(Wall Street Journal) Dore Gold - Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas made clear in a New York Times op-ed last week that he plans to lobby the UN General Assembly for a resolution that called on its members to recognize a Palestinian state on the 1967 lines. Unfortunately, President Obama asserted in a speech Thursday that Israel's future borders with a Palestinian state "should be based on the 1967 lines," a position he tried to offset by offering "mutually agreed land swaps." Mr. Abbas has said many times that any land swaps would be minuscule. The cornerstone of all postwar diplomacy, UN Security Council Resolution 242 of 1967, did not demand that Israel pull back completely to the pre-1967 lines. The central thrust of Arab-Israeli diplomacy for more than 40 years was that Israel must negotiate an agreed border with its Arab neighbors. The 1993 Oslo Agreements did not stipulate that the final borders between Israel and the Palestinians would be the 1967 lines. An April 2004 U.S. letter to Israel, backed by a bipartisan consensus in both houses of Congress, stipulated that Israel was not expected to fully withdraw from the West Bank, but rather was entitled to "defensible borders."
2011-05-23 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive