereignty and Jewish neighborhoods under Israeli authority, Mitzna said.

The Old City would be open, without borders, but with a similar arrangement, with the Jewish Quarter including the Western Wall under Israeli sovereignty and the Muslim Quarter and the Temple Mount under the PA.

There would also be an international force in the Temple Mount area to monitor the situation, Mitzna said.

The agreement is similar to one drawn up in late 2000, near the end of the second term of US President Bill Clinton, when Israeli and PA officials meeting in Taba came up with an outline of an agreement that roughly called for Israel to cede some 95 percent of the territories in exchange for Arab control of east Jerusalem and for the right of refugees to return to a new Palestinian state, but not to pre-1967 Israel.

Likud Minister Uzi Landau called the effort "anti-democratic." More than 1,000 Israelis have already been killed as a result of similar efforts, he said.

Social Affairs Minister Zevulun Orlev (NRP) said such initiatives harm Israel and hurt the government's ability to reach an agreement.

"Apparently," he said of the former politicians, "they still do not understand that the public pushed them out of the government."

"It is very clear that the government is doing nothing to open channels of negotiation. We felt that it is the responsibility of every citizen to find any way to sit around the negotiating table and to stop the violence," he said. "Every citizen has the duty to do everything to change the situation."

When leftists of any stripe negotiate ANYTHING, the only results you get are a pile of cacca . . . regardless of the ingredients. Holding hands, singing Kumbaya, and willing away all the evil spirits and vibes doesn't work in any language. Lasting peace is only achieved when one side either capitulates totally or is completely destroyed.

Sorry you peace-niks out there but that is the way of the jungle and wishing it were not so doesn't change anything. You can't negotiate with those who want you dead.

And Israel's first clue should be that Arafat approves of the plan. That impotent, insolent little bastard wouldn't know . . . take a deep breath. It's only Monday and you promised yourself you'd be calmer this week.

Whew. Sorry.

As SJackson already pointed out the article is just plain wrong. The Palestinians are not willing to give up what they call "right of return" to make it high and moral sounding in the western media. What they are continuing to demand is the right to flood millions of Arabs into Israel to destroy the Jewish state. Even Meretz leader Yossi Sarid, who is as far left as you can get, has called that "national suicide".

If I believed for even one minute that the Palestinians would abide by a treaty if they signed it, forever end the violence, and live in peace with us--which, BTW, I do not believe for even one minute--this "agreement" amounts to cultural suicide.

For two thousand years the Jewish people prayed for "next year in Jerusalem". Not next year in Israel or in Tel Aviv or in Haifa. Only Jerusalem, the spiritual center of Judaism. That center, in turn, is centered on the Temple Mount, the holiest site in Judaism. To surrender that is to be willing to give up everything it means to be Jewish. It is, the scriptures tell us, where G-d chose to dwell on earth. Even if you don't believe that literally you have to understand the importance to Judaism. Nobody would ask Muslims to surrender Mecca or Catholics to surrender the Vatican. The Temple Mount is everything those places are and more.

In 1854, under Ottoman rule, and years before the first Jewish immigration, Jerusalem had a majority Jewish population. The city then was little beyond the Old City walls. Yet it is precisely this Old City that is somehow now being defined as "Arab". It is more Jewish than Arab in terms of history, culture, and importance. It was annexed to Israel in 1967 when no other captured lands were for a reason.

In the 1948-49 War of Independence my father was a soldier in the Israeli army fighting to lift the seige of Jerusalem. This treat would make what he fought for, and what all Israelis have fought and died for, virtually meaningless.

Some things are worth fighting for. Jerusalem is one of them.

If I were Sharon I’d arrest and charge each of these leftists losers, Yossi Beilin, Yossi Sarid, Amran Mitzna, Avraham Burg, and Haim Oron with treason, because what they did is the same thing as if the Democrats had negotiated a peace agreement with Saddam behind the Bush administration’s back before the war. These are the same people who secretly negotiated Oslo, which has amounted to the biggest disaster in Israel’s history and led to the loss of over 1200 Israelis to Palestinian terrorism and the current intifada.

I see that these ignorant losers even made a compromise on the Palestinian demand for the "right of return." Even Shimon Peres, one of the most stupid political leaders ever in Israel’s history isn’t stupid enough to do that, because the slightest compromise on the Palestinian "right of return" demand automatically justifies as legal the 55-year war of aggression the Arab world has been waging against the Israelis and so also justifies further continued war. These delusional leftists idiots are complete morons.

This agreement, which is a recipe for the destruction of Israel, will amount to nothing more that a big stick to hit Israel with in which the left, the Arabs, and all of Israel’s enemies will use to propagandize that Israel doesn’t really want peace, and these leftist appease-happy-losers should all be arrested and tried for treason for giving further comfort and ammunition to the enemy and doing more damage to Israel.

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