U.S. Announces Peace Talks
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced:
"I've invited Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Abbas to meet in Washington, D.C., to re-launch direct negotiations...which we believe can be completed within one year."
(State Department)
Not taking yes for an answer -Efraim Karsh
No matter how many times Israel has reached out its hand in peace, it seems Mahmoud Abbas just wasn’t – and isn’t – interested.
No sooner had Hillary Clinton announced the imminent resumption of direct Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations without preconditions, than the Palestinian leadership cold shouldered the US secretary of state.
An emergency meeting of the PLO executive committee, chaired by PA President Mahmoud Abbas, agreed to return to the negotiating table but threatened to pull out of the talks if Israel didn’t extend the freeze on all settlement activities. “Should the Israeli government issue new tenders on September 26, we will not be able to continue with talks,” chief PA negotiator Saeb Erekat told reporters.
But the story doesn’t end here. While the English language announcement of the PLO’s decision sets [a] “Palestinian state living side by side in peace and security with Israel” as the outcome of the negotiations, the Arabic-language version makes no mention of the two-state solution.
And there lies the heart of the problem.
[T]he PLO leadership has been singing the praises of the two-state solution whenever addressing Israeli or Western audiences, [but] has consistently denigrated the idea to its own constituents, depicting the process as a transient arrangement required by the needs of the moment that would inexorably lead to the long-cherished goal of Israel’s demise.
In this respect there has been no fundamental distinction between Yasser Arafat and Abbas...
[I]n April 2009, when Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu [asked Palestinians to] recognize Israel as a Jewish state alongside the would-be Palestinian state, Abbas [responded] in a speech in Ramallah: “A Jewish state, what is that supposed to mean?...You can call yourselves as you like, but I don’t accept it and I say so publicly.”
When in June 2009 Netanyahu publicly accept[ed] a two-state solution and agree[d] to the establishment of a Palestinian state, provided the PA leadership responded in kind and recognized Israel’s Jewish nature, Erekat warned that the prime minister “will have to wait 1,000 years before he finds one Palestinian who will go along with him.”
And so it goes. Precisely 10 years after Arafat was dragged kicking and screaming to the American-convened peace summit in Camp David, his erstwhile successor is being dragged to the negotiating table.
[L]ike Arafat, as far as Israel’s existence is concerned, Abbas would not take a yes for an answer.
[Jerusalem Post]
*
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced:
"I've invited Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Abbas to meet in Washington, D.C., to re-launch direct negotiations...which we believe can be completed within one year."
(State Department)
Not taking yes for an answer -Efraim Karsh
No matter how many times Israel has reached out its hand in peace, it seems Mahmoud Abbas just wasn’t – and isn’t – interested.
No sooner had Hillary Clinton announced the imminent resumption of direct Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations without preconditions, than the Palestinian leadership cold shouldered the US secretary of state.
An emergency meeting of the PLO executive committee, chaired by PA President Mahmoud Abbas, agreed to return to the negotiating table but threatened to pull out of the talks if Israel didn’t extend the freeze on all settlement activities. “Should the Israeli government issue new tenders on September 26, we will not be able to continue with talks,” chief PA negotiator Saeb Erekat told reporters.
But the story doesn’t end here. While the English language announcement of the PLO’s decision sets [a] “Palestinian state living side by side in peace and security with Israel” as the outcome of the negotiations, the Arabic-language version makes no mention of the two-state solution.
And there lies the heart of the problem.
[T]he PLO leadership has been singing the praises of the two-state solution whenever addressing Israeli or Western audiences, [but] has consistently denigrated the idea to its own constituents, depicting the process as a transient arrangement required by the needs of the moment that would inexorably lead to the long-cherished goal of Israel’s demise.
In this respect there has been no fundamental distinction between Yasser Arafat and Abbas...
[I]n April 2009, when Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu [asked Palestinians to] recognize Israel as a Jewish state alongside the would-be Palestinian state, Abbas [responded] in a speech in Ramallah: “A Jewish state, what is that supposed to mean?...You can call yourselves as you like, but I don’t accept it and I say so publicly.”
When in June 2009 Netanyahu publicly accept[ed] a two-state solution and agree[d] to the establishment of a Palestinian state, provided the PA leadership responded in kind and recognized Israel’s Jewish nature, Erekat warned that the prime minister “will have to wait 1,000 years before he finds one Palestinian who will go along with him.”
And so it goes. Precisely 10 years after Arafat was dragged kicking and screaming to the American-convened peace summit in Camp David, his erstwhile successor is being dragged to the negotiating table.
[L]ike Arafat, as far as Israel’s existence is concerned, Abbas would not take a yes for an answer.
[Jerusalem Post]
*
No comments:
Post a Comment