{"id":42157,"date":"2014-04-28T12:00:21","date_gmt":"2014-04-28T11:00:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=42157"},"modified":"2015-05-05T21:35:04","modified_gmt":"2015-05-05T20:35:04","slug":"yet-another-betrayal-of-the-palestinians","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2014\/04\/yet-another-betrayal-of-the-palestinians\/","title":{"rendered":"Yet another Betrayal of the Palestinians"},"content":{"rendered":"

‘Barack Obama becomes the latest US President effectively to give up on the peace process’.<\/em><\/p>\n

25 April 2014<\/em> – Dead in the water. Just as the entire world predicted \u2013 with the exception of Messrs Barack Obama and John Kerry and, I suppose, our favourite \u201cpeace\u201d envoy Tony Blair \u2013 the whole fandango of an Israeli-Palestinian \u201cpeace\u201d has collapsed again. US President Obama, walking away from the car crash for which his own political cowardice is entirely to blame, says it\u2019s time for a \u201cpause\u201d. Could there be a more chilling word for America\u2019s impotence in the Middle East?<\/p>\n

Of course \u2013 lock-stepping with Israel as usual \u2013 Obama condemned Mahmoud Abbas for the \u201cunhelpful\u201d step of trying to form a unity government with Hamas, a skewed version of events that entirely chimes with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu\u2019s predictable claim that the Palestinian President \u201cformed an alliance with a murderous terrorist organisation that calls for Israel\u2019s destruction\u201d.<\/p>\n

Forget that Mr Abbas insists that this Palestinian unity would be founded on recognition of Israel, renunciation of violence and acceptance of previous agreements.<\/p>\n

Since Mr Netanyahu has been demanding that Mr Abbas accept \u2013 even before the latter\u2019s renewed love affair with Hamas \u2013 that Israel was a \u201cJewish state\u201d (thus deleting its tens of thousands of Israeli Arab citizens), no \u201crecognition of Israel\u201d without its Jewish definition would be of any use to him.<\/p>\n

For years, the Israelis have been telling the world that there was no Palestinian to negotiate with \u2013 because Mr Abbas did not represent the Palestinians of Gaza. But the moment Mr Abbas and the\u00a0 Palestinian Authority try to bring about the unity which would produce Israel\u2019s negotiating partner, Mr Netanyahu announces that the \u201cpeace\u201d \u2013 and let\u2019s forget the \u201ctwo-state solution\u201d \u2013 is nixed.<\/p>\n

How on earth did Mr Kerry think that he could bring this nonsense off in nine months?\u00a0 For as long as the US administration remains in hock to the Israeli government and continues to support Israel, right or wrong, it can never \u2013 and will never \u2013 negotiate peace between the two.<\/p>\n

Only a month ago, Israel approved the construction of yet another 186 houses in the newly colonised Jewish areas of East Jerusalem. And colonisation is what it has all been about. How could Israel demand peace with Palestine while continuing to gobble up Arab land in the West Bank? The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the world\u2019s last colonial war. Deny this and you cannot even start talking.<\/p>\n

Mr Netanyahu would have done better to condemn the utterly undemocratic nature of the Palestinian Authority, its suppression of dissent \u2013 though this suppression in the West Bank is essential to prevent Palestinians from opposing the \u201cpeace process\u201d \u2013 and Mr Abbas\u2019s own totally illegal and undemocratic presidency. But Mr Abbas was supposed to be \u201cour\u201d man, the guy whom Mr Obama and Mr Kerry and the Beloved Tony could talk to, so there was no way in which Israel could trash the old man.<\/p>\n

The writing was on the wall \u2013 and let us remember that this clich\u00e9 comes from the writing on the wall at Belshazzar\u2019s feast in which he was \u201cweighed in the balance and found wanting\u201d \u2013 from the very moment that the fey and luckless Mr Kerry told us all three weeks ago that the US administration was going to \u201cre-evaluate\u201d its role in Israeli-Palestinian talks.<\/p>\n

It was time, he said then, for \u201ca reality check\u201d. Had this hopeless US Secretary of State not grasped that it should have been taken before his ridiculous promise last year that all would be solved by the end of this month?<\/p>\n

Even the more inappropriate clich\u00e9s have acquired their own cemetery characteristics. Originally, the \u201cpeace process\u201d \u2013 which was rarely about peace and never a process \u2013 had to be put \u201cback on track\u201d each time it collapsed. Then the Quartet and the Beloved Blair supported a \u201croad map\u201d for peace \u2013 which presumably meant we were now driving towards peace rather than taking the train. But now we are encouraged to believe that peace is locked inside a room \u2013 from which it is necessary to escape through a door.<\/p>\n

Hence Mr Obama obligingly told the world yesterday that \u201crealistically, there is one door and that is [sic] the two parties getting together to make some very difficult compromises. We will encourage them to walk through that door.\u201d<\/p>\n

But then, in his next breath \u2013 speaking in South Korea\u00a0 \u2013 he announced that he did not \u201cexpect they will walk through that door, next week, next month or even in the course of the next six months\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

In other words, zilch. The premature winner of the Nobel Peace Prize for Public Speaking has thrown in the towel. It will be up to the next US president \u2013 perhaps La Clinton, with all her expertise at Middle East \u201cpeace-making\u201d, will be imposed on the poor old Israelis and Palestinians \u2013 to open the door, put the train back on track, drive the car down the road map or whatever other infantile expression is invented. But there\u2019s no Cuban cigar for guessing where all this went wrong.<\/p>\n

From the start, Mr Arafat agreed that his land would exist only in 22 per cent of Mandate Palestine. Fair enough. But then he accepted the growing Jewish colonies on the West Bank, allowed America to dictate the terms for peace \u2013 which were supposed to prevent any such territorial expansion after the Oslo agreement \u2013 and then permitted the US to blame him for the failure of negotiations. Hamas, with their dodgy relations with Syria, and then Qatar and Iran and Egypt (under Mr Morsi) and anyone else who could fund their corrupt institution, handed Israel a gift by bombarding Sderot from Gaza with thousands of inaccurate rockets, most of them home-made.<\/p>\n

It allowed Israel to kill hundreds of Palestinian civilians as it sought revenge, and deprived the Israeli left (that which still existed) of their support for the original Israeli withdrawal from Gaza; a withdrawal which Ariel Sharon\u2019s own right-hand man admitted was intended to allow Jewish colony expansion on the West Bank.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s up to them,\u201d President Obama said on Friday, throwing in the towel. So an all-powerful Israel and a partially occupied Palestine have to make their \u201ccompromises\u201d while Washington says \u2013 in Mr Obama\u2019s words \u2013 it \u201cwill never give up our hope or our commitment for the possibilities [sic] of peace\u201d. By which time, of course, \u201cPalestine\u201d will be as dead as the \u201cpeace process\u201d.<\/p>\n

_____________________________<\/p>\n

Robert Fisk, based in Beirut, is a multiple award-winning journalist on the Middle East and a <\/em>correspondent for <\/em>The Independent, a UK newspaper.\u00a0 He is the author of many books on the region, including <\/em>The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 independent.co.uk<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Join the BDS-BOYCOTT, DIVESTMENT, SANCTIONS <\/em><\/strong><\/span>campaign to protest the Israeli barbaric siege of Gaza, illegal occupation of the Palestine nation\u2019s territory, the apartheid wall, its inhuman and degrading treatment of the Palestinian people, and the more than 7,000 Palestinian men, women, elderly and children arbitrarily locked up in Israeli prisons.<\/p>\n

DON’T BUY<\/strong> PRODUCTS WHOSE<\/strong> BARCODE<\/strong> STARTS WITH<\/strong> 729<\/strong>, which indicates that it is produced in Israel.\u00a0\u00a0 DO YOUR PART! MAKE A DIFFERENCE!<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

7 2 9: BOYCOTT FOR JUSTICE!<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

25 April 2014 – Dead in the water. Just as the entire world predicted \u2013 with the exception of Messrs Barack Obama and John Kerry and, I suppose, our favourite \u201cpeace\u201d envoy Tony Blair \u2013 the whole fandango of an Israeli-Palestinian \u201cpeace\u201d has collapsed again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-42157","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-palestine-israel-gaza-genocide"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42157","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42157"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42157\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42157"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42157"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42157"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}