Deputy Prime Minister Haim Ramon in yesterday’s cabinet meeting as quoted in today’s Maariv:
We have to talk to the Palestinians about handing over the neighborhoods in East Jerusalem to them. Anyone who thinks that it is possible to go to the conference and talk about a National Insurance Institute in the Palestinian state does not know what he’s talking about.
Ramon was a pro-peace labourite before joining Kadima, remains close to Israeli peaceniks, and is reportedly trusted by Palestinians. He is shaping up to be one of the key forces in Olmert’s government pushing for something substantive to come out of next month’s peace conference.
But look who else seems to have softened their stance on the Jerusalem issue: right wing hardliner Avigdor Leiberman. Here’s what Leiberman, known to most for his past support of transferring Israel’s Arab population out of the country, had to say at yesterday’s cabinet meeting:
We must make concessions on the Jerusalem issue, or transfer to Palestinian control some of the neighborhoods and refugee camps. But the Old City and Mt. Scopus are an inseparable part of Jerusalem and so they will remain. As to all the rest, the only connection between Israel and Shuafat and Anata is that day in the month that they come to get their National Insurance allowance from us.
When it comes time for the public to decide whether or not it supports whatever peace deal/declaration Olmert is cooking up with Abbas, it is assumed that much of the Israeli right will be taking their cue from Leiberman, the most right wing member of Olmert’s government. If Olmert makes too many concessions and Leiberman pulls out of the government, the PM’s already shakey right flank is likely to collapse.
6 responses so far ↓
1 Xaxam // Oct 8, 2007 at 8:04 am
…Leiberman, known to most for his past support of transferring Israel’s Arab population out of the country…
An obvious distortion of facts. Liberman made the aboutface in his views long time ago, since joining the government. The “transfer” allegedly advocated by him, is actually the same transfer of parts of Land of Israel, populated by the Arabs, under the Palestinian sovereignty. Nothing new.
2 Green // Oct 8, 2007 at 8:32 am
Most of the Israeli public, right and left, religious and secular, old and young, know that Ramon is about as trustworthy as a wiesel. He’s the sort of guy that makes guys llike Ahitofel and Rasputin look like innocent girl scouts.
3 Pappe // Oct 8, 2007 at 2:07 pm
“Ramon is about as trustworthy as a wiesel” true but meaningless.
This is not about who Ramon is but his proposal.
What the extremists are very good at (always) is refusal to deal with the issues on their merits – instead they make personal attacks. You can attack Ramon, Anony Mous can attack me – it is all the same: Refusal to deal with the actual proposal.
Why they do it ?
Because the extremists know that these proposals are leading to compromise. Compromise is something extremists want : They prefer a fight until “winner takes all”
4 yaacov // Oct 8, 2007 at 8:54 pm
Hillel Cohen, in his otherwise mostly balanced new book “The Rise and Fall of Arab Jerusalem, 1967-2007″ (Hebrew, 2007), tells that if Israel transfers control over the Arab neighborhoods to the Palestinians, this will be an anti-Palestinian move (page 193). If this is the case with Hillel Cohen, an intelligent and very well informed Israeli of the Left, just think what Israel’s enemies will make of such a move. It will be protrayed as just another cynical (evil) Israeli ploy to domintate the Palestinians without paying them national insurance, or some such.
5 Shual // Oct 9, 2007 at 12:18 am
Yaacov, can you please show the Hillel-Cohen-quote + some frame?
Cohen: “The affinity for the Palestinian Authority is not strong because the PA is not strong. The PA cannot be a source of pride for people because of all that it has experienced, both vis-a-vis Israel and with its internal difficulties. Therefore, residents of East Jerusalem have a problem with the PA, and because they’re in East Jerusalem, it’s relatively easy for them to ignore it. But this doesn’t mean that they’ve lost their basic nationalist conception.”
“tells that if Israel transfers control over the Arab neighborhoods to the Palestinians, this will be an anti-Palestinian move” in case of bringing the “ignored” problem with the PA into the sigth of them?, including the problem of the PA to absorb the very different developped society there? Or simply a “anti-palestinian” move cause of the cash the PA must invest there? Or the different rigth-situation? Or the “moral degeneration”? Or…
6 Connecting the dots // Oct 11, 2007 at 10:26 pm
[…] week later, on October 7 Haim Ramon, the leading dove in the Olmert government, told the cabinet that Israel would have to turn over the Arab neighborhoods in East Jerusalem to the Palestinians as […]
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