Surrounding Annapolis, Extreme Bias in Dhimmedia
"There is an Arab acceptance of Israel and a commitment to a comprehensive peace settlement that is unprecedented in the six decades of the conflict." (TIME.com)
When Middle East adversaries meet in Annapolis this week, will it be a peace conference, or rather a conference that ends all peace? Nearly 60 years since the outbreak of the Arab-Israeli conflict, that may well be the stark choice that awaits the conference's participants.Doomsday predictions, of course, have long been a staple of Middle East commentary. Every negotiation seems to be the "last chance" for peace. Every crisis seems to threaten the outbreak of a major war, if not the great apocalypse. But there's reason to pay attention to the warnings this time. The 1979 Camp David peace treaty between Egypt and Israel planted the seed for resolving the core of the conflict: the creation of an independent Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Arab territories seized by Israel in the 1967 war. But if the Annapolis conference fails to provide urgently needed nourishment, the two-state solution and its hope of peace may die forever.
The once-promising dialogue between Israelis and Palestinians to settle their dispute is hanging by a thread. Despite 14 years of mutual recognition and on-off peace talks, they have failed to agree on the formula by which they can live together side by side in separate states. Israeli settlements in the West Bank have proceeded apace, while, until recently, Israeli leaders seemed inclined to unilaterally decide the borders and other unresolved issues. Palestinian leadership has become badly splintered, with the pro-negotiations camp represented by the late Yasser Arafat's Fatah party increasingly overwhelmed by the Islamic fundamentalist group, Hamas....
14 years of mutual recognition? What's he talking about?!
Jeff Jacoby:
In advance of the upcoming diplomatic conference in Annapolis, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert announced the other day that he expects the Palestinian Authority to finally acknowledge Israel’s existence as a Jewish state.A newly arrived visitor from Mars might wonder why this should even be an issue n after all, Israel is a Jewish state. If the more than 55 countries that make up the Organization of the Islamic Conference are entitled to recognition as Muslim states, and if the 22 members of the Arab League are universally accepted as Arab states, why should anyone balk at acknowledging Israel as the world’s lone Jewish state?
Yet Olmert’s demand was rebuffed. Saeb Erekat, the senior Palestinian Authority negotiator, said recently that Palestinians would refuse to recognize Israel’s Jewish identity on the grounds that “it is not acceptable for a country to link its national character to a specific religion.” According to The Jerusalem Post, Erekat told Radio Palestine: There is no country in the world where religious and national identities are intertwined.”
.... The refusal of the Palestinian Authority, and for that matter most of the Arab world, to acknowledge Israel as a legitimate Jewish state isn’t a denial of reality; it is a sign of their determination to undo that reality.
and on-off peace talks?
Hullo, Mr. MacLeod. Can you say.... Gaza?
If Ariel Sharon weren't already unconscious, it would put him in coma to see how world completely ignores the "considerable sacrifice" Israel offered with the "ultimate goal" of establishing
"good neighborly relations with a Palestinian state."
Most infuriating of all is the unfairness of incessant repetition that Israeli settlements are The Obstacle to Peace. This is consistently coupled with Palestinian impunity; MacLeod holds the Palestinians responsible only for their "splintered" leadership.
Is this what he means by "splintered"? June 11, 2007:
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip - Rival gunmen exchanged fire at two Gaza hospitals on Monday and Cabinet ministers fled their weekly meeting after the government headquarters was caught in the crossfire of a brutal day of infighting that killed 17 Palestinians. The battles came a day after two militants from the rival Hamas and Fatah factions were dragged onto high-rise rooftops and thrown to their death in a power struggle that appears to be rapidly descending into all-out confrontation....The bloodiest clashes of the day took place in the northern Gaza town of Beit Hanoun. Fatah and Hamas gunmen exchanged fire near Beit Hanoun Hospital, killing a Hamas supporter. The battle then moved tothe hospital, where three men from a Fatah-allied clan were shot dead.
At Gaza's largest hospital, Shifa, combatants fired mortars, grenades and assault rifles.
Two other Palestinians were killed in battles late Monday night in northern Gaza, security and hospital officials said. Later, Hamas said one of its men, who was kidnapped earlier, was found dead in a Gaza street.
Early Tuesday, three women and a child were killed when Hamas militants attacked the home of a senior Fatah security official with mortars and grenades, security officials said. The gunmen seized Hassan Abu Rabie and killed his 14-year-old son and three other women in the house, hospital officials said.
Also, Fatah gunmen stormed the house of a Hamas lawmaker and burned it to the ground.
It's not just that Mr. MacLeod is wrong, misinformed or uninformed. It's not even that he's biased in favor of the poor-palestinians. Going in to Annapolis with an American public believing accounts such as his, believing that Annapolis is about "peace," is just straight on dangerous. It's dangerous for Israel - and by extension, dangerous for all Jews everywhere - because it so undermines any possibility of support for the Jewish state. Again, still, Israel is forced to stand alone in the world.
Like the rest of the dhimmedia, MacLeod remains callously unmoved by the array of Jew-hatred represented at Annapolis. He either doesn't know, or chooses not to tell his readership, that
"the Saudi foreign minister, Prince Saud al-Faisal, who said he would attend, made it clear there would be no handshake with Israeli officials."
How many Americans - if they knew - would approve of a "peace conference" in which someone won't even touch a Jew to shake his or her hand?
How President Bush can not only sanction, but lend his clout to such blatant bigotry is beyond me. But don't hold your breath, because media creeps like MacLeod won't be asking him. They have their own agenda.
Posted by: yonaton | Tuesday, 27 November 2007 at 12:04 AM
Posted by: yonaton | Tuesday, 27 November 2007 at 12:19 AM