Inkwell Institute
Middle East Desk
By now all interested know that the Middle East peace process is dead…dead….dead. And as per the norm there is a wealth of blame for the death of the negotiations…….one of the sticking points is the building of new settlements on the West bank……but Israel has had NO intention of stopping the process……
John Glasner has brought some interesting facts to the conversation…..
Israel’s primary criticism of the Palestinian side is that they are not engaging in “good faith negotiations,” they are not “partners for peace.” As I’ve noted several times in the past few weeks, that critique rings hypocritical given Israel’s negotiating positions. After all, Secretary of State John Kerry admitted it was Israel’s failure to comply with its promised steps in the talks and then called off negotiations long before Fatah and Hamas announced reconciliation.
Israel’s depiction of itself as the only party willing to make sacrifices for peace is further eroded by these two findings from the Israeli activist group Peace Now and the PLO.
Israel okayed nearly 14,000 settler homes during talks
Israel approved plans for nearly 14,000 new settler homes during the nine months of peace talks with the Palestinians, an Israeli settlement watchdog said Tuesday as the negotiation period formally ended.
…“This is an unprecedented number representing an average of 50 housing units per day or 1,540 per month,” it said.
PLO: Israel demolished over 500 Palestinian structures during talks
Israel demolished over 500 Palestinian structures throughout the US-brokered peace negotiations, the PLO said in a statement Tuesday.
Citing figures from the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the PLO said Israel demolished a total of 508 Palestinian structures, 312 of which were homes, from July 30, 2013 to April 29, 2014.
“As a result, 878 persons were forcibly displaced,” the statement said.So, during Israel’s supposedly good faith efforts in peace talks, more than 500 Palestinian homes and buildings were demolished by Israeli Defense Forces and almost 14,000 new settlement units were approved. How can anyone argue Israel was negotiating in good faith?
That would have pissed me off also………but then the PA, Palestine Authority signed a reconciliation pact with Hamas………..of course Israel saw this as an opportunity to nix the negotiations saying that this was totally unacceptable…….now both sides have a way to save face……and in doing so have murdered the peace process…well done!
This happens every time one side or the other finds a situation they can use to stop the process dead in its tracks…….and I mean every time!
Here is one example of how the process fails……….from the mouth of Israeli prez Peres…….
According to Peres, who is in the final months of his presidential term, Abbas was willing to recognize Israel as the Jewish state in return for the establishment of a Palestinian state.
Regarding the refugee issue, Peres said agreement was reached along the lines of the Arab League initiative that the problem would be resolved in an agreed and just manner.
Peres stressed that the meetings he held with Abbas, at a time when there were no negotiations, were held with Netanyahu’s knowledge and consent.
The president, who said he has known Abbas for 30 years, called him a man of “character,” a “fighter against terrorism,” and a man who is courageous and talks of peace.
What are they, Israelis, afraid of this time?
Now Netan—-whats his name is trying one of the end runs that the American Right are famous for doing……….
Leaders of Israel’s Arab minority have reacted with fury to plans by the Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, to spearhead legislation defining Israel as “the nation state of the Jewish people”.
Arab Israelis say the law will pave the way for discrimination against them to be entrenched in law.
Liberal Israeli Jews are also warning that Mr Netanyahu’s announcement that his government intends to “provide a constitutional anchor for Israel’s status as the nation state of the Jewish people” is “undemocratic”.
Mr Netanyahu says that a Basic Law is necessary because enemies of Israel are trying to challenge the historical, legal and moral basis of the existence of Israel as a Jewish state.
In a draft law Mr Levin prepared, Israel is delineated as the national home of the Jewish people and it is stated that the right of national self-determination in Israel is exclusive to the Jewish nation. Israel, it continues, is the Jewish people’s historic homeland, without mention being made of it as a historic homeland for its Arab citizens.
Jafar Farah, director of Mosawa, a non-governmental organisation that promotes equality for the Arab minority, predicts that legal discrimination will now become more pronounced. “This will mainstream racism and discrimination and marginalisation of the Arab community and give us the feeling that we are not only second-class citizens but a fifth column,” he said.
Galia Golan, a member of the dovish Meretz party, says “the implication is that everyone else is a second-class citizen. By implication you are excluding others when the whole basis of democracy is pluralism and equality. In that sense, it’s undemocratic.
“It amounts to sending a message to your minority, that was here to begin with, that they have no place here,” she added.
Keep in mind this is the “democracy” that so many hold up as some sort of example…….it is delusional to do so.
In the past month or so the US state dept has issued a couple of amazing findings…..and of course they were not pick up on US TV for we cannot have such stuff on our free and balanced mews media…….
Israel practices “institutional and societal discrimination” against its Palestinian citizens: this is the conclusion of the US State Department in its newly-published Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2012.
The annual country report on Israel contains uncomfortable reading for pro-Israel advocacy groups, particularly given who is publishing it. With regards to problems faced by Palestinians with Israeli citizenship, the State Department notes the following:
- “Resources devoted to Arabic education were inferior to those devoted to Hebrew education in the public education system.”
- “Approximately 93 percent of land was in the public domain, including approximately 12.5 percent owned by the NGO Jewish National Fund (JNF), whose statutes prohibit sale or lease of land to non-Jews.”
- “Approximately 60,000 Bedouin lived in at least 46 unrecognized tent or shack villages that did not have water and electricity and lacked educational, health, and welfare services.”
- “The law bars family reunification when a citizen’s spouse is a non-Jewish citizen of Iran, Iraq, Syria, or Lebanon. Citizens may apply for temporary visit permits for Palestinian male spouses 35 years old or older or Palestinian female spouses 25 years old or older, but may not receive residency based on their marriage and have no path to citizenship.”