Al-Hayat had announced that talks between the Palestinians and Israelis were resuming, but the State department has already confirmed that they're not.
"There are currently no plans for an announcement for the resumption of negotiations," [US State Department Spokeswoman Jen] Psaki said in Amman, where US Secretary of State John Kerry is on his sixth visit to the region to try to revive peace talks that broke down nearly three years ago.
(H/t Carl)
The reason's obvious. Why would Abbas and the Palestinians bother to negotiate anything now when the EU already has given them all their territorial demands?
And at that, according to the Palestinians, it's not enough anyway.
Abbas is bragging (in Arabic, of course) that Netanyahu offered him even more privately than was leaked publicly, but he still turned down any negotiations.
I find that doubtful, but it does make Abbas look tough and bolsters him with Fatah.
According to EU Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso, the guidelines outlining the EU's new Jewish ghetto are going to be up for discussion, with Barroso saying “Following a request from Israeli authorities the EU stands ready to engage in consultations on their implementation”.
That indicates the EU was perhaps surprised by the Israeli response and might be open to at least discussing some changes. And they're perhaps also realizing that they're subject to damage from this as well.
For instance, according to today's Maariv daily, Israel has threatened to pull out from the European Union's Horizons 2020 program, a move that would seriously affect Europe's prestige and its wallet.
Israel is the only non-European full partner in the project, and is supposed to invest 600 million Euro (785 million US dollars) in the project over 7 years.
Besides the financial hit the EU project would take as a result, the move would be a serious blow to the project’s prestige and success. Israel is a central partner in the projects that Horizon 2020 undertakes, and part of these project’s successes are dependent on Israeli human resources and research.
But wait, there's more.
Israeli Economy and Trade Minister and Naftali Bennett have already let Israeli PM Benyamin Netanyahu and any other interested party know that his party Habayit Hayehudi (Jewish Home) will leave the coalition if there's any negotiations based on the pre '67 borders, and a number of members of Netanyahu's own party Likud as well as Israel Beiteinu have echoed what Bennett said. Even if he wanted to, there's no way Netanyahu could begin any negotiations with that as a starting point without his government falling and he knows it.
Bennett, meanwhile has been spending time in China cementing business deals and goodwill. As he says, the country is wide open for increased trade with Israel, there is no historic or current anti-semitism and the Chinese are a lot more interested in the benefits they can get from Israeli innovation than the Arab-Israeli conflict.
“In all the 20 meetings we held, not once were we asked about the Arabs, or about the Palestinians, or about any occupation or anything else,” said Bennett. "All they care about is Israeli high-tech, Israeli innovations, how we can bring these technologies here. We met ministers and CEOs of companies and the heads of the state. So the main insight is that Israel needs to lead its economic diplomacy, not constantly deal with the political issues, where we don’t always have an answer, but lead through the economy.”
If the EU wants to erect walls against one of the top high tech and scientific countries in the world that actually provides important trade that benefits the EU's economy as opposed to the Palestinians who provide nothing and merely sop up EU tax dollars like a sponge, that's the EU's choice.
Ultimately, I think it's going to be as successful as their choice to replace six million Jews with 20 Million Muslims.
As for Israel, they need to announce an end to the Oslo era and the faux negotiations, annex the parts of area C and area B they decide they require for their security, bring the Jews behind those borders and move any non-Israeli Arabs to the other side. And then defend those borders diligently.
That's how this thing is going to end eventually anyway.
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