Israel must be brought back to its original size

A little ago I have posted almost the entire text of speech of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the United Nations. He claimed, “Israel is on the verge of creating a peace with Saudi Arabia that could transform the Middle East as long as Iran’s nuclear threat is eliminated”.

Netanyahu showed two maps of Israel so that the audience could better understand the historic transformation that was about to occur.  He first showed a map from 1948, a tiny country.

Then he showed a modern map and talked about normalization of Israeli’s ties with four of its Arab neighbors under the US-backed Abraham Accords and drew a circle around those countries.

I am sure, many Muslim countries would immediately recognize Israel, if Saudi Arab normalizes its relations with Israel. However, I request all my readers to read my blog titled “Israel must be brought back to its original size” written as back as December 01, 2012, Following are the excerpts.

I wrote this blog after Israel announced to build 3,000 new settlement homes on occupied land, a slap on the face of international community that has just recognized Palestine State, accepted the philosophy of two sovereign states, Israel and Palestine. The announcement once again proved that Israel is a usurper.

I wrote, “If the international community, particularly United States wants Palestinians to behave diligently, they must asked Israel to stop construction of settlements on occupied land and also bring Israel back to its original boundaries demarcated at the time of creation of a state for the Jews”.

A cautioned, “Israel's moves serves as a harsh reminder to Palestinians that while they now have a state on paper, most of it remains very much under Israeli control, this is a doomsday scenario”.

Israel's decision also embarrassed the United States, which was among just nine countries in the 193-member General Assembly to vote against accepting Palestine as a non-member observer state.

State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland criticized the Israeli announcement. "These actions are counterproductive and make it harder to resume direct negotiations or achieve a two-state solution," she said.

It may be recalled that the successive US administrations have pressured Israel not to build E-1 because it would effectively cut off east Jerusalem from the West Bank, and split the northern part of the territory from the southern part. E-1 will be the death of the two-state solution.

It is on record that Tzipi Livni, Israel's former foreign minister and chief negotiator with the Palestinians warned, "The decision to build thousands of housing units as punishment to the Palestinians only punishes Israel ... (and) only isolates Israel further."

Even at that time Netanyahu was blamed for defying the whole international community and insisting on destroying the two-state solution.

 

The UN endorsed a Palestinian state in territories Israel captured in 1967, but Netanyahu refused to use the 1967 lines as a starting point. The Palestinian demand for a settlement freeze ahead of negotiations still stands.

On the Israeli side, compromise on settlements seemed unlikely as Netanyahu was seeking re-election at the helm of a Likud party had turned more hawkish and in an electoral alliance with an ultra-nationalist pro-settler party.