UOTE OF THE WEEK:
BARAK'S PERMANENT-STATUS PLAN
MER - Washington - 16 Nov: Former General Ehud Barak, now head of Israel's Labor Party,
outlined his vision of the "Permanent" settlement with Palestinians last week.
As usual, the Labor types phrase things abit more mildly and ambiguously playing on the
naivety and desperation of the Palestinians and playing to the gallery of world opinion,
especially wealthy "liberal" American Jews they desperately need for funds and
support. But even so the differences with Sharon and Bibi are far more stylistic than
actual.
"First: Jerusalem - united under our sovereignty, the Israeli capital forever,
period. Second: no return under any circumstances to the 1967 borders. Third: no foreign
modern army - no divisions, no armored units, no air force, no missiles - west of the
Jordan River. Fourth: most of the Yesha residents, though not necessarily every isolated
settlement, will remain under Israeli sovereignty, in settlement blocs, even in the
permanent arrangement." Numbers 1 and 4 clearly mean that any Palestinian
"entity" or "State", regardless of what it is called and no matter how
much more declaring Arafat engages in, will not be real but will instead be a Bantustan
arrangement. Tragically, this is all made possible by Yasser Arafat and his miserably
inept, corrupt, and repressive "Authority" as every "agreement" he has
made has been considerably worse than the previous one.
