"This Doesn't Work"

Mahmoud Abbas joins the reality-based community:

Harry's Place: "This doesn't work": A brave speech-- in Arabic, to a Palestinian audience-- by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas:

In the past, they said: "Under no circumstances will we accept a state, unless it includes all of Palestine, because Palestine is a land of Islamic endowment." Fine. This doesn't work. I can say: "We demand all of the land," and you will applaud me. This doesn't work. This doesn't work. This doesn't work. There is a reality -- either you acknowledge it, or you will get crushed.

Was Arafat ever that honest to Palestinians?

Comments

[Aaron]

So when will the people, such as Jimmy Carter, who claim that the the failure to reach an agreement is primarily Israel's fault, join the reality-based community? Abbas may be saying this now in Arabic, but he apparently has no ability to deliver. The elected Palestinian government wants its whole "Islamic endowment" back. So the reality is that the present is the same as the past in this regard.

[r flanagan]

No Arafat was never honest. But honesty isn't all that common and indeed how honest
are we in discussing Arafat ? Was the
Arafat of the 70s the same as the one who
entered Israel in disguise so he could be
present at the memorial services for Rabin ? Or had dinner at Barak's house two
days before Sharon's visit to the Temple Mount and privately begged him to stop it ?
Certainly Arafat when he began was a terrorist and a murderer . As was Begin when the Irgun bombed the King David Hotel . And Gerry Adams . And Mandela before his imprisonment. But we now give those last 3 a pass on those early crimes . Properly so. Maybe for Arafat we could at least invoke De Moritibus nil nisi bonum.

[Ponzi Q. Globalization]

"Mahmoud Abbas joins the reality-based community"

Having to accept the fact that you've been kicked out of your home and marginalized by people from thousands of miles away may be the reality. But it still sucks for those kicked out and marginalized.

Maybe this sort of tribal conquest is so ingrained in humanity that it will never be extinguished. History sure makes it look like the natural behavior of mankind. But maybe a better form of 'globalization' -- one that is benign enough to limit backlash -- will make this drive to gang up and dominate our fellow man obsolete.

[pgl]

The converse is true. If the Likudniks in Israel want all ten provinces of the former Palestine rather than the 8 given to them by the Brits - this will never work either. It's good that some Palestine leaders have joined the Reality Based Community. Now if we can more Reality Based leaders in Israel, talks might produce something lasting.

[remmer]

If Abbas's speech is reality-based, it's based on the reality that the US and EU have joined Israel in punishing Palestinians for holding a democratic election and not voting for the right party. What Abbas is trying to do is call another election and convince voters this time to elect people who have the approval of the Western powers. Had any Palestinian leader made the comments Abbas just made five years ago, they would have been refreshingly candid. Had Abbas wanted to be refreshingly candid the other day, he would have said: "In the past, the Western powers said they wanted to see a democratic Middle East. Fine. This doesn’t work. I can say: ‘We demand the right to have a government of our own choosing,” and you will applaud me. This doesn't work. The reality is that the Western powers want us to elect a government of their choosing – either acknowledge it or you will be crushed."

[George J. Georganas]

Hmmm ...
To have been entirely honest, the president ought to have been more specific as to who would do the crushing. The state of Israel? The US? The Arab "allies"?
That a small number of Arabic-speakers are made to suffer the side-effects of European anti-semitism is the hard fact. Alas, those primarily responsible for the murder and subsequent emigration of most of the European Jews that survived their attempted murder believe they can get by without ever acknowledging this hard fact.
The US has no part in the root cause of this injustice. It is only guilty of adhering to a miscalculation, namely that the Middle East would continue, as in centuries past, to be relatively more hospitable to Jews than Europe had been in mid-20th century.
How about the US allying itself with the Palestinians in claiming reparations, not from Israel, but from the Europeans who created the mess in the first place? The economic progress of Europe, West and East, makes this project viable.
Uprooting the Jews once again is not fair. Making the uprooting of Palestinians less painful than that of the Jews may be feasible.

[andres]

"Alas, those primarily responsible for the murder and subsequent emigration of most of the European Jews that survived their attempted murder believe they can get by without ever acknowledging this hard fact."

Er, George, those primarily responsible for the murder of Jews and its consequences went to trial at Nuremberg and were either executed or spent very long terms in prisons--in any case they're mostly not around now to "acknowledge this hard fact". And the Germans who elected the Nazis paid the penalty in heaps of dead German soldiers and destroyed German cities. In this regard, there is nothing with which to reproach either the US, Europe, and even Russia.

If you're going to engage in anti-Europeanism (a small but growing alternative to anti-Semitism and anti-Islamism here in the US) you should at least get your facts straight.

[Paul Reber]

FWIW, my first thought upon hearing of the US plan to go to war in Iraq was that putting those resources towards resolution of Israel-Palestine would go a lot further than regime change in Baghdad for "fighting terrorism."

Just imagine if we had instead committed a few hundred billion dollars to building schools, mosques, and other infrastructure in Palestine as some sort of foreign-aid/reparations plan? Hell, I'd have been willing to contract it all through Halliburton and let them steal half of it. We'd still end up with a lot less damage done.

Sigh. I know, I know, I might as well wish for that *and* a pony...

[Bernard Yomtov]

"The US has no part in the root cause of this injustice. It is only guilty of adhering to a miscalculation, namely that the Middle East would continue, as in centuries past, to be relatively more hospitable to Jews than Europe had been in mid-20th century."

I do not think it is correct to say that Zionism is based on a miscalculation. Indeed it was based on a very accurate calculation indeed. It was not the Holocaust, but rather the anti-Semitism that pervaded Europe decades earlier, and had for many centuries, that persuaded Herzl and others that Europe was inhospitable to Jews. This was unquestionably an accurate reading of history and Nazism, if it did nothing else, confirmed it.

[gordon]

"Grasping reality with every limb" shouldn't mean "Drifting into a cynical despair". Human aspirations are real, including those of the Palestinians.

[Emma Anne]

Paul: "Just imagine if we had instead committed a few hundred billion dollars to building schools, mosques, and other infrastructure in Palestine as some sort of foreign-aid/reparations plan?"

I had a similar thought back then. I thought as cooperative and a little scared as the world is right now (after 9-11) we would have the muscle and heft to get this solved once and for all. We all know what the deal is going to look like. Get it done!

And, as you say, a pony.

[KY Choong]

There was once a people,
who dreamed of a country that they could call their own.

The nations they lived in rejected them,
they were called foreigners in the lands that they grew up in.

They dreamed of a country of peace and security, of justice and equality, of goodwill and prosperity.

The country they dreamed off,
was it just a dream?

[Tom Beck]

I'm a Jew and a strong supporter of Israel, and I have to ask, was any Israeli leader ever that honest? (Was any American leader that honest the last few years?)

[Jonathan Goldberg]

"Er, George, those primarily responsible for the murder of Jews and its consequences went to trial at Nuremberg ..."

This is not entirely true. Passing over the fact that Nazism emerged from a long tradition of Euroopean anti-Semitism, one reason that so many Jews ended up in Israel is that even after the Holocaust their native countries would not take them back. In some cases this was because the property of Jews had been expropriated and the new owners did not wish to face demands to give it back.

In any event, dealing with the claims of the Palestinians is decades overdue. Paul's comments above are all too apropos.

[p.wilmington]

I'm not quite sure what is brave about it. The PLO, Hamas, Saudi Arabis and the Arab League have all agreed in one form or another to accept Israel within the green line, i.e within the 1967 borders. I suspect this speech was meant for the west, just as the GIs in Iraq asking Gates for more troops was aimed at the evening news.

Abbas has been supported, armed and his newly formed 'presidential guard' trained by the US with the consent of Israel. The US and Israel want a counterweight to Hamas, so they arm Fatah and Abbas. Years ago, Israel wanted a counterweight to the PLO so they helped fund a startup called Hamas. And so things go around. Israel wants the Palestinians fighting amongst themselves and it has done what it can to create that infighting.

Personally, I always find it illuminating to look at a problem in the context of living memory. So here goes. In 1948, Jewish people constituted 30% of Palestine and owned 7% of the land, with most of the Jewish population being recent immigrants from Europe. The UN, being controlled by the west, which was guilty of the Holocaust and still living a gestalt of racism and colonialism, violated its own principle of self-determination and gave the 30% Jewish population 55% of Palestine. In the inevitable war that followed, the 30% did not gracefully take the 55%, but took 78%. Through further wars, Israel now controls 100% of historic Palestine. Since then, two important UN resolutions define Israel proper as the 78% and the remaing 22% as land for the Palestinians. What western magnaminity!

And guess what, when Israel offers the Palestinians less than the internationally agreed upon 22%, they call it 'generous'.

The Palestinians have a right to exist in thier homeland.

[Carlos]

No, Arafat was never that honest. On the other hand, he died in a bed, of natural causes, instead of being shot or blown up by another Palestinian, something that seems likely to happen to Abbas. ¿Maybe both things are related?

[George J. Georganas]

The Jews of Israel cannot really afford to be generous. They are, themselves, dispossessed. But the rest of us need to be more generous, for our own sake. If only to take the moral high ground from under the feet of fanatics.
We need to confront the Ahmadinnezads of this world with our acknowledgement that Palestinians are collateral victims of a broader injustice targeted on Jews.
In any system of law the lead ought to be taken by those who started the problem, that is Europeans, East and West. This is not anti-Europeanism, it is just attribution of overdue blame.
And, yes, the Zionists were right in half of their calculation (along with everyone else). The Middle East, for all its violence, is much less dangerous for Jews than postwar Europe might have been. Yet, considering that for most of their common history Muslims and Jews have been close allies, present-day Middle East is singularly inhospitable to Jews. In any case, the mass of Jews who followed the Zionists to Palestine had no other choice and, hence, can hardly be blamed for the correctness or otherwise of their calculations. The fellows who drove them to that edge, however, cannot benefit from that excuse.

PS I am European, pro-European and a former member of the permanent staff of the European Commission. One's vision of Europe will always run ahead of its concrete achievements. But this is not the Washington blame-it-all-on-the-Europeans game.

[Ponzi Q. Globalization]

"We need to confront the Ahmadinnezads of this world with our acknowledgement that Palestinians are collateral victims of a broader injustice targeted on Jews."

Acknowledgement that the Palestinians are victimized is nice. Telling those victimized that they are victimized for a good cause is not so nice.

What would be nicer then the mere acknowledgment of victimization are actions that lessen the oppression of the Palestinians today. This would have to include stopping and reversing the land grab in the West Bank. Or at least make it clear that the occupation is for reasons of security and there is no intention that the land will be kept forever.

Just what does the leadership of Israel want? It looks like a simple case of expansion of one 'tribe' into the territory of another to me.

The real forces that drive humanity -- among them fear of and desire to gain at the expense of the other -- trump the billions of words wasted concerning morality and justice once again. Of course, to pretend that latter has meaning, abstract justifications will pour forth from the mouths of the beneficiaries. Just like it always does.

[andres]

"In any system of law the lead ought to be taken by those who started the problem, that is Europeans, East and West. This is not anti-Europeanism, it is just attribution of overdue blame."

No. You may not be anti-European, but you still have an incorrect notion of political causality in this case, imo. In the first place, the Europeans who brought anti-Semitism in Europe to a crisis in the 1940's mostly died fighting for Nazi Germany or for Nazi Germany's allies, eg even Stalinist rule could not substantially resurrect anti-Semitism in post-1945 Hungary. In the second place, it is ethically wrong to blame today's Europeans for crimes committed by their forebears.

European governments today have no moral _requirement_ to unconditionally support the policies of Israel's government. And the reason that Israel's policies have become unhinged under Netanyahu, Sharon, and Olmert is precisely because of uncritical US and even European support. If the Israeli government were to be reminded for once that US and European support has to be _earned_, it would become more moderate in its policies on the West Bank and Gaza. Considering the nature of the neighboring Arab goverments, earning US and European support shouldn't be an insuperable task.

[George J. Georganas]

Palestinians are victimised, just much less so than Jews have been. And this is not done for a good cause. The cause is a bad one : European anti-semitism. I hope the meaning is clear.
Anti-semitism could not be resurrected in post-war Europe because there were hardly any Jews left close-by that one could rough up.
I agree that the problem of European anti-semitism may now not be so big in Europe, but its consequences are still with us in the Middle East.
The US and Europe abdicating responsiblity to the Israeli government for enforcing a new order (conceived by the US and Europe) in the Middle East was never going to work. Too much of a principal-agent problem. Ditto for trying to work with any moderate or otherwise Arab government, whether legitimised by elections or not. And now the circle of agents to accommodate has grown even wider with non-Arab Muslim people getting excited over the issue.
Now, the root of all evil may be "the lust for power fuelled by greed and ambition". But, then, we should give up on regulating inter-personal, as well as international, affairs by law. Why, even blogging would be pointless "billions of words concerning morality and justice".