Post by smartarse on Aug 11, 2009 15:06:16 GMT 10
It always seems to be my lot in life to start a thread on this forum about Israel!
I've read some interesting stuff about it recently and so while I listen to Question Time in the Victorian parliament I thought i'd post some links.
An article in this week's Economist had some facinating things to say about how close we came to a comprehensive deal on a Palestinian state. Here is a summary of that article:
In 2008, Ehud Olmert, then Israel's fading prime minister, and Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinians' more durable president, were astonishingly close to a peace deal. Judging by a recent interview with Olmert www.newsweek.com/id/201937 they appeared to have been only a whisker apart.
According to the report, Olmert offered the Palestinians nearly 94% of the West Bank as the basis of their would-be state, plus land swaps of Israeli territory to make up the difference, amounting to nearly 6%, plus a safe-passage road-corridor to link Gaza with the West Bank. Olmert is said to have also offered to internationalise the sovereignty of the "holy basin" of Jerusalem - principally, the Western ("Wailing") Wall, which is sacred to Jews, and the al-Aqsa mosque (the Dome on the Rock) above it that is revered by Muslims.
The city of Jerusalem, by implication, would be shared as a capital of both states, with the Palestinian one on the east side, the Israeli one on the west. Finally, perhaps most controversially, Olmert says he offered to let a small number of Palestinians return to the lands in Israel from which they or their forebears had fled after the Jewish state was founded in 1948.
Source: International: Not quite as gloomy as they look; Israel and Palestine, The Economist, Aug 1, 2009.
If the deal offered was so good, why did it fail? Well the original Newsweek article offers some consise analysis:
For all his moderate rhetoric, Olmert's policies were deeply flawed. During the last full year of his term, construction tenders for new structures increased dramatically—by a multiple of 38 in East Jerusalem, according to one study. He failed even to remove many of the hardest-core outposts deep in the West Bank, which seven in 10 Israelis are eager to abandon. Part of his trouble was rooted in the nature of Israel's coalition system, a kaleidoscope of small parties that each hold the power to topple the government. Hobbled by corruption allegations and a failed war in Lebanon, Olmert had nowhere near the political capital to tame enemies on his right flank. At one low point during his tenure, a poll showed support for the prime minister hovering around 3 percent.
This obviously an extremely complex issue and I didn't mean to start this thread at such a high level. But if you're new to this issue and want to understand it better I suggest you read teh Newsweek article linked above, and the Economist one if you can get your hands on it and then post some questions on here.
MAD is lucky to have a quite of number of people - past and present members - who really know their stuff on Israel so this should hopefully be a really productive conservation about ideas and arguments you can use.
I've read some interesting stuff about it recently and so while I listen to Question Time in the Victorian parliament I thought i'd post some links.
An article in this week's Economist had some facinating things to say about how close we came to a comprehensive deal on a Palestinian state. Here is a summary of that article:
In 2008, Ehud Olmert, then Israel's fading prime minister, and Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinians' more durable president, were astonishingly close to a peace deal. Judging by a recent interview with Olmert www.newsweek.com/id/201937 they appeared to have been only a whisker apart.
According to the report, Olmert offered the Palestinians nearly 94% of the West Bank as the basis of their would-be state, plus land swaps of Israeli territory to make up the difference, amounting to nearly 6%, plus a safe-passage road-corridor to link Gaza with the West Bank. Olmert is said to have also offered to internationalise the sovereignty of the "holy basin" of Jerusalem - principally, the Western ("Wailing") Wall, which is sacred to Jews, and the al-Aqsa mosque (the Dome on the Rock) above it that is revered by Muslims.
The city of Jerusalem, by implication, would be shared as a capital of both states, with the Palestinian one on the east side, the Israeli one on the west. Finally, perhaps most controversially, Olmert says he offered to let a small number of Palestinians return to the lands in Israel from which they or their forebears had fled after the Jewish state was founded in 1948.
Source: International: Not quite as gloomy as they look; Israel and Palestine, The Economist, Aug 1, 2009.
If the deal offered was so good, why did it fail? Well the original Newsweek article offers some consise analysis:
For all his moderate rhetoric, Olmert's policies were deeply flawed. During the last full year of his term, construction tenders for new structures increased dramatically—by a multiple of 38 in East Jerusalem, according to one study. He failed even to remove many of the hardest-core outposts deep in the West Bank, which seven in 10 Israelis are eager to abandon. Part of his trouble was rooted in the nature of Israel's coalition system, a kaleidoscope of small parties that each hold the power to topple the government. Hobbled by corruption allegations and a failed war in Lebanon, Olmert had nowhere near the political capital to tame enemies on his right flank. At one low point during his tenure, a poll showed support for the prime minister hovering around 3 percent.
This obviously an extremely complex issue and I didn't mean to start this thread at such a high level. But if you're new to this issue and want to understand it better I suggest you read teh Newsweek article linked above, and the Economist one if you can get your hands on it and then post some questions on here.
MAD is lucky to have a quite of number of people - past and present members - who really know their stuff on Israel so this should hopefully be a really productive conservation about ideas and arguments you can use.