(Jewish Ideas Daily) Elliot Jager - German Chancellor Angela Merkel scolded Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: "You haven't made a single step to advance peace." Not a single step? Not Netanyahu's dramatic 2009 appeal to the Palestinians and the Arab nations to begin negotiating a two-state solution with no prior conditions? Not the lifting of 400 security checkpoints in the West Bank (including near Itamar), the ten-month moratorium on most settlement building, the willingness to extend the freeze another three months? All of these have failed to move Mahmoud Abbas an inch away from his refusal to end his two-year boycott of negotiations, but Israel is blamed for the impasse. Given the almost certain fact that any Netanyahu peace offering would be dead on arrival - indeed, no sooner had Netanyahu's office leaked the possibility of Israel's recognizing a Palestinian state within temporary borders than Abbas utterly rejected the idea - is this really the time to present a new Israeli peace plan? Arguably, the plan that most needs to be articulated is one that places security and defensible borders first; all else is secondary.
2011-03-15 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive