Weekly Commentary: Lessons from the stand off on settlement freeze

Dr. Aaron Lerner Date: 24 September 2009

It wasn't too long ago that President Obama's team and the various radical
Israeli Leftists advising them were convinced that they could force Prime
Minister Binyamin Netanyahu into an open ended all encompassing settlement
freeze.

They were convinced that they had a winning combination: an issue that
American Jews didn't relate to, deceptively designed published partial
Israeli polling data indicating support and a prime minister viewed by his
detractors as having serious orthopedic problems (spineless).

But that's not how it played out.

Once again we see that when Israel makes it clear what its red lines are -
and sticks to them - even the President of the United States of America has
to back down.

What happens now?

Despite his best efforts, President Shimon Peres' anarchistic proposal to
create a sovereign Palestinian state before we reach an agreement appears
thankfully to be dead in the water.

And while the Palestinian plan to get their act together over the course of
the next two years so that they would appear ready for a state has been
cited by some Israeli Leftists as reason enough for cutting whatever deal
the Palestinians might accept already today, most elements of the program
can be seen as framework for autonomous as much as sovereign state building.

Will there be a crippling stalemate?

On the one hand, Mahmoud Abbas, with his eyes on elections in 2010, may be
hard pressed to avoid being seen as engaging in final status talks with
Israel in the absence of the encompassing freeze the Obama team originally
demanded. But while such negotiations might be counterproductive for Abbas
and Fatah at the Palestinian polls, the ongoing improvement in the quality
of life in the West Bank - a development that requires continuous
Palestinian-Israeli contacts at all levels - could help bring him and his
party a victory.

And then what?

Take note of Prime Minister Netanyahu's phrase: "The Palestinians should
have all the powers to govern themselves except those handful of powers that
could endanger Israel."

State? Perhaps under certain conditions.

A sovereign state?

".all the powers to govern themselves except those handful of powers that
could endanger Israel."

You can spell that A U T O N O M Y.

Dr. Aaron Lerner, Director IMRA (Independent Media Review & Analysis)
(Mail POB 982 Kfar Sava)
Tel 972-9-7604719/Fax 972-3-7255730
INTERNET ADDRESS: imra@netvision.net.il
Website: http://www.imra.org.il