And these are the main changes, not all of them, which we envision and want in the permanent solution:
A) First and foremost, united Jerusalem, which will include both Ma’ale Adumim and Givat Ze’ev – as the capital of Israel, under Israeli sovereignty, while preserving the rights of the members of the other faiths, Christianity and Islam, to freedom of access and freedom of worship in their holy places, according to the customs of their faiths.
B) The security border of the State of Israel will be located in the Jordan Valley, in the broadest meaning of that term.
C) Changes which will include the addition of Gush Etzion, Efrat, Beitar and other communities, most of which are in the area east of what was the “Green Line,” prior to the Six-Day War.
D) The establishment of blocs of settlements in Judea and Samaria [the West Bank]. Nothing has changed in the past 18 years that would diminish Israel’s need to retain the areas referred to by Rabin. The topography of the region has not changed, and the nations around Israel have not become more peaceful or more reconciled to Israel’s existence.
In fact, with the breakdown of the Arab Spring into violent civil wars on its borders (Syria, Lebanon, Egypt), and with a nuclear, terrorist-sponsoring Iran looming, the situation is even more precarious.
Israel cannot afford a major security threat aimed at the heart of the country from organizations whose charters call for its destruction. Netanyahu’s views on defensible borders for Israel essentially conform to the parameters laid out by Rabin.
Land For Peace ?
If you listen carefully to what they are saying to the media in Arabic, the Palestinian Arabs reveal what a farce the negotiations are.
A senior PA official, Abbas Zaki, Member of the Fatah Central Committee, explained on Syrian television how the current ongoing peace talks are a veneer for a phased plan to destroy Israel in stages.
Zaki said the PA would agree to a treaty with Israel if a Palestinian state is established on the 1967 lines, which would only be the beginning of a multi-stage plan to achieve their ultimate goal: a Palestinian State on the remains of the destruction of Israel.
It is also rarely mentioned that the Palestinian Arabs have rejected co-existent, mutually-recognized peace with a Jewish state living alongside it six times: 1937, 1948, 1956, 1967, 2000 (Camp David: 93% of “West Bank,” Gaza, Old City and shared Jerusalem as capital), and 2008 (same as 2000 but with 95-97%). They never miss an opportunity to reject obtaining their own sovereign state if it means that they must recognize Israel.
More notably, Erekat revealed the contents of a letter Abbas sent to President Obama on Dec. 8, 2013 : “Firstly, we will not be able to accept Israel as a Jewish state. Secondly, we will not be able to accept a Palestinian state with 1967 borders without Jerusalem. Thirdly, we will not be able to accept any Israeli on Palestinian land, sea, air and border crossings following the completion of the gradual withdrawal.”
A fourth precondition was the instatement of the “right of return” for potentially millions of Palestinian refugees and their descendants to Israel. In essence, this is a rewording of the famous Three Nos from the Arab League issued at Khartoum in 1967: “no peace, no recognition, no negotiation with Israel.”
Erekat’s preferred strategy for achieving Palestinian statehood is appealing to the EU to recognize a Palestinian state while appealing to international bodies to sign treaties and protocols that would enable the Palestinian Authority to file a suit against Israel at the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague. This is just further verification that the Palestinian Arabs cannot bring themselves to forge an agreement with the Jewish state, for putting an end to the conflict ends the raison d’etre of the Palestinian Authority and its culture of victimhood.