The obstacle to peace
The American Jewish Committee's Kenneth Bandler has identified the obstacle to peace in the Middle East: 'Moderate' 'Palestinian' President As Ronald Reagan would have said, “There you go again!”For those of you who keep score of American Jewish organizations, the AJC is not known to be particularly 'hawkish.'
Seriously, when will Palestinian leaders acknowledge that four consecutive Israeli prime ministers – Ehud Barak, Ariel Sharon, Ehud Olmert and Benjamin Netanyahu – have stated Israel’s commitment to a negotiated two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?
Back when there were direct talks, very sweet offers were made. Barak, with the support of President Clinton, offered more than 90 percent of the West Bank, all of Gaza, and even floated the idea of sharing Jerusalem. But the answer from Yasser Arafat in 2000 was the second intifada. Olmert made a similar offer on West Bank territory, as well as a piece of land on the Israeli side of the border, in 2008. But Abbas, rather than continue negotiating, followed in the footsteps of his mentor and predecessor, spurning the Israeli offer and summarily cancelling peace negotiations.
Furthermore, Abbas now insists that Israel begin negotiations from Olmert’s offer. Maybe the Palestinian leadership has a different concept for negotiations, but typically one should not expect to automatically go back to previously rejected terms.
Abbas – and his Arab state allies – must stop complaining and return to direct interaction with Netanyahu to find solutions. Of course, that presumes Abbas and company truly want to realize an independent Palestinian state, living in peace and security alongside Israel. There is reason for doubt. As more time passes, Abbas, his Fatah Party and the Arab League are confirming that they are willing accomplices in creating blockages in the peace process.
Read the whole thing.
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 6:45 PM
4 Comments:
We know a two state solution is never going to happen. You cannot have peace when only one side wants it. And yet this lesson is the one the world keeps missing in its single-minded obsession with non-existent Israel intransigence.
Personally, and I say this as someone not living in Israel, I'm glad the "negotiations" are going nowhere. There will never be a decent settlement offer and will never be peace that (I think) Israelis can accept, so the status quo is just fine.
I wouldn't call axing the embassy act by a conservative, hawkish would you?
I thought hawks and neo-cons were not friends with the UN, EU and Russia. So why then did a conservative president formulate a quartet for peace made up of three arch enemies of Israel...EU,UN and RUSSIA. hmm
Oh my. A U.S president failed to send even a grunt representative of his administration to the anniversary of the reunification of Jerusalem. He must have been a stupid liberal!! Think again...
So what and who is hawkish?
The obstacle to peace is abject blind partisanship.
All those now screaming and yelling oh poor Jerusalem, oh poor Israel did nothing when Bush was betraying Israel. NOTHING.
NOTHING Carl. For that, the republican party is nothing more than hypocrites.
...and that picture of Abbas showing all of Israel, Palestine. The only group with balls, ZOA begged Bush to take Abbas to task on that. Bush did nothing. So today Abbas flaunts that picture and people like you blame it on liberals, peace now, J street and everyone other then who that particular picture should be blamed for. Worse, the hierarchy of the republican party and my Republican representatives kept their mouths shut knowing what that picture represented. But yah, they too are good friends.
The obstacle of peace is ignoring what happened prior to Obama.
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