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The False Urgency of the Israeli-Palestinian Peace Process

(Washington Examiner) Jed Babbin - Look at the "peace process" track record. In 2000 at Camp David, Bill Clinton wanted to rush things along. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak offered essentially the same deal that Obama wants now - a return to Israel's 1967 lines with land swaps. That fell apart when Palestinian chieftain Yasser Arafat abruptly left the negotiations and never asked to resume them. In 2005, Ariel Sharon pulled back from Gaza and the West Bank - without land swaps - and the Palestinians launched rocket attacks on Israel. In 2008, Ehud Olmert presented Abbas with a map proposing a Palestinian state on nearly 100% of the West Bank and Gaza. Abbas left and never came back. Now Obama is again pushing the same deal, cloaking it in an urgency that isn't there, because there is no flexibility whatsoever in the Palestinians' position, no compromise they will accept. The Palestinians' desire for peace was demonstrated Wednesday when the Israeli navy seized the Klos C carrying missiles for terrorists in Gaza that can reach almost all of Israel. The writer served as a deputy undersecretary of defense in the George H.W. Bush administration and is a senior fellow of the London Center for Policy Research.
2014-03-07 00:00:00
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