View From a Divided Palestine

I'll be going to the New America Foundation's event "The View from a Divided Palestine" with Mustafa Barghouti from the Palestinian Legislative Council, Rita Hauser from the International Peace Academy and the International Crisis Group, and Daniel Levy from New America and elsewhere. Steve Clemons is promising that the event will be record and posted here.

For background, after years of pursuing a mix of disengagement and sporadic counterproductive interventions, Condoleezza Rice decided to call for a peace conference that'll be happening in Annapolis in November. It's a little unclear why exactly she's done this, since in many respects the US government doesn't seem to have done anything to clear the ground for success and the consequences of failure could be dire. But call it she did, so people of good will may as well try to seize the opportunity to accomplish something constructive — or, at a minimum, stave off some kind of disaster where poor planning leads to failure which leads to years of renewed bitterness and violence.

Comments

Just another case of the appeasers talking to the terrorists. The appeasers never learn, the Palestinians are only interested in the State of Israel going out of business.

http://web.israelinsider.com/views/12296.htm

Posted by SLC | October 30, 2007 11:59 AM

I doubt anything will come of the November meeting for the simple and historically and glaringly obvious reason that Israel doesn't want peace, they want the real estate.

This is and always has been a war over land since day one.

All the other terrier yada,yada and whinning is just so much crapola to cover the land grab.

Personally I think if Israel doesn't change it's ways dramatically it will disappear in my lifetime, probably at the same time the US goes broke and gets it's ass handed to it by the new emerging international realities.

Posted by Cal | October 30, 2007 1:09 PM

Just another case of the appeasers talking to the terrorists.

You are quite right, SLC--the Palestinians shouldn't be talking to us.

Posted by rea | October 30, 2007 4:28 PM

Re Cal

"I doubt anything will come of the November meeting for the simple and historically and glaringly obvious reason that Israel doesn't want peace, they want the real estate."

Nothing will come of the November meeting for the simple and historically and glaringly obvious reason that the Paletinians definition of peace includes the demand that the State of Israel go out of business. Mr. Cals' claim is a god damn lie.

Re rea

Mr. rea is about as funny as AIDS. The time is long overdue for the US to quit pushing for an independent Palestinian state as the Palestinians vision of such a state includes all of Palestine.

Posted by SLC | October 30, 2007 6:00 PM

SLC, you are a hate-mongering fiend who just lies and lies and lies.

Posted by Jennifer | October 30, 2007 6:46 PM

Mr. rea is about as funny as AIDS. The time is long overdue for the US to quit pushing for an independent Palestinian state as the Palestinians vision of such a state includes all of Palestine.

Ok. I mean, I certainly think you're wrong about that, as I've said. But say it was. So what? The Palestinians are among the least powerful ethnic groups in the world. They have close to no power whatsoever to chart their own destiny. So who says we should give them all of Palestine, if indeed they were demanding that? Give them the 1967 borders, with a corridor created between Gaze and the West Bank. What are they going to do? Say no? Saying that Palestinians want the whole thing, in addition to being factually incorrect, just becomes obstructionism. Negotiate a settlement that brings them a viable, contiguous state with true sovereignty and they won't say no.

Posted by Freddie | October 30, 2007 6:55 PM

Re Freddie

Mr. Freddie lives in a dreamworld. The Palestinians have never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity. The could have had a Palestinian state on 95% of the West Bank and 100% of the Gaza Strip and turned it down (by the way, it should be pointed out that the Palestinians currently have 100% of the Gaza Strip; the result has been kassems and mortar rounds fired into Israel). If the Government of Israel agreed to every one of Mr. Freddies' proposals, the Palestinians would turn it down as they continue to insist that Palestinians in refugee camps be resettled in Israel. That ain't going to happen. Until this demand id dropped, any negotiations are a waste of time and energy.

Posted by SLC | October 30, 2007 7:50 PM