Blair: 'Palestinians' have begun to fulfill road map obligations
Quartet Mideast envoy Tony Blair announced this evening that the 'Palestinians' have begun to fulfill their obligations under the 'road map' and therefore Israel should do the same. "I think it is important to recognize that what has happened here in Nablus over these past few months is, of course, precisely what phase one of the 'road map' asks for," Blair said during a visit to the West Bank city.Actually, the way the road map is supposed to work, Israel is not supposed to fulfill its Phase 1 obligations until the 'Palestinians' fulfill theirs. Further, Israel's only obligation under Phase 1 is to remove the 'illegal outposts' and not to "halt Jewish settlement activity." And the only reason the 'West Bank' hasn't been overrun by Hamas is because of the IDF's continued presence there. In any event, Israel disagrees with Blair's assessment.
Earlier Thursday, during a visit south of Ramallah, he said: "The Palestinian side has improved significantly their security capability."
Israel has yet to fulfill its own road map commitments to halt Jewish settlement activity and to uproot outposts built without government authorization in the West Bank.
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Citing what he called progress by the Palestinians, Blair said Israel "in time" should remove checkpoints and other restrictions on Palestinian travel and trade.
"The single most important thing for the economy is, bit by bit, to lift the occupation," he said. But, he added: "For all sorts of reasons, we know this will take time."
Israeli officials said the Palestinians had a long way to go before they would meet their security obligations, citing a suicide bombing this week in southern Israel.Of course, now that the Olmert-Barak-Livni junta agreed during the run-up to Annapolis to make Condi Rice's State Department the arbiter of the fulfillment of road map obligations, the US may ignore Israel and decide that Blair is right anyway. But then, that's why the Winograd Committee decided to protect Olmert and keep him in power, isn't it?
"We agree that the Palestinian Authority has started to move on implementing obligations under the 'road map', but obviously much more still has to be done," Olmert's spokesman, Mark Regev, said.
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 8:47 PM
5 Comments:
The Palestinians have begun to fulfill their road-map obligations?
In what universe?
When the PA is glorifying homocide terrorist bombers and when it is so weak it can't even purge extremists from its own ranks, its hardly begun to fulfill its obligations. I doubt Mahmoud Abbas writ runs outside the Duchy Of Ramallah.
And Hamas in Gaza wants nothing to do with him.
I'm sure you guys will be interested to hear about this: A "Palestinian" from Ramallah was involved in an explosion at a gas station in Tampa, FL. During the TV reporting on it, reports one viewer, the news person stated that "Ramallah is one of the bigger cities in Iraq."
What do they teach them in these schools?
Speaking of the US monitor, here's what I found to be a very strange Ministry of Foreign Affairs press release about Livni's meeting with General Jones yesterday. The linkage, the ambiguity, it's all weird and provokes speculation.
Tzipi Livni strikes me as an affirmative action appointment. When there are plenty of qualified people to run the foreign affairs portfolio, Ehud Olmert decided he needed to stash her somewhere. Her tenure at the Foreign Ministry runs from execrable to bad and that's putting it mildly.
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