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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: tekboy who wrote (27554)	4/28/2002 10:07:43 AM
From: JohnM	Respond to of 281500

The Luft piece is interesting but I found the FA piece which argues that piecemeal approaches create a structural incentive to undermine agreements more convincing. Looks as if we may have a debate about piecemeal versus totalistic approaches in the public media now. Good.

To: tekboy who wrote (27554)	4/28/2002 1:37:02 PM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

INTERVENE when mediation fails. Fresh Ways to Think About the Mideast Sunday, April 28, 2002; Page B03 The Washington Post ANTONIA CHAYES, former undersecretary of the U.S. Air Force, lectures at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. She is also senior adviser of the nonprofit Conflict Management Group. ____________________________________ The international community should now treat the Middle East as a conflict just as intractable as Cyprus and provide a robust force that affords Israelis security and Palestinians their longed-for, and also secure, state. Consent would be helpful, but under Chapter VII of the U.N. Charter the situation qualifies as a threat to international peace. Consent is not required. There are good reasons for taking such a tough line.Mediation has not worked. After the international community clamored for the Americans to help reduce violence, the United States responded with its most talented mediators. But neither reason nor imagination has moved the Israelis and Palestinians closer to agreement. Nor is it likely that the United States will threaten Israel with loss of military or other assistance in order to reduce Israeli settlements in the West Bank and Gaza. If for no other reason, the approaching midterm elections will cause both Democrats and Republicans to become preoccupied with domestic politics. Despite such failures, the contours of an ultimate settlement -- the two-state solution -- are known. The remaining issues are hard, but resolvable. Imaginative land swaps could provide Israelis with security, and Palestinians with nearly contiguous territories, water and a safe corridor between the West Bank and Gaza. Many suggestions have been made about Jerusalem, and even about the Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif. But the will to find a peaceful settlement cannot now be kindled. What are the steps toward achieving peace? • The international community could do nothing and wait for exhaustion of both parties. This is an unattractive option. Many lives will be lost. But the international community may be close to accepting it. • The United States, Europe and others, including Russia, could continue to try to broker a peace agreement. George Mitchell showed that brand of patience in Northern Ireland. More than 700 days of effort finally led to an agreement that is slowly being implemented. • Saudi Arabia and other neighboring countries could shoulder the responsibility for bringing about a constructive outcome, perhaps along the lines of Crown Prince Abdullah's important proposal. • An international peacekeeping force -- made up of NATO troops with U.S. participation -- could provide security. It should be U.N.-authorized under Chapter VIII. Even serious discussion of this alternative might enhance the effectiveness of the previous two alternatives. © 2002 The Washington Post Company washingtonpost.com

To: tekboy who wrote (27554)	4/28/2002 1:37:40 PM
From: Nadine Carroll	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Yossi Klein Halevi has it right, I think, if only it can be done: Israel should enlist JORDAN in the cause. Sunday, April 28, 2002; Page B03 YOSSI KLEIN HALEVI is the New Republic's correspondent in Israel and a senior writer for the Jerusalem Report. Israel needs a strategy that combines the insights of its left and right: that we can neither occupy the Palestinians nor make peace with them. We should revive what Israelis once called the Jordanian option -- ceding most of the territories to the Hashemites, who governed the West Bank and East Jerusalem before 1967. That's because the disastrous experiment of partitioning the Holy Land with the unholiest national movement of our time is over. By embracing the suicide bombers, Palestine has committed suicide. Yasser Arafat has convinced an Israeli public once ready for far-reaching compromise that the Palestinians cannot be trusted as peace partners, let alone as partners in governing Jerusalem. The result is that a comprehensive settlement has become unattainable. Once, before Oslo, the Labor Party supported the Jordanian option, while Likud opposed it. Disastrously, Likud vetoed negotiations in 1987 between Shimon Peres and the late Jordanian King Hussein. The first intifada broke out shortly afterward, leading to Jordanian withdrawal of its claims to the territories and Labor's fatal embrace of the PLO. Now, Palestine is in ruins, with no prospects of recovery, controlled by a leadership that places grandiose national dreams ahead of its people's most basic welfare. Relatively stable Jordan is the natural custodian to help rebuild Palestinian society. Jordan's population is around 70 percent Palestinian, and the Hashemite Kingdom has been the only Arab country to grant Palestinian refugees citizenship. That is tacit recognition of the fact that Jordan is part of historic Palestine -- indeed, the only independent Arab state that has ever existed in this land. As a first step, the Palestinian Authority must go the way of the Taliban. Arafat should be placed on a plane to Baghdad and his terrorist "police" apparatus dismantled. Israel would then cede most of the territories to Jordan, concentrating the settlements in areas close to the 1967 borders. Until the situation stabilizes, Israel would remain in control of a united Jerusalem, though it would cede the Temple Mount to the Hashemites who, as descendants of the Prophet Muhammad's family, have a compelling claim as custodians of the site. Finally, Israel would retain a military presence along the Jordan River. Jordan is the only Arab country that has entered into a strategic relationship with the Jewish state. The Hashemites fear a PLO state no less than the Israelis do. Ironically, Ariel Sharon, who once advocated transforming Jordan into Palestine, has become one of the stalwarts of the Israeli-Jordanian relationship. Perhaps Sharon is the man to help transform Palestine back into Jordan. washingtonpost.com

To: tekboy who wrote (27554)	4/28/2002 1:57:34 PM
From: LLLefty	Respond to of 281500

>>>This guy Gal Luft is one to watch, I think<<< All seven articles deserve honorable mentions, even though a couple left me wondering what planet they live on (Bordon and Agha-Malley). Luft's proposal is a version of sorts of Ross's timeline option. Luft concentrates on settlements as the bait, trading 12 months of Palestinian non-belligerency for a dozen settlements. Luft is certainly right that many settlements are an economic burden (that Israel can little afford). Ross, I believe, also outlined a timeline proposal the other day in thinking aloud about options but I don't think he devoted much time to settlements issue as the killer roadblock to peace. He may have concluded that since there were few objections to the Clinton plan at Taba, it wasn't the gut issue. I don't know; just thinking aloud. Really, the only two fresh ideas in the last several years have been a fence and and/or an international peacekeeping force of sorts, both having arisen from the desperate lack of realistic alternatives. Now, we have the Halevi piece. This one is worth reading because, for all I know, Halevi has been reading Sharon's mind. washingtonpost.com