LAND SWAPS = Exclusive new report: map hand-drawn by Mahmoud Abbas from memory after meeting Ehud Olmert on 16 Sept 2008

May 23rd, 2013

This is an exclusive [not ours, but of Israeli journalist Avi Issacharoff, who reported it in The Tower, here] — a map reportedly hand-drawn from memory by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on 16 September 2008 upon his return to Ramallah after meeting Israel’s then-Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

In his exclusive, Issacharoff wrote that this map somehow “calls into question the basic willingness of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to accept any peace agreement with the Jewish State”…

Negotiations map hand-drawn by Mahmoud Abbas from memory after meeting Ehud Olmert

Negotiations map hand-drawn by Mahmoud Abbas from memory after meeting Ehud Olmert

On the other hand, Issacharoff’ s story w/ Abbas map could have the effect of bolstering Abbas’ wish to restart talks at the point they broke off in September 2008 — in other words, on the basis of the proposals made in this map.

In fact, the only thing that’s new in this story, so far, is the photo of this map. [But, Issacharoff promises to publish his full interview with Olmert tomorrow.]

Meanwhile, Palestinian negotiators have said for several years that the Israelis only let them look at this map, but never to keep it.  Palestinians then prepared their own map which they gave to George Mitchell at the start of the Obama administration’s involvement in 2009, but they say that to this day Israel has not presented a map.

Palestinians say that Netanyahu’s negotiator Yitzhak Molcho has since introduced the idea that Israel should be allowed to keep a security corridor all along the Jordan [River] Valley, carving out a large slice that would remain under their control.   Mohammad Shtayyah said after a series of direct contacts in Amman in January 2012 that Molcho said, “Give it to us, or we’ll take it”…  And President Abbas has complained to a number of visiting American and Israeli delegations about Israel’s Jordan Valley ambitions.

The Abbas-drawn map shows, inside the West Bank, only the 3 large settlement blocs that have been under discussion between Israels and Palestinians since 2000-2001: Ariel, Gush Etzion, Maale Adumim.

It also shows, outside the West Bank, what must be proposed areas of land swaps: North of the West Bank; at the Tarqumiya area to the west; and South of the West Bank.

[The two designs to the left are not clear -- is the top one just a doodle?]

But Issacharoff’s thesis doesn’t hold water — the Palestinian leadership wants a peace deal at least as much as the Israeli leadership, if not more.

This is a September 2008 map of Israeli proposals Land Swaps — an idea that evolved out of the Geneva Initiative signed in December 2003, in Geneva, between Israeli and Palestinian “civil society” teams. The Palestinian achievement was in insisting that the Land Swaps be on 1:1 basis. They later scored an even greater victory: the Land Swaps should be of land of an equal or greater “quality” [i.e., not rubbish or barren wasteland].

I was shown a similar map in a Ministry in Ramallah in January 2001 — without the Land Swap blobs drawn by Abbas just outside the North + South of the West Bank, and just to the West of the Tarqoumiya area [which was supposed to be the terminal for the two-way safe-passage route planned between Gaza and the West Bank].

In other words, in late 2000 + 2001, Israeli negotiators working for then-Prime Minister Ehud Barak were proposing that they keep the three large settlement blocs marked on the map. The Palestinian negotiators apparently were willing at that time, as I was told in another Ramallah office, to cede only two, not three.

It took eight years for the Israeli negotiators to sweeten their offer with an exchange proposal, the Land Swaps…

By the time the Olmert proposal was made to Abbas on 16 September 2008, as part of the American-led Annapolis process of negotiations that was supposed to lead to a state by the end of 2008 [or the end of the Bush Admin in January 2009], Olmert himself was facing indictment and the Palestinians were told [and decided] to hold off on any committment…

On 27 December 2008, Israel launched a massive military operation, Cast Lead, into Gaza — and Abbas broke off negotiations a few days later. Despite a few contacts, these negotiations have not yet resumed — and Abbas wants them to resume where they left off on 16 September 2008…

Neither side has an exclusivity on missing opportunities

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The Nakba … is awareness growing?

May 15th, 2013

Tel Aviv-based public-opinion analyst Dahlia Scheindlin has just written an article in +972 Magazine, here, entitled “The Palestinian Nakba: Are Israelis starting to get it?”

Here is an excerpt from Dahlia Scheindlin’s piece:

“During the Camp David negotiations of 2000, when I was working with American pollster Stanley Greenberg supplying public opinion data to then-Prime Minister Ehud Barak almost nightly, the refugee issue tended to be the toughest problem, even as the Jewish public advanced significantly toward unprecedented compromises on Jerusalem (documented in Greenberg’s 2009 book).

Just after the talks collapsed, a Hebrew University survey in late July, 2000 asked Israelis (and Palestinians) whether they thought their respective leader’s compromises on each item had been appropriate, too much or too little. Among Israelis, the perception of Barak’s proposed compromises on Palestinian refugees gathered the highest ‘too much of a compromise’ response of all (64 percent gave this answer, compared to 57 percent for Jerusalem).

Twelve years later, in a December, 2012 survey by the same authors (Jacob Shamir and Khalil Shikaki), the Palestinian refugee question no longer holds the most-rejected-clause spot. That distinction now goes to the proposals on Jerusalem, based on the old Clinton framework (59 percent rejected them, 38 percent supported them). Respondents were asked about a refugee compromise which reflects the Clinton, Geneva Plan and Arab Peace Initiative approach:

Both sides agree that the solution will be based on UN resolutions 194 and 242. The refugees would be given five choices for permanent residency. These are: the Palestinian state and the Israeli areas transferred to the Palestinian state in the territorial exchange mentioned above; no restrictions would be imposed on refugee return to these two areas. Residency in the other three areas (in host countries, third countries, and Israel) would be subject to the decision of these states. As a base for its decision Israel will consider the average number of refugees admitted to third countries like Australia, Canada, Europe, and others. All refugees would be entitled to compensation for their “refugeehood” and loss of property.

Among the 600-person sample, which included Arabs, 42 percent accepted this and 49 percent rejected it – a significant decline from nearly two-thirds who felt it was ‘too much of a compromise’ in 2000.

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Yasser Abed Rabbo reveals he was a secret channel for talks with Israel in 2010-2011

May 15th, 2013

It’s hard to understand what the purpose is, of this revelation.

Yasser Abed Rabbo, a former spokesperson for the DFLP who’s now the Executive Secretary of the Palestine Liberation Organization [PLO] told Israeli journalist Avi Issacharoff he personally took part in an hitherto-unrevealed series of talks with Yizhak Molcho, the negotiations adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu, which ended with an inconclusive meeting with Netanyahu himself in mid-February 2011.

Issacharoff reported, in his story [published by the Times of Israel, here] that “The Prime Minister’s Office refused to comment on the contents of this report”.

The Issacharoff story does not explain how the talks began, in late 2010 [not long after an Obama effort to restart direct Israeli-Palestinian negotiations by a meeting at the White House in September 2010, which were suspended after the IDF launched its major Gaza operation, Cast Lead, on 27 December 2008...] Nor does it explain exactly how Issacharoff got the story, or why Abed Rabbo decided to speak out now.

But these contacts ended with the mid-February 2011 meeting.

Abed Rabbo told Issacharoff that he waited a full year to hear back from Netanyahu:
“He said to me, ‘Give me two days and I’ll get back to you.’ We said goodbye. He asked me to send his regards to Abu Mazen. And from that point on, I didn’t hear from Bibi or Molcho. A year later [i.e., in or around February 2012], I relayed him a message through a third party that I’ve been sitting waiting by the phone for a year, but Netanyahu did not respond”.

It was not long after that effort a year later  to re-contact Netanyahu that Abed Rabbo and Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad both refused Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ order to take a letter to Prime Minister Netanyahu in Jerusalem on 17 April 2012 — a still-puzzling episode that we posted about on our sister blog, UN-Truth, here. In that post, we noted that the Jerusalem Post reported that Fayyad’s “last-minute cancellation may cast new light on divisions within the Palestinian political establishment” …

Much of Issacharoff’s report makes for uncomfortable reading.

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[Rare, Old] Palestinian banknotes sold at London auction

April 13th, 2013

Al-Arabiya reported on its website today that “An Arab buyer in London has paid £65,000 (almost $100,000) for a rare Palestinian banknote that was auctioned this week in the British capital. The note, which was offered by Spink Auctions on Thursday, appeared for the first time in 40 years and was on sale with another 1,690 rare notes, many of them Palestinian”.

Rare 100-pound Palestinian banknote with special serial number

Extremely are 100-pound Palestinian banknote with special serial number

According to Al-Arabiya, “The 100-pound Palestinian note, issued in 1929, is extremely rare and has attracted great attention at the auction, Ayman Abdou, an expert in rare banknotes said this week. ‘The price which the note was sold at is not actually that expensive … At the time, this note could have bought an entire plot of land in the most beautiful parts of Palestine’, Abdou said. Abdou also said the note was particularly special because it remained in good condition, adding that its serial number is ‘A000000′. ‘The notes that have zeros are usually very rare. They are printed to be distributed amongst central banks across the world. This means it had been rare since the day it was issued’, he said”.  This story is published here.

[Land in Ramallah is going for something astronomical {like $1,000,000 a dunam or so} these days...]

We did an earlier post on these Palestinian banknotes, here.

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U.S. Secy of State John Kelly on new efforts to improve the Palestinian West Bank economy

April 9th, 2013

This is not a new idea, of course.

In fact, Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu is one of its main proponents… It’s just that the time was never ripe, before. Or, that the Palestinians were doing something to prevent implementation of Netanyahu’s good intentions [which Palestinians believe is a way of distracting them from pursuing their political goals, such as self-determination].

In any case, here is an excerpt from remarks U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry made at Israel’s Ben Gurion airport just before leaving after a 42-hour visit to meet officials in Ramallah + Jerusalem. It was his first on-the-ground effort to prepare the way for eventual resumed Israeli-Palestinian talks:

“It’s our intention, and we all committed to this, every party, to continue our intensive discussions with the belief that they are constructive and they are in good faith, and that we intend to try to create the conditions for peace so that we can resume negotiations between the parties in a clear and precise, predetermined manner.

“We also spoke about other steps that could be taken in order to facilitate this process and to make it more conducive to success. Specifically, we agreed among us – President Abbas, Prime Minister Netanyahu, and ourselves – that we are going to engage in new efforts, very specific efforts, to promote economic development and to remove some of the bottlenecks and barriers that exist with respect to commerce in the West Bank, to move very rapidly towards increased business expansion and private sector investment in the West Bank, all of which, we are convinced, will help improve the economic security of the people living there as well as improve the security of the people of Israel. Economic growth will help us be able to provide a climate, if you will, an atmosphere, within which people have greater confidence about moving forward. But I want to emphasize – I emphasize this very strongly: This is not in lieu of, or an alternative to, the political track. It is not a substitute. The political track remains the primary focus. But this is in addition to, in a way that could help to facilitate that track, and I believe will begin to take hold immediately. I held discussions regarding these efforts with both Israeli and Palestinian officials, as well as with the Quartet representative Tony Blair, and other private sector business people. And this will be a focus of our work over the course of the next months in a very intensive way, and I will have more to say about this in the very near future…”
Kerry’s remarks at the airport before leaving the region today are posted here.

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“We. Are. Powerless!” – The Jon Stewart Daily Show on the Obama visit

March 27th, 2013

Here it is, the Jon Stewart report on the Obama visit. Yes, incisive.

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Dan Meridor: another way to propose an interim agreement

February 19th, 2013

A veteran Israeli politician, Dan Meridor, who speaks in sober and measured tones, says that the Palestinians have twice [in 2000, and in 2008] rejected proposals that would have brought about a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Meridor explained, in an interview [published by Al-Monitor] with Mazal Mualem, chief political analyst of Maariv, why this convinces him that only an interim agreement is possible now:

Al-Monitor: Where did negotiations with the Palestinians disappear to in the last four years?

Meridor: “The election campaign here created the illusion as if there is no Palestinian problem. Except for [Tzipi] Livni, no-one talked about it. A kind of fallacy was created here, that we can live with the situation for generations, and that is definitely not correct. It is an anomaly. For forty-five years we have an anomaly, and it is not important who is right. I think that we are right, but things can’t continue this way. Therefore I hope that the government that will be formed now will deal with it seriously, because a continuation of the current situation is dangerous for Israel.

There is an illusion that since there is no terror, we can continue this way. I think that the thwarting of terror is not only our success, but also Abu Mazen’s strategy. But if we continue in the same path we are on today, without clear borders, in the end we’ll have one state from Jordan to the sea, and this, in my eyes, represents a threat to the entire Zionist vision. I think that the Palestinians also have an interest in changing the current situation”.

Al-Monitor: So what actually happened here?

Meridor: “Four years ago, we ‘had arrived’. [Former Prime Minister] Olmert proposed a final settlement. He offered [Palestinian Chairman] Abu Mazen the entire territory, including partitioning Jerusalem, thus bringing an end to the conflict. Abu Mazen didn’t accept it. That poses a very big question for us. Why didn’t Abu Mazen grab that proposal with two hands, after he had dedicated dozens of years of his life to the Palestinian issue?

I don’t have a definite answer, but the fact is that, until today, the two very far-reaching proposals submitted by Israel to bring, at last, an end to the conflict encountered Palestinian rejection. I was involved in one of them, with [then Prime Minister Ehud] Barak and [then Palestinian Chairman Yasser] Arafat in Camp David [in 2000]. The second one, proposed by Olmert, I also observed from close up. I am ready even tonight to sign an agreement, but I am not convinced that the Palestinian side is ready”.

What does he think should be done?  Well, Meridor says that he does not want an interim [as opposed to final] agreement, but says that seems to be the only solution possible — at least for now. He says that Israel should announce an end to any further settlements [outside of Jerusalem, and already-existing settlements, which Israel intends to keep...]

And, he says, “We need to start to decide on the border, not to wait. An international agreement that is in the process of being formed is that the border will not be exactly like the 1967 borders, but will be based on 1967. That appears in Obama’s speech of two years ago, and appears in a letter from [then President] Bush to [then Prime Minister] Sharon. It even appears in the Geneva Accord of [Palestinian politician] Yasser Abd-Rabbo and [former Knesset Member] Yossi Beilin … Netanyahu delivered the Bar Ilan speech [2009], then went to the Knesset and said: I want the [settlement] blocs and Jerusalem. We froze [construction in] the settlements for 10 months, but Abu Mazen didn’t come. Therefore I don’t blame Bibi [Benjamin Netanyahu], precisely because we went far on this issue and you have to be fair”.   These remarks are posted on the Al-Monitor website, here.

Now, the Palestinians have said they absolutely do not want either an interim agreement, or a provisional state [another aspect of the same proposal, nowadays].   They have also been astonished at the suggestion that both Yasser Arafat [in July 2000] and Mahmoud Abbas [in September 2008] said “No”.  At least, they might agree, neither leader said “Yes”.  That, they explain, is because the Americans [the brokers, both times] and the Israeli negotiators knew that these proposals did not meet the Palestinian bottom line.  In 200 + 2001, Arafat was waiting for a better offer.  In September 2008, Mahmoud Abbas was waiting for Ehud Olmert to be indicted on  charges of corruption — so, the Palestinians concluded, Olmert’s offer wasn’t firm or reliable — and in any case a better offer might yet appear on the horizon.  But, the Palestinian negotiators agree, they were close, at least in 2008.  [We have reported here and on our sister blog, www.un-truth.com, that the differences were narrowed to something less than 3% of the West Bank territory.]

And, the Palestinian negotiators have said that they want negotiations to resume at the point they ended in 2008 [with the same proposals on the table] –  but it is the Israeli government negotiators who have refused…

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We’ve heard it before: Netanyahu reportedly ready to offer Palestinians an old Israeli proposal of temporary or interim agreement [which the Palestinians have previously rejected]

February 13th, 2013

In advance of U.S. President Obama’s planned visit to the region on 20-22 March [during which Obama will reportedly spend about 3 hours in Ramallah, as compared to 45 hours in Israel] Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu is reportedly planning to offer a “new” plan for arranging things with the current Palestinian leadership.

This has been heard before.

Meanwhile, the New U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said, in a joint press conference in Washington with Jordan’s Foreign Minister Nasser Judeh, that he and President Obama were planning to visit the region in order to “listen”.

This has also been heard before.

Kerry bravely proceeded, anyway, saying that “the President is not prepared, at this point in time, to do more than to listen to the parties, which is why he has announced he’s going to go to Israel. It affords him an opportunity to listen. And I think we start out by listening and get a sense of what the current state of possibilities are and then begin to make some choices. It would be a huge mistake, almost an arrogant step, to suddenly be announcing this and that without listening first, so that’s what I intend to do, that’s what the President intends to do”.

Jordan’s Foreign Minister Judeh said: “The most important thing is to have results. And I think that we’ve seen failed approaches, false starts, media events. I think we have to look at all of this and put it in perspective and see how we can produce results in the next phase. The Secretary and I are in full agreement that the window of opportunity on this is closing fast, and that makes it all the more important for us to work together in addressing this issue”.

[ Ynet is reporting here that on Thursday morning March 21, "Obama will depart for Ramallah to meet with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. Obama will return to Jerusalem by noon, when he will be taken by Netanyahu to examine a model of Second Temple Period Jerusalem. They will continue to the Shrine of the Book, where Netanyahu will show him the Dead Sea Scrolls"... and so on].

Akiva Eldar reported in Al-Monitor here that high-level Likud officials believe that Netanyahu “really appears to want to jump-start diplomatic negotiations with Palestinian Authority Chairman Abu Mazen in an attempt to bring about a long-term interim agreement. This, he feels, is because a final status settlement is not achievable in the coming years.”

Again, this has been heard before.

Not least of all when the same view was recently expressed by Netanyahu’s previous Foreign Minister, Alexander Lieberman.

The thing is, none of the Palestinian leadership, from Mahmoud Abbas to Khaled Meshaal of Hamas, will accept an interim or temporary agreement. They believe that Israel will continue to create facts on the ground, mainly in settlements in the West Bank, that will make the Palestinian state — and any solution — non-viable.

So, this will be an extremely irritating move, at least for the Palestinians — and, at best, a waste of time.

The UN Human Rights Council [HRC] in Geneva has just received a tough report that relies on international law to say that Israel’s settlements are illegal and must be evacuated.

We reported on reaction to this HRC report in late January on our sister blog, here.

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Clarification from Mahmoud Abbas — but not clarity

January 10th, 2013

Does Mahmoud Abbas have the right to refuse, on behalf of Palestinian refugees caught up in fighting in Syria, the reported condition set by Israel [that these Palestinian refugees give up their Right of Return to their original homes that may be in areas now inside Israel] — in order to allow these Palestinian refugees to come to into the West Bank now?

Well, he said in Cairo on Wednesday night [9 January] that he refused this reported Israeli condition — which he said was communicated to him by UN Secretary-General BAN Ki-Moon — anyway.

Mahmoud Abbas and his delegated representatives have engaged in negotiations with Israelis for decades — and during this time, in some of these conversations, he was involved in conversations in which it was said, or rather speculated, that surely not every Palestinian refugee around the world would want to return to his/her original homes…

Some of these conversations, incoherent in part, full of innuendo that can’t be communicated by transcription, have been revealed in release of documents like the Al-Jazeera Palestine Papers.

In response, Palestinian critics have said that the Right of Return is an individual, not a collective right — and that Abbas had no right to give it up pr waive it in negotiations on behalf of each and every Palestinian.

Now, we are faced with the opposite situation.

It was Abbas himself who said, in mid-December, during fighting that had reportedly emptied 95% of Yarmouk Camp [which is now a suburb of Damascus], that Palestinians forced to flee that violence should be allowed to come to the West Bank.

He asked for the UN to help.

Now, we learn from a report in the Times of Israel today, that:

    “Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas rejected an Israeli offer to allow Palestinian refugees fleeing Syria to enter the Palestinian territories on condition that they forgo their ‘right of return’ to Israel proper, Abbas told the Egyptian press on Wednesday evening.  Following a meeting with Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi, Abbas said that he had appealed to the UN to intercede on behalf of Palestinian refugees living in Syriaand demand that Israel allow them to enter the West Bank and Gaza.  UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told Abbas that Israel agreed to the request, on the condition that the refugees sign a document in which they forgo the ‘right of return’ to areas within Israel.  Abbas said he rejected that condition”.  This is published here.

The Associated Press, economizing with words, reported that:
“The fate of Palestinians uprooted by Israel’s creation is an explosive issue. Israel worries that a mass influx of Palestinians could destroy the notion of a Jewish state. Last month, Abbas asked the U.N. to seek Israeli permission to bring Palestinians caught in Syria’s civil war to the Palestinian territories. Abbas said in comments published Thursday that Israel linked its acceptance to refugees relinquishing claims to returning to what is now Israel. Abbas says ‘we rejected that’. Israeli officials declined comment”. This was published by the Washington Post here.

Did Mahmoud Abbas think his proposal to allow Palestinian refugees caught up in fighting in Syria was only a temporary solution?

Did Mahmoud Abbas think that he was  offering Palestinian refugees [mainly from Yarmouk Camp] just shelter from the immediate conflict now?

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Getting Real: A Jewish debate

December 12th, 2012

“Daniel Gordis has it backwards”

Mark Baker [writing in The Daily Beast], in an argument worth following, has taken on Daniel Gordis [who addressed American Jewish leaders via an article published in Haaretz] — over the responsibility for the current situation:

Mark Baker wrote here that “For a long time, Daniel Gordis has been telling us to get real. He has written numerous books about getting used to a war without end, and has joined a growing chorus of commentators who preach despair against hope, realism in place of reconciliation…”

And here is Gordis’ latest piece of writing in Haaretz — the article that Baker is takgin issue with:

“The dangerous myopia of American Jewish leaders”

The progressive Jewish leadership calls for peace while Hamas calls for hatred.  When will these Jewish leaders stop denying reality and start grappling with the dangers in the real world in which Israel has to try to survive?  By Daniel Gordis:
“From coast to coast, as Progressive American rabbis continue to call for peace, they are inadvertently revealing their tragic inability to acknowledge that the world in which they once formulated their positions on Israel has changed almost beyond recognition…” This is posted here.

In his reply ["Daniel Gordis Has It Backwards"], published by The Daily Beast, Mark Baker wrote:

“But what is this realism that our leaders are supposed to acknowledge before bettering the world? Is it the realism that builds on road-maps or biblical maps? Is it the realism that punishes Palestinians for supporting a U.N. resolution that recognizes Israel alongside Palestine? … Or are we supposed to accept the realism that pits itself against peace by acquiescing to an infantile building game of settlement blocs?

“Is it the realism that will extend a temporary occupation into a never-ending system of control and discrimination? Is it this realism that allows us to accommodate ourselves to the fruits of occupation—the burning of olive groves and mosques, the culture of holy harassment that has come to typify day-to-day life in Judea and Samaria [n.b. - the West Bank]?

“Such cynical realism demands that Palestinians forget their losses, while we fetishize our memories. It makes Palestinian West Bankers dependent on Israeli utilities and then punishes them by withholding revenues. It means destroying Bedouin villages in the place where Jews civilize the desert. It commands us to assassinate their leaders until there is no partner left for peace.

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