Olmert: Only delusional people think we'll keep post-'67 borders
Zionist Extremism Key Impediment to Peace | 27.05.2008 17:03 | Palestine | World
"The guideline of our policy has always been the idea that a permanent situation of no peace and a latent war is the best situation for us, and that it must be maintained at all costs. ... we are becoming stronger year by year in a situation of impending conflict where it is possible that actual fighting may break out from time to time. SUch wars will usually be short and the results guaranteed in advance, since the gap between us and the Arabs is increasing. In this way we shall move on from occupation to further occupation. ... this criminally mischievous policy has led us into the crisis we are living through today"
(Yeshayahu Leibowitz, 30 November 1973)
"We have not been seeking peace for twenty-five years -- all declarations to that effect have been no more than coloured statements or deliberate lies. There is of course no assurance that we could have made peace with the Arabs if we had wanted to. However, it has to be heavily emphasized that we have not only made no attempts to seek peace, but have deliberately and with premeditation, sabotaged every possibility of doing so."
(Yeshayahu Leibowitz, 30 November 1973)
(Yeshayahu Leibowitz, 30 November 1973)
"We have not been seeking peace for twenty-five years -- all declarations to that effect have been no more than coloured statements or deliberate lies. There is of course no assurance that we could have made peace with the Arabs if we had wanted to. However, it has to be heavily emphasized that we have not only made no attempts to seek peace, but have deliberately and with premeditation, sabotaged every possibility of doing so."
(Yeshayahu Leibowitz, 30 November 1973)
Olmert: Only delusional people think we'll keep post-'67 borders
By Shahar Ilan, Haaretz Correspondent
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Monday said that only people suffering from delusions believe it is possible to realize the dream of holding onto the greater Land of Israel, territories Israel captured in the 1967 Six Day War.
(Despite Israel's consistent drive to do so ever since, including under the direction of Olmert's Government ...)
Olmert's comments came amid negotiations with the Palestinian Authority and indirect Israeli peace talks with Syria.
(In the case of the Palestinian talks, the process is irrelevant, as it ignores the elected Government and Netanyahu has already said he will nullify any agreement reached, and in the case of Syria, it appears that Israel is again making untenable demands precursors to peace, in essence, stalling the process.)
Palestinian officials said the negotiations over reaching a final status deal involved an Israeli offer of 91.5 percent of West Bank. He made the remarks speaking at a Knesset Foreign Affairs Committee meeting.
After Rejecting Truce, Israel Finally Unveils Its New "Generous Offer"
http://winnipeg.indymedia.org/item.php?14655S
In response, MK Limor Livnat (Likud) charged that what was actually delusional was that a prime minister at the end of his political career can receive envelops of cash and hold talks on the return of the Golan Heights.
(it's been interesting to watch these Extremists turn on themselves, desperately trying to assassinate the character of one of them they do not feel is Extreme enough. This really demonstrates Zionist Extremism's rejection of any peace which would require living up to their legal and moral obligations, and abandoning the Cultish dream of the annexation of all of Palestine.)
The former cabinet minister was referring to the ongoing corruption investigation against Olmert in which he is suspected of receiving illicit funds from an American businessman over a number of years.
Later on in the committee session, Olmert denied holding talks with Hamas despite Vice Premier Haim Ramon's claim of the opposite last week.
(He has to deny doing what a majority of Israelis has been urging his Government to do for months, because the Extremists wish to perpetuate their war, and as such, won't budge on the dehumanization of their intended victims.)
Olmert also stated that the notion of Israel becoming a state "of all its citizens" was gaining credit within elites in the United States. He was speaking of what would be, in effect, a one-state solution whereby Palestinians receive Israeli citizenship.
(Which is, really, the reason Israel and its Ally has stalled any real process for so long. The next step will again be to expell these Arabs, as called for by several Israeli MK's, politicians whose racism and calls for violence would have forced them to step down in shame in any other 'civilized democracy' on earth.)
"This is a very dangerous process that endangers the continuation of our existence as a Jewish state," Olmert told the committee members. He warned that if Israel does not reach an agreement with the Palestinian Authority it will eventually face a Hamas leadership in the West Bank, as opposed to the more moderate Fatah faction.
(That's fine. The idea of a racially-based state is the definition of Apartheid.)
In reference to talks with Damascus, Olmert said he has made no promises to Syria about a future peace agreement. He told the committee that he has made no commitments to Syria. However, he said it's clear what Syria wants as part of any peace deal.
(And as such, Israel has made demands that those obligations not be met by Israel.)
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/987169.html
No Middle East Peace Without Tough Love
By Henry Siegman
25/04/08 "Al-Hayat" -- - We now have word that Tony Blair, envoy of the Middle East Quartet (the UN, the EU, Russia and the United States), and German Chancellor Angela Merkel intend to organize yet another peace conference, this time in Berlin in June. It is hard to believe that after the long string of failed peace initiatives, stretching back at least to the Madrid conference of 1991, statesmen and stateswomen are recycling these failures without seemingly having a clue as to why the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is even more hopeless today than before these peace exercises first got underway.
The scandal of the international community's impotence in resolving one of history's longest bloodlettings is that it knows what the problem is but does not have the courage to speak the truth, much less deal with it. The next peace conference in Germany (or in Moscow, where the Russians want to hold it) will suffer from the same gutlessness that has marked all previous efforts. It will deal with everything except the problem primarily responsible for this conflict's multi-generational impasse.
That problem is that for all of the sins attributable to the Palestinians - and they are legion, including inept and corrupt leadership, failed institution-building and the murderous violence of the rejectionist groups-there is no prospect for a viable, sovereign Palestinian state primarily because Israel's various governments, from 1967 until today, have never intended allowing such a state to come into being.
It is one thing if Israeli governments had insisted on delaying a Palestinian state until certain Israeli security concerns were dealt with. But no government that is serious about a two-state solution to the conflict would have pursued without let-up the theft and fragmentation of Palestinian lands that even a child understands makes Palestinian statehood impossible.
Given the overwhelming disproportion of power between the occupier and the occupied, it is hardly surprising that Israeli governments and their military and security establishments found it difficult to resist the acquisition of Palestinian land. What is astounding is that the international community, pretending to believe Israel's claim that it is the victim and its occupied subjects the aggressors, has allowed this devastating dispossession to continue and the law of the jungle to prevail.
As long as Israel knows that by delaying the peace process it buys time to create facts on the ground that will prove irreversible, and that the international community will continue to indulge Israel's pretense that its desire for a two-state solution is being frustrated by the Palestinians, no new peace initiative can succeed, and the dispossession of the Palestinian people will indeed become irreversible.
There can be no greater delusion on the part of Western countries weighed down by guilt about the Holocaust than the belief that accommodating such an outcome would be an act of friendship to the Jewish people. The abandonment of the Palestinians now is surely not an atonement for the abandonment of European Jewry seventy years ago, nor will it serve the security of the State of Israel and its people.
John Vinocur of the New York Times recently suggested that the virtually unqualified declarations of support for Israel by Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy are "at a minimum an attempt to seek Israeli moderation by means of public assurances with this tacit subtext: these days, the European Union is not, or is no longer, its reflexive antagonist." But the expectation that uncritical Western support of Israel would lead to greater Israeli moderation and greater willingness to take risks for peace is blatantly contradicted by the conflict's history.
Time and again, this history has shown that the less opposition Israel encounters from its friends in the West for its dispossession of the Palestinians, the more uncompromising its behavior. Indeed, Olmert's reaction to Sarkozy's and Merkel's expressions of eternal solidarity and friendship have had exactly that result: Olmert approved massive new construction in East Jerusalem- authorizing housing projects that were frozen for years by previous governments because of their destructive impact on the possibility of a peace agreement-as well as continued expansion of Israel's settlements. And Olmert's defense minister, Ehud Barak, declared shortly after Merkel's departure that he will remove only a token number of the more than 500 checkpoints and roadblocks that Israel has repeatedly promised, and just as repeatedly failed, to dismantle.
That announcement shattered whatever hope Palestinians may have had for recovery of their economy as a consequence of the seven billion dollars in new aid promised by the international donor community in Paris last December. In these circumstances, the donor countries, not to speak of the private sector, will not pour good money after bad, as they so often have in the past.
So what is required of statesmen is not more peace conferences or clever adjustments to previous peace formulations, but the moral and political courage to end their collaboration with the massive hoax the
peace process has been turned into. Of course, Palestinian violence must be condemned and stopped, particularly when it targets civilians. But is it not utterly disingenuous to pretend that Israel's occupation-maintained by IDF-manned checkpoints and barricades, helicopter gunships, jet fighter planes, targeted assassinations and military incursions, not to speak of the massive theft of Palestinian lands-is not itself an exercise in continuous and unrelenting violence against more than 3 million Palestinian civilians? If Israel were to renounce violence, could the occupation last even one day?
Israel's designs on the West Bank are not much different than the designs of the Arab forces that attacked the Jewish state in 1948 - the nullification of the international community's partition resolution of 1947. Short of addressing the problem by its right name-something that is of an entirely different order than hollow statements that "settlements do not advance peace"-and taking effective collective action to end a colonial enterprise that disgraces what began as a noble Jewish national liberation struggle, further peace conferences, no matter how well intentioned, make their participants accessories to one of the longest and cruelest deceptions in the annals of international diplomacy.
Henry Siegman, director of the US/Middle East Project in New York, is research professor at the Sir Joseph Hotung Middle East Program, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. Siegman is a former national director of the American Jewish Congress and of the Synagogue Council of America.
Olmert Pays Lip Service to Peace Deal, While Planning Gaza Assault
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2008/05/399277.html
By Shahar Ilan, Haaretz Correspondent
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Monday said that only people suffering from delusions believe it is possible to realize the dream of holding onto the greater Land of Israel, territories Israel captured in the 1967 Six Day War.
(Despite Israel's consistent drive to do so ever since, including under the direction of Olmert's Government ...)
Olmert's comments came amid negotiations with the Palestinian Authority and indirect Israeli peace talks with Syria.
(In the case of the Palestinian talks, the process is irrelevant, as it ignores the elected Government and Netanyahu has already said he will nullify any agreement reached, and in the case of Syria, it appears that Israel is again making untenable demands precursors to peace, in essence, stalling the process.)
Palestinian officials said the negotiations over reaching a final status deal involved an Israeli offer of 91.5 percent of West Bank. He made the remarks speaking at a Knesset Foreign Affairs Committee meeting.
After Rejecting Truce, Israel Finally Unveils Its New "Generous Offer"
http://winnipeg.indymedia.org/item.php?14655S In response, MK Limor Livnat (Likud) charged that what was actually delusional was that a prime minister at the end of his political career can receive envelops of cash and hold talks on the return of the Golan Heights.
(it's been interesting to watch these Extremists turn on themselves, desperately trying to assassinate the character of one of them they do not feel is Extreme enough. This really demonstrates Zionist Extremism's rejection of any peace which would require living up to their legal and moral obligations, and abandoning the Cultish dream of the annexation of all of Palestine.)
The former cabinet minister was referring to the ongoing corruption investigation against Olmert in which he is suspected of receiving illicit funds from an American businessman over a number of years.
Later on in the committee session, Olmert denied holding talks with Hamas despite Vice Premier Haim Ramon's claim of the opposite last week.
(He has to deny doing what a majority of Israelis has been urging his Government to do for months, because the Extremists wish to perpetuate their war, and as such, won't budge on the dehumanization of their intended victims.)
Olmert also stated that the notion of Israel becoming a state "of all its citizens" was gaining credit within elites in the United States. He was speaking of what would be, in effect, a one-state solution whereby Palestinians receive Israeli citizenship.
(Which is, really, the reason Israel and its Ally has stalled any real process for so long. The next step will again be to expell these Arabs, as called for by several Israeli MK's, politicians whose racism and calls for violence would have forced them to step down in shame in any other 'civilized democracy' on earth.)
"This is a very dangerous process that endangers the continuation of our existence as a Jewish state," Olmert told the committee members. He warned that if Israel does not reach an agreement with the Palestinian Authority it will eventually face a Hamas leadership in the West Bank, as opposed to the more moderate Fatah faction.
(That's fine. The idea of a racially-based state is the definition of Apartheid.)
In reference to talks with Damascus, Olmert said he has made no promises to Syria about a future peace agreement. He told the committee that he has made no commitments to Syria. However, he said it's clear what Syria wants as part of any peace deal.
(And as such, Israel has made demands that those obligations not be met by Israel.)
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/987169.html No Middle East Peace Without Tough Love
By Henry Siegman
25/04/08 "Al-Hayat" -- - We now have word that Tony Blair, envoy of the Middle East Quartet (the UN, the EU, Russia and the United States), and German Chancellor Angela Merkel intend to organize yet another peace conference, this time in Berlin in June. It is hard to believe that after the long string of failed peace initiatives, stretching back at least to the Madrid conference of 1991, statesmen and stateswomen are recycling these failures without seemingly having a clue as to why the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is even more hopeless today than before these peace exercises first got underway.
The scandal of the international community's impotence in resolving one of history's longest bloodlettings is that it knows what the problem is but does not have the courage to speak the truth, much less deal with it. The next peace conference in Germany (or in Moscow, where the Russians want to hold it) will suffer from the same gutlessness that has marked all previous efforts. It will deal with everything except the problem primarily responsible for this conflict's multi-generational impasse.
That problem is that for all of the sins attributable to the Palestinians - and they are legion, including inept and corrupt leadership, failed institution-building and the murderous violence of the rejectionist groups-there is no prospect for a viable, sovereign Palestinian state primarily because Israel's various governments, from 1967 until today, have never intended allowing such a state to come into being.
It is one thing if Israeli governments had insisted on delaying a Palestinian state until certain Israeli security concerns were dealt with. But no government that is serious about a two-state solution to the conflict would have pursued without let-up the theft and fragmentation of Palestinian lands that even a child understands makes Palestinian statehood impossible.
Given the overwhelming disproportion of power between the occupier and the occupied, it is hardly surprising that Israeli governments and their military and security establishments found it difficult to resist the acquisition of Palestinian land. What is astounding is that the international community, pretending to believe Israel's claim that it is the victim and its occupied subjects the aggressors, has allowed this devastating dispossession to continue and the law of the jungle to prevail.
As long as Israel knows that by delaying the peace process it buys time to create facts on the ground that will prove irreversible, and that the international community will continue to indulge Israel's pretense that its desire for a two-state solution is being frustrated by the Palestinians, no new peace initiative can succeed, and the dispossession of the Palestinian people will indeed become irreversible.
There can be no greater delusion on the part of Western countries weighed down by guilt about the Holocaust than the belief that accommodating such an outcome would be an act of friendship to the Jewish people. The abandonment of the Palestinians now is surely not an atonement for the abandonment of European Jewry seventy years ago, nor will it serve the security of the State of Israel and its people.
John Vinocur of the New York Times recently suggested that the virtually unqualified declarations of support for Israel by Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy are "at a minimum an attempt to seek Israeli moderation by means of public assurances with this tacit subtext: these days, the European Union is not, or is no longer, its reflexive antagonist." But the expectation that uncritical Western support of Israel would lead to greater Israeli moderation and greater willingness to take risks for peace is blatantly contradicted by the conflict's history.
Time and again, this history has shown that the less opposition Israel encounters from its friends in the West for its dispossession of the Palestinians, the more uncompromising its behavior. Indeed, Olmert's reaction to Sarkozy's and Merkel's expressions of eternal solidarity and friendship have had exactly that result: Olmert approved massive new construction in East Jerusalem- authorizing housing projects that were frozen for years by previous governments because of their destructive impact on the possibility of a peace agreement-as well as continued expansion of Israel's settlements. And Olmert's defense minister, Ehud Barak, declared shortly after Merkel's departure that he will remove only a token number of the more than 500 checkpoints and roadblocks that Israel has repeatedly promised, and just as repeatedly failed, to dismantle.
That announcement shattered whatever hope Palestinians may have had for recovery of their economy as a consequence of the seven billion dollars in new aid promised by the international donor community in Paris last December. In these circumstances, the donor countries, not to speak of the private sector, will not pour good money after bad, as they so often have in the past.
So what is required of statesmen is not more peace conferences or clever adjustments to previous peace formulations, but the moral and political courage to end their collaboration with the massive hoax the
peace process has been turned into. Of course, Palestinian violence must be condemned and stopped, particularly when it targets civilians. But is it not utterly disingenuous to pretend that Israel's occupation-maintained by IDF-manned checkpoints and barricades, helicopter gunships, jet fighter planes, targeted assassinations and military incursions, not to speak of the massive theft of Palestinian lands-is not itself an exercise in continuous and unrelenting violence against more than 3 million Palestinian civilians? If Israel were to renounce violence, could the occupation last even one day?
Israel's designs on the West Bank are not much different than the designs of the Arab forces that attacked the Jewish state in 1948 - the nullification of the international community's partition resolution of 1947. Short of addressing the problem by its right name-something that is of an entirely different order than hollow statements that "settlements do not advance peace"-and taking effective collective action to end a colonial enterprise that disgraces what began as a noble Jewish national liberation struggle, further peace conferences, no matter how well intentioned, make their participants accessories to one of the longest and cruelest deceptions in the annals of international diplomacy.
Henry Siegman, director of the US/Middle East Project in New York, is research professor at the Sir Joseph Hotung Middle East Program, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. Siegman is a former national director of the American Jewish Congress and of the Synagogue Council of America.
Olmert Pays Lip Service to Peace Deal, While Planning Gaza Assault
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2008/05/399277.html
Zionist Extremism Key Impediment to Peace