Preconditions demanded by the Palestinians are a non-starter for the Israelis
As usual, the Palestinians find a way to avoid reaching a peace accord with Israel. While Abbas has called for a resumption of negotiations, he has done so by insisting on preconditions which, as he damn well knows, will be a non-starter for the Israelis. Of course, the Obama administration is likely to see, and the international community will definitely see Israel’s rejection of the preconditions as nothing more than Israeli intransigence.
When is the world going to accept the fact that the Palestinians really do not want two states living side by side in peace? They want only one state – a Palestinian state - from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. If the two sides ever do sign a peace accord, sooner or later it will be broken by the Palestinians as they try to achieve their avowed goal of one state from the river to the sea.
PALESTINIANS REBUFF NETANYAHU PEACE OVERTURE
By Ryan Jones
Israel Today
May 14, 2012
The Palestinian Authority on Sunday dismissed a letter from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas suggesting that the two men return to the negotiating table.
Netanyahu's letter was a response to a letter sent by Abbas to the Israeli leader last month in which Abbas insisted that since the peace process had already dragged on so long, Israel must now agree to meet all Palestinian demand before negotiations resume.
Abbas' letter concluded by demanding that Netanyahu:
1. Accept the two-state solution on the 1967 borders with possible minor and mutually agreed upon land swaps of equal size and value;
2. Stop all settlement activities, including in East Jerusalem;
3. Release all prisoners, in particular those imprisoned prior to the end of 1994; and
4. Revoke all decisions taken since 2000 which undermine agreements signed between Israel and the PLO.
While Netanyahu has already verbally agreed to the establishment of a Palestinian state, freezing and even uprooting Jewish neighborhoods in Jerusalem and setting free thousands of blood-soaked Palestinian terrorists from Israeli prisons are red lines that almost no Israeli is prepared to cross.
While details of Netanyahu's response were scarce, it reportedly reflected those Israeli concerns, and insisted that the Palestinians return to the negotiating table without preconditions, as the two sides had clearly not yet reached the "final status" phase as stipulated by the original "Oslo Accords." Netanyahu is said to have stressed that Israel's new unity government offers Abbas the perfect face-saving opportunity to resume talks without first making hardline demands.
Netanyahu's letter also presumably reminded Abbas of the things he left out of his own letter, namely that while the peace process has dragged on far longer than anyone hoped, that fact is primarily the result of not only continuing, but escalating Palestinian violence against Israel over the past decade.
The Oslo Accords obligated the Palestinian Authority to stop all violence against Israel, combat and dismantle any groups that engage in violence, and educate its people for peaceful coexistence. Numerous surveys show that the PA continues to violate those terms, despite Abbas' public commitment to "non-violence."
Palestinian officials were hoping no one noticed the discrepancies between their demands and claims and their behavior of the ground, and tried to paint Netanyahu and his policies as the sole obstacle to peace.
The content of [Netanyahu's] letter did not represent grounds for returning to negotiations," Palestinian official Hanan Ashrawi told Reuters.
Barring any about-faces by either Israel or the Palestinians, it is assumed that Abbas' next move will be to again approach the United Nations to recognize a State of Palestine in the absence of a peace agreement with Israel. Abbas tried a similar stunt last year, only to be shot down by the UN Security Council, where the United States threatened to veto the Palestinian motion.
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