By Haitham Sabbah
A draft of the Obama peace plan, which is expected to be released at the UN Assembly meeting in New York, or at the G-20 Summit in Pittsburgh, has surfaced.
The International Middle East Media Center's website leaked the alleged draft of Obama's peace plan given to them by Palestinian Legislator Hasan Khreisha. Khreisha added that the draft has been widely distributed among Palestinian and Arab leaders and the Egyptian President, Hosni Mubarak, recently discussed the plan during his visit to the White House.
According to Khreisha, the draft includes ten main points detailed as follows:
1. International presence in the Jordan Valley, Palestinian Plains area, and other areas in the West Bank.
2. Annexing some parts of East Jerusalem to remain under Israeli control, while Muslim holy site would be under Arab control.
3. All Palestinian factions would be dissolved and transformed into political parties.
4. Large settlement blocs in the West Bank would remain under Israeli control, while negotiations would be conducted within three months of the plan agreement?, to discuss the future of smaller settlements.
5. Several areas in the West Bank would be disarmed, and Israeli would maintain aerial control.
6. Intensifying the Palestinian-Israeli security coordination.
7. The Palestinian Authority would not be allowed to have military alliances with regional countries.
8. The United States would guarantee the establishment of a Palestinian State in the summer of 2011.
9. Allowing an agreed upon number of refugees to return, and to be settled in the Plains area and other areas in the West Bank, particularly in the cities of Ramallah and Nablus. A special fund for supporting the refugees would also be established.
10. Israel starts releasing the Palestinian political detainees immediately after the peace deal is signed. Three years would be allocated for the release of the detainees.
Do you wonder how all this will end?
Walter Russell Mead, the Henry A. Kissinger Senior Fellow for US Foreign Policy at the Council of Foreign Relations has written a paper called Change They Can Believe In: To Make Israel Safe, Give Palestinians Their Due.
http://tinyurl.com/8o9jg4
I am going to tell you what I think about this paper.
Mr. Mead starts by calling the Middle East peace process a "necessary evil" for US administrations -- "evil because it is costly and difficult."
No. That is not why it is evil. It is evil because US administrations must always arrange the phony "peace process" in a way that subverts justice for the Palestinians. Why? Because that is what Israel demands. Everything else about this situation flows from this core truth. You will see that Israel constantly demands and whines about security. It is the ever elusive goal, always just out of reach. Why is that? Because there is no security without peace, and more importantly, there is no peace without justice. This is the real problem -- the problem of justice. The problem to be avoided, and failing that (you are here now), finessed. So the conversation always revolves around Israel's security, keeping the cart in front of the horse at all times; because when the conversation turns to justice, the burden falls squarely on Israel's shoulders. And naturally, since Israel was literally founded on a grave injustice and refuses to concede that point -- nothing will ever be resolved. This CFR paper outlines an attempt to buy off the Palestinians and to internationalize this problem, but this is simply a clever way for Israel to finesse the demand for justice without actually having to make a real sacrifice. Here we go...
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