Time to stop supporting an already failed state
Rick Richman writes that the time has come to reassess American support for a non-existent but already failed state - the state of 'Palestine.'The issue is more fundamental, however, than Abbas’s decision to ignore the latest Israeli efforts. He once demanded a construction freeze, got one for ten months in the West Bank, and ignored that too. He received an offer of a state from Ehud Olmert, who begged him to accept it, and ignored that as well, rejecting the urgings of both Secretary Rice and President Bush. He ignored the personal request of President Obama last year to call off the grandstanding trip to the UN and return to negotiations. He published a New York Times op-ed, replete with distortions, seeking recognition of the “long delayed Palestinian state” not to end claims but to “pave the way” to “pursue claims against Israel at the United Nations, human rights treaty bodies and the International Court of Justice.”Read the whole thing. I agree. But until Israelis make this same reassessment, Americans have no motivation whatsoever to do so. And most Israelis - from Netanyahu on down - are still afraid to say that the 'two-state solution' isn't going to happen.
Abbas does not have the political legitimacy to negotiate a peace agreement, nor the power to implement one even if he did. But the broader policy issue is this: Palestinian political culture has now produced a terrorist tyranny in Gaza and a faux democracy in the West Bank, unable even to hold local elections, lacking the civil, legal, and political institutions necessary to prevent the winner of its Potemkin presidential elections from serving as president-for-life. Why should the U.S. continue to support the creation of an already failed state?
Labels: Abu Mazen, Palestinian elections 2012, two-state solution
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 1:39 AM
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