Here's an example of local press. I've read the first few paragraphs, but I think most of it is factually incorrect.....
Olmert's 'border' for Israel
By Patrick Seale, Special to Gulf News
gulfnews.com
Ever since the creation of the state of Israel in 1948, its leaders have been careful never to define its borders obviously in the hope that these borders could be pushed deeper and deeper into Arab territory.
"We are a tiny country," Yitzhak Shamir, a former right-wing Israeli prime minister, once told me. "We need more, more …"
This unsated thirst for land has caused Israeli leaders of all parties to state repeatedly that Israel would never return to its pre-1967 borders, although those borders gave Israel 78 per cent of the historic Palestine, leaving a mere 22 per cent to the Palestinians.
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The dispossessed Palestinians and indeed the entire Arab world were ready to accept this division. In a historic resolution, Arab leaders meeting in Beirut in March 2002 offered Israel peace and normal relations if it withdrew to its 1967 borders, but the offer was rejected. ??? Land, for Israel, was more important than peace.
Now, for the first time in Israel's history, acting prime minister Ehud Olmert has spelled out how he envisages his country's final borders, if his centre-right party, Kadima, wins the elections on March 28, as it is widely expected to do.
He proposes a further division of the remaining 22 per cent, leaving perhaps only 10 or 12 per cent in Palestinian hands, divided into separate cantons surrounded by Israel and cut off from Arab East Jerusalem.
The dream of a "Greater Israel", absorbing the whole territory between the Mediterranean and the Jordan river, may be dead but so also, it would seem, is the Palestinian dream of a viable, sovereign, independent state.
Disengaged
In an interview with the Israeli daily Haaretz on March 10, Olmert declared: "I believe that in four years' time Israel will be disengaged from the vast majority of the Palestinian population, within new borders, with the route of the fence which until now has been a security fence adjusted to the new line of the permanent borders.
"It could be that there will be cases in which we move the fence eastward and it could be that there will be cases in which we move it westward in accordance with a line that we will agree upon. We will take a crucial step forward in the shaping of Israel as a Jewish state, in which there is a solid and stable Jewish majority that is not at risk."
Israel's new borders, Olmert declared, would be fixed in discussions with the colonists. He made no mention of discussions with the Palestinians or of a Palestinian state. The new "line" would be drawn by Israel unilaterally, with support from the United States. "I will conduct a very substantial dialogue with our greatest ally, President Bush," he promised.
Israel's disengagement from Gaza as well as the Hamas victory at the Palestinian elections created the right conditions, Olmert suggested, for Israel to secure international backing for its new borders. He claimed to have "an excellent personal relationship" with Britain's Prime Minister Tony Blair, as well as with Italy's Silvio Berlusconi, Germany's Angela Merkel, France's Jacques Chirac, and his "friends", the leaders of Egypt and Jordan.
"Hardly a day goes by when messages aren't transmitted from them to me or from me to them. The intensiveness of the relations between us and the Jordanians is very great," he declared, hinting that he expected no opposition to his plans from that direction.
Olmert made clear that large blocks of colonies built inside Palestinian territory, such as Gush Etzion and Ma'aleh Adumim, would be included inside Israel; that inhabitants of outlying colonies would be moved to these blocks, which would be "thickened" to accommodate them; that what he called "the [occupied] Jerusalem envelope" would be part of the Israeli state; and that, in spite of American objections, Israel would build in Area E-1 so as to establish "contiguity between [occupied] Jerusalem and Ma'aleh Adumim".
Olmert made an interesting distinction between the new political borders established by the fence and Israel's "security border" along the Jordan river. In other words, the Jordan valley would remain under Israeli military control.
Declaration of war
Palestinian leaders have described Olmert's proposed new borders as a declaration of war against the Palestinian people. To which Olmert and his defence minister Shaul Mofaz have replied that, if Hamas attempted armed resistance, its leaders, including prime minister Esmail Haniya, would become targets for assassination!
Olmert made no mention of Syria's Golan Heights, occupied by Israel in 1967, which no Israeli politician seems inclined to return.
Arab leaders have, on the whole, remained silent in the face of Israel's proposed land grab. They prefer to look the other way. The Gulf states, now enjoying an unprecedented bonanza because of the high oil price, have not hurried to ease the plight of the Palestinian population, reduced to abject poverty by decades of brutal occupation.
It would appear that several Arab states are as alarmed as Israel and the US by the Hamas victory. So much for Arab solidarity!
Patrick Seale is a commentator and author of several books on Middle East affairs |
