Opinion Editorials, March 2010

 Is the PA capitulating to Israel?

By Khalid Amayreh

Al-Jazeerah & ccun.org, March 15, 2010

No sooner had the Obama administration announced the resumption of “indirect” talks between Israel and the PA regime than Israel announced new plans to expand Jewish settlements in occupied East Jerusalem and other parts of the West Bank .

On Tuesday, as visiting  US Vice president Joe Biden was showering Israel  with the usually excessive  praise, the Israeli Interior Ministry, headed by Eli Yeshai, announced plans to build 1600 new settler units in East Jerusalem.

Earlier, Israeli Defense Minister, Ehud Barak, Okayed the construction of 112 additional settler units in the West Bank, effectively terminating an earlier half-hearted decision to partially freeze Jewish settlement expansion for eight months.

The continued aggrandizement of Jewish settlements in the West Bank is meant to decapitate once and for all the prospects of establishing a viable Palestinian state.

In fact, it is more than clear that the Israeli strategy of thwarting Palestinian statehood is succeeding despite all feeble American objections and helpless Palestinian and Arab protestations.

In the final analysis, the US gives words, empty words and shallow promises about peace efforts, while Israel is tearing the West Bank into pieces and making the realization of Palestinian statehood a distant dream.

The latest Israeli measures should also be viewed as a profound insult to Arab leaders who have decided to “give peace a chance” by okaying the resumption of indirect but seemingly futile peace talks between an insolent Israel ruled by the most fascist and anti-peace elements in Israel’s history and a powerless, impotent and bankrupt Palestinian leadership that has lost nearly all pretensions of national responsibility.

What else can be said of an artificial entity that keeps pandering to the enemies of the Palestinian people as if the disgraceful sycophancy would make Israel reconsider its evil designs and enable the Palestinian people to regain their rights and dignity.

The latest Israeli provocations also expose the total bankruptcy of official Arab political thinking, espoused by the Egyptian, Saudi and Jordanian regimes. These regimes are of the opinion  that the more concessions and sacrifices Palestinians  make for “peace with Israel ,” the more good-will Israel will show toward the Palestinians.

Obviously, Arab despots, who mostly excel in tormenting and oppressing their own peoples for Israel’s and America’s sake, don’t know that Israel is very much like a vicious crocodiles, the more meat you give it, the more it will seek.

It is really sad for the Palestinians that their enduring just cause is  being entrusted to a feeble leadership which itself is entrusting it to totally impotent and bankrupt Arab dictatorships which would go to any extent to appease Israel and its guardian ally, the United States.

The Palestinian leadership eventually got what it wanted from the so-called Arab leaderships, namely an Arab endorsement of  the PA retreat from its  erstwhile posture that refused to return to moribund talks with Israel,  which  even children in Palestinian streets know well  would lead nowhere except to more frustration and capitulation.

Indeed, the feeble PA reactions to the latest  Israeli provocations  underscore the pathetic state of a “leadership” that has lost touch with reality after losing touch with the people.

Such a leadership not only will fail to make any gains for the Palestinian cause but will also keep moving from one disaster to the other, all in the name of realism,  pragmatism…and peace!!!

The new planned expansion of Jewish settlements, timed to coincide with the a visit to occupied Palestine by Vice President Biden, is also meant as a message of defiance  to the Obama administration which apparently has been paralyzed by the extent to which the American Jewish lobby is willing to confront the administration on Israel’s behalf.

In fact, the Israeli behavior is very telling. It tells the Americans, that no matter how much praise you bestow on us and how much infatuation you display with Israel , the Jewish state will do what it wants irrespective of the whims of the  “black goy” at the White House.

Biden, a veteran lover of Israel , has gone as far as any American political prostitute would in praising and glorifying Israel , a state that thrives on murder, land theft and aggression, all  in the hope that the depraved embrace of Israeli Nazism  would make a dent in Israeli thinking.

He said “the cornerstone of the relations is our absolute, total, unvarnished commitment to Israel ’s security.” Biden also told Shimon Peres, the unprosecuted and unpunished  hero of the Qana massacre,  that “It’s good to be home!!”

Well, with morally bankrupt American politicians readily willing to  cheapen and prostitute  themselves and their country by pandering to a state that only last year committed Nazi-like war crimes in the Gaza Strip,  Israel is under no pressure or obligation to show the slightest respect for the rulers of America.

It is these rulers after all that have prostituted their country and Israel is only following the normal order of things.

I really don’t know when the PA and its tyrannical Arab allies  will realize that peace with Israel is impossible, given Israel ’s consistent goals of ethnical cleansing and colonialism at the expense of the national rights of the Palestinian people.

Similarly, I don’t know how much longer PA officials will keep issuing the same idle statements about the damage Israeli provocations are  causing  to the proverbial peace process, a process based on a substance of deception and lies.

What is clear though is that the PA and Arab tyrants have reached a new level of depravity and moral stagnation so much that absolutely nothing good or positive could be expected from them.

The Arab poet said “He that disgraces himself shall be vulnerable to further disgrace. A wound in a dead body doesn’t make pain.”