The Tail Wagging The Donkey
"The committee will convene again in a month to study the alternatives, which gives the U.S. administration a chance between now and then to try to find a solution to the settlements issue": Navil Abu Rudeina, PA spokesmanWell, there it is in lurid black and white. The Arab League ministers are dictating terms to the President of the United States. They doubtless feel free to do so. President Obama, after all, flew to the Middle East to address Muslims in a speech set in Egypt, assuring them that although the United States might have been tardy and faulty in the past, it no longer would be. The country and the new President had embarked on a new path.
One that recognized its indebtedness to the Middle East countries. The Muslim countries of the world. Which had earned the respect of the international community through their skilled ability to communicate their values and priorities. And through the undoubted influence the bloc holds within the United Nations. Such influence, for example, as to lead the UN in viewing Israel as an outcast, human-rights-abusing state.
That said, and with Barack Obama's assurance to the ummah that he personally had their best interests at heart, that they had no reason in fact to view America as their enemy, and that Islam had integrated itself into American life, and everything was copacetic with the pluralistic world view, the Arab League feels fully confident in instructing the American President that their expectation is that he will bring Israel to heel.
The stipulation for a definite time limit is starkly evident; prove it. Prove what you've implied. Prove that you, personally, are intimately dedicated to solving this issue of settlements, for no peace talks can conceivably take place in confidence while Israel continues to blatantly assume it has a right to take land not its own. Of course, if the settlements issue is solved for the moment, and another few months of withholding permission to build succeeds, what next?
Why, when Israel in good faith, suspended building within the settlements for ten months, did peace talks not proceed at that point? Oh, right, the Palestinian Authority was miffed over the IDF's defensive incursion into Gaza. Offending Palestinians greatly at the very idea that Israel would wish to, never mind have the legal right to defend itself from incessant rocket attacks. So the ten months lapsed and nothing was accomplished.
Oh well.
Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas is resolutely determined that the PLO/PA will not return to the talks they have now once again abandoned, as long as settlements construction continue. Pressure is being placed on West Bank Palestinians who rely on the construction jobs in those settlements for their daily bread. They insist they will only leave the security of those jobs when the PA offers them employment elsewhere.
Oh dear.
As for the Arab League itself and its monitoring committee which has given the PA the authority Mr. Abbas sought to suspend talks, it is rather amazing that none other than Syria's President Assad scornfully rejects the PA's hesitant fear to make its own decisions without the firm direction of the Arab League. Whose direction he seeks to ensure authenticity in authority.
 | Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Qatari FM Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim al Thani at the Arab League follow up committee meeting on October 8, 2010. |
| Photo by: Reuters |
At its conference in Libya, the committee gave Abbas support on Friday for his decision to suspend the direct talks with Israel as long as settlement construction continues, and resolved to reconvene in a month to examine alternatives to negotiations. It also expressed hope that the United States would pressure Israel to extend the construction freeze.
Bashir Assad amazingly, has blasted the Arab League for its focus on the West Bank settlement issue as a peace talk condition. Nor would he, he hissed, seek permission of the Arab League if and when he undertook himself to conduct similar peace talks with Israel on behalf of Syria. But, whines Mr. Abbas, the issue is one of great affect on all Arabs. He will resign without their support.
He is correct, of course; the greater Arab world of the Middle East has always manipulated the Palestinians for the decided purpose of demonstrating their suffering as refugees to the world for sympathy and support against the dastardly presence of a Jewish state in an Arab territory. It should be noted too, that this is sacreligious; land consecrated to Islam, cannot be transformed into Jewish territory. But that's clearly racist, isn't it?
The PA's Abbas stressed the absolute need for the Arab League to impress upon the United States its duty to impose an absolute halt to settlement construction. The alternative would be to approach the kindly and sympathetic members of the United Nations to recognize the reality of a Palestinian State in the West Bank and Gaza Strip within the 1967 borders. Previously rejected, of course. A fait accompli would make Israel blink repeatedly. What a strategy.
Of course there is also the issue of the status of Jerusalem, that very city that remains the seat of the Israeli government, reflecting its ancient heritage. What? Israel will balk at dividing Jerusalem? It will never assent to having all its most sacred sites in the hands, once again, of an Arab government? Isn't that just like the arrogance of Jews.
Labels: Israel, Middle East, Peace, Political Realities
posted by Pieface @ Monday, October 11, 2010
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