Op-ed: The Saudis have come to Israel with a non-negotiable peace plan; Gilad Sharon asks type of country would concede to demands which put access to Jewish places of worship at risk, and which turns the clock back to 1947.
The Saudi Peace initiative is a trap. The initiative calls for an Israeli withdrawal to the borders of June 4, 1967 and for a solution to the problem of Palestinian refugees in accordance with UN resolution 194.
In return, there will be peace and normalization between Israel and the nations of the Arab League. This is apparently something positive.
The Arab countries are prepared for peace with Israel, something which they weren’t prepared for when Israel was founded, nor which they were willing to have for the past several decades. However, the conditions of the agreement – which they said are non-negotiable – are impossible for us.
Let me clarify: the return to the 1967 lines is impossible, not now and not in the future. Its suicide – we want to live. To whom exactly will we give the Golan Heights? We couldn’t do it before the Syrian civil war broke out, and we definitely can’t do it now that Syria has disintegrated.
Would any sane person stay in a country where the distance between the border and the beaches of Netanya is nine miles? When the suburbs of Gush Dan brush right up against ISIS controlled areas? A country where it’s illegal for Jews to go up onto the Temple Mount? A country where Jews are only allowed to go up the seventh step at the entrance of the Cave of the Patriarchs? (When the Ottomans and later the British controlled the Holy Land, Jews were only allowed to go up to the seventh step of the entrance to the Cave of the Patriarchs) A country where Jews are only able to access the Western Wall via armored UN personnel carriers? What about Ariel, Ma’ale Adumim, Gush Etzion, and the Gilo neighborhood of Jerusalem? This cannot happen and this will not happen.
A quote from section 11 in UN General Assembly Resolution 194 states; “the refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbors should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date.” Who are the Palestinian refugees? There shouldn’t be that many left. It’s been close to 70 years, how many are still alive?
Yet the Palestinians get special treatment. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), deals with them and no one else. They are the only people in the world whose refugee status is passed down from generation to generation, until the end of time.
The Arab nations, instead of absorbing them, have purposefully perpetuated their refugee status, and have ensured that they remain neglected in their refugee camps in order to put pressure on Israel.
More than four million Palestinians have the status of “refugee” according to their specialized criteria. Where would they prefer to live, in a refugee camp in Syria or Gaza, or in Israel?
The number of Jewish refugees who were forced to leave their homes in the Arab world is larger than the number of Palestinians who left Israel. Those Jews and their descendents won’t return to those Arab countries, and the Palestinians and their descendents won’t return here.
If the Arabs would have accepted the 1947 partition plan, there wouldn’t have been a single Palestinian refugee, and all the land which they are asking for now would have already been in their hands. But it wasn’t enough for them.
We can’t turn back the clock. And if because of that we won’t have relations with Djibouti, Somalia, Yemen, the Comoros Islands, or other god-forsaken countries, it’s not the end of the world. We already have relations with the important Arab countries – both open and secret relations– due to mutual interests, not because of a great love of each other.
Thanks Saudi Arabia, but no thanks.
As reported by Ynetnews