Negotiations stalled due to Hamas-Israel war at that time. Abbas did not freeze anything; in fact, he was calling on both sides to stop. It is misconstruing (which is an inch from outright lying) to suggest he is responsible for stalled negotiations.
This directly contradicts the contemporaneous Washington Post article I posted above, which expressly states that “Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas on Sunday suspended peace talks with Israel”. Is there any support for your version of events?
Moreover, your story has changed from “main reason for those talks to stop was that Olmert had to step down due to corruption charges” to “Negotiations stalled due to Hamas-Israel war”.
What I glean from the articles is that Abbas suspended talks because of Palestinian outrage over the Hamas conflict. They remained suspended for two years. When they resumed last year, he pretty well instantly suspended talks again due to Palestinian outrage over Israeli settlements.
If I am incorrect in that assessment, or misled by the sources, please point me to some facts demonstrating same.
This is not consistent with Israel shutting down talks in spite of the great concessions offered by the Palestinian negotiators.
Ironically, that was another suspension in the negotiating process, Malthus. (Edit: referring to the March 2008 suspension)
The one that came after the alleged offer, and the one that I and (I think) Newcomer is referring to, is Abbas’ suspension after the 2008 Israel-Hamas war.
[
](Jordan Times)
I have now provided two separate cites now saying he did.
You have your word that he did not.
In case you missed this upthread:
Leave out the accusations of dishonesty entirely.
There were several instances where Abbas suspended talks, so I’m not sure which specific instance newcomer has an issue with (or if s/he has an issue with all of them), but here is a (different) cite showing that the Arab League supported him in his suspension (which would presume that he actually did in fact suspend talks):
-XT
I must admit to being confused with the timeline. I wish there was some sort of chart, demonstrating when each suspension was made.
I do know that talks were suspended for two years in 2008, and at the insistence of Abbas.
What’s wrong with the bit about the Israel lobby?
And as far as whether Abbas shut down talks or not, why did he do that? Because Israel were bombing the crap out of the Palestinians, something they knew would cause the Palestinians to suspend negotiations so that they could in future blame the Palestinians for suspending the negotiations. If we’re accepting the veracity of these documents then it’s even more clear than it ever has been that Israel have no desire at all to make any kind of peace offer that’s acceptable and are going to continue their policy of the slow-motion ethnic cleansing/land thest of the 22% of historic Palestine that they don’t already have.
It’s been almost-official Israeli policy over the past few years to think of Gaza and the West Bank as two separate and unrelated nations (the Strip is often referred to as “Hamastan”). I suspect that sometimes we forget that the Palestinians don’t necessarily think the same way.
And **Malthus **- it isn’t that the current government is too hardline; Ariel Sharon was the most hardline sumbitch be ever had, and he left Gaza. It’s that Bibi is incapable of committing to *any *course of action. He won’t make peace, not because of his ideology (if he has one), but because he lacks the political cojones to take the risk. If it’s any consolation, he won’t bomb Iran for the exact same reason.
I dont believe any Israel lobby dictates the US’s foreign policies. Cutting off the US backup to Israel would certainly play a role in forcing the latter to consider real sacrifices for peace’s sake. But the mentality regarding the peace process is Israeli, not American. Take off the Israel lobby in the us, and I’m not sure we’d still see a real peace process in our lifetime.
Even assuming that is 100% correct and the only reason Abbas shut down the talks, a follow on question would be ‘why was Israel bombing the crap out of the Palestinians at that time?’. It’s a vicious cycle. And, regardless, newcomer seemed to be denying categorically that Abbas broke off those negotiations, regardless of circumstance or rationale.
-XT
If America didn’t routinely block any UN resolution critical of Israel or prevent any attempt at enforcing sanctions from getting anywhere then Israel would have been under sanctions for decades now. They would have made a deal long ago and the whole thing would have been history. Instead they continue to play for all the marbles because they know that there’s going to be no international pressure for them to make a deal.
And what creates the cycle in the first place? The Israeli occupation.
Israel have total military control of the situation and can ramp up and down the violence whnever they want to suit their current purposes.
Does official or almost-official Israeli policy really understand that an independent Palestine necessarily would control its own borders with Jordan and Egypt? And that trade with both would be important to its economy, and would necessarily create a lot of trade/shipping between the WB and Gaza? And that, therefore, Palestine would quite reasonably demand a right of free passage across Israeli territory between Gaza and the WB, at least for commercial purposes? (The passage might be limited to a designated route.)
Huh…and here I was going to say Palestinian violence against the Jews in the region prior to the formation of Israel, and Palestinian refusal to abide by the UN partition of the region into two separate, sovereign nations and the subsequent war for survival that Israel was forced to fight and…
Well, it goes on and on. There are two sides to any story, and you seem to only be familiar with a skewed version of one of those sides. To me, there is no real beginning to the cycle, since it goes back for decades or even centuries…sort of like the conflicts in Ireland. At a certain point it’s not profitable to keep bringing up Oooo killled Oooo, or who’s castle burned down and fell into the swamp first.
-XT
Just out of curiosity, if this “right of return” were granted, what would happen? How many people are we talking about, where would they go if they could, what property would they claim? And if they went to Israel, would they be Israeli citizens?
I believe that the distinction was that in March 2008 what was suspended was the series of negotiations that had been ongoing on the ‘roadmap’, and in December 2008 all direct negotiation itself was suspended.
In before: “But they said that was designed to freeze the peace process until things improved, preserving it in ‘formaldehyde’. That just shows that they were ending the peace process”
And again, standard fact checking:
The vast majority of land of “historic Palestine” is owned by Jordan, not Israel.
Right now, Israel’s hardliners win by making sure that a peace deal is not achieved. The same can be said for the Hamas hardliners. Neither wants peace.
Theres are all good questions, and there are no firm answers to any of them.
The revelations in the papers are that, allegedly, the Palestinian negotiators seriously considered reducing the “right of return” to a symbolic or nominal level.
However, that is not how the vast majority of Palestinians living in exile apparently understand the “right”.
That’s the “it takes a Nixon to go to China” phenominon. The problem here, and I suppose we agree on this, is that Bibi is no Nixon.
What if we replaced our aid for Israel with aid for Palestinians?
What if we give the Palestinians 5 decades of military aid and see what the resulting negotiating power would be. Perhaps the settlements in East Jerusalem wouldn’t seem so important. The Israelis are insisting on an inequitable resolution because they think they have negotiating power based on their military advantage.
We would be having a very different conversation if we hadn’t been providing Israel with military assistance for decades. Of course we had our own reasons for providing taht assistance but more and more of it has been the result of outfits like AIPAC rather than legitimate US interests.