Don’t Blame Bibi
“They’re still allowing Abbas to make fools of them, as they wait for the Palestinian Godot, who will never show up.”
Excellent analysis in the left-wing Haaretz newspaper by journalist Ari Shavit, Waiting for the Palestinian Godot:
There are some moments a journalist will never forget. In early 1997, Yossi Beilin decided to trust me, and show me the document that proved that peace was within reach. The then-prominent and creative politician from the Labor movement opened up a safe, took out a stack of printed pages, and laid them down on the table like a player with a winning poker hand.
Rumors were rife about the Beilin-Abu Mazen agreement, but only a few had the opportunity to see the document with their own eyes or hold it in their hands. I was one of those few. With mouth agape I read the comprehensive outline for peace that had been formulated 18 months earlier by two brilliant champions of peace — one, Israeli, and one, Palestinian. The document left nothing to chance: Mahmoud Abbas is ready to sign a permanent agreement. The refugee from Safed had overcome the ghosts of the past and the ideas of the past, and was willing to build a joint Israeli-Palestinian future, based on coexistence. If we could only get out from under the Likud’s thumb, and get Benjamin Netanyahu out of office, he will join us, hand in hand, walking toward the two-state solution. Abbas is a serious partner for true peace, the one with whom we can make a historic breakthrough toward reconciliation.
We understood. We did what was necessary. In 1999, we ousted Likud and Netanyahu. In 2000, we went to the peace summit at Camp David. Whoops, surprise: Abbas didn’t bring the Beilin-Abu Mazen plan to Camp David, or any other draft of a peace proposal. The opposite was true: He was one of the staunchest objectors, and his demand for the right of return prevented any progress.
But don’t believe we’d give up so quickly. During the fall of 2003, as the Geneva Accord was being formulated, it was clear to us that there were no more excuses, and that now, Abbas would sign the new peace agreement and adopt its principles. Whoops, surprise: Abu Mazen sent Yasser Abed Rabbo (a former Palestinian Authority minister) instead, while he stayed in his comfy Ramallah office. No signature, no accord.
But people as steadfast as us don’t give up on our dreams. So in 2008 we got behind Ehud Olmert, and the marathon talks he held with Abbas, and the offer that couldn’t be refused. Whoops, surprise: Abu Mazen didn’t actually refuse, he just disappeared. He didn’t say yes, he didn’t say no, he just vanished without a trace….
In the summer of 2009, we even supported Netanyahu, when he made overtures to Abbas with his Bar-Ilan speech, and the settlement freeze. Whoops, surprise: the sophisticated objector didn’t blink, or trip up. He simple refused to dance the tango of peace with the right-wing Israeli leader.
Have we opened our eyes? Of course not. Again, we blamed Netanyahu and Likud, and believed that in 2014, Abu Mazen wouldn’t dare to say no, not to John Kerry. Whoops, surprise: In his own sophisticated, polite way, Abbas has said no in recent months to both Kerry and Barack Obama. Again, the Palestinian president’s position is clear and consistent: The Palestinians must not be required to make concessions. It’s a complicated game – squeezing more and more compromises out of the Israelis, without the Palestinians granting a single real, compromise of their own.
Take heed: Twenty years of fruitless talks have led to nothing. There is no document that contains any real Palestinian concession with Abbas’ signature. None. There never was, and there never will be….
They’re still allowing Abbas to make fools of them, as they wait for the Palestinian Godot, who will never show up.
With Abbas’ latest move of a unity government with Hamas and Islamic Jihad, maybe it finally will sink in, Bibi is not the problem.
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Comments
By refusing to hold the Palestinians’ feet to the fire, American administrations guarantee that they will never come to the table honestly. Their best interest, at least in the short term, is to perpetuate the status quo indefinitely. Being used by other Arabs and the international community as their designated outrage foci doesn’t begin to harsh the high induced by being treated as the ultimate victim class. It would take a people of character and moral value to extricate themselves from the web the Palestinians are in, and they ain’t it.
Well, the Arabs do what they do best — lie — and people believe them. Sweet.
The day Israelis get their heads out of their butts and accept that the Arabs, partners in the first, want a second Holocaust us the day that they will stop making foolish overtures for “peace” and surrendering their patrimony.
The rule of war when dealing with Arabs is: beat them until they surrender, then put your foot on their necks until they sign documents agreeing to their defeat; offer them nothing; reclaim what is yours and take some of what they have; if they start acting up again, beat the hell out of them again.
The Israelis aren’t trying to manage the Palestinians. They know exactly what that lot will do. They’re trying to manage the White House, like some idiot child that has it in their heads that they’re going to solve the unsolveable problem. It’s an idiot child with a massive pocketbook, so Isreal pats them on the head and tries not to anger them.
Great read. Certainly spot-on, but, I’m not as well read as I’d like to be, or should be, I suppose. I have no idea what “Godot” meant, or what “Godot” is — so I looked it up:
Voila! LoL! Interesting, in multiple respects. I hope that helps others not in the know, too 😉
Instead of “this is the play about nothing,” I’d describe it as “this is the play upon which many meanings have been hung, one of which is the hanging of hopes upon groundless expectations.”
But in any case, the absurdist play is the very model of the absurd reality.
Well, I do know a little about it . . . 😉
Godot is a man. In the play, he regularly sends word that he has been unavoidably delayed, but will surely come tomorrow. Then tomorrow, another such message.
What is left unsaid is why Vladimir and I are supposed to be waiting for him or what is supposed to happen when he gets there.
As Abba Eban famously said, “The Arabs never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.” Actually, I believe this actually shows the naiveté of the Israeli leadership over the years. The fact is there never was a real opportunity in the first place. No Palestinian leader has ever really intended to make peace with Israel and have only used the promise of peace to continue its attack on the Jewish nation.
It’s exactly what Bill Clinton figured out in 2000. Sadly, Bush refused to accept that premise. Obama, on the other hand, will never admit what he has to know is true. But his affinity towards the Palestinians makes him just as culpable. Perhaps this is the reason he has given all the responsibility to John Kerry, as opposed to being the front man himself (usually, his ego would not allow anyone else to be considered the lead dog).
The fact is that if Arabs wanted peace, the whole “Palestinian problem” could have been solved with a little money from the oil producers to set them up. But the Arab nations preferred the Palestinians poor and angry, so they sent only the minimal aid.
Now generations have been weaned on some irrational idea that they will drive out the Jews and reconquer the entire country. That it is not only acceptable but admirable and heroic to murder children to terrorize Israel. As insane and inhuman as that is, when it is indoctrinated from kindergarten on, it’s not easy to overcome.
But American behavior has been no less irrational. How crazy is it to keep opening negotiations with someone who won’t keep their promises from the past? Of what worth would an “agreement” with such people be?
Of course the leftist Euro-trash elite and their US counterparts who drive the BDS nonsense and other similar garbage realize this, which is why they and the government diplomats from the US and EU no longer speak in terms of a “peace agreement,” they only praise the “peace process.”
Why are so many so gleeful? It sounds as if they are saying “Good excuse not to have to deal with the Palestinians.” I don’t hear any sense of regret that Abbas is making a mistake. I hear too much triumphalism.
That’s because the conservative right wants to maintain the status quo……