About Jewishness

The Road Map for Peace
The "road map" for peace is a plan to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict proposed by a "quartet" of international entities: the United States, the European Union, Russia, and the United Nations. The principles of the plan, originally drafted by U.S. Foreign Service Officer Donald Bloome, were first outlined by U.S. President George W. Bush in a speech on June 24, 2002, in which he called for an independent Palestinian state living side by side with Israel in peace: "The Road Map represents a starting point toward achieving the vision of two states, a secure State of Israel and a viable, peaceful, democratic Palestine. It is the framework for progress towards lasting peace and security in the Middle East..."

In exchange for statehood, the road map requires the Palestinian Authority to make reforms and abandon the use of violence. Israel, for its part, must support and accept the emergence of a reformed Palestinian government and end settlement activity of the and West Bank as the Palestinian terrorist threat is removed.
Immediately after the Road Map came out, the Israeli government approved the road map and they attached 14 reservations to the plan, which were approved by the United States. These resevations completely eviscerated the intentional Road Map. In effect, Israel said, "We'll sign the road map, but we're not going to observe it, because here's the conditions." One condition, for example, is that nothing can happen until the Palestinians end, of course, all violence, but also all incitement, so anything critical of Israel. On the other hand nothing can stop Israel from carrying out violence and incitement. Also, there can be no discussion of the existence of settlements, in fact, no discussion of anything that matters. That's the Road Map and the United States supported that. Which means that both the United States and Israel reject the road map.

Hamas is not a direct party in the peace negociations, because they don't meet three conditions that were established.
1. They have to accept the road map, which Israel and the United States reject, but they have to accept it, otherwise they can't be allowed into the "civilized world".
2. They have to renounce violence, while the United States and Israel do not have to renounce violence.
3. They have to recognize Israel, but the United States don't have to recognize Palestine, nor does Israel. So they have to meet three conditions that the United States don't meet and that Israel doesn't meet.
So when Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman (or whatever other Israeli politician) says that he will stick to the Road Map, it means absolutely nothing, and it will not lead to peace.

In June 2009 Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced Israel's acceptance of the Road Map, while simultaneously rejecting a settlement freeze which is a main Israeli requirement under the Road Map In rejecting President Obama's call for a settlement freeze Netanyahu also claimed that settlement expansion, so called "natural growth", was needed to allow settlers to raise families by moving to new larger houses rather than move to existing houses either elsewhere in the Occupied Territories or in Israel itself.

In June 2009 the construction of 300 new houses in the West Bank was announced by Defense Minister Ehud Barak. Most of these "new" houses were already built or in the process of completion. The Defense Minister's permit for construction was just another layer on top of those already given earlier.

On March 8, 2010 Israel authorized the construction of 112 new apartments in the West Bank despite a pledge to slow settlement building. This decision enraged the Palestinians a day after they reluctantly agreed to resume peace talks.

On March 9, 2010, Israel announced the construction of 1,600 new settlement units in East Jerusalem.

On March 10, 2010, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas announced he would not enter indirect talks with Israel, because of the Israeli plans to erect 1,600 new homes in East Jerusalem. Abbas had only agreed to the talks on condition that Israel imposed a settlement freeze. "Yesterday the decision by the Israeli government to advance planning for new housing units in East Jerusalem undermines that very trust, the trust that we need right now in order to begin profitable negotiations," US Vice-President Joe Biden said after meeting Palestinian leaders in Ramallah later that day.

On March 11, 2010, Joe Biden in a direct address from Tel Aviv urged both Israelis and the Palestinians look toward direct negotiations to end the long-standing conflict. "The demographic realities make it difficult for Israel to be a Jewish homeland and a democratic country," said Biden in his speech to foreign dignitaries, Israeli officials and students at Tel Aviv University. "The status quo is not sustainable." "To end this historic conflict, both sides must be historically bold," he said.

Also on March 11, 2010, Israeli planning officials announced that some 50,000 new housing units in Jerusalem neighborhoods beyond the Green Line are in various stages of planning and approval. They said Jerusalem's construction plans for the next few years, even decades, are expected to focus on East Jerusalem. Most of the housing units will be built in predominantly Jewish neighborhoods beyond the Green Line, while a smaller number of them will be built in Arab neighborhoods.

On March 12, 2010, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu consulted with the forum of seven senior cabinet ministers over a list of demands that U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made in a telephone conversation that day. Clinton harshly criticized the announcement last week of plans to expand the Ramat Shlomo neighborhood in East Jerusalem

On March 15, 2010, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that Israel would continue to build in Jerusalem in the same way that it has over the last 42 years. "The building in Jerusalem - and in all other places - will continue in the same way as has been customary over the last 42 years," said Netanyahu at a Likud party meeting.

On March 16, 2010, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said she did not think ties between the U.S. and Israel were in danger. She said the United States and Israel have a "close, unshakable bond" and that Washington remained absolutely committed to Israeli security. "We have an absolute commitment to Israel's security. We have a close, unshakable bond between the United States and Israel," Clinton told a news briefing, markedly softening the rhetoric after several days of sharp diplomatic exchanges over Israel's announcement of new settlement construction.
Meanwhile, a visit to Israel by U.S. special peace envoy George Mitchell was on hold on March 16, pending an Israeli response to a series of American demands. Mitchell had been due to leave Washington for Israel early on Monday but delayed his trip in a sign of the Obama administration's growing anger at Israel's refusal to stop building Jewish homes in East Jerusalem. Netanyahu and Biden spoke on the phone that night, in a bid to reduce friction between the U.S. and Israel.

On March 22, 2010, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu arrived in Washington for a visit which marked a fresh chance to repair the frayed personal ties between the Israeli leader and U.S. President Barack Obama. Netanyahu agreed to ease the siege on the Gaza Strip, release Palestinian prisoners affiliated with Fatah, and discuss the conflict's core issues in the context of indirect talks with the Palestinians. Netanyahu did not agree to the American demand to limit Israeli construction in East Jerusalem, but did commit to closer monitoring of building in the city to avoid embarrassing incidents.

Also on March 22, 2010, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, after a meeting in Amman with U.S. Mideast envoy George Mitchell, said that the Palestinian people had a national right to resistance against Israeli occupation, adding that his government would not acquiesce to any Israeli demands with which it disagreed. Palestinians fear that Israeli settlement expansion in East Jerusalem -- which they see as a future capital of a Palestinian state -- will prejudge final status negotiations on the borders of Israel and the Palestinian territory.
Fears were exacerbated recently when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, on March 21, 2010, said that "from our point of view, construction in Jerusalem is like construction in Tel Aviv." Many Palestinians saw Netanyahu's comment as another way of saying that all of Jerusalem belongs inside Israel's borders.

On March 23, 2010, Israel announced plans to build another 20 settlement units in the majority Arab neighborhood of East Jerusalem known as Sheikh Jarrah. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that he feared peace negotiations with the Palestinians would be deferred for another year unless the Palestinians abandoned their demands for a full Israeli settlement freeze. Netanyahu told U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi during his visit to Washington that Israel would not allow itself to be trapped by Palestinians into unfair demands, particularly with regard to construction in East Jerusalem.
Netanyahu's meeting with U.S. President Barack Obama was defined as a failure. President Obama and his aides could not convince Netanyahu to stop settlement activities in the occupied territories and in occupied East Jerusalem. Israel insisted on building settlements in occupied East Jerusalem, while the United States demanded that the construction be stopped, saying it was likely to poison the peace talks. Obama asked Netanyahu to clarify his positions on a letter delivered to the administration about Israeli gestures to the Palestinian Authority and his willingness to seriously broach the issues in the indirect talks. The president also asked Netanyahu to put these assurances in writing.
Netanyahu held one-on-one talks with Obama for 90 minutes. The meeting ended in serious disagreement, and in an unusual move, Netanyahu, Defense Minister Ehud Barak and their advisers retired to a side room in the White House for consultations, while Obama left for his residential quarters. Some 90 minutes later, Netanyahu requested a second meeting with the president, who returned to the Oval Office for a further half-hour conversation with the prime minister. But the second meeting between the two also ended without resolving the dispute, and they could not even reach a consensus on a joint statement.

On March 26,2010, Israel's President Shimon Peres told Netanyahu and several ministers in his cabinet that every Israeli government until now has agreed not to build in predominantly Arab areas of the city. "Previous governments built in Jewish neighborhoods, but not in Arab ones," he said. "Even Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir did not build in the heart of Arab neighborhoods in East Jerusalem. That's why the entire world agreed to building in Jewish areas, and it wasn't a stumbling block in negotiations."
Peres recalled Itzhak Rabin's warm relations with former U.S. president Bill Clinton. "My heart is crushed when I see how the current Prime Minister was received in Washington," Peres said. "I couldn't help thinking about better days."

On March 27, 2010, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas warned that peace talks would not move forward "as long as Israel maintains its settlement policy," continuing the rift in the region that began this month with Israel's intent to build housing in disputed territory.
The remarks came at the Arab Summit in the Libyan city of Sirte, where many leaders echoed Abbas' views.
The Arab League's Secretary-General, Amr Moussa, asked Arab states to prepare for "the possibility of the peace process' complete failure." "It's time to face Israel. We have to have alternative plans because the situation has reached a turning point," Moussa said.
The conference -- titled "Summit for Supporting a Steadfast Jerusalem" -- gathered 14 Arab heads of state, the United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and Italian Prime Minister Slivio Berlusconi, among other guests.
In an address before the leaders, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan described the Israeli position as "madness" and said if Israel insists on building in East Jerusalem, they will violate international law, "human feelings, conscience and history."

On March 30, 2010, the U.S. administration requested a construction freeze in all parts of East Jerusalem. In exchange, the United States would pressure Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to hold direct talks with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu instead of the indirect talks to which the Palestinians have agreed. An official in Jerusalem said the U.S. administration is demanding that Israel freeze construction in East Jerusalem, including Jewish neighborhoods such as Neveh Yaakov, French Hill and of course Ramat Shlomo, which sparked the recent tensions between Israel and the United States. The freeze would last four months, the time frame the Arab League authorized for indirect talks between the Palestinian Authority and Israel.

On April 6, 2010, Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman warned the Palestinian Authority against plans to declare independence unilaterally next year, saying such a move could prompt Israel to annex parts of the West Bank and annul past peace agreements. Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, whose Western-backed government had a limited governing role in the Israeli-controlled West Bank, announced plans to unilaterally declare a Palestinian state, possibly as early as the summer of 2011 - even without a peace deal. Toward that aim, Fayyad begun ambitious reforms of the government and security forces, building up Palestinian institutions and developing the economy in preparation for independence. The international community welcomed Fayyad's reform efforts, raising fears in Israel that a unilateral declaration of Palestinian statehood could win international recognition. Lieberman warned that Israel would not tolerate such a step, and could revoke a series of agreements made under the so-called Oslo interim peace accords of the 1990s or even annex parts of the West Bank. "Any unilateral decision will release us from all of our commitments and will allow us also to make unilateral decisions," Lieberman was quoted as saying by Israeli media. "For example, imposing Israeli sovereignty on certain areas, cutting off all kinds of ties and transfers of money and a string of benefits and agreements put into place since the Oslo accords," he said. It’s hard to believe that such Israeli response will be received sympathetically in Washington at this time.
The Palestinians claim all of the West Bank and East Jerusalem - areas captured by Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War - as part of their future state. They are coordinating with the Americans the building of infrastructure across the West Bank as preparation for economic independence and detachment from Israel’s hold, which over the years made the Palestinian economy an underdeveloped captive. About 750 projects, some of them strategic, are currently being constructed across the Palestinian Authority. The US Administration, via General Dayton who coordinates and monitors the building of Palestinian forces at a cost of hundreds of millions of US dollars, is preparing the law enforcement system of the state in progress.

Zvi Bar'el writes, "An outbreak of violence will certainly do wonders for Israeli interests. There's nothing like a murderous terror attack to give Israel back its image of being the victim; it would give us an excellent excuse to stop the fake freeze on settlement construction and show Barack Obama who the real culprit is. Enough with playing games, bring it on. Save us with an intifada."

On April 21, 2010 U.S. National Security Adviser General James Jones, in a speech at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a well known pro-Israeli forum, said that the differences between Israel and the U.S. will be resolved as allies do. Jones called on both sides, Israel and the Palestinians, to avoid provocations such as Israeli activity in East Jerusalem and Palestinian incitement.

On April 22, 2010, in an interview on Channel 2, Netanyahu said he is amenable to an interim agreement in the West Bank that would include the establishment of a Palestinian state within temporary borders. He said he considers such an interim step a possible way to unfreeze the stalled political process that was created because of the Palestinian leadership's refusal to resume talks on a final settlement. However, the prime minister insisted on delaying discussion on the final status of Jerusalem to the end of the process. "There will be no freeze in Jerusalem," he said, and "The peace process depends on one thing: removing preconditions to negotiations." Netanyahu warned that if Israel withdraws from Arab neighborhoods in Jerusalem, "Iran will be able to enter there," as it did in Lebanon and the Gaza Strip, "but this will be as part of a final settlement. Meanwhile they tell me that I cannot build and plan on French Hill." Netanyahu said that in his talks with Obama, "I tell him I can go with you on this - willing and able - but there are things I am not willing and do not do." He called on the U.S. not to wait for the U.N. Security Council and impose severe sanctions against Iran on its own. "We prefer that the U.S. lead the confrontation with Iran," Netanyahu said, "but Israel always reserves the right to self-defense."

On April 23, 2010, during his meeting with United States special Mideast envoy Mitchell on Friday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu agreed to enable the Palestinian Authority to act in Area C, which contains most Israeli settlements, in the West Bank. Netanyahu also agreed to release more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails, to remove several roadblocks in the West Bank, and to ease the blockade on the Gaza Strip, as a series of gestures towards Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

On April 24, 2010 Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas urged the Obama administration to impose a solution to the Middle East conflict that would give his people an independent state. "Frankly, we will not accept the state with temporary borders, because it is being offered these days," he said.
He also said the Palestinians were being asked to take a state with provisional borders on 40 or 50 percent, "and after that we will see".

On May 3, 2010, U.S. Middle East envoy George Mitchell returned to the region in hopes of convening indirect or "proximity" talks between Israel and the Palestinians after an Arab League panel approved the idea at a meeting in Cairo on May 1, 2010.
Israeli and Palestinian security sources said Israel is considering handing over security responsibilities to Palestinians in additional West Bank towns, like Abu Dis, if George Mitchell succeeded in resuming peace talks with Palestinians stalled since December 2008.
The same day U.S. President Barack Obama called Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday to discuss making "full use" of the upcoming indirect Israeli-Palestinian peace talks and moving to direct negotiations as soon as possible, the White House said. They discussed how best to work together to achieve comprehensive peace in the Middle East, in particular by making full use of substantive proximity talks between Israel and the Palestinians and transitioning to direct negotiations as soon as possible.

On May 5, 2010 Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas said that the Israeli government is “extremist” and must halt all building for Jews on land claimed by the PA before it agrees to American-mediated talks. Asked if he would sit down to talk if Israel continues to build Jewish homes on land claimed by the PA, Abbas said, “Certainly not. This is our land.”The harsh words, stated in an interview with CNN a day after consultations with Saudi Arabia, came hours before Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was to meet with U.S. Middle East envoy George Mitchell in what so far were one-sided talks. Mitchell was scheduled to meet with Abbas on May 7, 2010. At the same time, Abbas was in Egypt for consultations following a conference with Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah in preparation for presenting to Mitchell conditions for a PA state.

(to be continued)