@oralloy,
You're choosing to interpret the Palestinian negotiators' position in a very biased way, oralloy.
The point is, if the Israelis were so unresponsive to such generous concessions (which understandably upset many Palestinians when they found out what had been offered), what do the the Israelis actually
require to achieve a peaceful resolution?
And what would
they bring to the negotiating table?
Most of the compromises cannot be expected to be made by one side in a negotiating situation, surely?
You are conveniently over-looking the fact that there are genuine grievances on the Palestinian side (which need to be addressed) for the outcome of any negotiated peace to actually "work".
Israel cannot expect have everything its own way.
@msolga,
msolga wrote:You're choosing to interpret the Palestinian negotiators' position in a very biased way, oralloy.
By noting that this is the first time the Palestinians have ever taken a reasonable negotiating position???
What is biased about noting reality?
msolga wrote:The point is, if the Israelis were so unresponsive to such generous concessions (which understandably upset many Palestinians when they found out what had been offered),
Hardly understandable. Why would anyone be upset that their government was taking a reasonable position?
msolga wrote:what do the Israelis actually require to achieve a peaceful resolution?
Mainly what Israel requires is that people be willing to make peace with them instead of trying to just murder Israeli children all the time.
msolga wrote:And what would they bring to the negotiating table?
If you could manage to convince Israel that people were actually willing to make peace with them, I'd imagine Israel would reinstate their offer from Taba.
msolga wrote:Most of the compromises cannot be expected to be made by one side in a negotiating situation, surely?
Yes. That is why it is good that the Palestinians have finally been willing to compromise instead of demanding that Israel make all the concessions.
Unfortunately after so much intransigence and after so many murdered Israeli children, I'm not sure if anyone is listening to the Palestinians anymore.
msolga wrote:You are conveniently over-looking the fact that there are genuine grievances on the Palestinian side (which need to be addressed) for the outcome of any negotiated peace to actually "work".
Well, grievances kind of get overshadowed when the Palestinians refuse to take a reasonable negotiating position or do anything other than try to murder Israeli children.
Now that the Palestinians seem willing to contemplate a reasonable position, maybe they will get their grievances addressed, if the Israeli voters can be convinced that the Palestinians are finally genuinely interested in peace.
msolga wrote:Israel cannot expect have everything its own way.
They never have. They just want the Palestinians to stop murdering them.
@oralloy,
It is difficult to discuss this further with you, orralloy.
I'm of the opinion that neither side is perfect, that mistakes have been made by the leadership of both sides.
The issue is not nearly so black & white, right vs wrong to me ...
Though I have a great deal of compassion for the Palestinian people & what they have had to endure, I admit.
We can't really comment on what has occurred in
previous negotiations, because we simple do not
know the full details. We haven't had access to that information, unlike
these leaked details of recent negotiations.
@msolga,
msolga wrote:We can't really comment on what has occurred in previous negotiations, because we simple do not know the full details. We haven't had access to that information, unlike these leaked details of recent negotiations.
We know at least as much about previous negotiations as we do about this current Palestinian position.
But in any case, all we really need to know is that the Israeli people are willing to make peace with the Palestinians, and the only reason they've elected a non-peace government is the fact that the last time they tried to make peace, all they got for their trouble is a lot of suicide bombers killing their children.
If the Israeli people were to be convinced that the Palestinians were actually interested in peace, they'd elect a pro-negotiation government again.
What the Palestine papers tell us – video
Guardian associate editor Seumas Milne and Middle East editor, Ian Black, discuss the leak of secret notes from years of negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/video/2011/jan/23/palestine-papers-israel-negotiations-video
@Endymion,
Thank you for posting that video, Endy.
I was beginning to wonder if I (along with Walter) was the only one paying any attention to these significant leaks.
It is now clear that the Palestinian people have received a very raw deal at the negotiating table.
They are the "meat in the sandwich", between the Israelis (supported by the US) & Hamas (which apparently is not interested in any negotiations at all.).
The Palestinians' negotiators have been completely ineffectual. Pathetic & gutless.
No wonder the Israelis are so blaze & cocky. These negotiations have been a complete joke.
The Israelis have been under no pressure at all to address very legitimate Palestinian issues.
Bravo,
Al Jazeera (&
the Guardian) for exposing these sham "negotiations" for what they really were.
Now can we have some REAL negotiations, please?
They are well overdue.
Palestinian leaders weak - and increasingly desperate
Quote:PA leaders repeatedly threatened to abandon attempts to negotiate a two-state solution in favour of a one-state option. At the same meeting, Erekat declared that if the settlement of the West Bank continued, "we will announce the one state and the struggle for equality in the state of Israel".
A one-state option with equality for all therein is wielded as a threat? The myopia of it all is preposterous.
A single, egalitarian and pluralistic state for all of the inhabitants in Israel/Palestine is the best alternative to the necessarily discriminatory and oppressive ethnocentric Zionist state, and is the solution to the Israel/Palestine Conflict.
@msolga,
Quote:No wonder the Israelis are so blaze & cocky. These negotiations have been a complete joke.
The US was on the other side so what do you expect, MsO? One only needs to look at the negotiating manner and standards of the US in times past to see that it is always US US US [pun intended].
@JTT,
It is the leaked information regarding the
Palestinian negotiators & their performance during the negotiations which really shocked & surprised me (& many Palestinians!), JTT.
Abysmal.
Quote:.... Regardless of the documents' substance, what is clear is their potential to damage the leadership of the Palestinian Authority and to destroy any lingering illusion among Palestinians that there is any point in negotiating with an Israeli government. The result could be the collapse of the authority, which could force Israel back into a more direct role as occupier of the Palestinian Territories.
At the storm front is Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian leader whose future, political and personal, must be under a heavy cloud. Abbas is a good man, an honourable man, a nice man - admirable qualities in most situations but which appear as weakness in the brutal context of Palestinian-Israeli relations.
This weakness has been exposed twice by Abbas's friends, Israel and the US. In 2003, under American pressure, Yasser Arafat appointed Abbas the prime minister of the Palestinian Authority. Over the following few months, however, Abbas found himself deserted by these same friends and eventually resigned.
On Arafat's death, Abbas became the President of the authority, in which role he has been forced to pursue an even closer relationship with the Americans and Israelis.
As well as conducting negotiations, he has also been responsible for controlling dissent in the Territories and this has exposed him to accusations of being the errand boy of the US and Israel. Just how close this relationship has become could be made clear when more material is revealed in coming days. It is expected to detail, for example, the way in which the Palestinian security co-operation with the US and Israel has worked to suppress Palestinian frustration rather than to protect Palestinians from Israeli attacks.
Also expected to be released are details of how Palestinian negotiators considered accepting Arab citizens of Israel, whom the government would like to expel, and the collusion between the authority and Israel over Israel's attacks on Gaza two years ago.
Another damaging leak is the report that Palestinian negotiators offered Israel a deal on Jerusalem. Arabs and Muslims worldwide regard Jerusalem as the patrimony of all Muslims and not up for negotiation.
These concessions also undercut the essence of the Abdallah peace plan, which was endorsed by all Arab governments and offered Israel full diplomatic recognition and normalised relations in return for the establishment of a Palestinian state on the lands seized by Israel in 1967. Neither of these reports is likely to please other Arabs, apart from the American-dominated regimes in Egypt and Jordan.
These exposures will be particularly damaging to Abbas as they portray him and his team as having lost sight of the core interests of ordinary Palestinians and as negotiating with themselves and for themselves. This is a reasonable charge, but it is helpful to look at the position in which Abbas finds himself. ....
http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/politics/leaks-cast-cloud-over-future-of-palestinian-authority-20110125-1a49v.html
@msolga,
Quote:apart from the American-dominated regimes in Egypt and Jordan.
Things aren't looking so rosy for Mubarak in Egypt. One has to wonder why that freedom loving US of A hasn't pushed for elections in Egypt for, what is it now, 30 years.
@msolga,
Quote:The point is, if the Israelis were so unresponsive to such generous concessions (which understandably upset many Palestinians when they found out what had been offered), what do the the Israelis actually require to achieve a peaceful resolution?
On this same point, I just read an comment piece in
Haaretz, a liberal Israeli newspaper. Titled:
"Israel will never get a better deal than the one it rejected".
The Palestinian Authority offered so much (to the outrage of many Palestinians who only found out about these "offerings", via the
Al Jazeera leaks ), in their negotiations with the Israelis.
Only to be rejected by the Israelis!
Unbelievable.
So I find myself wondering again: What would the Israeli negotiators have
accepted to make peace, when they had the opportunity to?
I seriously doubt they will have such an opportunity again.
Quote:...They (the Palestinian negotiators) conceded most of the settlements in Jerusalem, the Old City is also no longer exclusively in their hands, and nothing. Betar Ilit and Modi'in Ilit are ours, and that's not enough for Israel, as if it has forgotten that the 1967 borders are the Palestinian compromise.
What more do we want? What more will Israel ask of the dying horse, a moment before it gives up the ghost? A Palestinian state in greater Abu Dis? Hatikvah as its anthem? And what will happen then, when the horse dies? A wild pony will emerge that will never agree to live under the conditions of the old horse.
Never, but never, will Israel be offered a better deal than the one now revealed - and what came of it? Israeli rejection. Rejectionism. No, no,no, absolutely not.
And yes to what? To continuing the occupation, perpetuating the conflict. From now on we can say to our children: For Har Homa we'll continue living on the edge of the volcano. That is the terrible truth. The settlers have vanquished Israel. It is not hard to imagine how possible it would have been to return the West Bank to its owners had there not been hundreds of thousands of settlers living in it.
Were it not for this enterprise, there would have been peace. Now that it is established, Israel is no longer able to get up on its feet and extricate itself from its stranglehold. ....
http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/israel-will-never-get-a-better-deal-than-the-one-it-rejected-1.339435
@msolga,
msolga wrote:It is now clear that the Palestinian people have received a very raw deal at the negotiating table.
How so? Looks to me like there have been no deals at all at the negotiating table.
msolga wrote:The Palestinians' negotiators have been completely ineffectual. Pathetic & gutless.
Because they were finally willing to put forth a reasonable position???
msolga wrote:No wonder the Israelis are so blaze & cocky. These negotiations have been a complete joke.
The Israelis have been under no pressure at all to address very legitimate Palestinian issues.
The Israelis don't need to be pressured. All you'd have to do is convince them that the Palestinians were finally willing to be reasonable, and the Israelis would vote Likud out and replace them with someone willing to negotiate.
Actually pressuring the Israelis to do something which they are already willing to do would probably backfire and convince them that there was still no point in taking negotiations seriously.
msolga wrote:Bravo, Al Jazeera (& the Guardian) for exposing these sham "negotiations" for what they really were.
That's not what they exposed.
Everyone already knew these negotiations were a sham. No one was taking them seriously.
What these papers exposed is the fact that the Palestinians have finally been willing to be reasonable.
msolga wrote:Now can we have some REAL negotiations, please?
They are well overdue.
Maybe.
If the Israeli voters realize that the other side is actually willing to finally be reasonable, they will surely vote out Likud and replace them with a government that is willing to negotiate.
@msolga,
msolga wrote:On this same point, I just read an comment piece in Haaretz, a liberal Israeli newspaper. Titled: "Israel will never get a better deal than the one it rejected".
The Palestinian Authority offered so much (to the outrage of many Palestinians who only found out about these "offerings", via the Al Jazeera leaks ), in their negotiations with the Israelis.
Only to be rejected by the Israelis!
Unbelievable.
I'm still bemused by the fact that many Palestinians are outraged over the thought that their government might be reasonable.
Again, if you want the Israelis to negotiate, first you have to convince them that the other side is actually willing to at last be reasonable. Then the Israelis will vote in a government that is willing to negotiate. And then you get the negotiations you desire.
msolga wrote:So I find myself wondering again: What would the Israeli negotiators have accepted to make peace, when they had the opportunity to?
The 2001 Taba offer?
msolga wrote:I seriously doubt they will have such an opportunity again.
Why not? Are the Palestinians only capable of putting forth a reasonable offer once in human history?
If the Palestinians are serious about peace, they can make that clear to the Israeli people, then after the Israeli people vote in a pro-peace government, the Palestinians can make the same peace offer again.
@msolga,
Cheers Olga -
Quote:Bravo, Al Jazeera (& the Guardian) for exposing these sham "negotiations" for what they really were.
Now can we have some REAL negotiations, please?
They are well overdue.
Put human lives before the billion dollar war industry? Wish someone had the guts to, but i won't hold my breath. I think the biggest problem is racism, myself. How to combat it, who knows?
Miserable, isn't it?
Peace hasn't got a chance - at least not until people elect peace-makers
@Endymion,
Yes, sadly I believe you're probably right, Endy.
What Wikileaks Really Show
Will leaks end the Mideast peace process?
"From The Outside, This Palestinian Behavior Looks Utterly Irrational"
By David Frum, CNN.com, January 24, 2011
It's being called a Palestinian Wikileaks: a dump of 1,600 Palestinian Authority documents to Al-Jazeera and the British newspaper The Guardian.
The first releases reveal Palestinian negotiating concessions. Later releases will (The Guardian claims) detail the extent of Israeli-Palestinian Authority security cooperation.
In the words of a Guardian columnist today:
"Who will be most damaged by this extraordinary glimpse into the reality of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process? Perhaps the first casualty will be Palestinian national pride, their collective sense of dignity in adversity badly wounded by the papers revealed today.
"Many on the Palestinian streets will recoil to read not just the concessions offered by their representatives – starting with the yielding of those parts of East Jerusalem settled by Israeli Jews – but the language in which those concessions were made."
More bluntly, Blake Hounshell, managing editor of Foreign Policy magazine, has suggested that January 23, 2011, be marked as the day "the two-state solution died."
Yet very arguably, the real news about the documents is that there is no news.
Former Palestinian Liberation Organization representative Karma Nabulsi writes on the Guardian's website, "had such deals eventually come to light, Palestinians would have rejected them comprehensively." Nabulsi is almost certainly correct, and that is the tragedy of the story.
When American officials think about the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, they see a simple solution:
Divide the country along the 1967 armistice lines. The Palestinians get the West Bank and Gaza. Israel gets Israel. Jerusalem is shared somehow. The Palestinian state is disarmed, so that Israel gets security. The international community is mobilized, so that the Palestinians get money.
That rough sketch leaves aside many important technical details – water rights, for example – but basically, it's the answer that every American president since Jimmy Carter has carried in his head.
This answer seems so compelling to Americans that you'll often hear U.S. experts on the issue say, "Everybody knows what the answer has to be."
"Everybody knows"? Not so fast.
The Palestinian leaks show the Palestinian Authority leadership trying to work their way to the answer that "everybody knows."
But the secrecy surrounding the documents – and the reaction to the leak – confirms the Israelis' worst fear: The Palestinian population does not, in fact, "know" what "everybody knows." And a Palestinian leadership that did "know" what "everybody knows" is now being reviled by its own population as traitors and sell-outs.
What, after all, are the big, shameful concessions contained in the documents? Where are the wounds to Palestinian national pride?
• The documents as reported demand Palestinian sovereignty over almost all of historic Jerusalem, including the Western Wall, the holiest site in Judaism.
• The documents demand Palestinian control of lands equal in territory to the 1967 lands. Any border adjustment to reflect Israeli settlement activity would have to be balanced by an equivalent surrender of Israeli land to the new Palestinian state.
• Even after the Palestinians get their state on the other side of the 1967 line, the documents demand some kind of recognition of a Palestinian right to "return" to the Israeli side of the line. At one point, the documents suggest that the Israelis be required to resettle 100,000 Palestinians inside Israel.
If these ideas had been accepted as the basis of a final treaty between Israel and Palestine, every Middle East expert in Washington would have agreed that the Palestinians had done very, very, very well for themselves.
And yet, it never happened. It did not happen in very large part for exactly the reason now confessed by angry Palestinians themselves: because the actual demands of the Palestinian population are so much greater than any diplomat can gain.
Americans tend not to take very seriously the idea of a Palestinian "right of return": a right to move back to Israel even after the creation of a Palestinian state. Americans think, once you have your own state, how are you entitled to the other guy's state, too?
Yet it turns out that this claim that seems so outrageous to many Americans is indispensable to Palestinians and their supporters in the Middle East.
Likewise, Americans tend to assume that any deal should include Jewish sovereignty over the Jewish holy sites in Jerusalem. Yet this too seems radically unacceptable to Palestinians and their supporters, who envision Palestinian control over almost all of historic and spiritual Jerusalem.
The leaked documents take large steps toward recognizing reality as Americans see it. Yet these steps had to remain a desperately guarded secret for exactly the reason we are seeing now: If a Palestinian leadership publicly admits what "everybody admits," that Palestinian leadership will be discredited and repudiated.
Yasser Arafat believed that his people would not accept peace on such terms, which is why Arafat refused to sign a similar peace in 2000: He said it would be signing his death warrant. That refusal triggered another war, the Second Intifada of 2000-03, which ended in disastrous Palestinian defeat.
Yet even after that loss, dissident politicians within the Palestinian leadership believe that their people still will not accept peace on the terms "everybody knows," which is why one of those politicians leaked these documents. That politician expects that disclosure will destroy the current Palestinian leadership and open the way for new leaders who will continue the long war for the old hopeless goals.
From the outside, this Palestinian behavior looks utterly irrational. You can't always get the deal you want. Still, some deal is better – you'd think – than no deal at all. And there is no deal that will give the Palestinians the things their leaders promise them. Palestinians will not be returning to Israel. Palestinians will not be getting the Western Wall. The suburbs built around Jerusalem will not be unbuilt. The deal on offer in 2020 will be worse than the deal on offer in 2010. Why not end the conflict today?
There are deep and long answers to that question. But there is also a short and simple answer, in which we are all implicated:
The conflict is not being ended because the outside world supports and subsidizes the conflict. Palestinians who have lived in Lebanon since 1949 are not Lebanese. Ditto Palestinians who have lived in Syria or Jordan. They receive international aid on the condition that they remain refugees forever. They command attention only to the extent that they do not relinquish their grievances. Everywhere else on the planet, the world community insists that wars must end. This one war is the war that the international community pays to continue.
And when – at long last! – some Palestinian leaders take the tentative steps toward peace on more realistic terms, they must do so in desperate secret. They know what would happen if the deal ever emerged into view. They'd lose their public. As has happened.
When people say that the Middle East peace process is all process, no peace, here is why: because it is only so long that the process reaches no result that the people in charge of the process on the Palestinian side can remain in charge.
Israel has few friends in Gaza, and now the blockade on the Egyptian side may be ending.
Israel's policy towards its neighbours might now begin to count against it.
The world's biggest myth is that, if Israel surrenders to the demands of the Palestinian leadership, there will be peace in the ME.
Israel's Never Looked So Good
By David Suissa, Huffington Post, February 2, 2011
They warned us. The geniuses at Peace Now warned us. The brilliant diplomats warned us. The think tanks warned us. Even the Arab dictators warned us. For decades now, they have been warning us that if you want "peace in the Middle East," just fix the Palestinian problem. A recent variation on this theme has been: Just get the Jews to stop building apartments in East Jerusalem and Efrat. Yes, if all those Jews in the West Bank and East Jerusalem would only "freeze" their construction, then, finally, Palestinian leaders might come to the table and peace might break out.
And what would happen if peace would break out between Jews and Palestinians? Would all those furious Arabs now demonstrating on streets across the Middle East feel any better?
What bloody nonsense.
Has there ever been a greater abuse of the English language in international diplomacy than calling the Israeli-Palestinian conflict the "Middle East peace process?" As if there were only two countries in the Middle East.
Even if you absolutely believe in the imperative of creating a Palestinian state, you can't tell me that the single-minded and global obsession with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at the expense of the enormous ills in the rest of the Middle East hasn't been idiotic, if not criminally negligent.
While tens of millions of Arabs have been suffering for decades from brutal oppression, while gays have been tortured and writers jailed and women humiliated and dissidents killed, the world—yes, the world—has obsessed with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
As if Palestinians—the same coddled victims on whom the world has spent billions and who have rejected one peace offer after another—were the only victims in the Middle East.
As if the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has anything to do with the 1,000-year-old bloody conflict between Sunni and Shiite Muslims, or the desire of brutal Arab dictators to stay in power, or the desire of Islamist radicals to bring back the Caliphate, or the economic despair of millions, or simply the absence of free speech or basic human rights throughout the Arab world.
While self-righteous Israel bashers have scrutinized every flaw in Israel's democracy—some waxing hysterical that the Jewish democratic experiment in the world's nastiest neighborhood had turned into an embarrassment—they kept their big mouths shut about the oppression of millions of Arabs throughout the Middle East.
They cried foul if Israeli Arabs—who have infinitely more rights and freedoms than any Arabs in the Middle East—had their rights compromised in any way. But if a poet were jailed in Jordan or a gay man were tortured in Egypt or a woman were stoned in Syria, all we heard was screaming silence.
Think of the ridiculous amount of media ink and diplomatic attention that has been poured onto the Israel-Palestinian conflict over the years, while much of the Arab world was suffering and smoldering, and tell me this is not criminal negligence. Do you ever recall seeing a UN resolution or an international conference in support of Middle Eastern Arabs not named Palestinians?
Of course, now that the Arab volcano has finally erupted, all those chronic Israel bashers have suddenly discovered a new cause: Freedom for the poor oppressed Arabs of the Middle East!
Imagine if, instead of putting Israel under their critical and hypocritical microscope, the world's Israel bashers had taken Israel's imperfect democratic experiment and said to the Arab world: Why don't you try to emulate the Jews?
Why don't you give equal rights to your women and gays, just like Israel does?
Why don't you give your people the same freedom of speech and freedom to vote that Israel does? And offer them the economic opportunities they would get in Israel? Why don't you treat your Jewish and Christian citizens the same way Israel treats its Arab and Christian citizens?
Why don't you study how Israel has struggled to balance religion with democracy—a very difficult but not insurmountable task?
Why don't you teach your people that Jews are not the sons of dogs but a noble, ancient people with a 3,000-year connection to the land of Israel?
Yes, imagine if Israel bashers had spent a fraction of their energy fighting the lies of Arab dictators and defending the rights of millions of oppressed Arabs. Imagine if President Obama had taken one percent of the time he has harped on Jewish settlements to defend the democratic rights of Egyptian Arabs—which he is suddenly doing now that the volcano has erupted.
Maybe it's just easier to beat up on a free and open society like Israel.
Well, now that the cesspool of human oppression in the Arab world has been opened for all to see, how bad is Israel's democracy looking? Don't you wish the Arab world had a modicum of Israel's civil society? Would you still be worrying about "stability in the Middle East?"
You can preach to me all you want about the great Jewish tradition of self-criticism—which I believe in—but right now, when I see poor Arab souls being murdered for the simple act of protesting on the street, I've never felt more proud of being a supporter of the Jewish state.
