By Barry RubinContinue reading “Peace Process” Silliness from Obama and Abbas
Speaking to Jewish donors (or should we say possible Jewish donors?) to his presidential campaign, President Barack Obama pledged that his administration would “devote all of its creative powers” to trying to bring about Mideast peace.
This is not an art project. What is needed is not “creative powers” but to deal with the actual, real situation. To me, “creative powers” (Samantha creative Powers?) means to come up with gimmicks, to do anything possible to bring about the supposed signing of a peace of paper [pun] as fast as possible. If they know the Palestinian Authority is inflexible, then they will just demand more concessions from Israel. And they won’t bother to ask whether the “peace agreement” they are pushing would last a month or produce a more stable region and a more secure Israel.
Every time Obama says that the “status quo is unsustainable,” he’s suggesting that anything would be better than the status quo. What he would produce, then, is a worse status quo.
Meanwhile, as if to prove the point, Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas said he would drop seeking UN approval of unilateral Palestinian independence if the United States offers something better: “I don’t know if the U.S. has another option, but if it does, we will not go to the U.N..”
This is a beautiful example of Palestinian leaders’ chutzpah disguised as victimhood. Let’s consider the following points:
Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader
(seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East
(Wiley), and The Truth About Syria
(Palgrave-Macmillan). His latest book is Israel: An Introduction, to be published by Yale University Press later this year. You can read more of Barry Rubin's posts at Rubin Reports, and now on his new blog, Rubin Reports, on Pajamas MediaTechnorati Tag: Israel and Obama and Abbas and Middle East.
A variant of this peace process silliness is shown in an Open Letter to President Obama just published in the "New York Review" Of Books (June 23) by former high-ranking US officials. They blame Israel for the impasse in the Middle East peace talks and in short, they favor the US forcing Israel to make peace on Arab terms whether or not it wants to or whether that is the expressed will of its people. Its a variant of lying for peace and the one-sided pressure these people advocate be placed on Israel to submit will only end in failure. Sometimes smart people are completely out of touch with reality.
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