Israel and Palestine

Palestinian nationalism is not based on a passion for normalization through getting a state as quickly as possible, but rather on the idea that "their land" was usurped by Israel in 1948. Therefore it is more important for Israel to be wiped out than for a Palestinian state to exist. It is more important to get all of the territory than to achieve benefits by compromising to get part of it.

No More ‘Peace Talks,’ Please: The Arab-Israeli Conflict has no Clear Parameters for Resolution

Shoshana Bryen
February 5th 2012

Pajamas Media

Prime Minister Salam Fayyad  and PA President Mahmoud Abbas

The current round of Israeli-Palestinian meetings in Jordan ended with a Palestinian decision to leave. "The Israelis brought nothing new in these meetings," said one official, without bothering to note the obvious — neither did the Palestinians.

The talks were the result of a Quartet plan to have Israelis and Palestinians make proposals on territory and security in hopes of reaching a deal in 2012. Questions abound, but the most important is, "How many more times will this farce be played out without recognition of the real and incompatible bottom lines of the two parties?"

It is that fundamental incompatibility — not the lack of pressure or lack of bribes — that prevents the present creation of the mythical "two-state solution" embedded in the Oslo Accords, negotiated without U.S. participation, and signed in 1993.

From the Israeli side, Oslo had three underlying assumptions:

• That Palestinian nationalism could be understood as the mirror image of Jewish nationalism (Zionism);
• That Palestinian nationalism could find its full expression in a West Bank and Gaza Strip state; and
• That there is a price Israel, the United States, and Europe could pay to the Palestinians that would overcome any remaining Palestinian objection to Jewish sovereignty in the region.

All three assumptions have been proven wrong.

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Posted on January 30, 2012 at 12:44 pm by Ruth King, Mideast Outpost, AFSI

WILLIAM MEHLMAN: ABDULLAH, PICK UP THE PHONE

If it’s solely a National Home for which the so-called Palestinians yearn, rather than the liquidation of the Jewish National Home, such an abode – fully furnished –already exists east of the Jordan River

Filed under Mideast

When all the wild, desperate, improbable solutions to a problem have been exhausted, there is    nothing left to turn to but the obvious.

In respect to the Arab-Israel conflict, the “obvious” has been staring us in face for over 40 years. Encapsulated in the mantra “Two States for Two Peoples on Two Banks of the Jordan River,“ it has the distinction of being the most ignored testament to rationality and common sense in the history of international diplomacy.

An “invented ”nation the so-called Palestinians surely are, but given the world’s acceptance of their claim to sovereignty, it  is on the shoulders of the world, not on Israel’s, that the  realization of  that aspiration rests.

Indeed, if it’s solely a National Home for which the so-called Palestinians yearn, rather than the liquidation of the Jewish National Home, such an abode – fully furnished –already exists east of the Jordan River. “Jordan” it may be called, but encompassing 77 percent of Biblical Israel expropriated by the British and handed over to a Hashemite desert potentate, it is a “Palestinian State” in the purest post-Biblical sense of the term.

That this de facto  “Palestinian State” with its 70 percent  Palestinian Arab  majority should be allowed to stand on the sidelines, like some kibbitzer at  an  interminable diplomatic poker game, exempt from any material obligation toward  its compatriots, boggles the  mind.

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