Last month in an IPS interview, top Israeli political pundit David Landau argued that Obama should strive to secure an Israeli-Palestinian peace through what he defined as “the Grand Bargain: full-fledged support for Israel in the neutralising of any Iranian nuclear threat in exchange for Israel accepting to give up its occupation of Palestinian lands.”
The Israeli Prime Minister has suddenly been awoken to realise that he needs face a new choice - not simply linkage between neutralising the threat of war with Iran and working for peace with the Palestinians, but between neutralising the threat of war with Iran and an imposed peace.
That would seem to leave Netanyahu with only one way of pre-empting the U.S. plan that is now taking shape - the imposition of a settlement with the Palestinians, on U.S. terms. He takes the initiative.
* The fourth scenario therefore involves Netanyahu turning “the Grand Bargain” on its head: he formally pledges Israel’s readiness for a fair peace with the Palestinians but only provided he gets, upfront, iron-clad guarantees, not only from the U.S., but from Europe and from the Arab world, that Israel need have no fear - present or future - from any Iranian nuclear weapon.
It is almost 43 years since the 1967 Arab-Israeli war is said to have changed “forever” the face of the Middle East.
It is a moment when “forever” post-1967 is coming to an end; the Middle East is fast approaching its most important crossroads since June 1967
via israpundit.com
(1) there is no occupied Palestine. Jews were living in the mandate of Palestinian before they were occupied and ethnically cleansed by the Hashemite kingdom of Jordan (2) Obama is making an existential threat. This really is a Hitler.
