Love of the Land: Everyone knows

Everyone knows

Melanie Phillips
The Spectator
08 April '10

According to David Ignatius, the Obama administration is preparing to impose a ‘solution’ to the Middle East impasse between Israel and the Arabs Palestinians. Apparently, everyone knows what such a ‘peace deal’ would look like.

Well if everyone knows, why hasn’t it been achieved?

Apparently it’s much like the

agreement that was nearly reached at Camp David in 2000 and in subsequent negotiations.

Ah yes, ‘nearly’. Only problem was the Palestinians wouldn’t have it, even though it offered them more than 90 per cent of the disputed territories and half of Jerusalem. Why didn’t they accept it? Because they wanted more. Everyone who has read the history knows what a peace deal would look like because it was offered in the 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, 1960s and 2000; only problem is that the Arabs rejected it.

The Palestinians ‘know’ what a peace deal that they would agree to would look like. It would consist of peace without Israel existing at all. They’ve said so many times. For some inexplicable reason, not everyone in the Obama administration ‘knows’ this fact. Indeed, none of them seems to. Or if they do, they’re not telling us.

An anonymous American official told Ignatius:

...an American plan, if launched, would build upon past progress on such issues as borders, the ‘right of return’ for Palestinian refugees and the status of Jerusalem.

Fascinating! The Obama administration knows what everyone else doesn’t know they know. What Israeli borders does ‘everyone know’? The 1967 borders, aka the 1947 ‘Auschwitz borders’? Or the borders proposed in 2000, which included some of the settlements and the Jewish areas of Jerusalem beyond the Green Line which everyone but the Obama administration has known for the past several decades will always remain part of Israel?

(Read full article)

Love of the Land: Everyone knows