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OPEN FORUM
On the Bid to U.N. to Recognize Palestinian Statehood
Why Israel is voting ‘No’
By Akiva Tor
Israel believes in the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside us. We recognize the Palestinian claim to self-determination and do not wish to rule over them. We believe that two states living side by side is the right and just way of achieving lasting peace between our peoples. We remain committed to this path, despite deepening regional instability and renewed challenges to our strategic environment.
Why then are we opposed to a U.N. declaration of Palestinian statehood this Friday?
The Palestinian appeal to the United Nations is a betrayal of trust and a violation of the fundamental principle agreed at Oslo in 1993, in which we committed to resolve our differences by fair negotiation, and renounced the use of coercion. We have pursued this path persistently in the last decade: Prime Ministers Ehud Barak and Ehud Olmert made far-reaching peace offers to the Palestinian leadership in 2000 and 2007. Current Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu froze building in the West Bank in 2009 in order to return the Palestinians to the table. At each juncture, the Palestinians jettisoned talks. Yasser Arafat left Camp David in 2000 and launched the second intifada with enormous loss of life, and Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas now seeks to wield against us the automatic Palestinian majority at the United Nations.
The land area between the River Jordan and the Mediterranean Sea is too restricted and vulnerable to reach an agreement by any means other than recognition that endorses their maximal claims and ignores Israel’s vital concerns. As much as we desire peace with our neighbors, no Israeli government will accept Palestinian demands that require our ruination, no matter how lopsided the U.N. vote. The expected Palestinian draft includes: A border that declares half a million Israelis illegal, including Jewish neighborhoods of Jerusalem built 40 years ago.
Palestinian sovereignty would begin 4 miles from Ben Gurion International Airport without security guarantees for international aviation.
Israel’s main water sources,
the northern and southern mountain aquifers, will be ruled by the Palestinian state without any binding agreement on sharing. The Palestinians will pump freshwater, while our drinking supply in Tel Aviv and Haifa turns saline.
No end of conflict or cessation of claims. In addition to receiving a U.N. state, the Palestinians will demand the return of Palestinian refugees to pre-1967 Israel. Israel is home to hundreds of thousands of Jewish refugees forced to flee Arab lands, but the Palestinian state will not accept responsibility for their own.
This is why they refuse to recognize our nation’s identity as a Jewish state, even though we recognize their nation-state claims.
But the deepest problem of premature U.N. recognition is that it makes achieving the required mutual compromise even more intractable. Abbas already has declared that he will use the U.N. resolution to pursue aggressive legal action against Israel. Israel will need to lawyer up and defend itself.
Israel would prefer to negotiate a fair and lasting peace treaty with the leadership of the Palestinian people. For the present, the Palestinians are on a path of evasion.
Akiva Tor is the Israeli consul general to the Pacific Northwest.
His office is in San Francisco.
BCC Camera letters@camera.org
To comment online:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/09/20/ED041L6IHJ.DTL
Comments (1)
OPEN FORUM
On the Bid to U.N. to Recognize Palestinian Statehood
Why Israel is voting ‘No’
By Akiva Tor
Israel believes in the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside us. We recognize the Palestinian claim to self-determination and do not wish to rule over them. We believe that two states living side by side is the right and just way of achieving lasting peace between our peoples. We remain committed to this path, despite deepening regional instability and renewed challenges to our strategic environment.
Why then are we opposed to a U.N. declaration of Palestinian statehood this Friday?
The Palestinian appeal to the United Nations is a betrayal of trust and a violation of the fundamental principle agreed at Oslo in 1993, in which we committed to resolve our differences by fair negotiation, and renounced the use of coercion. We have pursued this path persistently in the last decade: Prime Ministers Ehud Barak and Ehud Olmert made far-reaching peace offers to the Palestinian leadership in 2000 and 2007. Current Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu froze building in the West Bank in 2009 in order to return the Palestinians to the table. At each juncture, the Palestinians jettisoned talks. Yasser Arafat left Camp David in 2000 and launched the second intifada with enormous loss of life, and Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas now seeks to wield against us the automatic Palestinian majority at the United Nations.
The land area between the River Jordan and the Mediterranean Sea is too restricted and vulnerable to reach an agreement by any means other than recognition that endorses their maximal claims and ignores Israel’s vital concerns. As much as we desire peace with our neighbors, no Israeli government will accept Palestinian demands that require our ruination, no matter how lopsided the U.N. vote. The expected Palestinian draft includes: A border that declares half a million Israelis illegal, including Jewish neighborhoods of Jerusalem built 40 years ago.
Palestinian sovereignty would begin 4 miles from Ben Gurion International Airport without security guarantees for international aviation.
Israel’s main water sources,
the northern and southern mountain aquifers, will be ruled by the Palestinian state without any binding agreement on sharing. The Palestinians will pump freshwater, while our drinking supply in Tel Aviv and Haifa turns saline.
No end of conflict or cessation of claims. In addition to receiving a U.N. state, the Palestinians will demand the return of Palestinian refugees to pre-1967 Israel. Israel is home to hundreds of thousands of Jewish refugees forced to flee Arab lands, but the Palestinian state will not accept responsibility for their own.
This is why they refuse to recognize our nation’s identity as a Jewish state, even though we recognize their nation-state claims.
But the deepest problem of premature U.N. recognition is that it makes achieving the required mutual compromise even more intractable. Abbas already has declared that he will use the U.N. resolution to pursue aggressive legal action against Israel. Israel will need to lawyer up and defend itself.
Israel would prefer to negotiate a fair and lasting peace treaty with the leadership of the Palestinian people. For the present, the Palestinians are on a path of evasion.
Akiva Tor is the Israeli consul general to the Pacific Northwest.
His office is in San Francisco.
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