Tuesday, June 12, 2012
Israel's settlement construction policies in the West Bank or the burning of a mosque could potentially incite another Palestinian popular uprising, Mideast experts warned Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last week, the Ha 'aretz daily reported on Sunday.
According to the report, the experts told Netanyahu that his plan, announced last week, to build 851 new housing units in West Bank settlements, could trigger a third intifada, especially in light of the prolonged diplomatic stalemate between Israel and the Palestinian National Authority.
One expert projected that the burning of a mosque by Jewish extremists holds the greatest risk for the outbreak of violence.
The National Security Council, a body subordinate to the Prime Minister's Office, initiated the meeting with Netanyahu last Tuesday. Among the academics in attendance were some of Israel's most acclaimed Mideast experts, including professors Emmanuel Sivan, Shimon Shamir, Eyal Zisser and Meir Litvak.
Brig. Gen. (retired) Shalom Harari, a former Arab affairs adviser to the military, was also present, as well as other experts on Egypt, Jordan, Turkey and Iran.
Netanyahu was presented with statistics showing that the outbreak of the first intifada in 1987 and the second intifada in 2000 were both preceded by mass violence and violence perpetrated by individuals, and that a similar trend is currently visible.
The meeting was held as the political arena was abuzz over the upcoming demolition of Uplana, a 30-family neighborhood in the West Bank settlement of Beit El, which the Supreme Court earlier this year ruled was illegally built on privately-owned Palestinian land.
In a bid to appease the settlers and avoid a crisis within his cabinet, Netanyahu said the neighborhood's five buildings would be relocated to a defunct military base near the settlement and announced a plan to build 851 new housing units in several settlements.
The prime minister reportedly did not respond to the experts' warning that implementing plans to build the new apartments in the absence of diplomatic progress could undermine support for the Palestinian leadership, and weaken the PNA's security forces' ability to contain violence in the West Bank.
On Saturday, the former director of Israel's Shin Bet security service echoed those sentiments, warning that deadlocked peace talks could ignite a new intifada or a terror wave.
"We're dealing with fateful issues in Israel; the peace process is deadlocked and we're heading rapidly towards a bi-national state," the Ynet news website quoted Yaakov Peri as saying at a cultural event in the city of Kfar Saba.
Peri, who joins several former security chiefs who have slammed the policies of Netanyahu's government on Iran and the peace process over the past year, starkly predicted that "this is the end of Zionism. We need a new leadership."
Source: Xinhua
