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Jerusalem Journalist's Perspective on Clinton Plan
David Bedein Jerusalem, Israel(1 January, 2001)
israelbehindthenews
The Clinton Plan for Middle East Peace, unfolded in the twilight days
of
the Clinton Administration, dictates a simplistic notion for Israel:
Only
Jewish neighborhoods in Jerusalem will remain in Israel and Arab
neighborhoods should be ceded to Arafat.
The Clinton Plan for Middle East Peace dictates that the Palestinian
Authority’s Palestinian Liberation Army will take immediate control
over
Arab neighborhoods in East Jerusalem that intertwine with all Jewish
neighborhoods. in Jerusalem.
Since the Palestinian Authority has freed convicted murderers of Jews
from
its jails over the past three months, and since the Palestinian
Authority
has provided safe haven for thieves and killers who have committed
crimes
inside Israel and have then escaped to the safe havens of the PA, The
Clinton Plan for Middle East Peace would allow convicted murderers to
walk
freely in Arab neighborhoods of Jerusalem. and
would provide even more accessible safe havens for Arabs to kill, steal
and
run into new PA havens of refuge for
The Clinton Plan for Middle East Peace dictates that 2.4 million UNRWA
refugee camp clients be given the option to move out of their UNRWA
refugee camps in Lebanon, Syria and Jordan and to join the 1.2 million
UNRWA refugee camp residents in the west bank and Gaza. Since UNRWA,
funded in part by the US, has inculcated Arab refugees for more than
fifty
years to believe that they must reject financial compensation and only
be
repatriated to the precise geographic vicinities where their villages
stood
in 1948, The Clinton Plan For Middle East Peace would l encourage 3.6
million UNRWA camp residents to wait impatiently on the hills and
plains of
the west bank until they are repatriated to the 531 Arab villages from
before 1948 that have been replaced by Israeli cities, collective farms
and
woodlands.
And if the architects of the Clinton Plan for Middle East Peace try to
convince the public that the demand for the ‘right of return” is a
bargaining chip or only a negotiating position...
The PLO has now set up a computer terminal at its Orient House
headquarters
in Jerusalem, whose function is to locate UNRWA refugee camp residents
and
to document the exact homes of Jews that are to be repossessed, and
then to
organize their forcible return. That is why the PLO endorses terror
attacks
in Jaffa, Hadera, Beit Lid and certain sections of Tel Aviv, all of
which
are defined as ‘illegal settlements’. That is why the PLO has
distributed
thousands of maps of the 531 Arab villages that are to be
liberated...to
all UNRWA camp residents.
In light of the above, it may be surprising to many observers that the
Israeli government has accepted the Clinton Plan for Middle East Peace.
The reasoning behind the Israeli government acceptance is that the PLO
will never accept the Clinton Plan for Middle East Peace, since it does
not
guarantee the absolute ‘right of return’.
Yet what the Israeli government acceptance of the Clinton Plan for
Middle
East Peace does is to establish that plan as the basis for future
negotiations, when Israel would be asked to relinquish more of its
sovereignty
A case in point, when Clinton declared that Arab neighborhoods should
be
ceded to Palestinian sovereignty, many Israelis may have forgotten
that
the Palestinian definition of “Arab neighborhoods” would surprise many
Israelis..In other words, the next stage of negotiations will involve
Arab
demands for Bakka, Talbia, Katamonim and Deir Yassin, Jewish
neighborhoods
in Jerusalem that were Arab villages before 1948, all of whose
descendents
live in UNRWA refugee camps and await their 'repatriation' to West
Jerusalem.
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