Obstacle to Peace
In Israel, in South Hebron, in cities like Dimona, European Union funding is paying for the illegal building of Arab homes. Roads have been built, electrical lines put in, forests destroyed and building of illegal homes for the Arab population is ongoing. Despite the illegality of the activities, and even while Israel is destroying illegally-built Israeli-Jewish homes, the government of Israel and its army does nothing to dissuade the illegal homes being built by Arabs.The government is not prepared to address the massive incidence of illegal Arab construction. It is extremely awkward, no one wants to upset any delicate discussion baskets. Yet Palestinian Authority negotiator Saeb Erekat repeated that absolutely no discussions whatever between the PA and Israel would be permitted unless Israel agreed to a complete and unequivocal construction freeze in the West Bank.
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu insists there is no reason whatever why discussions between Israel and the PA should not continue. That the issue of the construction freeze is irrelevant to the talks, and should the talks continue, the item respecting construction could be addressed at any time. The truth is, the construction freeze demanded by the PA is simply a handy excuse not to address peace negotiations.
The truth is, there is no real interest for the Palestinians in pursuing peace talks. Those talks have taken place previously, and have concluded successfully, but have never been ratified by the Palestinian Authority. The intention is currently as it always has been, to make an effort to appear to the West that there is genuine interest in pursuing peace talks, but in reality this is a stalling tactic.
The real agenda, an ongoing one, one that has been exercised for a half-century, is to propagandize to the West, as well as to Palestinians, to convince them that Israel has no heritage, no cultural-religious investment in the history of the area. That they are interlopers, having brazenly and illegally taken geography that they have no claim to, either historically or legally installed at the present, as a world-recognized nation.
As the Palestinian journalist Khaled Abu Toameh notes - who writes now for the Jerusalem Post simply because he discovered while working for Al Fajr, the Palestine Liberation Organization newspaper that they would accept only propaganda, not objective news reportage - "This is not a power struggle between good guys and bad guys. It is a struggle between bad guys and bad guys. ... They're only fighting over money and power".
He is speaking of the two Palestinian groups purporting to represent the best interests of Palestinians, Fatah and Hamas, one seen by the West as 'moderate', the other as 'radicals'. He sees them both equally as anti-Semitic and determined to oust Israel from the geography. There are no moderates on either side, he claims; both factions air moderate views to the West, and reveal their true agendas to their electorates.
Huge amounts of foreign aid, he says, has been purloined by Fatah officials, and the West is simply uninterested in reporting that little fact. It is inconvenient to their commitment to support the Palestinian cause in opposition to the oppression of the Jewish state. And, he argues, it is abundantly clear that peace in Gaza could have been achieved with the Israeli pull-out, not the collapsed social Palestinian failure that resulted, if settlements are the primary issue.
"I wish the settlements were the problem", noted Khaled Abu Toameh, addressing an audience of journalists on a trip to Toronto. "The real obstacle to peace is not a Jew building a settlement but the failure of the Palestinians to have a government. Is there a partner on the Palestinian side for peace talks? No."
Labels: Israel, Middle East, Traditions
posted by Pieface @ Sunday, July 12, 2009
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