Haaretz reports:
Israel is conducting secret negotiations with the U.S. on establishing the future borders of a Palestinian state, the London-based Arabic language daily Asharq al-Awsat reported on Friday.
According to the report, Palestinian sources confirmed that the two sides discussed an option wherein Israel may lease lands in East Jerusalem from the Palestinians in exchange for the establishment of an independent Palestinian state.
Israel would lease the territories from the Palestinian state for a period of 40 to 99 years.
The Palestinian sources said that the talks are an American initiative that has been going on for some time in order to obtain an understanding with Israel regarding the terms surrounding a future Palestinian state.
The Palestinian Authority apparently has only recently been made aware of the talks and hasn’t been given the details of the proposal.
An Egyptian source told the newspaper that the negotiations are “more quiet than secret, and are meant to try to save the peace process.”
Neither the Prime Minister’s Office nor the U.S. government agreed to comment on the report.
Israel in secret negotiations with the US? I guess this confirms what has long appeared to be the case: that the Palestinians are regarded as being peripheral to the conflict. But I really don’t know what to make of this lease proposal. Britain held Hong Kong on a lease, but once the lease expired Hong Kong went back to China. Somehow I don’t see a Palestinian state ever having quite as much leverage as China. Neither, given its disregard for UN resolutions, do I see Israel feeling a heavy obligation to honor a legal contract limiting its occupation of East Jerusalem. The Israelis’ interests have always seemed to be focused on the so-called facts no the ground rather than legal issues of ownership.
But, if you do not see Israel returning leased land after 40 or 99 years, why do you (or do you, in fact) repose any hope at all that Israel will keep to ANY TERMS WHATEVER of a treaty with Palestinians?
Since I believe (as you hint) that Israel is not a reliable partner for agreements, including peace treaties, I therefore believe that the Palestinians must declare statehood or ask the UNGA to do it for them, and ask the individual states to commence BDS (via legislation or government edict) swo as to pressure Israel to remove the settlers, remove the all, end the siege, and generally move toward [1] legality and [2] peace pere 242/Arab initiative.
Lease it in exchange for what? Are the Israelis gonna rent it to them?
Israel has lived its entire existence as a “kept” state on welfare riding an endless Western guilt trip. Its initial post WWII vibrancy as the nation of Holocaust survivors who rose from the near-dead to create a homeland for themselves has badly aged as the wear&tear of time is replaced with garish maquiage to hide its geriatric grotesqueness. But rather than accept the dissolution of its once revered legitimacy, to a deterioration that it itself imposed on the post-Holocaust Zionist myth with outlandish fabrications to cover-up its racial rather than religious self-legitimation– all presented as absurd stories based on assumption that it deals with “dumb goyim. Forcing such manure down the throats of the West has become too well paid a profession for hasbaraists to stop. And so Israel has become an ever more parasitic entity in America’s economically exsanguinating mind obsessed with fear of Jihad.
Today, alQaeda chose Yemen as its base– not Iran, not Gaza, not West Bank, not Syria. Yet, we continue to stuff Israel’s nouveaux riches shysters with more and more aid instead of HALF-ING that aid in order to more fully support a Yemeni willing national struggle for national sovereignty and modernization as the best means to crush the Jihadis based there. Both Israel and Pakistan serve as fist causes of our sense of terror; yet both are rewarded for that at the expanse of Muslim states that would wholeheartedly use our aid to fight the alQaeda cancer withing them.
If we half our “aid” to Israel, rerouting those funds to Yemeni stability we’re sure to get more bang for the buck. But that would require that we stop being a nation of “dumb goyim.”
As with all banking, it’s the price that counts. Seems to me the Jews were the first bankers, so they won’t be giving anything away.
Now, if the Israelis were prepared to admit they’re not the owners of the land they’ve already taken, and were renting it instead — there might be a chance for a just settlement. Set the rent high enough that the Palestinians could all move into condos in Dubai or Miami Beach and there might be a chance for peace.
One positive aspect to this revelation is that there is an implicit recognition from the US that Israel doesn’t own this land.
What has the U.S. got to do with what goes on in the area? Is this a neo-con attempt to subvert the process, a gasp of the “O” administration to show it is doing something besides failing through out the Middle East? Stinking its nose into other peoples business, will only get it bruised, if not broken. A new direction needs to take place between the U.S. & the whole of the Middle East, probably the only true avenue is to withdraw all military forces & support and combine them to the Continental U.S. Let the rest of the World settle their own differences. The U.S. can no longer police the World.
This is exactly how Indian Reservations in America work, and look at all it’s done for the Native American. Indian Reservations are collectively held by the tribe, any tribe member may live on his tribe’s own reservation–though I assume the details are reserved for the tribes to divide/adjudicate. In those reservations around cities especially, 99yr. lease agreements are the only way land can be sold, or used by others outside the tribe.
DETod, why would you call for more corrupting American aid in Yemen? Do you suspect that we will be supporting the democratic will of the Yemeni? Or, might we find ourselves supporting something stronger, more certain? Think we’d invest heavily in the vagaries of democracy? We prefer tyrants and venal whores who will take a few shekels for a “deal.” Where does your sudden faith in American foreign policy come from?
Ditto what Patrick said. It’s an unexpectedly positive sign to see the U.S. starting from the assumption that the Occupied Territories – including E. Jerusalem – are not Israel.