{"id":9231,"date":"2015-05-21T19:38:31","date_gmt":"2015-05-21T19:38:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kohelet.org.il\/article\/the-israeli-palestinian-conflict-and-the-cypriot-status-quo\/"},"modified":"2015-05-21T19:38:31","modified_gmt":"2015-05-21T19:38:31","slug":"the-israeli-palestinian-conflict-and-the-cypriot-status-quo","status":"publish","type":"article","link":"https:\/\/www.kohelet.org.il\/en\/article\/the-israeli-palestinian-conflict-and-the-cypriot-status-quo\/","title":{"rendered":"The Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the Cypriot status quo"},"content":{"rendered":"The visit to Israel of Federica Mogherini, the High Representative of the European Union (EU) for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, is meant to revive the EU\u2019s involvement in the so-called \u201cMiddle-East peace process.\u201d \u201cThe status quo\u201d is not an option, declared Mrs. Mogherini ahead of her visit.\n\nAmong EU members, France is actively promoting a new Security Council resolution on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.\n\nThe French initiative would define the former armistice line of 1949-1967 between Israel and Jordan as an international border between Israel and a Palestinian state; it would designate Jerusalem as the capital of both Israel and a Palestinian state; and it would call for \u201ca fair solution\u201d to the issue of Palestinian refugees. Such a resolution, if adopted, would in effect completely endorse the Palestinian position and sideline Israel\u2019s, and it would constitute a grave departure from Security Council Resolution 242.\n\nThe former armistice line between Israel and Jordan never was, and was never meant to become, an international border. Resolution 242 does not demand an Israeli withdrawal to that armistice line in exchange for peace &#8211; only a withdrawal \u201cfrom territories\u201d in a way that would provide Israel and its neighbors with \u201csecure and recognized boundaries.\u201d The 1949 armistice line cannot possibly be considered a secure boundary, since it created a 15-kilometer narrow \u201cwaist\u201d between Israel and Jordan, surrounding Jerusalem and overlooking Tel Aviv from mountainous heights. As for Jerusalem, it is not mentioned at all in Resolution 242.\n\nResolution 242 calls for \u201ca just settlement of the refugee problem,\u201d apparently making the proposed French resolution redundant. But the French proposal makes two radical changes regarding the refugee issue. First, it only refers to \u201cPalestinian refugees.\u201d What is meant by \u201crefugees\u201d in Resolution 242, however, is both the 600,000 Palestinian refugees from Israel and the 900,000 Jewish refugees from Arab countries. As the US ambassador to the UN in 1967, Judge Arthur Goldberg, explained after the adoption of 242, this resolution \u201crefers both to Arab and Jewish refugees, for about an equal number of each abandoned their homes as a result of the several wars.\u201d Moreover, what 242 means by \u201crefugees\u201d are the actual Arab and Jewish refugees of the Arab-Israeli wars, not their descendants.\n\nThe Palestinians, however, claim that the status of refugee applies to all descendants of the 1948 refugees. Even though there is no legal ground and no historic precedent for such a claim, it has become accepted in today\u2019s \u201cnewspeak\u201d and, apparently, by French diplomats. Therefore, according to the Palestinians and to the French, a \u201cfair solution\u201d must be found not for the Jewish refugees, not for the actual Palestinian refugees, but for the descendants of the Palestinian refugees (which number about 5 million according to UNRWA).\n\nThe French resolution does not expect the Palestinians to abandon this ridiculous claim, which has been the main reason for the failure of the \u201cpeace process\u201d for the past two decades. When Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas explained to former US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in 2008 why he did not accept the peace offer of then Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, he said that he could not abandon the \u201cright of return\u201d (as reported by Rice in her memoirs \u201cNo Higher Honor\u201d). The French resolution makes no demand of the Palestinians, leaving open the \u201cright of return\u201d issue, even though this fantasy was the excuse used by both Yasser Arafat (in 2000) and by Mahmoud Abbas (in 2008) for not signing a peace agreement with Israel.\n\nIn a meeting I had this week with a delegation of French parliamentarians, I asked them if they had a solution to the conflict in Cyprus. Their answer was a clear \u201cno.\u201d I also asked them if they weren\u2019t \u201ctired\u201d of the 40-year Turkish occupation of Cyprus (an EU member). Their answer was also \u201cno.\u201d And so when I asked them how they envisioned the future of Cyprus, they explained that the \u201cstatus quo\u201d was the only option. When I tried to understand why they washed their hands of the Cyprus conflict while being obsessed with the Israeli-Palestinian one, their answer was no less amazing: \u201cBecause the conflict in Cyprus doesn\u2019t produce instability.\u201d\n\nNow, the Middle-East is the most unstable region in the world, with people killing each other, with countries imploding, and with Iran and ISIS filling the void. Yet the French can think of nothing more urgent than establishing a failed state in the midst of the only stable and successful country of this war zone.\n\nAs long as France and the EU do not drop the so-called \u201cright of return\u201d from their diplomatic initiatives, the Israeli-Palestinian status quo will not only continue, but it will also be the only realistic option \u2013 just like in Cyprus.","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The visit to Israel of Federica Mogherini, the High Representative of the European Union (EU) for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, is meant to revive the EU\u2019s involvement in the so-called \u201cMiddle-East peace process.\u201d \u201cThe status quo\u201d is not an option, declared Mrs. Mogherini ahead of her visit. Among EU members, France is actively promoting [&hellip;]","protected":false},"featured_media":9232,"template":"","article-category":[525],"custom-tags":[534,538],"ppma_author":[62],"class_list":["post-9231","article","type-article","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","article-category-publications","custom-tags-eu","custom-tags-israeli-palestinian-conflict"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v24.7 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>The Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the Cypriot status quo - kohelet<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.kohelet.org.il\/en\/article\/the-israeli-palestinian-conflict-and-the-cypriot-status-quo\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the Cypriot status quo - kohelet\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The visit to Israel of Federica Mogherini, the High Representative of the European Union (EU) for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, is meant to revive the EU\u2019s involvement in the so-called \u201cMiddle-East peace process.\u201d \u201cThe status quo\u201d is not an option, declared Mrs. Mogherini ahead of her visit. 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