Give me a break! The Palestinians have had nearly continuous negotiations with Israel since the Madrid Conference, held 17.5 years ago.
‘Negotiations’ aren’t lacking. Successful peace negotiations– that is, negotiations that (a) result in a peace agreement and (b) that leads to implementation: Those are what is lacking.
‘Negotiations’ as a cover for continued pursuit of the colony-building project is all that Netanyahu is promising.
Analogous to ‘shooting while crying’, this could be summed up as ‘colony-building while [endlessly] negotiating.’
No-one should be fooled. This charade known as ‘negotiations’ has gone on W-A-Y-S too long already.
When I interviewed Salam Fayyad a month ago, he said the only thing that would make returning to the negotiating table worthwhile would be if there is a complete halt on settlement-building. “Not a brick” in the words of some Palestinians.
I would describe that as a pretty minimal demand.
Between 1991 and 2007, the numbers of settlers in the West Bank including East Jerusalem rose from 227,600 to above 372,000.
9 thoughts on “Netanyahu promises… continuous negotiations!”
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So, you see? Israel is not intransigent. They are more than willing to negotiate, and negotiate, and negotiate, and negotiate while they continue to expand and expand and expand and expand and expand.
The key term missing here: “conclusion,” as in “the conclusion of negotiations.” Just plain “negotiation,” without any tangible results from it, means nothing more than a “process” synonym for ineffectually “working the levers,” as the late Barbara Tuchman put it.
But the Apartheid Zionist Entity (or A.Z.E.) will never conclude negotiations with the Palestinian Arabs whom they keep incarcerating, murdering, or bulldozing out of their homes every day. Why conclude anything when sooner or later the interminable “process” will result in no Palestinans alive or out of prison with whom to “negotiate”? Finally, a “Final Solution” by not solving anything!
People keep seeing ligh at the end of the tunnel…
Israel’s choke-hold in America loosens
I witnessed one example of this earlier this week when I participated in the second annual symposium on Gaza, jointly organized by and hosted at two outstanding universities, Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Equally noteworthy was that it was sponsored by mainstream units at the universities, including MIT’s Center for International Studies and the Program on Human Rights and Justice, and Harvard’s Middle East Initiative at the Kennedy School, the Center for Middle East Studies, and the Human Rights Program at the Harvard Law School.
Boston University Political Science professor Irene Grendzier suggested that two phenomena have defined events in the Middle East in recent years – the problem of weapons of mass destruction, but also the problem of “weapons of mass deception” in the United States public arena.
The deliberate deception of the American people about realities on the ground in Israel and Palestine was one reason the US government and public could take a position of “overwhelming silence” on the recent Israeli assault on Gaza, and its continuing strangulation of that society.
“The deception is breaking down slowly, however” she said, because of the availability of alternative sources of news available to anyone who sought it out on the internet or non-American television services. This meant that “we are witnessing the public beheading of Israeli myths on events in Palestine.”
Public beheadings of myths! Whew… tough talk. The Palestinians are still on the receiving end of the weapons of mass deception.
On the other hand, the Israelis need to know that the end game in negotiating is not a cease fire (i.e. the Hamas position) – and, in the case of Hamas, a cease fire that would not be fully observed anyway – and that ceded land will not be used as a platform to launch further attacks. Which is to say, the Israelis are not likely to be forthcoming unless any settlement ends the dispute entirely.
I read a recent interview/article about John Negraponte in which he noted what Bill Clinton told him, among other people, about the negotiations back in 2000. Clinton, according to Negraponte, said that the main obstacle to peace was Arafat, his being the main reason why such negotiations failed. While one might dispute this, Clinton was not alone in holding that view.
This may be because Arafat more or less walked away from his own negotiating stance – something asserted by Prince Bandar in an article that appeared in The NewYorker (and which appeared and may well still appear on the website of the Saudi Arabian Embassy to the US, so it is probably reasonably accurate).
Whether or not that information is really accurate (i.e. both what Clinton said at the time [which, to note, also appeared years ago in The Guardian] and what Prince Bandar said), the fact is that this is not only the Israel show. It is also the story of mistakes and duplicity and unreasonableness by Palestinian Arab leaders.
BBC: Israel’s new ultra-nationalist foreign minister has said it is not bound by a US-sponsored 2007 agreement to reach a peace deal with the Palestinians. “The Annapolis conference, it has no validity,” Avigdor Lieberman said.
Haaretz: A source in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s party confirmed Wednesday that his new government intended to distance itself from U.S.-sponsored understandings on working towards a Palestinian state.
Asked about ultra-nationalist Lieberman’s remark that Israel was no longer bound by the 2007 framework, the source replied: “There is no problem here. He (Lieberman) is distancing himself from the Annapolis label, as the government intends to do.”
N Friedman–
We have fairly detailed accounts of what happened in 2000-2001 in the negotiations and there’s no reason to take seriously the words of some Saudi prince who wasn’t there. Shlomo Ben-Ami is no fan of Arafat and blames him for the final breakdown and I think that’s oversimplified (based on other things I’ve read), but even Ben-Ami says the initial Camp David offer was not one that was fair to the Palestinians, yet all we heard from Clinton at that time was how far Barak had come. So Clinton’s word is worth nothing (not that anyone needed to be told that).
Donald Johnson,
We do have detailed accounts. You note that the original Israeli offer was not the most generous. That is called negotiating. So, I do not see your point.
As for Clinton, if we go by Robert Malley’s account, Arafat’s group was not ready for the Camp David event. So, why would Clinton compliment Arafat? And, why should I discount what Clinton said in a debriefing meeting with people like Negraponte? That makes no sense. There is no imaginable motive, in the context of such a meeting, for him to lie. And, why would Prince Bandar back up Clinton’s story, which makes the Israelis look like good guys? That seems rather unlikely.
At the very least, one might think that the settlement expansion would be halted by an Israeli side interested in a negotiated agreement.
That the expansion has accelerated speaks volumes for the intentions of successive Israeli governments.