• published: 26 Feb 2014
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The Defence Minister in Israel may have been caught saying aloud what many have been thinking for a long time.The Defence Minister in Israel may have been caught saying aloud what many have been thinking for a long time.The Defence Minister in Israel may have been caught saying aloud what many have been thinking for a long time.The Defence Minister in Israel may have been caught saying aloud what many have been thinking for a long time.The 20 year anniversary of the signing of the Oslo peace accords, between Yitzhak Rabin and Yassar Arafat passed last year with little fanfare. There have been Nobel peace prizes, billions of dollars, countless hours of shuttle diplomacy and conferences, that have been put into — and continue to be put into — the peace process, but in reality the whole fiasco has been a complete disaster. John Kerry, the United States Secretary of State, seems to have made the peace process the main goal of his office, making many visits to the region and pushing the sides toward reaching an agreement. We are now in 2014 and the peace process continues. John Kerry has succeeded in getting the parties to the negotiating table. On January 9, hardline Israeli foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman, turned around and seemingly supported John Kerrys plan in an interview with the UK Telegraph. This is an apparent success for John Kerry, however, exactly what Lieberman thinks is a little shrouded as the Telegraph also reported regarding Lieberman, that, He remains unrepentant about Israels right to expand settlements in the West Bank... Prospects of the John Kerry plan succeeding are doubtful just from a purely practical point of view. There are some fundamental facts, that place the whole idea of pushing for a peace settlement in the current climate, as very foolish from Israels point of view, as well as a practical impossibility. Here are three: 1. The regimes surrounding Israel are very unstable and may be history in a short period of time. A peace treaty signed with the Palestinian Arabs is of little value without the support of all the surrounding countries, where many so called Palestinian refugees reside. These people have been denied citizenship by their host countries in order to preserve the refugee problem and put pressure on Israel. The problem of the refugees and their supposed right of return to the land of Israel, is one of the major roadblocks for an agreement. This could only be solved with all parties being involved, which would for example include the Syrian government. 2. The proposed area for a Palestinian State is currently divided between two warring Palestinian Arab factions, the Islamic Hamas which rule the Gaza strip and the PLO which have civil jurisdiction in the West Bank autonomous areas. The two territories are not contiguous and the West Bank area is landlocked without an airport or seaport. Even all the territory together is hardly a viable state. Currently the main problem however, is that the current negotiations do not include half the Palestinian Arab side, making it impossible to have an agreement. In reality Kerry has only succeeded in getting some of the parties to negotiate. 3. By many estimates the Jewish population in the West Bank area of the proposed Arab state is past the point of no return. Population estimates vary depending on which areas are included. CBS reported in 2013 that there were 341,400 Jews living in the West Bank. This does not include over 200,000 living in East Jerusalem which Israel annexed right after the six day war. Even if Israel retained all the major settlements it hopes to in a peace treaty, this would still leave approximately 85,000 largely ideological Jews, who would have to be forcibly removed from their homes and resettled in the rest of the country. It is openly acknowledged that this could lead to civil war in Israel and is logistically impossible. (8500 settlers were forcibly removed from the Gaza strip in 2005 and they still have not all found proper housing and jobs in Israel.) There is also the immoral aspect, of forcibly transferring a population based on race alone — simply because they are Jewish. From these three facts alone, it is evident that the current round of talks, on a purely practical basis, cannot go anywhere. In the meantime Israel continues to build in the areas it considers hers, announcing this week construction tenders for 1800 new housing units in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria. Recent polls show that Israelis in general reject further concessions to the Palestinian Arabs as reported on Israel National News this week. A potentially explosive report broke in Israel this week reported on mainstream Galei Tzahal, which is the IDF Radio station, reporting from government sources that John Kerry is behind European Boycott threats and that Kerry is making sure the threats stay in check, but as soon as the peace talks fail he intends to open the floodgates and spur on full-blown internat