Palestinian rhetoric on Israeli settlements is just talk

Anybody can say anything about whatever they want to about anything, and it is with that understanding that Sunday's statement by former Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Ahmed Qurei about Israeli "settlements" in Jerusalem being a "time bomb" should be viewed. Qurei and Israeli opposition leader Tsipi Livni, the former foreign minister, urged moderates on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to work harder to settle their differences. "The Jerusalem situation, I think, is a time bomb if it continues in this way," Qurei said a meeting of academics in Jerusalem, according to the Reuters international news service. "It has an impact on the Palestinian people . . . and on trust on both sides." Qurei was discussing Israel's continuing construction of housing for its citizens in formerly Jordanian-controlled East Jerusalem, often after demolishing Palestinian-owned housing. "It is 19 years since Oslo and things remain as is," Qurei said, referring to the historic agreement that recognized Palestinian sovereignty over the West Bank of the Jordan River, which Israel captured, along with East Jerusalem, in the 1967 Mideast war, and led to the return from exile of Yasir Arafat. Arafat, the Palestinian leader, and then-Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for reaching the Oslo Accords. But the lasting peace that seemed within reach in 1993 no longer appears at hand, not after the years of violence and mistrust that supplanted what turned out to be naive optimism -- on both sides. If the Israelis assumed that their Arab enemies, with whom they had already fought three all-out wars, were now willing to accept their Jewish neighbors as equals, and if Palestinian leaders assumed they were on the fast-track to statehood without having to undo the hatred they had been planting in the hearts of their people and convince them to work for peace, they both were tragically mistaken. The repeated failure of all parties to accept these realities are responsible for the current situation.

Abbas puts gap between Israel and Palestinians on display at United Nations

Friday's speech to the United Nations by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas was a clear demonstration of the gap between Palestinian and Israeli political leaders -- following, as it did, Thursday's address by Israel's prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. Abbas said Israel was blocking progress toward peace by refusing to comply with Palestinian conditions for reopening peace talks, by refusing to fulfill its obligations under negotiated agreements and by refusing to comply with "hundreds" of U.N. resolutions. "All of these active efforts and initiatives, which have been welcomed and supported by us and by the Arab states, are, however, confronted with Israeli intransigence, which refuses to adhere to the requirements for relaunching the peace process," Abbas said. But Netanyahu said a day earlier that the PA was unwilling even to take the most "elementary" step toward peace of recognizing Israel as a Jewish state. "We asked the Palestinians to finally do what they refused to do for 62 years, say 'yes' to a Jewish state," Netanyahu said. "As simple, as clear, as elementary as that, just as we are asked to recognize a nation-state for the Palestinian people, the Palestinians must be asked to recognize the nation-state of the Jewish people. The Jewish people are not foreign conquerors in the land of Israel. It is the land of our forefathers." The two sides are not even listening to each other -- maybe they do when they're face-to-face at the negotiating table. And, maybe, that explains their reluctance to meet. Any agreement they do reach will likely be of historical proportions and result in region-changing upheaval. Israel will have to give up sovereignty over the homes of 100,000 Israelis on land the Palestinians expect for a state; the Palestinian people will have to give up claims to land they left in 1948 and to Jerusalem. The PA has not even begun to educate its citizens on the realities and responsibilities of peace -- it may not understand them itself. For one thing, the PA does not appear capable of controlling all of the territory that has already been ceded to it. There is a very long way to go -- the current leaders may have to think of the future, not the present, if they truly want to make peace happen. But, remember, Israel, Egypt and Jordan -- formerly bitter enemies -- have reached peace deals that have held together for years.

Peace is not the goal of new Obama-backed Middle East peace plan

The new U.S. peace plan for the Middle East, the so-called "57-state solution," might sound good on paper but could be quite different in reality. The new plan, reportedly developed in meetings between Jordan's King Abdullah and U.S. President Barak Obama in April, would result in all of world's Muslim countries recognizing Israel, according to the Reuters international news service. But what would Israel be required to surrender in return? Details on that are sketchy, but they appear to involve having Israel withdraw to its pre-1967 war borders and the creation of a Palestinian state on the West Bank of the Jordan River, which Israel captured in the Six-Day War along with East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights. Israel returned the Sinai Peninsula, which it also captured in 1967, in a separate peace treaty with Egypt in 1979. "We are offering a third of the world to meet them with open arms," Abdullah told the London Times, Reuters said. "The future is not the Jordan River or the Golan Heights or the Sinai, the future is Morocco in the Atlantic and Indonesia in the Pacific. That is the prize." But that is no prize -- not if, as Abdullah says, Israel will be forced to make further concessions to get the right to fly over Arab countries or the right to visit them. What he is talking about is not peace, it is precisely the opposite. Abdullah is offering a situation that can serve only as a prelude to war. In fact, Abdullah actually threatens war is Israel does not agree to the plan. "If we delay our peace negotiations, then there is going to be another conflict between Arabs or Muslims and Israel in the next 12-18 months," Abdullah told the newspaper. Maybe new U.S. president Barak Obama is in accord with the new plan, maybe not. Maybe Obama already realizes this is not a legitimate peace offer. Peace means more than the mere absence of war and, rhetoric aside, the 57-state solution is, at best, no more than a starting point.