The 'Palestinian Authority' hangs the Europeans out to dry
Robin Shepherd on how the Palileaks disclosure have left the Europeans in general and al-Guardian in particular hung out to dry for being more 'Palestinian' than the 'Palestinians.' To the horror of a European political intelligentsia which has been steadfast to the point of fanatical in its opposition to Israeli “settlements” in east Jerusalem, the Palestinian leadership itself, we now know, has long accepted that the vast majority of Israeli settlements can be considered legitimate and would become part of Israel under any reasonable peace agreement.Read the whole thing. It's devastating.
This is utterly devastating since it simultaneously shows that everyone from the British Foreign Office and the BBC to the European Commission and the continent’s passionately anti-Israeli NGO community have been adopting a position which was significantly more uncompromising on “settlements” than the Palestinian leadership itself, and also that that same Palestinian leadership had accepted that the so called 1967 “borders” — the gold standard for practically every anti-Israeli polemic around — are irrelevant to the prospects of a lasting peace.
In one of its most resentful leader columns for years, the Guardian was nothing short of apoplectic: not so much with Israel, but with a Palestinian leadership which has effectively blown the credibility of the Guardian’s very own mantras on the MidEast straight out of the water. The Palestinian leadership, the paper declaimed, had been shown to be “weak” and “craven”. Their concessions amounted to “surrender of land Palestinians have lived on for centuries”. And, in words that look alarmingly close to the position adopted by Hamas, “The Palestinian Authority may continue as an employer but, as of today, its legitimacy as negotiators will have all but ended on the Palestinian street.” This is sheer spite.
The Palestinian leadership accepts what any reasonable person has been able to accept for decades. The Guardian then slams them as surrender monkeys. The Guardian newspaper is more hardline against Israel than the Palestinian leadership itself. And bear in mind, as you mull over the implications of that stark and unyielding state of affairs, that the Palestinian Authority is led by Mahmoud Abbas, who is a Holocaust denier.
Labels: al-Guardian, BBC, British anti-Semitism, British Foreign Office, Palileaks, Politics, Robin Shepherd, World Politics
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 1:17 PM
1 Comments:
The concessions were piecemeal, incomplete (sarcastic rejection of recognizing a Jewish state, refusal to guarantee safety or rights of any Jews left within Palestinian territory while demanding Ma'ale Adumim [and Western Wall?] etc.) and contested, but there was something. So why no follow-up from the Palis then and why the walkaway now from the bits and pieces of rationality conceded? Commentary offers a suggestion:
"The answer may be that the Palestinians neither accepted nor rejected the Olmert offer but, rather, regarded it as still on the table, allowing them time to see if Olmert was going to survive politically. With Olmert (and Livni) out and Obama in, then, the Palestinians may have concluded that a better deal could be had with a more sympathetic U.S. administration in place. This is consistent with Palestinian behavior historically and a tried-and-tested recipe for disaster for their aspirations."
Why be more compromising than no-Jerusalem-settlements Obama?
Post a Comment
<< Home