There was a fascinating interview on Radio 4 Saturday morning with Henry Kissinger. Now cuddly Henry has always been a cynical, nasty old ferker, but we have to admit he is smart.
Essentially , he said that Obama was pretty much spot on with his middle east policies, and particularly so with regard to the Israel/Palestine thing. He said that the borders between the two states will look pre 1967 borders, with some minor mutually agreed swaps. Jerusalem will be the capita of two nations. Any return of Palestinian refugees could, realistically, only be in such numbers as may be considered “ symbolic”, however unjust this may be.This is, of course , what the world, including the US, decided some considerable time ago. He pointed out that Obama said nothing that hadn’t been said by Israeli prime ministers, before the return of the nightmare of Nethanyahu. As George Mitchell pointed out, this faux outrage is pure theatrics.
Kissinger further said that the new state of Palestine would not only be contiguous, but fully sovereign, with no foreign troops stationed on it’s soil. ( that means not in the Jordan valley )
Of course , even after minor land swaps, a lot of Israelis that will find themselves on the ” wrong “ side of the border, and this is a problem. We need to bear in mind that this problem has been deliberately created by Israel. The colonising enterprise had two purposes. In the first place it was undertaken in pursuit of living space. The second purpose was to create this very problem, and make it so far as possible, insoluble.
It is a long way from insoluble. The illegal colonists have several options including...
1)The State of Palestine will, I am sure , be generous, and offer the colonists the option of giving up their Israeli citizenship and become citizens of Palestine.
2)Or they could continue to live as unenfranchised aliens in Palestine, subject of course, like everyone else, to the jurisdiction of the Palestine law enforcement agencies and judiciary.
3)Or they could go back to Israel.
Like I have said previously, why not just get on with it, and get to where we are inevitably going as quickly as possible, saving a lot of interim blood and pain.
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