NOVANEWS
Has there been a single Israeli prime minister who has ever been serious about giving Palestinians a viable state of their own? Of course not. A colonial power does not give political power back to the people whose land it has stolen by force and by guile.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas (Issam Romawi for AFP/Getty Images)
By James M Wall
The game must go on. John Kerry performs his negotiator role. Benjamin Netanyahu goes through his role as the leader of an “endangered” state.
Mahmoud Abbas? Well, he (at right) is just sitting by at the peace table, with future diplomacy on his mind.
Trouble is, not even a hard-working John Kerry can resuscitate that which has not been suscitated in the first place.
Suscitated?
Yes, that is exactly the word we need here. Less than a month away from Kerry’s deadline for Israel and Palestine to agree on a framework to continue the current round of talks.
The Alpha Dictionary explains why:
“This word [suscitate] is not obsolete, just left behind in the dust of progress. . . Before you can resuscitate something, it should have originally been suscitated, [as in] “How do you suscitate curiosity in your students?”
Has there been a single Israeli prime minister who has ever been serious about giving Palestinians a viable state of their own? Of course not. A colonial power does not give political power back to the people whose land it has stolen by force and by guile.
Unless that is, you are the white minority of South Africa which lacked the one thing it needed to continue to control the indigenous population which it had pushed into bantustans: A well-funded Lobby which owned the U .S. Congress.
How strong is the Israel Lobby? The Congress demonstrates its power when it cheers Netanyahu each time he shows up to ply his wares.
The Israel Lobby has such power that it even reaches into U.S. religious bodies when they debate resolutions critical of Israel.
Two of those religious denominations—The United Methodist Church and the Presbyterian Church USA—will bring up new resolutions against the occupation when they gather for national meetings this summer.
The Israel Lobby will set up shop around and inside the two church assembly halls. They will not be discussing religious matters.
The modern state of Israel, created in 1948 at considerable cost to the Palestinian people, has never wanted to “suscitate” a peace process.
Every Israeli prime minister who agreed to “peace talks” did so because it was a handy place to nestle down and pretend peace while he or she swallowed up more Palestine land and stepped up Palestinian oppression.
Why else in this current round of “talks” would Netanyahu toss in two new demands, knowing they were deal-breakers?
“Recognize us as a Jewish state” and “give us the Jordan Valley to save us from marauding Arab armies” sounds suspiciously like a two-part package dreamed up by Madison Avenue to keep the talks going until the next U.S. presidential election.
To an uninformed American public and to an uncaring Congress, the two demands sound reasonable, in spite of the fact that they were dreamed up especially for this round of talks.
Netanyahu knows that a Republican or a Clintonian Democratic White House will show little enthusiasm to confront the occupation.
Abbas knows Israel is stalling for time. Which explains why he is ready to “launch his own non-violent diplomatic assault” to confront Netanyahu’s stalling tactics.
Time magazine has the story:
Palestinian leaders are readying for a confrontation without violence. Once the talks fail — an outcome they regard as inevitable — the plan is to resume a diplomatic assault on Israel.
The main venue will be the U.N., where the General Assembly in 2012 granted Palestine state status. The institution, broadly supportive of Palestine, offers other levers to pressure Israel, including access to the International Criminal Court.
“The U.N. is one place where you can show respect for multilateralism, international law, where you can empower the Palestinians, check Israeli violations and give people hope,” [says Hanan Ashrawi, a Palestinian Authority executive-committee member].
Meanwhile, this weekend across the Atlantic, the 2016 presidential race gets underway. A very special Republican “primary” in Las Vegas will be hosted by an American oligarch with a strong affection for Israel.
That, of course would be billionaire casino magnate Sheldon G. Adelson (left), who, with his wife Miriam, poured more than $92 million into 2012 campaigns to elect Republican candidates, most of whom lost.
His strategy for 2016 will be pragmatic. The Adelsons intend to win the White House for Israel.
The Washington Post reports on the Adelsons’ 2016 strategy:
The Adelsons are plotting their investments based not on personal loyalty but on a much more strategic aim: to help select a Republican nominee they believe will have broad appeal to an increasingly diverse national electorate.
The change in attitude comes amid early jockeying by a lengthy list of aspiring Republican presidential contenders to win the affections of the billionaire, who is in the beginning stages of assessing the field.
“The bar for support is going to be much higher,” said Andy Abboud, Adelson’s top political adviser and an executive at the Adelson-run Las Vegas Sands Corp. “There’s going to be a lot more scrutiny.”
Four Republican hopefuls will audition for the Adelsons: Former Florida governor Jeb Bush, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker and Ohio Governor John Kasich.
In what is essentially the “Sheldon Primary,” the auditions are the first step toward victory for the Republican party and for Israel.
The Post adds that:
Officially, the potential 2016 candidates will be at the Venetian for the spring meeting of the Republican Jewish Coalition, which begins Thursday with a golf outing, followed by a VIP dinner featuring [Jeb] Bush and hosted by the Adelsons in the private airplane hangar where Adelson keeps his fleet.
But some of the most important events will occur between the poker tournament, Scotch tasting and strategy workshops. That’s when Adelson is scheduled to hold casual one-on-one chats — over coffee, at dinner or in his private office — with the prospective candidates.
No doubt Israel will be at the top of the Adelsons’ agenda for discussion, followed by a friendly committment that the casino industry will be given clear sailing in its current battle against its major competitor, online gambling.
After 2016, with what Republicans like Adelson hopes will be a Congress firmly in hand, and a Republican, or a Clintonian Democrat, in the White House, talk of resuscitating a peace process that has never been susciated, will no doubt be trotted out in a new format, one that will enable Israel to proceed with further expansion.
And the most fervent effort for justice by a U. S. Secretary of State since Israel became a nation, will have reached an ignominious conclusion.
After which, President Abbas’ effort to launch a diplomatic assault on Israel’s occupation, will be tested in the court of world opinion, and just possibly, in the courts of international justice.
Meanwhile, Sheldon G. Adelson will be happy. And Israel, which calls itself the “start up nation”, will keep its economy booming, with the keys to the occupation firmly secure in its hands. For a time, at least.
