6-5-2014 U.S. Culpability in the Failure of Israeli-Palestinian Peace Talks - Stephen Zunes Foreign Policy in Focus

http://fpif.org/u-s-culpability-failure-israeli-palestinian-peace-talks/

The failure of John Kerry's Israeli-Palestinian peace talks showed just how -----extreme U.S. policy on the conflict has become…

… Washington has focused on Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas's refusal to give in to U.S. and Israeli demands that he recognize Israel as a "Jewish state." While the Palestinian government, the Palestine Liberation Organization, and the ruling Fatah party have all recognized the state of Israel for more than 20 years, the Obama administration has effectively moved the goalposts by declaring that recognizing the Israeli government, acknowledging its right to exist, and providing security guarantees is not enough, insisting that the Palestinians explicitly recognize the state of Israel's ethno-religious identity as well. No previous administration has put forward such a requirement. President Carter never made such demands on Egypt, nor did President Clinton require this of Jordan as a condition for their peace treaties with Israel. Abbas has said that Israel can identify itself however it wants, but—given that 20 percent of the Israeli population is ethnically Palestinian Arab—it would be politically impossible to agree to something that would acknowledge second-class status for other Palestinians…

 

… Ironically, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud party still rejects a two-state solution, and his cabinet includes parties even further to the right—including HaBayit HaYehudi, or "Jewish Home," which essentially mirrors Hamas in rejecting previous disengagement agreements, refusing to accept Palestine's right to exist, and supporting attacks against Palestinian civilians. However, the Obama administration apparently believes that while anti-Israel extremism in unacceptable, anti-Palestinian extremism can be tolerated…

 

Posted by Judith Ferster, AIME member   

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

9-3-2013 'Room 514': Israeli Film Looks at Gender, Justice, Sexuality & the Occupation - Mira Sucharov Open Zion

http://www.thedailybeast.com/openzion.html Thanks to Netflix, viewers outside of Israel can catch a glimpse of a compelling 2012 Israeli film that premiered at the International Film Festival Rotterdam. A “triumph of low-budget filmmaking,” as Variety calls it , Room 514 is a cinéma-vérité-style meditation on psychology, morality, identity and politics. Set in two locations—an IDF interrogation room and a city bus, and with such a small personnel footprint that even the one required extra is the director himself—the film follows the attempt by Anna ( Asia Naifeld) , an IDF soldier three weeks shy of being released from her military service, to extract a confession from a soldier accused of beating a Palestinian man.
Read more

10-10-2018 Letter [to the President] (TRIGGERING GLOBAL MAGNITSKY INVESTIGATION INTO KHASHOGGI DISAPPEARANCE) Menendez-Corker-Leahy-Graham:

https://www.leahy.senate.gov/press/101018khashoggisanctionsletter   On 10/10, the ranking member and chair of the SFRC, Menendez (D-NJ) and Corker (R-TN), along with the ranking member and chair of the Appropriations Committee's Subcommittee on State and Foreign operations, Leahy (D-VT) and Graham (R-SC), and 18 other senators (bipartisan) sent a letter to President Trump triggering an investigation and Global Magnitsky sanctions determination regarding the disappearance of Jamal Khashoggi. The letter notes, " The Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act requires the President, upon receipt of a request from the Chairman and Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, to determine whether a foreign person is responsible for an extrajudicial killing, torture, or other gross violation of internationally recognized human rights against an individual exercising freedom of expression, and report to the Committee within 120 days with a de...
Read more