The Situation

Coexistence and alerts

Monday, December 08, 2003

Voyages to Promised Lands, Take off, acrylic on paper

The apparent failure of the Palestinian conference, meant to launch a Palestinian Authority hudna offer to Israel, does not mean the Egyptian and Palestinian efforts to strike a deal are over, though it is not clear what message Egyptian Intelligence Minister Omar Suleiman will bring to Washington after the Hamas closed the door – for now – on a pan-Palestinian cease-fire. But all is not lost – Israel has made clear that it won’t need a formal cease-fire to observe one, if the Palestinians stick to such a truce. Indeed, a key aspect of the Palestinian conference noted by observers like Arab affairs analyst Dr. Guy Bechor, speaking to Israel Radio this morning, is that all the parties involved, from the PA to Jerusalem, the Hamas to Washington, all want a cease-fire, even if they don’t want to be seen cooperating with each other. An Arafat spokesman meanwhile said this morning that the efforts would continue to reach a cease-fire, while officials in the Prime Minister’s Office said talks continued with their counterparts in the Palestinian PMO for a meeting between Ariel Sharon and Ahmed Qurei’.

he fence issue is sending Israel’s ambassador to the U.S. back to Washington with a map showing how the fence helped prevent a terror attack at Yokne’am last week, but Israel is bracing for days of more international scrutiny of the fence. Israel won’t boycott the General Assembly session tonight, but its argument that the fence is necessary for self-protection is undermined by the manner in which the fence drives deep into the West Bank in places. Prime Minister Sharon, Foreign Minister Shalom, and Defense Minister Mofaz met today to prepare a united front on the international public relations front over the issue.

In other developments, the search committee for a new attorney general rejected the candidate nominated by Justice Minister Yosef Lapid, saying that Dr. Yoram Turbowicz did not have the kind of experience that qualified him for the job. Lapid, who had said ‘ideology’ was behind his choice of the commercial lawyer who was a successful Anti-Trust Commissioner in the 1990s and since then has been in private business, said he’d seek a new candidate. And in the Knesset, the House Committee was meeting to discuss lifting the parliamentary immunity of two Likud MKs accused by outgoing Attorney General Elyakim Rubinstein of voting twice during budget votes earlier this year.

But the big political issue today remained Ehud Olmert’s weekend bombshell – his proposal for a unilateral Israeli withdrawal from the territories. The Likud faction in the Knesset was meeting today to discuss the Olmert interview and another issue involving the deputy prime minister – his acceptance of European Union rules requiring Israeli exports be marked with their geographic origin, so EU countries can apply tariffs on exports from the settlements. Sharon has yet to comment on Olmert’s remarks, but the conventional wisdom is that the two men are coordinated. Since the interview with Nahum Barnea in Yedioth Ahronoth, Olmert has been saying that he speaks for a majority of Likud voters. He is being attacked for everything from defeatism and ideological deviation, to giving up important negotiating assets and ruining the government’s international public relations efforts to explain the government policy.

The faction is divided, and appears to be tilting against Olmert – but even Likudniks admit that the prime minister was the one who announced the need for painful concessions and a Palestinian state. “It’s time for the Likud to convene and do some serious thinking,” said an Olmert ally, MK Avraham Hirschson, who attacked those calling for Olmert to be thrown out of the party. “Olmert’s views’ are pure pragmatism, and many in the Likud have reached the conclusion that it’s time to take things into our hands and do what’s right for the state of Israel,” he added. Hirschson is the Likud MK chairing the finance committee, and is hawkish in many spheres, but his comments are an indication that Olmert breached a longstanding barrier inside the Likud against stating openly that the settlement enterprise has been defeated by demographics, and failed to do what the Likud intended when it came to power in 1977: make sure the Biblical homelands – Judea and Samaria -- remain in the state of Israel’s hands, and prevent the establishment of the state of Palestine.

Recommended:

FOUR HORSEMEN OF THE APOCYALYPSE On November 14, 2003, in a dramatic development, four former Shin Bet chiefs call on the political leadership to make peace with the Palestinians. Read the full interview.

Sharon’s policy is bringing us to the brink of existential abyss a speech by Victoria Buch to the Peace Coalition weekly vigil outside the Prime Minister's Residence, November 29, 2003

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