Israel Matzav

Dennis Ross: Now is not the time for a deal

Long-time peace processor Dennis Ross spoke at the Aspen Institute on Monday and said that the time is not ripe to make a peace deal. No kidding.

Let's go to the videotape. There's more after the videotape (which is quite long).



JPost has a summary of Ross' speech. Here's part of it.

He warned Israel that in any [Palestinian] elections it has “an enormous stake in ensuring that those Palestinians who believe in nonviolence, who believe in coexistence are the ones who are validated.

“I want to see steps that show that the occupation is actually shrinking.”

And Ross said that though he doesn’t foresee a terminal peace deal in the near future, he stressed that the sides shouldn’t “give up on trying” in case such a deal was possible, and also as a means of widening the range of options at each side’s disposal.

He described a “major psychological gap” between the two parties as a key obstacle to peacemaking.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas “believes that with this Israeli government there is no deal and therefore why try to even get into a negotiation with them,” he said, while Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu complains of Abbas that “it looks like you’re constantly trying to discredit me and delegitimize us.”

Ross makes this sound like a lot of it is a personality conflict. It's not. Abu Mazen couldn't reach a deal with Olmert and Arafat couldn't make a deal with Barak.

The truth is that the 'Palestinians' don't want peace, aren't ready for peace and have never taken even the first step to prepare their people for peace. The 'peace process' has been a complete and utter failure because all it has done is to sell Israelis on an illusion of peace, while failing to even start to suggest to the 'Palestinians' that peace requires compromises on their part as well. The 'Palestinians' - both Fatah and Hamas - remain determined to extirpate the Jewish state, and Israel would be foolish to make any moves that assume otherwise.

But for Ross to admit that would be to admit that his life's work is a failure, and I don't think we can expect that to happen.

Labels: Abu Mazen, Binyamin Netanyahu, Dennis Ross, Hamas, Middle East peace process

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 10:50 AM