Israeli-Palestinian confederation? Dangerous plan by Israeli politician to be presented to US

A Likud faction slammed the architect of the Oslo Accords for knowing that this would inevitably lead to the Jews’ expulsion or death.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

A plan to establish a Palestinian-Israel confederation will be presented to American government officials in the coming days by a private group, garnering swift criticism from the right wing in Israel.

Past justice minister Yossi Beilin, who heads a joint Israeli-Palestinian group, originally publicized the idea in 2015. In an interview with Arutz 7 Sunday, he said that his model was based on the European Union.

In such an entity, each country retains its sovereignty while cooperating closely with each other economically as well as on health, security and other issues, he said.

No Jewish communities would be destroyed, according to Beilin. The Jews would remain residents under the rule of the Palestinian state while being citizens of Israel and voting for the Knesset.

While admitting that “there are no simple answers” to ensure their security because they would not have the IDF to protect them, he said the essence is that the plan would be implemented only gradually.

“If it seems that there is a reasonable relationship and that there is no violence, it will be possible to be more liberal and secure the settlers, perhaps through a third party,” he said.

The Palestinian Authority has stated many times over the years that any state of theirs would have to be judenrein, the Nazi term for “clear of Jews.”  When asked about this, Beilin answered, “[PA President] Abu Mazen said many things” but “many” Palestinians understand that if they allow the ‘settlers’ stay, “it could bring the chances of reaching peace closer.”

He also downplayed the risk of having a Palestinian state overlooking the central region where most of Israel’s population lives, even though the Palestinian Authority — which includes antisemitism and glorification of terrorists in its educational and cultural programming — is in danger of falling to the even more rabidly anti-Israel Hamas that controls the Gaza Strip.

“The assumption is that if there is peace and not a partial settlement, the security risk will be small, as it was with the Egyptians and the Jordanians,” he said, referring to the peace treaties Israel signed with those states. “The Palestinians are no different from them.”

The Dror faction of the Likud immediately slammed the plan in a Facebook post.

“Beilin isn’t a stupid kid…. He knows well that there’s no way to leave Jews in a Palestinian state. So either he’s lying and preparing for a reverse annexation plan – i.e., first we’ll establish a Palestinian state and then we’ll think what to do with the Jews, and of course at the end we’ll expel them in order to protect them. Or he really wants to remove the IDF from Judea and Samaria and let his ‘partners’ finish the job.”

“And regarding the timing [of the trip], let’s note that it’s not happenstance that the ‘incitement government’ is already giving a green light to the PA to take over parts of Area C [of Judea and Samaria, under Israeli administration, according to the Oslo Accords], while it is signaling that the [Jewish] residents of Judea and Samaria are the enemy.”

Beilin and his colleagues are not going as official representatives of either Jerusalem or Ramallah, yet they will be meeting with Barbara Leaf of the National Security Council and Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman. They will present their ideas to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres as well.

Beilin was one of the architects of the secretly negotiated 1993 Oslo Accords with the terrorist Palestine Liberation Organization, when it was still illegal to meet its representatives.

A decade later he co-authored the Geneva Initiative with a Palestinian minister, Yasser Abed Rabbo, to provide answers for all final-status issues not included in the Accords. Among its features was a non-militarized Palestinian state and a limited “right of return” for Palestinians, with Jerusalem divided administratively.

HamasLikudOslo AccordsPalestinian AuthorityPalestinian right of returnright of returnSettlersTwo State Solutionyossi beilin