It sounds like something is afoot in the Middle East and Secretary of State John Kerry might be succeeding in getting some talks going between Israel and the Palestinians.
Mr. Kerry’s decision to rip up his itinerary and stay in Israel has heightened expectations of a potential breakthrough.
After canceling a Saturday news conference in Jordan and a planned trip later that day to the United Arab Emirates, Mr. Kerry flew by helicopter to Amman for a two-hour meeting with Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority, and his advisers, including the Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat.
Asked if he was making progress as the meeting got under way, Mr. Kerry replied, “Working hard.”
Mr. Kerry then headed back to Israel for an evening meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, his third such meeting in three days. Tzipi Livni, Israel’s minister of justice and the government’s chief negotiator on the Palestinian issue, and Isaac Molho, Mr. Netanyahu’s special envoy, were to attend the meeting as well, according to a State Department official.
The Jerusalem Post doesn’t seem any better informed. Secretary Kerry may have a press conference tomorrow or he may not. Haaretz is of two minds, with one post confirming the imminent announcement of peace talks and another post saying the two sides are “nowhere near” resuming peace talks.
The Middle East has a way of punishing optimists, but I hope Kerry doesn’t come away from all this empty-handed.
What do they have to talk about? How much more land the US is going to allow Israel to steal? What weapon systems are on the Knesset’s wish-list? The need to kill Palestinians at a more equitable ratio than usual?
Part of it is apparently about how to get businesses to invest $4 billion in the territories.
This is the key point, from the Jerusalem Post:
The US can run interference for Netanyahu, delaying such action, more effectively if there are local peace talks, real or imagined.
Exactly. Fuck the peace process. Israel had its chance for 6 decades. They chose war and apartheid. Their time is up.
How, exactly, is their time up? That seems like a completely nonsensical statement.
Show me how we get two states. It cannot happen. Not only is there no politically will, but it is physically and geographically not possible. Unless Israel sends in the military to boot out every single settler and award the P’s with the buildings and infrastructure as reparations, it’s not happening. Not now, not ever. They will need to be dragged by the international community through BDS to form a one-state and give the Palestinians political rights. That means an end to this racist Zionist dream of a “Jewish state.” Effectively, their time is up and citizens of the world save the US are tired of their shit.
The only nonsensical statements are the words “two state solution” and “peace talks”.
The only time progress has been made has been under Democratic presidents. Carter got the Camp David Accords. Clinton got the peace treaty with Jordan, the Oslo process, and the talks at the end of his presidency. The eight years of the Bush presidency were tremendously costly, and things had deteriorated by the time Obama showed up. Netanyahu was betting on Obama losing. But he didn’t lose and Netanyahu’s coalition took a beating. Either things are about to take a major turn or they are not. But a lot of things have changed dramatically in the region and I will not be surprised if Israel’s leaders are thinking differently than they have in the past.
What has changed is that Obama doesn’t need Netanyahu’s support but Netanyahu definitely needs the cover of the US in the General Assembly to ensure that Palestine doesn’t get the cachet of full sovereignty with claims to the 1967 borders.
We’ll see what sort of negotiator Kerry turns out to be.
That’s not really true unless you think the Olmert government was full of shit.
Most every Israeli government except the Netanyahu one in the 90s has offered successively clarifying (if not exactly compromising) offers since Oslo, none to Palestinian liking.
There’s a missing logical step in this plan, where the whole Israeli political establishment from Labor to the actual fascists says, “Oh, my bad.” That won’t happen. Adopting it just means 50 years of increasing apartheid for the Palestinians, while the government is getting “dragged”. At least the 2-states approach has a history of thinking behind it and a number of steps that could still be taken (declaration and recognition of the Palestinian state, for one).
And the attempt at two states since Israel first was awarded more than their fair share has been what, exactly? The two state approach is exactly why we are where we are, as Tarheel alluded earlier; it is a distraction in bad faith while more land is stolen.
Bad faith is the reason why we are where we are; the two-state approach is just the terrain.
I can’t really disagree with you: your one-state is a little like socialized medicine, the most rational and just approach, but there’s no imaginable way of getting there from here. Two-state is hardly hopeful at this point, I’m very pessimistic that there is any “solution” at all, but–it takes the bad faith into the calculations, in that so many Israeli leaders have claimed (lying) to support it, and this hypocrisy provides some leverage to work with, as the Carter and Clinton administrations did. It’s a crappy game but the only game there is.
“Fuck the peace talks. Israel had its chance?”
You seem to be operating under the misapprehension that peace talks are some sort of favor the Palestinians are doing for the Israelis, and that the failure of the talks would be some sort of setback for Israel – oh, and that the Palestinians are doing so awesomely under the status quo that they have no reason to make a deal.
Nothing will happen.
Bibi is nothing more than a softer, more sociably acceptable and more personally engaging version of the Dick Cheney model of political sociopath.
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“Clinton got the peace treaty with Jordan, the Oslo process, and the talks at the end of his presidency. The eight years
of the Bush presidency were tremendously costly, and things had deteriorated by the time Obama showed up.”
The Isrealis hated no one more than Bush Sr. and James Baker III with the pressure exerted that led to the Oslo Accords. It took hate speech by Netanyahu during an election campaign and the gun held by Yigal Amir to stall the peace process.
Obama’s greatest failure was his Cairo speech, the complete tactical outmaneuvring by Netanyahu during his first term. Thanks to a weak Republican campaign and candidate Romney, Obama could use his upper hand vs Netanyahu during his second term. What Obama needs to do is to make a choice: the hardline of Susan Rice or the comprehensive dealing with the Middle-East as John Kerry has set out to do. Being indecisive, Obama will risk to destruct John Kerry’s peace initiative.
Knesset blocks any movement to initiate peace talks with Palestinians
Americans for Peace Now
Hey Oui, the Susan Rice link seems to be the wrong one. What did you mean?
.
Amb. Susan Rice Diplomacy: U.S. is ‘disgusted’ over UN Syria veto
Susan Rice continous to gripe about Russia’s “one-sidedness” on Syria and never bothers about the US stand on Israel and its stubborness in vetoing all Security Councils resolutions. Even in her final speech she didn’t fail to attack Russia on Syria. Now she has come even closer to Obama to set the principles on “National Security” issues. In a position more powerful than John Kerry?
Susan Rice and the Jewish Service Award, how I’m not surprised
Generally speaking, I’ve expected
erryKerry to be a failure at SecState, just like everything else he’s tried in the last decade. I’ll just expect to be somewhere in the range of “unsurprised” to “impressed with how awful that turned out to be despite my low expectations.” And I’d bet $50.00 it’s no better than that. The Israelis are straight racist ***holes and Kerry is an ineffectual blueblood.But that’s just me.
There’s a lot of hate in this thread. I don’t revel in the failure and cynicism.
I’m sure there will eventually be a conference on having a conference on having direct negotiations that will be scheduled whenever and then that conference will succeed in producing the conference that succeeds in producing the negotiations that invariably fail when the Palestinians blow them up within a month of their initiation. Which is what I’d be counting on if I was a pro-settlement Israeli. Humoring the activists is good business as long as you can always count on the Palestinians to do the dumbest thing possible in response.
But as John Kerry proves, there will never be a shortage of suicidal do-gooders and messiahs that will be willing to bash their heads against the wall. Eventually the wall will crack, we just don’t know whose head will be the deciding one (or what health and sanity they’ll have left when it goes). Best to just keep trying.
>>negotiations that invariably fail when the Palestinians blow them up
and in the same breath you accuse others of hate and cynicism…
I’d say the negotiations invariably fail because the Israelis aren’t actually negotiating in good faith. They don’t want peace, they want to win.
Also, too: except for occasional splinter groups, almost all Palestinian attacks are intended as reprisals. And there’s always a steady flow of incidents to avenge, most of which don’t draw that type of reaction. But the reactions are what get reported in the US. A “period of peace” means the casual brutality and occasional deaths of Palestinians continue as usual, but nobody strikes back.
Sure, the people who do strike back aren’t doing anything constructive in terms of a long-term solution, and they’re not dumb – they know it. But: constructive in terms of constructing what? The Israeli government, regardless of party, has made clear for years that their ideal long-term outcome is a Greater Israel as a Jewish democratic theocracy without Palestinians – hence the ever-expanding “settlements,” a telling euphemism that implied nobody lives on the land they’re stealing. The people in power in Isreal now are simply more forthcoming about that ideal outcome.
Palestinians have plenty of day-to-day evidence that Israel never intends to willingly recognize their full rights, and they’ve heard promises to the contrary for decades that never, ever pan out. In that circumstance, it’s inevitable that a few feel they have nothing further to lose and simply lash out or try to exact vengeance. I agree it’s stupid, but it doesn’t happen in a void, and to blame their actions for the impasse, rather than the daily brutality of an Apartheid state committed to its own expansion, is….lame. And bassackwards.
Oh, there is some politics going on here. What do you imagine the neocons will be talking about Sunday?
Everyone wants to win. Who would want to lose? It’s a zero-sum game, not hippy-dippy land.
That’s why my sympathy lies with neither the Israelis nor the Palestinians, but with those who can’t help but try and get those two to help themselves.
I remember 25 years ago having a Native American friend tell me that in terms of theft of land and the means used to accomplish it, the Palestinians were the Native Americans of the Middle East. That analogy has held up remarkably well over the past quarter-century.
As I recall, most “treaties” didn’t work out very well for Native Americans. They were negotiated from a position of overwhelming strength, blatant dishonesty, and contempt for the very humanity of the other signatories, and were usually violated by white Europeans almost immediately. So you can forgive Palestinians for being pretty cynical about a “peace” process being brokered by Israel’s biggest – and, regarding the Occupation, only – ally.
I/P peace talks — on the bucket list for the second term of US Presidents. Carter demonstrated the danger of getting any peace treaty with Israel in the first term.
I hope something comes of it but I always remember Netanyanhu’s ability to Yeah-but it with another round of suburbs.
Peace talk is a long process, sometimes or I mean most of the time it doesn’t work at all 🙁 http://linkapp.me/d0z8A