Israel Matzav

That's not the 'Palestinian' position; it's the Israeli position

Now, reversing reality so that the attribution of actual attitudes or behaviour is switched from one side to the other is a standard Islamic variation on the religiously sanctioned practice of taqiyya – mandated lying or distortion in the cause of Islam. The Islamic world constantly uses it against Israel and the Jews; for example, denying the Holocaust while claiming Israel is perpetrating genocide in Gaza, or claiming a ‘right of return’ (to someone else’s country) in mimicry of the right of return to Israel for Jews. It is an uncanny coincidence, is it not, that the offered concessions claimed in these papers mirror almost exactly the concessions offered by Ehud Olmert?

Someone doesn’t find it an uncanny coincidence at all. That someone is the Palestinian Authority ‘President’, Mahmoud Abbas. As the BBC News website reports:

Mr Abbas, who is due to hold talks on the peace process on Monday with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, said negotiations had been carried out openly, and his fellow Arab leaders were aware of their contents. ‘What is intended is a mix-up. I have seen them yesterday present things as Palestinian but they were Israeli... this is therefore intentional,’ he said in Cairo, in remarks quoted by the Reuters news agency (my emphasis).

It figures. And as the chief Palestinian negotiator, Saeb Erekat, who is quoted in these documents as saying they were ‘offering the biggest Yerushalayim [Jerusalem in Hebrew] in Jewish history’, later told al-Jazeera:

‘On several occasions I have said on al-Jazeera that we, the Palestinian Authority, would never give up any of our rights. If we did indeed offer Israel the Jewish and Armenian quarters of Jerusalem, and the biggest Yerushalayim as they claim, then why did Israel not sign a final status agreement?" he asked. ‘Is it not strange that we would offer all these concessions which Israel demands, yet there is still no peace deal?’

Quite so! Could it be that, for once, Abbas and Erekat are actually telling the truth?

Labels: al-Guardian, Mahmoud Abbas, Melanie Phillips, Palileaks, Saeb Erekat

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 9:28 PM