That's about it, and it's about time. The security fence is building a reality where Israel will be able to sit back and let the Palestinians decide if they're serious about moving forward or not.
Here is the full text of Sharon's speech.
Sharon starts with articulating his vision for the future of Israel - pride, democracy, education, good values and economic strength.
He cautions that there is a tendency to focus on Israel's political problems with its neighbors and the Palestinians. This is the crux of it. Israel has other things to do. It has a life to live and a nation to nurture. Holding the hand of a murderous Palestinian state is sapping their strength and distracting their focus. Time to move on.
I know that there is sometimes a tendency to narrow all of Israel's problems down to the political sphere, believing that once a solution is found to Israel's problems with its neighbors, particularly the Palestinians, the other issues on the agenda will miraculously resolve themselves. I do not believe so. We are facing additional challenges which must be addressed – the economy, educating the young generation, immigrant absorption, enhancement of social cohesion and the improvement of relations between Arabs and Jews in Israel.
Sharon says Israel is ready to move on to peace, but if the Palestinians are not, they will not wait.
He affirms his commitment ot the Roadmap, and to a two-state solution.
In order to implement the Roadmap, security is necessary. There will be no moving forward with peace plans in the absence of security and hoping, vainly, that tranquility will follow.
The Roadmap is a clear and reasonable plan, and it is therefore possible and imperative to implement it. The concept behind this plan is that only security will lead to peace. And in that sequence. Without the achievement of full security – within the framework of which terror organizations will be dismantled – it will not be possible to achieve genuine peace, a peace for generations. This is the essence of the Roadmap. The opposite perception, according to which the very signing of a peace agreement will produce security out of thin air, has already been tried in the past and failed miserably. And such will be the fate of any other plan which promotes this concept. These plans deceive the public and create false hope. There will be no peace before the eradication of terror.
Sharon goes on to elaborate on the steps Israel will begin to take immediately for its own part:
Concurrent with the demand from the Palestinians to eliminate the terror organizations, Israel is taking – and will continue to take – steps to significantly improve the living conditions of the Palestinian population: Israel will remove closures and curfews and reduce the number of roadblocks; we will improve freedom of movement for the Palestinian population, including the passage of people and goods; we will increase the hours of operation at international border crossings; we will enable a large number of Palestinian merchants to conduct regular and normal economic and trade relations with their Israeli counterparts, etc. All these measures are aimed at enabling better and freer movement for the Palestinian population not involved in terror.
In addition, subject to security coordination, we will transfer Palestinian towns to Palestinian security responsibility.
He assures the audience he will dismantle unauthorized outposts, regardless of the reaction he'll have to weather.
I have committed to the President of the United States that Israel will dismantle unauthorized outposts. It is my intention to implement this commitment. The State of Israel is governed by law, and the issue of the outposts is no exception. I understand the sensitivity; we will try to do this in the least painful way possible, but the unauthorized outposts will be dismantled. Period.
He goes on to further detail Israel's actions with regard to current settlements:
There will be no construction beyond the existing construction line, no expropriation of land for construction, no special economic incentives and no construction of new settlements.
He then pauses to assure the Palestinians that the goal is for a territorially contiguous and economically viable Palestinian State. That's the carot.
The stick is that he won't wait for them to get their act together, and goes on to detail the "Disengagement Plan." A plan that he says will be coordinated with the US, help to ease friction between the two people, and allow Israel to get on with life - exaclty what many of us hoped construction of the security fence would allow. The plan seems very much geared to pulling back the Israeli presence in deep areas of the territories, and focussing instead on a defensible line.
This reduction of friction will require the extremely difficult step of changing the deployment of some of the settlements. I would like to repeat what I have said in the past: In the framework of a future agreement, Israel will not remain in all the places where it is today. The relocation of settlements will be made, first and foremost, in order to draw the most efficient security line possible, thereby creating this disengagement between Israel and the Palestinians. This security line will not constitute the permanent border of the State of Israel, however, as long as implementation of the Roadmap is not resumed, the IDF will be deployed along that line. Settlements which will be relocated are those which will not be included in the territory of the State of Israel in the framework of any possible future permanent agreement. At the same time, in the framework of the "Disengagement Plan", Israel will strengthen its control over those same areas in the Land of Israel which will constitute an inseparable part of the State of Israel in any future agreement. I know you would like to hear names, but we should leave something for later.
Israel will greatly accelerate the construction of the security fence. Today we can already see it taking shape. The rapid completion of the security fence will enable the IDF to remove roadblocks and ease the daily lives of the Palestinian population not involved in terror.
While insisting that the "Disengagement Plan" is not a permanent political settlement, he does leave off with this important and appropriate warning:
Obviously, through the "Disengagement Plan" the Palestinians will receive much less than they would have received through direct negotiations as set out in the Roadmap.
PM Sharon's speech, like President Bush's recent speech to the National Endowment for Democracy, is a major one that deserves to be read in full.
This is the "it's about time" speech.
yes, and ISN'T it about time??
that may well be the best speech Sharon has ever given. Good for him, he's absolutely right; Israel really DOES have other issues it needs to focus it's energy on.