Yes, once again, the losers are dictating terms to the winners:
The Palestinians will only participate in the US-sponsored peace conference expected to be held next month if general agreement is first reached with Israel on all the fundamental issues, Palestinian Authority officials here said Monday.
They said that in addition to Jerusalem, the borders of the future Palestinian state and the problem of the refugees, the PA was also seeking agreement on water, security and settlements.
[..] The officials also denied that the PA had agreed to discuss an exchange of land with Israel and limiting the number of refugees who would return to Israel proper. They said the PA’s official position remained that Israel must withdraw from all the territories captured in 1967, including east Jerusalem, and that there would be no concessions on the “right of return.”
PA negotiator Saeb Erekat said he was unaware of any land swap agreement. He called on the media to refrain from publishing any unofficial documents or unauthorized statements.
One official told The Jerusalem Post the Palestinians were convinced that a joint declaration of principles could be achieved before the conference.
What’s going to happen if Israel doesn’t meet these Palestinian demands? Gee, let’s take a page from the Arafat playbook, which is the playbook that Mahmoud Abbas learned from—at the knees of his mentor and friend, Yasser Arafat. I’m guessing more terror, more attacks, and more world condemnation for Israel because Israel refuses to accede to every Palestinian demand.
These are not negotiations. These are the opposite of negotiations. Palestinians are offering nothing and demanding everything. Not once in a single news report have we heard a commitment to stop the incitement of Palestinian schoolchildren against Israelis. Not once have we heard a firm and unyielding commitment to ending terror as a Palestinian practice. There has been absolutely no word of stopping the rocket and mortar attacks from Gaza—quite probably because Abbas has no authority in Gaza. Unless, as some have written, the whole Hamas/Fatah war was yet another setup.
These are not negotiations. These are uncompromising demands. The Palestinians refuse to give up the “right of return,” which would flood Israel with millions of third-generation Palestinians.
When I hear a Palestinian leader swear that there will be peace, and that the Palestinians will no longer try to kill Israelis, I will consider these negotiations. Failing that, it’s just the same old song, different time period, and yes, the talks are doomed to failure—because the Palestinians won’t do a thing other than demand the same thing they’ve demanded for the past sixty years: An end to the Israeli presence in “Muslim” lands. Let’s not pretend they want anything else.
According to another PA official, the Palestinians want the declaration of principles to include an Israeli commitment to withdraw to the pre-1967 borders. “As President Mahmoud Abbas stated last week, we have no intention to compromise on any of our rights,” he said.
The pre-1967 borders are the 1949 Armistice Lines. That’s only a step away from the 1947 borders, and no state of Israel.
israel
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My magic powers of prediction enable me to say that if the Palestinians therefore do not show up because the Israelis didn’t agree to absolutely everything they wanted in advance, the msm will ascribe their absence to Israeli intransigence that yet again blocks the road to peace.
Since the MSM, otherwise known as the MeanStreak Media, has no intention of reporting anything resembling reality, why not go ahead and please ourselves?
It is meaningless for the Israeli government to be afraid of offending the media, because the media is determined to be offended anyway. So there is no further cost associated with doing what we need to do:
encourage the non-citizen Arabs within the borders of Eretz Yisrael to leave.