"did i hear obama use the word CONTIGUOUS when talking about gaza and the w.bank?"
I replied:
You are correct! The President said:
"The Palestinian people must have the right to govern themselves, and reach their full potential, in a sovereign and contiguous state."
Ehud Barak proposed a tunnel connecting Gaza to the West Bank. See here, which is apparently what the President referred to. The distance between the two enclaves is 5 miles. When it is considered that the tunnel between Britain and France extends for 31 miles and is under water, a 5 mile tunnel under land is quite practicable. How many miles underground does our subway run? Barak further explained that "The preferred way to do it would be to dig a tunnel that would be under Israeli sovereignty, but under totally free and unobstructed use by Palestinians..."
Netanyahu has not expressed a position on this but we may assume he is opposed, as he is to all plans that would bring the occupation to an end.
Nevertheless, the Right Wing Blogosphere went into overdrive. Glenn Beck compared this to attempting to connect Alaska and Washington state, while his faithful sidekick Stu Burguiere compared it to connecting South Carolina and California. Beck concluded that "there's no way to do this, and the President knows it" and a search of Google simply using as key words, "Obama contiguous" brought forth: "Obama's 'Contiguous' Palestinian State Could 'Split Israel in Half" (CNS News) and "Is Obama saying he wants Israel cut in half" (Hyscience) as essentially the same is repeated over and over.
And Republicans join the chorus:
-Mitt Romney: Has the President “thrown Israel under the bus”
-Michele Bachmann: Has he “once again betrayed our friend and ally, Israel”
-Tim Pawlenty: Made a “mistaken and very dangerous demand”
-Newt Gingrich: “given the Palestinians a huge break”
Well, it turns out that here again all this outrage is manufactured.
Obama simply repeated what Bush had said, without controversy:
“I believe that any peace agreement between them will require mutually agreed adjustments to the armistice lines of 1949 to reflect current realities and to ensure that the Palestinian state is viable and contiguous.” (emphasis added)
In fact, Ariel Sharon, the former Prime Minister of Israel endorsed this idea. An article printed on the website of the Jewish Federations of North America explains:
"According to U.S. peace negotiator Dennis Ross, Israel offered to create a Palestinian state that was contiguous, and not a series of cantons. Even in the case of the Gaza Strip, which must be physically separate from the West Bank unless Israel were to be cut into non-contiguous pieces, a solution was devised whereby an overland highway would connect the two parts of the Palestinian state without any Israeli checkpoints or interference."
Since this exchange with Ernest Hauser I have researched this point further and found that it apparently was not intended to refer to creating contiguity between Gaza and the West Bank, but rather to the West Bank being contiguous and not to be broken up by Israeli settlements deep with its territory. As was pointed out in an article in the Daily Beast, a liberal news web-site, "The settlement of Ariel, which Olmert hoped to swap for land inside Israel, juts like a bony finger 13 miles into the northern West Bank. According to the 2003 Geneva Initiative, keeping Maale Adumim, another large settlement for which Israel might swap land, requires a thin land bridge across a Palestinian state to Jerusalem."
I particularly urge my readers to read this article in the Daily Beast which explains how Obama was trying to aid Israel by setting up a basis for blocking UN recognition of a Palestinian state.
I also would urge readers to read Thomas L. Friedman's column written as long ago as 2003 where he said:
"Palestinians find themselves isolated in pockets next to Jewish settlers — who have the rule of law, the right to vote, welfare, jobs, etc. — and as hope for a contiguous Palestinian state fades, it's inevitable that many of them will throw in the towel and ask for the right to vote in Israel.
Khalil Shikaki, a Palestinian pollster, has already found 25 to 30 percent of Palestinians now supporting this idea — a stunning figure, considering it's never been proposed by any Palestinian or Israeli party."
It is not president Obama who changed the terms for a settlement, it is Netanyahu, and Republicans who opportunistically produce knee-jerk reactions of criticism to anything and everything our President does.
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