The ostrich process
Ostrich-like, the Obama administration is ignoring the biggest issues in the current 'peace process' says JPost columnist Khaled Abu Toameh. Have Obama and Clinton ever given a thought as to whether the Palestinian president has the power to enforce a peace agreement in the "southern part of Palestine" - the Gaza Strip?In the title of his post, Abu Toameh asks, but does not answer, an important question: Why is Washington sticking its head in the sand? The answer is quite simple. The Obama administration sees a 'fierce moral urgency' to make peace, because it sees Israel as "an aggressive, Western imperialist power exploiting indigenous people of color who simply wish to be free." And like the Israelis from 1993-2009 who could not accept that their wanting peace didn't necessarily mean that the other side wanted it, so too the Obama administration, which so desperately wants peace that it cannot understand that one of the sides is not interested and the other has given up.
Any peace agreement Abbas reaches with Israel will apply only to those areas in the West Bank that are under the jurisdiction or control of the Palestinian Authority.
By being forced out of the Gaza Strip, Abbas lost direct control over some 1.5 million Palestinians, roughly half the Palestinians living in the Palestinian territories.
There are also doubts as to whether Abbas would even be able to impose, or sell, a peace agreement to many of his constituents in the West Bank, particularly those living in refugee camps.
So if Abbas cannot go to the Gaza Strip and has limited control over the West Bank, where is he supposed to implement a peace agreement? In downtown Ramallah? In Tel Aviv?
The way matters seem to be these days, it is highly unlikely that Abbas and Fatah would be returning to the Gaza Strip, at least not in the foreseeable future.
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 11:41 PM
2 Comments:
This Administration (and the previous one as well) have been playing make believe all over the world, not just with Gaza and the PA. Look at Afghanistan where we pretend that the government there isn't completely corrupt; that "progress" is being made; that you can have elections where most of the populace is illiterate and has no idea that they live in Afghanistan. So, problems like Gaza, to mention just one and not even the worst problem, are just ignored, sort of like 1938.
Any agreement obtained with the Palestinians would not be worth the paper it is written on and would be a dead letter from the moment it is signed.
The Palestinians are not ready to accept Israel today. Why is that point so hard for the Obama Administration and the rest of the world to grasp?
There is no good argument to be made for overturning a status quo that Hillary Clinton herself has admitted could last 30 years.
What could go wrong indeed
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