The AP reports that the EU is adopting a wait-and-see approach to the new PA unity government shell game.
The European Union will maintain its wait-and-see policy toward a Palestinian unity government until Hamas and Fatah agree on a division of Cabinet posts and finalize a policy toward Israel, a top official said Monday.
“We have to see results,” External Relations Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner said on the sidelines of a meeting of EU foreign ministers. “We have been waiting for so many months to have a national unity government … a few more weeks will also be borne by us.”
Ferrero-Waldner dismissed suggestions from France and others that the EU should move more quickly to offer early encouragement to the new Palestinian Cabinet perhaps even without the condition that the militant Hamas movement fulfill international demands on recognizing Israel.
“We simply cannot decide yet when, or even if, we will be able to re-engage with the new Palestinian government of national unity because we will need to see its program and we will need to see its actions,” she said.
That all sounds very well, but history has shown the world to be all-too-ready to deal with terrorists and murderers whose real aim is the destruction of the Jewish State.
Meantime, the AP editors missed a word, and the resulting paragraph seems to foreshadow the EU’s true intent:
Last month, Abbas toured European capitals asking for Western support of the incoming coalition government. The moderate leader said the government if not Hamas would be committed to rejecting violence, international law and to meeting all previous agreements with Israel.
That bolded phrase? Well, the comma is placed so that it appears to be saying that the PA will reject violence—and international law, and all previous agreements with Israel. The word “respecting” before international law would have been a better way to write it.
The EU may have a long wait !
Except that the way they wrote it is more honest as to what the PA intends to do.
Same old, same old. Arafat said that the PLO would recognize Israel’s right to exist, but none of the PLO’s constituent bodies, including FATAH, ever endorsed the umbrella group’s nominal position. Arafat was two-faced, and one way to see it clearly is to consider that he headed both the PLO and FATAH. Guess who heads both bodies now? The very Holocaust-denying SOB that this article, like all the others, calls a “moderate.”
So far as dealings with Israel are concerned, a HAMAS-led government isn’t any less “moderate” than a FATAH-led government. They’re both cut from the same “take what you can get now, work on getting more later when you’re stronger, and in the meanwhile indoctrinate your society to hate Israel and everything that she stands for” cloth. The only difference is that FATAH is slightly better at double-talk. But only slightly. The double-talk is clear enough to anyone who listens attentively. But nobody of consequence does listen, lest they wind up with no “moderates” with whom to deal.
FATAH isn’t even a wolf in sheep’s clothing. It’s a wolf that bleaches its coat white, confident that it will be embraced by a world desperately seeking (or, in some cases, pretending to seek) a sheep.
Meryl,
at least once in a while you could give us some credit:
Ralf, I did see that item on Merkel, but I’ve been busy the last few days. And I give her all the credit for saying those things, and for other good things she’s said.
And while the words about Shalit are welcome, words are words. The EU and the rest of the world have been saying that Hamas should release Gilad Shalit for months. UN Resolution 1701 demands the unconditional release of the kidnapped soldiers from Lebanon.
And yet, the three soldiers remain in the hands of terrorists, and it is now three-quarters of a year and counting.
Words, in this case, have proven meaningless—on all sides, including Israel’s, where Olmert said he would not stop the war until he got his kidnapped soldiers back.
Uh-huh.
Not quite meaningless. The longer the three are in captivity, the longer the PA has to wait for financial assistance. The Palestinian civil war we are seeing right now most likely is a fight over the diminishing spoils, and the longer the embargo last, the harder Fatah and Hamas will fight each other, and the more support they are going to lose. Once they start dismantling their own infrastructure to sell the parts, like they did with the greenhouses in Gaza, they’ll be finished.
At the same time Israel is looking increasingly better
‘the embargo lasts‘, not ‘last’, of course.