At last, a US-sponsored peace conference for Israelis and Palestinians. At last, the Bush administration is heeding pleas that it get vigorously involved in Mideast peacemaking. Of course, it won’t work. The time in which a sit down with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas could have proved fruitful has long passed. Abbas rules over just two thirds of the Palestinian people today. His hold over the West Bank is based on an increasingly autocratic rule and is further buttressed by the Israeli army’s ongoing crackdowns on Abbas’ biggest political rival, Hamas. Abbas is no longer a legitimate leader to negotiate on behalf of the Palestinians. But more worrisome than Abbas’ popular legitimacy, however, is the fact that he simply lacks the political and military strength to conclude any sort of peace deal.
US intelligence officials had this to say according to today’s Washington Post:
Several intelligence assessments have warned that Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, the man U.S. policymakers hope can help salvage the Middle East peace process, may not be politically strong enough to achieve that goal, according to U.S. officials.
The assessments have also cautioned that his opponents in Hamas — the Islamic movement that is being shunned by Abbas, Israel and the United States — will not be easily marginalized.
…
The Palestinian president does not control all armed groups, including the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, that are linked to Fatah, and he may not be able to stem all terrorist plots, the intelligence reports have also warned. Hamas members and other extremists have significant incentive to target Israel from the West Bank to undermine new peace efforts — and Abbas’s ability to build a Hamas-less state, the assessments suggest.
“Fatah faces significant challenges in effectively governing the West Bank. Israeli military operations are the major factor restricting Hamas activity, and Abbas can at best influence, not control, the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade forces that are the power on the street in several towns,” said a senior intelligence official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the assessments are classified.
Bush can not foster a peace process that is based on a policy of further dividing the Palestinian people. Hamas simply must be brought into the process if there is to be any chance of success.
18 responses so far ↓
1 Rattling The Kettle // Jul 16, 2007 at 11:59 pm
You know, you can’t have it both ways, first criticizing Bush for not holding a peace conference, and then criticizing him for holding a peace conference. It’s just a tad disingenuous.
As for your conclusion, that “Hamas simply must be brought into the process if there is to be any chance of success,” what “process” do you refer tp? Certainly, it can’t be the “peace process”, because Hamas’ vision of “peace” is a one-state solution that does not involve Israel continuing to exist as a Jewish state. That’s not peace. That’s nothing but a call for indefinite conflict. If Hamas wants a seat at the peace table, they first have to accept the fundamental purpose of the talks - a way towards peaceful co-existence. If they were willing to do that, the Western boycott would have ended long before Hamas launched a civil war in Gaza.
2 ns // Jul 17, 2007 at 12:41 am
Hamas will not be brought into any process. Hamas took itself out of the process, and so the process will proceed without it, though perhaps to the detriment of both.
3 Edie // Jul 17, 2007 at 1:01 am
Who to include in peace talks or not is irrelevant. These shenanigans remind me of the distraction a magician uses to confuse his audience. There will not be peace in the region until the real issues are dealt with and the U.S. will not be the arbitrator to do it - it’s not in their agenda.
I also disagree with ‘Rattling’ - having a theocratic ‘Jewish State’, with no constitution and different policies and opportunities depending on your ethnicity or religion is not peace and will not lead to peace.
The World Bank report that came out last month pointed out decisively that Israel’s policies over the past 40 years and the current condition of the Occupied Territories make a two-state solution or a viable Palestinian State virtually impossible - this was well before the ‘civil war’ in Gaza.
The only solution - that will lead to any chance at peace and security for both Jewish and Palestinians - lies with dealing with the original issues created with the State of Israel, the occupation and creating a democratic, one state where rule of law governs for all equally.
4 Anonymous // Jul 17, 2007 at 1:23 am
I think all Palestinians should agree to recognize Israel the moment Israel agrees to recognize Palestine with it’s eternal capital of Jerusalem. Israel must of course provide security guarantees that it will control all the violent elements in its society who continue to attack and murder innocent Palestinians on a daily basis. All those Israeli militants must arrested and placed in jail and Israel must agree to collect all the weapons in these violent fanatics hands, including from such rogue groups as the “IDF” and “IAF”. Israel further must agree to cease the incitement and hatred against Palestinians that is the daily staple of the Israeli school system and media - such incitement to terrorism must be declared illegal in Israeli law and perpetrators arrested.
Fair, no?
5 busybody // Jul 17, 2007 at 2:23 am
Terrorist lover writes
Bush can not foster a peace process that is based on a policy of further dividing the Palestinian people. Hamas simply must be brought into the process if there is to be any chance of success.
When do we allow Al Queda to sit at the “peace table”
Maybe we can give Al Q a State or three so they wont hurt us
How does that sound, TERRORIST BLOGGER?
6 Chevalier de Malepertuis // Jul 17, 2007 at 4:28 am
Oh great busybody, the greatest TerroristHunter of all times! Your TerroristBloggerDetector is out of order.
Charles [and I] promote demands of well-known analysts like Shibley Telhami [”I don’t see how anything serious on the diplomatic front can be accomplished so long as the strategy to isolate Hamas continues”]. Why do I promote this demand? Because the assumption of Bush that an american general [security service] and money [economy-welfare] and a decret that Fatah has turned around 180°, has learned now to govern and figth corruption is enough to FIGTH TERRORISM is wrong. The reversal of americas policy was already done before the last elections and “the problem for Mr. Abbas is that Palestinians have seen [still] little tangible benefit from his close relationship with the United States.” Abbas had his chance after the Gaza withdrawal… Abbas had his chance after the elections … Abbas had his chance after Mekka … and everything has progressively declined. Fatah failure made Hamas a big player and it has found its way in the society not because they are much better than Fatah, but because Fatah did not deliver results in foreign and domestic policies. To isolate Hamas [very difficult and not done by words or demands] is not to bolster unreformed Fatah. 190 million dollars and a conference is no peace-initiative.
Bush’s approach, he [Daniel Levy] said, appeared to be based on “deepening” the conflict between Fatah and Hamas rather than trying to bring them together. “The two-state solution that the president claims to support will need to deliver and have legitimacy on both sides in order to have a chance of being sustainable. That cannot be based on an irreconcilable Palestinian political division,” Levy noted, pointing to recent press leaks by U.S. intelligence officials who oppose the West Bank First strategy on the grounds that Hamas is too strong and has too much popular support to be effectively isolated or marginalised.
Or my other words: The internal political dynamics of Palestine shown in the results [and candidates -25%woman] of the last election can MODERATE Hamas positions againts Israel if [a reformed] Fatah-movement can reasonable share the power with Hamas. The “isolation-policy” [mainly Funding of Dahlans private war] has definitley failed. Today in Gaza. Tomorrow in the Westbank.
7 Rattling the Kettle // Jul 17, 2007 at 4:32 am
Edie wrote: “the only solution…lies with dealing with the original issues created with the State of Israel”.
Right on, Edie! Had only the Nazis finished the job, we wouldn’t have any of these problems today!
Which just illustrates my original point - until Hamas and their supporters recognize that the Jews have as much of a right to a homeland as do the Palestinians, there can be no peace . The so-called “one-state solution” is nothing but seemingly acceptable code words for getting rid of the Jews.
8 Lewis // Jul 17, 2007 at 5:03 am
Anonymous said: Israel further must agree to cease the incitement and hatred against Palestinians that is the daily staple of the Israeli school system and media
AHAHAHAHAHAHA. Right. You’re talking about Palestinians there, not Israelis. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6257594.stm
All I’m hearing from Charles, Edie, and Anonymous is “all or nothing, all or nothing, all or nothing”. That’s not going to get anyone anywhere.
The so-called “one-state solution” is nothing but seemingly acceptable code words for getting rid of the Jews.
Well said. Too many anti-Israelis want the forever war, not realizing the Palestinian society is going to continue to get worse and worse because of it.
9 Lucia // Jul 17, 2007 at 5:25 am
“Right on, Edie! Had only the Nazis finished the job, we wouldn’t have any of these problems today! ” -Rattling the Kettle
–
Wrong!.
Invasion of Palestine by zionists started in the l890’s when nazism was not even in the imagination.
You could say instead that, had only the zionists accepted any of the other places offered by the British Empire for jews to settle: Argentine, Uganda, etc. etc. etc. or the Birobidzjan created by the Russians for them, maybe 6 million jew lives would have been spared.
But the zionists are more interested in using the holocaust for their own purposes rather than in accepting their pasive responsibility with it, as well as their active responsibility with it for their collaborationism in many documented cases.
The root causes of the israeli state must be addressed of course. And the first is its illegal creation, and the illegal partition plan for wich the UN was not empowered.
No solution, no peace in Middle East if this is not solved first, but USA won’t do it. She needs her zio-mercenaries as soon as there is some oil available in the area. Why do you think the israeli settler state is so generously US-funded?
10 Steve M // Jul 17, 2007 at 10:21 am
The situation is that if Hamas and Fatah are no longer killing each other in large numbers (for the moment), they are certainly not buddies. Their respective power centres are, for now, independent of each other.
The current reality is that Israel must now deal with the West Bank and Gaza separately. Trying to reach agreements with Fatah in the West Bank does not preclude current or future dealings with Hamas.
11 Steve M // Jul 17, 2007 at 10:24 am
Too many anti-Israelis want the forever war, not realizing the Palestinian society is going to continue to get worse and worse because of it.
They realise. They just don’t care.
12 Edie // Jul 17, 2007 at 1:44 pm
Rattling: Why do Jews have the ‘right to a homeland’? The only people that have a ‘right to a homeland’ would be an indigenous population that has lived in that land for generations.
I would say that today Israelis have the right to security and peace just as the Palestinians have the right to security and peace. This means dealing with the real issues - the issues created with the State of Israel back in 1948 and the illegal occupation - NOT peace conferences that go nowhere, but provide the opportunity for everyone to expel more hot air and profess the goal of ‘peace’.
A one-state solution is not ‘code words’ for eliminating the Jews. It is what is called probably the only solution that will actually work now (mostly due to Israeli policies).
Any theocracy is dangerous, whether it’s ‘Hamastan’ or Iran or Israel. One democratic state with Jerusalem as an international city, shared by all parties, is the only solution.
Lewish: A one-state solution isn’t all or nothing. Israel and the U.S. have done their best to frame this conflict as a sum-zero equation and by their actions are creating that very situation, but I don’t believe it is ‘all or nothing’ yet. We’re seeing nowadays extremists in positions of power both in the U.S. and Israel and a very disapointing Palestinian leader in Abbas, but more and more individuals following the conflict are getting educated and are getting heard. It’s not too late to turn things around.
13 Rattling the Kettle // Jul 17, 2007 at 2:17 pm
Edie, I’m not sure how far back in history you want to go, but you could go pretty far back and still find that there were Jews in what is now Israel. Ask Jesus.
Calling Israel a theocracy (twice!) belies your ignorance of the situation. For all its ills, real and perceived, Israel is no theocracy. Visit Tel Aviv, then visit Riyadh, and then come back and tell us what you saw.
14 Edie // Jul 17, 2007 at 2:57 pm
True. There was a Jewish population that remained in Judea/Samaria/Palestine after the diaspora for centuries; in the minority and mostly centralized in Jerusalem. The majority of the population during that time was the indigenous, Arab population. If anyone had a ‘right to a homeland’ in that area, it would be the majority population, not the foreign European influx of immigrants that started migrating there in the mid 1880’s.
I call Israel a theocracy because they do not have a constitution guaranteeing equal rights to all and have policies based on a person’s religious and ethnic background. Many institutions/opportunities are also only given to those with military background - an avenue closed to most Arabs in Israel, therefore automatically cutting many avenues of advancement in society and economically. I would also argue that civil services (i.e. garbage pick up, paved road repair, etc …) is distributed unequally although the Arab-Israelis pay the same taxes and the Jewish population.
Israel also takes pride in repeatedly calling itself a ‘Jewish State’, not a state for all it’s citizens.
Yes, Israel is a theocracy, even if it has a different mask than Iran or Saudi Arabia.
15 Anonymous // Jul 18, 2007 at 12:25 am
No Lewis, I’m talking about Israel. Spend a little time there: from the time Israelis are kids there is constant non-stop racist incitement against Arabs built into the Israeli educational and media systems. It is a key tool by which Israelis are taught from a young age that it is ok to abuse, disrespect, rob, dehumanize and ultimately murder Palestinians. It is the militarily and economically powerful side’s tool for teaching their common citizens to hate and murder so that they can feed the hungry, angry system of racism which ordinarily they as decent people would never do. The Palestinians have no system, they simply have chaos in which angry messages flourish because of the abuse, robbery, and murder that has been heaped on them by the Israelis for a century. So stop the Israeli incitement to those things in their schools and media, replace it with teaching Israeli children and adults about common humanity and equal rights (isn’t it ironic that the thing the Israeli system fears the most is equal human rights?) and you are taking an important step forward.
16 Dom // Jul 18, 2007 at 3:22 am
I have never read such ignorance about the Israeli education as in these comments. The Israeli education system is up there with the most humanitarian and egalitarian western nations. By contrast the Palestinians are typically indoctrinated that the Jews stole their land and must be killed.
The zionists in the late 19th century bought land with large sums of money welcomed by many of the Ottoman elite, and objections arose first and foremost because they were not Muslim, culminating in the Arab riots of the 1920s. That was when both “sides” began to arm themselves systematically. Additionally one might note that there were more Jews living in Arab lands than Arabs living in what is now Israel, and for the most part they were persecuted, stripped of their property, and either confined or expelled. Any attempt to compare the way Israel treats its Arabs, who vote and have economic freedom and freedom of movement, with the way Muslim countries treat their minorities, can only be ignorant or disingenuous, much like the suggestion that Israel’s democratic governing system can be semantically labelled as equivalent to a theocracy such as the Wahhabi Saudi government. It is essentially true that a peace deal requires Israel to concede something viable, not that Jordan or Egypt will do the same for Palestinians and not that any Arab countries will compensate their Jews, but first absurd to consider the descendants of the original refugees to be refugees - a despicable and unique trick of the Arab countries and UN - and second insidious to ignore the call for Israel’s destruction by the Arab religious elites not to mention the Hamas charter. There is nothing wrong with suggesting that Israel should make concessions and nothing wrong with outrage over specific atrocities, but it is utterly vile to suggest that in the meantime their is a case for an indeterminate and indiscriminate campaign against Israel such as waged by Hamas. Palestinians are not at risk of genocide although they seem to have been left to rot by other Arab states, until they overpower Israel, an obscene strategy.
17 How the Middle East “peace process” works… « The Heathlander // Jul 18, 2007 at 12:28 pm
[…] also Charles Levinson and Tony Karon. Filed under: European Union, United Nations, Israeli / Palestinian, Syria, US, […]
18 Lewis // Jul 18, 2007 at 3:37 pm
Civil rights in Israel are guaranteed by the independent court system (which does not shy away from countering government actions).
Arab Israeli citizens are not exempt from the Israeli army. They may serve voluntarily. They simple aren’t forced to serve, unlike most Israeli citizens.
Israel and Palestine can’t leap to a one-state solution before implementing a two state solution. There is little to no trust after repeated wars, the two can barely be neighbours, how can they live in the same house right away? Before such an agreement, the hostility must subside.
Anonymous, your claims about the Israeli education system are totally unfounded. Claiming there is no organized hate-mongering on the Palestinian side is ludicrous.
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