Garbanzo Toons

How Much Longer Does the Charade Continue?

After all these years, why do they still insist that Palestinians have any legitimate demands to anything other than what they've created for themselves? According to this article

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas told Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice on Sunday that he opposes the establishment of a provisional Palestinian state within temporary borders.

Palestinian officials in recent weeks have grown increasingly wary of the idea, which was also proposed by
Israel's foreign minister, fearing they will be stuck indefinitely with a truncated state.

"We reaffirmed to Secretary Rice our rejection of any temporary or transitional solutions, including a state with temporary borders, because we don't see in it as a realistic option," he told a joint news conference with Rice.

So

Rice responded by reiterating the U.S. commitment to the internationally backed "road map" peace plan. She not address the idea of a provisional state at the news conference, but Mohammed Dahlan, a confidant of Abbas, said later she "showed understanding" for the Palestinian position.

"My work is going to be best targeted, I think, in these next months on trying to accelerate progress on the road map, which after all would lead us then to a Palestinian state and to helping the Palestinians and Israelis think through the political horizon," she said.

Rice said she was told during her trip that the United States needed to deepen its involvement in Mideast peace efforts. "You will have my commitment to do precisely that," she said.

"The Palestinian people have waited a long time for their own state. The Israeli people have waited a long time to live in security and peace with their neighbors," she said.

I'm always hearing about what a mental giant Rice is, but if she's still pandering to Abbas and his Fatah terrorists, she's showing the same inability to learn that plagues the rest of our "leadership".

Hamas, which has dominated the Cabinet since winning parliamentary elections in March, has balked at international demands it recognize Israel, renounce violence and accept existing peace deals before Western sanctions on economic assistance to the government could be lifted.

The international community, including the U.S., insists that any Palestinian government recognize Israel's right to exist, but Hamas has refused to do so.

In other words, it doesn't matter what Rice claims, or what Abbas says in order to maintain his position as a "moderate". As long as cash from the West keeps flowing into Palestinian coffers, Palestinians will keep attacking Israel. Rice, however, wants to keep the delusion alive that there is a Palestinian leadership that is ammenable to peace. She ignores the words and deeds of Hamas and the low level civil war that has engulfed Palestinian society. Maybe she accepts the traditional Islamic explanation for the civil war and for all Islamic troubles, an explanation built and refined over years of Islamic scholarship, and now accepted by dupes and useful idiots in the West:

Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas contended that Israel and the U.S. were trying to fan the flames of a Palestinian civil war.

That's right, blame the Jews . . . excuse me, I mean the "Israel lobby." It's helped bring the Palestinians to their current state as a model society, so why mess with success? Right Condi?

If you think the situation is ugly now, if Israel gets the strong leadership they need anytime in the near future, it could get uglier. Unfortunately, violence seems to be the only negotiating tactic that either Hamas or Abbas understand. And violence will be the only tactic that will insure Israel's survival.

Labels: Abbas, Condi Rice, Hamas, Palestinians

posted by Harry @ 10:26 AM