More evidence (in Haaretz: "Mitchell to Abbas: No more excuses, renew Mideast talks") that Obama and Mitchell have no problem squeezing the Palestinians to make up for their own political problems and weakness. Having taken on Netanyahu and lost, they compensate for their failure by pressuring the weakest party to give in. A right-wing French government, no less, points out to the Americans their unreasonableness towards Palestinian President Abbas–
French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner defended Abbas, urging the envoy to recognize the risk to the Palestinian leader of returning to talks without international guarantees.
but the Obama administration is unmoved. Meanwhile, Mearsheimer & Walt gain material for a revised edition of The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy.
How the f* does Obama sleep at night? If he had any respect for either of his parents, their respective best values–especially his mother’s as revealed by her whole life, how can he squeeze Abbas and the Pals generally, and let the Israelis totally off the hook?
Some people criticize his lecturing of the US Supreme Court for its decision to give
corporations (arguably even foreign-controlled corporations) the virtual rights of any individual adult American of maximum free speech–basically further enhancing the power of special interest lobbies to propagandize, to buy congressional votes, even further diluting any leftover power of one-vote each for the masses.
He did that. But he can’t stand up to the Israel Lobby?
He can lecture the US Supreme Court in public.
But he can’t lecture the Israel Lobby in public.
Just like Sarah Palin.
So how is he better than she is?
He might be worse since he’s highly educated.
Abbas’ insistence of a 3 month complete construction freeze on the Palestinian side of the green line, is an excellent place to start.
The US should convey to Netanyahu the very large significance of doing that, and of the generosity of Abbas to set such a short time-line as criteria.
Obama and Mitchell have already lost that battle. Netanyahu completely flummoxed them, by introducing a phony settlement freeze, and Hillary Clinton congratulated him. More recently, Obama confessed, weakly, to the ‘difficulties’ he encountered in dealing with the problem.
Now, they are trying to pressure Abbas. So far as I am concerned, he is an Israeli quisling, still smarting from his electoral defeat by Hamas, and relying on his US-trained goons to keep him in power in his tiny little fiefdom in Ramallah. His official term as president of the PA expired long ago.
Witty, read your newspapers, or the internet, and keep up with current events.
Were one looking for an excuse viable in the United States then the fact that Israel has refused – rather contemptuously refused – to accept a stipulation that the United States very publicly made would seem like a pretty good excuse to be going on with.
But I don’t think we should have much sympathy with Abbas, who is a usurper and something of a quisling. He’s never had any alternative but to sign up to whatever he’s told to in the end. The problem is more about finding to some way to give his signature some authority or plausibility.
Abbas is looking a little less quisly these days, but he’s still obsessed with taking down Hamas. He declared his support for the Iron Wall.
Still, he was quite right to reject any US guarantees. No one, not even Abbas, is stupid enough to fall for that one again. The US, particularly Obama, can’t guarantee squat in Israel. BYahoo has made it clear that he’ll do what he damn well pleases, in fact will openly defy Obama by doing exactly what Obama has said not to do. Just how does Obama plan to enforce any “guarantee” he makes?
So Abbas won’t sign the surrender document, and he’ll either be assassinated or removed in a coup and replaced with someone like Mohamman Dahlan, and the Dayton battalions will move in enforce Israel’s will on the Palestinian population, which will be spun as “fighting terror.”
Yeah, your scenario is plausible. I think Obama Inc has already kicked the I-P can down the road as something to pick up during his second term. He feels his hands are full
now with two wars and the domestic fiscal and economic crisis, not to mention his signature item, inflated medicaid health insurance.
Abbas doesn’t want to look like a total Quisling to all Palestinians. You’d have to
be part of the ruling clan in any oil-rich Arab state to be able to risk that. Or Egypt, another welfare state aping Israel the best it can.
I wrote my previous reply to Witty before I even read the rest of the posts, where MHughes976, Citizen, and Potsherd said much the same things, and even used the same words (quisling).
‘Negotiations’ mean nothing, as the Oslo Accords proved. Palestinians in Area C of the West Bank (rural areas wholly under control by Israel) are now outnumbered 2-1 by illegal Israeli settlers. East Jerusalem (slated as the Palestinian state’s future capital) is under relentless attack (in Sheikh Jarrah, Silwan, and the Old City itself), by illegal settlers.
How many Presidents have said the settlements are illegal and must stop? How many times have Israeli officials ignored these request? Certainly not demands. Well 41 and James Baker tied aid into the situation. Or a threat of cutting off some of the endless aid to Israel.
Hope Abbas stands firm. No negotiations until the expansion and building of new and old settlements stop.
When will Obama and Mitchell put the hammer down on Israel. Stop with the expansion of the illegal settlements. When?
Obama has put it off until his second term; by then of course he might not have a second term. More of concern may be that Israel will require him to allow continuing settlements officially so long as Israel is allowed to bomb Iran. Yep. Read it again. That’s how powerful the Israel Lobby is over Congress, and how powerful it’s hold on the MSM in the USA is.
Obama has no hammer.
Kathleen, you are right. The US has a huge hammer to hold over Israeli right-wing politicians; it’s called ‘aid’ and the gushing tap could be slowed without resort to the AIPAC-bought (or threatened) Congress.
All that needs to be done is a quiet Presidential signing order that ceases US payments (for instance) for more US-supplied-and-paid-for white phosphorous shells, flechette bombs, Apache helicopters, more advanced bomber/fighter jets, etc. This could be justified by reference to the Geneva Conventions, and further justified by applying the bans to everyone else.
Turkey managed to almost sever its relations with Israel by cancelling their participation in a single air force exercise.
Something small, and not very obvious at first sight (like James Baker’s hint on debt non-renewals) needs to be done, very soon
What Obama wants is a photo-op. He wants the flashbulbs popping while he stands between Abbas and BYahoo shaking hands as they sign some peace of paper that says TWO STATE SOLUTION on it, when it’s really a document officially surrendering the West Bank to Israel. But no one will say that, and everyone will cheer Obama for bringing about a TWO STATE SOLUTION when no one else good, and he’ll get another worthless, degraded Nobel Prize.
I wasn’t really disillusioned in Obama because I saw him more as a centrist , and in some things as a pragmatic progressive. But right now in the Afghan war there’s a move I think is wise. A big part of the problem is that everyone in Afghanistan got lumped together. Taliban, Al Qaeda, terrorists, civilians. In the current situation you wonder what keeps you from calling everyone over there just ‘resistance fighters’ battling an occupying army that specializes in bombing weddings and funerals .
After a confusing move of sending more troops over, there is now an initiative to talk to ‘moderate taliban’. I think that’s interesting. Patrick Cockburn pointed out that there were signals from the Taliban that their agenda is an Afghan agenda, not a worldwide agenda, thus putting a clear distance between them and Al Qaeda. Maybe they’ve concluded that a kill ratio of one Al-Qaeda guy for 10 Taliban, for 100 civilians, isn’t very productive.
Al Qaida is a wholly US-invented entity, formed by prosecutors who wanted something bigger to prosecute under RICO laws in the case against the Kenya bombers in early 2001 (long before 9/11).
I researched UBL in 2000, for a (failed and unwritten) book on the kidnapping in Sipadan, and found no mention of Al Qaida.
Of course, the Afghans want their own country back. And if some of them are ‘Taliban’, so what?
I would want my own country back, if US soldiers were marching around in Mars-suits, conducting night-raids, Predator strikes, etc, against a totally unfocussed ‘enemy’.
Obama will talk to the Taliban but recoils in horror at the suggestion of talking to Hamas.
I wonder what Trudeau will come up with as an icon for Obama.
Richard,
That’s kind of ambiguous. Al Qaida is a wholly US-invented entity
Strong interpretation: US created it.
Weak: they needed to put a name on it and they made up the name.
Yes, I have an idea of what happened in the 80′s with US support to the mujahedin (though the 90′s are a bit fuzzy).