Got up before five due to neighbors coming home around then. Did not manage to get back to sleep. Gave up and got out of bed and downstairs to work before seven. Worked until two, tried to nap, failed. Got up at three, showered, went to school, taught seven active children for two hours, then met with the caterer for my bat mitzvah dinner. Home, food, then back to work for several hours because the materials I was supposed to get last Monday were received on Friday, and it was a holiday weekend, where I was told I did not have to put the pages up until today. Except there’s so much material, I’m not finished yet.

But it’s close to midnight, and I’m working on less than five hours of sleep, and I can barely type this post.

So I am going to bed. And thanking my co-bloggers ahead of time for picking up the slack.

I didn’t get to practice anything new tonight. Now I have to do double work tomorrow.

Oh. Funny small-town Richmond story. The caterer and the third-grade teacher (who gave me the caterer’s name) were discussing my singlehood while we discussed the menu for my dinner. Then they started talking up a mutual friend of theirs as a potential date. They started describing him to me, he sounded extremely familiar, and I said, “Wait—what’s his last name?” They told me, and I told them to forget it. We’d been set up several years ago by a mutual friend. Not my type. Turns out he’s the caterer’s brother-in-law.

Now I’m really glad we parted amicably.

And on that note… outta here.

You have to give Dennis Ross credit. After years of unsuccessful peace processing he’s gone to the private sector and with the added benefit of more than a decade of hindsight, he clings tightly to his principles despite ample evidence that his premises were all wrong. So now he’s giving advice to Secretary Rice in the pages of the New Republic. I couldn’t help but be struck by the next to last paragraph.

Thus, if the Secretary is unable to produce a text that outlines the core tradeoffs on Jerusalem, refugees, and borders, she might go for lesser, but still important, agreement on: the scope of sovereignty, state to state relations, and a process to begin to develop such relations; Israeli territorial withdrawal(s) from the West Bank conditioned on agreed milestones on Palestinian (or others’) performance on security; a freeze on expansion of existing Israeli settlements and a commitment not to develop the E-1 area; an ongoing process with agreed criteria on Palestinian prisoner releases to ensure at least some prisoners are released every few weeks; a serious mechanism (with leadership involvement) for ending incitement and the teaching of hatred; working groups to develop options on Jerusalem, refugees and final borders; and implementation committees to ensure all obligations are fulfilled.

Specifically it’s hard to read Ross argue for “agreed milestones” and “serious mechanism[s].” The Palestinian commitment to fight terror was one of the premises of the Oslo Accords. It has been flouted regularly by Arafat and even by the “moderate” Abbas.

So what will milestones do? They will be disobeyed now as they had been for the past 14 years. And serious mechanisms for ending incitement? Please! How many times have those been tried? The PA will fight terror and incitement against Israel when it feels that it has an interest in doing so. Failing to do so and counting on the international community to push Israel to concede more regardless has reinforced the Palestinian view that, eventually, it will get everything it wants even if they fail to meet every single condition it agrees to.

Would you like a specific example?

A year after Netanyahu and Arafat agreed to the Hebron Accords and Israel withdrew from most of Hebron, Netanyahu was waiting for Arafat to fulfill any of the obligations that he committed to (again) in the Hebron Accords. In January of 1998, he got his cabinet to refuse further withdrawals until the Palestinians started observing the obligations they accepted. The New York Times, in the person of Serge Schmemann, dutifully issued a State Department press release (in lieu of a news story) on January 14, 1998, ISRAEL ANNOUNCES STRINGENT TERMS FOR WITHDRAWAL

The Israeli Cabinet decided today that Israel would make no further withdrawal from the West Bank unless the Palestinians satisfied a series of stringent conditions. The conditions included some — like extradition of Palestinian prisoners to Israel — that Yasir Arafat, the Palestinian leader, is most unlikely to accept. His aides dismissed the conditions as another attempt by the right-wing Israeli Government to avoid any further withdrawal.

The article went on to argue (erroneously) that the Israeli government was basing its refusal on a letter signed by then Secretary of State Warren Christopher, but then noted triumphantly

In fact, the ”note for the record” signed by Warren Christopher — who was Secretary of State at the time — included none of these requirements. What it said was, ”We intend to continue our efforts to help ensure that all outstanding commitments are carried out by both parties in a cooperative spirit and on the basis of reciprocity.”

It took me a minute or two using Lynx to discover that the Note for the Record, indeed, spelled out the Palestinian obligations (and the Israeli obligations) but that it was not signed by Secretary Christopher but by Dennis Ross. As Charles Krauthammer observed a few days later (He Negotiates by the Rules, Washington Post, January 16, 1998)

Take the New York Times. Its front-page lead story on Wednesday reports that these demands are essentially Netanyahu inventions. “In fact,” writes correspondent Serge Schmemann triumphantly, “the `Note for the Record’ signed by Warren Christopher — who was secretary of state at the time — included none of these requirements.” But there is no “Note for the Record” signed by Christopher. And the official American “Note for the Record” (authored and signed by U.S. Middle East envoy Dennis Ross) contains, under the heading “Palestinian Responsibilities,” every single measure cited above: “The Palestinian side reaffirms its commitments to the following measures. . . . (1) Complete the process of revising the Palestinian National Charter. (2) Fighting terror and preventing violence . . . preventing incitement and hostile propaganda . . . transfer {extradition} of suspects . . . confiscation of illegal firearms. (3) Size of Palestinian Police will be pursuant to the Interim {Oslo} Agreement,” etc. The Times’ false front-page report (subject of a correction the following day) is typical of its tendentious treatment of Netanyahu. It echoes the PLO line that Netanyahu’s demand for reciprocity is nothing but a ploy. But how can any fair-minded observer consider reciprocity anything but an unobjectionable, indeed essential, condition for a peace process?

If Dennis Ross believes in “agreed milestones” and “serious mechanism[s]” he had a funny way of showing it a decade ago. Every single one of Netanyahu’s demands had been codified in a document he had signed and nowhere in Schmemann’s report was he [Ross] quoted as saying that Netanyahu’s points were valid. (I suspect that he may have been one of several government officials who fed Schmemann the information that Netanyahu had made up these requirements, but I have no proof of that.) The failure of the Camp David negotiations in 2000 showed that the failure of Israel to compromise was not the reason there was no Palestinian state or that there was no Middle East peace. Yet seven years later, one of the principals of those negotiations insists that with just the right formula, peace (or at least co-existence would once more be at hand. The failure really was never demanding substantive changes in Palestinian ideology or that the Palestinians abide by their commitments. Dennis Ross’s suggestions to Secretary Rice show that he has learned nothing from his past failure.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

dennis ross, peace process, israel, palestinians.

Let’s take a look at this article about Israeli opinion on turning over Jerusalem to non-Israeli rule. The headline:

Poll: 37% of Israelis willing to cede sovereignty in Jerusalem’s holy sites

My first thought at that headline was utter shock that so many Israelis were so willing to give up the Temple Mount to the governorship of people who have proven in the past that they have no intention of letting Jews worship at their own holy sites. But then I read the article.

Let’s look at the relevant data.

When asked who should remain sovereign of the Western Wall and Temple Mount, 61% believed Israel should be named sovereign, 16% voted for joint Israeli-Palestinian sovereignty, 21% said the holy places should be under international rule and 1% said Jordan should be named the holy places’ sovereign.

So, let’s rerun those numbers with a different spin. That 16% of joint rule should not be lumped in with those willing to “cede” sovereignty, as the Islamic Waqf already runs far too much of the Temple Mount complex. That’s not really ceding sovereignty, although under the current terms, Jews are not allowed to pray on the Temple Mount. Now the numbers run like this:

78% of Israelis want sole or partnered Israeli rule of Jerusalem’s holy sites.

But then, let’s take a look at the spin on handing the Hashemites the keys to the Jewish holy places, which was revealed in a news article yesterday (that Ehud Olmert immediately denied):

99% of Israelis not willing to cede sovereignty of Jerusalem’s holy sites to Jordan

So many different ways to spin this. Of course, the one that Omri is going to use is:

38% of Israelis out of their minds

As for my opinion: You have got to be kidding me. That many Israelis don’t care about the Temple Mount? That many Israelis have forgotten that under Muslim rules, Jews were forbidden to set foot on their holiest of holy places? That many Israelis don’t know that the Waqf is doing its damnedest to destroy all evidence of Jewish rule of Jerusalem in the Temple Mount?

What is wrong with those people?

It’s times like this that I worry the most for Israel.

The Winograd Committee investigating the Second Lebanon War will issue its final report without any conclusions or recommendations against specific persons involved.

Which means “Get out of jail” card to many a deserving person.

Too bad…

Cross-posted on SimplyJews.

Many bloggers more worthy than your humble servant already covered the latest performance by Nasrallah the famous Lebanese groundhog.

Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah accused Israel of being behind the assassination of Lebanese politicians and urged feuding parties to agree on who should become president in order to end the country’s crisis.

So I wouldn’t waste words on this interesting, but not very novel, idea - after all every dastardly deed stems from this or that Elders’ dastardly plan. What is of immediate interest to me is the duration of Nasrallah’s self-imposed underground lifestyle. Especially related to that picture in the linked article. His color, unhealthy enough by itself from the lack of sunlight and the general underground shelter dankness, has become indistinguishable from the surrounding walls. Probably some kind of mimicry that may enable him to become invisible when hugging the wall while naked…

And his chances of getting out from the shelter, after more than an year of hiding, are practically non-existent. To remind you the rules of groundhog behavior:

In traditional weather lore, if a groundhog emerges from its burrow on this day and fails to see its shadow because the weather is cloudy, winter will soon end. If the groundhog sees its shadow because the weather is bright and clear, it will be frightened and run back into its hole, and the winter will continue for six more weeks.

Due to the sunny climate of Lebanon, the day when Nasrallah’s overfed body will not cast a shadow will hardly come anytime soon. Same with the day when he will be no more frightened…

Cross-posted on SimplyJews.

The EU is at it again, unwilling to give even the tiniest portion of responsibility for the lack of peace in Israel and the terrortories[sic] to the Palestinians. Oh, no, it’s all on Israel.

The price of failure at the Annapolis conference in November could be greater than that of the Camp David conference in 2000, the EU’s special representative to the Middle East Marc Otte told Israeli reporters in Brussels on Monday.

Oh noes! Doom and gloom! Teh Middle East is falling!

Otte told the reporters that if Israel were to wait any longer it would be dealing with Hamas as its partner for peace rather than Abbas, and added that Israel’s lack of support of the Palestinian president in the past has contributed to the current situation in Gaza.

You get that part, right? Terrorism has nothing to do with the current situation in Gaza. Fatah’s corruption has nothing to do with the current situation in Gaza. Palestinian irredentism, and their willingness to insist that the only way out of their problem is to destroy Israel—none of these things had anything to do with the current situation. This is all about Israel refusing to support Mahmoud Abbas, a man who can only get elected dogcatcher after the pit bulls have been running wild for over a year.

Saying that both Israel and Palestinian leaderships were weak, Otte expressed uncertainty regarding the two leaders’ ability to bring about a solution to the conflict.

Otte added that it would be impossible to reach peace with only part of the Palestinian population and that Hamas would have to be included in the solution.

Yet another call to negotiate with Hamas. That would be the same group that’s tried at least seven times in the last six weeks to blow up Israelis via suicide bombs. Sure, talk to them. What could go wrong, besides, well, everything?

Yeah. Blind, clueless EU Middle East envoys… where have we seen this before? Oh. Right. That would be every single one of the EU Middle East envoys.

Okay. Here’s the thing that should be the first rule of Sylar, now and always: If you find yourself alone with an evil mutant who can eat your brain, don’t stop to think, talk, or mention how good you can be together. Count zero and run away. Preferably screaming.

I mean, come on. Candace just flunked Supervillains 101.