A State Of Suspension

A new poll shows that Israelis and Palestinians agree on at least one thing -- that the status quo will persist:

Regarding the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, 71 percent of Israelis and 68% of Palestinians surveyed viewed the chances for establishing an independent Palestinian state within the next five years to be minimal.

Nonetheless, 60% of the Israelis and 65% of the Palestinians opposed a one-state solution with equal rights between Arabs and Jews, according to the poll. Only 36% of Israelis and 31% of Palestinians supported such a solution.

One More Time, With Feeling?

Writing in the Jerusalem Post, Herb Kaion speculates that the Palestinians are interested in negotiating again:

[T]he tactic the Palestinians adopted since September 2010 – when PA President Mahmoud Abbas walked away from talks with [Benyamin] Netanyahu and seemingly turned his back on the idea of a negotiated settlement to the conflict in favor of trying to get one imposed on Israel – has not produced results.

The two leaders will meet next week. Kaion reports that the Quartet (the U.S., Russia, the European Union, and the UN) is expected to call tomorrow for another round of direct peace talks.

Living, Learning, And Living

Even though peace talks with Israel have been stalled for years, polls show that Palestinians prefer non-violent resistance to a Third Intifada. The reason, experts say, is that violence against Israel doesn't work.

Sacrificing One Peace For Another

As Fatah and Hamas make nice, will the Palestinians' prospective new prime minister, PNA President Mammoud Abbas, have to step even further back from negotiations with Israel to placate hardliners? The Jerusalem Post:

[S]ome Hamas officials in the Gaza Strip voiced opposition to the deal, especially the appointment of Abbas as prime minister.

“It was Hamas that won the election [in 2006] and not Mahmoud Abbas,” said a Hamas legislator who asked not to be identified. “Many people in Hamas are not happy with this agreement.”

Another Hamas legislator, Ismail Ashqar, criticized the Qatari-sponsored pact, saying it “violated the Palestinian Authority Basic Law and bypassed the Palestinian Legislative Council.”

Ashqar said the ball was now in the court of Abbas who, he added, would have to stop the negotiations and security coordination with Israel to ensure the success of reconciliation between Hamas and Fatah.

We Think We Have Church Vs. State Problems

The complexities of the Middle East's only democracy: The ultra-orthodox haredim, who don't think Israel's secular government is legitimate (but who are paid to pray at the Western Wall under an agreement that dates from Israel's founding), battle back against the government's effort to keep them from further oppressing their women.

Opposing Violence, Except Against Israel

Writing in the Jerusalem Post, David Horovitz says the Muslim Brotherhood's intentions are hiding in plain sight:

[MB spokesman] Mohamed Morsy, who in the course of the conversation on Thursday refused to commit his movement to maintenance of the Israel-Egypt peace treaty or to recognition of Israel, and stressed its opposition to Zionism, insisted that the Muslim Brotherhood opposed the use of violence. Without missing a beat, however, he went on to say that what was going on in Palestine was “resistance.” And “resistance,” he said, “is acceptable by all mankind. It is the right of people to resist imperialism.”

Photo: Graffiti on Israel's security and separation wall, near Bethlehem, January 2011

Private Peace Talks Require Public Peace Talk

In an editorial about the leak of documents about peace negotiations in 2008, the Jerusalem Post criticizes the Palestinian government for failing to do more to prepare its people for the compromises that will be necessary to make peace with Israel.

"Israel Is Not An Apartheid State"

A welcome if somewhat discouraging dose of pragmatism about the Middle East and Israel from Abu Toameh, an Arab and an Israeli citizen who covers Palestinian issues for the Jerusalem Post. First, he addresses a favorite canard of some of the Palestinians' well-meaning friends in the West:

Israel is not an apartheid state. But there are problems and some discrimination with the Arab minority inside Israel. If Israel were an apartheid state, I, for example, would not be allowed to work for a Jewish newspaper or live in a Jewish neighborhood or own a home. The real apartheid is in Lebanon, where there is a law that bans Palestinians from working in over 50 professions. Can you imagine if the Knesset passed a law banning Arabs from working even in one profession? The real apartheid is also in many Arab and Muslim nations, like Kuwait, where my Palestinian uncle, who has been living there for 35 years is banned from buying a house. The law of Israel does not distinguish between a Jew and an Arab.

More disturbingly, he says Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is so weak that only Israel's presence in the West Bank keeps him in power. What if Palestinians got their wish -- a state based on the pre-Six Day War borders?:

Abbas will collapse and Hamas will take over the West Bank in less than a day. If I were Israel, I would not give Abbas one inch of land in the West Bank – not for ideological reasons, but to avoid a situation where Hamas and others would take over the area.

Hat tip to Tom Tierney

More Palestinian Wallowing

Unconstructive Jewish temple denial by Palestinians, who've issued a new report claiming that Jerusalem's Western Wall is part of the Al-Aqsa mosque and not a remnant of Herod the Great's expansion of the Second Temple. According to the Jerusalem Post, the official who wrote the report says "that the Jews had never used the site for worship until the Balfour Declaration of 1917."

The argument doesn't wash. Excavations in and around the Old City have revealed many other Herodian structures, including further remnants of his wall. Besides, as we read in Wikipedia:

It has been a site for Jewish prayer and pilgrimage for centuries, the earliest source mentioning Jewish attachment to the site dating from the 4th century.

That would be at least 200 years before Muhammad and Islam.

Some Palestinian experts confine themselves to the more elegant and also scripturally sound argument that their forebears the Canaanites were probably worshiping in the Jebusite city now known as Jerusalem long before the Jews even got there. As for proving Jewish provenance on the Temple Mount, all we have to do is excavate beneath it, which I doubt the Muslim authorities would countenance.

The Ides Of Next August

From the Jerusalem Post, big news and a honking dangling clause in one lead:

Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad said the PA will declare an independent Palestinian state in 2011, while picking olives with a reporter from Italian daily Corriere Della Sera, according to an interview published on Thursday.

Dexterous PM, lucky reporter!

Two Prime Ministers Passing In the Night

It should come as no surprise that the Jerusalem Post covers Israel-Palestinian issues more carefully than U.S. papers. Stateside, it does seem to be all about the West Bank settlements. In his comments in London today, Israeli PM Binyamin Netanyahu put countervailing stress on Palestinian resistance to the idea of Israel as a Jewish homeland. The U.S. is neglectful of that issue, the Post suggests:

Netanyahu's comments came just hours before Wednesday morning's meeting in his London hotel, the Intercontinental, with US Mideast envoy George Mitchell during which the settlements, much more then Palestinian recognition of Israel as a Jewish homeland, are expected to be the focus of discussion.

Indeed no mention of the issue in this New York Times article about a new Palestinian National Authority road map for a state of Palestine within two years. It assumes east Jerusalem as the new nation's capital, which Netanyahu flatly ruled out in in his London press conference.