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From the Jerusalem Post:

Nayef Hawatmeh, leader of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine [DFLP] and the man responsible for killing 22 [sic] Israeli children in a terror attack on Ma’alot, wants to live in the Palestinian Authority, despite never having had a home there…

Hawatmeh said that his presence in the PA would bolster PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, who, he said, needed the support of figures such as himself to advance his diplomatic plans. “Without us, who will you talk to?” he asked.

Who, indeed? Perhaps this tells us something about trying to talk to people who want to kill you.

Although survivors of the Ma’alot massacre (in which a total of 31 died) have “vowed to use any means to stop the government from allowing Hawatmeh to return”, one wonders if “bolstering Abbas” will be considered more important than decency and national self-respect. We’ll see.

Hawatmeh, presently living in Damascus, was supposed to be part of the bolstering that included the pardoning of wanted Fatah operatives and the prisoner release , but this did not happen. Here’s what I said about Hawatmeh then.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Hawatmeh, Ma’alot, DFLP, Abbas

Sometimes something is glaringly obvious, but people have invested so much in the opposite view that they are rendered totally blind to it.

Israel Harel explains why the Peres Plan will not succeed:

The plan is based on the assumption that the root of the conflict is territorial. And even now that the territorial concessions from Oslo have proved the opposite – that concessions only bring more violence and that Israeli withdrawals strengthen the extremists – the belief in continued concessions has not changed and is a major component of our diplomatic thinking.

[Peres and Olmert] should know very well that the main reason for the Arabs’ war against the Jews is ideological and not territorial, and that even a concession of 100 percent will not satisfy the Arabs.

This is why the 2000 withdrawal from Lebanon strengthened Hezbollah and not the moderates, and why Hamas, not Fatah, won control in free elections after 25 Israeli settlements were uprooted from the Gaza Strip.

If the conflict were territorial, a Palestinian state would have arisen in 1947 when the Jews greeted the partition plan with singing and dancing; certainly the Palestinians would have been prepared to accept the 1948 armistice lines as permanent borders. Ultimately they would have accepted…the far-reaching concessions that prime minister Ehud Barak made to Palestinian Authority chairman Yasser Arafat in 2000.

But at the crucial moment, Arafat proved that even 96 percent of the territory, including the Temple Mount, was not his real goal. And now, with Hamas having won in free elections, will it accept less than Fatah would have?

If the definition of insanity is ‘doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results’, then Shimon Peres — and many others — need to make urgent appointments with their psychiatrists.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Palestinians, Peres, Olmert

Why does the current excitement about a revived ‘peace process’ appear contrived (I’m reminded of my departed friend Max Fishman, who always referred to it as the “piss process”, and not only to make fun of Peres’ accent)?

Why does it all seem like empty words?

Jonathan Spyer finds two basic reasons:

Firstly, because the two leaders, Olmert and Abbas, lack credibility with their respective publics. Indeed, a sizeable part of Abbas’s public currently lives under the rival Palestinian Authority maintained by Hamas in Gaza. The very existence of that authority raises the question of in whose name exactly will Abbas and Fayad be negotiating, and who will feel bound by any agreement they might reach.

Olmert, meanwhile, has been deeply unpopular among the Israeli public since the Lebanon War last year, and surely lacks the authority that would be required to order the large scale removal of West Bank Jewish communities as part of any deal…

Secondly, there is the more fundamental issue of intention. The peace process of the 1990s collapsed not because of a misunderstanding, but because of the fundamentally irreconcilable positions of the sides – most crucially, on the issue of the Palestinian refugees of 1948 and their descendants.

The Israeli left thought that the Palestinian ‘right of return’ was a sort of metaphor, which required only a bit of empathy and a few ritual expressions of guilt to be satisfied. They found out they were wrong. The issue of the refugees remains the single most defining element of Palestinian nationalism. It is also an issue on which Israel cannot concede without ceasing to exist as the expression of the national rights of the Jews – its very raison d’etre.

But if there’s no chance of success, why bother?

The revived ‘peace process’ is part of a rearguard action intended to solidify the ranks of the regional opponents of Iran and of revolutionary Islamism. The so-called axis of moderation – Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan – do not wish, by aligning with the US and Israel, to leave Iran and its allies to champion the cause of the Palestinians – still the greatest ‘legitimating card’ in regional politics. There is therefore a need for something to seem to be happening on the Israeli-Palestinian track.

Read all of Spyer’s analysis here.

The leaders of the democratic nations involved in this charade, Israel and the US, are not doing their constituents a service by maintaining the fiction that there is a diplomatic process that can lead to a true peace between Israel and the Palestinians.

Continuing in this direction is especially dangerous for Israel, since it involves the arming of her enemies as well as pressure to make concrete concessions that will reduce her security, particularly when the “process” collapses — as it is certain to do.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Palestinians, peace process, Olmert, Abbas