Lieberman tells UN full peace could take 'decades'
Give Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman (pictured with Secretary of State Clinton) credit: He's willing to say things that people don't want to hear. On Tuesday, he told the United Nations General Assembly that full peace in the Middle East could take decades, and that we need to set our sights at a lower and more realistic level. Addressing the United Nations General Assembly Tuesday, Israeli Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Avigdor Lieberman recommended a “two-staged” solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that “could take a few decades,” and said a final status agreement would entail “not land-for-peace, but rather, exchange of populated territory.”Now, I don't favor giving up parts of the Land of Israel, and I don't favor giving up any land without an end of conflict resolution (even though a state with 'temporary borders' is part of the road map) but Lieberman makes many valid points and they ought to be addressed rationally. But they weren't. Instead, Lieberman is dismissed as a war mongerer by Prime Minister Netanyahu ('he doesn't speak for me'), lambasted by Defense Minister Barak and ignored by the Americans.
Lieberman said a “long-term intermediate agreement” prior to final status agreements would most likely be necessary as a first component of a “two-staged” solution.
An intermediate agreement, Lieberman said, would be motivated from the “need to raise an entire new generation that will have mutual trust and will not be influenced by incitement and extremist messages.” Lieberman added that creating such an emotionally conducive climate “could take a few decades.”
Lieberman stressed that he was not advocating population transfer as part of a final status agreement, but rather, stating that “moving borders to better reflect demographic realities” would be part of an effort to recognize and address the deep-seated friction between the two nations.
Citing examples in East Timor, as well as the former Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia, Lieberman said “where effective separation has been achieved, conflict has either been avoided or has been dramatically reduced or resolved.”
Lieberman said that “precisely this notion – that a mismatch between borders and nationalities is a recipe for conflict – has long been accepted as a virtual truism in the academic community,” referencing the term “right-sizing the state.”
“States and nations must be in balance in order to ensure peace,” Lieberman said. “This is not a controversial political policy. It is an empirical truth.”
“Israel is not only where we are,” Lieberman said. “It is who we are.”
Instead of confronting the elephants in the room, as Lieberman tried to do on Tuesday, both Israel and the Americans are ignoring them as if doing so will make them go away. And all because the elephants won't abide by President Obama's timetable. What could go wrong?
P.S. I disagree with Ben Smith that Lieberman shows what Netanyahu is up against. Lieberman ultimately believes that there has to be a 'Palestinian state.' Many Israelis are unalterably opposed to one.
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 11:36 AM
3 Comments:
I'm opposed to one but if there has to be one, I want the borders moved to move the Israeli Arabs over to the Palestinian state and annex all the Jews in Yesha to Israel.
I mean every one supposedly believes in two states for two peoples. So we ought to follow the formula literally. Not one state for the Arabs and a Jewish State with an Arab minority but one state for all the Jews and one state for all the Arabs.
What could be more logical? I think Lieberman is right on target and the reason no one takes him seriously is that he is right and no one has a better solution to offer to the problem at hand than he does.
And if the Palestinians don't like it, Israel would be better off in my view, annexing all of Yesha and giving them and Israeli Arabs incentives to emigrate and leave the country. In my view, the past, present and future of the Land Of Israel is Jewish. Its time for the world to deal with it.
"I'm opposed to one but if there has to be one, I want the borders moved to move the Israeli Arabs over to the Palestinian state and annex all the Jews in Yesha to Israel"
You mean a second "palestinian"state.
We cannot let Jordon get away with pretending that they are not eastern Eretz Israel
Lieberman, Netanyahu, Barak, and the Americans are all wrong. R. Kahane [ZT"L, HY"D] is the only politician who has formulated the only feasible, practical and pragmatic solution. And most importantly its Torah/Tanakh/Talmud based [it is the only authentic Jewish solution].
Dawdling around with non-solutions, which is all the world has proposed since day one [sans R. Kahane], can only be viewed as sadistic, masochistic, and completely non-sensible.
The Arabs must go. -- And if the Arabs attack again, the Jews will gain more of our E"Y [to the agonized dismay of the Mohammedans]. Peace from Muslims will never take place [read the Koran and Sunnah], but we can have security.
What a phony [even] Lieberman is.
Bring back Kach!
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