Bemused, But Not Amused
Israel is definitely not a grovelling, plaintive and helpless client of a powerful country whose goodwill and support it most definitely needs and appreciates. Much as it would like to accommodate the wishes and desires of its major sponsor and erstwhile supporter on the world stage, it is a sovereign nation whose first duty is to itself and its people. That President Barack Obama and his administration are shocked, disappointed, annoyed as hell, is unfortunate.The straitened and condemnatory statement: "I think it makes it harder for them to make peace with their neighbours. I think it embitters the Palestinians in a way that could end up being very dangerous", is ingenuous at best, hypocritical to historical reality in its worst interpretation. The Palestinians have never been anything but bitter, it is what sustains them, their sense of bitter victimhood, their languorous, deeply-held aggrievement.
Palestinians do not need much in the way of encouragement to become violent in tone and in action. This is their relief valve. Their incendiary hatred for their neighbour whom they will never cease blaming for stealing their land and their patrimony is irreconcilable with peace-making. This is why all previous, along with the current theatre of 'peace talks', have failed to conclude with a working arrangement toward detente.
The Jerusalem municipality's decision to authorize construction of 900 new housing units in the Jerusalem neighbourhood of Gilo is an internal affair. Gilo is built on land legally owned by Jews, purchased before 1948; it lies within the municipal boundaries of Jerusalem. That is Jerusalem, the undivided capital of Israel, Palestinian aspirations notwithsanding. And unlike the Obama administration, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner disagrees that this new construction represents an obstacle to peace.
The construction of new 'natural growth' housing in the West Bank settlements, on the other hand, is one that the Netanyahu government has been prepared to postpone, albeit not indefinitely. Historically, when it comes to peace talks with the Palestinians, settlement expansion has never been an obstacle to committing to peace talks. It's simply that those peace talks have never gone anywhere.
Any time a PA leader - Arafat or Abbas - began to strike a deal that looked like it might go somewhere, popular Palestinian resistance and resentment caused them to pull back when they lost political appeal as a result of accusations that they were acceding to the enemy, and they launched their famous Intifadas, restoring trust and solidarity with the people. They well knew their adversaries, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade would wreak havoc, if they didn't, and take the advantage from them.
In all of the accusations and counter-accusations, including American and European condemnation of the Jerusalem municipality destroying some illegal Palestinian-owned buildings, has there been any mention in the West of the fact that the Jerusalem municipality is proceeding with plans for the construction of over five thousand housing units in Arab neighbourhoods in northern and southeastern Jerusalem?
The Palestinian structures that were demolished were built illegally on public land. All the anguished breast-beating about the destruction of buildings owned by Palestinians are a canard; anywhere else in the world where squatters and illegal buildings are erected, the situation would be a non-issue. Palestinians and their ardent sympathizers have been working overtime on their public relations agenda to further isolate Israel.
The problem with the Obama administration is that they have failed to recognize that they are dealing with an autonomous entity in the State of Israel. That their bullying and denunciations of Israel, and complicit and implicit statements to the Arab and Muslim world in the hopes that their zeal to make friends there and relax tensions will materialize into reality have succeeded in making them look incompetent.
Actually, the truth is, they have been obscenely incompetent. Unnecessarily so. Their incompetence has been an embarrassment to them, and yet they continue to tread that same imbecilic path to hopeless dysfunction. Time out?
Labels: Israel, Middle East, Troublespots, United States
posted by Pieface @ Friday, November 20, 2009
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