It’s beyond my understanding why Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas continually falls into traps that serve to bolster American/Israeli credibility on the international stage, while leaving himself looking weak and ineffectual.
With great fanfare, this latest US-brokered initiative was announced serving up yet another dollop of hope, albeit minute, to millions of Palestinians on the West Bank and throughout the Diaspora. A meeting between negotiators to be held in Jerusalem is scheduled for today and, as a “good will gesture” Israel has approved the release of 26 Palestinian prisoners—including several from Hamas and Islamic Jihad—with more to follow. But that gesture, characterized by Israel’s far right as setting free “terrorists with blood on their hands,” pales in comparison to the blow Israel dealt to the revived peace process just days before the parties are due to sit at the table.
On Sunday, Israel’s Ministry of Housing announced it would issue tenders for 1,187 new settler housing units in East Jerusalem and on the West Bank and stated the intention of issuing many more in the future throughout “Judea and Samaria.” This makes an absolute mockery of Israel’s stated ambition to work toward a Palestinian state. It’s as though Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu shook the hand of the Palestinian leader and slapped him with the other. This is nothing short of an insult. It’s no wonder Palestinians feel cheated and enraged. A senior Palestinian negotiator Mohamed Shtayyeh accused Israel of using “peace negotiations as a smokescreen for more settlement construction” and there are reports that talks may be halted before they’ve begun. I believe there’s more to this than Israel playing for time to continue its land grab.
In June, Israel came under heavy European Union censure over its expansion of Jewish colonies in East Jerusalem and the West Bank and a warning that Israeli “entities” operating from occupied land will be ineligible for EU loans and grants in 2014. The Israeli government is notoriously prickly about criticism, which it invariably puts down to anti-Semitism, whether valid or otherwise. But, in this case, it directed its fury at Palestinians, announcing they would bar the EU from implementing West Bank projects benefiting Palestinian residents. Almost immediately following the peace initiative’s launch, Israel sought urgent talks with the EU to remove its planned sanctions. As long as peace talks are ongoing, the EU would be hard pressed to refuse.
It’s evident that the Israeli government isn’t serious about a Palestinian state. Netanyahu has always been notoriously against the two-state solution to which he’s been forced to pay mere lip service to pacify Washington. As far as he’s concerned, now that troublesome Gaza has been shed from occupation, Palestinians in the West Bank should be given economic incentives and improved infrastructure to keep them quiet, while 1.6 million Gazans can be left to rot as long as militant groups refrain from rocket attacks against Israel. It’s highly unlikely that he’s had a genuine change of heart.
But let’s be generous and suppose he’s serious this time around. His cabinet is stuffed with right-wing hawks for which a Palestinian state is an anathema. Can their arms even be twisted? In any event, the only “Palestine” Netanyahu would ever countenance would be one sans East Jerusalem as its capital. It would be a demilitarized excuse for a state with no control over its own borders, air space and coastline and one that would be lumbered with the largest Israeli Jewish settlements, such as Ariel and Ma’ale Adumim. As for the right of return for Palestinian refugees, that’s a red line for Israel apart from a token influx of, say, 5,000–10,000.
The Obama administration’s sincerity is also being questioned when Secretary of State John Kerry has appointed Martin Indyk as his chief liaison envoy/negotiator on the pretext that he’s been involved in previous peace efforts. Surely Indyk, a self-confessed Zionist, can’t be a credible middleman when he was formerly America’s ambassador to Israel—and, more crucially, research director for AIPAC, the most influential US pro-Israel lobbying organization. How on earth can a lobbyist for Israel be considered impartial? Where are America’s finest minds we’re always hearing about; is there no one in the US with intimate knowledge of Middle East politics, apart from AIPAC’s man?
It seems to me that US foreign policy constitutes a series of blunders—gifting Iraq to Iran, leaving Afghanistan in the hands of a resurgent Taleban next year, and managing to incur the wrath of just about every Egyptian. President after president lurches from one disaster to the other.
Mahmoud Abbas has been let down by the US and Israel time and time again. It’s about time he refused to participate in cinematic endeavors to cast Netanyahu and Obama as the good guys on the world’s stage. Abbas is too eager to please, too easily manipulated. He should have stuck to his guns by insisting upon the cessation of West Bank Jewish colony expansion, before his photo-op with Kerry and Netanyahu. If he agrees to go ahead with talks despite being undermined by the housing minister’s announcement, he has no cards to play. If he doesn’t, Israeli and American spinmeisters will shake their heads in faux disappointment, reaffirming that old propagandist canard “The Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.”
Abbas, go tell the Americans to find another actor to star in their dirty games movie before you are tarred with the same brush!
Linda S. Heard is a British specialist writer on Middle East affairs. She welcomes feedback and can be contacted by email at heardonthegrapevines@yahoo.co.uk.
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Abbas: Always bitten, never shy
Posted on August 14, 2013 by Linda S. Heard
It’s beyond my understanding why Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas continually falls into traps that serve to bolster American/Israeli credibility on the international stage, while leaving himself looking weak and ineffectual.
With great fanfare, this latest US-brokered initiative was announced serving up yet another dollop of hope, albeit minute, to millions of Palestinians on the West Bank and throughout the Diaspora. A meeting between negotiators to be held in Jerusalem is scheduled for today and, as a “good will gesture” Israel has approved the release of 26 Palestinian prisoners—including several from Hamas and Islamic Jihad—with more to follow. But that gesture, characterized by Israel’s far right as setting free “terrorists with blood on their hands,” pales in comparison to the blow Israel dealt to the revived peace process just days before the parties are due to sit at the table.
On Sunday, Israel’s Ministry of Housing announced it would issue tenders for 1,187 new settler housing units in East Jerusalem and on the West Bank and stated the intention of issuing many more in the future throughout “Judea and Samaria.” This makes an absolute mockery of Israel’s stated ambition to work toward a Palestinian state. It’s as though Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu shook the hand of the Palestinian leader and slapped him with the other. This is nothing short of an insult. It’s no wonder Palestinians feel cheated and enraged. A senior Palestinian negotiator Mohamed Shtayyeh accused Israel of using “peace negotiations as a smokescreen for more settlement construction” and there are reports that talks may be halted before they’ve begun. I believe there’s more to this than Israel playing for time to continue its land grab.
In June, Israel came under heavy European Union censure over its expansion of Jewish colonies in East Jerusalem and the West Bank and a warning that Israeli “entities” operating from occupied land will be ineligible for EU loans and grants in 2014. The Israeli government is notoriously prickly about criticism, which it invariably puts down to anti-Semitism, whether valid or otherwise. But, in this case, it directed its fury at Palestinians, announcing they would bar the EU from implementing West Bank projects benefiting Palestinian residents. Almost immediately following the peace initiative’s launch, Israel sought urgent talks with the EU to remove its planned sanctions. As long as peace talks are ongoing, the EU would be hard pressed to refuse.
It’s evident that the Israeli government isn’t serious about a Palestinian state. Netanyahu has always been notoriously against the two-state solution to which he’s been forced to pay mere lip service to pacify Washington. As far as he’s concerned, now that troublesome Gaza has been shed from occupation, Palestinians in the West Bank should be given economic incentives and improved infrastructure to keep them quiet, while 1.6 million Gazans can be left to rot as long as militant groups refrain from rocket attacks against Israel. It’s highly unlikely that he’s had a genuine change of heart.
But let’s be generous and suppose he’s serious this time around. His cabinet is stuffed with right-wing hawks for which a Palestinian state is an anathema. Can their arms even be twisted? In any event, the only “Palestine” Netanyahu would ever countenance would be one sans East Jerusalem as its capital. It would be a demilitarized excuse for a state with no control over its own borders, air space and coastline and one that would be lumbered with the largest Israeli Jewish settlements, such as Ariel and Ma’ale Adumim. As for the right of return for Palestinian refugees, that’s a red line for Israel apart from a token influx of, say, 5,000–10,000.
The Obama administration’s sincerity is also being questioned when Secretary of State John Kerry has appointed Martin Indyk as his chief liaison envoy/negotiator on the pretext that he’s been involved in previous peace efforts. Surely Indyk, a self-confessed Zionist, can’t be a credible middleman when he was formerly America’s ambassador to Israel—and, more crucially, research director for AIPAC, the most influential US pro-Israel lobbying organization. How on earth can a lobbyist for Israel be considered impartial? Where are America’s finest minds we’re always hearing about; is there no one in the US with intimate knowledge of Middle East politics, apart from AIPAC’s man?
It seems to me that US foreign policy constitutes a series of blunders—gifting Iraq to Iran, leaving Afghanistan in the hands of a resurgent Taleban next year, and managing to incur the wrath of just about every Egyptian. President after president lurches from one disaster to the other.
Mahmoud Abbas has been let down by the US and Israel time and time again. It’s about time he refused to participate in cinematic endeavors to cast Netanyahu and Obama as the good guys on the world’s stage. Abbas is too eager to please, too easily manipulated. He should have stuck to his guns by insisting upon the cessation of West Bank Jewish colony expansion, before his photo-op with Kerry and Netanyahu. If he agrees to go ahead with talks despite being undermined by the housing minister’s announcement, he has no cards to play. If he doesn’t, Israeli and American spinmeisters will shake their heads in faux disappointment, reaffirming that old propagandist canard “The Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.”
Abbas, go tell the Americans to find another actor to star in their dirty games movie before you are tarred with the same brush!
Linda S. Heard is a British specialist writer on Middle East affairs. She welcomes feedback and can be contacted by email at heardonthegrapevines@yahoo.co.uk.