Monday, May 12, 2008

Green Line-ism

In a new publication, "Israel: Growing Pains at 60" of The Middle East Institute in
Washington, DC, Ronald W. Zweig, Taub Professor of Israel Studies at New York University wants to recreate the Green Line in Israeli public awareness because:-

...the “settlement issue” must be defused. The settlers have consciously attempted to magnify the size of the settler population, just as they have attempted to intimidate and manipulate public opinion by escalating the level of violence whenever there is an attempt to dislodge them. The settlers have successfully created an image of a problem that can only be accommodated, not excised. However, if the settlement reality on the ground is broken into its component parts — suburbs of Jerusalem, settlements just across the border, and settlements in the middle of the West Bank beyond the Separation Barrier — the settlement enterprise need not be an obstacle to peace. Voluntary evacuation in exchange for compensation, small border adjustments in exchange for a land corridor (between Gaza and the West Bank) that would allow for the inclusion of the large majority of the settlers inside Israel’s borders, and arrangements to permit small numbers of Jews to remain close to Jewish holy sites in Hebron within a Palestinian state — as well as other similar moves — will be a huge step forward to re-imagining the borders of 1967.

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