Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Mideast talks, 30 years later-USA Today Op-Ed so Wrong!

CAMERA

Here are a few of the egregious errors:• Implying that Israel negotiates in bad faith when Palestinian negotiators, whether lead by Yasser Arafat or Mahmoud Abbas, have rejected Israeli and Israeli-U.S. proposals of a "two-state solution" because they meant peaceful coexistence with Israel as a Jewish state;

• Omitting the real causes of Palestinian terrorism;

• Ignoring that Israeli restrictions on Palestinian commerce and travel are reactions to Arab terrorism, reactions that have saved Israeli lives; and

• Amnesia as to the extremist nature of internal Palestinian politics. 1. The editorial urges Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to "help [Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud] Abbas build a peaceful state" by "improving Palestinians' living conditions" in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Doing so in Gaza "could undermine Hamas." This "could reduce pressures that drive young Palestinian toward terrorism."
a) The world over, most poor people are NOT terrorists. The "pressures that drive young Palestinians toward terrorism" come mostly from Palestinian society. They include incessant antisemitic, anti-Israeli demonization from Palestinian communications media, school curriculum and mosques, whether controlled by Hamas or Abbas' own Fatah movement. This contributes to a culture of death that celebrates suicide bombings as "martyrdom" and terrorism as "resistance."

b) Israel took a huge step in 2005 that many observers thought would empower Palestinian state-building and economic growth: it completely evacuated the Gaza Strip. However, instead of state building, Palestinian Arabs led by Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Fatah offshoots turned the Strip into a terrorist base.

c) Hamas did not win the Palestinian legislative elections in 2006 because it promised economic growth. It won because it successfully portrayed the ruling Fatah movement as corrupt and inefficient and itself as more effective in leading anti-Israel "resistance" - terrorism.

2. USA Today's commentary advises Israel "to take small steps: easing economic and travel restrictions that keep Palestinians dirt poor, for example."

The economy of the West Bank and Gaza Strip grew rapidly for several years after the 1993 Israeli-Palestinian Declaration of Principles and the first Oslo Agreement. Subsequent Israeli restrictions were a response to renewed and expanded Palestinian terrorism. Economic growth stopped when the Palestinian leadership launched the terrorist war of the "al-Aqsa intifada" in 2000. A U.N. study rated Palestinian Arabs in 2003 as economically better off, even under Israeli control, than the residents of several Arab countries; the restrictions USA Today bemoans are reactions that reduced Israeli casualties dramatically.

3. "Mideast talks, 30 years later" fundamentally contradicts itself within a few sentences. It asserts that for Netanyahu's proposals to be credible, Israel must "negotiate for a Palestinian state in good faith ...." It then claims that an Israeli-U.S. offer "almost achieved such a state" in 2000, but "former Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat balked, demolishing the peace process."

Not only did Arafat refuse what even Saudi Arabia said was a good deal,but Abbasalso, in 2008, rejected an apparently better deal. Last year then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert reportedly offered more than Israel and the United States did in 2000, which was a new Palestinian state on 95 percent-plus of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, with east Jerusalem as its capital, in exchange for peace. Maybe it's the Palestinian side that's not really after a "two-state solution."

4. USA Today opines that "Arafat lost power to moderates after backing Saddam Hussein in the Persian Gulf War."

Arafat never "lost power to moderates" within or outside the Palestine Liberation Organization, before or after the 1991 Persian Gulf War or after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. At his death in 2004, Arafat and his Fatah movement was challenged primarily by Hamas, which the editorial correctly describes as "a terrorist organization." Within Fatah, a younger generation was led by Marwan Bharghouti, one of the leaders of the al-Aqsa intifiada on the West Bank. He's now serving multiple life sentences in a Israeli prison for involvement in the murders of several Israelis.
Comment: Either USA Today is naive, ignorant or isintentionally writing incorrect information to address an agenda that is far away from peace. the editors had best study their ME history before attempting to make cogent comments in the future.

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