[ … just like it already has been doing for decades ]
The Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is seeking to introduce any terms agreed in a Middle East peace deal over a period of decades rather than years, it has been claimed.
Amid growing but guarded optimism surrounding last week’s launch of direct negotiations for the first time in nearly two years,
both the Palestinian and Israeli leaderships have spoken of their desire to reach a “framework” deal within 12 months.
However, Mr Netanyahu is reportedly is hoping that the agreements reached under an accord
would be phased in stage-by-stage over as much as 30 years.
[ and it’s probably safe to assume that
– at the current rate of israel’s border expansion –
Palestine will have been wiped off the map by then ]
Israel reportedly hopes that a protracted timetable would test the viability of a peace deal by gradually building confidence that its security needs would be met even as it withdrew from territory that would become part of a Palestinian state.
But any such proposal is likely to encounter stiff Palestinian resistance,
as it is likely to mean a lengthy delay both in dismantling Jewish settlements in the West Bank
and granting full sovereignty to a state of Palestine.
The government of Mahmoud Abbas,
the president of the Palestinian Authority,
has not disclosed how long it sees the implementation phase of a peace deal.
[ … and that’s because mahmoud eats his lunch at israel’s table ]
However, a senior Palestinian representative at the talks said he hoped that Israel’s three-year withdrawal from the Sinai Peninsula after the Camp David peace talks of 1978 could be replicated if a deal was reached.
“We have the Sinai experience as a model,” Nabil Abu Rudeina told the pan-Arab newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat.
“An agreement was reached in Camp David on Israeli withdrawal from Sinai and a period of 36 months was set for implementation.
We will be flexible.”