Huffington Post Blog Posting
August 18, 2008
Palestinians Display Weakness in their Race to Reject Olmert's Lacking Proposal
Beleaguered Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert proposed a ridiculous plan to end the conflict as his term in office winds down to an inglorious end.
Although his "peace plan" has aspects of good ideas, it is most significant not for what it offers, but for what it lacks.
Hoping to put a positive spin to his unflattering career ending, Olmert offered to give the Palestinians 92.7 percent of the Occupied West Bank and all of the Gaza Strip.
The plan loudly shouts what Israelis for years have only whispered, that the "Wall" is not a barrier to stop at all. It is a clever strategy to annex more Palestinian lands. And taking land is the heart of Israel's existence.
Olmert's offer allows Israel to keep all of the land on its side of the Wall, which is built deep inside the West Bank on Palestinian land. If it were built on the Green Line, or the 1949 armistice lines, most Palestinians would have supported its construction, rather than demonizing it with worthless words of passion like calling it the "Apartheid Wall."
Israel's policies are not about apartheid at all, but rather smart politics.
Olmert's plan allows Israel to also keep nearly all of its West Bank settlements, resulting in the slicing up of the West Bank into several "islands," which is a polite term for buntastans.
And the crown jewel, is Olmert declares that the Palestinians have no right to any part of Jerusalem, including East Jerusalem which was occupied in 1967.
Olmert was awkward in leadership. His visions lacked original initiative. He's a bureaucrat who knows how to manage an office and not a courageous leader who knew how to manage people, like his predecessor the late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.
But no one knows the moral of that story better than the Palestinians: bureaucrats survive a lot longer in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict than the courageous.
In response to Olmert, the Palestinians have done what they do always do, play to their hysterical choir of critics rather than to the chance that just maybe they can create a state of their own.
No Palestinian leader dares to accept a peace plan that concedes sovereignty over Jerusalem accepts the permanency of Israel's settlements which, like the Wall, Israelis once insisted were only "temporary, necessary security measures."
Time has a way of playing into Israel's long term hands. In the face of achieving genuine peace, Israelis would rather trade it for land, settlements and all of Jerusalem.
Peace, apparently, is not as valuable to them as the land and, apparently, politics.
Yet still, the Israelis would not make these lacking offers if they didn't already know the Palestinian leadership like the back of their hands.
The Israelis know exactly how far to go to make an offer sound good and yet unacceptable to the Palestinians.
Like the Israelis, the Palestinians are slaves to public emotion and hysteria. The extremists hold everyone hostage. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is little more than a bureaucrat who is not even good at being bureaucrat.
And as the peace process collapses -- actually it is always still born -- the extremists can build up public support for extremist strategies including the use of violence and acts of terrorism, such as justifying suicide bombing and the killing of civilians.
The real tragedy here is that there are no courageous leaders, leaders willing to risk their careers and their lives to do what is needed to be done.
The Israelis are afraid to stand up to their own growing religious and settler extremist movements. The once pro-peace left is a shambles, symbolized by an outgoing prime minister accused of corruption.
So both sides in their own way know that rejecting peace is far safer than accepting even a morsel of a dream.
If the Palestinians had anything close to a genuine leadership, they would welcome the proposal as a first step towards dialogue, rather than playing to public emotions and rejecting Olmert's plan out of hand.
If the Israeli public could restore its trust in the Palestinians, it might force them to go the additional mile and make real difficult concessions.
By welcoming Olmert's plan, Palestinians could strengthen their negotiating posture and push for more. And they would get it.
But by saying no, as they always do, the Palestinians are again allowing Israel to set in stone not only of the permanency of the Wall's route as the current border, but also annexing all the land it has grabbed. Now, Israel can set its sights on annexing even more lands and building even more settlements.
The one thing that Arab and Israeli culture share is the ease at which both people chose to condemn something rather than to work hard at turning dreams into reality.
Palestinians Display Weakness in their Race to Reject Olmert's Lacking Proposal
Beleaguered Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert proposed a ridiculous plan to end the conflict as his term in office winds down to an inglorious end.
Although his "peace plan" has aspects of good ideas, it is most significant not for what it offers, but for what it lacks.
Hoping to put a positive spin to his unflattering career ending, Olmert offered to give the Palestinians 92.7 percent of the Occupied West Bank and all of the Gaza Strip.
The plan loudly shouts what Israelis for years have only whispered, that the "Wall" is not a barrier to stop at all. It is a clever strategy to annex more Palestinian lands. And taking land is the heart of Israel's existence.
Olmert's offer allows Israel to keep all of the land on its side of the Wall, which is built deep inside the West Bank on Palestinian land. If it were built on the Green Line, or the 1949 armistice lines, most Palestinians would have supported its construction, rather than demonizing it with worthless words of passion like calling it the "Apartheid Wall."
Israel's policies are not about apartheid at all, but rather smart politics.
Olmert's plan allows Israel to also keep nearly all of its West Bank settlements, resulting in the slicing up of the West Bank into several "islands," which is a polite term for buntastans.
And the crown jewel, is Olmert declares that the Palestinians have no right to any part of Jerusalem, including East Jerusalem which was occupied in 1967.
Olmert was awkward in leadership. His visions lacked original initiative. He's a bureaucrat who knows how to manage an office and not a courageous leader who knew how to manage people, like his predecessor the late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.
But no one knows the moral of that story better than the Palestinians: bureaucrats survive a lot longer in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict than the courageous.
In response to Olmert, the Palestinians have done what they do always do, play to their hysterical choir of critics rather than to the chance that just maybe they can create a state of their own.
No Palestinian leader dares to accept a peace plan that concedes sovereignty over Jerusalem accepts the permanency of Israel's settlements which, like the Wall, Israelis once insisted were only "temporary, necessary security measures."
Time has a way of playing into Israel's long term hands. In the face of achieving genuine peace, Israelis would rather trade it for land, settlements and all of Jerusalem.
Peace, apparently, is not as valuable to them as the land and, apparently, politics.
Yet still, the Israelis would not make these lacking offers if they didn't already know the Palestinian leadership like the back of their hands.
The Israelis know exactly how far to go to make an offer sound good and yet unacceptable to the Palestinians.
Like the Israelis, the Palestinians are slaves to public emotion and hysteria. The extremists hold everyone hostage. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is little more than a bureaucrat who is not even good at being bureaucrat.
And as the peace process collapses -- actually it is always still born -- the extremists can build up public support for extremist strategies including the use of violence and acts of terrorism, such as justifying suicide bombing and the killing of civilians.
The real tragedy here is that there are no courageous leaders, leaders willing to risk their careers and their lives to do what is needed to be done.
The Israelis are afraid to stand up to their own growing religious and settler extremist movements. The once pro-peace left is a shambles, symbolized by an outgoing prime minister accused of corruption.
So both sides in their own way know that rejecting peace is far safer than accepting even a morsel of a dream.
If the Palestinians had anything close to a genuine leadership, they would welcome the proposal as a first step towards dialogue, rather than playing to public emotions and rejecting Olmert's plan out of hand.
If the Israeli public could restore its trust in the Palestinians, it might force them to go the additional mile and make real difficult concessions.
By welcoming Olmert's plan, Palestinians could strengthen their negotiating posture and push for more. And they would get it.
But by saying no, as they always do, the Palestinians are again allowing Israel to set in stone not only of the permanency of the Wall's route as the current border, but also annexing all the land it has grabbed. Now, Israel can set its sights on annexing even more lands and building even more settlements.
The one thing that Arab and Israeli culture share is the ease at which both people chose to condemn something rather than to work hard at turning dreams into reality.
Check out other Huffington Post Blog postings of Ray Hanania.
Ray Hanania is an award winning political reporter and columnist who began in journalism covering Chicago's City Hall from 1976 until 1992. Named "Best Ethnic American Columnist" in Nov. 2006 by the New America Media, Hanania is also one of only a few professional Palestinian Arab American journalists. You can contact Ray at rayhanania@comcast.net.
Ray Hanania is an award winning political reporter and columnist who began in journalism covering Chicago's City Hall from 1976 until 1992. Named "Best Ethnic American Columnist" in Nov. 2006 by the New America Media, Hanania is also one of only a few professional Palestinian Arab American journalists. You can contact Ray at rayhanania@comcast.net.