Get Ready: The New Unilateralism

The New York Times does it again.  Another op-ed from the left.  Despite attempts, has the NYTimes ever published an op-ed from someone, not an elected politician or government official, supporting the viewpoint that Israel has a right and need to be in Judea and Samaria, and Gaza, and to contruct communities there?

Well, today, we have "Peace Without Partners" from Ami Ayalon, Orni Petruschka and Gilead Sher (Ayalon is a former commander of the Israeli Navy and head of the Israeli domestic security agency and a failed politician, Orni Petruschka is an entrepreneur (?!), and Sher was a peace negotiator and chief of staff to Prime Minister Barak from 1999 to 2001.


Excerpts:


...Israel doesn’t need to wait for a final-status deal with the Palestinians. What it needs is a radically new unilateral approach: It should set the conditions for a territorial compromise based on the principle of two states for two peoples, which is essential for Israel’s future as both a Jewish and a democratic state.


Israel can and must take constructive steps to advance the reality of two states based on the 1967 borders, with land swaps — regardless of whether Palestinian leaders have agreed to accept it. Through a series of unilateral actions, gradual but tangible changes could begin to transform the situation on the ground.


That is a recipe for disaster, see: Unilateral Disengagement and Yossi Beilin:


"The greatest risk underlying unilateral action is the strengthening of extremists," wrote Yossi Beilin, a former Israeli justice minister and one of the architects of the Geneva Accord, an unofficial peace plan.
Israel...should create a plan to help 100,000 settlers who live east of the barrier to relocate within Israel’s recognized borders. That plan would not take full effect before a peace agreement was in place.


But, what "recognized borders"?  If unilateral and, regardless if the Pals. accept it, ...are they crazy?


...Israel should also enact a voluntary evacuation, compensation and absorption law for settlers east of the fence...


Can we do so to Arabs west of the new "recognized borders"?  Why not?


Our organization, Blue White Future, holds regular meetings with settlers. We have found that many would move voluntarily if the government renounced its sovereign claims to the West Bank, because they would see no future for themselves there.

Actually, that sounds like the Black-and-Blue Future.

Critics will argue that unilateral moves by Israel have been failures — notably the hasty withdrawal from the Gaza Strip in 2005, which left settlers homeless and allowed Hamas to move into the vacuum and launch rockets into Israel. But we can learn lessons from those mistakes. Under our proposal, the Israeli Army would remain in the West Bank until the conflict was officially resolved with a final-status agreement. And Israel would not physically force its citizens to leave until an agreement was reached, even though preparations would begin well before such an accord.


Oh, they read my mind.  Have they read the Pals' minds?  No way will that be acceptable to the other side.  Have they read Hamas' latest "we won't accept a [peace treaty" statement?
And after reading this, ask youselves, out of 360,000 Jewish resident revenants in Yesha, how many are the "many" of whom they write?

We don’t expect the most ideologically motivated settlers to support this plan, since their visions for Israel’s future differ radically from ours. But as a result of our discussions and seminars with settlers of all stripes, we believe that many of them recognize that people with different visions are no less Zionist than they are. We have learned that we must be candid about our proposed plan, discuss the settlers’ concerns and above all not demonize them. They are the ones who would pay the price of being uprooted from their homes and also from their deeply felt mission of settling the land.


There's more but it is platidudinal prose.  No logic, no realpolitik.


Too bad the NYTimes wastes column inches on such.

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