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Ari Shavit blames breakdown of talks on Arabs’ ‘anachronistic political culture’

Ari Shavit
Ari Shavit

Ari Shavit, the Zionist revivalist author who was laurel’d by American media last year, has published his idea of a “New Peace” plan in the New Republic. He says that the Palestinians didn’t get a state under the old peace process because they are “victims of an anachronistic political culture whose negative ethos makes it especially difficult” to offer necessary concessions.

For instance, they wouldn’t recognize the Jewish state and Zionism’s legitimate claims– “the Jewish people’s right to self-determination in their ancient homeland.”

And Arabs aren’t ready for democracy. Shavit speaks bleakly of “Arab political culture” in the “merciless Middle East.”

But the Palestinians can get economic peace, in this manner:

New Peace will not forsake the hope that eventually a democratic Middle East will emerge. But it would acknowledge the political culture of the Arab world and the Palestinian people as they are now and it would try to make the most out of it.

How can all this come about? Very simply. First, Israel will freeze all settlement activity beyond the separation barrier. Then Israel will initiate limited pullouts from designated areas in the West Bank. The Palestinians will commit to turning every piece of liberated land into a development zone in which massive building projects (resembling those in the new Palestinian city of Rawabi) will take center stage. The Saudis and the Gulf states will finance those development enterprises. The Egyptians and Jordanians will give the process political backing and military guidance. The United States will oversee it all, and Europe will do what Europe does best: NGO activity and civil-society building. While the Israelis and Palestinians advance the process with unsigned understandings and undeclared cooperation, the Israelis, Palestinians, Arabs, and Turks will institute major regional economic projects.

I.e., taxation without representation. And if it seems like a fantasy, consider this about freezing settlement activity: Peace Now issued a report yesterday on unending settlement construction. JTA:

Israel promoted plans and tenders for nearly 14,000 housing units in the West Bank during the nine months of peace talks, the activist group Peace Now said.

An average of 50 apartments was built daily in the West Bank throughout the U.S.-backed negotiations launched last summer, the nongovernmental organization said in a report issued Tuesday.

From the Peace Now report, a graph of settlement housing tenders under recent Israeli governments:

Settlement tenders in recent Israeli governments, from Peace Now
Settlement tenders in recent Israeli governments, from Peace Now
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Zionist spouts bigoted horseshit… color me not so surprised.

So Israel has destroyed Palestine, and now others must reconstruct it and foot the bill? The Europeans are already disillusioned with funding Palestinian reconstruction, as this is often the first area to be targeted and destroyed whenever Israel wants to administer another punitive land grab. The Egyptians, a ruthless military junta, will give ‘political and military backing’? Lol. No Israeli reparations or justice for their victims? But ‘unsigned understandings and undeclared cooperation’? What is this meant to mean, other than the already routine trashing of any agreements, but with the bonus now of claiming they never existed in the first place?
This is just ridiculous, childs play arguments and fantasy, based on the usual zionist complete ignorance of Palestinian life or the Middle East, but with the pig-headed insistence that they know what’s best for the people they attack, undermine and dispossess every day.

There is some part in the brains of these zionists, that seem to be blank when it comes to Israel. Strange they are able to blame everything, including failure of peace initiatives by the US, on those who really have not much leverage, and choice, in this matter, and who suffer under the brutal occupying powers, yet are so obviously blind to the continued crimes by the occupier, against these victims, including the crime of land theft and illegal settlements. It seems the blatant announcements of thousands of illegal settlements DURING peace talks, detrimental to those peace talks, does not matter, or did not happen. Israel kept shifting the goal post many times, irritating even the Obama administration, and here you are yet another zionist spewing BS, and blaming the “Arabs”….as if the Jews are blameless. Right now John Kerry is getting attacked by the guard dogs in Congress and media, obviously unleashed by Israel’s vicious lobbies.

“they wouldn’t recognize the Jewish state and Zionism’s legitimate claims–”

Right, the “anachronistic” Palestinians’ bizarre refusal to recognize as legitimate the Zionists’ right to steal their homes and farms, to exile them from the place where they and generations of their ancestors had lived by use of deadly force and threats of more, to make them stateless refugees, to deny them rights as citizens . . . the list goes on. How obdurate, how outrageous are these “anachronistic” Palestinians, especially compared with Zionists who lay claim to this “homeland” by virtue of their tribal myths dating from the dawn of the iron age.

-Palestinians didn’t get a state under the old peace process because they are “victims of an anachronistic political culture whose negative ethos makes it especially difficult” to offer necessary concessions.-

I mean they would like to get them a state, but they’re just so NEGATIVE! Who knew that taking their country out from under them would cause such a grudge.