The Palestinian reaction to the Palestinian Authority selling out Gaza on the Goldstone report has been vehement. Now, Arab News reports, Abbas is shocked, shocked over the cashiering of the report:
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, amid mounting criticisms at home over Palestinian Authority’s decision to withdraw support for a UN report on Israeli war crimes in Gaza, on Sunday formed a committee to investigate the reasons for the move.
The report by respected justice Richard Goldstone will now lie dormant for at least six months rather than be sent to the UN General Assembly with possible recommendations for action.
“Abbas, after consultations with PLO members and Prime Minister (Salam Fayyad), issued a decree to form a committee to investigate the circumstances behind postponing the vote on Goldstone report on Israeli war crimes during its aggression on Gaza Strip,” Yasser Abed Rabbo, secretary-general of PLO’s executive committee, said in a press statement.
Jerry Haber has the best post on the debacle, saying that the nullification of the report has given a huge boost to the BDS movement because Palestinians have no other power in a world where international courts and systems routinely overlook the destruction of their rights. Haber:
It took about a week to finish off Richard Goldstone and his Gaza Report. You have to give a lot of credit to the Netanyahu government. They get better at killing the messenger each time they do it. This time a few days of Israeli phone calls to the European capitals, intensive public relations, and a lot of help from the US government, did the trick. Hillary bought the Israeli line that acting upon the Goldstone Report would damage a (non-existent) peace process. As if the war crimes in Gaza had anything to do with any sort of peace process…. And let’s not forget a VERY BIG winner of throwing Judge Goldstone under the bus – the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions people. For we now know that the way to get results out of the Israeli government is through public action – and that action cannot be left to government actions, especially when the governments are serial human-rights violators such as the US, Israel, and the Palestinian Authority.
As for the Obama administration, giant loser here. Paul Woodward says that Obama tried to dodge this one by sticking it to the P.A. And the result has been to demolish the PA as a credible spokesman for Palestinian interests.
A year ago had there been a similar scenario, Abbas would not have been alone in receiving well-deserved expressions of contempt. Bush and Rice would have drawn as much criticism. Let’s not pretend that Obama is an innocent bystander here.
Whichever "top White House official told Jewish organizational leaders in an off-the-record phone call" that the Goldstone report would get strangled (in a "natural conclusion") was telling the truth. [This site never bought the Obama administration's correction of this report the next day; no, we believe in the Israel lobby]
Abbas did the inexcusable dirty work but the Obama administration made him do it.
(And just for the record, I voted for Obama.)
Related posts:
- Abbas meets with Obama today, but does it matter?
- Why isn’t Obama dickering with Abbas on settlements? (Cherchez la puissance)
- According to WaPo, Obama has turned Abbas into a hardliner
- Obama puts pressure on… Palestinians!
- Your Israel lobby at work: Howard Berman describes Palestinian fighters as ‘the enemy’
{ 1 trackback }
{ 27 comments }
I also thought that Netanyahu handled it amateurishly.
What can you say about a regime that knows that it can’t remain Zionist if it continues expropriation, claims to value Zionism as primary, but still continues.
I think the appropriate approach should have been that Israel agrees to conduct an investigation (using the information supplied) as a means to improve its performance.
By conducting a sincere investigation, there is no possible war crimes prosecution. Only by not conducting investigations, is there still an angle for severe criticism.
It also takes away the ability for Israel to shift the questions back to Hamas about its war crimes over decades, thereby eliminating Hamas from any international credibility ever.
Witty seriously, did you miss the part where Israel already declared their “most moral army in the world” innocent?
“It also takes away the ability for Israel to shift the questions back to Hamas about its war crimes over decades, thereby eliminating Hamas from any international credibility ever.”
Neither Hamas nor Israel have any credibility on war crimes. Israel has committed war crimes over its entire existence. I know you love Israel. If you cared about Israel with an honest sort of love (as opposed to the love of someone who has a delusional view of the beloved) you’d want them to launch an honest investigation for a much more important reason–to achieve some sort of moral accounting, to face up to the truth about themselves, which is not pretty. Only secondarily would you be thinking “And hey, we could also discredit Hamas”.
I don’t post that often, and you and others do exegeses of my posts, so I would assume that you read where I recommended that Israel conduct the investigation that you just castigated me for your imagination of “not recommending”.
Prejudicial, Donald.
You’re unable to read, Richard, because I mentioned that you wanted an investigation, but criticized your reasons. Is it really so hard for you to read one paragraph and understand it? I castigated your emphasis and the implications–you want the investigation in part so you can then turn around and condemn Hamas for its long history of war crimes and to deflect severe criticism and avoid war crimes trials. Given that Israel has a long history of war crimes and oppression, one that spans its entire existence, it seems as though you want an investigation as much for PR purposes as anything else.
You also don’t know the end-game on this.
I’m hoping that this will be a means to exact an actual settlement construction freeze from Netanyahu.
Really? Because the Israeli government just put the go ahead on a substantial settlement expansion right next to Bethlehem.
Not knowing, but shooting anyway, is very similar to what is objected to relative to Iran.
Obviously a smaller scale. But, the tone is not to cool heads and invite inquiry, but to agitate and confront (war).
Out of curiosity, how inconspicuous do you suppose it is that you’ve taken on the habit of camping out, blasting the first few comments on a blog and trying to steer the debate from the get go now?
Not to be too uppity but is it necessary to reduce discussion to personal attacks? Can we not exchange ideas and discuss differences with an ethics of respect for the other even if we ideologically disagree on principles?
This doesn’t exactly look good for the Obama administration in front of the rest of the world because, basically, there are no US-moderated peace talks because we aren’t the moderator — we are very blatantly Israel’s shield behind which no atrocity is too heinous.
So much for the Cairo speech.
A lot of us suckers voted for the son of a bitch.
I would give a lot to know how that guy from Gaza feels now, the one who made all those phone calls to elect Obama, on his own dime, because he fell for that bullshit line of Hope and Change. If he’s still alive.
Amira Haass http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1118892.html
This should be considered like a race, the start gun has gone off, and now the people have to race towards and participate in BDS. Here is what you got from Obama, the same thing his own people received. How is this for prescient? –
EQUAL OPPORTUNITY
It is an equal opportunity betrayal
Linda Heard – A People Denied Justice http://www.arabnews.com/?page=7§ion=0&article=127096&d=6&m=10&y=2009
She makes the important point that, once again, the Palestinians’ attempts to obtain legal, nonviolent redress for their just grievances are in vain.
One good sign – ex-IDF head Moshe Ya’alon had to cancel a planned visit to Britain for fear of arrest.
So, keep up the letter writing. (What, you didn’t bother?)
You’re an asshole, Witty. You really are.
The writing may be over Witty, what comes next?
THE SYSTEM
I don’t think you have a clue about the hour or what is about to occur.
Not one MSMer’s touched the Goldstone report. NOT RACHEL MADDOW, KEITH OLBERMANN, ED, CHRIS MATTHEWS
NADA NOTHING ZERO
CHICKEN SHITS JUST PLAIN OLD CHICKEN SHITS
That damn liberal media
The MSM helped throw the Goldstone Report under the bus…not even a whisper…not a whisper. Pathetic
While it may be awhile, and while its importance may be overlooked by then, it seems to me this incident has the potential to have very far-reaching consequences indeed. And, ironically, those consequences may be worse for Obama and the Israelis than for the Palestinians.
Abbas of course now looks the tool, with Hamas in fact very effectively calling him a traitor. But I suspect that he’s been a tool all along, including in the negotiations he was having with Olmert before Olmert left office, which negotiations Obama and others are urging the parties to get back to *at the point they left off at.*
So what did Abbas agree to there? Does anyone believe that he was acting any more staunchly or representatively of his people there than he has with this Goldstone report? I doubt it, and suspect that’s why even the vaguest of terms of what Abbas and Olmert were agreeing to or talking about were kept secret: Because the Palestinians would have made it plain that Abbas was selling them out.
So Abbas has now had his true colors revealed here, and it seems that they may indeed be the same colors as his entire PA. And there is thus the chance that despite the probable frantic attempts of the U.S. and even the Israelis to buck Abbas and the PA up he and it may well be deposed or at the very least rendered obviously not representative of the Palestinians. Either that, or the PA will repudiate Abbas or what was done and so as to try to regain some of its legitimacy will suddenly start getting some backbone, and that of course means that Obama will not see a restart of negotiations between the parties without a settlement freeze on Israel’s part, and since Israel won’t do that, there goes even the pretense that there’s a peace process going on.
I.e., by getting Abbas to strangle Goldstone, Obama may have just strangled his own ridiculous pretensions in the conflict.
Moreover, what may be even more possible given that there are at least a few indications that it may already be starting, the Palestinians in the West Bank could begin getting in the Intifada mood again, with the Israeli media reporting just over the last couple of days since this Goldstone strangling has been reported that there have been any number of clashes in the West Bank between the Pals and the Israeli forces. And, ominously enough, there’s no way these were instigated or started by the PA, so perhaps already showing at the very least that it is way behind the curve of its people and that it either has to grow a pair or get overthrown by Hamas.
In short, while this particular incident may seem to simply pass, it may well prove to be a substantial straw that contributes to the breaking of the back of the compliant if not utterly co-opted PA, with all the very significant if not profound meaning that holds for the future.
After all, what was the more possible future without this? That Abbas go back into negotiations, the U.S. leans on or bribes him some more, he comes out of the secret talks with a deal that screws his people left and right, they revolt and don’t go along, and people say it’s hopeless dealing with them. So maybe this is good in the sense of helping get the Palestinians some real representation, and good in the sense that there was simply no way any peace deal achieved with any such co-opted, unrepresentative tool as Abbas was never going to be sustainable anyway.
As usual, Sin, very astute observations. You have the situation mapped out pretty accurately as far as I’m concerned.
There have been a lot of clashes in E Jerusalem, over the Israeli restrictions of Muslims praying at the Al-Aqsa Mosque and Jews allowed into it. The Islamic Movement has been agitating for action (this is a group of Muslim Israelis, not Palestinians) and Jordan is pissed.
That’s good, frankly, because until we start seeing Israel’s neighbors grow a backbones and stand up to Israel — Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon — Israel is going to keep expanding its apartheid state. And sooner or later, the IDF will be crossing the Jordan river to secure and protect more of their so-called “Jewish birthright.”
Great new site
http://palestinenote.com/cs/
America is no longer the so-called “sole superpower” in the world, and accordingly, it has both Russia and China zeroing in on its supremacy. Obama’s Cairo speech, while well-intended, may have made matters far worse than George Bush. Obama’s inability to make any progress whatsoever on the I/P catastrophe has demonstrated that the U.S. will justify any action on the part of Israel, and totally disregard the blowback risk.
What blowback risk, you may ask? Says Robert Fisk of the Independent: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/the-demise-of-the-dollar-1798175.html
And as Hillary Clinton keeps pushing China to go along with sanctions against Iran, as the U.S. puts a tariff on Chinese made tires and squawks about human rights violations, China would be very happy to redeem the $800.5 billion (or 23.35%) of the U.S. Treasury notes it holds and reinvest the proceeds more strategically.
The next time a Zionist friend attempts to dupe you into drinking the Kool-Aid that it’s in America’s strategic interest to bomb Iran, think about how the world will treat the U.S. once it’s responsible for touching off a World War in the region.
Am unable to get in on the new thread testing
Comments on this entry are closed.