The latest is to be presented today when Mahmoud Abbas will be meeting with US President Barak Obama. According to news reports, Abbas is going to demand the release of a list of Palestinians in Israeli prisons, including a couple of high-profile prisoners, such as Marwan Barghouti. In addition to that, Abbas will be demanding a construction freeze by Israel. And all this is just so that Abbas will agree to continue talking to Israel until the end of 2014.
Abbas keeps making demands for Israeli concessions just for the goal of sitting and talking - if it was as part of an actual agreement, that would be one thing. But just in order to continue sitting and talking? We have done this too many times already.
I hope Netanyahu can withstand the pressure that will surely be put on him...
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This is a standard part of the game. If you go all the way back to 1993 the Arabs have not conceded on a single demand from their original Oslo position. Israel has moved miles but they haven't budged. All they've ever said is "Without further unilateral concessions we won't discuss peace and you will be blamed". And liberal politicians always fall for it.
ReplyDeleteThere is no doubt in 2014 that we should not be trying to acheive a peace agreement but rather peace and normalization. An internationally backed piece of paper is worth nothing. Than you Obama for showing that to the world that nothing has changed since Chamberlain.
ReplyDeleteThen Netanyahu should be prepared to say no.
ReplyDeleteThe 104 in the current exchange should not have been agreed to, and the last time a settlement freeze was demanded Abbas waited nine months into a ten-month freeze before sitting down, then refused to continue after the ten months until Israel froze settlements after the ten-month period. There should be NO agreement to further prisoner releases and NO agreement to freeze settlements.
The game that MGI refers to should be declared over. In fact, in a little bit of irony, Netanyahu should say to Abbas and Obama (quoting President George H.W. Bush and Secretary of State James Baker), "Here is the number of the Prime Minister's Office. When you are serious about negotiating a peace agreement, call us." We should be willing to "be wrong in the eyes of the whole damned world" (quoting Leon Uris) in order to preserve our Holy Land. And if the whole world wants to turn against us, we'll see who was right.