In what should go down as one of the most humiliating episodes in the history of Israel-US relations, former President Bill Clinton told the Saban Forum in Jerusalem on Sunday that Palestinians must "accept America’s modification of its anti-settlement policy and return to the bargaining table," according to a report in the Jerusalem Post which the US media apparently ignored
It was the last nail in the coffin of Obama’s and Hillary Clinton’s earlier demand for an Israeli settlement freeze.
"Take where we are and the reformulation of the settlement issue and find a way [to move forward]," Clinton told the meeting of Israeli and American "policy makers" which included Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad.
Ignoring the overwhelming vote in the UN General Assembly in favor of the Goldstone Report, Clinton warned that the Palestinians "risked irking the international community" if they refused to return to the bargaining table. When even the French and British have expressed criticism of Netanyahu’s hardline stance, What countries, besides Israel, the United States, and maybe Palau, was he referring to?
The article reiterated the myth now being spread by the Obama administration that the Israeli prime minister is calling for a resumption of "peace talks" without preconditions, ignoring the fact that Netanyahu has, among other demands, made the Palestinian acceptance of Israel as a Jewish state a prerequisite for any settlement.
Concerned that they might think otherwise, Clinton told his audience, "You should not think that President Obama is your enemy," and then offered as proof of America’s commitment to Israel, its own rejection of the Goldstone Report.
"No American president can serve in good conscience,"he said, "and not be committed to the security of Israel." Nor, he should have added, could he or she obtain the campaign funding necessary to even run, let alone get elected.
They all want Abbas at the negotiating table to sign away the deed to Manhattan for a handful of beads.
There is no bargaining table, apparently. There is simply Israel, holding a pistol at the Palestinians in one hand, and with a death grip on Uncle Sam’s block and tackle with the other.
There is no bargaining table. There is a surrender table.
There are no negotiations. There is only capitulation.
The US/Israel axis has been slowly conspiring to box up the Palestinians until they can’t get out of the trap, under the lie of a “two-state solution.” There is no two-state solution. There is no state, and it is no solution.
What Abbas is supposed to do is sign away all rights to a sovereign Palestinian state and the right of return for refugees in exchange for what Israel calls Area A – the noncontiguous Bantustans. This will become in effect a larger Gaza, another prison surrounded by walls and guard towers under a false flag of self-determination.
This “state” will have no sovereignty, no control of its own borders, no exits or entrances not under Israeli control, no control of its own air space, no sea port. It will have no right or power to defend itself, no airforce, no army, only a militia dedicated to repressing the population. At any time it pleases, Israel will reserve to itself the right of incursion, the right to bomb and strafe and rocket any development that it feels threatens its “security”. It will have no Gaza, no Jerusalem, no Jordan Valley and probably no access to the West Bank aquifer.
This is what “negotiations” means to Israel, Clinton and the rest of the Zionists. It means Israel will give up nothing and Palestine will surrender everything. And they are really desperate to find some quisling who will sit down and sign away the Palestinian birthright so they can claim that their seizure of it is legitimate.
I wonder if Clinton is getting some kickbacks from Saban for his whoring around. Or perhaps he just hopes that some fawning shiksa will give him the Lewinsky of a lifetime.
Clinton and his wife have always been goy neocons. At last, they have removed the masks. They know what it takes to succeed in American politics – licking the boots of Israeli officials and American Jewish potentates.
Does anyone seriously doubt that the Israel Lobby is an extremely well-organized and brutally effective agent of a foreign power; that it has deprived Americans of their independence as a nation?
This illustrates something about Bill Clinton that was first revealed during the failed Camp David talks in 1999. These were the negotiations that Dennis Ross and Clinton were involved in. Basically the US insisted that Arafat accept Barak’s offer of what was basically a Bantustan solution for the IP dispute. Arafat could not agree. So then Clinton accused Arafat of refusing to accept peace and told the world that Israel had no one to talk to. Barak went back to Israel and said there was no one to talk to. This led, with Sharon’s help. to the second Intifada. Basically more and more war. And Bill Clinton is as much responsible for this as anyone (or course the mole Dennis Ross was whispering in his ear the whole time.)
Any way why should any body, American, Israeli or Palestinian, pay any attention to this Arkansas grifter for advice on such a difficult and delicate issue. He had his chance and he failed big time.
And like always, the Palestinians were at zero fault. Its the same old lines on here, everyone’s fault but the Palestinians.
The sad part is, that was the best deal the Palestinians will EVER get and Arafat just couldn’t accept it. What he did accept is millions in corrupt $$$ what he could accept was another 10 years of occupation for his people.
Arafat is a terrorist baby killer who had his chance to bring his people out of the abyss, but just couldn’t accept it.
So the Palestinians have to be forced to accept a bad deal just because no one will force Israel to agree to a fair one.
Israel takes what it wants and Palestinian is left with the scraps, and it’s the Palestinians’ own fault that Israel steals the best. Typical Zionist.
“This is our final offer! Act now, or miss out on this great bargain!” Wow, Yonira, you and Vince Shlomi between the two of you do one of the most thorough jobs of perpetuating nasty anti-Semitic stereotypes than anyone else I’ve seen.
The danger of continual acceptance of yet another compromise is that the result is no sovereignty, no potential for confident self-assertion, no potential for what would be the unique Palestinian experiment.
I think that is one of the dangers of either forms of single-state approach, that what is unique about Palestinian nation might not have the scope to come to pass.
Justice is one vision. But, multi-culturalism is another. If it takes a distinct nation to foster a unique Palestinian culture, rather than dissolution into a commercialist or socialist soup, that is better.
The hope for Palestinian culture at all within a single state, is some features that preserve the ability of cultures to retain some tribal identity, otherwise it gets assimilated entirely into some future civil culture, or Judeo-Arab culture (with Arab as functional dhimmi, if not legal).
I’m not sure how you do that absent a distinct nation-state given the very extreme commercial and class pressures that exist in the modern world.
It is a fundamental compromise for Clinton (either one of them) to shift from the position that a VIABLE self-governed Palestine is important, to a symbolic one.
Richard,
Let me see if I got a gist of your argument:
The justice, unlike multiculturalism, requires Palestinians to accept bantustans, where they can have their unique Palestinian culture preserved, lest it becomes distorted, diluted due to commercial and class pressures and dissolved in socialist soup.
So really, those ungrateful natives, given a chance of preserving in aspic “unique Palestinian experiment (it is Gaza you are referring to here – are you?)” seem to – like Lemmings – aspire to getting assimilated in a future Judeo-Arab culture!!
They really don’t understand that what is happening to them is for their own good.
No, it requires effective state-building so that it becomes undeniable and earning the status of peer.
I think that BOTH Jewish and Palestinian culture are more likely to be respected in a two-state solution.
In a one-state approach that is in fact democratic, there would have to be removal of all ethnic or any other prejudicial screens to location of land purchase, settlement development, etc.
Even if the dividing line is class and income based ($300,000 condominiums), the majority of those will be sold to employees of Intel, IBM, pharma firms, medical instrumentation, etc. of whom a percentage will be Palestinian, but likely majority Jewish, seeking to make their residence comfortable. Probably more urban commercial than explicitly Jewish, but mostly Jewish in numbers.
Gaza was not my model of “unique Palestinian experiment”. I was referring to something new, a vision of a vibrant and modern but definitively Palestinian society.
Palestine can be Hungary, landlocked but thriving and uniquely Hungarian.
That will be nice, Witty, once you acknowledge that the biggest obstacle to Palestinian state-building is the collective effort by Israelis to confiscate, obstruct and destroy anything the Palestinians build.
Eva,
For what its worth, the decision of activists that do support a single-state, is also an imposition, a choosing for them.
Hey, idiot? Are you following the blog posts here that present statements crafted by Palestinians? Or I suppose those get caught in the same filter which allows you to ignore posts showing what the IDF has been doing to the Palestinians.
They aren’t supporting One-State randomly, you Nazi.
Like always, you lie over and over again. Typical Zionist.
Al-Jazeera has just reported on the approval given by the Israeli housing commission for the building of 900 new exclusively Jewish housing units in East Jerusalem as part of Israel’s continuing effort, aided and abetted by the Clinton administration, to ethnically cleanse East Jerusalem.
For too many years, Jews in many places in the US were legally unable to buy or rent houses or apartments because those areas permitted what were called “restricted covenants.” These covenants also effected Blacks, Latinos, and Asians. Jewish lawyers fought these racist agreements in the courts and they were eventually ruled to be illegal.
That their fellow Jews in Israel have established “restricted covenants” against Palestinian Arabs in the latter’s own country has never been a problem for the organized American Jewish community whose spokespersons regularly preach to the public about the dangers of “anti-semitism.”
Hillary “They will build no new settlements, expropriate no land, allow no new construction or approvals.”
link to themajlis.org
Israel can’t hear her or anyone else
oooops, make that the Obama administration, Of course, there is really no difference between the two.
Clinton should get out on the street more as well as getting onto blogs. Things have changed and are building. The BDS movement is growing. Anger towards Israel is growing.
Israel is being called out on the illegal settlements, the illegal wall, the UN resolution violations. Clinton needs to stop wagging that finger. It does not seem to be helping