Today's Situation

Clumsy coalition negotiations Wednesday, April 26, 2006

Only some 40 percent of the fence, which in some parts of Jerusalem and in a few places in the West Bank turns into a concrete wall as high as eight meters , has been completed. Much of the fence has been held up by litigation against it by Palestinian landowners on whose property the fence has been routed. The entire route is more than 800 kilometers long, because of the winding, twisting route the fence takes as it tries to include as many settlements as possible. So, while much of the fence is on the Green Line, some of it extends deep into the West Bank, to include the so-called settlement blocs. In addition, Olmert has spoken of including the Jordan Valley as a security zone that would remain in Israeli hands. Thus, even though the fence route actually includes less than 10 percent of the territory of the West Bank, its route effectively cuts up the territory into Palestinian enclaves and islands cut off from one another, particularly in the Jerusalem area.

The High Court of Justice , which traditionally has accepted 'security arguments' in various litigations, has in some cases forced the government to redraw the route of the fence closer to the Green Line.

Olmert has made clear that his goal is to turn the route of the fence into 'the permanent borders' of the state of Israel, promising that he will win international recognition of the new lines, which he plans to impose unilaterally on the Palestinians.

But there is doubt that any such international recognition of such a move will be forthcoming. Even Bush administration officials, who have been most sympathetic to Israeli concerns warned (anonymously) today in Haaretz that Israel should not expect international recognition of unilaterally imposed borders, especially if those borders veer eastward to encompass swathes of the West Bank. The new Spanish ambassador to Israel makes the same point today in an interview with The Jerusalem Post.

Meanwhile, the coalition negotiations proceed much more clumsily than what was expected right after the elections, when it seemed that Olmert could put together almost any kind of coalition he wanted. While Labor and Kadima have agreed on many of the main issues -- including an agreement that the Sasson report on illegal outposts will be implemented, meaning the eviction of several hundred radical settlers from about 100 'illegal outposts' -- Kadima and the other parties are not making much headway.

True, the Pensioners are likely to sign on to a coalition agreement today, but Shas and Yisrael Beitenu seem to be creating as many obstacles as Kadima tries to remove. Shas is demanding the reinstatement of a sliding scale for government allotments children, so that large families of five or more children -- commonplace among ultra-Orthodox and Arabs in Israel -- get thousands of shekels a month tax free. The Shas demands could cost billions, and would do nothing to eliminate poverty among the ultra-Orthodox.

Meanwhile, Yisrael Beitenu objects to Labor's insistence that the government guidelines include an explicit rejection of Yisrael Beitenu's platform, which would strip some 200,000 Israeli Arabs of their citizenship and make them Palestinian citizens in any political agreement with the Palestinians. Nor has Kadima reached any agreement with Yisrael Beitenu on broader issues regarding a political settlement with the Palestinians.

Not that there is even a twinkle of such an agreement on the horizon. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak has extended invitations to Olmert and Abbas to a three-way summit. Abbas has accepted the invitation, but Olmert is being cagey about it, saying no such meeting with Abbas is in the cards until at the very earliest, after Olmert visits Washington once he forms a government. Washington expects to hear Olmert's detailed plan for the West Bank withdrawal. They'll be the first to hear such details -- Olmert has said nothing to Israelis about where the estimated NIS 70-100 billion it would cost to remove some 70,000-80,000 Israelis from settlements outside the fence, will come from. Indeed, the subject has not even come up in the coalition negotiations. In fact, Olmert's withdrawal plan, which he calls 'convergence,' is apparently not even directly mentioned in the government guidelines being hammered out between Kadima and Labor.

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