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Factbox: Major issues in Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking
WASHINGTON |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Israeli and Palestinian leaders resume direct peace talks on Thursday in Washington following a 20-month hiatus.
Following are the main issues on the table:
TWO-STATE SOLUTION
U.S. President Barack Obama is pushing for an agreement that would create a state for the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip alongside Israel, the so-called two-state solution at the core of U.S. efforts for an Israeli-Palestinian peace.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said a Palestinian state must be demilitarized so as not to threaten Israel. The Palestinians do not object to this demand, but say it should be discussed in negotiations with Israel.
But the issue has been severely complicated by the fact that Gaza and the West Bank are run by different Palestinian parties, which are virulently opposed to each other. Hamas Islamists, who govern Gaza, denounce the notion of direct talks and do not recognize Israel's right to exist.
ISRAELI SETTLEMENTS
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has called for a total freeze on the expansion of settlements Israel his built on land it captured in the 1967 war. That would be in line with a commitment Israel made under a 2003 U.S.-backed peace "road map."
Netanyahu imposed a 10-month halt to new housing starts in West Bank settlements that expires on September 26. He did not apply the measure to East Jerusalem, captured from Jordan in 1967, and has not committed to extending the West Bank moratorium.
Palestinians say all settlements should be evacuated, and along with the World Court and major powers, consider them illegal. Israel has said it intends to keep several major settlements in any future peace deal, a move that could result in territorial swaps with the Palestinians.
JERUSALEM
Palestinians want East Jerusalem, which includes the Old City and its sites sacred to Muslims, Jews and Christians, to be the capital of the state they aim to establish in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Netanyahu has said Jerusalem would remain Israel's "indivisible and eternal" capital. Israel's claim to the eastern part of Jerusalem is not recognized internationally.
REFUGEES
Palestinians have long demanded that refugees who fled or were forced to leave in the war of Israel's creation in 1948 should be allowed to return, along with millions of their descendants. Yet Palestinian negotiators have signaled they would accept "a just and agreed-upon" solution for refugees as laid out in a U.N. resolution that mentions compensation for those who settle elsewhere.
Israel says any resettlement of Palestinian refugees must occur outside of its borders.
(Reporting by Jeffrey Heller in Washington; Editing by Sandra Maler)
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But If Israel said it was going to send the Arab population to live in the West Bank it would be condemned as raciest?
What would actually make a great deal of sense would be for all those settlers who now occupy homes that were illegally built in the West Bank – to be granted Palestinian citizenship – if there ever actually is a Palestinian state?
Do you think the Jewish settlers would agree to that? And if not, why not?
The issue of whether or not citizenship in a state is a guarantor of peace and security seems to depend largely on how well the state can guarantee that civil and property rights are honored by that state regardless of the citizens’ racial or religious identity. The history there is one where the Israelis have shown no respect what-so-ever to anyone else’s property claims but their own.
The great scandal of the Israeli/Palestinian issue is that racism, religious and cultural bigotry is at the core of it now. The Palestinians have the additional complaint that many of them were willing to live within the territories that were drawn by the UN (with the agreement of all the major powers of the period) for those who were primarily Hebrew speaking or claimed a Jewish identity, or else relocated to the territories that were supposed to be dedicated to those who were Arabic speaker.
If you take a look at the UN record you will find that the war broke out because Israel was not satisfied that many Palestinians remained within their borders and insisted on redrawing their borders to make them more contiguous at the cost of the Palestinians who were trapped in non-contiguous territories. And it is documented that the Israeli army was ruthless in forcing the residents of Arab villages and towns to flee with literally nothing but what they could carry. Those refugees were given nothing in compensation for property lost and reoccupied by the new Jewish arrivals. This is the fact that Israel consistently down plays or ignores. They also refused to let those refugees back to reclaim their lost property.
The issue may have devolved into the idiocy of fighting over race and religion but at the rock bottom of it all is the fact that an army of “foreigners” were flooding an area with a majority of Arab speaking peoples and used force to create a state they were not fully authorized to create, redrew borders and confiscated property without legitimate due process and have ever since claimed themselves as victims of the unreasonable “Arabs”.
It helps to have friends in English speaking high places within the media. Now the Arabs voice is also being heard. I am nearly 60 years old, and the sound of that other voice is still a novelty.
I do not take Iran’s rhetoric at face value. I too don’t see such a tragedy for the world if a “Jewish state” ceased to exist. A state where both Jews and Arabs were able to live without the threat of the loss of civil or property rights would be the best solution. A state based on civil rights and not on religious identity would be the ideal solution. But that still leaves the unanswered question of damages due the refugees. Israel has been very forceful in pursuing claims against the European countries for lost property during WWII. They set a precedent foe the Palestinians to do likewise.
Wouldn’t you agree?
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