Too Early To Write-Off The New Israel-Palestine Talks ? An Answer To Journalist Aluf Benn’s Empty Words
It’s too early to write off direct Israeli-Palestinian talks
Low expectations have their virtues: They serve as a cushion protecting negotiators from performance anxiety
- Globe And Mail Opinions
Too early to write-off direct talks?
Please.
Representatives for these "direct talks" on the Palestinian side in a sense do not even exist: Abbas's election mandate
timed out a year ago, and he stays in office under emergency measures – i..e,, he has absolutely no democratic
legitimacy.
But even poor Abbas, a kind of Palestinian "step'n'fetch it" figure if ever there was one, wanted nothing to do with
such talks while Israel continued stealing land. The American administration browbeat him for months, threatening him
with loss of all aid, into attending.
The only genuinely elected government in any of the territories of Palestine, Hamas in Gaza, remains under Israel’s
brutal blockade and imprisonment – that is, those elected representatives who were not illegally arrested by Israel or
murdered in assassinations or murdered in Operation Cast Lead.
Representatives for these "direct talks" on the Israeli side are from the Netanyahu government, a group of people who
have not the least interest in what any normal person would call peace. The “foreign minister” qualifies surely as a
David Duke figure.
Now David Duke in the United States – former Klu Klux Klan chief and minor politician – is treated anytime in the press
as a lowlife. Avigdor Lieberman is every bit the hateful racist as Duke, but he is far more poisonous, being the foreign
minister he is in a position to make his hate wreck the lives of millions. Because he is an Israeli, Lieberman is
treated with respect he does not deserve.
Does anyone but a madman believe anything can come out of that set of circumstances?
The only possibility is that Abbas is virtually beaten down into signing something utterly inappropriate for his people.
In that case, the “agreement” won’t be worth the paper on which it is written.
This entire matter is utterly meaningless as statesmanship, it is brutal political theater, intended to please the
Israel Lobby in the U.S. to get the Democrats through the mid-term elections without a catastrophic loss of campaign
contributions.
Response to an uninformed comment:
The Six Day War was an elaborate black operation by Israel. It prodded the Arabs over and over with many aggressive acts
into hostility, and then it attacked first.
The intention was to seize the lands not seized in 1948 with the terrors of Irgun and Stern - that is, to create Greater
Israel, a self-defined concept that has always motivated Israel's government.
The attack on the USS Liberty, a US spy ship on station in the Mediterranean, was intended to blind the US
administration while General Dayan turned around his armor to attack in the North.
It was not a "mistake." It was a deliberate two-hour attack on a well-marked ship, one moreover that Israel had been
advised would be on station to guard against its ambitions.
Dayan felt that if he had the slot of time, he could achieve all Israel's goals of conquest, and he pretty much did,
presenting the world with the fait accompli whose ghastly consequences we have endured since.
It was all a neat trick, wage a lightning war of conquest while getting sympathy as little David fighting off hoards of
nasty Philistines, but Israel knew from its first planning it was sure to win.
And we’ve learned since that the “little David” image is a sentimental fairy tale: Israel behaves the part brutal bully
in its part of the world, attacking and terrorizing every neighbor that it has, even now threatening people a thousand
miles away who have never attacked anyone.
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