What Does Fatah Think It Gains From Renewed Violence?

Fatah's Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade terrorists in Gaza fired rockets into Israel in solidarity with protesters who have been raging against Israel after a Palestinian man died in Israeli custody. Palestinians claim he was tortured and killed, which Israel denies.

The Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, which says it is affiliated with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah party, took responsibility for the attack. The rocket fell on a road in southern Israel. No injuries were reported, according to Israeli Defense Forces radio.

Days of clashes between dozens of Palestinian stone-throwers and Israeli soldiers have taken place since the death of Arafat Jaradat, a 30-year-old Palestinian man who died under unclear circumstances while in Israeli police custody.

Palestinian officials insist Jaradat was tortured to death during an interrogation. An Israeli autopsy conducted in the presence of a Palestinian physician showed bruises and a couple of broken ribs which, Israel says, could have occurred during resuscitation efforts.

Tensions were already high after several Palestinian demonstrations demanding the release of more than 4,000 prisoners held in Israeli prisons for everything from stone-throwing to terror attacks.

It's a flashpoint that Fatah thinks can it can exploit as President Obama is scheduled to come to Israel next month.

It makes no sense though.

The Palestinian Authority and Fatah have a level of autonomy that comes from an uneasy status quo where Fatah controls much of the West Bank with civil administrative control and regions are off limits to Israelis. All this was set forth in the Oslo Accords and follow on agreements.

Palestinians refused to even consider peace deals that included land swaps the two times that Israel proffered a comprehensive deal. In fact, in both instances the Palestinian response was more violence, not a counter proposal upon which further negotiations could occur.

Perhaps Fatah thinks that they need to remind Palestinians that they can resort to violence just as surely as Hamas has done since 2005. Yet, the end result of the violence would be further security clampdowns on Palestinian mobility through the West Bank and crossing points into Israel. That serves no one, least of all Palestinian businesses. The violence only ratchets up the tensions.

Perhaps Fatah's Mahmoud Abbas thinks that the violence will lead President Obama to come forth with a proposal that would impose a peace deal, but that's not going to happen. The US has already signaled that the President isn't coming with a peace proposal in hand, but instead is coming to hear what both sides have to say about the matter.

Or, perhaps Abbas thinks that they need this violence so as to engage in a rapproachment with Hamas, but I don't think Abbas is so cynical as to believe that that's possible given how Abbas and Fatah have generally worked out a coexistence with Israel on civil administrative and security matters that allows many in the West Bank to attend to the business of business. Hamas considers Fatah to be sell-outs of Palestinian freedom by merely accepting Israel's existence.

Reflexively, Palestinian leaders revert to violence when the needs suit them because they simply haven't accepted that a peace deal could be reached after all the promises that they've given Palestinians for generations that they would wipe Israel from the map and/or overwhelm them demographically with a right of return.

For its part, Israel has no reason to inflame tensions or ratchet up the violence. There's enough instability on Israel's borders to keep its security officials up at night. With the Syrian civil war raging and the situation in Egypt uncertain while the porous Sinai border with Gaza allowing an ongoing influx of weapons and material to Hamas, Israel's neighbors are all dealing with internal issues (though Assad and others may try to cause conflict with Israel so as to deflect attention from their own problems).

The US policy has been that a peace deal will come only when both Israelis and Palestinians sit down and hash out a deal. That's the right strategy as an imposed deal will not carry as much weight as one that the two sides manage to hash out. I'm quite pessimistic that any such deal could be worked out when Hamas still refuses to accept Israel's existence and that they view ceasefires as a hudna in which they're able to regroup and rearm for the next armed phase of their conflict with Israel.

In other words, Israel faces not a united Palestinian front, but one that for all intents and purposes has created three "states" - Israel, Fatah-controlled West Bank, and Hamas-controlled Gaza. A 3-state solution reflects the situation on the ground, but isn't a sustainable concept diplomatically when Hamas and Fatah are both nominally representing the Palestinian people. The 2-state solution is on life support, but it's been that way ever since the Palestinian civil war split control of Gaza and the West Bank between Fatah and Hamas, not because Israel wants to see an end to the dialogue.

Thus, the latest outbreak of violence will end as it usually does - lots more people injured, property damage, inflamed passions, and neither side budging on core issues.

The Barak Disengagement Plan

Israel's defense minister Ehud Barak has come out with a new plan that is spurring a new debate about Israel's role in the West Bank. Ehud Barak is part of the government coalition under Binyamin Netanyahu, but he's also the leader of his own political party and has aspirations to once again be Prime Minister of Israel.

That means that his comments need to be framed both as an internal political issue within the Israeli electorate and as a wider Israeli policy vis-a-vis the Palestinians.

Barak's plan? A disengagement from large portions of the West Bank, including uprooting settlements and using financial incentives to get Israel's to move back inside the Green Line. However, the Etzion and Ariel settlement blocs would not be included in the disengagement:

Defense Minister Ehud Barak is urging the government to examine a plan for unilateral withdrawal from Judea and Samaria. Under the plan, secluded settlements and outposts in Judea and Samaria would be evacuated by the state, and any Jews wishing to remain in the region would be permitted to live there under Palestinian rule.

In a special interview with Israel Hayom, to be published in full on Tuesday, Barak outlined the details of his plan and explained the logic behind it. Under Barak's plan, the settlement blocs of Gush Etzion, Maaleh Adumim and Ariel would remain intact. These blocs house some 90 percent of Judea and Samaria's Jewish population. Strategic areas (such as the Samarian hills overlooking Ben-Gurion International Airport) would similarly remain under Israeli control, and an Israeli military presence in the Jordan Valley would be ensured. The remainder of the territory would be handed over to the Palestinians to establish a state. Dozens of small Jewish communities would have to be evacuated.


Barak's plan elicited a harsh response from the right on Monday, with Likud Minister Yuli Edelstein saying that "this is not a disengagement plan we are talking about. This is our survival. Ehud Barak is continuing to make rookie mistakes. After supporting the disastrous Oslo Accords, orchestrating the escape from Lebanon and advancing the withdrawal from Gaza, which put a million Israelis in bomb shelters, Barak is now willing to put millions more in harms way just to get more votes."

There has been no visible movement on the peace process in the past couple of years as Hamas has solidified its hold on Gaza while Fatah continues running the show in the West Bank autonomous areas where Palestinians have civil administrative control. Pursuant to the Oslo Accords, the Palestinian Authority has full civil administrative control over certain portions, shared security arrangements in other areas, and Israel controls the remaining areas. The ultimate disposition of the West Bank would be determined in an agreement between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. But since Hamas has remained steadfast in its refusal to recognize Israel's very right to exist and has no interest in holding to already signed deals between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, there's been no movement. Israel can't work on a peace deal when it doesn't have a partner in peace.

Elections are likely in the next year, and Barak thinks he's got a shot at winning the opportunity to forge a coalition government rather than Netenyahu. Disengagement isn't likely to sit well with many Israelis after the Gaza experiment, though there are significant differences between the two scenarios. For one, Hamas had a greater presence in Gaza than in the West Bank, and Fatah has been more willing to coordinate security with Israel. That isn't to say that disengagement is without risk to Israel's security.

So, this is where Barak's proposal comes into play. It would seem to be a version of Ariel Sharon's Gaza disengagement plan. It would take into account the demographic problems that face Israel with a growing Palestinian population that would threaten the very character of Israel's Jewishness.

Critics of Barak's plan in Israel point to the problems resulting from the Gaza disengagement. Deputy Prime Minister Dan Meridor notes that the disengagement from Gaza allowed Hamas to overrun and take control of the area and turned Gaza into a rocket and terrorist haven. Thousands of terror attacks have been launched against Israel - in the form of mortars, kassams, and grad rocket/missile attacks against Israel from Ashkelon and Ashdod through Sderot. Meridor points out that something similar would likely occur if Israel unilaterally withdraws from areas in the West Bank.

"We saw what happened in Gaza," Meridor told Israel Radio, expressing his belief that unilateral withdrawal from settlements is "not a good idea."

"We all want to reach an agreement," he said, "but since Olmert's proposal (in 2006) we haven't had real negotiations, and they [the Palestinians] don't seem to want it."

Meridor stressed that Israel should make an effort to reach an agreement and that the current situation must not continue, but he added that the army must remain in the West Bank for the time being.

Meanwhile, Vice Premier Silvan Shalom all but dismissed the proposal, predicting that Barak will not have sway on government action in the settlements, following elections scheduled for 2013.

The view that Israelis are the ones blocking a path to a peace deal ignore the reality on the ground unless the goal is to establish not a two-state solution, but a three state solution. One for Hamas in Gaza, one for Fatah in the West Bank territories, and Israel. If that's the path to take, then we need to eliminate the fiction that the Palestinian Authority has any actual authority, that the votes the Palestinians took, and their civil war that led to the current situation but that would also mean that Palestinian self-determination in those elections wasn't determinative.

The problem with the three-state solution is that the Palestinians themselves don't appear to want that - they still hold fast to 2-state solution that ultimately leads to a 1-state solution in overruning Israel.

Fatah's Abbas isn't willing to make concessions on right of return or other critical issues that would lead to a new peace deal. And housing and settlements are a non-factor since Israel has repeatedly shown that Israel is willing to uproot settlers from housing to have an opportunity for peace.

They did it in Sinai.

They did it in Gaza.

And they'd do so in the West Bank if there was a peace deal to be had. Without a partner in peace though, the Israelis aren't going to warm up to another unilateral disengagement plan.

Palestinians Threatening To Abrogate Oslo Accords and Other Arrangements With Israel

The Palestinians, particularly Fatah's Mahmoud Abbas, is once again threatening to abrogate the Oslo Accords and the successor security arragements made with Israel so as to curry favor with Hamas as Fatah and Hamas try to reconcile their longstanding differences.

Mohammed Shtayyeh, member of the Fatah Central Committee and one of the Palestinian Authority negotiators with Israel, was quoted Sunday as saying that the Palestinians may cancel the agreements signed between the PLO and Israel.

Meanwhile, some PLO and Fatah leaders have privately criticized Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas for agreeing to incorporate Hamas into the PLO.

At least three senior officials in Ramallah have voiced strong reservations over the decision, a Fatah official told The Jerusalem Post. He said that those who were opposed to the move were worried that Hamas would replace Fatah as the dominant party in the PLO.

One official was quoted as saying that Abbas was paving the way for Hamas and Islamic Jihad to take control not only over the PLO, but the entire West Bank as well.

Shtayyeh's comments were published by the London-based Asharq Al Awsat newspaper.

This was not the first time that a senior PA official had talked about the possibility of abrogating the Oslo Accords.

The comments came less than 48 hours after Hamas and Islamic Jihad agreed to join a temporary leadership of the PLO that would prepare for new elections for the organization's two key bodies - the Palestine National Council and Executive Committee.

In response to a question about Israeli settlements, Shtayyeh said: "If Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu insists that there is no difference between the settlement of Abu Ghneim [Har Homa] and Tel Aviv, we won't distinguish between Ramallah and Jaffa."

The Palestinian Authority hasn't held elections since 2005, when Hamas and Fatah split the vote and ending up fighting a civil war that left Hamas in full control over Gaza while Fatah maintained civil administrative control over the West Bank. The Palestinians continue their attempts to revise history by claiming that Oslo didn't recognize Palestinian rights to territories, but they continue to avoid recognizing Israel's rights to territories, including historic claims to Jerusalem that extend back hundreds and thousands of years.

Hamas is not ruling out running in elections that may be held in 2012. They think that they might win in a landslide. That may be wishful thinking on their part considering that Hamas has shown an inability to do anything other than carry out attacks against Israel and find reason to blame Israel for all that ails the Palestinians. It can't do anything constructive. While Fatah remains open to concerns about corruption, Palestinians living in areas controlled by Fatah are able to move about more freely and have far more economic opportunities than those in Gaza. It doesn't seem likely that people living in the West Bank would consider voting for Hamas, unless they're looking for a more violent confrontation with Israel and an end to the peace process.

Yet, Hamas must think that they've got support to make such claims. Indeed, looking back at the 2006 election results, and one sees that Fatah maintained support only in a few select West Bank cities, while Hamas generated support elsewhere. That dynamic isn't likely to change even though the economic situation is worse now in Gaza than before the elections.

Despite the worsened economic conditions, Hamas wears that with a badge of pride - all in the cause of fighting Israel's existence and undermining Israel's right to exist at every opportunity. They portray the fight and the lack of economic opportunity as sacrifices that must be made in the fight against the Zionists.

Hamas celebrates a 3-year anniversary since the start of Operation Cast Lead, when Israel went after the Palestinian terror group after hundreds of rockets and mortars slammed into Israeli cities and towns. They refer to Israeli war crimes and genocide, even though by Hamas' own admission the vast majority of those killed were Hamas terrorists. Moreover, the overwhelming majority of civilians killed were not purposefully attacked by Israel, but were rather used by Hamas as human shields so as to inflate the body count and inflame Palestinian passions against Israel. At the same time, Palestinians look the other way as those Hamas rocket and mortar attacks were themselves war crimes as they purposefully targeted civilians so as to maximize the body count. To Hamas, there are no Israeli civilians - all are worthy targets.

The Personal Politics of the Middle East Conflict

As this past week's events at the United Nations have once again demonstrated, the Arab-Israeli conflict, and the Palestinian-Israeli conflict in particular, are dominated by the personal politics that can overtake the facts on the ground.

This is an area near and dear to my heart. It's a subject on which I've spent the better part of the past two decades thinking and writing about (including my Master's Thesis).

Put simply, the actions of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas shows a level of cowardice to avoid making any concessions or dealing directly with Israel and that the peace process is all but dead as a result of Israel lacking a political leader among the Palestinians willing to put their life on the line to actually cut a deal establishing a 2-state solution.

For decades, Palestinians have bought into the notion that if they can wait out Israel's leadership, they'll not only get a state of their own, but that they will overwhelm Israel through demographics and geopolitical realities to eventually create a Palestinian state on what was once Israel.

Israel will not go quietly into the night, but it has made repeated efforts to make peace with its Arab neighbors. First, Egyptian leader Anwar Sadat made the historic trip to Jerusalem to make the case for peace. The resulting Camp David Accords solidified the notion of land for peace, and Israel withdrew from Sinai (a landmass more than twice the size of Israel proper and which had mineral and oil deposits and dozens of Israeli communities from 1967 onwards). Israel forcibly removed those Israeli settlements in making the case for peace.

Sadat's bravery in the face of overt hate towards all things Israel made him a target for assassination, and he died at the hands of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad (a forerunner for al Qaeda). Yet, for nearly 30 years, there has been a peace between the two countries.

Jordan's King Hussein likewise made peace with Israel, despite a significant Palestinian population within his own country that he had kept under tight reign after the PLO sought to overthrow his government in 1970 (the PLO is the umbrella organization that includes Fatah).

Jordan's King Hussein likewise made peace, and the Palestinian Authority was designated as the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people. Yasir Arafat, the head of Fatah, was given several opportunities to make a peace deal by and through the Oslo process, but never even gave the consideration of a counterproposal. He simply walked away from the process, opting instead to maintain civil administrative control over the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza all while pursuing the ultimate goal of a 1-state solution.

By the time Arafat died and was superseded by Abbas, the Palestinians have not budged from their ultimate goal of a 1-state solution.

Hamas now controls Gaza after Israel unilaterally disengaged from the region and left Palestinians in full and complete control over their future there. Far from creating an economic and social environment for improving Palestinian lives, Hamas has turned it in to a terror-haven for incessant attacks against Israel, requiring Israel to defend itself against suicide bombers and rocket and mortar attacks. \

Hamas refuses to recognize Israel's right to exist and none of the Palestinian leadership talks of recognizing Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state. That comes as the same Palestinian leadership speaks of making its own territories (at present and looking ahead to a future Palestinian state in the West Bank) - free from Jews. That's ethnic cleansing any way you cut it, and world diplomats consistently ignore that reality.

Abbas not only cannot rise above this, but he actively encourages undermining Israel's rights to exist, and his craven cowardice shows that Israel has no partner in peace.

That's despite an Israeli electorate that has consistently shown itself willing to cede land for peace despite the security risks it posed to Israel. The Israeli public has moved away from land for peace as the Gaza disengagement has shown that withdrawing from land will not mean peace - particularly with the Palestinians. It's led to a hardening of Israeli positions on security, but the Israelis have maintained that a 2-state solution is the only solution.

But for the failures of the Palestinian leadership to actually lead and show courage in adopting a 2-state solution, there would be peace.

That's entirely on the failure of the personal leadership of Palestinians like Mahmoud Abbas who cannot get past his regimes' decades-long goals. When you've spent decades building up towards a 1-state solution, accepting a 2-state solution is untenable; the population has been radicalized into believing that they can ultimately get what they want and will continue using all means at their disposal towards a Palestinian state.

Moreover, they can look forward to seeing Israel being forced into negotiating against itself - it keeps putting forth deal after deal to the Palestinians from which they get no counterproposal. If they were so keen on a state to call their own, they could have accepted either the 2000 or 2007 Israeli proposals establishing a Palestinian state. They have chosen not to do so and have made no such effort to create a functioning state in the territories in which they already have full dominion or civil administrative control. Instead, Abbas, the Palestinian Authority, and Hamas revel in the ability to attack Israel's sovereignty and take no responsibility for the situation of their own making.

Trying To Salvage Peace Process Means Heading Off Palestinian Calls For Statehood at UN

President Barack Obama and Israel are facing a September deadline. They have to convince the Palestinians that declaring statehood at the United Nations in September would be a train wreck of the worst kind. Yet, the Palestinians are increasingly likely to make that declaration and throw what's left of the "peace process" under the bus. That assessment comes from former Middle East envoy George Mitchell:

"The United Nations does not have the authority to recognize states," Mitchell said. Recognition of a state, especially if passed by an overwhelming margin at the UN, would be "very harmful for Israel, for the United States, and not good for the peace process."

The United States has consistently expressed the opinion that bringing the issue of a Palestinian state to the UN is harmful to the peace process with Israel. Despite this, several countries, have already granted recognition to an independent Palestinian state of their own accord.

In a recent meet with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, German Chancellor Angela Merkel warned against unilateral recognition of a Palestinian state, saying "We do not think that unilateral steps are helpful."

The way the Middle East conflict is going to end, Mitchell said is "by an agreement in which the United States plays an active and substantive role but an agreement that will be owned by, be the property of, and be the result of negotiation by Israelis and Palestinians."

The envoy also spoke about the recent reconciliation between Hamas and Fatah, saying "obviously we hope that Abbas and the Fatah Party will win the election, not Hamas."

Mitchell should know better than most that the Palestinians will more than likely vote along the same lines as the last elections held - Hamas wins Gaza and parts of the West Bank, while Fatah wins elsewhere. Hamas would likely repeat its totals, and again throw the "peace process" into turmoil since Hamas refuses to accept Israel's very existence, which is a necessary condition for any talks between Israel and the Palestinians to be worth more than the paper they're printed upon.

While it's worth noting that other countries are backing the US on seeing that the peace process continue via direct talks between Israel and the Palestinians, no one should hold any parties just yet - Hamas and Fatah continue to reject Israel's existence and any talk of a 2-state solution can't occur until such time when Hamas and Fatah - the elected representatives of the Palestinian people, accept Israel's right to exist.

It seems that every other day Hamas or Fatah spokeshacks declare their intentions to seek liberation of all Palestine and seek Israel's demise. They aren't hiding their intentions, but the diplomats continue working under the illusion that there is a framework for peace to be found.

Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert gets in on the act too, complaining that peace will not come from speeches and polls. That's rather rich considering that he botched not one but two wars with terror groups - the Hizbullah War and the Operation Cast Lead. Instead of fighting both to defeat Hizbullah and Hamas when they lobbed thousands of rockets, mortars, and missiles at Israel, he took half measures and limited Israel's military efforts to dislodge the terrorists from their refuges. Failing to disrupt the terror networks gave the terror groups renewed hope that they could defeat Israel in the long run.

It's worth noting that Prime Minister Netenyahu essentially agreed with President Obama's calls for peace and painful concessions, but only after the Palestinians accept Israel's right to exist. There are no such statements forthcoming from the Palestinians, who hold on to the belief that they can wait out Israel and plot Israel's demise all while forcing Israel into making still more concessions without any reciprocation.

Then, there's the issue of what exactly would happen if the Palestinians declared independence in September? Well, it would mean the end of the peace process as it currently exists, and would then position the territories of Gaza and West Bank into a different category under international law. Gaza would be sovereign territory - and if terrorists launched attacks from Gaza into Israel, it would be a clear act of war to which Israel could respond with force. The situation in the West Bank is more complicated considering that it is carved up into areas of responsibility - A, B, and C zones that give Palestinians and Israelis different levels of control and authority. Jerusalem has been annexed by Israel, but the Palestinians refuse to accept that - or Israel's borders, so it would set the stage for yet another war.

There's no word on whether Palestinian leaders would keep their fellow Palestinians bottled up in refugee camps as they've done throughout Gaza and the West Bank, but that's what they've done to date and there's no reason to believe that they'd end the refugee camps until Israel ceases to exist. That's the ultimate goal under Palestinian demands for a right of return.

Where Tom Friedman Continues Believing Israel Has A Partner In Peace

Here's a memo to Tom Friedman about the chances for an Arab-Israeli peace deal (and particularly a Palestinian-Israel deal). No deal can be had when the Palestinians refuse to undertake their most essential obligation under Oslo - agreeing to a 2-state solution. Friedman believes that the problem isn't Hamas and Fatah, but rather Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netenyahu's refusal to make concessions.

That puts the cart before the horse. Why exactly would any Israeli leader make still more concessions when the Palestinians have refused to carry out their stated obligations under Oslo?

When Hamas, which has reconciled with Fatah and rejoined the PA, refuses to recognize Israel's right to exist and doesn't include Israel on a map other than to use as targeting data for its terror plots, Israel lacks a partner in peace.

Israel can and has shown an uncommon willingness to swap land for peace, but the Gaza disengagement should have disabused the world of the notion that land for peace will work when one party to the deal doesn't accept Israel's existence. Instead of using Gaza to build a productive society, the Palestinian leadership turned the region into an armed camp for a terror war against Israel using fellow Palestinians as human shields. Palestinian propaganda continues touting those killed in these attacks as martyrs for the cause of liberating all of Israel from Israeli control.

That is not the framework for peace, and Netenyahu and other Israeli leaders would not be carrying out their sworn obligation to defend Israel from its enemies if it granted still more concessions to Palestinians when Palestinian obligations go unfulfilled.

Housing can be swapped - and has been in the past - it was, and never has been, the real stumbling block to peace no matter how much the left in Israel and the pro-Palestinians try to spin it. The history of Israel's land swaps disprove that time and time again (Camp David, Gaza disengagement).

Palestinians simply can't accept a Jewish state of Israel alongside a Palestinian state - regardless of what borders are delineated on a map. The border incursions weren't about Israel capturing the West Bank, Golan and Gaza in 1967, but called for liberating all of Israel for the Palestinians; a tacit call for Israel's destruction.

These are the partners in peace that Friedman and others like him think Israel should be making still more concessions to in the hopes that the Palestinians will somehow moderate.

Frankly, the recent history has shown that whenever Israel has made concessions, the result has been to portray Israel as weak and terror groups, including Hamas (still part of the PA) has unleashed waves of terror. Israel makes concessions and gets terror as a consequence. Israel doesn't make concessions, and it still gets threats of terror. With that calculus, there's no reason to make further concessions. The onus should be on the Palestinians to show that they are truly committed to a 2-state solution.

To that end, that means a full repeal of the Hamas charter and PLO/PA charter provisions calling for Israel's destruction. Yet, we all know that will never happen since Hamas' raison d'etre is to seek Israel's destruction as a religious and political goal. Hamas considers Israel's very existence as an abomination against Israel, and phrases its call to jihad as a duty for all Muslims. This isn't a partner in peace, but the call by a terror group to commit genocide should it have the means at its disposal.

Dropping the Pretense of Peace

The Palestinians claim that they've had a breakthrough on their reconciliation between Hamas and Fatah. To do so, they're ignoring key issues and hoping that the rest of the world do the same.

That means that they want everyone to ignore the fact that Hamas has no intention of recognizing Israel's right to exist all while demanding more concessions from Israel towards a "peace" deal.

International mediators should drop their demand that the Gaza Strip's Hamas rulers recognize Israel, an aide to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said Wednesday, just hours before his Western-backed government was to sign a reconciliation deal with Hamas.

The accord, to be inked in Cairo, would end a four-year rift between the bitter rivals and pave the way for a joint caretaker government ahead of national elections next year.

Israel has denounced the plan for Abbas' Fatah movement to join forces with Hamas because of the militant group's long history of deadly attacks against Israeli targets, and has equated the deal with a renunciation of peacemaking.

Like the United States and the European Union, Israel considers Hamas a terrorist organization and says it will not negotiate with a future Palestinian government that includes the Iranian-backed group.

It's not clear whether Western powers would deal with the new government that is to emerge from the unity deal. They've said they are waiting to see its composition.

The Quartet of Mideast mediators — the U.S., the E.U., United Nations and Russia — has long demanded that Hamas renounce violence and recognize the principle of Israel's right to exist.

Hamas has no intention of making peace with Israel. It's antithetical to Hamas' very existence. These tenets are part of the Hamas charter - the call to destroy Israel begins in just the second paragraph:

Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it" (The Martyr, Imam Hassan al-Banna, of blessed memory).

The terror group was founded on the principles that Israel must be destroyed and that Israel's destruction is a religious and political obligation among Palestinians. Hamas went to war with Fatah after the 2006 elections over how the two terror groups diverged in their means towards a Palestinian state and Israel.

The whole reconciliation is based on an understanding that a caretaker government would handle affairs until new elections are carried out. Perhaps everyone should put any kind of talk of a peace process on hold to see what kind of outcome those elections bring. After all, the last elections showed that Fatah was incapable of handing over power in an election and Hamas was incapable of dominating in the West Bank.

What Does Presumed Hamas-Fatah Reconciliation Mean For Peace Process?

Egyptian news sources are indicating that Hamas and Fatah have managed to overcome their ideological differences and are paving the way for holding new elections and power-sharing. The plan involves creating a caretaker government and then holding elections that are long overdue.

Hamas and Fatah engaged in a civil war following Israel's Gaza disengagement. Hamas threw Fatah out of Gaza and left Fatah maintaining a tenuous hold on the West Bank with the backing of Israel, while Hamas consolidated its power in Gaza.

Hamas refuses to recognize Israel's right to exist, which means that the "reconciliation" would necessarily affect any supposed peace process with Israel. With one party to the peace process refusing to accept the existence of the other, peace is simply impossible.

For its part, Fatah has asserted that it would unilaterally declare a Palestinian state and petition the UN for acceptance.

I can therefore only conclude that this will once again mean that Hamas and Fatah are going to fully coordinate in their triangle offense of terror against Israel. As they've done in the past, they'll use terror attacks to further their ideological goal of eliminating Israel and establishing a Palestinian state on all the land west of the Jordan River all while denying Israel and its Jewish population any rights to any territory - including access to Jewish holy sites that are situated in disputed territory.

UN Report Claims PA Ready To Govern Palestinian State

The United Nations has prepared a report claiming that the Palestinian Authority is capable of governing a state, but that the ongoing occupation presents obstacles to doing so.

The Palestinian Authority is ready to govern a state of its own, according to a report published Tuesday by the office of UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Robert Serry, AFP reported.

The report, which will be submitted to Palestinian donor nations at a meeting in Brussels on Wednesday, said that in six areas where the UN is most engaged there are sufficient governmental functions to establish a state.

The report, however stressed that it would be difficult for the Palestinians to make further progress while peace talks remained stalled and Israeli "occupation" continued.

Serry praised Palestinian Authority President Mahmud Abbas and Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad in a statement accompanying the report.

Curiously, there is no mention of the fact that Hamas refuses to recognize Israel, and that the Fatah/Hamas schism is a geographical and ideological divide so severe as to make any claims that the PA is ready to govern ludicrous. The last time that Fatah and Hamas attempted to share/redistribute power between the two terror groups, a civil war erupted and Hamas threw Fatah out of Gaza.

Now, this particular report claims that Israel's ongoing military presence in the West Bank is preventing the PA from operating. That too is a serious misrepresentation of the facts on the ground.

Israel and the PA have divided the West Bank into sectors of operation - the PA has civil administrative control over nearly all the West Bank, and Israelis are limited to move only within certain areas altogether. Israeli security forces operate only within certain areas as well, and the PA is responsible for security in those areas where Israel currently does not operate. These are designated by A, B, and C areas. This was arranged under Oslo, the Gaza-Jericho Accords, Wye, and other interim documents and agreements.

The PA has shown an inability to deal with the terror groups operating from its territories, and the PA has limited ability to operate within Gaza altogether, where Hamas rules with an iron fist.

So, before there can be any talk of statehood, the UN needs to reorient itself with the facts on the ground instead of engaging in wishful thinking about what should happen if Israel stops taking actions defending its citizens against ongoing terror threats arising from both Gaza and the West Bank.

Peace talks have ostensibly been on hold since late last year because Israel decided to go ahead with building housing on areas claimed by both Israel and the Palestinians within the West Bank. Yet, it isn't the housing dispute that causes problems so much as the fact that Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and other Palestinian terror factions have been unrelenting in their terror war against Israel's very existence.

The Gaza disengagement should have exposed the lie of land for peace for the world to see, but it is ignored by the diplomats. Instead of using Gaza to establish an economic and political center for a future Palestinian state, it was turned into a terror camp.

Land does not equate with peace.

Settlements - housing - can be transferred, but when one side (the Palestinians) refuse to accept a Jewish state of Israel alongside a Palestinian state, you get to the heart of the problem. The Palestinians refuse to accept Israel on religious, ideological, and political grounds despite the statements in English made to the diplomats. The rhetoric, propaganda, and indoctrination of refusing to accept Israel's very existence continues to this day despite their prohibition under Oslo.

That is the problem.

Until the Palestinians recognize Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state, there can and will be no peace. Israel will have to continue to defend itself against terror attacks on a daily basis because the Palestinians refuse to accept the facts on the ground and that Israel will not go quietly into the night.

Thus, this report whitewashes the problems with the Palestinians themselves, and instead focuses on what Israel is doing to prevent a Palestinian state. It's an infantilization of the Palestinian people - and shows that no one requires them to carry out their obligations under Oslo.

UPDATE:
Hamas has released video confirming Israel's longstanding claims that the terror group purposefully fires rockets and mortars from within heavily populated areas of Gaza (HT: NJDhockeyfan at LGF).

Israel Mourns The Brutal Murder of Five Israelis While Rival Terror Groups Claim Responsibility

Israelis are in mourning today after burying a family of five Israelis who were butchered while asleep in their home in the West Bank. The Fogel family, Udi, Ruth, Elad, Yoav and Hadas, was laid to rest after a funeral attended by 20,000. They were slaughtered while they slept - and the youngest victim was all of three months. Their murderers slipped into the Itamar settlement near Nablus after dark and broke into a neighboring home first but found no one home before carrying out their murderous deeds in the Fogel's home.

Hamas approves of the terror attacks, and Fatah's response is to name a street after a Fatah terrorist who killed 37 people in 1978 (just days after naming a youth center after the first female suicide bomber last week).

Incitement is expressly forbidden under Olso, but Fatah and Hamas routinely ignore that.

Those are the terror groups that Israel is supposed to be negotiating peace with.

Building housing is not an impediment to peace - and it never has been. Housing can always be transferred, but when Israel lacks a partner, talk about negotiating and peace deals is a pipe dream.

As for who was behind the attack - both Islamic Jihad and Hamas claimed responsibility (and other Hamas thugs say it wasn't them) but Israeli authorities don't think that those groups were involved since they lack the terror network in the West Bank. Yet, Hamas is saying that they're going to resume terror ops from the West Bank.

Hamas militants in the West Bank have resumed their efforts to kill Israeli soldiers or civilians and abduct their bodies, Palestinian and Israeli security sources have told Haaretz.

The sources said Hamas activists believe they cannot keep Israeli hostages out of the Shin Bet and Palestinian Authority's reach for long. So they plan to kill them, abduct and bury the bodies, then negotiate returning them to Israel.

Hamas headquarters in Damascus and Gaza are pressuring organization cells in the West Bank to kill Israelis and abduct their bodies, in view of the effect Gilad Shalit's abduction has had on Israeli public opinion. Another reason for the pressure is the failure of Shalit's abduction to bring the release of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners, the sources told Haaretz.

The only way that Fatah has remained in power in the West Bank is because Israel has propped them up against Hamas - the evil of the lesser of two evils.

So, what can you take away from Hamas' contradictory statements? They are itching for a fight with Israel, but aren't ready to do so on their terms. They know that the murder of this Israeli family would be enough to get Israel to go after the terror group behind the attacks in a serious way - particularly because of the brutal and heinous way they butchered the family as they were asleep.

Yet Another Reason Palestinian-Israeli Peace Talks Wont Succeed

I can sum up the reason that peace talks will not succeed between Israel and the Palestinians in one word. It is also the one word that diplomats, pundits, and the New York Times refuse to recognize trumps anything else, even as they tout the possibility of a breakthrough for a peace deal.

Hamas.

Palestinian Authority municipal elections scheduled for July 9, 2011, will not be held in Gaza until rival Palestinian factions reach a reconciliation agreement, Israel Radio quoted Hamas as saying Tuesday.

Hamas spokesman Fawazi Barhoum said that the elections, announced by Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad earlier in the day, have no real value because they were declared by a government that has lost its legitimacy.

According to the report, Barhoum also said that the elections were meant to cover up the WikiLeaks scandals and the "Palestine Papers" released by Al Jazeera that exposed the concessions PA President Mahmoud Abbas was willing to make in peace negotiations with Israel.

Earlier Tuesday, Palestinian Authority Spokesman Ghassan Khatib had said that even if Hamas blocks elections in Gaza, they will still be held only in the West Bank.

The last Palestinian elections were held in 2005, and Hamas won handily in Gaza, and won a majority of seats in the Palestinian Parliament. Fatah and Hamas engaged in a civil war, and Hamas threw Fatah out of Gaza. Fatah has no ability to impose its will on Hamas, and Fatah needs Israel to provide sufficient backing to keep Hamas from overwhelming Fatah's operations.

So, while Fatah's Mahmoud Abbas and other diplomats engage in talks with Israel, Hamas continues to reject any and all deals with Israel.

Hamas rejects Israel's existence.

Hamas sees any deal in the context of a hudna - a truce until such a time when Hamas can fight and defeat Israel at the time and place of its choosing. That's a lose-lose situation for Israel and the Palestinians themselves. So any deal that potentially enlarges Gaza in land-swaps would be giving territory to a regime that is antithetical to Israel's very existence and which has shown no interest in peaceful coexistence.

Moreover, Fatah needs a diplomatic breakthrough and success, but it can't impose any breakthrough because the population has been conditioned to accept nothing less than Israel's destruction. Even news reports that Abbas and his negotiators were making concessions brought out the condemnations from the usual suspects because they were seen as collaborating with Israel to give up Palestinian rights to Jerusalem and accepting a two-state solution.

Meanwhile, Gazan terrorists affiliated with Islamic Jihad continue their ongoing attacks against Israel, firing off four mortars today that slammed into the Negev. Thankfully, there were no injuries but the incident shows Hamas and the other terror groups in Gaza have no interest in peace and that they're going to take advantage of the situation to further their own ideological goals, which do not include coexistence with Israel.

Protesters Continue Defying Mubarak's Regime

After yesterday's riots and skirmishes started when pro-Mubarak groups stampeded camels and horses through Tahrir Square and hundreds of people were injured, the Egyptian Prime Minister apologized for the violence. Gunfire overnight rang out through Tahrir Square and at least five people were killed. That was after hours of melee combat between the pro-Mubarak thugs and protesters included hurling rocks, Molotov cocktails and anything that wasn't firmly attached to the ground.

Prime Minister Ahmed Shafiq told state TV that the attack on the anti-government protesters which began late Wednesday was a "blatant mistake" and promised to investigate who was behind it. He said the actions of the pro-Mubarak supporters were "a million percent wrong."

In an attempt to quell the violence, Egyptian army tanks and soldiers cleared away pro-government rioters Thursday and deployed between them and the protesters seeking the fall of President Hosni Mubarak.

The protesters accuse the regime of organizing the assault, using paid thugs and policemen in civilian clothes, in an attempt to crush their movement.

Government supporters charged central Tahrir Square Wednesday afternoon, sparking 15 hours of uncontrolled chaos, with the two sides battled with rocks, sticks, bottles and firebombs as soldiers largely stood by without intervening.
Video: Witness: Gangs roam Cairo with 'iron bars, knives' (on this page)

However, the military began to move with muscle to stop the fighting early Thursday after a barrage of automatic gunfire hit the anti-government camp before dawn.

Four tanks cleared a highway overpass from which Mubarak supporters had hurled rocks and firebombs onto the protesters.

Multiple journalists were assaulted by mobs of demonstrators, making it more difficult for reporting to get out. So, what has the Egyptian government/military done?

Well, the military has begun rounding up the journalists.

The Egyptian military started rounding up journalists, possibly for their own protection, on Thursday after they came under attack from supporters of President Hosni Mubarak who have been assaulting anti-government protesters.

The U.S. State Department condemned what it called a "concerted campaign to intimidate" foreign journalists in Egypt. The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists said Wednesday that violence against journalists was part of a series of deliberate attacks and called on the Egyptian military to provide protection for reporters.

Foreign photographers reported a string of attacks on them by Mubarak supporters on Thursday near Tahrir Square, the scene of battles between supporters of Mubarak and protesters demanding he step down after nearly 30 years in power.

One Greek print journalist was stabbed in the leg with a screwdriver. A Greek freelance photographer was punched in the face by a group of men who stopped him on the street near Tahrir Square and smashed some of his equipment.

An Associated Press reporter saw eight foreign journalists detained by the military near the prime minister's office, not far from Tahrir Square

The Arabic-language satellite channel Al-Arabiya pleaded on an urgent news scroll for the army to protect its offices and journalists.

Instead of capturing those who were assaulting the journalists, the military is squandering an opportunity to do the right thing to maintain the flow of information.

Despite the military's ongoing presence in Cairo, the violence continues as the pro-Mubarak thugs continue their ongoing assault on the protesters.

Meanwhile, jihadis are looking on and trying to figure out how they can take advantage of the situation to further their own agenda.

At Muslm.net, a Web site associated with Al Qaeda in Egypt, the call was for foreign youths to come to Egypt to join the jihad.

“Hey, brothers, the fall of Egypt’s tyrant is a fall of the earth’s tyrants,” it urged. “This is the time to slaughter the cow.”

That, one expert said, was about the most they could make of the crisis.

“Like always, Al Qaeda’s online movement is viewing this through consummately opportunist lenses,” said Jarret Brachman, a counterterrorism consultant and author of the book “Global Jihadism,” who monitors jihadi Web sites.

Elsewhere, Web postings urged jihadis in Egypt to attack the Arish-Ashkelon gas pipeline, which goes to Israel. “This is a chance to stop the supply to the Israelites,” urged a writer on the Shumukh al-Islam forum, according to a translation by the SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors extremist Web sites.

In Yemen, where Al Qaeda in the Arab Peninsula is stronger, the group posted a videotaped speech by its deputy leader Abu Sufyan al-Azdi encouraging attacks on a Shiite group that it considered part of an Iranian advance on the country, according to SITE.

The jihadi groups, which created mayhem in Egypt in the early part of the last decade, were largely crushed by Mr. Mubarak’s government, and do not enjoy popular support. They face structural challenges in Egypt, where the Muslim Brotherhood, a conservative but nonviolent organization, forms the best-known political opposition.

Though many Qaeda leaders, including Osama bin Laden’s No. 2, Ayman al-Zawahri, began in the Muslim Brotherhood, the two movements have often contrary positions, and the Brotherhood on Tuesday announced its support of Mohamed ElBaradei, a liberal Muslim, to lead an opposition umbrella group in negotiations on a new government to replace Mr. Mubarak’s — a position that is antithetical to Al Qaeda, because it exalts human authority rather than divine.

On Hanein, a Qaeda Web site, a poster using the name Citizen of the Village called jihadis to join with the Muslim Brotherhood because both supported Islamic revolution, whatever their differences.

“You have printed the exact truth,” another replied. “We have to sacrifice for our religion and not let titles hinder us.”

From their weakened position, some jihadis struggled to figure out their role in the protests in Cairo.

In a post on the Ansar al-Mujahedeen forum, translated by SITE, an anonymous writer noted many jihadis’ objections to the demonstrators’ “mistakes and distance from religion.”

But he added, “it is nevertheless our duty not to ignore the benefits that may come about,” including an empty throne. “Jihadists may then leap on that throne.”

Yet, the writer also acknowledged that within the jihadi movement many felt that replacing Mr. Mubarak with a secular, democratic leader might mean simply exchanging one tyrant with ties to the United States with another. “So we wait and do not care for those revolutionaries against injustice, and we continue our jihadi path and the support of our jihadi brothers.” Ultimately, “separating the jihadi movement from the popular Muslim movement is the end of this movement,” he wrote.

Perhaps most ominous are the calls for the jihadi groups to come under the Muslim Brotherhood umbrella to help topple the Mubarak regime.

UPDATE:
There are reports that the Egyptian Central Bank is imposing limits on how much depositors can withdraw. That would suggest that the Bank is contemplating a possible bank run - except that the news of those limits might itself bring on a bank run not just in Cairo, but around the country. That's going to upset the already delicate economic situation even further and would suggest that the government is even more worried about the financial picture than they're letting on.

Meanwhile, the BBC is reporting that the Egyptian Constitution will be amended to impose term limits and who can or can't be elected to the presidency.

#
1457: More from Vice-President Suleiman, as reported by state TV: He says articles 76 and 77 of the Egyptian constitution will be amended, and other articles are open to amendment as well. Article 76 specifies who can or can't run for president, and article 77 says the president can be re-elected, without specifying a term limit.

That's not sufficient to placate the protesters.

The BBC is also reporting that at least one employee at the state-run television network has quit over the propagandizing nature of the network's reporting:

#
1450: Shahira Amin, was until yesterday a journalist with the state-run Egyptian channel, Nile TV. She told the BBC World Service that she had to leave her job because she no longer felt able to report the state view when what she saw on the street was so different: "We were basically showing the pro-Mubarak rallies all day long, as if that was the only thing that was happening. I couldn't show what was happening here in Tahrir. I couldn't even report the figures as they were. So no thank you. I feel liberated."

NYT Lede coverage continues here.

Mohamed ElBaradei has given Mubarak 48 hours to leave the country, but that's an idle threat since ElBaradei doesn't exactly have the power to make that happen. It's just a strong statement made in the hopes of currying favor among the disparate opposition groups.

UPDATE:
The regime is systematically attempting to thwart reporting of the protests, the riots by pro-Mubarak thugs, and otherwise getting the news out about the ongoing conditions in the country.

Many journalists covering the protests in Egypt were detained and attacked on Thursday, and human rights groups were also a target, in what appeared to be an escalating effort to block reports on the violence.

The Egyptian security forces were rounding up workers for human rights groups as well as foreign journalists, witnesses in Cairo said. Security police raided the Hisham Mubarak Law Center, where many nongovernmental organizations operate. They ordered people there to lie on the floor and disabled their mobile phones. Two people were being interrogated. The state news agency Thursday has asked foreign press to evacuate all the hotels near Tahrir Square.

The Committee to Protect Journalists was investigating at least 10 cases of reporters being detained on Thursday. The government told the journalists that they were not being arrested but rather taken into "protective custody," according to the group.

UPDATE:
There are protests in Gaza to support the anti-Mubarak protesters, but similar protests were disbanded by Hamas in Gaza and Fatah has prevented similar gatherings in the West Bank. The PA Prime Minister says that the Egyptian situation is blamed on the failure of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad said Thursday during a visit to Paris that he thinks the failure to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is playing into the unrest in Egypt and elsewhere in the Middle East.

Fayyad said he thinks protesters' complaints stem partly from the internal situations in countries hit by unrest, but also from "a frustration, a desperation because of the failure of efforts to solve the Palestinian problem."

Ah, when all else fails, blame Israel. Never mind that the situation in Egypt is directly related to with the failure of Mubarak to provide socioeconomic opportunities and allow a political process to develop and flourish that was open - high food costs, high unemployment, and lack of political participation have nothing to do with Israel and everything to do with the autocratic regime in place whose economic policies have led to more than half the population of Egypt living on less than $2 a day.

And you wonder why I have no expectation of success in a peace process when Israel is demonized its so-called partners in peace at every opportunity.

A Map Will Not Bring Peace

The New York Times reports that a think tank has come up with a map that they think might lead to a breakthrough in the impasse in the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Fat chance.

Once again, it's the lack of a partner in peace that is the impasse, not maps or plans.

The Palestinians have steadfastly refused to accept a Jewish state of Israel and Jewish ties to lands that include the pre-1967 borders. Palestinians continually attempt to rewrite history and Jewish ties to lands both within and outside the 1948 borders. Palestinian Authority "historians" claim that Jews don't have claims to the Temple Mount, despite a 3,000 history of documented ties.

Palestinians can't even negotiate with a single voice - Hamas and Fatah are at odds, and Hamas refuses even to negotiate with Israel. Hamas refuses to recognize Israel's right to exist, and Hamas controls Gaza - not Fatah.

There's no amount of maps that can trump the fact that Hamas controls territory that would ostensibly become part of any Palestinian state and that it would use that territory not to create a prosperous country and society, but to resume jihad against Israel.

Fatah; PLO Threaten To Abrogate Oslo Accords Security Arrangements

Fatah, which is the largest faction in the PLO and which is in an ongoing struggle with Hamas to control the Palestinian Authority, has threatened to abrogate security arrangements that were established under the Oslo Accords because the peace process has broken down over an inability of the Palestinians to recognize Israel's right to exist and refusal to accept a 2-state solution.

That's not how the Palestinians see it, of course. They'd like to claim that the talks have collapsed because Israel refuses to stop building housing, but housing has never been an impediment to peace. Just as the Egyptians; Israel withdrew from Sinai and destroyed thousands of homes and uprooted Israelis who lived in Sinai as part of the Camp David talks.

The Palestinian Authority will stop coordinating its security with Israel, in response to the US's official announcement that peace talks have failed, Al Quds al-Arabi reported on Friday.

Khana Amira, a PLO official, told the UK newspaper that the PA is also considering canceling its other commitments to Israel, including the Oslo Accords and the Road Map, which demand that terror organizations will stop.

Yasser Abed Rabbo, a senior PLO official and an adviser to PA President Mahmoud Abbas reportedly plans to convene a meeting with the PLO and Fatah central committees on Friday afternoon, in order to make a new plan for the Palestinians.

Palestinian officials told Al Quds al-Arabi that they expect US President Barack Obama to attempt to restart peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians.

"Maybe the meeting will give the American government another chance," an official told the paper.

The Palestinians are also considering seeking the UN Security Council's recognition of a Palestinian state on all the Palestinian territories that were captured by Israel in 1967.

What the Palestinians want is to make their territories free of an Israeli and Jewish presence. They want to accomplish what never has happened in the course of history of the region - to eliminate the Jewish presence in areas that have historically had a Jewish presence, including in Jerusalem and its environs. To that end, the Palestinians continue to engage in revisionist history (and here), which shows just how unwilling the Palestinians are to accepting a 2-state solution. They are unwilling to admit that Israel has legitimacy and longstanding and historical claims to the land.

Moreover, Palestinian consideration of a Security Council recognition of a Palestinian state on all Palestinian territories that were captured by Israel in 1967 doesn't hold water.

For starters, Palestine didn't exist. When Israel declared independence in 1947, Arab states around former Mandate Palestine invaded and took the land for itself. Egypt captured Gaza and Transjordan (now Jordan) captured the West Bank and East Jerusalem. The Palestinians want to eliminate Israeli control over East Jerusalem, which includes the Temple Mount and the Western Wall, Judaism's holiest sites on the planet. Israel will never accept such a situation, and it is unlikely that the Security Council will abide by such a unilateral declaration against Israel as long as the US hold veto power to stop action.

The Palestinians continue to refuse to negotiate in good faith with Israel and they have habitually shown themselves to be incapable of making a deal on which lasting peace can occur. Palestinian propaganda efforts repeatedly attack Israel's right to exist and indoctrinate new generations of Palestinians to seek Israel's destruction as a religious and political obligation, and that doesn't even get into Hamas' refusal to accept Israel's existence as anything other than aiming points for its terrorists.

It's also questionable as to whether President Obama would restart peace talks when his efforts to date have been an abject failure. It made little sense for his involvement in the process at the outset of his presidency since the conditions were not favorable to even the slightest movement on peace since the Palestinians have become more strident in their demands without making any concessions to peace. Hamas remains as it has been for years, and they have consolidated power in Gaza, which means that any peace deal would have to go through Hamas, which has not wavered in its refusal to make peace with Israel (it wont even recognize Israel). So the President cannot even acknowledge with whom Israel is supposed to negotiate when the Palestinian Authority itself lacks legitimacy to negotiate on behalf of the Palestinians (Hamas and Fatah refuse to recognize the others right to control the PA and elections have not been held to reconcile the strident differences).

US efforts to restart the peace process have been a miserable failure since President Obama took office because he and his diplomatic corps have steadfastly refused to recognize the reality that the Palestinians would much rather accept the status quo - take foreign aid, including from the US, without having to build a peaceful infrastructure alongside Israel while continuing calls for Israel's destruction and rabble rousing, rather than making the tough decision to make peace. Without a partner in peace, there can be no peace. Until the Palestinians show a willingness to make concessions, there can be no peace. Until the US recognizes that its continued efforts will meet with failure until the Palestinians change their tune, there can be no breakthrough.

No Surprise That Middle East Peace Process In Tatters

I was warning about this very scenario when President Barack Obama launched into his Middle East diplomacy just days into his first term at a time when Palestinians and Israelis weren't exactly primed for a new effort by a neophyte President who lacked any kind of experience dealing with the conflict.

His lack of experience has played itself out with a thus far spectacular failure to improve matters. Moreover, both sides (Palestinians and Israelis) see each the President as bringing about ongoing failure as the other side.

The political peace process to which Obama committed so much energy is considered a failure so far. And in the world’s most pro-American state, the public and its leaders have lost any faith in Obama and — increasingly — even in the notion of a politically negotiated peace.

Even those who still believe in the process that Obama has championed view his conduct as a deeply unfunny comedy of errors.

“He’s like rain,” said a top Israeli official involved in diplomacy with the U.S., speaking of Obama’s role in negotiations. “You can do all kinds of things to cope with it.”

Some fret that not only has Obama failed to move the process forward but he and his Israeli and Palestinian counterparts may have dealt it a setback that will leave it worse off than when they began.

“Each of them has exacerbated the mistakes of the other,” said Michael Herzog, a retired general who still plays an informal role advising Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s negotiators. He worries that the result of the bumbling could be “disastrous: People will lose hope in the possibility of a two-state solution.”

The White House declined to comment for this story. But in general, the Americans point fingers back at the region. They’re unsure whether Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, known as Abu Mazen, has the will to make peace. They’ve been surprised and disappointed by Arab leaders’ unwillingness to bolster Israel’s confidence in the process with diplomatic concessions or financial support for the Palestinian Authority. And they are dissatisfied with the domestic political excuses of an Israeli prime minister they see as having chosen his own intractable coalition and who is now — in the view of one American official — “running out the clock.”

That latter bit is particularly hilarious since no one should have taken the Palestinians seriously since the 2007 schism between Hamas and Fatah that left each with control of only one portion of a potential Palestinian state (Hamas in Gaza and Fatah in the West Bank) but neither recognizes the rights of the other to speak for all Palestinians.

Moreover, Hamas continues to refuse to recognize Israel's right to exist openly. Fatah is more circumspect in that regard, but it too alludes to a long struggle to overcome the Zionist (Israeli) presence in the Middle East. When one side refuses to recognize the right of the other to even exist, there's absolutely no way that a peace deal could be struck that means anything more than a piece of paper.

The whole notion that Israel has to be prodded into making concessions on housing freezes completely ignores Palestinian failures to adhere to Oslo - and just how uneven the demands on both sides truly are. Housing is not an impediment to peace - Palestinian refusal to accept Israel - as a Jewish state - is. Palestinians want to rid all territories that will fall into their sphere of influence of all Jews. They have required Israel to forcibly uproot Israeli settlements and that was formalized via Oslo - that there are areas in the West Bank where Israelis simply cannot travel or else they'd face arrest (or lynching depending on the mood of the Palestinians that given day). That's not a firm foundation for peace, but for a renewed conflict.

Throw in the US arms deals to the Saudis that would give that feeble regime more fighter aircraft (F-16s) and it's little wonder that the Israelis wanted to get an improved fighter deal for themselves (the F-35). The Saudis see the Iranians as a threat, but the Israelis see the Saudis as a threat should the regime topple (the King is getting up there in years and the stability of the regime isn't entirely certain). The Iranians continue making their usual genocidal statements towards Israel's presence along with attempts at procuring both conventional weapons systems and even nuclear technologies.

The President has made a mess of any chance at further a peace process while the current players are at the helm. It would take a radical sea-change for there to be an improvement in chances for peace - and that would necessarily have to originate with the Palestinians. It is on the Palestinians to bring about the conditions for peace - starting with a complete and total renunciation of their desire to eliminate Israel and to accept a Jewish state alongside a Palestinian state. Housing can always be transferred (see the original Camp David accords with Egypt).

The Palestinians have to figure out what they want - whether they want to follow Hamas and their jihad against Israel or Fatah's long-term struggle, or create a whole new path towards peace. Right now, they're showing no interest in peace, and depending on where you ask, they consider jihad or the struggle to be paramount even if it means economic ruin for Palestinians.

Israel has no choice but to continue operating as it has for years - protecting itself from attack and hoping that someone among the Palestinians finally shows courage and backbone to make a deal that Arafat and Abbas would not.

Fatah Again Shows True Self In Latest Jerusalem Riots

Fatah is now claiming that it will crack down on Palestinian rioters in Jerusalem following yesterday's riots. "They don't want to give Israel the excuse to stop further negotiations." That's the line they're going with despite the fact that it was Palestinian criminality - rioting and stoning Israeli vehicles that precipitated the latest outbreak of violence that happened to coincide with the latest peace process efforts:

Palestinian sources said the PA wants to see the violence ebb "so not to give Israel an excuse for agitation while peace talks were ongoing and so close to the end of the settlement freeze." The sources added that the PA wanted to refrain from any escalation which Israel may use an excuse to delay negotiations.

Both Fatah and PA sources said they believe the violence will die down Thursday, although they could not rule out sporadic violence during the three-day mourning period called for Sarchan.

Senior Fatah member Mohammad Dahlan said Israel was trying to stir up a third intifada, defining Sarchan's shooting by an Israeli security guard as "crossing all the red lines."

What's left unsaid is that the incident was precipitated and caused by Palestinian rioters in the first place- when they attacked a vehicle carrying private Israeli security guards heading to their homes in Silwan. They were cornered, cut off, and rocks were thrown at the vehicle. The security guard fired in the air to no effect, and took a single shot at the rioters - killing one. That led to a mass outbreak of rioting in all the usual locations.

But for the Palestinians rioting and throwing rocks at the Israelis, the Israeli security guard would not have fired in self-defense. No rioting by Palestinians, no additional riots at the Temple Mount.

It's just more of the same from Fatah.

Senior Fatah member Mohammad Dahlan said Israel was trying to stir up a third intifada, defining Sarchan's shooting by an Israeli security guard as "crossing all the red lines."

A Fatah Central Committee spokesman said that the incident was "part of a scheme by the Netanyahu government to thwart the negotiation and continue the Judaization of Jerusalem. Israel wants to return to the cycle of violence and altercation to force us into a solution convenient to it – a temporary state within the borders of the security fence."

The Palestinians say one thing, and then go about creating situations that lead to more violence and the need for Israelis to protect themselves up to and including the use of deadly force. It's called preparing the ground in the negotiations and the Palestinians are trying to paint the Israelis as the reason for the latest round to eventually fail. They're further hoping that the media ignores the precipitating act and instead focuses on the Israeli crackdown and the death of the Palestinian in the midst of the rioting; it is propagandizing and hoping to capitalize on the body count.

Israelis Do Care About Peace; But Wish Palestinians Were As Concerned As They Were

Time Magazine stepped into it when they released their latest edition, claiming that Israelis no longer care about peace.

That can't be further from the truth.

Israelis are sick and tired of being at a perpetual state of war. They are going to live hard and fight hard, because they have been under the gun for so long because of Palestinian terror and genocidal threats of annihilation from Israel's myriad enemies both near and distant (Hamas, Hizbullah, Iran, Syria, etc.)

Israel has become more pragmatic and realistic about the chances for peace with the Palestinians and neighboring Arab states following the Israel disengagement from Gaza in 2005 and the Lebanese withdrawal in 2000. Israel has seen a rise in terror attacks from Gaza since the 2005 disengagement - thousands of kassam attacks each of which is designed to kill or maim Israelis or destroy Israeli property within range of the missiles. Far from being an opportunity for peace, Gazans turned to Hamas and the terror group has maintained an iron grip on Gaza expelling Fatah in a bloody civil war.

Those actions have convinced Israel's polity that peace cannot come through more concessions, let alone land for peace. Israel has precious little land as compared to its neighbors, and Israel's so-called partners in peace at the Palestinian Authority have offered up nothing but empty platitudes and maintained the status quo on indoctrination of another generation of Palestinians to see Israel as illegitimate and refuse to recognize its right to exist alongside a Palestinian state.

Time is in the business of selling papers, and couldn't be bothered with reporting on facts or employing even the slightest bit of critical thinking and logic. It glosses over the reasons why Israelis have hardened in their belief that peace is not forthcoming - namely they lack a true partner for peace.

Instead of focusing on Israel, attention should truly be focused on the Palestinians and their double-speak - how they say one thing to their followers and empty statements to the diplomats who continue to think that they can substitute their own reality for the facts on the ground.

Settlements are not the impediment to peace - Palestinian intransigence to Israel's existence is the impediment to peace.

Moreover, how can peace with the Palestinians come when Fatah doesn't speak for at least half the Palestinian people and can't even address the issue of Gaza, which is fully in the hands of Hamas, the Palestinian terror group dedicated to Israel's destruction. Indeed, even the current Fatah charter references back to its original charter, which also calls for Israel's destruction and obligation to fight Israeli oppression.

With "partners" such as this, it is not Israel who no longer cares about peace, but the Palestinians who never did - unless it included a future without Israel's very existence.

Newsweek's Idiotic Coverage Of Pending Mideast Talks; NYT Follows Suit

Newsweek has put together a handy dandy list of catchphrases that should be avoided as a means to conducting a successful round of talks.

When President Obama hosts the Israeli and Palestinian leaders in Washington this week for the start of direct talks, he should remember above all that the two sides have been at this for a very long time. Their peace process began when Obama was still in law school. At least a dozen summits have preceded this one with little or no tangible results. As such, Israelis and Palestinians are deeply skeptical about the prospects for an agreement—and worried that another failure will trigger fresh waves of violence. To acknowledge the long odds and to avoid sounding out of step, here are four lofty phrases uttered throughout the era of peacemaking that all sides should do their best to avoid.

The catchphrases are completely and utterly besides the point. Uttering "confidence building measures" does not damn the talks to failure.

Assuming that Mahmoud Abbas has authority to conduct talks in the name of Palestinians, let alone the ability to implement any deal beyond the West Bank, is what will damn these talks to failure.

The two sides have been at war since Israel's founding (that being Arabs versus the Israelis). The PLO (which includes Fatah as its largest faction) seeks Israel's destruction in its founding charter, and subsequent revisions have always referred back to the founding charter as its guiding principle.

Negotiations require having two sides that are willing to make concessions. Israel has always signaled its willingness to make concessions - on land, including around Jerusalem. The Palestinians have always sought more concessions, without making any of their own. Abbas and Fatah have refused to give up the right of return, and claim East Jerusalem (that includes the Old City of Jerusalem and the Temple Mount) as theirs. That's a nonstarter for any talks with Israel.

Abbas isn't willing or able to make those concessions because there's no way that the Palestinians would ever accept those terms because they've spent generations calling for nothing less than Israel's destruction, the right of return and Jerusalem as their capital.

Even more than Abbas' issues within his own organization is the fact that Fatah and the PA don't control Gaza. Hamas does - and they're not only not a party to these talks, but refuses to recognize Israel's right to exist. Fatah and Hamas have already gone toe to toe in a Palestinian civil war, with Fatah losing its presence in Gaza in the process (Hamas remains a threat in the West Bank though).

UPDATE:
The New York Times follows with its own inane analysis, claiming that peace rests on the shoulders of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Right. Just ignore that there's a guy across from him that has no power to actually fulfill any obligations that he might conceivably agree to - Mahmoud Abbas.

No, the pressure isn't on Netanyahu. It's on Abbas. Abbas is the key to any deal here.

Moreover, the analysis is based on the theory that "...the left wants to make peace but cannot, while the right doesn’t want to but, if forced to, can do it". Peace will come when Israel has a partner for peace. That happened when Sadat made his historic trip to Jerusalem and opened the door to a peace deal between Egypt and Israel. Similarly, King Hussein of Jordan entered a peace deal with Israel.

Despite the Oslo Accords (and Labor's efforts through Shimon Peres), the lack of a peace partner in the Palestinians is the main stumbling block.

Land concessions are now seen in a different light, particularly after the Gaza disengagement, which instead of creating conditions for peace, turned into a haven for Hamas, who proceeded to fire thousands of kassams at Israel and fostered a siege mentality among Israelis living within range of the rockets. That move was carried out by then Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and his Kadima party, which was comprised of former Labor and Likud members.

Now, Israelis have to see concrete actions towards peace and are not going to accept land concessions without something tangible in return.

What Kind Of Direct Talks Can These Be?

The Palestinian Authority doesn't speak for all of the Palestinians, and Hamas still seeks nothing less than Israel's destruction all while being in control of Gaza, but yet media reports will breathlessly state that talks between Israel and the Palestinians will resume in September. MSNBC is headlining that this is a breakthrough.

The United States, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations formally invited them to talks that are to begin Sept. 2 in Washington, NBC News reported.

The breakthrough marks a small but important step toward easing tensions in the Middle East. The goal is to agree on arrangements for two sovereign states, Israel and an independent Palestine.

"As we move forward, it is important that actions by all sides help to advance our effort, not hinder it," Clinton said. "There have been difficulties in the past; there will be difficulties ahead. Without a doubt, we will hit more obstacles. The enemies of peace will keep trying to defeat us and to derail these talks. But I ask the parties to persevere."

Clinton said the face-to-face talks are to begin Sept. 2. She said the hope is that a comprehensive peace agreement can be reached within one year.

I have no expectations for these talks. Israel cannot and will not make an agreement with the Palestinian Authority because Mahmoud Abbas cannot speak for all of the territories, and Hamas will not let Abbas do so for Gaza. What authority does Abbas have to speak for the Palestinians when the Palestinian Authority can't operate in Gaza? Hamas controls Gaza and but for Israel's assistance, Abbas and Fatah would have been tossed from the West Bank as well.

Abbas needs some kind of diplomatic breakthrough in order to maintain support among those living in the West Bank, but if that comes, it will be yet another sign that a 2-state solution is dead and that we're looking towards a 3-state solution, with Gaza and West Bank having separate futures.

This is yet another sign that the diplomats are living in their own fantasy world where they think that they can impose and substitute their own reality for the world around them. The reality is that Hamas and Fatah have no interest in ceding power to the other, and Hamas retains full control in Gaza despite the Israeli blockade and Fatah's own efforts to undermine Hamas. Hamas will not accept any deal that recognizes Israel's rights to any land - whether it is in the West Bank, Jerusalem, or Israel proper. It simply doesn't accept Israel's right to exist.

Pushing Israel Into A Corner?

Don't think that the New York Times' timing on the release of a report about US tax exempt donations going to the construction of housing in the West Bank wasn't purposeful on the eve of President Barack Obama's meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netenyahu. There are some reports that indicate that Obama will try to pressure Israel into making some kind of apology to Turkey over the flotilla raid, even though the backers of the flotilla were intent on creating a violent incident for propaganda purposes and Israel was within its sovereign rights to defend itself from terrorists who would use running the blockade as a means to regroup, resupply, and rearm.

For starters, the tax exempt donations don't only include the West Bank - but Jerusalem as well. And as I keep pointing out ad nauseum, the construction of housing is not an impediment to peace. Housing can always be sold or transferred. It's been done before by Israel - twice. Israel withdrew from Sinai and returned thousands of houses built for settlers there in multiple communities. Israel again withdrew from Gaza in 2005 and transferred those communities to the Gazans, who promptly used them as terror training camps and destroyed the infrastructure, including greenhouses donated by US businessmen for providing an incubator for Gazan economic development.

Other reports indicate that the US will demand that Israel move to a two-state solution immediately. Such reports deny reality and again show the folly of diplomats trying to invent facts instead of taking the situation as it truly is - psuedoreality.

The fact is that Hamas and Fatah continue to refuse Israel's existence and deny a 2-state solution. That is the impediment to peace. When you have Fatah honoring a mass murderer who killed Israeli athletes at Munich in 1972 as conquering hero, your priorities are wrong.

Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas has euologized Abu Dauod, the mastermind of the massacre of 11 Israeli athletes at the Munch Olympics in 1972 and who died Saturday. “He is missed. He was one of the leading figures of Fatah and spent his life in resistance and sincere work as well as physical sacrifice for his people's just causes,” said Abbas.

Dauod's life's work was focused on murdering Israelis.

Focusing on housing is a distraction from the real problems - that Israel simply does not have a partner in peace. It doesn't matter how many concessions Israel makes, it will never be sufficient and the Palestinians will not accept any such deal because they will always demand more.

Mind you that the PA never even bothered with counterproposals to the two Israeli peace deals made - one with Arafat in 2000 and later with Abbas.

Now, who exactly is Israel to make peace with when the Palestinians themselves can't agree on who is their representative - Hamas that continues to seek Israel's destruction openly and obviously, or Fatah, which is content to let other terror groups do their dirty work while continuing to indoctrinate another generation to hate Israel's very existence. Neither terror group can dominate the other, and each has its own territories to operate from.