Guest Post: Arial Conference Part VII – Conclusion

This is a guest post by Mark L. Levinson.  If you are interested in guest posting at The Israel Situation, please take a look at our guest posting guidelines.  This is the final part in a series of posts about the Arial Conference, focusing on Israel, legal issues, and the media.

Public Conclusion and Private Extension

Closing the public part of the conference, Professor Sion noted that the cup could be seen as half full or half empty. Many Israelis complain that there are no embassies in Jerusalem any more; no country in the world recognizes Jerusalem as Israel’s capital under international law. But there was a time when foreign diplomats wouldn’t even meet with Israeli officials in Jerusalem. If he wanted to confer with the leader of another country, the prime minister of Israel had to pretend to be on vacation in Tiberias or somewhere.

International law itself is not what matters primarily depend on. They depend on what the people accomplish.

Scheduled for the evening, but by invitation only, was a talk with Minister of Foreign Affairs Avigdor Lieberman, Minister of Information and Diaspora Yuli Edelstein, and Knesset Member Shaul Mofaz. I found no news coverage of Edelstein or Mofaz, but Walla News mentioned Lieberman’s remarks.

According to Walla News, Lieberman reassured the audience regarding the building freeze on the West Bank. On the one hand, in practice there had been no construction for a year and a half anyway. On the other hand, having played the freeze card, the government could subsequently return to building uninhibitedly when the freeze ran out. There would be no further gestures or concessions to the Palestinian Authority, though Israel was always willing to negotiate without preconditions. Abu Mazen, the President of the Palestinian Authority, should bear in mind that he and his fellow moderates would not survive without Israel’s help.

Not everyone considers the Israel/Palestinian conflict to be the world’s central conflict, and it isn’t. Israel’s job is not to increase the fuss over the Palestinians but to help it fade away so that the world can concentrate on the more serious development — the appearance, for the first time since World War II of major irrational forces on the international scene. Not everyone wants to admit what’s before their eyes but it looks like the 1930s, said Lieberman.