After a week of following-up the UN General Assembly work in New York, and another week of monitoring the reactions to the speeches given by President Mahmoud Abbas and Benjamin Netanyahu, and before them both Barack Obama, I firmly believe now that peace with the current Israeli government is impossible. The Palestinians did not get recognition for their state or membership in the United Nations. However, they did get a referendum in which a majority of the states of the world proclaimed their support for the establishment of the Palestinian state, while this same majority also proclaimed its rejection of Netanyahu and his policies. For one thing, the Prime Minister of Israel received applause only from the members of his delegation and his guests. The picture now is as follows: - President Barack Obama is like Faust, who sold his soul to the devil for worldly pleasures. He decided to abandon the Palestinians and their rights, in return for coming back to the White House in the upcoming presidential elections. I would not have dreamt of writing this about Obama after I heard his speech at Cairo University, and after his speech, which he gave only last year, at the General Assembly, when he said that he hoped that the State of Palestine would be welcomed in the General Assembly this year. Nevertheless, he and we lived to see a day when he stood at the helm of the campaign opposed to Palestine's membership in the UN. He said that the Palestinian state will not be established through resolutions, and I say that it will not be established through talks with a fascist government that has a blank check from the U.S. administration. - The best Arab position in support of the Palestinians came from Egypt and Saudi Arabia. The Egyptian Minister Kamel Amr rebuked Israel from the rostrum of the General Assembly, and called for a halt to settlements. He was preceded by Prince Saud al-Faisal, who declared his support for a Palestinian move at the Security Council, settling the issue at the level of the Arab Gulf countries in the process. The best international position came from Russia and Turkey, and personally, I was not surprised to see Germany, Britain and France plot against the Palestinians. However, I wait for King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz to shake his stick at the leaders of these countries. - I sat on the arm of the seat that brought together Abu Mazen and the Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, as well as a translator, and tried to hear what they were saying. Dr. Ahmed Tibi, a dear friend and a member of the Knesset, sat by my side on another chair. I had seen Tibi applaud Abu Mazen's speech, while his hands were frozen solid during Netanyahu's address. Now I hear that the Ethics Committee in the Knesset (and I insist that they have no ethics what so ever) wants to reprimand Dr. Ahmed Tibi, who appeared as though he was a member of the Palestinian delegation. He responded to this challenge by throwing down the gauntlet in turn and reiterating that he who came last (to Palestine) must leave first. - I read an interview with Netanyahu in an Israeli paper that was even more insolent than his speech in the General Assembly, when he called for negotiations without preconditions, while requiring that the security of Israel be guaranteed and that it be recognized as a Jewish state. In the interview, Netanyahu said that hope for peace “comes when one adheres to justice and truth”. Yet, he would not know what truth is if it slapped him in the face. As for justice, this means to him announcing the construction of 1100 residential units in Palestinian territories straight after he returned from New York. Besides, he spoke in the speech and in the interview about the Land of Israel, meaning Palestine, where no trace for [historic] Jewish presence or Jewish kingdoms exists. - I read in Maariv a letter addressed by a prominent Israeli commentator, Ben Caspit, to U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, who opposed the release of Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard. Pollard is serving a life sentence, after carrying briefcases laden with official U.S. secrets to the spies in the Israeli embassy in Washington. The letter would have been almost comical, were it not for its subject, as its writer asked Biden to heed the calls of those demanding amnesty for the traitor and spy. Who are those people then? Among them, Caspit cited Henry Kissinger, a Jew of German origin whose allegiance lies with Israel, James Woolsey, the former chief of the CIA who was looking for flying saucers, and a known Israeli agent, the Russian-American Malcolm Hoenlein, Vice Chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, who works on behalf of Israel and places it above ‘his country' the United States, and Abraham Foxman, President of the (Jewish) Anti-Defamation League, an organization similar to AIPAC or the original den of spies. These people are as suspect to me as Pollard is, but they have not yet been proven guilty. Finally, I recall the words of Dr. Nabil al-Arabi, Secretary General of the Arab League, as we stood together in the General Assembly Hall. He said that the Israeli strategy is to negotiate for negotiations' sake, and not to reach a peaceful settlement. [email protected]
