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Olmert's Border Fallacy

"A RECENTLY broached plan to establish Israel's permanent borders through unilateral withdrawals from select West Bank settlements might make political sense for Kadima, the party of acting Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, but it has very little chance of leading to the two-state peace accord Israelis and Palestinians need and want.

The aim of Olmert's plan is to ensure a Jewish majority within a defensible Israeli perimeter. The Kadima Party figure who described the plan, former Israeli security service director Avi Dichter, stressed that this will be a purely civilian, not a military, withdrawal. In the run-up to Israel's March 28 parliamentary election, Dichter's distinction looks like a way to fend off criticism from the right-wing Likud party, whose hawkish leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, recently said: ''The question today is who will cede territory and who will hold onto territory. I will hold onto territory."

Campaign politics is the wrong crucible for a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. And it is no less a mistake for Olmert to cite the recent electoral triumph of the Islamist movement Hamas as a justification for taking unilateral action. Satisfying as it may be for Israeli policy makers to opt for unilateral moves, such moves cannot resolve the conflict with the Palestinians, and so cannot bring Israel genuine security".

In an unusual ["unusual" in that it is rare to read such a piece] editorial published in the Boston Globe, the newspaper spells out the fallacies of Israel's policies in relation to Gaza and the West Bank.

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