Bennett kowtows to Biden and jettisons Trump

 

It has taken just two months for Israel’s Prime Minister – Naftali Bennett - to abandon implementing his 10 years old policy calling for Israel to unilaterally extend its sovereignty into 60% of Judea and Samaria (West Bank) - dubbed Area C under the Oslo Accords.

Bennett’s backdown was made in the New York Times on 24 August:

“This government will neither annex nor form a Palestinian state, everyone gets that”

Bennett told the Knesset exactly the opposite on the occasion of his swearing in as Prime Minister on 13 June:

“We will ensure Israel’s national interests in Area C – and we will increase standards to that end after much neglect in this area.”

Bennett articulated Israel’s national interests in Area C when presenting his comprehensive Israel Stability Initiative in February 2012:

• Israel unilaterally extending sovereignty over Area C:

“Through this initiative, Israel will secure vital interests: providing security to Jerusalem and the Gush Dan Region, protecting Israeli communities, and maintaining sovereignty over our National Heritage Sites. The world will not recognize our claim to sovereignty, as it does not recognize our sovereignty over the Western Wall, the Ramot and Gilo neighborhoods of Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights. Yet eventually the world will adjust to the de facto reality. Further, the areas coming under Israel’s sovereignty will create territorial contiguity and will include the Jordan Valley, the Dead Sea, Ariel, Maale Adumim, the mountains above Ben Gurion Airport, and all of the Israeli communities in Judea and Samaria. As a result, residents of Tel Aviv, the Gush Dan Region, Jerusalem, and Israel will live in full security, protected against threats from the east.”

• Full naturalization of the 50,000 Arabs living in Area C:

“This will counter any claims of apartheid. Currently there are 350,000 Jewish residents, and only 50,000 Arab residents of Area C. Irrespective of religion, all residents of the area will receive full citizenship. Based on this outline, no Arabs or Jews will be evicted or expelled from their properties.”

• A full Israeli security umbrella for all of Judea and Samaria:

“The success of the initiative is conditional on keeping the territories peaceful and quiet. Peace can only be achieved with the IDF [Israel Defense Forces] maintaining a strong presence in, and complete security control over, Judea and Samaria. If the IDF leaves, Hamas will rapidly infiltrate the area. This is how Hamas took control of Gaza, and how Hizballah took control of southern Lebanon”

Abandonment of these objectives by Israel’s present Government for the next four years can only be regarded as:

• an attempt to curry favour with Biden and his administration
• a missed opportunity to advance President Trump’s detailed peace plan to extend Israeli sovereignty into approximately 50% of Area C (see diagram following)

The mutual backslapping and expressions of self-admiration by Bennett and Biden for each other at their White House meeting on 27 August took place as the US was reeling from the deaths of 13 US military personnel, 18 more wounded and at least 169 Afghani citizens killed in two suicide-bombing attacks following Biden’s disastrous decision to unilaterally withdraw from Afghanistan.

Forgotten was Bennett’s own assessment of Trump in May 2020:

“Israel has never had a friend like Donald Trump. But it cannot guarantee that of his successors. His bold peace vision creates new possibilities that we believe should be pursued—but not at any price.”

Taking flight from – rather than fighting for – Bennett’s own and Trump’s carefully crafted proposals to provide Israel with secure, defensible and recognized borders – is not in Israel’s national interests.

Kowtowing to Biden and jettisoning Trump does not augur well for Bennett’s coalition Government or Israel.

Author’s note: The cartoon — commissioned exclusively for this article — is by Yaakov Kirschen aka “Dry Bones”- one of Israel’s foremost political and social commentators — whose cartoons have graced the columns of Israeli and international media publications for decades.

Bennett set to shake-up global consensus on two-state solution

 

Israeli Prime Minister — Naftali Bennett — seems set to challenge the decades-long failure by the international community to achieve its called-for two-state solution: Creating a second Palestinian Arab state, in addition to Jordan, for the first time in recorded history.

Bennett made his intention very clear when introducing Israel’s next Government — presumably with his new coalition partners’ unanimous approval:

“We will ensure Israel’s national interests in Area C — and we will increase standards to that end after much neglect in this area.”

Bennett — anointed as “Prime Minister and Minister for Settlement Affairs” — is now uniquely placed to promote his “Israel Stability Initiative — February 2012” (Stability Plan)  —  summarised by him in 2017:

“The main idea of The Stability Plan is to provide full civilian self-governance to the Palestinians so they can elect themselves, pay their taxes, and control those areas that are theirs. We should apply sovereignty in Israeli-controlled areas—known as Area C—and Palestinians living there will become part and parcel of the State of Israel. And since within the State of Israel you cannot have two levels of people, those Palestinians living in Area C—approximately 80,000 people—will be offered full Israeli citizenship, including voting rights. I think most will opt for residency rather than citizenship (like in East Jerusalem) but it’s up to them. They can be Israeli citizens, Israeli residents or Palestinian citizens.

Those living in the Palestinian-controlled areas (Areas A and B) will govern themselves in all aspects barring two elements: overall security responsibility and not being able to allow the return of decedents [sic] of Palestinians refugees. We can’t have an inflow of millions of great grandchildren of 1948 refugees coming across the Jordan River because in one swoop that would distort the demography of the area, and within a few weeks of their arrival, the local Palestinians in Judea and Samaria would tell them to ‘go back to Jaffa’ which would subsequently create pressure on Israel that could lead to a third intifada inside ‘Smaller Israel’.

My option is that Palestinians have an ‘autonomy on steroids,’ and I’m open to ideas about how this materialises; it could be a confederation with Jordan, or local municipalities, or a central government. It would encompass full freedom of movement, massive infrastructure investment, the creation of a tourism zone so Christians can enter Haifa, Nazareth, Nablus, Ramallah, Jerusalem and Hebron without going through road blocks. We would have joint industrial centres, and we’d be able to create a land port governed by the Palestinians in Jenin that would be connected to Haifa.”

Bennett continued:

“I understand there is global consensus around the two-state solution, but what the world thinks is no proof for the correctness of a plan. The world gets it wrong a lot.

I’d say to those in the international community who are so entrenched in the idea of a Palestinian state that (a) the Palestinians have a state in Gaza and they blew it, and (b) after 50 years, at what time do we need to rethink? In the high tech world where I come from, if my employees tried the same solution and failed again and again I’d fire them as I’d expect them to have tried to tackle the challenge from a different angle by now! There is an industry around this topic—think-tanks, journals, professionals and academics who keep on chewing on the same old failed solution. We’re not in Europe, we live in a region with very few democracies, and when we tried this idea out it blew up in our faces and no one showed us any sympathy.”

Global consensus needs to positively respond to Bennett’s challenge.

Author’s note: The cartoon—commissioned exclusively for this article—is by Yaakov Kirschen aka “Dry Bones”- one of Israel’s foremost political and social commentators—whose cartoons have graced the columns of Israeli and international media publications for decades.