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Defensible borders
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Comments
1
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Aaron Eitan Meyer
said:
A major part of the problem with regard to the eventual borders is the fact that the world has been duped into following the non-English version of UN Resolution 242. Properly speaking, Israel has no obligation to withdraw from ALL territories - the resolution that it signed said merely withdrawal from territories. The world is selectively ignoring the all-important 'the' with dangerous results for Israel. This world includes the United States, whose concerns over the Security Fence seem to imply an understanding that Israel will cede all areas in dispute to the Palestinians. Former Ambassador Gold is doind essential work in at least making people aware of the danger Israel will face if it goes back to the Auschwitz borders. And nobody is even mentioning the report by the US Joint Chiefs of Staff from the 80's which stated that Israel's potential lack of any strategic depth would spell doom...
Posted by: Aaron Eitan Meyer on August 3, 2005 01:21 AM
2
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BobW
said:
Concur; Arafat has won.
Any national frontier can be defended, even if in vain. "Defensible" borders re Israel is no longer part of the equation.
Israel is being forced to allow Arab workers from the pending state of "Palestine" to work in Israel. Air strikes and artillery cannot defend against porous borders. Other traditional military responses for border integrity are also outside the equation. How can troops be sent from the Haifa-Maalot area to Beersheba if the deployment requires transiting the new state of "Palestine"?
More dangerous than the undefendable borders of Israel is Martin Indyk.
Dr Gold's suggestions are just mechanical applications since overruled by the Great Powers. Beyond the international demands on Israel, watch for political overtures from Jordan's anti-government body politic to Israel's Arab bloc in the Knesset. Again, Arafat has won.
Defensible borders are just a manifestation of the existential issue facing Israel. The real problem is that Israel does not have a Jewish government. In a few days after the Edict of Expulsion watch for Gamla to reenter the news. I think the Great Powers are planning on a condominium arrangement for Israeli Jews, Israeli Arabs and Jordan's divided population.
US Senator Lieberman is part of Israel's problem.
Kol tuv,
BobW
Posted by: BobW on August 3, 2005 02:19 AM
3
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Sara
said:
While UNRes. 242 speaks of withdrawal from occupied territories, it does not speak of ceding anything to the "Palestinians". When Israel signed the peace treaty with Egypt in 1979, Israel in fact withdrew from more than 90% of the occupied territories that 242 speaks about. The Gaza strip was ceded to Israel in that treaty.
In the peace treaty with Jordan in 1994, the "West Bank" was in fact ceded to Israel by Jordan. The Yesha is therefore not "occupied territories" under International Law.
The only remaining "occupied territories" that could be discussed is part of the Golan and some marginal areas on the Libanese border.
Posted by: Sara on August 3, 2005 05:30 AM
4
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Ed D
said:
Bob, as usual you are mostly right; however, one caveat that says Arafat did not win. If Israel recognizes that to withdraw, then the so-called Palestinians will slowly gobble up Israel and Arafat would be the victor. If Israel would act, even against the wishes of it's so called allies, and allowed the IDF to massively attack Hamas and destroy all intransigence, then Israel would certainly control their own fate. Has any country, for the sake of friendship, ever came to our aid? Of course not. Israel has always had to go it's own way alone. If our "allies" wish to maintain restrictions for our defense by withholding arms and supplies, Israel has the capability to make their own. Then, Israel wins.
Posted by: Ed D on August 3, 2005 07:50 PM
Defensible borders
NY Sun
Israel's former ambassador to the United Nations, Dore Gold, is launching a campaign to stress Israel's need for "defensible borders" as part of any settlement with the Palestinian Arabs.
Mr. Gold pressed his case in recent days in appearances on American television and in meetings with Bush administration officials and members of Congress. The campaign is being undertaken not by the government of Israel but by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, a research institute headed by Mr. Gold.
Mr. Gold is warning that pressure is already building on Israel to withdraw to a 1949 armistice line that Israeli diplomat Abba Eban dubbed "Auschwitz borders." The European Union's high representative for foreign and security policy, Javier Solana; a recent Rand Corporation Report, and Martin Indyk of the Brooking Institution have all called for such a plan or something close to it.
President Bush committed America to maintaining "secure, defensible borders" for Israel in an April 14, 2004, letter to Prime Minister Sharon. Mr. Gold has been speaking to American officials about just what those borders would include, leaving behind copies of a report he wrote with the chairman of the foreign affairs and defense committee of Israel's parliament, Yuval Steinitz; the former head of assessment for Israel's military intelligence, Major General Yaakov Amidror, and a former ambassador of Israel to America, Meir Rosenne.
The report, calls for Israeli control of the border of the West Bank along the Jordan Valley. It also calls for shifting Israel's boundary eastward "so that militarily vital territory does not end up under Palestinian control." And it calls for "broadening the narrow corridor connecting Jerusalem with Tel Aviv" and for establishing a "defensive perimeter" around Jerusalem.
In the past two months, Mr. Gold has met with Senators Kyl, Lieberman, Brownback, Lautenberg, Coleman, and Bunning, as well as Reps. Eric Cantor, Mike Pence, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Jane Harman, Robert Wexler, Gary Ackerman, Barney Frank, Brad Sherman, and Howard Berman. He's also met with the assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern Affairs, David Welch, and with officials at the National Security Council and in the office of Vice President Cheney. He's taken the case for defensible borders to the American Enterprise Institute, the Heritage Foundation, and the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. And he's met with journalists at the Washington Post, USA Today, and the Associated Press.
In a visit to The New York Sun over the weekend, Mr. Gold pointed to maps showing how Israeli population centers and Ben-Gurion International Airport would be vulnerable to conventional or terrorist attack if Israel returned to the 1949 borders.
He invoked the memory of the assassinated Labor Party prime minister of Israel, Yitzhak Rabin. "Is this the Dore Gold plan? No, it's the Yitzhak Rabin plan," Mr. Gold said. The report, "Defensible Borders for a Lasting Peace," has a picture of Rabin on the back cover along with a quote from Rabin's last address to the Israeli parliament. Rabin said, "The border of the State of Israel, during the permanent solution, will be beyond the lines which existed before the Six-Day War." He also said that Israel must retain "a united Jerusalem" and that "the security border of Israel will be located in the Jordan Valley, in the broadest meaning of that term."
Posted by Ted Belman at August 3, 2005 09:31 AM