|
Michael Carmichael
|
|
Monday, 06 September 2010 09:59 |
|
PlanetaryMovement.org
President Obama is making the Israelis and the Palestinians an offer they can't refuse.
Reports in Israel suggest that Prime Minister Netanyahu will appeal for national unity tomorrow in a Rosh Hashanah statement on the Jewish New Year to prepare the way for a historic agreement that will be announced later this month or early in October.
The direct peace negotiations between the leading diplomats will take place in syncopation with the onrush of the Jewish holidays: Aseret Yemei Teshuva; Yom Kippur; Sukkot; Hoshanah Rabbah; Shemini Atzeret and Simchat Torah ending on the first of October.
The Islamic Holidays will be observed by the negotiators as well: Ramadan; Lailatul-Qadr and Eid-Al-Fitr that end on the tenth of September.
Led by President Mubarak of Egypt, King Abdullah of Jordan and President Abbas, the Arabs and Palestinians will be making their own moves toward political unity and doing their dead-level best to restrain the violence-prone elements in their still fragmentary political coalition in the West Bank and Gaza, as well as Hamas and Hezbollah.
The terms of the rapidly developing agreement appear to be based on the long-established parameters predicated on the 1967 borders and the right of return for a still undisclosed number of Palestinian families displaced by the Arab-Israeli wars. An international force consisting of both Jewish and Non-Jewish as well as Muslim and Non-Muslim troops will be deployed on the West Bank to provide security for both nations: Israel and Palestine.
The timetable appears to be fixed around the next talks at Sharm El-Sheikh in the Sinai ten days from today that will take place after Eid al Fitr and shortly before Yom Kippur, the highest of holy days on the Jewish calendar.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Senator George Mitchell will represent US interests at the Sinah Conference between Netanyahu and Abbas. Both Americans have invested heavily in the diplomatic outcome of these negotiations.
That a historic agreement will be announced is now clearly indicated by the acquiescence of the leader of the Yisrael Beitenu Party, Avigdor Lieberman who is now advocating a long-term interim agreement. Lieberman's position now represents the official doctrine of the farthest reaches of the political right in Israel.
By his latest statements on an interim agreement, Lieberman has distanced himself from the inflammatory remarks of the extremist faction led by Rabbi Ovadia Yosef who beseeched God to destroy the Palestinians and their leader Mahmud Abbas by a "plague" of biblical proportions.
In tandem with the US State Department condemnation of the Rabbinical call for a plague on the house of Palestine, Netanyahu publicly distanced himself from the radical religious right-wing Rabbi Yosef's death wish, and he strongly asserted the national aspirations for an imminent peace agreement.
The political backdrop to these developments is being fixed around US national security that defines peace between the Israelis and Palestinians as a primary strategic objective essential to securing a broad spectrum of American interests.
Responding to President Obama's diplomatic lead earlier this year, General David Petraeus articulated the case for American national security through peace and stability in Israel-Palestine. In January, General Petraeus dispatched a team of senior military officers to brief Admiral Michael Mullen, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on the central importance of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The Petraeus briefings defined the crux of the problem, "Israeli intransigence on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was jeopardizing US standing in the region."
The political repercussions in America, Israel, Palestine and throughout the Middle East are being shaped to transform the international political landscape for a new era of relations between the West, the worlds of Judaism and Islam and the nations of Israel and Palestine.
Planetary monitors all developments of this rapidly unfolding story.
|
