Israel Matzav

The roadmap to nowhere

When Prime Minister Ariel Sharon accepted the road map in 2003, which is the official and only acceptance of the road map by the government of Israel, he did so subject to 14 reservations, one of which was that things in the road map were supposed to happen sequentially. Until the 'Palestinians' fulfilled their obligations under Phase 1 - ending incitement and disbanding the terror groups - we were not to move to Phase 2. The Bush administration gutted the sequencing by insisting that we go straight to the final phase of the road map at Annapolis in 2007, and the Obama administration (together with the EU) gutted the requirement that the 'Palestinians' fulfill any requirements at all, Israel has never formally consented to those steps, so our acceptance of the road map remains Sharon's.

David Hornik reports just how far away the 'Palestinians' are from the requirement that they end incitement against Israel.

Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) has published an overview of anti-Israeli incitement in the Palestinian Authority during July and August of this year. That was the time of the Israeli-Palestinian proximity talks, the result of intensive U.S. diplomacy spearheaded by Middle East envoy George Mitchell.

Those proximity talks led to the crowning glory: the direct talks of September, which Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas ended almost as soon as they had begun by demanding that Netanyahu extend Israel’s settlement freeze — something Abbas knew he wouldn’t do.

With the talks now in suspension and a change having swept Washington, speculation is rife as to whether, and how much, the administration will keep pushing for the “process” to continue.

No one who reads PMW’s report, however, can rationally believe that the PA is ripe for peace or that U.S. efforts to promote this entity to statehood are efforts well spent.

Since June of last year Netanyahu has been airing the demand that the Palestinian side recognize Israel as a Jewish state. But as far as the official PA is concerned, Israel’s nature is not in question: it doesn’t exist at all.

As PMW notes, on June 4, 2008, then-candidate Obama told the AIPAC conference: “I will never compromise when it comes to Israel’s security. … Not when there are maps across the Middle East that don’t even acknowledge Israel’s existence.”

And yet, as PMW points out — displaying many examples — “all the official PA maps in offices, websites, schoolbooks, and those appearing on official PA TV since the start of the proximity talks continue the policy of defining all of Israel as ‘Palestine.’”

That policy is also expressed verbally by referring to Israel in official PA TV shows, its official newspaper Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, and so on solely with such epithets as “the occupied homeland,” the “Palestinian interior,” and the like. And this refers to Israel within the 1967 borders, the part that’s supposed to be one of the “two states living side by side in peace and security.”

This goes hand in hand with a systematic, total denial of Jewish ties to Jerusalem and the land of Israel, laced by constant incendiary claims that Israel plans to seize and even destroy the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem.

Blatant demonization of Israelis and Jews is also an ongoing feature of PA media and sermons, to the point that the supposed distinction between “radical” Hamas, the rulers of Gaza, and the supposedly “moderate” Fatah, the rulers of the PA, emerges as meaningless.

Statements from Al-Hayat Al-Jadida include “[The Israelis] are the new Nazis upon the earth” and “Palestine has been torn in the hands of the Zionists, and the Jews have crucified it and caused blood to flow from its body.” The paper also makes allegations that Israel is “spreading drugs among the [Palestinian] young people.”

In July, after Israel had expelled four Hamas officials from Jerusalem, it was claimed this was a “prelude to the forced expulsion of the inhabitants of Jerusalem, whose aim is to change the geographical and demographic situation in the holy city.” The speaker of those words, quoted in Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, was Abbas.

Anyone for peace?

Read the whole thing.

Labels: Ariel Sharon, disbanding terror organizations, ending incitement, fourteen reservations, road map

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 2:53 PM