Welcome to Jerusalem Studio!
Today we will discuss with Pekka Sartola
the situation of the peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians.
As you will hear during the course of the program, it is complicated.
To avoid despair I will read a few verses from Isaiah
which will show that whatever the situation,
God is in control and He has said in His word,
what awaits us in the end of the tunnel - light.
Isaiah 62:6-8 -
On your walls, O Jerusalem, I have set watchmen;
all the day and all the night they shall never be silent.
You who put the Lord in remembrance, take no rest,
and give him no rest until he establishes Jerusalem
and makes it a praise in the earth.
The Lord has sworn by his right hand and by his mighty arm:
“I will not again give your grain to be food for your enemies,
and foreigners shall not drink your wine for which you have labored.
How would you comment that Scripture?
What are God's plans?
It is quite a consoling message, and also final,
but it is aimed at a future further down.
In the meantime we will see different prophecies coming to pass.
The best, however, is God's in control over everything
and He will bring His plans to pass, both for Israel, us, Christians
and the secular matters - Jerusalem and the state of Israel.
Let's move on to daily life and current events.
How have the peace talks advanced or have they advanced at all?
They began a few months ago with an ambitious goal -
to achieve in 9 months what has not been done in 65 years,
in spite of hundreds of talks and agreements.
From the perspective of predicting
I am quite sceptical about their success.
Everything is possible, of course.
But without enormous pressure on Israel
and great concessions reaching the goal seems impossible.
In the light of recent events and news about the release
of Palestinian prisoners who have been received as war heros,
what has that achieved?
In Israel it has only caused deep and justified disagreement
of the relatives whose loved ones were killed by these criminals.
They were sentenced legally according to Israeli laws.
They were now released with a political decision
only to get the Palestinians to come to the negotiations table
without receiving anything in return.
I think it is a humiliation to the Israeli government
being forced into this.
Why does such a release have to take place
while the other side considers it a precondition to the talks?
Good question.
Palestinian side negotiates without a mandate.
The mandate of their so-called president Abbas
ended in 2010, after which he has no authority to negotiate
except as the chairman of the Palestinian Authority.
Hamas is the only democratically elected organization.
Hamas, however, does not accept any agreements with Israel
nor any solution of the talks.
Palestinians needed some kind of a victory
that Abbas could flaunt as his effortless achievement,
and also show that this as a right position at the talks,
and the sentencing of those prisoners was supposedly wrong.
It is just some kind of an eyewash. Feels bad to even think about it.
I almost fainted when I read their list of demands.
What have they demanded from Israel
for their willingness to continue the talks?
The list is quite long
and granting it all would mean national suicide for Israel.
Their first demand is quite clever: both USA and Israel must recognize
that the whole Palestine, they mean West Bank,
is an occupied territory, which would make Israel an occupier
and could thus be brought under international judgment.
But this is not the case.
Occupation can only happen on a legal territory with borders
under the control of a sovereign state.
But that has never applied to the territory in question.
Their demand list includes many other things.
The worst of them, in addition to the division of Jerusalem,
is the right of return for the refugees
not to the future Palestinian state but to Israeli territory
which would be a catastrophe.
Could you explain what does it mean exactly?
Who are moving and where?
Oslo 2 in 1995, as shown on the map
where green areas are under PA rule,
Israel being in charge of security in some of them.
All the white, debated areas, were to remain under Israeli control
and negotiated about later.
The right of free return of the Palestinian refugees
would not only mean the West Bank but the whole modern Israeli state,
which was a home for 6 million Jews
as well as for 2 million others.
Adding 4 million refugees would mean national suicide for Israel.
It would mean that the Arabs would get a majority
at parliamentary elections.
That's exactly their goal.
With a simple majority of votes
they would be able to make decisions go their way.
They would also be able to return to the areas
their forefathers left from,
meaning that Jews must be chased out of there.
This is an impossible problem
that has not found a solution in 65 years.
What kind of demands do they have on the Eastern border
or in the Jordan Valley?
This is Area C, which currently belongs to Israel.
They want a mutual border with Jordan,
which would mean the removal of the electric security fence.
It was intended to keep illegal infiltrating of terrorists
and smuggling of weapons to Israel.
If they would control the border, it would be problematic for Israel.
Refugees would flood in from Jordan and the next border
would be the West Bank or the so-called Green Line.
That would become an impossible situation.
Doesn't one of the demands call for the no-fly-zone
for Israel over Palestinian territories?
They mean that the air space of their sovereign state
would mean the air space over the whole West Bank,
the whole atmosphere up until the Moon.
Israeli Air Force and civil aviation would not be allowed in.
But Israel has quite a few bases in the West Bank areas.
Israel will never compromise its security to that extent
and would not grant that demand.
US Secretary of State John Kerry has also proposed
that 1/3 of the Dead Sea
would also be relinquished to the Palestinians.
It would become a patchwork that is quite impossible to defend.
They demand the situation of 1947 which was once voted upon
and which they refused.
UN's Partition plan from November 29, 1947,
suggested to divide the area into separate zones
which would have created three Jewish communities
with bottlenecks, like the one above Nazareth
and the other near Ashkelon, that are impossible to defend.
That was an intolerable proposal from military perspective.
Areas designated for Israel would form three enclaves,
the Palestinians would have gotten the best areas,
with international Jerusalem
in the middle of Palestinian territories.
And with the closed air space
it would be impossible for Israel to defend itself.
They would have to operate from their northern bases on Golan
and from Negev.
But the 14-20 km wide Ayalon Valley near Ashkelon
would still remain in the range of any rocket attacks,
as well as airports, Tel Aviv and other places.
It is impossible to think that this can be defended.
At the starting point in 1922 the idea was
that these two nations should freely negotiate their borders.
The current impassé has not occurred without pressure.
What has happened for the world to enable
such a simplistic approach to the negotiations?
The leading force here is the US and the current president.
Also former US presidents have desired to bring to pass
the Palestinian State whatever the cost.
But Obama has started to use quite powerful weapons
and exerted pressure on Israel both economically and otherwise,
as Israel has US backed loans, direct economic and military aid.
These are easy tools for blackmailing.
A change of direction seems to be on the horizon
as Israel now has its own energy resources.
These resources must be quite vast.
They really are remarkably enormous.
They begin to yield profit already in the middle of next year
in case of the Tamar gas field
and the rest gradually every two years from then on.
Only the produce of the currently known fields
would according to finance minister's prognosis last spring
yield Israel the net profit of 425 billion USD.
Such amounts would release Israeli economy from dependence
and they become self-sufficient in the field of energy,
and even energy exporters.
Adding the future oil and other resources
no wonder Obama is in the hurry to pressure Israel now.
Why does Obama want to do that
when US and Israel have been close cooperation partners?
I don't understand his thinking.
He received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2010 without doing anything.
It was a great surprise for him as well as many others.
He must be trying to redeem his promises.
I'm wondering why are they all obsessed
with establishing a state called Palestine
as if there was no other problematic places to deal with.
It is based on Islamic mentality.
Iran's president said a few weeks ago
that the problems of the whole world will disappear
when Israel is wiped out
and replaced with an Islamic Palestinian State.
For them it is a religious obsession and for some reason
Obama has adopted it as well as his foreign political vision.
The positions US and Obama have already changed
and there seems to be a break regarding Iran's nuclear pursuits.
Does Obama want to hear what he wants to hear?
That is most likely one of Obama's fixations.
Also George Bush Jr had quite a short-sighted vision.
He took some political goal, turned into a personal axiom
and wanted to believe it whatever the cost.
Talks with Iran are an example of that.
Iran has never changed its goals.
It is just about what tactics,
tempo and strategy is used to attain them.
Their goal is a Shiite world domination.
The Sunnites have the same goal.
These goals have not changed.
Severe external pressure that keeps them from realization
just calls for change of tactics.
They try a different approach and it seems to be working
in the US-Iranian dialogue.
We can see different pursuits also in Israel's government.
How does the composition of the Israeli government affect the talks?
This is a very difficult question.
Netanyahu is between a rock and a hard place.
Maintaining the current coalition means delaying the talks
and standing against the Palestinian demands.
His chief negotiator Tzipi Livni
has always supported the two-state solution
and the division of Jerusalem.
Of course, she cannot decide it by herself.
On the other hand, if the current coalition dissolves
and Bennett's party as the decisive factor leaves,
Netanyahu must declare early elections
or invite along ultraorthodox parties
who are even more reluctant towards the talks.
He is dependent on his coalition no matter what he does.
This is a problem in Israel.
He has promised to put all the major national interests
such as the division of Jerusalem to a referendum,
which is the final advisory organ to decide the fate of things.
It is a difficult situation for Netanyahu and his government.
EU and USA push the two-state solution
and demands are impossible.
The war in Syria, Iran pursuing nuclear capabilities
and the events in Egypt and elsewhere form quite a cauldron.
It is quite a hodge-podge.
It is difficult to zone in on one problem and solve it,
as different factors are continually introduced.
Syria's situation, Iran's satellite Lebanon,
whose influence should not be underestimated.
Egypt's situation is a bit more contained at the moment.
Benefitial for Israel is that Egypt's military rulers
understand the current geo-political situation
much better than the government of the Muslim Brotherhood
who only saw things through the religious mirror.
Soldiers understand that Israel cannot be beaten,
thus it is better to negotiate and cooperate against common enemies.
Has EU changed its positions recently or not?
If there are any changes then unfortunately negative ones.
Catherine Ashton sent a letter to EU foreign ministers in July
which starting from January 2014 introduces restriction guidelines
for relations with Israeli companies and institutions.
One of them is very hurtful
in the light of the current talks and recent history:
Israel must be defined in all transactions and documents
as knowledgeably operating on illegally occupied territories,
i.e. Area C in West Bank
which is a matter to be negotiated between Israel and Palestinians,
not with EU.
We see quite often in the news
that building by Israel in Area C is considered illegal.
Where does that stem from,
as Israel considers its construction plans rightful?
Israel has every right to build.
The internal affairs in the area are bilateral affairs of two parties
based on Oslo Accords, approved also by US, EU, Russia
and even several Arab states.
The so-called Interim Agreement defines the positions of Israel
and the Palestinians and what actions are allowed and what not.
It is amazing that EU has interfered
and has taken the role of a judge in favor of one of the parties,
against the agreements between the mentioned two parties.
and suddenly considers Area C that was designated as Israeli area
a Palestinian area instead.
This is a result of Obama's policy.
He proposed in 2010 that all these areas are Palestinian
forsaking all the previous agreements.
Every year PA gets a lot of aid money.
Is this supervised at all and how?
The World Bank has inquired where have all the billions gone.
There are no documents and nobody can give an answer
where have all these enormous sums been used.
The funds of all of the world's tax payers are used to aid PA.
It has always been clear that PA is very corrupt
already since the times of Yasser Arafat.
There's not much change in the current leadership.
Supervision would be necessary but who would do that.
PA has always been considered the weak one
and they have banked on that, which allows free corruption.
In conclusion I'd like to discuss the decision making apparatus
of the Palestinian side.
There's Hamas and Abbas' faction.
How does this work between them?
In 2006 Hamas won the elections.
This was a complete surprise for the US as well as Israel.
Their calculations were wrong.
They expected that after giving up Gaza
Fatah, i. e. Palestinian Authority would take control there.
Hamas came to power instead by declaring
that they drove out the Zionists.
They came to power in the whole Palestinian territories,
forming a government that was democratically elected.
Abbas was elected as president but his mandate ended 3 years ago.
He has been negotiating without a mandate.
Thus two opposite positions rule -
one makes obstacles and the other tries to move forward.
Hamas does not agree to negotiate, to respect any earlier agreements,
wherefore we have a stalemate.
Whatever decisions Abbas makes, he has no mandate for it.
Thank you, Pekka! Thank you, dear viewers!
We will continue with these complex topics.
We are not very optimistic about a peace deal in 9 months
but we will observe the situation.
Translation: Monika Jaaguri