Weekly Commentary: Olmert team negotiating outline of flying elephant

Dr. Aaron Lerner Date: 16 August 2007

"Phase II starts after Palestinian elections and ends with possible creation
of an independent Palestinian state with provisional borders...through a
process of Israeli-Palestinian engagement, launched by the international
conference. "

A Performance-Based Roadmap to a Permanent Two-State Solution to the
Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (aka the Roadmap)
April 30, 2003

It would appear that the Olmert team is already hard at work negotiating the
outline of a sovereign Palestinian state with the goal being to work out the
broad brush strokes in time for the international conference this autumn.
This at a time that it is ever more clear just how incredibly dangerous it
would be to inject a sovereign Palestinian state into the neighborhood.

Outlining the details of a viable, stable and peaceful Palestinian state is
no more a realistic an exercise today than debating the configuration of
wing inserts for an elephant.

Neither can fly.

But the problem is that while no one is going to stake anyone's life on
Dumbo's avionic viability, this is hardly the case with regard to the
discussions of a sovereign Palestinian state.

To make matters worse, the Roadmap provides for the possibility of this
flying Dumbo state before final status issues are finalized and without
necessarily even requiring Israel's consent (through the use of a novel
phrase to describe the process: Israeli-Palestinian "engagement" rather than
"negotiations").

While it is certainly possible that the entire exercise ends up with nothing
more than some photo ops to serve the interests of the participants in other
venues it would be irresponsible to ignore the potential of this process to
foist a flying Dumbo state on the Jewish People.

This is no time for complacency.

Dr. Aaron Lerner, Director IMRA (Independent Media Review & Analysis)
(Mail POB 982 Kfar Sava)
Tel 972-9-7604719/Fax 972-3-7255730
INTERNET ADDRESS: imra@netvision.net.il
Website: http://www.imra.org.il