In a deliberate move to scuttle even the possibility of any further negotiations, Mahmoud Abbas, the unelected dictator of 'Palestine' had a sitdown with Hamas PM Ismail Haniyeh and finalized a unity agreement that calls for new national elections in five months and a single government to control Gaza and the Arab-occupied parts of Judea and Samaria.
Regular members of Joshua's Army will recall I reported that the details of this agreement were worked out back in mid-December, so this was merely a formal signing ceremony.
And if I knew about this, I'm certain the U.S. State Department did. But they still kept hammering Israel for concessions to make an agreement with what was in fact a terrorist entity all this time. Abbas wanted to turn this into a public occasion just as he did his abrogating the talks agreement by signing membership applications to those UN organizations and conventions live on PA State television, to deliberately rub Secretary of State John Kerry's nose in it.
So the State Department's pose about being “disappointing in terms of the content as well as the timing” is hypocritical in the extreme.State Department spokeswoman Jan Psaki underlined that when she mentioned why Hamas was a problem. Not because they're an officially recognized terrorist organization. Not because they're openly genocidal. And not because they have the blood of more than a few American citizens on their hands. No, it's because - wait for it- they refuse to recognize Israel's right to exist.
“It’s hard to see how Israel can be expected to sit down and negotiate with a group that denies its right to exist,” Psaki told reporters. She said that the State Department believes that a Hamas-Fatah reconciliation would “certainly complicate the process.”
“The ball is in the Palestinians’ court to answer whether the principles that have been part of the process can be met,” she said. “Historically Hamas has not shown a willingness to abide by the basic principles expected by the US government.”
'Complicate the process' ? It ends it, at least in the real world outside Foggy Bottom in Washington.
The Israelis cancelled a scheduled meeting of the PA and Israeli negotiating teams, with Israeli PM Netanyahu tweeting the following:
And for comedy relief, there was the reaction of one particular member of Netanyahu's coalition, Finance minister and head of Yesh Atid Yair Lapid. Just yesterday, he was threatening to leave the coalition if peace talks were ended. Today? Well, it's a different day. You can almost picture Lapid scratching his head in puzzlement:
“Do the Palestinians really want a state?” he asked. “If the answer is ‘yes’, they could have a state in six months.”
Addressing a unity pact announced hours earlier between Hamas and the Fatah faction of the Palestine Liberation Organization, Lapid noted that Fatah, which dominates the PLO, made no demands from Hamas to give up its terror policies before signing the agreement.
Lapid, head of the centrist Yesh Atid, said a threat to dissolve the PA and hand responsibility for the West Bank back to Israel was “illogical,” but maintained that the Fatah-Hamas unity deal was even worse.
“Hamas is not a government, it is a Jihadist terror organization that has inscribed on its flag the killing of civilians — women, children, old people — just because they are Jewish,” he said.[...]
“The question that is left is do the Palestinians want their own state, and if so, do they want to set it up alongside the Jewish state? Or have they never abandoned their original vision, a Palestinian state instead of Jewish state?”
Gosh, Yair Lapid. Are you still even asking that question?
What's more of interest in what happens now in Washington and Jerusalem. As I've said many times before, Abbas and the rest of the Fatah Old Guard are ready to turn over the keys to Hamas and use their Jordanian citizenship and passports to leave 'Palestine' and retire happily to the EU or the Emirates with all the money they've stolen in the last two decades or so. The next five months are simply a transition period.
As David Gerstman and others have noted, President Obama and his team have achieved peace all right...between Fatah and Hamas. Abbas has played the president, the Secretary of State and the entire Obama team for fools, and the odds are that the PA won't suffer any significant consequences for it either, not even a cut in funding. And I'd put the odds at the US vetoing Palestinian statehood in the UN at no better than 50/50, if that.
Israel, on the other hand, has to realistically assess what going on here, finally. Just as an exercise in how little has changed over the years and how futile the entire 'peace process' since Oslo has been, take a look at this piece of mine written two years ago and tell me whether 95% of it couldn't be republished now with today's date on it.
There is no peace process, and for the Palestinians, whether we're talking Fatah or Hamas, it's the same old story of no peace, no recognition and no negotiations. If Israel wants a solution, they will have to implement it themselves.
It's called d-i-v-o-r-c-e.
Israel should immediately declare Oslo null and void, delineate the borders it needs unilaterally, all of Area C, the Jordan Valley and the parts of Area B it needs for the sake of a contiguous and defensible border. Leave Area A, where most of the Arab-occupied part of Judea and Samaria is to the Palestinians tom,ake whatever they want out of it. Move any Israeli citizens to the Israeli side of the border and any Arab non-Israeli Arabs to the other, perhaps with compensation for property. Then Israel should annex the land withing their new borders, declaring it part of Israel. . Build the land, let a thousand bulldozers sing and dance and and defend those new borders, making it clear to the 'Palestinians' and the world that an attack on Israel would definitely be dealt with using a disproportionate response.
The Arabs who refer to themselves as Palestinians would never accept it, of course, but then they don't accept Israel's existence as it is. Perhaps with the corrupt Fatah mafiosos gone, new leadership might possibly evolve with the sense to realize that 'Palestine' isn't viable without a decent partnership with Israel. It never was, even if they had all of Judea, Samaria and East Jerusalem.
The 'international community'? The UN? Yes, there would be a period of pro forma condemnations and meaningless resolutions, but in the end the world is pretty tired of 'Palestine' and the endless financial drain , and the fact that there's at least some kind of independent Palestinian reichlet would make that reaction fade away in a relatively short time.Especially since it's hard for any but true believers to deny that Abbas and the Palestinians have rejected any kind of negotiated settlement.
Again, the idea here is divorce, and on Israel's terms. It's time this nonsense was finished, once and for all, with facts on the ground.
Selah.
I would tend to agree that at best there is only a 50% chance the US would veto a UN resolution establishing Palestine as a state. It will largely depend upon just how "tired" the world really is of Palestine. If the nations of the EU and the Arab states want this and America refuses to go along, they can exact a terrible price on America in many ways that would devastating to America in a number of ways. Also, we are dealing with many in American leadership who lack character or integrity. As such, it seems quite clever on the part of the "Palestinian" leadership to push this during an election year in America.
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