Crunch Time
By ROGER COHEN
NYT
JERUSALEM — Every recent Israeli prime minister has done things he never dreamed of doing. I won’t go through the whole list, but consider Yitzhak Rabin’s pivot from “break their bones” to the prince of peace, Ariel Sharon’s decision to withdraw from Gaza, and Ehud Olmert’s pained conclusion that an agreement with the Palestinians required “a withdrawal from nearly all, if not all” the occupied territories.
What is it that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is prepared to do that he never dreamed of doing? He recently got to “two states for two peoples,” but that was just playing catch-up. Beyond all the unseemly bartering of recent weeks, with its focus on what happens in the West Bank in the next 60 days, lies the core issue of where Netanyahu imagines a Palestinian state.
The Palestinians have stated their position: The 1967 borders plus or minus agreed land swaps, meaning a state in the West Bank and Gaza with East Jerusalem as its capital. In return, President Mahmoud Abbas has said, Palestinians will drop all “historical claims” and live alongside a secure Israel in peace.
Netanyahu and Israelis have plenty of cause for skepticism, not least the Fatah-Hamas division in the Palestinian national movement and the way withdrawal from Gaza led to rockets from Hamas.
(More here.)
NYT
JERUSALEM — Every recent Israeli prime minister has done things he never dreamed of doing. I won’t go through the whole list, but consider Yitzhak Rabin’s pivot from “break their bones” to the prince of peace, Ariel Sharon’s decision to withdraw from Gaza, and Ehud Olmert’s pained conclusion that an agreement with the Palestinians required “a withdrawal from nearly all, if not all” the occupied territories.
What is it that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is prepared to do that he never dreamed of doing? He recently got to “two states for two peoples,” but that was just playing catch-up. Beyond all the unseemly bartering of recent weeks, with its focus on what happens in the West Bank in the next 60 days, lies the core issue of where Netanyahu imagines a Palestinian state.
The Palestinians have stated their position: The 1967 borders plus or minus agreed land swaps, meaning a state in the West Bank and Gaza with East Jerusalem as its capital. In return, President Mahmoud Abbas has said, Palestinians will drop all “historical claims” and live alongside a secure Israel in peace.
Netanyahu and Israelis have plenty of cause for skepticism, not least the Fatah-Hamas division in the Palestinian national movement and the way withdrawal from Gaza led to rockets from Hamas.
(More here.)
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