United States of Islam

by: USI News Desk

U.S. Vice President Joe Biden told Palestinians today that they deserve a “viable” independent state with contiguous territory.

Biden’s comments appeared aimed at reassuring the Palestinians of U.S. support a day after Israel announced plans to build 1,600 new homes in disputed east Jerusalem. The Israeli move has overshadowed Biden’s visit, which is meant to promote U.S.-led peace negotiations that are set to begin in the coming weeks.

At a news conference in Ramallah in the West Bank with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Biden reiterated his condemnation of Israel’s plan and urged both sides to refrain from actions that could “inflame” tensions.

Growing settlements take up more and more of the land the Palestinians want for their state and make partition increasingly difficult. Today, nearly 300,000 Israeli settlers live in the West Bank and 180,000 in east Jerusalem.

The Palestinians want east Jerusalem, captured by Israel in the 1967 Mideast War, as their future capital.

Israel apologized today for disrupting Biden’s visit with its announcement, but made clear it had no intention of reversing the order.

Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad said the Israeli announcement was “damaging” and posed a “great challenge” to restarting peace talks. Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said the new construction would be the main item on the Abbas-Biden agenda.

“I think the Israeli government is making it almost impossible for us, the Americans and the international community, to take a one centimeter step in the direction of reviving the peace process,” Erekat said.

Abbas has said he won’t resume direct negotiations without a settlement freeze, leaving the U.S. no choice but to arrange indirect talks in hopes of ending the impasse.

Is the peace process doomed to fail? Here’s what some commentators say:

Bogged down by complexity:

Blogging for the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, Carlo Strenger suggests that part of the problem is there are no simple answers for who is right and who is wrong.

“More than anything, all sides want a morally simplistic picture: either Israel is the clear-cut bad guy in the story; a cunning regional superpower with colonial ambitions hidden behind pretexts about Israel’s security; or: Arabs have never accepted Israel, and are doing everything to undermine its existence. The truth, I suspect, is more complicated than the aficionados of moral simplicity would like. We should remember how long it generally takes for states to find their identity. Most European nation states went through major wars, whether civil or against foreign powers, in the process of welding an identity. And none of them turned into modern democracies easily or quickly.”

A reason to tread lightly:

The Atlanta Journal Constitution’s Jay Bookman writes that Israel is playing a dangerous game by insulting both friends and foes.

“It is hard to shake the notion that, having defeated the Palestinians militarily, the conservative Israeli government now feels no need to make peace, and little need to treat its foes and perhaps even its friends with respect. They have come to the place where war is more comfortable and reassuring to them than peace. But the truth is that Israel has solved its security problems only in the short term; its long-term strategic problems remain and in fact grow more difficult and threatening with time.”

A test of fairness:

JTA’s Ami Eden cautions those condemning Israel’s announcement should be watching Palestinian actions with the same critical eye.

“In response to claims that they are picking on Israel by focusing so heavily on settlements, the White House and left-wing Jewish groups often counter by saying that they are equally concerns about areas where the Palestinians need to do better, particularly on ending incitement. Well, it turns out that the Palestinians have their own timing issues: On Thursday, according to Palestinian Media Watch, the Palestinian Authority is planning to go through with plans to name a public square after Dalal Mughrabi, who led a 1978 bus hijacking in which 37 Israelis, including 12 children, were killed. Thursday is the 32nd anniversary of the attack. Biden will still be in town. So it’ll be interesting to see if he weighs in, as he did on the Israeli housing starts.”

Pointless proximity talks:

Blogging for Huffington Post, Oxford University’s Sharmine Narwani labels the indirect negotiations as Theater of the Absurd.

“Palestinians and Israelis are not even going to be at the table together. Mitchell could not even make that happen. This isn’t phase one of a longstanding conflict. These are adversaries who have sat across many tables and struck many agreements over the past 19 years. And so this is where we are in the gruelingly endless Middle East peace process. About a dozen steps back from where we started.”

Insincere efforts:

Writing for The American Spectator, David Gutmann argues that peace talks won’t work because Palestinians don’t really want their own independent state, and their previous actions serve as proof.

“Why won’t they accept the grant of statehood? To repeat, perhaps because they don’t really want their own country? There are, after all, many bounties attached to their current status, perks that would disappear under the condition of statehood. This is the age of the sanctified victim; and any person or group who can claim that title is automatically in a state of grace. Nobody is allowed to “blame the victim,” and so these lucky unfortunates can follow any course, however bloody, so long as they can blame their violence on their victimized condition. Convincing much of the world — including too many Jews — that they were the embodiment of the new Christ, the latest targets of Jewish savagery in the holy land, the Palestinians years ago captured the victim’s high-ground, and have since worked their claim for great profit