Hendrik Hertzberg of The New Yorker says with Hillary as Secretary of State, the new administration will have a great team in place that, he is predicting, will achieve a region changing Palestinian / Israel deal. Hertzberg says everyone already knows what a Palestinian / Israel deal would look like. He says, “It’s a question of having the political strength and exerting the will to make it happen.”
Hertzberg writes, “The team of Barack ‘Grandpa Was a Muslim’ Obama, Hillary ‘I’m a Clinton’ Clinton, and Rahm ‘Israel’ Emanuel (that’s his real middle name! and he was a volunteer with the I.D.F. during the 1991 Gulf War!), with Joe Biden and Bill Clinton pitching in as necessary, would put the new Administration in an extremely powerful position to apply the kind of pressure that would give Israeli politicians the political cover they need to reach a settlement with the Palestinians.”
In a recent interview, the lame duck prime minister of Israel, Ehud Olmert, said, “We must reach an agreement with the Palestinians, meaning a withdrawal from nearly all, if not all, of the [occupied] territories. Some percentage of these territories would remain in our hands, but we must give the Palestinians the same percentage [of territory elsewhere]—without this, there will be no peace.”
Olmert said the territory given to the Palestinians must include Jerusalem—”with special arrangements made for the Temple Mount and the holy/historical sites.” Olmert said, “This decision is difficult, awful, a decision that contradicts our natural instincts, our deepest yearnings, our collective memories, and the prayers of the nation of Israel for the past two thousand years. … I was the first person who wanted to maintain Israeli control over the entire city. I confess. I’m not trying to retroactively justify what I’ve done for the past thirty-five years. For a significant portion of those years I wasn’t ready to contemplate the depth of this reality.”
