A Bridge Too Far
Olmert, Abbas to Meet on Jerusalem, Refugees on Eve of Elections
15 Elul 5768, 15 September 08 12:10
by Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu(IsraelNN.com) Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian Authority (PA) chairman Mahmoud Abbas will met Tuesday to discuss the future of Jerusalem and the PA demand that millions of foreign Arabs move to Israel, Channel Two television reported. The Prime Minister's Kadima party will vote the following day on a successor to lead the party and try to form the next government.
If one of the four candidates wins 40 percent of the vote on the first round, Prime Minister Olmert might step down immediately. However, he is going ahead with a "business as usual" approach. Channel Two said that he, and not Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, is talking with the PA about the future borders of the capital.
The Shas party has consistently said it will leave the coalition and presumably topple the government if senior negotiators, meaning Foreign Minister Livni, were to discuss the possibility of dividing the capital so that the PA can control part of it and claim it is as the capital of a new Arab country. She has repeatedly denied that she has spoken with PA negotiators on the matter, but Abbas has insisted the issue has been discussed.
The Israeli position has continually softened in the past year, especially since American Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice declared several months ago that the Har Homa neighborhood, near Gilo in southern Jerusalem, is a "settlement," putting it on par with all Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria. By definition, all of the neighborhoods added to Jerusalem after the Six-Day War in 1967 have the same status as Har Homa. These areas include French Hill, Gilo, Ramot, Pisgat Zev and East Talpiot, among others.
Abbas has demanded that Israel also withdraw from the city of Ma'aleh Adumim, east of Jerusalem, but Channel Two said he is willing to negotiate over Gilo and French Hill.
Israel also has softened its issue on the issue of "refugees," the common term that refers to approximately five million Arabs in foreign countries who claim to be f Arabs who fled Israel during the wars in 1948 and 1967 and their descendants.
The issue once was a "red line" that no political leader was willing to cross, but Prime Minister Olmert, several months ago, quietly agreed to make several hundred "exceptions" for Arabs to move to Judea and Samaria. The number later increased to several thousand, during subsequent meetings with Abbas.
One driving force behind Prime Minister's determination to reach an outline of an agreement with Abbas is to satisfy the determination by American President George W. Bush that a deal will be made before the next president takes office next January.
An Olmert-Abbas pact will not have any legal standing without Cabinet or Knesset approval but will be able to be used by the American government and the European Union (EU) as a tool to force the next Israeli government to use it as a base for further compromises.
Abbas also wants an agreement in order to bolster his claim that his mandate can be extended for another year. He has arranged to meet with President Bush in Washington next week, possibly with an agreement in hand.
Both Israel and the PA have said there is no chance of concluding a pact this year on the final status of a new Arab state within Israel's current border.
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Mark my words Olmert will agree to the demands of our enemy in an effort to create facts on the ground which will tie Israel's hands in the future.
At first glance this is a terrible acts that will be done by the worse Prime Minister in Israel's history, however.
This just might be enough to push Israel to move away from the "peace talks" for Olmert just may take Israel a bridge too far, thus condemning the whole process to fail.
