Aluf Benn (Ha'aretz) - * Is there a border that will satisfy the Palestinians sufficiently for them to agree to live in peace side by side with Israel? The Palestinian Authority has not yet taken control of the territories being evacuated by Israel in the Gaza Strip, and it is already asking for more. * PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas has adopted the argument that Israel is continuing to occupy Palestinian lands in the northern and eastern Gaza Strip. When PA Civil Affairs Minister Mohammed Dahlan first made this claim to Vice Premier Shimon Peres a few weeks ago, the Israelis were surprised, but tried to ignore it. When Abu Mazen speaks about it, the demand becomes the official Palestinian position. * The Palestinians are refusing to discuss upgrading the Erez crossing on the grounds that it is located in occupied territory. Tomorrow, someone will shell Moshav Nativ Ha'asara, which lies within the disputed area, and claim the action is part of a just war of liberation - "the Nativ Ha'asara Intifada." * The 1949 cease-fire line, according to the Rhodes agreement between Egypt and Israel, was different from the current border of the Gaza Strip. However, a territorial exchange agreement was signed a year after Rhodes. Israel received the area in the northern Gaza Strip, where Erez and Nativ Ha'asarah are located today, in exchange for a larger parcel in the eastern Strip (which on maps looks like a hump). This altered border remained in effect until 1967, and United Nations soldiers were deployed along it. It appeared in the maps that were part of the Oslo Accords in the 1990s, without any complaints from the Palestinians. * Now Abbas wants to return to the original 1949 boundary. He has ignored the fact that all of the peace agreements and UN decisions were based on the status that existed on the ground before the 1967 War and not on the Rhodes agreement. For him, the point is that he can show that the Israeli occupation in Gaza is not ending with the completion of the disengagement. * The Palestinian recalcitrance over this groundless claim reinforces the claim that there is no Palestinian partner for peace, that the Palestinians are incurably greedy extortionists, that all they want is to hurt Israel, to nibble away at its territory and its international standing.
2005-09-06 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive