Sometimes when you read reports about the Middle East, you get the impression that corporate journalists think Palestinians are another species entirely. Here’s the New York Times‘ Mark Landler (3/4/09) explaining the theory of how better relations with Syria could help create a peace deal between Israel and Palestine:
By seeking an understanding with Syria, which has cultivated close ties to Iran, the United States could increase the pressure on Iran to respond to its offer of direct talks. Such an understanding would also give Arab states and moderate Palestinians the political cover to negotiate with Israel. That, in turn, could increase the burden on Hamas, the Islamic militant group that controls Gaza, to relax its hostile stance toward Israel.
Israel just recently launched an assault on the Gaza Strip that killed nearly 1,300 Palestinians, including 280 children under the age of 18 and 111 adult women. The Israelis killed roughly 1 out of every thousand residents of Gaza; the equivalent death toll in the U.S. would be almost 300,000.
If you were writing about human beings, you would assume that those massive losses, rather than a lack of “political cover,” would probably result in a “hostile stance” toward the country that inflicted them. Since Landler doesn’t seem to think that those deaths are a significant factor in the political situation, he must think he’s writing about a very different sort of creature.
So, since when have “Arab states and moderate Palestinians” … or Hamas, for that matter … needed “political cover to negotiate with Israel”?
Isn’t the question why Israel won’t negotiate with them … in any honest way, at least?
What Landler and the corpress in general mean by “negotiate” is capitulate, isn’t it? They regard nothing less than the acceptance of arid and isolated bantustans as a “Palestinian state” as the benchmark for Palestinian “reasonableness”.
Hamas has been willing to talk about a viable state, and has been rejected at every turn by Israel and our own gummint, haven’t they?
Personally, I think the only just solution is one state in historic Palestine with equal rights for all its citizens, as advocated by Ali Abunimah and others.
Perhaps two states could be a prelude to that. I’m far from an expert on the subject. I just can’t see how any two-state “solution” can be considered truly fair, can you?
No.
The Israelis have to deal with the Palestinians and solve the problem. No one else can do it…and until this happens, there will be blood. This is another self-fullfilling prophecy perpetrated by religious hard-liners on all sides. All three sides. A pox on all of them and their blind faith.
Many years ago in the UK I witnessed a television interview with four Israeli academics who refused to discuss the right of Israel to exist on the grounds that it was God’s will. I do not dispute that there are as many good reasons for Israel to exist as there are for Israelis to treat Palestinians with respect and to abide by the agreements they disregard so wontonly; unless not to do so is God’s will of course.