Likud Party votes no to Palestinian State

[Gatorade]

The Likud party voted no to a creating a Palestinian state. I think this was a bad move on part of the Likud Party.

Sharon sounded reasonable when he said, "Any decision taken today on the final agreement is dangerous to the State of Israel and will only intensify the pressures on us." Any decision about Palestinian statehood under the current circumstances, "was irrelevant and premature."

"Peace is possible on two conditions - a complete halt to the terror, violence and incitement" and "the Palestinian Authority must carry out internal reforms in every way - on security, the economy, the legal system and within society."

My opinion is that you should have flexiblity in negotiations.

This really opens the door to crittics too. President Bush, who has supported Israel more than any country, has stated that a solution will have to ultimately be a Palestinian state. Liberals in the US have said that Israel has planned to keep the West Bank all along are going to win over a lot of people.

With 60,000 people rallying for peace at Tel Aviv and a ton more in Italy, Israel could have pointed out that they are ready for peace. They could have said that Israel is willing to negotiate as long as it wasn't with Arafat. That would have really put a lot of international pressure on the PA to send someone up to negiotate and maybe bypass Arafat or else look really bad.

Now, the Likud party doesn't really have much of a carrot to offer in terms of negotiations and they alienated the many in US in the process.

[NewsGuy]

Yes, this was a key vote and will have reprecussions for Likud party politics.

But I wouldn't see this vote as being overly significant in terms of Israeli foreign policy. Here's why not:

1. There is no viable political process between Israel and the Palestinians currently, due to the last 2 years of Palestinian terrorism. We are a very long way from having a Palestinian state being actively negotiated between the parties. By the time such a process is on track, the Likud party is liable to change its position many times over.

2. Close to 60 percent of Israelis support a Palestinian state. If and when the time comes to negotiate this issue, there is likely to be a plebocite put in place, in which the Israeli public will have the opportunity to approve or disapprove any peace plan, in its entirety, including the possibility of a Palestinian state.

So, I wouldn't draw too many conclusions from Likud intra-party politics, except that Netanyahu is breathing down Sharon's neck and that some Likud members have hardened their position after the Palestinian attempted genocide of the Israeli people.

[alexbmn]

See one would can call Likud despicable, racist, right wing hardliners but I'm sorry I think their decision was reasonable.The Palestinians refused to live side by side with Israel in 1937 when the Peel Commision proposed to divide up the land,thery refused in 1948 when the UN did so,they refused in 2000 when Barrak made an extraordinary generous offer.And honestly why would the Palestinians agree to peacefull resolution? It would show that all their sacrifice had gone to waste. They started a war of terror as their responce to Barak's offer and they must know that Sharon's offer will not come close to what Barak offered them.(see that why I think Sharon's continuos call that a Palestinian state is inevitable is a bluff, a diplomatic dance)

[Mediocrates]

See my other post (pitching around Gehrig to face Ruth). This is a tactical move on it's own that is meaningless. What it does do it force whomever is going to deal with the Israelis to deal with Sharon's Sylla instead of Likud's Charybdis (which is far worse).

After all, the devil you know, works both ways.