Who caused the 'peace talks' to collapse?
- In March 2014, Saeb Erekat, the head of the Palestinian negotiating team, prepared a 65-page document that surveys the diplomatic process and offers a list of recommendations for the PA to achieve Palestinian sovereignty in the territories demarcated by the 1967 lines. PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas has recently implemented some of these recommendations.
- The recommendations include submitting a request to immediately join the Geneva Conventions; declaring the impossibility of extending the negotiations after the end of the nine-month period on April 29, 2014; and opposing the Israeli proposal that the settlement blocs become part of Israel in any final agreement.
- The plan also includes activating bilateral committees with Russia, the EU, and the UN, and cooperating with the monitoring committee of the Arab Peace Initiative, to muster support for the Palestinian anti-settlement position; urging the states of the world to uphold the European Union’s guidelines regarding settlement activity; and escalating the peaceful popular struggle against settlements and the [security] fence.
- The PA’s latest moves reflect the long-term strategy Abbas has been implementing, which involves using diplomatic means to obtain international recognition of a sovereign Palestinian state along the 1967 lines without the Palestinians having to make concessions on the fundamental issues of the conflict, particularly the refugee issue and what is called the “right of return.”
- The signing of the 15 international conventions is part of a gradual Palestinian move to statehood which, unlike a unilateral declaration of statehood, does not occur with one move. Abbas has previously made political moves in defiance of the United States and Israel without fearing the pressures and threats directed at him, as in his November 2012 appeal to the UN General Assembly for an upgrade of the PLO’s status to UN nonmember observer state. Now, too, he feels confident in his ability to take unilateral steps without incurring serious damage.
- The Palestinians believe they can use the diplomatic-legal arena to overcome Israel’s power and gradually subject it to diplomatic and economic pressures to unilaterally withdraw from the West Bank in a way similar to Israel’s unconditional withdrawal from Gaza in 2005.
Meanwhile, the Washington Free Beacon's Adam Kredo blames it on the Americans, saying that the White House has had a secret campaign to scapegoat Israel for the 'talks' failure.
Multiple sources told the Washington Free Beacon that top Obama administration officials have worked for the past several days to manufacture a crisis over the reissuing of housing permits in a Jerusalem neighborhood widely acknowledged as Israeli territory.
Senior State Department officials based in Israel have sought to lay the groundwork for Israel to take the blame for talks collapsing by peddling a narrative to the Israeli press claiming that the Palestinians were outraged over Israeli settlements, the Free Beacon has learned.
These administration officials have planted several stories in Israeli and U.S. newspapers blaming Israel for the collapse of peace talks and have additionally provided reporters with anonymous quotes slamming the Israeli government.
The primary source of these multiple reports has been identified as Middle East envoy Martin Indyk and his staff, according to these insiders, who said that the secret media campaign against Israel paved the way for Secretary of State John Kerry to go before Congress on Tuesday and publicly blame Israel for tanking the talks.
“The Palestinians didn’t even know they were supposed to be abandoning negotiations because of these housing permits, which are actually old, reissued permits for areas everyone assumes will end up on the Israelis’ side of the border anyway,” said one senior official at a U.S. based pro-Israel organization who asked to remain anonymous because the Obama administration has in the past retaliated against critics from inside the pro-Israel world.
“Then Martin Indyk started telling anyone who would listen that in fact the Palestinians were angry over the housing issue,” the source said. “Eventually, the Palestinians figured out it was in their interest to echo what the Americans were saying.”We've known for a long time what a shmuck Indyk is, haven't we? He's also a member of the board of the New Israel Fund. Back to Kredo.
One former Israeli diplomat familiar with Indyk’s tactics said that he is a crass political player who has a history of planting negative stories about Israel in order to undermine the Netanyahu government and bolster his hand in the talks.
“I’ve seen this before and see his fingerprints,” said the source, who referenced a separate story two weeks ago in which U.S. government sources implied that newly installed Israeli Ambassador Ron Dermer was not performing his job effectively.
“It’s certainly in Indyk’s interest now [to undermine the Israelis], but this was a game he also used to play when he was ambassador twice,” said the former diplomat. “This is part of Indyk’s playbook.”
“There was only one person who would do this kind of thing and it’s Martin Indyk and his staff,” the former diplomat added.
Another Washington-based source familiar with the talks said that Kerry’s peace team has a track record of trashing Israel anonymously.
“It’s one of the worst-kept secrets in Jerusalem that Kerry’s team leaks anti-Netanyahu quotes and claims to the Israeli press—not that is should be a mystery why Israeli reporters based in Israel keep producing anti-Bibi quotes from ‘American officials,’” the source said.
“But just imagine the outrage if the roles were reversed and Bibi had a team on the ground in D.C. trashing Obama to the Washington Post on background,” the source said.Maybe we should... Oh, wait. They'd probably declare Dermer persona non grata if we did that.
Read the whole thing.
Labels: Abu Mazen, Binyamin Netanyahu, Gilo, Martin Indyk, Middle East peace process, Ron Dermer, scapegoat, settlements
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 7:51 PM
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