President Obama will host a dinner September 1 with the Israeli and Palestinian leaders, along with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, Jordan's King Abdullah and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, representing the "Quartet" of key international players.
In case you're wondering, that essentially, that means you have Israel negotiating on one side and Obama, Tony Blair and the EU ,The Palestinians and the Arab league on the other.
This is all supposed to lead to a final settlement of all the outstanding issues and a peace agreement within one year. To get a sense of how unrealistic this is and how our State Department lives in a fantasy world let's see what deputy special envoy David Hale had to say about the interesting problem of how to construct a peaceful settlement without Hamas being involved:
The officials offered no clear answer on one central question: How to deal with Hamas, and its control over the Gaza Strip. Hale suggested that they would be pulled into an agreement by the sheer momentum of the talks.
The "forces of moderation and the forces of peace," Hale said, "will be greatly enhanced when they are able to point to an ongoing peace process and ultimately a peace treaty."
Yes, I can certainly see Hamas moderating its approach to Jews - not.
As for the Palestian Authority, they just named a town square in the town of Madama after a suicide bomber and child killer. Your tax dollars likely paid for it.
I see this as basically an attempt to provide a photo-op and some political wind in Obama's sagging sails. There's no upside for either party.
There's no deal that Abbas can accept that doesn't include a Jew-free Judea and Samaria, half of Jerusalem and the right to flood the rest of Israel with thousands of genocidal 'refugees'.
And Israel could not accept anything like those conditions and survive. Even if Netanyahu was silly enough to accept, he'd never get it past his own party, let alone the Israeli public. They've seen the results of too many of these 'land for peace' scams already.
Two possible results: 1)The palestinians will never agree no matter what Israel offers and simply use the talks as a propaganda platform. 2)The will agree to something but not hold up their end of the deal and just use new borders and new freedoms to attack Israel.
ReplyDeleteThe failure of these talks will just be another reason for another war...sometimes the US needs to stay out and let people deal with their own problems, or not deal with them. If the PA didn't think they had the US on their side to pressure Israel maybe they would come to their senses...of course they would have to have some sense to begin with..
ReplyDeleteI am also tired of the specious nonsense that the palestinian issue is the center of the Arab world. It is the center of the arab government world because then noone has to make them better their societies which is why they don't want a resolution to the palestinain issue either- so there never will be one short of Israel's destruction...when is the US going to get tired of playing with itself..and leave the ISrael's to do what they need to in the real world..
Lets see here. America's economy is worse than being in the toilet, its military is broken down to the point that even basic national defense is problematic, its national debt is massive, and it is being invaded from south of its borders.
ReplyDeleteGiven these massive problems facing the nation, what does this government do? It proposes to spend time and energy to try and resolve a conflict that is far from our borders. Not only this but the methods proposed to resolve this conflict involve rewarding folks who hold a world view that in many ways is simillar to the world views of the attackers of 9/11.
In a nut shell, not only is down right nutty for America to devote resources to this issues but this does nothing to actually solve the problems that face the country. In fact, it may make things worse becuase it seeks to reward enemies of America and it diverts resources away from the real issues facing the nation.
As far as Israel is concerned, they should never agree to these talks unless there is some mechanism in place to ensure Palestinian/Arab compliance with any agreement. This has been a major problem throughout the "peace process." While there are mechanisms to ensure Israeli compiance with any agreeement there has never been any thing in place to ensure Arab compliance.
As long as this continues, not only are the efforts destined to fail but they will make matters worse. Why expend time, effort, and other resources on projects that will not do any thing to address the problems America faces and will only make them worse?
Sheer stupidity on the part of American leadership. The sooner these people go the better off we will all be!!