The New York Times features an analysis, Mideast expert fear peace talks are too ambitious. The headline is probably correct as Abbas has no real standing to make any deal. But this paragraph struck me:
But those urging a more modest approach argue that Mr. Netanyahu, the most conservative Israeli prime minister to have embarked on final status talks, is unlikely to offer more than his more centrist predecessor, Ehud Olmert. In late 2008, Mr. Olmert proposed an Israeli withdrawal from about 93 percent of the West Bank and compensatory land swaps. Mr. Abbas, who did not accept that offer, is unlikely to settle for less.
“[U]nilikely to settle for less?” So if having a state is so important why did Abbas reject the 93 percent? Or better yet, if Abbas rejected such a deal, why should he expect better?
Now here’s the thought experiment part. I’m assuming most of the readers here — in this case I’d wager 99% of you — have been in negotiations themselves. When you got 98% or even 88% of what you wanted, did you walk away and start a war… okay, just walk away? And if you did, why did you do that … when you were so close to making a deal? You could obviously hang around in negotiations and get most, if not all, of what you wanted.
Well, the answer is — no fair peeking — because you never wanted the deal in the first place.
Now Abbas didn’t start a war. Arafat did that in 2000. But the idea’s the same, given that he was so close how could he reject Olmert? The answer must be that Abbas didn’t want a deal. Nothing’s changed to make him want a deal now. After all, all those sophisticated peace processors have been telling him that Israel needs a deal more than he does, so the failure to reach a deal will never be his failure.
Crossposted on Soccer Dad.
This is all a “Taqiyya” smoke screen, what the Arabs really want is a temporary truce until they feel they are strong enough to eliminate israel and the Jewish presence in the middle east. This is what they are saying in Arabic to their own people, not the BS they are presenting to a naive western media.
From wikipedia,
“Hudna (هدنة) is an Arabic term meaning a temporary “truce” or “armistice” as well as “calm” or “quiet”, coming from a verbal root meaning “calm”. It is sometimes translated as “cease-fire”. In the Lisan al-Arab (Ibn al-Manzur’s definitive dictionary of classical Arabic, dating to the 14th century) it is defined as follows:
“hadana: he grew quiet. hadina: he quieted (transitive or intransitive). haadana: he made peace with. The noun from each of these is hudna.”
A particularly famous early hudna was the Treaty of Hudaybiyyah between Muhammad and the Quraysh tribe.
According to Umdat as-Salik, a medieval summary of Shafi’i jurisprudence, hudnas with a non-Muslim enemy should be limited to 10 years: “if Muslims are weak, a truce may be made for ten years if necessary, for the Prophet made a truce with the Quraysh for that long, as is related by Abu Dawud” (‘Umdat as-Salik, o9.16).[citation needed].”
And more importantly,
Taqiyya — Religious Deception Due to the state of war between dar al-Islam and dar al-harb, reuses de guerre, i.e., systematic lying to the infidel, must be considered part and parcel of Islamic tactics.â€
But why should the Palestinians do anything else? Nothing coming from the US, the EU, or the rest of the world puts them on notice that they need to compromise about anything at all. What they do, without any consequences, is take Israel’s last offer and consider that a starting point.
The point ought to be obvious but isn’t, mostly to people who desperately don’t want to see the situation as it is–the Palestinians do not want a two-state solution. Nobody is putting pressure on them to change their minds, either.
Which means, of course, that when these talks fail it will be ascribed to Israeli intransigence.