‘Proximity talks’
Israeli Vice Prime Minister, Minister for Strategic Affairs and close Netanyahu ally Moshe Ya’alon explains that Netanyahu’s attempts to resume “indirect negotiations” with the Palestinian Authority are just a “maneuver” designed to “create the illusion that an agreement can be reached”:
“And I say so out of knowledge,” Ya’alon told Yediot. “Nobody in the forum of seven [senior cabinet ministers] thinks that we can reach an agreement with the Palestinians.” Yediot Ahronot reports (print version, translated from Hebrew):
Q: So why all these games of make-believe negotiations? It’s possible to announce that we will not reach an agreement, and that is all.
YA’ALON: Because in the political establishment there are pressures. Peace Now from within and other elements from without. So you have to maneuver. But what I’m saying now has to be given over to the Americans, and I hope that they will understand.
Some of what we have to do is maneuver with the American administration and the European establishment, which are also nourished by Israeli elements, which create the illusion that an agreement can be reached.
Ya’alon disclosed that Netanyahu has made clear that he intends to increase settlement activity as soon as the freeze expires. “The prime minister reiterates all the time,” Ya’alon said, “and also brought a decision to the security cabinet that says clearly, that immediately after the freeze, we will continue to build in Judea and Samaria as we did before.”
Q: Will we evacuate settlements in the end?
YA’ALON: I do not accept that. What has happened to us in recent years obligates us to stop with everything connected to withdrawal.
Meanwhile the press is wetting itself over Obama’s alleged walk-out of his meeting with Netanyahu. Whether that happened before or after the ‘massive arms deal‘, we’re not told.
As Tony Karon writes,
“Israel’s leaders, and its voters, have amply demonstrated that they will not voluntarily relinquish control of the Palestinian territories as long as there are no real consequences for maintaining the status quo. Sure, you can tell them that the status quo is untenable, but the whole history of Israel from the 1920s onward has been about transforming the impossible into the inevitable by changing the facts on the ground. Building settlements on occupied territory in violation of international law after 1967 seemed untenable at the time; today, the U.S. government says Israel will keep most of those major settlement blocs in any two-state solution. It is precisely in line with this sort of improvisational logic that Sharon calculated he could hold on to the settlements of the West Bank if he gave up the settlements of Gaza; the same logic allows Netanyahu to say the words “two states for two peoples” while always winking at his base that he has no intention of allowing it to happen…
…progress in the Middle East will not come until the U.S. changes Israel’s cost-benefit analysis for maintaining the status quo. The only Israeli leader capable of accepting the parameters of a two-state peace with the Palestinians, which are already widely known, is one who can convincingly demonstrate to his electorate that the alternatives are worse. Right now, without real pressure, without real cost, with nothing but words, there is simply no downside to the status quo for Israel. Until there is, things are unlikely to change, no matter the peril to U.S. troops throughout the Middle East.”
Filed under: Israeli / Palestinian | 2 Comments
Tags: "peace process", Moshe Ya'alon, Netanyahu, Obama, proximity talks, rejectionism, settlements, US-Israel
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Obama walked out of a meeting with Netanyahu? Clearly he must be an anti-Semite.
I feel like I’ve grown up–I just had a person call my blog anti-Semitic for criticizing Israel (Israel’s racism no less, from this Haaretz article: http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1157857.html ).
I’m sure you’ve seen this recent piece about the knee-jerk anti-Semitism: http://www.newyorker.com/talk/comment/2010/03/29/100329taco_talk_remnick
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This month’s diplomatic drama, which was set off during Vice-President Biden’s visit by the announcement of sixteen hundred housing units planned for Ramat Shlomo, a neighborhood in East Jerusalem, reached its sad nadir last week, when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s brother-in-law, Hagai Ben-Artzi, declared on Israeli radio that Obama was an “anti-Semite.” No one, not even Netanyahu, should be denied his right to an idiot relation, but the remark is less readily dismissed when one recalls reports (later denied) that the Prime Minister himself has referred to David Axelrod (whose West Wing office featured an “Obama for President” sign in Hebrew) and Rahm Emanuel (a civilian volunteer in the Israeli Army during the first Gulf War) as “self-hating Jews.”
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How sad that an empty threat from the U.S. could ever be considered sufficient placate the human rights-oriented criticism of Israel. The sad thing is, they are right.