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Peace Process

'Farewell to the land of our forefathers'

Olmert's 'convergence' coalition made new government of Israel


By Stan Goodenough
May 04, 2006

With its eyes wide open, Israel took a step closer to catastrophe Thursday as the Knesset (Parliament) gave its approval for Ehud Olmert?s convergence coalition to govern the Jewish state.

Now installed, the Kadima-led government plans to voluntarily ? and apparently willingly ? relinquish forever all claims to territory Israel as a nation has for 4,000 years held to be its everlasting, God-given land.

Before the Knesset vote, in what The Jerusalem Post described as a major policy speech, and one which did away with any doubts as to how he plans to use his prime ministerial powers, Olmert spelled out his intentions to the Knesset.

Communities in Judea and Samaria, home to tens of thousands of Jews and long regarded by both right and left-wing governments as integral to Israel?s security, are dead center in the new leader?s sights.

Using the already discredited ?demographic bomb? threat ? which is based on an inaccurate census of the Palestinian Arab population ? Olmert said that retaining these communities ?threatened the existence of the State of Israel as a Jewish state.?

They have to go, and go they will.

In a replay of last year?s abandonment of Gaza and parts of northern Samaria, Israeli soldiers and policemen will be used to move the populations of these Judean and Samarian towns out of their homes and into larger settlement blocs near the 1949 ceasefire line.

Those larger blocs, Olmert contended, would become ?forever? part of sovereign Israel.

Previous Prime Minister Ariel Sharon?s ?disengagement? ? which saw 8,000 Jews driven from their homes and scattered as refugees in tent cities and hotels; their towns handed over to the terrorist groups that have since used the abandoned land to fire hundreds of Kassam rockets into Israel ?proper? ? had been just the first step.

By 2008, according to an unnamed senior Kadima official quoted in Ha?aretz Thursday, convergence would go into play. Two years later, when this government?s office term is over, the plan will have been implemented, and Israel will have self-determined its ?final? borders.

That is, Olmert insisted in the runup to last March's general election that his borders were going to be Israel?s ?final? borders.

In his speech Thursday the right-wing-mayor-of-Jerusalem-turned-left-wing-leader-of-Kadima modified that somewhat, (possibly in response to the announcement from the Bush administration a few days earlier that it had no plans to recognize Olmert?s boundary lines), saying that his government would draw ?desirable? borders.

Detractors point to the nearly 100-year unbroken pattern in Israel-World relations to argue that the international community will never allow the Jewish state to determine what its boundaries will be.

Once Olmert has forever and unilaterally surrendered 95 percent of biblical Israel, irreversibly weakening the country and further deepening the chasm that already yawns between different sectors of Israeli society, the Quartet will simply insist that Israel return to the negotiating table with the ?Palestinians.?

And when it comes to the battle over the land of Israel, no government and hardly a single prime minister has had the courage to resist and reject pressure from the world.

Candidly, and with no hint of an apology, Olmert described his plan ? which he termed an Israeli ?concession? ? as a ?farewell to the land of our forefathers.?

It was a sacrifice that had to be made for the greater good - for the sake of a principle.

?Even if the Jewish eye fills with tears, and the heart is torn, we must safeguard the principle ? we must keep a solid and stable Jewish majority in our state,? he said.

In what some saw as a lackluster response given the terrible nature of Olmert's plans, opposition leader and Likud Party head Binyamin Netanyahu said there had never been an Israeli government ?that has given up on so much from the start.?

He saw neither the need nor the purpose of the convergence plan, and reminded the Knesset that the ?disengagement? had done nothing to ?weaken Hamas or push away the Kassams.?

It had, in a fact of which Israelis are daily made aware, achieved exactly the opposite of what was touted by Sharon.

All the former prime minister earned for his pains were groans from his detractors in the plenum.

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