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A new paradigm for Israel

It looks like Israel's hard line on just about everything, may come back to bite it on the backside!     The Arab Spring, coupled with the large demonstrations over the last weeks in Israel itself, leaves the country in a bad spot.    Then, add in Turkey effectively breaking off relations with Israel and the protests in Egypt against Israel, and it isn't hard to see why there is a new paradigm afoot for Israel itself and in the region. 

From The Telegraph [UK]:

"But, with alarming speed, all these gains now seem in jeopardy, leaving Israel terrified that the jungle is creeping back once more. This month has already proved one of the most nettlesome in Israel’s recent history – with worse to come before it is over, as the Palestinian leadership heads to the United Nations with a potentially explosive application for statehood."

At The Electronic Intifada:

"We are all going to be invited to the funeral of the two-state solution if and when the UN General Assembly announces the acceptance of Palestine as a member state.

The support of the vast majority of the organization’s members would complete a cycle that began in 1967 and which granted the ill-advised two-state solution the backing of every powerful and less powerful actor on the international and regional stages.

Even inside Israel, the support engulfed eventually the right as well as the left and center of Zionist politics. And yet despite the previous and future support, everybody inside and outside Palestine seems to concede that the occupation will continue and that even in the best of all scenarios, there will be a greater and racist Israel next to a fragmented and useless bantustan.

The charade will end in September or October — when the Palestinian Authority plans to submit its request for UN membership as a full member — in one of two ways."


Finally, Haaretz in "New Mideast will make Netanyahu long for Oslo Accords":

"An article - more accurately, a warning letter - published by Saudi Prince Turki al-Faisal in The New York Times yesterday, says that Obama doesn't have the option of sitting on the fence without ripping his trousers.

A former director of Saudi Arabia's intelligence services and a former Saudi ambassador to London and Washington, al-Faisal warns the American president that vetoing the proposal to recognize Palestine in the Security Council would cause substantial damage to American-Saudi relations.

He threatens that Saudi Arabia would turn its back on the United States in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The prince proposes turning the Oslo paradigm into a regional peace, on the basis of the Saudi peace initiative that became the Arab peace initiative.

The Israeli intelligence community assesses that progress in the peace process is the best remedy for Israel's cooling relations with its neighbors. Similarly, al-Faisal writes that an American veto would empower Iran and threaten regional stability and America's interests in the Middle East.

Two of the forum of eight senior cabinet ministers, Defense Minister Barak and Minister Dan Meridor, are familiar with the gloomy forecast by al-Faisal, who chairs the King Faisal Center for Research and Islamic Studies (a cover for anti-Global Jihad activity).

They know that opening immediate negotiations over a final-status agreement with the Palestinian state as part of a regional process is the only responsible, realistic and sane alternative to the Oslo Accords. One wonders - how do these two sleep at night?"










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