In the last few days I have been following the visits of both Vice President Joe Biden and Senator George Mitchell to the Middle East and the different and competing messages coming out of Washington, Ramallah, Tel-Aviv and Cairo the seat of the Arab League.

Vice President Joe Biden is a seasoned politician with over 30 years in the US Senate with many years of tenure at Chairman of the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee and one would assume is a smart man who can understand words and actions. He seemed to lose both while on his visit to Israel.

It seems the Obama-Biden’s White House does not get it. V.P Biden statement quoted in Haaretz “ Palestinians, Israelis must decide for themselves if they want peace” sound very good but when it comes from some one like Joe Biden such statement is not only stupid but reckless as well.

All of the US administrations with the exception of Eisenhower and Kennedy including Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, Bush II and now Obama has always acted not as an unbiased arbitrator but as partners with Israel and always gave Israel the legal, political, economic and military cover needed to continue with its occupation, with its expanding settlements, with its seizures and closers, its never ending daily aggression and pretended always to ignore the fact that Israel whether Labor, Likud, Kadima, Shas or whatever never was interested in peace with the Palestinians based on land for peace. One can only explain US-Israel relationship as one of a “pimp and his bitch” with Israel being the “pimp” of course.

Elie Yishai the Israeli interior minister did not let the visit of Joe Biden to Israel without taking deliberate action not only to humiliate Joe Biden and the Obama administration but also to make sure he rubs Biden face in the dirt with his announcement that Israel will build 1,600 new units in occupied East Jerusalem.

For many years since the early days of the Reagan and Bush administration continuing with Clinton and now Obama administrations every time there is visit by a high ranking American officials Israel announces either expansions of Jewish settlements, expulsions of Palestinians from East Jerusalem, expansions of security checkpoints, expanding the Apartheid Wall, committing targeted assassinations or attacking neighboring countries. This is the message American officials get from Israel every time they can pretend they are on a “peace mission”.

One would think that after some 43 years the American administrations get the message right, that Israel never was and never will be interested in any kind of peace with the Palestinians. Israel was, is and remains committed to Greater Israel, remains committed to the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from all of Palestine including Israel, and the West Bank with calls for making Jordan the home for the future Palestinian state.

Haaretz also announced that Israel is in the process of planning to build 50,000 more unites in the occupied West Bank, this is in addition to those 1,600 announced by the Netanyahu government as a welcome reception to Joe Biden and George Mitchell. The Israeli actions from the early days of 67 was for making the West Bank part of the “Jewish” state never refereeing to the area as “occupied” but as “Judea and Samaria” and at best “disputed” territories.

One can understand Washington’s failure to understand that Israel does not want peace; one could never understand Ramallah and the Arab League actions and statements that assume Israel does want peace.

The PLO leadership failed to understand this ‘strategic” and “ideological” decision on the part of Israel when it entered into negotiations with Israel leading to Oslo with the agreement and acquiesce of the Palestinian Trio of Arafat, Abbas and Qurai leaving Israel with total and absolute control over 57% of the “occupied territories”, total and absolute control over East Jerusalem including the power to ethnically cleanse Arabs from East Jerusalem.

More troublesome is the decision by Abbas and his administration in Ramallah to continue to negotiate with Ehud Olmert for couple of years while Olmert and his government was building and expanding settlements more than ever.

In 2008 Israel built 1,647 units in the West Bank an increase of 60% over 2007 and built 5,431 new unites in East Jerusalem an increase of 600% over 2007, not to mentions expulsions of tens of thousands of Arabs from East Jerusalem. Yet Mahmoud Abbas, and his chief negotiator Saeb Eurekat and the PLO executive secretary Yaser Abed-Rabou continued to negotiate with Olmert on regular basis meeting at times over dinner as if there are no new settlements. One has difficulty to understand why Abbas and his PLO team continued to negotiate with Olmert and his war criminal partners Levni and Barak and needed to have Arab League cover to start “proximity” talks with Netanyahu. Nothing has changed between Olmert and Netanyahu, both are committed to Greater Israel, both are committed to keeping Jerusalem united and under total Israeli control and both never considered the West Bank as “occupied territories” but always referred to it as “Judea and Samaria”.

I guess the only thing left for the Ramallah and the PLO leadership to negotiate is the annual management fees it gets from Israel, US and EU as manager of the Jewish Occupations and the numbers of VIP passes for its many top level executives and functionaries. One can understand if Washington does not get it, one could never understand why the PLO leadership does not get it? Why the Amer Musa and the Arab League do not get it? That Israel was and is and will remain never interested in “peace” with the Palestinians if that “peace” means ending the Jewish Occupation that started on June 5th, 1967. One also could never understand the Arab continued reliance on the US as an “honest broker” in the “peace process” when the US past and present administrations where always Israel’s “bitch”. Mr. Obama and Mr. Biden, peace can happens only when Israel decides and takes the necessary measures and actions it wants peace not before.

Share This

(No Ratings Yet)

 Loading ...