Dr. Aaron Lerner is co-founder of IMRA, Independent Media Review and Analysis, an Israel-based news organization which provides an extensive digest of media, polls and significant interviews and events relating to the Israeli-Arab conflict. imra@netvision.net.il
Olmert team negotiating outline of flying elephant
By Dr. Aaron Lerner
August 16, 2007 Bookmark to del.icio.us
"Phase II starts after Palestinian elections and ends with possible creation of an independent Palestinian state with provisional borders...through a process of Israeli-Palestinian engagement, launched by the international conference. "
A Performance-Based Roadmap to a Permanent Two-State Solution to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (aka the Roadmap) April 30, 2003
It would appear that the Olmert team is already hard at work negotiating the outline of a sovereign Palestinian state with the goal being to work out the broad brush strokes in time for the international conference this autumn. This at a time that it is ever more clear just how incredibly dangerous it would be to inject a sovereign Palestinian state into the neighborhood.
Outlining the details of a viable, stable and peaceful Palestinian state is no more a realistic an exercise today than debating the configuration of wing inserts for an elephant.
Neither can fly.
But the problem is that while no one is going to stake anyone's life on Dumbo's avionic viability, this is hardly the case with regard to the discussions of a sovereign Palestinian state.
To make matters worse, the Roadmap provides for the possibility of this flying Dumbo state before final status issues are finalized and without necessarily even requiring Israel's consent (through the use of a novel phrase to describe the process: Israeli-Palestinian "engagement" rather than "negotiations").
While it is certainly possible that the entire exercise ends up with nothing more than some photo ops to serve the interests of the participants in other venues it would be irresponsible to ignore the potential of this process to foist a flying Dumbo state on the Jewish People.
This is no time for complacency.
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