Journalist: Professor Rubin, why is Israel making a two-state solution impossible by building 3000 apartments in east Jerusalem?
Me:
In 1993 Israel signed an agreement with the PLO in which there was no
ban whatsoever on Israel building more buildings on existing
settlements. The Palestinians formed a government that received
political control over all the towns and villages of the West Bank and
Gaza Strip. It agreed that Israel would continue to control Jerusalem.
The two sides further agreed
that the political status of these territories would be changed only
through a mutual peace treaty.
In
2000, the Palestinian Authority (PA) rejected the offer of a
Palestinian state with its capital in east Jerusalem living in peace
alongside Israel.
Instead it launched a war against Israel whose main feature was terrorist attacks on Israel civilians.
A
few months later, it rejected an even better offer of peace with a
Palestinian state having its capital in east Jerusalem on the exact
amount of territory that constituted the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and east
Jerusalem before 1967.
Ever since then, for 12 years now, Palestinian leaders have repeatedly said they no
longer accepted a two-state solution or at least would soon stop doing so.
Israel
withdrew from the entire Gaza Strip and dismantled all the settlements
there in order to encourage the Palestinians to move toward a two-state
solution by developing that area and showing they were willing to live
in peace. Instead, Hamas took over, openly declared its rejection of all
previous agreements, that it would never accepted the two-state
solution, fired rockets and missiles at Israel, put on television
programs teaching children that they should grow up to be suicide
bombers, and that all Jews in the world be
murdered.
Despite
these positions of Hamas, the Palestinian Authority has tried endlessly
to make a deal bringing Hamas into the government, a government that
would have to be based on a platform rejecting any real, lasting
two-state solution.
This
policy was continued after the 2008-2009 and 2012 Hamas escalations to war with
Israel.
For more than a half-dozen years the PA has refused to negotiate seriously with Israel.
PA
schools teach that Israel should be wiped off the map; sermons in
PA-controlled mosques say that Israel should be wiped off the map; PA
officials demand that eventually Israel be wiped off the map.
Those who murdered Israeli civilians are glorified by the PA, which names, schools, squares, and soccer tournaments after them.
When Israel, at the U.S. request, froze all construction for ten months the PA refused to negotiate seriously.
For
the last three years, the PA has concentrated all of its efforts on
abandoning a negotiated two-state solution and getting their own state
without making any such commitment. Now, the UN—including many European
countries—has helped them achieve a non-member state status. Thus, due
to Palestinian action the 1993 Israel-PLO agreement has been killed,
every deal made since then abrogated, every concession and risk taken by
Israel during this period has been deprived of anything
in return.
Remember
also that if the PA were to negotiate a peace deal with Israel all the
settlements on Palestine’s territory would be dismantled. So if
construction upsets them so much why don’t they stop it permanently by
making a peace deal? You know who made that exact same point? King
Hussein of Jordan. And that was in 1986. They ignored him.
Now
in the wake of the UN General Assembly decision, PA leaders have been
proclaiming that Israel is a racist state that shouldn't exist, that the
UN has now endorsed the Palestinian claim to all of the 1967 borders
(which is not true), and that they will go to the international court to
prosecute Israel for allegedly being the occupier of territory
belonging to another country which has (not true) been declared
sovereign over that land.
Reportedly,
some of the countries that voted Palestine
would be a non-member state at the UN asked the PA for assurances that
they would not use this new status to launch lawsuits against Israel at
the World Court. Within hours, however, the PA announced that this is
precisely what it will do. The main goal is to get the court to rule
that Israel is occupying the territory of a sovereign state and thus
must withdraw immediately, with no peace treaty and no end to the
conflict. Thus, as called for in the PLO Covenant almost a half-century
ago, a state of Palestine would serve as a base for a "second stage" in
which Israel would be completely eliminated.
And
yet despite every point listed above if the Palestinian side were to
give Israel the slightest incentive today to believe it was interested
in a real compromise negotiate peace those buildings would not be begun,
much less built in a few years.
Now,
after all this has happened you want to blame Israel for the
destruction of the negotiating process and the abandonment of a
two-state solution? Don’t you realize how absurd this claim is?
Journalist:
Thank you very much, Professor Rubin, for this very clear and detailed
answer. I have only one more question: Why is Israel making a two-state
solution impossible by building 3000 apartments in east Jerusalem?
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------------------------
Barry
Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs
(GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International
Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest book, Israel: An Introduction, has just been published by Yale University Press. Other recent books
include The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). The website of the GLORIA Center and of his blog, Rubin Reports. His original articles are published at PJMedia.
Professor Barry Rubin, Director, Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center http://www.gloria-center.org
The Rubin Report blog http://rubinreports.blogspot.com/
He is a featured columnist at PJM http://pajamasmedia.com/barryrubin/.
Editor, Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal http://www.gloria-center.org
Editor Turkish Studies,http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~db=all~content=t713636933%22
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