Thursday, December 03, 2009

Splitting Jerusalem?

The news that Sweden, as the current chair of the EU, has introduced a resolution that the EU support the division of Jerusalem between Israel and a putative Palestinian State is a shocker. But, in fact Sweden has been a strong supporter of the Palestinians and of a two-state solution for a long time, and they are stepping in now because the Palestinians have let it be known that they will not return to negotiations with Israel under US auspices because Netanyahu has not accepted their precondition of a total building freeze, including Jerusalem.
In order to make the threatened unilateral declaration of a Palestinian State real, some in the EU are now seeking to replace the US as the arbiter of Middle East peace, and by supporting the Palestinian side, they are trying to enforce their left-wing vision of a two state solution onto Israel.
There is some irony in this, since Germany, one of the leading sympathizers of the Palestinian cause, notwithstanding their so-called "special relationship"with Israel, was certainly against the divison of Berlin,and no EU member would support that either.
But, Israel can use its influence with some of the EU members, including Britain, that generally supports the US position, Germany, that would not want to be seen as a leader of the split Jerusalem movement, and France, that under Sarkozy has shown a more pro-Israel tendency. Also, some of the East European members of the EU, such as Poland and the Czech Republic, tend to oppose the more left-wing policies of some of the older western EU members. Already a bloc of EU members are coming out against the Swedish plan.
However, if this combined threat of a division of Jerusalem and a unilateral declaration of a Palestinian State take wings, in the absence of ongoing negotiations between the two sides, then it could be a rough ride for Israel. No conceivable Israeli Government and certainly not the present one could countenance the division of Jerusalem, and so we may be on a collision course with the EU, apart from our usual clash with the Palestinians and the Arabs.
While there is a freeze on Israeli building in the West Bank for 10 months, there is no such limitation on the Palestinians. They are beginning to build a new Arab city called Rawabi, close to Ramallah. This is the first planned Arab city and is a kind of insult to Jewish settlers who see it as an affront to their objectives at this time. What has really riled them is that the Jewish National Fund (JNF) has agreed to donate funds for the planting of trees in Rawabi, at the same time as this would be banned for any Jewish settlement in the West Bank. Sometimes the stupidity of Jews is astounding.

1 Comments:

Blogger Unknown said...

A small side note to the comment on how construction in the suburbs of Ramallah is an insult to settlers....

Rawabi is build in area A - Palestinian juristiction. Settlements are build in area C - Israeli juristiction. One has NOTHING to do with the other.

Any idea of the process that Palestinians have to go through in order to build anything (houses, a second floor to an existing house, a fence around their property)on their property that has been labeled area C? So no worries. No one will build anything in area C in the next 10 months because to obtain permission to move a stone from point A to point B on Palestinian land in area C requires military approval.

P.S. If settlers feel so insulted....why dont they simply relocate into the borders of their country?

12:36 PM  

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