From Tuesday’s Yediot Ahronot, as translated in the emailed Daily News Update of the S. Daniel Abraham Center for Middle East Peace comes a fairly detailed description by Alex Fishman of John Kerry’s game plan for restarting the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. Fishman is Yediot’s veteran, impeccably well-sourced military affairs correspondent. He attributes this information to State Department sources. It doesn’t appear on line (neither in Hebrew nor English) so I’m posting the Abraham Center’s translation below in full.
In brief, Fishman reports that Kerry is aiming for a 4-way meeting in Amman between Israel, the Palestinian Authority, the United States and Jordan. (Kerry is very eager to have Jordan step in as a sponsor of peace talks, both to give Abbas some substantive Arab backing and to give King Abdullah II a boost.) You’ll note at once that Abbas is already refusing to attend without a clear gesture from Israel. In the past he’s demanded a full Israeli settlement freeze. Lately he’s begun demanding a map showing Bibi Netanyahu’s notion of a future Palestinian state. As I’ve reported in the past, Abu Mazen has been refusing to talk to Bibi (after willingly talking to Ehud Olmert before him) because his sense is that Bibi has no intention of ever ceding enough land for a real state. The idea of the map is to show that the talks will go somewhere, so Abu Mazen doesn’t enter a dead end and end up looking like a fool.
So if you stop reading after paragraph 2, you get the sense that Kerry’s plan is dead in the water. But Fishman goes on to report that Kerry thinks he can eventually get Bibi to give up some lesser concessions that will satisfy Abu Mazen and get the talks started. The two sides’ notions of final borders are impossibly far apart at this point, but Kerry is aiming for an interim agreement on Israel ceding 80% of the West Bank as a first stage. It’s a long shot, but who knows? So were the 1969 Mets…
The Kerry Plan
By Alex Fishman, Yediot Ahronot, April 9, 2013
The new American secretary of state, John Kerry, is trying to get Israel and the Palestinians to sit down to a four-way meeting in Jordan. The answer he’s received from Abu Mazen, at least for the time being, has been flat out refusal.
A rabbi passed over last year for the leadership of the Reform movement thinks he might have better luck running for the U.S. Senate.
Rabbi Jonah Pesner, a senior vice president at the Union for Reform Judaism, told the Boston Phoenix on January 7 that he is considering entering the special election to replace Senator John Kerry (D-Mass.), whom President Obama has nominated to be secretary of state.
Pesner could not immediately be reached for comment by the Forward.
A Reform rabbi, Pesner is a longtime social justice organizer in Massachusetts. The former head of Just Congregations, the Reform movement’s organizing arm, he’s also worked as a leader of the Greater Boston Interfaith Organization, an organizing group.
The Forward reported in 2011 that Pesner was one of two finalists in the URJ’s search for a new president. The organization went with the other finalist, Rabbi Richard Jacobs.
“Our work has just begun,” Pesner wrote in a March 2011 email to friends congratulating Jacobs when he was picked.
If he does run, Pesner will face a packed field. Potential opponents include Democrat Ed Markey, a longtime Massachusetts congressman, and Republican Scott Brown, the state’s former Senator.
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