A literary, historical and political repositry

I wish I could just laugh at Obama and Netanyahu but this is so fucking infuriating. Israel is willing to make generous concessions? Like what, for example? Will it “concede” the right of Palestinians not to live under military occupation? Will it “concede” the Palestinian right to a state? A return to 1967 borders is not a concession; it’s the bare minimum for a two-state solution. Unfortunately, this is the way Israel has always conducted “negotiations.” It has been deliberate policy since 1967 (or arguably 1948) to create facts on the ground at significant detriment both to Palestinians, whose lands are then usurped, and to Palestinian negotiators who have to adjust themselves to new “realities” when they shouldn’t have to.

That’s why it should be hilarious when Netanyahu says that Israel is willing to make generous concessions. Kind of like in 1993 when in exchange for full Palestinian recognition (something Obama still maintains Israel needs apparently), Israel recognized the PLO as the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people. How fucking generous. Of course, the UN had recognized the PLO as just that almost 20 years earlier in fucking 1974, but who fucking cares about the UN amirite? Certainly not Israel (despite the fact that it was the UN that created the State of Israel in the first place).

Ironically, it was in the moment the PLO was recognized by Israel as the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people that it ceased to be just that. Meanwhile Israel used the opportunity to build more settlements on land that did not - and does not - by any measure belong to it, insisting all the while that all it wanted was peace, and peace would totally be had if it weren’t for Arafat and those Nazi terrorists who started the Second Intifada. Poor Israel doesn’t have “a partner for peace,” you understand. Never mind the fact that Abu Mazen and the Palestinian authority are salivatingly grovelingly desperate for any bone that Israel throws their way (the Hamas-Fatah reconciliation represents the first time in years that the PA has acted on its own initiative and in accordance with the will of the Palestinian people, and Obama has the gall to condemn it).

The recent announcement of an agreement between Fatah and Hamas raises profound and legitimate questions for Israel – how can one negotiate with a party that has shown itself unwilling to recognize your right to exist.

Excuse me but what?

Never mind the unacceptable pre-conditions that Netanyahu’s government has set for “negotiations” ostensibly for “peace” and a “final settlement.” And then in 2009, Netanyahu declared his support for the two-state solution. Of course, in the 42 years between 1967 and 2009, Israel had done absolutely everything in its power (well, maybe not – I mean, they could have just shot everyone) to undermine the two-state solution and carry out a plan of unequivocal apartheid.

Which is why I laughed when Ehud Barak said this:

As long as in this territory west of the Jordan river there is only one political entity called Israel it is going to be either non-Jewish, or non-democratic,” Barak said. “If this bloc of millions of ­Palestinians cannot vote, that will be an apartheid state.

But now it’s just not very funny.

It’s so sad when fucking Jeffrey Goldberg is the voice of reason:

I’m amazed at the amount of insta-commentary out there suggesting that the President has proposed something radical and new by declaring that Israel’s 1967 borders should define — with land-swaps — the borders of a Palestinian state. I’m feeling a certain Groundhog Day effect here. This has been the basic idea for at least 12 years. This is what Bill Clinton, Ehud Barak and Yasser Arafat were talking about at Camp David, and later, at Taba. This is what George W. Bush was talking about with Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert. So what’s the huge deal here? Is there any non-delusional Israeli who doesn’t think that the 1967 border won’t serve as the rough outline of the new Palestinian state?

The fact of the matter is: Netanyahu sees no reason to reach a final settlement. As David Samel points out:

The status quo has served the Israelis well over the past 44 years. Sure, they’ve had to endure various rounds of “terrorism,” that is, a small fraction of the violence they have visited upon the Palestinians and Lebanese. But the land has been theirs to play with. They get to rule over millions of stateless, powerless people, making extrajudicial decisions over every facet of their lives and even whether they have lives at all, and still get to call themselves a “democracy”; only a few people, and none who count, snicker in disgust.

[...] Netanyahu doesn’t really care where the starting point is. He just wants to make sure there’s no realistic possibility of an end point.

Besides, every Israeli who is killed as a result of a suicide bombing or violence against settlers sends Likud poll numbers way up.