The 'Palestinians' need 'progress'
Here's someone we haven't heard from in a while. In the wake of the Netanyahu - Obama summit, Hanan Ashrawai complains that the summit served US and Israeli interests, but not the interests of the 'Palestinians' who need 'progress.'In discussing Israeli-Palestinian proximity talks, Ashrawi warned that moving to direct talks when no progress has been made will lead to the Palestinian national leadership's loss of credibility with its own constituents. Responding to the question of whether President Abbas would ultimately be willing to engage in direct talks under present conditions if pressed by President Obama, Ashrawi noted:When was the last time this 'vibrant and active democracy' held elections? Why were direct talks good enough for 16 years, but now suddenly you 'need' something to 'get to them'? What would push the PLO 'national leadership' to 'commit suicide'? Actually being forced to concede something in Arabic?President Obama has to understand you can push too far. You can really push people over the edge. They pay attention to Israeli democracy and public opinion and coalition requirements but they do not pay attention to the fact that the Palestinians have a very vibrant and active democracy and very active and outspoken public opinion, and they have to understand president Abbas does not have a free hand to just make unilateral single decisions like that in a vacuum...you keep pushing one person -- and I say, don't make the P.L.O. and national leadership commit political suicide. You cannot push them beyond their abilities and to lose their credibility with their own constituency. So if you need a leadership with credibility, with the ability to deliver, you cannot undermine them.
Left out of this equation are the Palestinians, whose interests lie in actual progress on the ground and not the mere public image of progress. Palestinian reluctance to engage in direct talks under current conditions stems from their experience with the failed peace process of the 1990s, where the negotiations were a mere symbolic exercise which Israel used to buy time while it expanded settlements and unilaterally reshaped the facts on the ground. According to Ashrawi:If direct talks have been bad news since the '90's, why did you continue with them until 2009? And by the way, what about those offers that were made to Arafat (2000 and 2001) and Abu Mazen (2008) that were totally ignored?[The Palestinian] position is not just an emotional reaction, it's a well thought out position saying we've talked forever and they've built settlements forever. We negotiated in good faith and what they did was negate negotiations and destroy the two-state solution on the ground. So the question is one of urgency, and one of intervention to curb Israeli behavior. It's not a question of just talks.
The problem here is that Ashrawi's and the 'Palestinians' definition of 'progress' is more unrequited Israeli concessions and her definition of good faith is that the 'Palestinians' sit at a table (with George Mitchell) and say no to everything.
But we've had it with this nonsense. We've given the 'Palestinians' their chance, and it's clear to nearly all Israelis today that what they really want is to destroy us. We won't let them.
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 5:57 PM
4 Comments:
The Palestinians need to grow up and discover Israel is not there to give them everything they want. That "my way or the highway" attitude doesn't work in any relationship we've ever been in. And Carl - if you told Mrs. Carl you want to have everything your way and you don't have to ever compromise, just how long do you think your marriage would last? People in real life don't behave that way, of course. My point is the Palestinians are not even in a marriage to Israel, they are not engaged in a dialogue with Israel and here they are expecting Israel to cater to their whim without having to give something in return. As long as they continue to think like that, they will be waiting a very long time to find a partner on the other side.
Almost Israeli Jews have concluded they don't have a Palestinian partner.That's why peace is a distant dream in our lifetime.
I know Golda spoke of the Palestinians loving their own children more than loving killing Jews, but I've come to think that no accommodation anywhere in the world will work with people who somehow do not think they have any duty or even connection to this life on this planet. For some people, death (theirs or others') is just like the light turning from green to yellow to red and back to green. There seems to be no change in actual value. During one summer that I spent in Mexico living with a family, a guy that we were talking to on the street said that the Church was telling them that the more misery they endure in this life, the better their position in heaven. That was 30+ years ago and look where Mexico is sliding to now. But the addition of not avoiding death and bonus points for killing, rather than just enduring misery, is a whole different ball game. They hate the separation barrier because it makes a mockery of their victim status and keeps them from being able to celebrate when their colleagues blow up a bus or restaurant.
Reading Ashrawi's comments, one is immediately drawn into the Arab mind, its ability to hold two completely contradictory ideas simultaneously with no sense of cognitive dissonance. The Palestinians need "progress" but can't be "pushed too far". They have a "vibrant and active democracy" but their elected leader "does not have a free hand to make unilateral decisions". They don't want to allow Israel to "buy time while it expands settlements" but they are unwilling to enter into direct negotiations while there is a complete settlement freeze.
Mind-boggling.
When it comes to the Arab-Israeli conflict, the "cure" (the kind of peace agreement that the Arabs are demanding) is worse than the disease.
The Arabs are demanding an unconditional surrender from the country that has defeated them in wars and survived their terror attacks.
It's literally a matter of the Arabs telling Israel, "If you want peace, you must die to find it" (G-d forbid).
It's Arafat's old "peace of the grave" strategy for Israel.
Supposedly, the Arabs' next move is to try to get the UN Security Council to approve 100% of their demands in a binding resolution. They want to do this while Obama is the U.S. President so that they can try to get it through without a U.S. veto. The European Union has been threatening to go along with this as a way to get Israel to buckle under and submit to the Arabs.
In this middle of all this, Abbas is lobbying for a Nobel Peace Prize. Unbelievable!
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