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Mideast Peace Talks Would Face Huge Obstacles

(AP) Dan Perry - President Barack Obama wants Israelis and Palestinians to return to the bargaining table, but it seems unlikely this will happen anytime soon - and even if it did, the sides would find a formidable array of obstacles to agreement. Netanyahu has declared the 1967 lines "indefensible" from a military point of view. And a look at the map shows why: Israel would be about 10 miles (about 15 km) wide at its narrowest point; the West Bank surrounds the Israeli part of Jerusalem on three sides; and, on a clear day, the West Bank's strategic highlands are clearly visible from Tel Aviv, where about a quarter of Israelis live. If there is any chance that a future Palestine could turn hostile, these borders are a challenge. Jerusalem's current demographics defy a clean division of the city. Over the years since 1967, Israel has ringed the Arab-populated part of the city with Jewish neighborhoods. Some 200,000 Jews now live in such areas, alongside about 300,000 Palestinians and 300,000 Jews in the western part of Jerusalem. The sides have discussed the principle of each keeping those areas of the city where its people live, but on the ground, such a division would yield an astoundingly kaleidoscopic jumble, with islands of Jews surrounded by Palestinian areas and vice versa.
2011-05-27 00:00:00
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