Avraham Burg was Speaker of the Knesset (1999-2003) and Chairman of the Jewish Agency and the World Zionist Organization
Odd that they ignore his demonstratively seeking French citizenship, exploiting his wife's birth nationality, caused controversy by comparing Israel to 1930s Germany, calling for the repeal of the Law of Return, and pushing for Israel no longer to be called a Jewish state. And that he seeks to become reinvolved in party politics with a 50% Arab -50% Jewish list, claiming "Israel is becoming a nationalist, fundamentalist, theocratic state, which is the unholy triangle.”
In any case, he writes in The Independent
...Since 2009, the United Kingdom has been taking measures...to ensure that settlement products...that have been produced in the occupied Palestinian territories – are no longer labelled as "made in Israel"...several European member states now appear ready to follow...these measures act in Israel's interest. They do so because they take steps that defend and reinforce the Green Line, the pre-1967 border between Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories.The Green Line is of decisive importance to achieving Middle East peace.
Why is the Green Line important? Well, its existence will not "prevent the
establishment of an independent Palestinian state". If we preserve the Green Line, the very idea of an Arab Palestine is kept alive.
Of course, there exists another option: that if the Green Line is returned, and that is the essence of the Oslo Accords - "The two sides view the West
Bank and the Gaza Strip as a single territorial unit, the integrity and
status of which will be preserved during the interim period... The two sides agree that
West Bank and Gaza Strip territory, except for issues that will be
negotiated in the permanent status negotiations, will come under the
jurisdiction of the Palestinian Council in a phased manner,"- as per the Israel-Palestinian Interim Agreement, Article XI, Sub-paragraphs 1 & 2 what might and probably develop is an existential threat and, at the very least, the return to Raanan, Kfar Saba, Jerusalem, etc. the dangerous and murderous security situtation that was the lot of those locations and their inhabitants before 1967. The record of the Palestinian Authority up until now, almost 20 years since the Spetember 1993 signing of the Declaration of Principles.
Burg should know, by the by, that the DOP signed explicitly notes that
permanent status issues, such as Jerusalem, refugees, settlements, security arrangements and borders are to be excluded from the interim arrangements and that the outcome of the permanent status talks should not be prejudged or preempted by the interim arrangements.
His boycott call, joining in his semantics the Beinart Bandwagon, actually doesn't align with the spirit of the peace agreements so far signed.
But Burg goes one step further:
It should long have been clear to every Israeli that...anything beyond the line is something else: undemocratic, illegal, not normative. Not ours.
Not "ours". "Not"? Shiloh is not ours? Hebron? In what sense? It isn't part of the Jewish homeland? It shouldn't be part? No Jew should live there? Is he boycotting, more than the products of our labors - in agriculture, industry, science, social projects - everything that is a link between Judea and Samaria and Israel/Israelis?
Burg continues in his extremism:
It is not anti-Semitic and not anti-Israel to convey these messages. On the contrary: the settlers, the conquerors and their political allies – including Benjamin Netanyahu, the Prime Minister of Israel – are the real enemies of Israel's future...Colonising Palestinian land across the Green Line...generates fanatic, nationalistic, fundamentalist and anti-democratic energies that threaten all civilised Israeli foundations...With international help, we must return these demons to their bottles...
I wonder from what bottle Burg has been imbibing.
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