The Failure of Peace Without Partners

Ayalon Amihay
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On May 17, 2012 , the Washington based Woodrow Wilson Center featured Amihai Ayalon in a book presentation: Peace Without Partners: Can Israeli Unilateralism Lead to a Two-State Solution? The controversial topic provoked questions - did the book contain a genuine proposal for achieving peace or, was it only another distraction for those who desire a just solution to the Israeli/Palestinian crisis? Because hope is eternal, are Ami Ayalon 's words designed to keep it that way?

Ami Ayalon arrived with credentials; a former Labor Party member in the Israeli Knesset, he gains attention by having previously been commander-in-chief of the navy and head of the Shin Bet, Israel's secret service. The former intelligence agent also arrived with publicity. His Blue White Future organization ( http://bluewhitefuture.org ) "that seeks to help achieve a two-state solution, and has developed a radical new unilateral approach to achieve this goal," so as to maintain a Jewish majority in Israel and keep its blue/white Star of David flag, received space in a New York Times article: Peace Without Partners, By Ami Ayalon, Orni Petruschka and Gilead Sher , April 23, 2012

Add suspicion to the agenda. Note that other Labor party figures, identified with the "peace process," fired up many and disillusioned all. Recall President Shimon Peres, "father" of the settlements, General and Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, originator of ":break the bones of Palestinians" during the 1990 Intifada, and former Knesset member Yosef Beilin's Geneva Initiative , " a permanent status agreement based on previous official negotiations, international resolutions, the Quartet Roadmap, the Clinton Parameters, and the Arab Peace Initiative," whose program had no accomplishments. All were members of a Labor Party that, despite its calls for "peace initiatives," promoted the settlements, the major obstacle to negotiations.

Ayalon's Peace Without Partners approach maintains that the "greatest threat to the nation is disappearance of the Zionist entity. Israel needs to be a Jewish democracy with a majority of Jews. The children who have been raised with a narrative of 5000 years of Jewish history cannot be betrayed." From these propositions, Blue White Future concludes that "peace requires two states." Continuing the thoughts, he suggests that Palestinian leader " Abu Mazen cannot deliver what he promises because he lacks support from Arab heads of state. Nor can Israel promise what former Prime Minister Olmert proposed. Negotiations no longer exist. Only coordinated unilateralism, based on former United States President Clinton 's peace proposals, can resolve the crisis."

The details of a six point plan:
(1) Israel must take constructive steps to advance the two states based on the 1967 borders, with land swaps - regardless of whether Palestinian leaders agree to accept it.
(2) Israel should declare willingness to return to negotiations anytime and state that it has no claims to sovereignty on areas east of the existing security barrier. It should end all settlement construction east of the security barrier and in Arab neighborhoods of Jerusalem .
(3)   Israel should also enact a voluntary evacuation, compensation and absorption law for settlers east of the fence, so that those who wish can begin relocating before there is an agreement with the Palestinians.
(4) Israel should develop a strategic plan to help 100,000 settlers who live east of the barrier to relocate within Israel 's recognized border.
(5) The IDF will remain in the West Bank until the conflict is officially resolved by a final-status agreement
(6) A Law of National referendum will decide the Israeli population acceptance of the plan.

Coordinated Palestinian acceptance will complete the process -- two nations for two peoples and all disputes mutually resolved.

Another benefit - from this approach "the international community will see Israel as an honest player."

A disingenuous plan, with built in obstacles.

The "show stoppers" are so definitive that success with the plan is dubious.

Will any Israeli leader want to have his/her name recorded in history as acquiescing to the halt of the Israeli initiative to control all of Biblical Israel and having relinquished land to the Palestinians?

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