Palestine – Obama Admits Defeat On Renewed Negotiations For Two-State Solution
President Obama has finally admitted the death of any renewed negotiations for a two-state solution between Israel and the PLO for the next several years – telling the media on 24 March:
“there still does not appear to be a prospect of a meaningful framework established that would lead to a Palestinian state even if there were a whole range of conditions and security requirements that might be phased in over a long period of time — which was always the presumption.”
President Obama has apparently accepted Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s contention that such negotiations are not possible whilst conflicts involving radical Islam rage in Syria, Iraq, Libya and Yemen.
President Obama had until now placed his faith in such negotiations:
“Now, I have said repeatedly that core issues can only be negotiated in direct talks between the parties.”
The rise of Islamic State in June 2014 has created a new ballgame and new dynamic.
Islamic State’s possible spill-over into Gaza and the West Bank cannot be ignored by Obama when Israel is being requested by Obama to withdraw from part of the West Bank and cede part of its own sovereign territory to the PLO in accordance with President Obama’s vision enunciated in May 2011:
“.. the United States believes that negotiations should result in two states, with permanent Palestinian borders with Israel, Jordan, and Egypt, and permanent Israeli borders with Palestine. The borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps – so that secure and recognized borders are established for both states.”
Abandoning territory as Israel did in Gaza in 2005 – will require ironclad security guarantees.
President Obama’s pledge to degrade and destroy Islamic State is a work in progress that could take up to three years – as Secretary of State John Kerry openly admitted last September at a NATO Summit attended by President Obama and himself.
Six months later Kerry’s assessment has been thrown into serious doubt by Syria’s President Assad – who in a rare interview with 60 Minutes on 30 March declared:
Actually ISIS [Islamic State] has expanded since the beginning of strikes – not like some Americans want to sugar coat the situation – to say that it is getting better, ISIS [Islamic State] is being defeated and so-on. Actually No – they have more recruits. Suggested estimates say they have 1000 recruits every month in Syria and Iraq. They are expanding in Libya and many Al-Qaeda affiliated organisations have announced their allegiance to ISIS.”
Israel cannot possibly be expected in these circumstances to negotiate with the PLO on establishing secure and recognized borders as stipulated by President Obama and Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338 – until Islamic State is finally degraded and destroyed.
President Obama has announced he is going back to the drawing board.
“the evaluation that’s taking place is specific to what happens between the Israelis and Palestinians going forward. We’ll continue to engage the Israeli government as well as the Palestinians, and ask them where they are interested in going and how do they see this issue being resolved. But what we can’t do is pretend that there’s a possibility of something that’s not there. And we can’t continue to premise our public diplomacy based on something that everybody knows is not going to happen at least in the next several years.”
President Obama should – in such evaluation process – seriously explore the possibility of first demanding that President Mahmoud Abbas call Presidential and parliamentary elections in Gaza and the West Bank – last held in 2005 and 2006 respectively.
Let democracy replace these repressive dictatorships.
Blind Freddie can see that this is not the time to cede territory and take security risks. Israel should rather put her energies into watching the dissolution of the Middle East very carefully and protect herself against IS, Al Qaeda Hezbollah, Hamas and any other terrorist organisation. The IS situation is fluid and new recruits are streaming in from all around. How can there be a push for peace now when fanatical forces are destroying or corroding so many countries?
This is all occuring on Obama’s watch. Hence, Obama has allowed things to degenerate without boots on the ground and cannot now turn around and expect Israel to cede territory for peace. He should find the decency to admit that this is not the time.
Let Obama declare this openly and often. This is not the time.
And there is still the Iran threat to pan out.
Efrem
Spot on.
Blind Freddy can see what is going on but blind Barack is oblivious to the events in the Middle East, Europe and Africa happening before his very eyes.
Wait till Europe really hots up and terrorist groups around the world start morphing into one murderous axis of pure evil.
All of this without taking Iran’s intentions into account.
Israel cannot possibly move from its present territorial limits whilst such chaos and uncertainty prevails.
“Secure and recognized boundaries” may have been capable of being achieved in 1967 with the passage of Security Council Resolution 242.
“Secure and recognized boundaries” were indeed achieved by Israel with Egypt in 1979 and Jordan in 1994.
“Secure and recognized boundaries” between Israel and the West Bank and Gaza however has no meaning whatsoever for Israel in 2015 as Israel faces enemies encircling it in every direction be it Syria, Lebanon, Islamic State, Hamas or the PLO.
No apology for his vinditive spirit, giving rise for radical anti-Israeli Jews calling him to “punish the Jewish state and Jews to demonstrate against Israel”.