In Bad Faith
What's all the fuss about? Why pretend surprise over an event that is so predictable? Haven't there been instances galore to prepare for such events? It's business as usual with the Palestinian Authority, after all. Are memories so short that no one recalls a summertime event where Hamas associates laid a trap for Mahmoud Abbas in a failed attempt to assassinate him at a time when Fatah and Hamas were still in a state of blessed union?So if colleagues, however bitter they are toward one another's aspirations and blatant attempts to out distance one the other for supreme leadership of the Palestinian people are so casually capable of attempting assassination of their own leadership, why the public display of surprise over a Fatah-associated group conspiring to assassinate Ehud Olmert? It's all brinkmanship, showmanship, and idle theatre.
Swept under the rug for accommodation of a perceived need at a dire time, but resurrected at another time to impact on a very uncomfortable summit where Prime Minister Olmert knows he cannot deliver even a modicum of accommodation toward meeting the PA's demands without losing his own core support. Thus his early warning alert, not to expect much to arise out of the forthcoming summit.
And who're we kidding, that the PA is committed to respecting its negotiations with Israel? Its haranguing and demands will continue with the usual determination to scream loud and long about entitlements until the adversarial rather than collegial exchanges result, in the minds of the PA negotiators, in the complete capitulation of the Israelis to the PA's demands.
The PLO, Fatah, the PA have no idea what balanced accommodation means.
They have no intention whatever to submit to any kind of fair negotiating procedures or any kind of arbitration that might result from the Annapolis Summit and the presence of U.S., French, German, Russian and E.U. representatives. Along with those of the Arab world, invited also to attend this exercise in frustrated illogicality.
It's all very well, to caution, as Nicolas Sarkozy did, echoing the very same statements issued by his confreres, that it's past time to settle the problem, but how to achieve such a settlement without succumbing completely to irrational demands that one side accept all the other's demands and think of this is a balanced and fair accommodation?
Clearly, Israel badly requires some other representatives with whom to bargain for peace, not the current body which so obviously spurns peace by claiming it will launch another spurt of violence against Israel should Israel prove by rejecting all the PA demands that it is not interested in peace. The responsibility to accept illogical and state-fatal demands is placed on Israel, with no dissenting voices heard from other-state interlocutors.
Do the Palestinians feel that they too require another prime representative with whom to bargain for what they obstinately consider their rights to begin with? Do they think that Netanayahu or Barak will deliver to them all that they stringently demand with no obligations on their part to reciprocate and surrender some of their own aspirational yearnings?
Might this have given them the confidence to encourage Fatah's terror-linkages to launch an assassination attempt on Olmert? Clumsy, impolitic, ragingly stupid in full characteristic of too many of the PA's representatives - demonstrating their incapacity for governance, let alone negotiating "in good faith" with a government from whom they wish to extract concessions.
Having to hold their feet to the fire to continue to incarcerate, let alone bring to justice the would-be executioners of that same head of government with whom they are engaging in negotiations. So much for integrity and honour. So much for reliability in representation and in bargaining.
So much for ongoing revelations of the backwardness and primitive mind-set of a people mired in tribal politics.
Labels: Israel, Justice, Political Realities, Terrorism
posted by Pieface @ Sunday, October 21, 2007
<< Home