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11/19/2009

SNB

Filed under: Anti-Semitism, Israel, News Briefs, palestinian politics — Tags: — Meryl Yourish @ 11:00 am

Someone explain to China the meaning of “chutzpah”: China, the current occupier of Tibet, is telling Israel that adding new apartments to Gilo is an obstacle to peace. Because it’s not like they’re not occupying an entire nation that was really a nation before China took it over. Unlike the fictional nation of “Palestine.”

Erekat: Israel is not a partner for peace. Meryl: The record’s stuck. The record’s stuck. The record’s stuck.

State-sponsored British anti-Semitism: Britain’s Channel 4 just ran an “expose” on the influence of The Israel Lobby (da-da-DUM!). Wow, what state moneys can buy in Jew-hatred. They were charged with racial hate (or whatever that charge is in Britain) when they ran an expose on terrorists recruiting in British mosques. Any guesses on whether they’ll get charged with inciting racial hatred on this one? Shyeah.

Oh, no way this goes wrong: The CIA is launching a campaign to recruit Arab-Americans. If their screening is as strenuous as the FBI and the Army, we can expect a lot more Major Hasan incidents.

Negotiating by tantrum

Filed under: palestinian politics — Soccerdad @ 9:59 am

About two weeks ago when Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas said he was quitting, Daled Amos observed that this less a dramatic announcement than standard operating procedure noting 14 times that he has threatened to quit since 2003. This isn’t an ultimatum for Abbas, but standard operating procedure. Knowing that he’s perceived as an irreplaceable “moderate,” when he doesn’t get his way he threatens to quit, hoping to be induced by incentives to stay. Think of it as negotiating by tantrum.

Barry Rubin outlined the elements of Abbas’s strategy:

t’s really funny how the story about Palestinian Authority (PA) leader Mahmoud Abbas supposedly-going-to-call-elections-and-resign story was covered. Everyone in the Middle East knew he wouldn’t resign and he wouldn’t call elections. It was a blatant bid to get something from the Americans and pretend that he was tough. But the Western media reported the story as if it were true.

This technique borrows from Egyptian President (dictator) Gamal Abdel Nasser after he lost the 1967 war. Step 1: Announce your quitting. Step 2: Organize big demonstrations begging you not to quit. Abbas added to this a Step 3: Get Westerners to give you goodies and demand more concessions from Israel so that you’ll stay.

So the media played along and took it seriously. In the process we were given the mainstream view of the Israel-Palestinian conflict within the framework of the Commandment: Thou shalt not criticize the Palestinian side. Well, you can knock Hamas but not the PA. In fact, the more one-sided the reporting, the better.

But it wasn’t long before it was clear he’d stay on as the PA’s head and there won’t be any elections.

If you thought it was over, it isn’t. Today Ethan Bronner of the New York Times writes:

The Israeli security establishment is in a state of alarm over the possible departure of Mr. Abbas, whom it considers a genuine moderate. Some of its top members are urging their government to make far-reaching offers — “not just lifting a few roadblocks,” in the words of one — that would persuade him to stay in power and resume negotiations with Israel on a solution that involves creating an independent Palestinian state.

Palestinian leaders are looking elsewhere for salvation. Aware of their own weakness, but also of rising disillusionment abroad with Israel over West Bank settlement growth and its war in Gaza in January, they are hoping to turn frailty to their advantage by appealing to the international community to come to their rescue.

Note how Abbas’s strategy is stated explicitly. He’s not getting what he wants so he’s using the threat to resign as a cry for help to the international community. The twist here is the “state of alarm” of Israel’s security establishment. Can it be that Israel’s security establishment really fears Abbas’s resignation? One would think like the boy who cried wolf, Abbas doesn’t have much credibility.

Later on Bronner inadvertently touches on the real problem of Palestinian leadership: there’s no real moderation there. Relatively speaking, Abbas is a moderate, but last year he rejected a peace proposal from then PM Ehud Olmert that went beyond Ehud Barak’s proposal to Yasser Arafat at Camp David in 2000. Knowing that Olmert would soon no longer be Prime Minister, Abbas didn’t see the urgency of accepting his proposal. Instead he rejected a peace offer in hopes that the international community would pressure Israel to cede even more!

The problem is that most of the rest of the Palestinian leadership is even more extreme than he is. Here’s more from Bronner:

Mr. Abbas has not groomed a successor. The American and Israeli dream would be Mr. Fayyad, but besides having no political base, he is not a member of Fatah, so Palestinians consider the prospect highly unlikely. More possible, a few say, would be for Mr. Abbas to remain president while allowing Mr. Fayyad to carry out his reform plan.

Two former security chiefs, Muhammad Dahlan and Jibril Rajoub, are also possibilities, although there seems to be no groundswell around them and plenty of opposition. Muhammad Ghneim, a founder of both Fatah and the P.L.O. who came to the West Bank this past summer from exile, is considered a possible place holder if the job suddenly becomes vacant. And Nasser al-Kidwa, a nephew of Mr. Arafat and former Palestinian envoy to the United Nations, is also mentioned by some as a possible future candidate.

But there is no appetite for a succession struggle as everyone waits to see whether the peace process deadlock can be broken.

Those who read Barry Rubin know that the candidate who emerged the strongest from this summer’s Fatah election was Ghneim. Here’s what Prof Rubin wrote about Ghneim (Ghanem):

Ghaneim has a definite appeal for Abbas as ally and successor. He is one of the few remaining original founders of Fatah and has wide contacts throughout the movement.

On the one hand, he possesses Arafat’s seal of approval historically but on the other hand he is so hard-line as to appeal to that powerful tendency in Fatah. In addition, as someone who has been outside the PA politics for 15 years he was seen as a neutral figure in many petty and personal disputes.

But this is not the man to choose if your top priorities were making peace with Israel and maintaining good relations with the West. He is the man you would choose if you intended to reject compromise, rebuild links to Syria and Hamas, and perhaps return to armed struggle in future.

On arrival at the Allenby Bridge crossing from Jordan on July 29, 2009, just before the Fatah Congress, Ghaneim was picked up by Abbas’ personal limousine, taken to his office, and welcomed in a ceremony.

At the reception, Ghaneim stated: “The struggle will continue until victory” and that if political means did not win Palestinian demands the movement would return to armed struggle. (Al-Hayat al-Jadida, July 30, 2009). It is clear how Ghaneim defines victory and it is not a West Bank-Gaza state with its capital in east Jerusalem living alongside Israel in perfect harmony.

That Ghaneim would give up demands that all Palestinian refugees and their offspring must be allowed to live in Israel or that he would make any territorial compromise, or that he would end the conflict permanently in any peace agreement is extremely unlikely. These are things–all necessary for peace–that even the less extreme Abbas has rejected.

So the problem isn’t that the Israel might lose the one “moderate” peace partner, it’s that such a partner doesn’t truly exist. And even if one wants to point to someone such as Salam Fayyad, the problem is that he has no political base. There’s no real constituency for moderation in the PA.

The media and selected members of Israel’s security establishment can take Abbas’s threat to quit seriously, but in the end it really won’t affect things much one way or another. It’s just one more tantrum.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

11/18/2009

Passively described aggression

Filed under: Israel, Media Bias, palestinian politics — Tags: , — Soccerdad @ 10:00 am

In some ways there’s little to quibble with in Howard Schneider’s To two faiths, a holy patch of land; to the world, a powder keg in the Washington Post. It begins:

It is one of the most watched pieces of real estate in the world, 35 acres where an under-the-breath prayer or a whiff of a rumor can rouse warnings of war.

In both Judaism and Islam, the area known respectively as the Temple Mount and the Noble Sanctuary is considered a formative location. Jews believe it to be the site of Solomon’s Temple and key biblical events. Muslims regard it as the spot where Muhammad was brought by the angel Gabriel before embarking on a trip to heaven to visit the other prophets.

It also remains a flash point, and a series of disturbances there this fall showed just how difficult it will be for Israelis and Palestinians to reach agreement on an area over which they negotiate not just as political entities but also as representatives of two faiths with an often-troubled relationship.

I wish he were stronger in terms of the Jewish claim. Archaeology has confirmed the Temple. It’s more than just a Jewish “belief.”

However later on there are a few things that bother me.

If the Palestinians “want to let go of an area in the West Bank, no one from the outside is going to say anything,” said Abdul Fattah Salah, Jordan’s minister of religious affairs. “But when it comes to Jerusalem, they can’t. It is tied to all Muslims.” The Jordanian ministry employs 500 people who staff the Jerusalem compound.
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Salah said the hope is that if part of Jerusalem becomes the capital of a Palestinian state, Muslims from any country will be able to begin visiting a site where it is considered a special blessing to pray — access that he said Israel is unlikely to grant if it maintains sole sovereignty over the city.

First of all, Schneider lets stand the exaggerated claim of the Muslim attachment to Jerusalem. Yes Jerusalem is holy to Muslims, but for much of Islamic history Jerusalem was ignored. Even the Crusades aroused little interest at first. This leads Daniel Pipes to conclude:

First, Jerusalem will never be more than a secondary city for Muslims; “belief in the sanctity of Jerusalem,” Sivan rightly concludes, “cannot be said to have been widely diffused nor deeply rooted in Islam.” Second, the Muslim interest lies not so much in controlling Jerusalem as it does in denying control over the city to anyone else. Third, the Islamic connection to the city is weaker than the Jewish one because it arises as much from transitory and mundane considerations as from the immutable claims of faith.

The other point Schneider should have challenged Salah on was his claim that until Jerusalem becomes part of a Palestinian state, Muslims from around the world won’t be able to visit it. I expect that Muslims from Arab countries that are hostile to Israel won’t be able to visit Jerusalem easily. So there is a solution. Make peace with Israel. (And of course the Jordanian doesn’t acknowledge that when his country ruled the Old City, Jews were forbidden from visiting their holy site!)

And then at the end of the article Schneider writes:

Given recent history, the fall riots were viewed by some here as a cause for optimism. They were on a comparatively small scale, led to no deaths on either side and, after a tense period from Yom Kippur through late October, appear to have dissipated without consequence.

Far worse has happened: Dozens of people died in 1996 in clashes that erupted after access was opened for tourists to a tunnel that ran on an ancient street alongside the wall. And a visit to the area by former prime minister Ariel Sharon in 2000 helped trigger the multi-year uprising known as the al-Aqsa Intifada.

Let’s give a little more detail as to what happened in 1996 and 2000. Barry Rubin recently recalled:

In 1996, the Israeli government opened a tunnel which tourists could walk through and see certain features of the ancient wall and Jerusalem. Rumors that the Jews were trying to destroy the mosques were orchestrated by the Palestinian leadership with many lives lost and the peace process placed in jeopardy. As a result, too, 85 Palestinians and 16 Israelis were killed, and more than 1,300 people–mostly Palestinians–were wounded, a terrible bloodshed for no rational reason whatsoever.

In 2000, a brief tour of the Temple Mount by Ariel Sharon—he merely walked through for about an hour, looked around, and then left—was the rationale used to set off an intifada that lasted for about five years and cost several thousand lives.

Afterward, Marwan Barghouti, leader of Fatah on the West Bank, described in detail how he used this as an excuse to set off the uprising. This violence took place about the time that President Bill Clinton, with Israeli agreement, proposed the creation of an independent Palestinian state which would, among other things, control most of east Jerusalem.

Schneider uses “erupted” and “triggered” to describe how the violence started in those circumstances. But in both cases as Prof. Rubin observed, the violence was incited. Worse in 2000, the Arafat-PA orchestrated violence came after rejecting a peace offer that would have given the Palestinians significant control over the Temple Mount.

Left unsaid by Schneider and unfortunately not even implicit in his article is that there’s no peace in the Middle East, because the Arabs generally and the Palestinians specifically, refuse to make peace with Israel. Jerusalem might well be a sticking point, but it’s because the Arab world has chosen to make it one, rejecting any compromises with Israel.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

11/12/2009

Ye olde grievance shoppe

Filed under: palestinian politics — Tags: — Soccerdad @ 12:00 pm

It’s hard to match the title A Chronicle of Gaza, in Kitsch Form with the opening paragraph:

“I can offer you a discount on the headbands,” said Tareq Abu Dayyeh, souvenir-store owner. “They’re just like the kind used by suicide bombers.”

I don’t think of glamorizing suicide bombers as kitschy, tasteless would be a better word. But here’s the gist of the story from the reporter Daniel Williams.

Since then, the shop has been a one-stop barometer of Palestinian fortunes, selling kitsch that chronicles war, political infighting and Gaza’s isolation since 2006, when Israel began to blockade the coastal strip.

When the store opened, it was called the PLO Flag Shop, and the souvenirs reflected hope. Yasir Arafat, the leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization, had returned from exile to take control of parts of Gaza and the West Bank. Peace seemed to be on the horizon and in tribute the shop displayed little crossed Israeli and Palestinian flag pins and key chains, Israeli flags and menorahs, the candelabra that is a symbol of Judaism.

A big seller was an inflatable vinyl pillow imprinted with Mr. Arafat’s smiling face. One that was purchased in 1995 deflated after a few months.

Israeli-themed mementos fell out of favor in the late 1990s as peace talks foundered, the Israeli settlements expanded and Hamas carried out a suicide-bomb campaign inside Israel. Posters of Saddam Hussein, who supported Palestinian liberation, were the rage.

If you look for the word “terror” in this article, you won’t find it, though Williams acknowledges a “suicide-bomb campaign.” The problem is that the terror is presented as an afterthought. It’s probably the main reason that the “peace talks foundered.” My guess is that mementos glamorizing terrorists – such as the above mentioned headbands – were very popular sellers, and, maybe, still are.

However, this might be the most telling paragraph:

The upbeat mood did not last. In 2006, Danish flags became a hot item, purchased to torch in protest of cartoons depicting Muhammad, the prophet of Islam, published in a Danish newspaper. That summer, Hezbollah, the Lebanese militia and party, fought a 33-day war with Israel, and Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s leader, became a subject of heroic portrait posters.

What do the Danish cartoons have to do with changing fortunes of Middle East peace? Nothing, but it was an episode of international Muslim grievances against the West. Nasrallah too, fought Israel after Israel withdrew from southern Lebanon and the supposed reason for Hezbollah’s existence disappeared. But Nasrallah is a hero because he attacked Israel with rockets.

The PLO flag does, as Williams say, reflect the recent history of the Middle East, but it is through the lens of Palestinian (and Arab) grievances.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

The audacity of nope

Filed under: Israel, palestinian politics — Tags: — Soccerdad @ 9:00 am

In an excellent op-ed, Steve Huntley gives a synopsis of how the Obama administration botched the Middle East.

Enter Obama. Rather than adopting a go-slow, build-on-the-past approach to a fragile situation, he did it his way — with a speech. Inadvertently, he exploded two grenades amid the process.

First, he declared the “aspiration for a Jewish homeland is rooted in a tragic history that cannot be denied” — a reference to the Holocaust. By not combining that with an affirmation of the 3½ millennia of Jewish history in the Holy Land, he fed the Arab fantasy that a guilt-ridden West imposed Israel on the Middle East.

Second, he elevated Israeli settlements into a make-or-break issue for peace talks. “The United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements,” he said. Yes, past administrations opposed settlement expansion, but it wasn’t a first-tier issue. And every realistic plan for a resolution to the conflict recognizes that Israeli communities comprising 80 percent of the settlers and located near the 1967 borders (actually cease-fire boundaries from the Arabs’ 1948 war of extermination) would be included in Israel in a land swap.

Whereas the Palestinians once conducted talks while settlement construction continued, Obama gave them an excuse to just say no.

This puts a lot of the blame for the currently stalled “peace talks” on President Obama’s miscalculations. Still there’s a more basic miscalculation that all administrations are guilty of. Barry Rubin writes:

The same thing applies to Palestinian Authority (PA) leader Mahmoud Abbas. Even after the United States and Israel announce that Israeli construction will be frozen, Abbas must insist that he can’t even talk to Israel unless not a single cinder block is laid atop another one. He also says that he will hold new elections next January but won’t run in them.

First of all, there won’t be new elections because his Fatah movement will never get a deal with Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip, and maybe also because Fatah’s afraid it won’t win.

Second, Abbas is trying to use this threat as leverage on the United States to get more. Let’s remember the situation: President Barack Obama wants direct Israel-PA talks and Abbas refuses. Obama made a deal with Israel on freezing construction on settlements, Abbas rejects it.

Once again, this is the farce played out in which everyone pretends Abbas is serious, while Washington pretends that it can get some real cooperation from the PA

But what is triggering Abbas’s action most immediately is the cries of betrayal when he agreed with Obama’s request that the PA not take the lead in pushing the Goldstone report in the UN. Everyone knew that it would pass and that all the Arab and Muslim-majority regimes would support it. Yet Washington wanted to avoid the embarrassment of having one of the two parties it is trying to get to the negotiating table call the other one a bestial war criminal that should be lynched.

Abbas went along for about 48 hours but there was an uproar in Fatah. Why? Because everyone was scoring points by proving they were more militant than Abbas. So Abbas did a turnaround. That wasn’t enough so then he helped provoke riots on the Temple Mount and now is doing this resignation farce.

The President’s audacity got him “nope” from Abbas.

This dynamic is independent of who’s in the White House. In the West, we value moderation; but in the Arab world intransigence s valued. So when the U.S. someone a moderate it has the effect of enhancing his reputation in the West, but damaging it in the Arab world. Until this changes, there isn’t hope for a negotiated settlement between Israel and the Palestinians.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

11/09/2009

An unworthy hack

Filed under: palestinian politics — Tags: — Soccerdad @ 12:00 pm

The New York Times had a symposium on Mahmoud Abbas’s resignation. Three of the participants, Rashid Khalidi, Fawaz Gerges, and Daoud Kuttab took the approach that Abbas had his authority undermined by the Americans and has no partner among Israelis so his moderate approach had run its course. An Israeli professor, Menachem Klein looked at things in much the same way. Ronen Bergman attributes it to the Obama administration’s missteps. David Makovsky doesn’t think he’s really resigned.

But no one in this group actually questions the premise if Abbas is really the moderate (implicitly) supposed by the question. (To Gerges and Khalidi, presumably he was too moderate.)

Khaled Abu Toameh though, calls the move a “big bluff,” and puts much of the onus on Abbas for his own weakness.

Fatah’s failure to come up with new faces is also seen by many Palestinians as evidence that the faction is not serious when it comes to implementing reforms. With candidates like Muhammad Dahlan, Jibril Rajoub and Nabil Sha’ath, Fatah is certain to lose the vote once again. Decision-makers in the US and the EU have clearly forgotten that these three men were part of the Fatah list that lost the elections to Hamas in 2006. And they appear to have forgotten that Barghouti, who is often described by mainstream media in the US as a popular and charismatic leader, was the head of that list.

(My impression is that Hamas isn’t all that popular right now as it hasn’t succeeded in doing much but making the people of Gaza more miserable.) And of course, how seriously could Abbas’s commitment to fighting corruption be, when his sons benefit from a cellular franchise? This is the way Fatah always did business, giving the favored few, lucrative business deals?

But it is Evelyn Gordon who really blows the lid off Abbas. She actually recalls his record!

Indeed, Abbas’s total lack of interest in a deal was evidenced by his handling of Ehud Olmert’s (overly) generous September 2008 offer, which included 94 percent of the territories, 1:1 territorial swaps to compensate for the remainder, international Muslim control over the Temple Mount, and absorption into Israel of several thousand refugees. Last week, Abbas said that he and Olmert “almost closed” a deal, implying that the current impasse stems from Olmert’s replacement by Benjamin Netanyahu. But in reality, Abbas never even bothered responding to Olmert’s offer until nine months later, long after Olmert had left office — and even then, he did so via a media interview rather than directly. And, most important, he rejected the offer, saying “the gaps were wide.”

Even Abbas’s vaunted opposition to terror has proved false. In 2005, his one year in sole control over the PA before Hamas’s electoral victory, Palestinians killed 54 Israelis and wounded 484, while 1,059 rockets and mortars were fired at Israel from Gaza. Yet not only did Abbas never order his forces to combat this terror; he explicitly and repeatedly refused to do so. He first cracked down on Hamas only in 2007, after its violent takeover of Gaza convinced him that Hamas threatened him, not just Israel. And he recently agreed to end this clampdown under a reconciliation agreement with Hamas.

Now go back, if you wish, and read the New York Times “debate” and you’ll realize it was a less a debate than an agreement (from different perspectives) for more Israeli concessions to an unworthy political hack.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Tom Friedman urges Bush policy on Israel

Filed under: Israel, palestinian politics — Meryl Yourish @ 7:00 am

Looks like even Tom Friedman has discovered that the secret to Middle East peacemaking isn’t the Obama Way:

This peace process movie is not going to end differently just because we keep playing the same reel. It is time for a radically new approach. And I mean radical. I mean something no U.S. administration has ever dared to do: Take down our “Peace-Processing-Is-Us” sign and just go home.

[...] Let’s just get out of the picture. Let all these leaders stand in front of their own people and tell them the truth: “My fellow citizens: Nothing is happening; nothing is going to happen. It’s just you and me and the problem we own.”

Indeed, it’s time for us to dust off James Baker’s line: “When you’re serious, give us a call: 202-456-1414. Ask for Barack. Otherwise, stay out of our lives. We have our own country to fix.”

That sounds to me like an endorsement of George W. Bush’s refusal to repeat the Clinton administration’s mistakes. And coming from the guy who threw the Saudi peace plan on the world and pushed it for years as the only real move forward in negotiations—well, let’s just say I’m having a major schadenfreude moment.

Sorry, but I simply have to laugh at this guy. How many times did he swear that the Palestinians really, truly, utterly wanted peace, and that all Israel had to do was give up a lot of land and figure out some way to resettle the “refugees” in order for that to happen? And now? Well, the stardust appears to have fallen from his eyes.

It is obvious that this Israeli government believes it can have peace with the Palestinians and keep the West Bank, this Palestinian Authority still can’t decide whether to reconcile with the Jewish state or criminalize it and this Hamas leadership would rather let Palestinians live forever in the hellish squalor that is Gaza than give up its crazy fantasy of an Islamic Republic in Palestine.

He’s wrong on Israel keeping the West Bank. Israel will give back nearly all of the land to the Palestinians in return for a true peace and recognition of Israel as a Jewish state. But he’s right on the others.

Tom Friedman, a realist at last. And not in the political sense of the word—in the dictionary sense.

11/04/2009

The Arab Lobby: Stronger than the Israel Lobby

Filed under: Israel, palestinian politics — Meryl Yourish @ 7:00 am

So, if the Israel lobby is so strong, how is it that the Arabs got Hillary Clinton to back off her praise for Israel not once, but twice? Why did she soften her praise of Netanyahu’s efforts to reach a compromise agreement with the Obama administration on halting construction?

During her meeting with the Israeli leader, Clinton praised his offer on settlements, which would freeze new construction but allow already started projects to continue, as “unprecedented.” She did not, however, push him to adhere to the complete freeze she had insisted upon in the past, causing many in the region to question whether the US had dropped the demand.

Since then Clinton has sought to reassure Arab leaders, repeating the praise for Netanyahu’s offer yesterday but stating clearly that it falls short of US goals. In interviews today with al Jazeera and al Hurra, Clinton has reiterated that message.

Today Clinton tacked on an extra stop to her trip. She’s now in Egypt, a country who, along with Jordan, issued a statement on Sunday in defense of Palestinian efforts after Clinton’s remarks with Netanyahu.

She’s kissing up to all of the Arabs for having the temerity to say that Netanyahu is being reasonable. Conversely, the Palestinians are being unreasonable—but heaven forfend that anyone should actually be truthful about the real obstruction to peace in the Middle East.

Here’s a hint: It ain’t settlements.

11/02/2009

The Palestinians turn on Obama

Filed under: Israel, The One, palestinian politics — Meryl Yourish @ 10:00 am

This is perfect. You really can’t get much better than this. The Palestinians are blaming Obama for the lack of a peace agreement, instead of, say, their utter refusal to come to the table and discuss things.

Palestinian officials on Sunday criticized the United States for what one called “backpedaling” on demands that Israel stop settlement construction in the occupied West Bank, saying the Obama administration’s change of approach on the issue damaged the likelihood of a peace agreement.

“If America cannot get Israel to implement a settlement freeze, what chance do the Palestinians have of reaching agreement” on the even more complex set of issues involved in final peace talks, chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said in a written statement.

The thing I like best about all this is that they’re actually correct. It is Obama’s fault, and you can trace it to these exact words from the Cairo speech:

The United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements. (Applause.) This construction violates previous agreements and undermines efforts to achieve peace. It is time for these settlements to stop. (Applause.)

There’s a lesson in unintended consequences there. Barry Rubin says that Netanyahu has given Hillary Clinton more than Israel has ever offered regarding the cessation of settlements, but it’s still not enough for the Palestinians—and now Egypt and Jordan have climbed aboard the “absolutely no building, anywhere!” wagon and declared that the Palestinians are right not to negotiate without a complete freeze. But, as Barry Rubin points out:

In fact, at the time it signed the original peace process agreement—often called the Oslo accord—in 1993, that’s 16 years ago—Israel put forward its interpretation of the agreement. It said that there would be no new Jewish settlements and no geographical expansion of existing settlements. But Israel made it clear that it would continue to build apartments on existing settlements. That position was not challenged by the Palestinians at the time and it has never held up talks before now.

In effect, then, Obama has totally effed up the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, by giving the Palestinians a demand that they could latch onto and use as an excuse to refuse so much as talking with Israel. Even the WaPo has noticed:

The comments represent what has been a shift in the dynamics since President Obama took office, with initial pressure on Israel giving way to apparent impatience over the refusal of Palestinian officials to resume peace talks in the absence of a settlement freeze.

The first months of Obama’s administration were marked by sharply worded demands that Israel stop building in both the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Palestinians consider the areas part of a future Palestinian state and say that a halt to settlements on Israel’s part would simply be fulfilling promises already made under previous international agreements.

You know, I think I may start taking back all the bad things I thought about Obama and the Cairo speech. Because clearly, it has shown the Palestinians’ duplicity to all and sundry, and exposed the so-called “moderate” states of Egypt and Jordan for the enablers of the rejectionist philosophy of Fatah and the PA. Even Barack Obama can’t keep ignoring who is truly at fault for lack of progress in the Middle East. Well, okay, he can—but people are going to start laughing at him when he blames Bush for the current impasse.

Update: And on cue, Clinton moderates her statement to please the outraged Palestinians and Arabs.

11/01/2009

The Obama Israel policy: Miserable failure

Filed under: Israel, The One, palestinian politics — Meryl Yourish @ 10:30 am

Let us review the Obama administration on Israel. We’ll start with the Cairo speech, which you may not remember was titled “A New Beginning.”

The United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements. (Applause.) This construction violates previous agreements and undermines efforts to achieve peace. It is time for these settlements to stop. (Applause.)

I love the little added applause parentheticals. But you should really listen to the speech to hear the harshness in Obama’s tone when he mentions the settlements. (There is no equivalent harshness when he mentioned the Palestinian obligations for peace.)

In any case, using that speech, the Palestinians promptly inserted a precondition for talks with the Netanyahu administration that they never had in all the years of peace talks: There will be no talking until there is a total freeze on all “settlement” activity, including the building of apartment additions in the suburbs of Jerusalem. And from there, the Palestinians only dug in their heels. Repeated efforts by various representatives of the Obama administration to get the Palestinians to drop their new precondition were met with refusal after refusal after refusal. Obama opened the bottle, the genie got out, and now his administration is trying really hard to get it back inside. And they’re not nearly as smart as Bugs Bunny was. The genie is winning.

The latest iteration is Hillary Clinton’s visit. The Palestinians are being told in no uncertain terms to get back to the negotiating table.

A halt on settlement construction in the West Bank is not a pre-condition for the resumption of talks between Israel and the Palestinians, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Saturday.

“There has never been a pre-condition. It’s always been an issue within the negotiations,” Clinton said about the settlements.

But if you look at those words, and the words of Obama’s Cairo speech, there is a cognitive dissonance that explains why the Palestinians continue to use the lack of a freeze as a reason to halt negotiations. Because the Obama administration opened the door for it use. And the Palestinians have never, ever not used an excuse to refuse to negotiate with Israel.

Responding to Clinton’s remarks, a Palestinian official said Israel must halt settlement building for peace talks to resume.

Nabil Abu Rdainah, spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, said: “A settlement freeze and acknowledging the terms of reference is the only way towards peace negotiations.”

Because the Palestinians don’t want to negotiate. They don’t want two states, living side by side in peace. They want a Palestinian state in all of what was the British Mandate of Palestine. And now, the Obama administration has given them their Best. Excuse. Ever. They’re not giving it up anytime soon.

The Obama administration’s Israel policy to date has been a miserable failure. The two sides are no closer to peace than they were under the Bush administration, or even the Clinton administration.

Smart power. Wow. It really doesn’t work very well, does it?

10/28/2009

Queers for Palestine: They’re on the wrong side

Filed under: Israel, Religion, palestinian politics — Tags: , — Meryl Yourish @ 9:30 am

So, let me get this straight—a gay Palestinian, who has been living in Israel with an Israeli partner for years, gets denied entry to Israel, can’t go back to his home town because he’s already been tortured by the Palestinian “police” and will be murdered if he returns, so he is currently living with—a religious settler in the West Bank? What’s that? A devout Jew is saving the life of a homosexual Palestinian?

“I can’t go back to my home in Israel; I can’t enter the village. The only option left for me is to hide out in a settlement, in a home that accepts me in a humane way,” said T. on Tuesday.

I think the gay community that is so stridently against Israel is working for the wrong side.

Granted, it seems like the defense forces are screwing this poor guy, and yes, things like that really do suck for the Palestinians. But the reasons for the checkpoints and the suspicion have been borne out by the many terror attacks, and even more attempted terror attacks. Just the other day, a Palestinian woman stabbed an Israeli soldier manning a checkpoint.

But—reverse the situation, and the gay guy dies. Gee, I wonder if Sullivan will bother to cover this story. Probably not without much hand-wringing about how evil Israel is preventing the Palestinian from getting back in.

10/27/2009

The PA’s torturers: Made in the U.K. (and USA?)

Filed under: Israeli Double Standard Time, Media Bias, palestinian politics — Tags: , — Meryl Yourish @ 12:30 pm

The proponents of peace have declared for years that if only the Palestinians had western-trained security forces, the terrorism would stop. But they didn’t seem to notice that their millions of dollars per year to fund the Palestinian police force was going to a force that uses torture on a regular basis.

The horrific torture of hundreds of people by Palestinian security forces in the West Bank is being funded by British taxpayers.

An investigation by The Mail on Sunday has found that the forces responsible get £20million a year from the UK.

The victims – some left maimed – are rounded up for alleged involvement with the militant Islamic group Hamas, yet many have nothing to do with it.

I will be waiting for the UN to denounce this. But first, the Daily Mail, being the British press, must blame Israel for it somehow.

Not only are PA forces carrying out torture, the authority ignores judges’ orders to release political detainees. Last month at least 30 journalists, teachers and students were arrested – as the crackdown on Hamas was praised by a senior Israeli defence official as a necessary ‘iron fist policy’.

Say, do you think the Brits are aware that the Palestinians are using their money to pay torturers?

A British diplomat in Jerusalem said: ‘Obviously we are very aware of problems with the Palestinian security forces. We are working hard to improve their standards across the board – including human rights standards.’

This is some of what the Brits’ £20 million pounds per year is paying for:

The commonest ‘mini’ method, known as ‘shabah’, involves hanging up shackled victims by their arms. The teacher told how he was held in a cellar at Jenaid prison last month.

‘First they shackled my hands behind my back, tied a rope round the shackles and looped it over a beam. They pulled until I was standing on tiptoes, just still able to take some weight on my legs. Then they jerked the rope so it all came on to my arms and held me there until I was on the point of passing out. They were laughing, saying it would dislocate my shoulders. They did it over and over for five or six days.’

Sometimes sharp-edged sardine cans were placed under his heels, so that when weight came back on his legs, they inflicted deep cuts. Two other victims independently described this, too.

The Brits are now going to send intelligence officers into the West Bank to teach the PA torturers to stop torturing. Their initial budget? £100,000.

Interestingly, none of the wire services have managed to find this story worth picking up and spreading. Apparently, only Israel can be guilty of human rights abuses. Just imagine the number of headlines around the world media if it were the Israeli police forces that were abusing prisoners like this.

What time is it, kids? That’s right. It’s Israeli Double Standard Time.

10/21/2009

The passive aggressive peace dynamic

Filed under: Israel, palestinian politics — Tags: — Soccerdad @ 9:00 am

In an odd analysis yesterday, titled Painful Mideast Truth – Force trumps Diplomacy, Ethan Bronner of the NYT wrote:

Through relentless commando operations and numerous checkpoints, the Israeli Army ended suicide bombings and other terrorist acts from the West Bank; since its 2006 war with the Lebanese militia Hezbollah, widely dismissed as a failure at the time, the group has not fired one rocket at Israel; and Israel’s operation against Gaza last December has greatly curtailed years of Hamas rocket fire, returning a semblance of normality to the Israeli south.

Two years ago, Israeli fighter planes destroyed what Israel and the United States say was a budding Syrian nuclear reactor; and last year in Syria, Israeli agents assassinated Imad Mugniyah, the top military operative for Hezbollah and a crucial link to its Iranian sponsors, a severe blow to both Hezbollah and Iran.

Diplomatic efforts, whether the Oslo peace talks of the 1990s or the Turkish-mediated negotiations with Syria last year have, by contrast, produced little. Every Israeli military operation of recent years — including the December invasion of Gaza that was condemned Friday by the United Nations Human Rights Council by a vote of 25 to 6 and referred to the Security Council following a report by a committee led by Richard Goldstone — has come under international censure.

Today all are viewed here as having been judged prematurely and unfairly but having delivered the goods — keeping Israel safe through deterrence.

Consider some of what has happened over the past sixteen years.

However dysfunctional and split, the Palestinians now have their leadership with them instead of abroad. But it’s that leadership that’s at the heart of the problem.

Israel, in a historic concession, was willing to accept the PLO as a negotiating partner on the grounds that it had purportedly given up terrorism. The PLO, as we know, had not abandoned its old ways. So inviting the PLO in resulted in more terror for Israel, until Israel largely ended it with Operation Defensive Shield in the early 2000’s. We see similar results when Israel withdrew from southern Lebanon – fulfilling an UN mandate – in 2000 and from Gaza in 2005. Each time the Israeli move to secure peace (or reduce terror) led to more terror.

The international censure that has resulted from Israel’s self-defense, I suppose, could be described as the result of an international state of denial. A refusal to believe that once diplomacy starts, it can be derailed. The condemnations of Israel have resulted from an international com community that has refused to come to terms with the fact that the PLO, Hezbollah or Hamas were violating the newfound peace in the region.

That would be the generous (and, I think, naive) view. And no doubt, some countries refuse to believe that the peace process was flawed from the start.

The more likely view is tha there are still an awful lot of countries that don’t much like Jews and like a Jewish state even less. These countries make up a majority (or at least a significant minority) of all countries in international. So they boast of their representing an international consensus, when, in fact, they allow their citizens no such power. They have every incentive to pretend that Israel has done nothing to help the Palestinians and that it is a worse rights abuser than they are.

The first group, unwilling to assert itself, for a variety of reasons, allows the second group to define the peace process.

So the Palestinian are absolved from most responsibilities – preparing their people for peace, setting up civil institutions, creating a real economy – and Israel is saddled with ever changing requirements to prove its sincerity – for example, a requirement to release people who were involved in prohibited political activities, has morphed into an imperative to release terrorists.

Effectively, the international community has created a passive aggressive diplomatic dynamic. The Palestinian refuse to budge and Israel gets pressured to concede to meet the growing Palestinian demands. “Occupation” has become a more serious obstacle to peace than terrorism.

Rather than holding the Palestinian responsible for a consistent failure to live up to their commitments, the world looks the other way.

Netanyahu has finally refused to play the game anymore. This doesn’t make an extreme right winger. It makes him a rational player.

In effect Israel has been forced to respond militarily to the failures of diplomacy. The main cause of that failure has been the consistent Palestinian refusal to meet the minimal conditions necessary for there to be peace with Israel.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

10/20/2009

Briefly

Filed under: Hamas, Iran, Israel, News Briefs, Terrorism, palestinian politics — Tags: , , , — Meryl Yourish @ 11:00 am

Hamas’ truce cry: We’ll dismantle Fatah. Really, I just love the Fatah-Hamas relationship. It’s so good for Israel and the world. Here’s what a Hamas “spokesman” says about disarming:

“It is easier to dismantle the Palestinian Authority than it is to dismantle us, and we will take them apart before anyone thinks of touching us.”

Ah, the Hamas/Fatah truce. The snark simply writes itself.

Turkey, the friend of Jews—not. France’s Le Monde polled the Turks, and 53% say they would not want to live next door to a Jew. But really, the Turks luuurve Israelis. Truly. They do. Probably a little more than they love Armenians, but I wouldn’t want to lay odds on that.

Abdullah to Obama: Forget Iran, it’s not that important. Uh-huh. We shouldn’t concentrate on Iran, because the king of Jordan is tired of hearing about Iran, Iran, Iran. It’s the Palestinians that are the key to mideast peace, you see—not the country that’s trying to build nuclear weapons, murdering American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, funding terrorists in Israel, South America, and, well, all over the world, and oh yeah—violently repressig its own people. So yeah, really, Obama—what’s with the Iran obsession?

Bill Maher is a great big idiot: Want to laugh? Watch this video over at Hot Air, where Bill Maher, the world-renowned scientist, tells us how dangerous flu vaccinations are, and vaccinations in general. Biggest laugh-line: It’s not settled science, like global warming. Yes, he really says that. Like Allahpundit says, when Chris Matthews is your voice of reason—well.

10/14/2009

Snarky, briefly

Filed under: Gaza, Hamas, Israel, Terrorism, United Nations, palestinian politics — Tags: , , — Meryl Yourish @ 11:30 am

J-Street Blues: World’s smallest violin concerto for Jeremy Ben-Ami, the anti-Israel pro-Israel guy who can’t get Michael Oren or anyone in the Netanyahu administration to give him the time of day. Hm, let’s think. It’s a supposed pro-Israel lobbying group that is against Iranian sanctions, was against the Gaza war, thinks that Israel is ultimately just another country in the group of nations… hm. I can’t figure out why Oren doesn’t want to talk to them. Let me go read Six Days of War by Michael Oren again and see if I can figure it out.

Awesome! Separately signed Palestinian unification agreements! Yes, it’s true. Fatah and Hamas are getting back together again, but they’re doing it so well that they refuse to have a joint signing ceremony. And Hamas is saying that it’s not really sure it’s going to sign the truce.

Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum said his organization would not be pressured into signing a truce deal Fatah had already signed. “Things happened that our public opinion cannot accept, and the Goldstone affair is still shaking up the atmosphere,” he said.

You can’t make this stuff up. I wish them all they deserve, and would like to know who gets to keep the cat in the divorce agreement. (Can’t be a dog. Unclean, Muslim, and all that.)

Turkey and Syria, together again: Now Syria will be holding joint military exercises with Turkey. I hope the Turkish pilots are good at ducking, because the Syrian Air Force is pretty crappy overall (80 Syrian jets downed by Israel, zero Israeli jets by Syria, in that dogfight in the Lebanon war). Good luck with those exercises, Turks! You deserve each other. (Wait—wait—just did more than skim the article. Land exercises only. Can we get a BWAHA! from the crowd?)

The Quartet’s still around? Apparently, there is no statute of limitations on any Israeli-Palestinian agreement. They’re still yammering about Oslo and the Road Map, and now, there’s actually a news story that references The Quartet (the U.S., Russia, the EU, and the UN). And now that I think about it, that isn’t four parts. It’s two states, the EU, and the EU and two states all over again with the UN. So that means that everyone in the EU gets two votes, Russia and the U.S. get three votes, but states that aren’t in the EU and aren’t Russia or the U.S. get only one vote. I think that’s wrong. You should subtract the EU, subtract Russia, and right now, subtract the U.S. because our leadership is filled with morons when it comes to Israel. Um. I completely forgot what I was going to mention about the Quartet. Oh, yeah! They’re saying that the Fatah-Hamas reconciliation agreement has to abide by the Road Map, meaning Hamas has to renounce violence, recognize Israel and respect past agreements. So, anyway—the Quartet’s still around?

09/25/2009

Friday snarkly

Filed under: Israel, The One, United Nations, palestinian politics — Tags: , , , — Meryl Yourish @ 7:00 am

NObama: Looks like the Palestinians aren’t going to take Obama’s suggestion and get back to the negotiating table anytime soon. I like how they no longer insist that all settlement activity be frozen first—they don’t dare add a precondition for talks after Obama said they had to stop putting preconditions on the talks. Now they’re saying that there are “fundamental disagreements” about the agenda of the talks. Brilliant. The onus is now on them, not on Netanyahu, to start negotiations. (That’ll last about a week, then the world will blame Israel once again.)

No room at the inn for Mad Mahmoud: Awesome. Another New York hotel canceled the banquet after finding out it was for the proud Holocaust denier. Unfortunately, he still spoke to a mostly full house at the UN.

UNRWA: We want money. That’s what we want. UNRWA is begging for more money to keep the victim class of the Palestinians going into the next generation, because hey, 61 years isn’t nearly long enough to keep paying “refugees.” Why, the UN has also been paying the millions of descendants of Jewish refugees from Arab lands, too. Oh, wait. No they’re not.

AP still doesn’t get the significance of the last name: Leonard Cohen performed in Israel, and I have to laugh at the AP headline and angle of the story: “Leonard Cohen performs in Israel, defies boycott.” Really. Just look at the last name one more time, AP. Or listen to Hallelujah again.

Well, I feel safer now: The One has chaired the UN Security Council, and got it to pass a resolution calling for an end to nuclear weapons. The next agenda calls for kittens, butterflies, and unicorns for everyone. Winged unicorns for seven-year-old girls. What Obama did not do, however, was get a resolution calling for sanctions on Iran, which is trying to build a nuclear bomb. So once again, it’s all for show.

09/23/2009

Risks for peace? Only from the Israelis

Filed under: Israel, The One, palestinian politics — Tags: , , — Meryl Yourish @ 7:00 am

President Obama is in a hurry again.

“Simply put, it is past time to talk about starting negotiations. It is time to move forward,” Obama told reporters before a meeting with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Um. I do believe that it has been the Palestinians who have refused to sit down and talk with the Israelis, but let’s move on.

Obama told Abbas and Netanyahu that, “The only reason to hold public office is to get things done,” and that everyone “must take risks for peace,” Mitchell said.

Everyone must take risks for peace? What risks, pray tell, will the Palestinians be taking? What risks will America be taking? The only risk for the Obama administration is that once again, peace will not break out in the Middle East, and The Anointed One will not win his coveted Nobel Prize. (I think perhaps he wants to be the first sitting President to win one. Maybe that’s his hurry.)

The risks for the Palestinians? Hm, let’s think. Wait, give me a minute. Um.

Nope. I can’t think of any.

The risks for Israel? Let’s see. Terror attacks, rockets in every town and city in Israel, chemical weapons dropped on her citizens, sniping from the Palestinian side of the border—Israelis will risk life and limb if the peace process does work, but the Palestinians refuse to stop fighting. So you see, it isn’t “everyone” that must take risks for peace. It’s only Israel that will be taking the risks. Funny how it always works out that way.

And there have been pretty much no moves by the Palestinians to hold up their end of the Road Map, although that doesn’t stop the president from pretending the Palestinians are actually doing something.

“Palestinians have strengthened their efforts on security, but they need to do more to stop incitement and to move forward with negotiations,” Mr. Obama said on Tuesday. “Israelis have facilitated greater freedom of movement for the Palestinians and have discussed important steps to restrain settlement activity. But they need to translate these discussions into real action on this and other issues.”

End incitement? You mean like amending the Fatah Charter, or not accusing the Israelis of poisoning Yasser Arafat? Or maybe even not calling for the “return” of third- and fourth-generation “refugees” to their ancestral homes?

Obama needs to do more in order to move forward with negotiations. He needs to actually read what the Palestinians are saying. But that would totally screw up the narrative. And the potential Nobel Peace Prize.

09/18/2009

Briefly

Filed under: Hamas, Holocaust, Iran, News Briefs, The One, palestinian politics — Tags: , , , , — Meryl Yourish @ 8:01 am

Germans to Israel: Shut up if you want Gilad Shalit to come home. To be fair, he wants all parties involved to shut up, but really—this is what the mediator thinks is a necessary ingredient to getting Hamas to release their hostage for hundreds of convicted terrorists? A press blackout? Yeah, that’s what’s important.

Abbas to Obama: Stick it in your very big ears. Wow, look at what all those preconditions Obama demanded did for the peace process. It worked! The Palestinians now think they don’t have to do anything and Israel will be handed to them by the U.S. Great job, Obama! (Is it racist to say that he has big ears?)

If it’s Quds Day, this must be Holocaust Denial: And not just Holocaust denial from Ahmadinejad—his thugs attacked ex-president Khatami. Hey, if they kill Khatami, will Iranians rise up and not stop this time? Here’s what they chanted:

“Death to the dictators,” and “Not Gaza, Not Lebanon, We are ready to die for Iran,” chanted protesters.

The normal chant, if you have forgotten, is “Death to Israel” or “Death to America.”

If this is a holiday, it must be high terror alert in Israel: But gee, Obama told me that the Palestinians want peace. So did the Saudis. So do the Egyptians. Huh. Go figure. And 75,000 Muslims attended Ramadan prayers, unmolested, in Jerusalem—in their mosque deliberately built on the Temple grounds—that was not destroyed when Israel took control of Jerusalem. Exactly which of us is the Religion of Peace, do you think?

09/08/2009

Tuesday SNB

Filed under: Israel, News Briefs, The One, palestinian politics — Tags: , , , — Meryl Yourish @ 10:00 am

Still more dividends from the Obama speech: A Palestinian minister met with an Israeli minister last week, but that will be the last of talking until Obama forces Abbas to sit down with Netanyahu. Becauase now the Palestinians are refusing to talk with Israel on any level until all their demands are met. Yep, Obama set the bar for negotiations with Israel. No settlements, not now, not ever, and so, the Palestinians are refusing to talk with Israel until all activity is frozen, even construction in Ma’ale Adumim, which is never going to be part of the Palestinian state, and the Palestinians know this. Obama and Clinton very kindly handed the Palestinians the excuse they need to continue exactly as they’re going—which is the way that enriches them the most, of course.

The freeze construction meme continues: And once again, the Arabs say that Israel must freeze all construction—of course, that includes in towns that will never be a part of the Palestinian state, such as Ma’ale Adumim—before any move will be made from the Arab side. Because so many moves have been made since 1967.

Elliott Abrams bitchslaps Jimmy Carter: I know Soccer Dad posted on it, but I can’t resist adding it to Snark News Briefs. Now this is a put-down.

The Obama speech: Get over it, people. So Obama’s going to give a speech to schoolchildren. Um. Have you forgotten how bored you were by long speeches? Please. This is not indoctrination. This is the president doing his job, which is to inspire children to work harder. Tempest in a teapot. He’s the president. He should be allowed to make speeches to students, and this sets a terrible precedent for all future presidents.

09/04/2009

Analyzing the AP anti-Israel bias

Filed under: AP Media Bias, Israel, palestinian politics — Tags: , , — Meryl Yourish @ 1:30 pm

The subtleties of the AP anti-Israel bias are always in evidence, no matter who the writer, no matter what the subject. Witness:

The gist of the article is a debate between Israeli president and former Prime Minister Shimon Peres, and the Secretary-General of the Arab League, Amr Moussa. But before we get to all that, we have to have the set-up. First, tar Netanyahu as the one preventing peace because—wait for it—he refuses to stop building settlements.

The difficulty has been compounded by the fact that in March a right-leaning government replaced the previous more moderate one in Israel.

Several months ago, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reluctantly agreed to accept the principle of a Palestinian state – a position his predecessors had already adopted but his Likud party has not – but said it would have to have limits on its rights to have a military or control its airspace.

Next, give Moussa a chance to respond to the above, but don’t have Peres respond to it. Have Peres talk about a completely different topic.

Then, slam Peres and compliment Moussa, almost in the same breath (but while allowing Moussa to accuse the Israelis of duplicity):

Peres – pushing the boundaries on a role that is meant to be ceremonial and somewhat above the political and diplomatic fray – argued that even the borders initially delineated for the Palestinian state could be considered provisional and ultimately expanded.

“You want us to believe that?” thundered the urbane Moussa. “Another one of the tricks!”

Another way of telling which way the article is biased: There are ten paragraphs that contain quotes or paraphrases by Moussa. There are only six containing Peres’ quotes or paraphrases—and the article is titled “Peres: Palestinian state first, full peace later.”

I think, though, the thing that really got me is describing Moussa as “urbane” right after implying that Peres isn’t acting in his government’s best interest. In point of fact, nobody in Israel is complaining that Peres is overstepping his bounds, or if they have, I haven’t seen it. But don’t let the facts get in the way of a good anti-Israel slap.

The Associated Press: the anti-Israel Energizer bunny. They just never stop.

08/23/2009

Palis smell blood in the water, circle

Filed under: Israel, palestinian politics — Meryl Yourish @ 11:00 am

Not satisfied with declaring at the Fatah congress that they were going to wait for Obama to pressure Israel into full compliance with their demands (and that was on top of telling the Washington Post that they were going to wait for Obama to pressure Israeli into full compliance with their demands), the Palestinians are now aiming for “natural growth” building and will be using that as an excuse not to hold peace talks with Israel.

The Palestinian Authority is unhappy with the recent developments in the talks between Israel and the United States. Palestinian sources told Ynet on Sunday morning that they were working to change the deal being formed between Washington and Jerusalem, which is slated to allow the completion of some 2,500 housing units in West Bank settlements.

Do I think this will get any traction? Absolutely. The media will spin the refusal to talk to Israel as Israel’s fault for refusing to stop “settlement” growth, even when that “settlement” growth is in Jerusalem.

You need to understand something about the PA, if you don’t already know it: It is an extortion racket. It has always been an extortion racket. The PA extorts billions of dollars out of the guilt-ridden West, uses some of it to buy weapons, some of it to pay salaries to people whose jobs are being members of the PA, and most of it to enrich the elite of the PA (cf: Palestinian elite and supplying cement for the separation barrier). It is in Mahmoud Abbas’ best interests not to deal with Israel, because then he might find himself in the same place that Yasser Arafat found himself in 2000: With a deal from Israel pending that would give the Palestinians just about everything they want. And we all know what happened next: War. Because the Palestinian leadership doesn’t want a Palestinian state living side-by-side in peace with Israel. They want a Palestinian state in place of Israel, or war until they get it.

08/21/2009

Friday SNB

Filed under: Israel, News Briefs, The One, United Nations, palestinian politics — Tags: , , — Meryl Yourish @ 9:00 am

There’s only time for Snark News Briefs this morning.

Soldiers won’t eat in front of Palestinians: That headline does not mean what you think it means. No, it’s not another damning report from another European-funded, Palestinian-staffed NGO about how IDF soldiers are humiliating Palestinians. It’s the fact that the IDF have been instructed not to eat, drink, or smoke in public while working in Palestinian areas on Ramadan. Once again, brought to you by the Better Than Them report, because many Israeli Arabs have no such compunctions respecting Jewish holidays like Yom Kippur.

David Miliband finds terrorism that he disapproves of: Looks like the Foreign Minister of Britain only condemns terrorism that doesn’t take place on his home turf. I’m shocked, shocked, to discover that he’s appalled by the hero’s welcome the Lockerbie bomber received in Libya. Those terrorists are simply going to have to learn to distinguish the good terrorism from the bad! (Footnote: What the hell did they expect? When has an Arab nation ever showed dismay at one of its own murdering hundreds of infidels?)

Top gun, but without the bad eighties hair and music: The IAF staged a competition over the Negev recently. And while one squadron won the competition, the real winner, of course, is Israel, especially in light of reports that Russia could sell fighter jets to Iran. Hey, I’m all for that. Better jets than missiles, because the IAF will do to the Iranian air force what it did to Syria—shooting down 80 Syrian fighters without a single loss of their own.

Must-read: The UNHRC Goldstone Commission will be presenting its biased report to the UN soon. Irwin Cotler has a must-read, in-depth series of articles at the JPost about how the report was rigged from the get-go. Part one. Part two. How biased was the assignment? So biased that even Mary Robinson said it was anti-Israel. Read in full recommendation.

Brilliant new Obama peace plan: Playground politics. Remember when you were kids, and you dared each other to do something? “You go first.” “No, you.” “I know! Let’s do it together!” That is the essence of Obama’s new peace plan. That’s right. Let’s make simultaneous actions. That will solve everything. So, will it work? Of course not. Not while the Palestinians keep getting support for their insistence that it is Israeli settlements that are preventing peace—not Palestinian intransigence and the unwillingness to recognize the rights to Jews to have a state in their ancestral homeland.

08/20/2009

When the moderate met the mass killer

Filed under: palestinian politics — Tags: — Soccerdad @ 10:00 am

A few months ago, a Washington Post editorial commented on the embrace of the Sudan’s leader Omar Hassan al-Bashir. In particular the editorial observed:

“We must also take a decisive stance of solidarity alongside fraternal Sudan and President Omar al-Bashir,” said Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. Mr. Abbas is hoping that the Obama administration will pressure Israel to stop building “illegal” settlements in the West Bank; the next time he utters the phrase “double standard” in the presence of a U.S. diplomat, we suggest a query about Mr. Bashir.

To be sure, some human rights groups have alleged crimes by Israeli forces in Gaza. But, according to Palestinian accounts, 1,409 people were killed during the offensive, of whom a substantial number were armed Hamas fighters. In contrast, the United Nations has reported more than 300,000 civilian deaths in Darfur as a result of the genocidal campaign sponsored by Mr. Bashir.

In case you thought that this display was simply opportunistic, that’s not the case. Abbas has made a trip to the Sudan to meet with his genocidal counterpart. Apparently the purpose of the embrace is to get Hamas to cut Fatah some slack. (Though it appears that Hamas has some of its own problems now. But who gets the virgins?)

Even as President Obama looks for moderation in the Arab world, it demonstrates its extremism again and again. When will he stop looking for what’s not there?

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

08/18/2009

Palestinian refugee creates Obama Joker poster

Filed under: American Scene, Politics, The One, palestinian politics — Tags: , — Meryl Yourish @ 1:00 pm

A reader of Glenn Reynolds points out that the artist who created the Obama Joker poster is a Palestinian-American. I would note further that he is a Palestinian refugee, as defined by the United Nations.

Under UNRWA’s operational definition, Palestine refugees are persons whose normal place of residence was Palestine between June 1946 and May 1948, who lost both their homes and means of livelihood as a result of the 1948 Arab-Israeli conflict. UNRWA’s services are available to all those living in its area of operations who meet this definition, who are registered with the Agency and who need assistance. The descendants of the original Palestine Refugees are also eligible for registration. When the agency became operational in 1950, it was responding to the needs of about 750,000 Palestine refugees. Today, 4.6 million Palestine refugees are eligible for UNRWA services.

Of course, for me, the real irony is that the guy who critiqued—and slammed—the Joker poster is the guy who created the poster of Bush as a vampire.

08/17/2009

Palestinian civilians killed in fighting in Gaza, world ignores it

Filed under: AP Media Bias, Gaza, Hamas, palestinian politics — Tags: , , — Meryl Yourish @ 7:00 am

Did you know there was a big battle in Rafah, near the Egyptian border? Did you also know that it took place in a mosque and a home? Did you further know that civilians were killed in the crossfire?

Of course you didn’t. Because it was Palestinians killing Palestinians (or maybe some foreign Arab fighters). So there’s no outcry from HRW. There’s barely a blip of notice in the wire services’ radar. No statement from the UN, no world outcry—because dead Palestinians don’t count unless they were killed by—or accused of being killed by—Israelis.

The fighting broke out late Friday when Hamas security men surrounded a mosque in the southern Gaza town of Rafah on the Egyptian border where about 100 members of Jund Ansar Allah were holed up.

[...] The Hamas forces raided the mosque, setting off a fierce gunbattle. Flares lit up the sky and the sound of machine gun fire echoed throughout the night.

Moussa escaped with some bodyguards to his home where another standoff ensued.

Here’s the AP spin:

Gaza’s Hamas rulers said they had restored law and order to the seaside territory Sunday after a bloody weekend of clashes with an al-Qaida-inspired group.

The militant Palestinian group crushed a challenge from Jund Ansar Allah, or the Soldiers of the Companions of God, one of a number of small, shadowy factions that are even more radical than Hamas.

[...] At least 150 people were wounded in the fighting, which began Friday afternoon after Moussa’s fiery speech and continued throughout the night in two fierce gunbattles outside his mosque and his home.

No mention of the fact that an 11-year-old girl was killed. There were two human rights groups protesting the casualties—Palestinian human rights groups, and props to them for speaking out. The more shame to the UN and HRW.

I won’t hold my breath waiting for HRW to issue a special report condemning this. As I recall, they didn’t condemn the Lebanese for brutally suppressing another al Qaeda splinter group last year, though many civilians were killed. Because, of course, it wasn’t Jews doing the killing.

08/13/2009

Cynical misery

Filed under: Israel, palestinian politics — Soccerdad @ 10:00 am

Often those of us who support Israel claim that the Palestinian issue is one that was created and maintained by the Arab world in order to have a weapon against Israel.

A few weeks ago, Daniel Pipes linked to a release from Palestinian Media Watch noting recent declarations that it was the Arabs who largely encouraged the Palestinian Arabs to leave. Pipes documents similar claims over the years.

Now Elder of Ziyon links to an translation from MEMRI that documents how other Arab governments keep the Palestinians in misery.

These countries must stop treating the Palestinians like a plague, using slogans which, as we all know, have become nothing but empty utterances in a loathsome struggle. We must break the isolation of the Palestinians in Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan. A Palestinian should be made to feel like a welcome and dear guest – before some external intervention comes along and grants him the right to live in dignity, to everyone’s consternation. “We must support the Palestinians like the West supported the Jews. We must reassess the whole idea of refugee camps, before they collapse on top of us. Be God-fearing [in handling the issue of] the refugee camp dwellers. Stop fighting at the expense of the Palestinian people’s dignity.

JudeoPundit noticed an example of this activity at Al-Jazeera too.

As recently as 2005, Palestinian refugees were banned from taking up employment in 70 professions. Today, the number of restricted professions stands at 20 and includes senior medical, legal and engineering careers . . .

While these restrictions were recently eased, applicants must have a valid work permit and membership of the appropriate professional representative body. Both are beyond the financial means of most Palestinian refugees.

Keeping the Palestinians miserable isn’t something new either.

In other words the misery of the Palestinians is the result of a flight encouraged by other Arabs and it persists because of other Arabs. The cynicism is astounding.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

08/11/2009

Where “liquidate” means “living side by side peacefully”

Filed under: Israel, Israel Derangement Syndrome, palestinian politics — Tags: — Soccerdad @ 11:00 am

Back on August 30, 1993 Clyde Haberman of the New York Times reported the significant change that the PLO was going to undergo:

Another important step is that the P.L.O. is to renounce terrorism, according to some officials. But they add that the P.L.O., now outlawed in Israel, is ready to go further, by formally recognizing Israel’s right to exist and revoking sections of its 1964 convenant that call
for Israel’s destruction.

When that happens — and one official said it could be a matter of only a few weeks — Israel and the P.L.O. would recognize each other. The Palestinian group’s leadership would then be allowed to move into Gaza and Jericho, several officials said.

“It would no longer be the same P.L.O.,” one official argued. “It would become in effect a political body and not a terrorist organization.”

And indeed, if it truly had renounced terror and its intent to destroy Israel, the PLO would have been a new organization. Supporting this step we had the late Chaim Herzog.

We also are seeing an exercise in leadership that has followed a completely unconventional route, attended by great dangers; seemingly it is irreconcilable with the approach universally accepted by most Israelis, who put the P.L.O. beyond the pale. What the leadership now maintains is that by the P.L.O. declaring its abandonment of the weapon of terror and its covenant calling for Israel’s destruction, it becomes a political movement with which one can negotiate and argue.

This is a unconventional approach, based on a long-range vision, But then that is what leadership is all about.

Then opposition leader Netanyahu wrote (rather prophetically):

The Rabin Government is now betting the security of Israel on Yasir Arafat’s promises. But his promises are worthless. He has violated every political commitment he has ever made. Since his “breakthrough” promise in 1988 to stop P.L.O. terror, his own Fatah faction has launched more terrorist attacks against Israel than any other Palestinian group. Similarly, he repeatedly “recognizes” Israel for some political gain — only to take it back later.

An armed P.L.O. state looming over Israel’s cities and overflowing with returning “refugees” (a million to start with, says the P.L.O.) is a far cry from a responsible compromise that would give Israel security and Arabs autonomy. Instead of giving peace a chance, it is a guarantee of increased tension, future terrorism and, ultimately, war.

(It is a strange exercise reading these articles. Netanyahu – who was correct – was, and still is often, considered a “right wing demagogue,” whereas those who supported the Oslo accords were considered the voices of reason.)

isabel Kershner reports on the most recent Fatah convention in Bethlehem.

“It speaks about a peaceful solution,” said Sarhan Salaymeh, the mayor of the West Bank town of Al-Ram, who spent 13 years in an Israeli prison. “It is the time for nation building, not fighting,” he said. “The rifle has its own time.”

Yet Fatah, still defining itself as a national liberation movement, is reluctant to fully abandon the gun. In a statement outlining the principles of its new political charter, the party reaffirmed its commitment to achieve a just peace, but said it believed the Palestinians, as a people under occupation, retain the legitimate right of resistance “in all its forms.”

Elder of Ziyon notes that Fatah’s old terminology persists. And Fatah has elected a convicted murderer to its central committee.

Yasser Arafat and Fatah made a down payment on legitimacy by supposedly renouncing terror in 1993. Now 16 years later Arafat’s successor still refuse to eschew terror and yet their international legitimacy persists.

Apparently those who consider “two states for two peoples living side by side peacefully” believe that the formulation is the equivalent of “liquidate the Zionist entity.”

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

08/10/2009

Monday SNB

Filed under: AP Media Bias, Gaza, Israel, Religion, Terrorism, The One, palestinian politics — Tags: , , , — Meryl Yourish @ 9:00 am

Funny how the AP keeps on missing these tidbits: Fatah has approved adding “the right to resist occupation in all its forms” to its new platform. (This is on top of insising that all of Jerusalem is theirs.) They further explain:

“we won’t abandon any of our options, and we believe that resistance, in all forms, is a legitimate right of occupied people in confronting their occupiers.”

And yet, we never seem to see the AP articles that emphasize the Palestinian refusal to compromise. Only Israel’s. Funny, that.

What AP media bias? Yesterday, Palestinians fired mortars at the Erez crossing while sick Palestinians were being transferred from Palestinian ambulances to Israeli ones. So Israel bombed a smuggling tunnel (should have bombed a lot more of them). The AP, which can’t seem to notice that Fatah is turning into Hamas Lite, found its voice again, against Israel. The headline: Israeli warplanes bomb tunnel along Gaza border. Just in case you thought maybe it was sightseeing planes that bombed the tunnel.

The “Judaization” of Jerusalem includes rebuilding synagogues: Jews rebuilt a synagogue that was built in Jerusalem in 1867, but because it’s on the “wrong” side of the line, Ehud Barak has come under fire for attending the ceremony to welcome the return of the Torah to a 142-year-old Jewish house of worship. Jews were forced out of there in 1938, and yet, we never seem to read about that aspect of Jerusalem anywhere but in the Jewish press. The synagogue is 100 yards from the Temple Mount. And it was nearly destroyed, of course, when Jordan controlled Jerusalem from 1948 to 1967. Sure, give Jerusalem back to the Muslims. Because they did such a great job safeguarding other religious sites before.

Bibi to Beirut: L’etat, c’est Hezbullah. Benjamin Netanyahu warned Lebanon that Israel will hold the entire country responsible for whatever Hezbullah does. Which makes sense, considering that Druze leader Walid Jumblatt has thrown in with Hezbullah and declared that he was wrong about Iran, so they’re going to be making policy with a voting majority soon. Right now, it’s just a war of words. I hope it stays that way, but it looks like Iran is placing its ducks in a row to respond to any attack on its nuclear facilities. And speaking of Iran:

Iran to Obama: No fist unclenching until we say so. Iran is bent on running out the clock. I know my regular readers are going to be shocked to hear this, but they’re not going to adhere to any U.S. deadline for talks—not even the one set by The One. And the clock ticks closer to Israeli action. Say, Iranian opposition: Faster, please. Oh, wait. They’re all in jail now.

08/08/2009

Fatah to Israel: All your Jerusalem are belong to us

Filed under: Israel, palestinian politics — Meryl Yourish @ 9:38 am

If anyone had any doubt that the Palestinian Authority has never given up on “reclaiming” all of “Palestine,” this current Fatah assembly declaration should shine a little light into their true intent towards Israel.

The sixth Fatah General Assembly decreed on Saturday that the return of both east and west Jerusalem to Palestinian control was a “red line” which was nonnegotiable, and would need to be fulfilled before any peace talks with Israel could renew, Israel Radio reported.

According to the report, a document adopted by the delegates of the assembly declared that Fatah would “continue to sacrifice victims until residents of Jerusalem are free of settlements and settlers.” The document went on to state that all of Jerusalem, including the surrounding villages, belonged to the Palestinians, and lands conquered following the Six-Day war shared the same status as those located within the green line.

You got that? ALL of Jerusalem, not just the “traditionally Arab east Jerusalem” part of it. This is, of course, because their mosques sit atop the Temple Mount, which is in the part that Jordan had control over from 1948 to 1967. They are asserting that Jerusalem is a Muslim waqf, just as the Hamas charter declares it, and just as the Islamists keep telling us. Once a Muslim land, always a Muslim land, according to them.

There is no compromising with the Palestinians. Not because Israel doesn’t want to compromise. The problem is, as it always has been, Palestinian Arab intransigence. Their refusal to negotiate is the real issue that is preventing peace. Not the settlements. Not “natural growth” building. Not the separation barrier. It is, quite simply, the fact that the Palestinians still think they can win all of Israel, somehow. They think they have time on their side demographically, and they think they can get the EU, the UN, and now the U.S. to force Israel into making a deal that will favor their ultimate goal—which is a state called “Palestine” where now there is a state called Israel.

Yeah, good luck that that. If I were a betting woman, I’d place my money on the Jews. Oh, wait. I am.

08/07/2009

Huzzahs for Hussam

Filed under: Media Bias, palestinian politics — Tags: — Soccerdad @ 10:00 am

Reading Isabel Kershner’s Fatah postpones elections but Extends Conference, I wonder if I’m missing anything. Kershner informs us that the younger members of Fatah want a greater say in its governance. Are they more moderate? She doesn’t tell us. But she does report:

Some of the younger generation of reformers, who are hoping to increase their power within the movement, complained that the traditional leaders had packed the conference with their own supporters at the last minute.

“They brought their relatives, their secretaries,” said Hussam Khader, a firebrand Fatah leader from Nablus who has long campaigned against corruption in the movement.

Well apparently Kuddar has done more than campaign against corruption. The Guardian sat profiled him last year.

Khader was arrested at his home in March 2003 and convicted of being a member of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, the armed wing of the Fatah movement that played a key role in the second intifada, and of helping fund the group through connections to Hizbullah and Iran. He was sentenced to seven years in jail but released after five and a half. It was his 24th time in an Israeli prison – he was first arrested at age 13 for taking part in a demonstration against the Israeli occupation.

So he funded a terrorist group through Hezbollah and Iran. So “reformer” then isn’t necessarily such an innocuous term in this case.

Khaled Abu Toameh observed recently that Fatah was being radicalized and that …

… one of the most disturbing signs of the growing radicalization of Fatah can be seen in calls by top representatives for a “strategic alliance” with Iran’s dictatorial and fundamental regime.

Kershner doesn’t tell us if Khader is one of those advocating for that alliance, but given his arrest, it’s hardly a stretch to believe that he is. But of course, all we know him as is a “firebrand” reformer.

Later on Kershner writes:

Delegates have come to Bethlehem from as far as Yemen and the United States. They include people as diverse as Sari Nusseibeh, an intellectual from Jerusalem who has championed nonviolence, and Khaled Abu Asba, who took part in a notorious attack in 1978 in which an Israeli bus was hijacked and about three dozen Israeli civilians were killed.

Barry Rubin observed that the AP didn’t report:

… the cheers for terrorists who murdered Israelis but were present at the meeting.

And neither did the New York Times. Again I think it’s safe to assume that Abu Asba was applauded. Kershner, though, simply used him as an example of the “diversity” of those attending the conference. I don’t know that “diversity” is a virtue when it involves including and honoring murderers.

So when Kershner reports that

One point of consensus reached on Thursday was the notion that Israel was responsible for the death of Yasir Arafat, the Palestinian leader and Fatah founder, who died in 2004. In the convention hall, delegates blamed Israel for having kept the ailing Mr. Arafat under siege in his headquarters in the West Bank. Fatah officials said they would continue to investigate the circumstances of his death, and suspicions that Israel poisoned him.

it sounds more bizarre than malicious. It’s indicative that Fatah is still less interested in fighting corruption than in fighting Israel or in creating an independent state. (h/t memeorandum) But without more information – that Kershner could have provided – we can’t get a sense from her report how the Fatah conference has improved or hurt the chances for peace. Given those omissions, my suspicion is that the latter is true. That’s the sort of news that’s not fit to print.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

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