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Israeli police examine car attacked by Hamas gunmen (Tomer Applebaum)
There have been so many miscalculations going into the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks one hardly knows where to begin in portraying them. First, let’s start with Hamas’ military wing, to whom we owe thanks for their gruesome point-blank killings of four Hebron Hills settlers including two women, one of whom was pregnant.
Thanks to the foolhardy campaign of isolation against Hamas engineered by Israel and the U.S., Hamas believes the only way to make its voice heard is through the barrel of a gun. But if the gangsters who planned this killing had bothered to think about anything more than drawing Israeli blood, they would’ve realized the peace talks are destined to fail. They don’t need killings in order to ensure this. In fact, that the Hamas military wing butchers headquartered in Damascus felt the need to kill indicates how insecure and desperate they are. If they had been smart, as in any political campaign, when your opponent is about to fall flat on his face you don’t do anything to make him more attractive to voters. This is precisely what Hamas did.
Further, in Israel an intense debate was underway provoked by theater artists about boycotting Israeli settlements. Their refusal to perform in the new Ariel cultural center was drawing sympathy from many Israelis. Now, any sympathy engendered has been drowned by preservation instincts that kick in whenever there’s a terror attack.
One might suspect that the Hamas extremists who executed this attack don’t want peace at any price. And that’s just what they’ll get if they continue on this road. Endless war and a struggle to the death ending perhaps in mutually assured destruction of both Israel and Palestine. Do they want the region to be a smoking rubble? Will that satisfy?
But let’s not leave the Israelis and Americans off as passengers on this ship of fools. Bibi Netanyahu is about to embark on peace talks when he has nothing whatsoever to offer the Palestinians. He’s refusing to renew the settlement freeze. Along with his U.S. partner in grime, Dennis Ross, he’s preparing a proposal that would be a freeze in name only and allow Israel to continue building in settlements it is “likely” to control after a peace agreement. Of course, such a proposal would undermine any negotiation since it would de facto assign Israel control of territory on whose behalf it is supposed to be negotiating.
If I were Abbas I would demand in return for approving this sham freeze a parallel set of building permits for building in Israeli Palestinian towns, which almost never can get Israeli approval for new construction.
What will Bibi offer the Palestinians? A few less roadblocks and checkpoints, a few more towns under Palestinian control. What will he not offer Abbas? Dismantling of illegal settlements, Right of Return (in even a modified form), return to ’67 borders. In short, he’s got nuttin’. Another sham.
As for the U.S., what is Obama thinking? How can he possibly want to invest political capital in such a shambles of a negotiation? My impression of presidential power is that it should be wielded when there is a reasonable chance of success. There isn’t in this case. So Obama is wasting his time and energy. Here is a perfect example of the Alice in Wonderland quality of the administration’s thinking going into the talks:
…The Obama administration, according to officials, is calculating that once the two leaders are in face-to-face negotiations, neither side will be willing to take actions that would capsize the talks in the first month. Mr. Netanyahu, this thinking goes, will offer a compromise that, while it may fall short of an extension of the moratorium, will satisfy the Palestinians that construction will be curbed.
Of course Bibi will be willing to capsize the talks. What does he stand to lose from doing so? His job? His coalition? His power? Of course not. And what can Obama do to threaten him politically or otherwise? Nothing. Will Obama dare to cut aid in an election year? Will he dare to anything that has teeth in the face of Israeli recalcitrance? Of course not. So who are we kidding here? Nothing good will come of this.
If you should doubt that proposition, just read Ethan Bronner’s “good time Mahmoud” account in today’s Times, Outlines Emerge of Future State in West Bank, you’ll see why the talks are bound to fail. Bronner’s eternal sunshine of the Zionist mind reels off his typical tedious list of Israel-Fatah West Bank “successes”: the requisite man in the street interview with a satisfied Palestinian customer praising the new found economic boom. The tantalizing prospects of the removal of a few checkpoints and a few new areas in which Palestinian police will be permitted to patrol (until Israel needs to pursue a terrorist or criminal, in which case it forgets it no longer has control and does whatever the hell it wishes anyway). All of this of course equals that “emerging Palestinian state.” That is if you’re in a drug-induced stupor that prevents you from seeing what is in front of one’s nose.
What is missing from Bronner’s account (except in a single-paragraph dismissive aside)? One word: Hamas. And that one word was reintroduced to the political landscape by today’s terror attack. What the terror attack showed to anyone with a brain and eyes in their head is that Hamas will shatter any arrangement unless it includes them in some meaningful form. Negotiating a peace agreement or proclaiming an emerging state as Bronner and his buddies Obama, Abbas and Bibi are trying to do, will founder on the rocks if it attempts to do so without a significant proportion of the Palestinian population, those who support Hamas.
This is not a promotion of that group. I don’t agree with Hamas’ agenda. But I do understand democracy and governing with the permission of the governed. Obama should too since that is the basis of American democracy. Hamas may not be what I’d prefer to govern Palestine and they may not do so if there is a future election in Palestine. But it is clear as day that they are a force that must be reckoned with in some form. Otherwise, all will be lost. That’s why the current formulation of peace talks is destined to fail.
And before any readers hop on the “beat up Palestinians” band wagon, note this telling passage from the N.Y. Times article linked above:
…The attack took place in an area of the West Bank that is under full Israeli security control, and where the Palestinian security forces have no responsibility and are not allowed to operate.
