Former Ambassador Warns of Pressure On Israeli Borders

Israel’s former ambassador to the United Nations, Dore Gold, is launching a campaign to stress Israel’s need for “defensible borders” as part of any settlement with the Palestinian Arabs.Mr. Gold pressed his case in recent days in appearances on American television and in meetings with Bush administration officials and members of Congress. The campaign is being undertaken not by the government of Israel but by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, a research institute headed by Mr. Gold.Mr. Gold is warning that pressure is already building on Israel to withdraw to a 1949 armistice line that Israeli diplomat Abba Eban dubbed “Auschwitz borders.” The European Union’s high representative for foreign and security policy, Javier Solana; a recent Rand Corporation Report, and Martin Indyk of the Brooking Institution have all called for such a plan or something close to it.President Bush committed America to maintaining “secure, defensible borders” for Israel in an April 14, 2004, letter to Prime Minister Sharon. Mr. Gold has been speaking to American officials about just what those borders would include, leaving behind copies of a report he wrote with the chairman of the foreign affairs and defense committee of Israel’s parliament, Yuval Steinitz; the former head of assessment for Israel’s military intelligence, Major General Yaakov Amidror, and a former ambassador of Israel to America, Meir Rosenne.The report, available on the Internet at defensibleborders.org, calls for Israeli control of the border of the West Bank along the Jordan Valley. It also calls for shifting Israel’s boundary eastward “so that militarily vital territory does not end up under Palestinian control.” And it calls for “broadening the narrow corridor connecting Jerusalem with Tel Aviv” and for establishing a “defensive perimeter” around Jerusalem.In the past two months, Mr. Gold has met with Senators Kyl, Lieberman, Brownback, Lautenberg, Coleman, and Bunning, as well as Reps. Eric Cantor, Mike Pence, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Jane Harman, Robert Wexler, Gary Ackerman, Barney Frank, Brad Sherman, and Howard Berman. He’s also met with the assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern Affairs, David Welch, and with officials at the National Security Council and in the office of Vice President Cheney. He’s taken the case for defensible borders to the American Enterprise Institute, the Heritage Foundation, and the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. And he’s met with journalists at the Washington Post, USA Today, and the Associated Press.In a visit to The New York Sun over the weekend, Mr. Gold pointed to maps showing how Israeli population centers and Ben-Gurion International Airport would be vulnerable to conventional or terrorist attack if Israel returned to the 1949 borders.He invoked the memory of the assassinated Labor Party prime minister of Israel, Yitzhak Rabin. “Is this the Dore Gold plan? No, it’s the Yitzhak Rabin plan,” Mr. Gold said. The report, “Defensible Borders for a Lasting Peace,” has a picture of Rabin on the back cover along with a quote from Rabin’s last address to the Israeli parliament. Rabin said, “The border of the State of Israel, during the permanent solution, will be beyond the lines which existed before the Six-Day War.” He also said that Israel must retain “a united Jerusalem” and that “the security border of Israel will be located in the Jordan Valley, in the broadest meaning of that term.”

Former Ambassador Warns of Pressure On Israeli Borders

Former Ambassador Warns of Pressure On Israeli Borders

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