T. Belman. Erakat is wrong. Aryeh Eldad, with whom I have been talking, has long backed a plan in which all Palestinians in Judea and Samaria would have Jordanian citizenship, as they do now, and Israeli residency. This is far better than Glick who wants to offer them a path to citizenship and 1.7 million is a very big number of expats. I wrote to Eldad as I still had some questions.
Is there any way to restrict them to areas A and B or could they live any where they want in Israel?
As residents, what economic support and benefits would they be entitled to?
How could that number get reduced over time or perhaps at the beginning?
Could the benefits and entitlements available to them be minimized so that living in Jordan would be more attractive?
Is there any way to prevent Jordan from cancelling their citizenship?
Saeb Erekat tells UK parliament speaker that Israel can’t have ‘apartheid regime,’ will have to allow ‘equal rights for everyone’
The only alternative to the creation of a Palestinian state is a one-state solution in which all Palestinians will get the right to vote, Palestine Liberation Organization Secretary-General Saeb Erekat said Wednesday, hours after a senior White House official appeared to withdraw the US’s traditional support for a two-state solution.
“Contrary to [Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu’s plan of one state and two systems, apartheid, the only alternative to two sovereign and democratic states on the 1967 border is one single secular and democratic state with equal rights for everyone, Christians, Muslims, and Jews, on all of historic Palestine,” Erekat said during a meeting with the speaker of the UK House of Commons, John Bercow, in Ramallah.
Erekat’s comments came a day after the White House announced that Washington will seek to broker a peace agreement between Israelis and Palestinians, but that a two-state solution may not necessarily be the framework to bring that peace to fruition. The president will not insist on the two-state formula, the official said.
Erekat said the two-state solution constituted a “painful” compromise from the Palestinian perspective.
“As we have constantly stated, the two-state solution is a Palestinian adoption of an international formula,” Erekat, a former top peace negotiator, said. “In fact, it represents a painful and historic Palestinian compromise of recognizing Israel over 78% of historic Palestine. Today, almost six million Palestinians live under Israeli control in all of historic Palestine, while almost six million Palestinians live in exile.”
Ramallah’s official position calls for a two-state solution, with the establishment of a Palestinian state on the 1967 lines with East Jerusalem as its capital.
In his meeting with Bercow, who earlier this week became the first sitting speaker of the UK parliament to visit Israel, Erekat called on London to “work toward justice for the Palestinian people, especially given the historic responsibility that the UK bears 100 years after the issuance of the Balfour Declaration,” a major diplomatic foundation for the establishment of the Jewish state.
Erekat denounced calls by UK Prime Minister Theresa May to celebrate the document’s anniversary as “unacceptable” and “insulting to the Palestinian people.” He further called on 10 Downing Street to recognize the State of Palestine and “to take concrete measures in order to save the two-state solution, including to ban all Israeli settlement products.”
Hours before US President Donald Trump and Netanyahu were set to meet Wednesday for the first time since the president took office, a senior White House official said the United States would no longer seek to dictate the terms of any final peace settlement, but would support what the two sides agree to together.
“A two-state solution that doesn’t bring peace is not our goal that anybody wants to achieve,” the official said in a briefing with reporters Tuesday night. “Peace is the goal. Whether it comes in the form of a two-state solution, if that’s what the parties want, or something else, if that’s what the parties want, we’re going to help them.
“We’re not going to dictate what the terms of peace will be,” the official added. “President Trump has very much indicated that he wants to achieve peace,” he went on, noting also that an accord was a “very high priority for the administration.”
From left to right: Acting Security Advisor Yaakov Nagel, Military Attache to the Prime Minister Eliezer Toledano, PM Netanyahu’s chief of staff Yoav Horowitz, Israeli Ambassador to the US Ron Dermer and Benjamin Netanyahu, at the Blair House in Washington, February 13 (Avi Ohayun/GPO)
Netanyahu told his advisers behind closed doors that he would tell Trump that there’s no point in establishing Palestinian state in the current climate, Channel 2 news reported Tuesday.
The past three US presidents have all publicly embraced a two-state solution as the only means to achieving the coveted peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians. Any deviation from that posture would mark a dramatic shift in American foreign policy.
A two-state solution has long been widely supported in Israel, as the basis on which the Jewish state was revived in 1948 following a UN vote in 1947, and as the formula that can ensure the maintenance of an Israel that is both democratic and has an overwhelmingly Jewish demographic. A little over three-quarters of the Israeli populace is Jewish, but in Israel and the various disputed territories, most demographers say the population is almost evenly split between Jews and non-Jews. The Jewish Home coalition party and many in Netanyahu’s Likud, however, flatly oppose Palestinian independence.
Trump has yet to speak directly to the Palestinian leadership since taking office last month.
The problem is that Jordan does not want the Palestinians. They are not alowhite like him and he fears being overrun by them, as they would not support his kingship. Remember, to Muslims, it’s fight with everyone until your tribe is all that’s left, or your family is all that is left. They don’t understand “peace”. If Israel is to make them citizens, the Muslims must agree to respect (not observe) Jewish holidays and Jewish laws, at least in public. They should not blare their Arabic prayers over loudspeakers that bother Jews in neighboring towns. They shouldn’t violate environmental laws with their illegal toxic fires. They should be forbidden to practice honor killings. They need to be told in no uncertain terms that if they don’t like the Jewish majority and Jewish flavor of Israel, they need to move to an Arab country. There are many Muslims who state they prefer to live under Israeli rule, and if this is true, they shouldn’t mind these kinds of restrictions cited above. The rest of them have to leave.
@ Sebastien Zorn:
xx
You all keep forgetting the Mudar Zahran Plan which takes all this stuff into account and, moreover, rids Israel-especially YESHA -of all thr Arab squatters. I haven’t heard of any plan other than perhaps Steven Plaut’s which comes near to it, and it encompasses more violence than Mudar’s which would have international backing..
We’re only going around and ’round in a circular wheel, like a couple of mice otherwise….
P.S. I’m using “Edit” to ask Ted why I’m in “moderation” for every scrap I post here, although I’m also on the “White List” which, up to a few days ago allowed my posts to be printed without “moderation”. “Moderation has appreared again out of nowhere, like the return of malaria.
The Judenrein OSS of the Pal: an Islamo-Arabic delusion supported too long by the western antisemites.
Typo Alert: Should be “go in its wake” not “go in wake”.
Typo Alert: Should be “go in it’s wake” not “go in wake”
@Ted Belman
One more question for Erekat: Is there any way for Jordan to unilaterally confer citizenship, in the first place, on all pals with or without their active consent and cooperation?
@ Ted Belman:
Yes you are correct. The handwriting on the wall says USA under Trump no longer has interest to try and force Israel to do things it does not believe in its best interests.
That is a sea change because that does kill the two state concept.
Please let us go its wake!
The Pals are running scared.