The alleged peace process reaches farcical lows

Last week David Friedman, the US Ambassador to Israel, gave an interview to the Jerusalem Post saying that Palestinian violence has stymied the peace process. Israeli settlements are no obstacle to peace, he said; and there’s an “alleged occupation.”

At the same time, Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu went to the West Bank to say that Israel would be there “forever.” And he released a video lecture, blaming the Palestinians for not extolling “champions of peace,” but honoring terrorists.

Netanyahu was also able to recruit the UN’s Secretary General in the Palestinian incitement talk. When Antonio Guterres met Netanyahu last week, the prime minister launched into the U.N. for having an “absurd obsession” with Israel; and Guterres, on his back foot, echoed the Prime Minister:

I’ve been expressing my opposition for instance to the settlement activity but clearly the combination of terrorism, violence and incitement and the understanding of the difficulties created by the separation between the West Bank and Gaza.

The press is going along with this farce, talking up the latest possibilities of the peace process.

Haaretz reports that Donald Trump will meet with Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas during the UN General Assembly meetings in two weeks to push his “planned peace initiative.” But make no mistake, nothing will happen:

Though [Trump envoys Jared] Kushner and [Jason] Greenblatt didn’t give Abbas a clear timetable for unveiling the peace initiative, they said it might happen before the end of the year, the officials added.

“The Americans said they need more time to draft something and asked Abu Mazen not to make international moves like joining additional UN agencies or launching proceedings at the International Criminal Court in The Hague,” one said, referring to Abbas by his nickname. “Abu Mazen acceded to this request in the hope that during the coming months, the administration really will present a plan or a position that could constitute a real basis for restarting the diplomatic process.”

The New York Times article on the talks is headlined, “For US Mideast Peace Negotiators, Keeping the Palestinians Involved Is a Victory,” but reporter Mark Landler is compelled to admit that there’s really nothing doing:

Mr. Greenblatt declined to say whether he had presented a plan or whether he had given the Palestinians any comfort on the two-state solution, which Mr. Trump threw into doubt last February when he said, “I’m looking at two-state and one-state” formulations.

Other officials made it clear the United States did not deviate from Mr. Trump’s statement, which has frustrated Palestinian officials, who say that unless the White House reaffirms the goal of a Palestinian state, he will not be a credible peacemaker.

Landler notes that the delegation to Israel and Palestine last week included deputy national security adviser Dina Powell, one of whose qualifications is that she is not Jewish. The imbalance of the American side is so pronounced, even the Times is counting Jews:

An Egyptian-born Coptic Christian who speaks some Arabic, Ms. Powell could help mitigate the perception that the Trump team is stocked with staunchly pro-Israel figures like Mr. Kushner, Mr. Greenblatt, and David M. Friedman, the ambassador to Israel – all of whom are orthodox Jews.

Former negotiator Aaron David Miller– whose family hosted David Ben-Gurion when he was a boy, a qualification for his long service in the peace process– writes in USA Today that the U.S. won’t achieve anything by being so responsive to Israel:

Only three Americans — two secretaries of State (James Baker and Henry Kissinger) and one president (Jimmy Carter) — achieved breakthroughs in this conflict, and all had run-ins with both Arabs and Israelis…. The Trump team has a very high sensitivity toward Israel and its concerns. But the U.S. can only be an effective broker or facilitator if it is considered independent and credible….

The Trump administration ought to borrow Baker’s tactic of blaming and shaming any party that doesn’t cooperate with the U.S. This game won’t get you to the ultimate deal but it will allow its pursuit to continue.

Blaming and shaming is not all that distant from Amira Hass’s plea in Haaretz for European governments to sanction Israel, for destroying its Palestinian projects in the West Bank. Israeli society will be lost without such measures.

You must take real actions. Yes, open and declared sanctions that have a path to becoming more severe. Painful sanctions. This may be the last chance to remove the average Israeli, including business people, tourists, judges, scholars, farmers and foreign soccer consumers from their indifference and criminal complacency.

Stop being afraid of Israeli emotional blackmail. Israel trades in the memory of our families murdered in Europe in order to speed up the expulsion of the Palestinians from the bulk of West Bank territory to the enclaves of the Palestinian Authority.

Hass is a great writer, in the very difficult position of standing up for Palestinian human rights in Israel. It is dangerous for an Israeli to call out to the world for not only Sanctions, but Boycott and Divestment, too. Sanctions are the actions of governments; but who can depend on governments to do anything right now? As the David Friedman and Guterres follies show, activists must take measures of their own to support Palestinians. That’s why BDS has burgeoned.

Thanks to Allison Deger. 

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“You must take real actions. Yes, open and declared sanctions that have a path to becoming more severe”

Hass is right but he should be aiming this comment directly towards the pathetic Vichy PA regime puppets who have known for a very long time that the so called”peace negotiation leading to a 2SS ” are blatant Israeli stalling actions to try and mask the rampant growth in the settler expansion in the West Bank. Even when the Bennett chasing Yahoo spells it out clearly for all to hear and see they are the ones who are propping up the farce and as long as they go along with it the Europeans have a get out of jail card in terms of taking any direct responsibility and any meaningful action.

Again, It is unbelievable that the zionists have been successful in convincing the world, that it is THEY who are the victims, despite being the occupier, have a deadly military, and the newest of weapons made by themselves and the world’s top arms manufacturer, the US. The rationale is crazy, but it seem it is the unarmed victims of the occupation are the aggressors, who keep resisting this bloody occupation, while their lands are being stolen, and kids are being killed.
Ah those poor zionists, how much more must be endure, and how much more will America pretend to believe the BS?

There has been no real peace process by the Israelis, just fake show (Potemkin peace process, as Poopy Netanyahu called it) maintained just in order to allow for them to gain time to complete the genocide they want, while blaming the Palestinians for notwanting peace.

“Why do Palestinians consistently choose to honor mass-murderers”? — [quotation from the video posted above by Phil of Israeli PM Benyamin Netanyahoo in which he criticizes Palestinians for “honoring terrorists.”]

The late British classicist, numismatist and author of more than 25 books on ancient Greek, Roman and Israelite history, Michael Grant, CBE, Litt.D., Cambridge University (b.1914- d.2004), paraphrases Manetho, an Egyptian priest who lived during the Ptolemaic era in the early 3rd century BCE, as follows:

“Manetho “censured the Hebrews for cruelty, hatred of other people’s customs, and deliberate segregation.” Manetho is a source from ancient history, Grant suggests, who — along with a host of other writers of that period — characterized the ancient Israelites in this manner. “Nowhere else in the world,” he continues, “as far as we know, were there such virulent manifestations of racial prejudice at this period” (THE HISTORY OF ANCIENT ISRAEL, New York, Scribner’s, 1984, p. 203).

“Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.”

What a ludicrous group of Zionists wasting time . Their ignorance and complicit support of genocidal Zionism is truly theatre for the Absurd. Marat Sade in action and the US posturing pretense at resolution is a true disgrace. Free Palestine without US interference!