Netanyahu: "The Palestinians Have No Interest In Entering Peace Talks"

Well, it's about time someone admitted it.

“For the last three years, the Palestinians have refused to enter negotiations, thinking they could impose preconditions upon us,” Netanyahu told Israeli lawmakers in a closed parliamentary meeting.

“The Palestinians have no interest in entering peace talks. I’m ready to travel now to Ramallah to start peace talks with Abu Mazen, without preconditions. But the simple truth is that Abu Mazen is not ready,” he said. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is widely known as Abu Mazen.

Netanyahu’s comments were relayed by a meeting participant who spoke on condition of anonymity because the meeting was closed.

Abbas says the Palestinians will not resume talks unless Israel stops building in the West Bank and east Jerusalem, areas Israel captured in the 1967 war from Jordan and claimed by the Palestinians as parts of their future state.

Actually, this WAPO article is somewhat..incomplete in details. Not only is Abbas insisting that Israel not build in the areas mentioned (most of whom are going to be off the table in any peace settlement anyway) but Abbas insists that Israel commit to making the pre '67 lines the starting point of the negotiations before any talks occur, and has said numerous times that he's unwilling to make a single concession of any kind to Israel in any negotiations he enters.

In other words, Abbas is only willing to 'negotiate' with the Israelis only if there's nothing much left to negotiate. This is roughly the equivalent of agreeing to go to Las Vegas and place a bet on the roulette wheel only if your winnings are guaranteed in advance.

Another building freeze is off the table, and Abbas knows it very well, which is exactly why he's insisting on it. Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu already gave the 'Palestinians' a 10 month freeze as a unilateral concession before in an attempt to get talks going, something that caused him considerable political damage at home. It turned out to be worthless, because the 'Palestinians' stonewalled for 9 1/2 months and then used Netanyahu's refusal to extend the freeze indefinitely as an excuse to bail out of talks. Netanyahu isn't going to make the same mistake twice.

Actually, the reality is that the 'Palestinians' have little interest in living in peace beside Israel, but merely in getting Israel as close to the indefensible pre '67 lines as possible. People interested in living in peace don't display maps of 'Palestine' with Israel obliterated, don't hold up people who've murdered Israeli civilians as heroes and role models and don't preach Jew hatred in their mosques, schools and media:

PA Mufti calls for the killing of Jews quoting Islamic Hadith from Palestinian Media Watch on Vimeo.

Moderator at Fatah ceremony:
"Our war with the descendants of the apes and pigs (i.e., Jews)
is a war of religion and faith.
Long Live Fatah! [I invite you,] our honorable Sheikh."

The official Palestinian Authority religious leader, the Mufti Muhammad Hussein comes to the podium and says:

"47 years ago the [Fatah] revolution started. Which revolution? The modern revolution of the Palestinian people's history. In fact, Palestine in its entirety is a revolution, since [Caliph] Umar came [to conquer Jerusalem, 637 CE], and continuing today, and until the End of Days. The reliable Hadith (tradition attributed to Muhammad), [found] in the two reliable collections, Bukhari and Muslim, says:

"The Hour [of Resurrection] will not come until you fight the Jews.
The Jew will hide behind stones or trees.
Then the stones or trees will call:
'Oh Muslim, servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.'
Except the Gharqad tree [which will keep silent]."
Therefore it is no wonder that you see Gharqad [trees]
surrounding the [Israeli] settlements and colonies.."

Imagine the headlines worldwide if Israel's chief Rabbi had addressed the Knesset and called for genocide against the Palestinians.

Of course the Quartet certainly provides lip service on violent incitement of this kind, but since the 'Palestinians' never receive any penalties for it and the aid money continues to roll in, there's no incentive for them to stop it. Oddly enough, the UN is a member of the Quartet and calling for genocide against a member nation is expressly against Article 2 of the UN Charter...yet they happily continue to fund the 'Palestinian Authority'.

And to refer to Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria as 'settlements'.

It's well worth remembering that 'Arab East Jerusalem' only became 'Arab' after the ethnic cleansing of every Jew there by the Arab armies after 1948.

The same applies to the 'Arab' areas of Judea and Samaria (AKA The West Bank), where again every Jew living there was ethnically cleansed, just like almost a million other Jews throughout the Arab world after 1948.

Strange, isn't it that an attempted Arab colonization of 19 years based on aggressive war and an occupation the UN itself didn't even recognize at the time is now considered legitimate, while Jewish communities that existed before 1948 on Jewish owned land like Ariel and Gush Etzion are considered temporary 'settlements' after being repopulated by Jews for over 40 years?

And isn't it odd that it's only Israeli building in the so-called disputed areas that continually comes under criticism as an obstacle to peace rather than that of the 'Palestinians'?

Not only East Jerusalem but the 'Palestinian' occupied areas in Judea and Samaria are rife with illegal and often unsafe construction, often done by squatters with no legal title to the land they build on. As I write this, the 'Palestinians' are attempting to build an entire city from scratch called Rawabi using EU and USAid funds in the middle of a primarily Jewish area that will actually encroach on the Israeli town of Ateret. Yet no one, especially President Obama or our State Department has ever referred to 'Palestinian' building as 'unhelpful'.

The truth of the matter is that the fabled two state solution doesn't exist,because there's no deal that Abbas is willing or able to accept that doesn't amount to the Israelis committing national suicide, especially since Fatah is now officially in a unity government with the genocidal Hamas.It's bad enough to have Hamas shooting missiles and mortars at Israel's sparsely populated south. It's quite another to cede the high ground in Judea and Samaria and the strategic area of the Jordan Valley to the same people in easy range of Jerusalem and Israel's densely populated coastal plain.

The real problem here is not building in Judea and Samaria. It's the Arab refusal to live with Jews in peace and equality. Since they insist on getting their apartheid, obscene little reichlet without a single Jew in it and refuse to make any concessions for real peace, there's no reason for Israel to accomodate them any further.

It might very well be time for Netanyahu to name some preconditions of his owntocontinue talks,like taking Jerusalem and the Israeli communities in Judea and Samaria off the table, insisting on recognition of Israel as a Jewish state and a formal renouncing by th e'Palestinians' of any fictional 'right of return.' Abbas of course would never agree to any of this since it would be tantamount to recognizing that a peace settlement involves the end of the conflict, but the clarity might be helpful.

If the 'Palestinians' really dislike living in peace next to Jews that much, there are there are 22 Arab countries they can move to where Jews are already forbidden. The Israelis lack that option, in case no one has noticed.