Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu achieved his goal from the peace negotiations when they merely started, but Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas will not achieve his goal until these peace negotiations are concluded. I venture once again to say, however, that peace with the government of occupation, murder, and destruction is impossible. The negotiations are supposed to begin after the Eid al-Fitr holiday. But the negotiations will fail, and Netanyahu will say afterwards that he tried but that the Palestinians do not want peace, and he will be backed by the U.S. Congress because the Israel lobby had bribed it and because a majority of its members work for the interests of Israel against U.S. interests themselves. Mahmoud Abbas agreed to the negotiations after blackmail by the Americans, which included both carrot ($4 billion to revive the economy of the West Bank) and stick (cutting U.S. aid and communications if he did not agree to negotiations). The Palestinian president looked around him and found that the Arabs are preoccupied with the so-called ‘Spring,' and that he was alone, with not a single Arab state telling him: Refuse. I said before that President Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, and Secretary of State John Kerry all want the peace process to succeed. Obama received the Palestinian and Israeli negotiators Saeb Erekat and Tzipi Livni, and phoned Netanyahu and Mahmoud Abbas to show that he stood strongly behind the peace process. But the time of miracles is over, and Obama does not have a magic wand. Furthermore, he is facing a gang, not a government, made up of terrorist extremists. If the Palestinian negotiators agree to the latter's terms, nothing will remain of Palestine. First, Palestine is the land from the River to the Sea. All what is now called Israel is Palestinian land where no traces exist of alleged Jewish prophets through the past three thousand years. Second, the Palestinians have accepted a state on 22 percent of their land, and I accepted with them hoping to end the violence; but Israel did not accept [...]. On the eve of the negotiations, the Israeli government was expanding its list of subsidized settlements in the West Bank, and deporting the Negev Bedouin from their lands. Third, Israel is alluding to land swaps, whereby six settlement blocs that cut apart the West Bank and prevent the emergence of a viable Palestinian state are kept in place, even as Israel steals Palestinian homes every day in Jerusalem and bans Palestinians who leave the city from returning. Israel has also demanded that the Palestinians recognize it as a Jewish state. To all this I say: in their dreams. I know Mahmoud Abbas as much as they do not, and he will not accept to retire from politics by betraying his cause. The Palestinians are being asked nothing short of relinquishing the remaining quarter of their rights, which will not happen. Netanyahu's "honest" intentions on the negotiations was then demonstrated when he announced that a thousand settlement units would be built in the West Bank before he even sat at the negotiating table. The true Israeli position is not that sugar-coated poison in the attitudes of some Israeli officials, but it can be found in U.S. Likudnik sources which express their real views. One example is enough; a few days ago, The New York Times ran with a report written by the paper's bureau-chief in Jerusalem, about Palestinian children who hurl stones at Israeli soldiers and settlers, and who consider this to be a hobby. The report begins with a boy who was arrested several times because of this "hobby." The Likudnik Commentary Magazine attacked The New York Times, a liberal newspaper owned by Jews, and wrote, "Nowhere in this story does anyone ever stop and say that perhaps it would be better for the Palestinians...if they decided to treat the Jews who live near them as human beings rather than merely enemy targets." In other words, the Likudniks want a Palestinian child whose home and land are occupied by extremist settlers to welcome them. I believe not even Mother Teresa is capable of such a feat. The magazine itself had attacked the American peace broker Martin Indyk, a Jew who supports Israel, and Mahmoud Abbas for calling for the release of 'terrorists' who "killed children." The terrorists are those who are in the Israeli government and the settlers. Since September 28, 2000, Israel has killed 1,500 Palestinian children, compared to 135 Israeli children. The government of Israel includes in its ranks war criminals supported by other war criminals of their ilk. Peace with those is therefore impossible. [email protected]
