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"Peace Talks" an illusion?


 Credited to Mike Lukavich

Those so-called "peace talks" between the Israelis and Palestinians.   For real?.....or an illusion?

"The so-called “peace talks” initiated by John Kerry between Israel and the Palestinian Authority are meaningless theatrics that are part of a stratagem concealing and obscuring the real intentions of the US and Israel in the Middle East.

When US President Barak Obama went to visit Israel, in March 2013, the peace talks were not even a priority for his administration. The world was bluntly told by Obama that the so-called “peace process” was not even on the agenda for discussion between the US and Israeli governments. Hence, the big question on a lot of minds: why have the talks become a priority for the US government now?

The “peace talks” illusion

The main purpose of the so-called peace process has been to serve as a theatrical distraction. Initially, the Israeli-Palestinian talks were used to keep the Palestinian people and Arabs at bay. The peace talks and negotiations acquired another dimension with time, when they became a convenient tool for distracting the international public and influencing global public opinion by presenting Israel as a reasonable entity willing to make concessions for peace and security.

On the latter point mentioned above, on the concept of “Israeli concessions” to the Palestinians, there is a catch. Israeli concessions only exist in theoretical terms if Israel’s illicit fancies are considered legitimate. In reality, there are no Israeli concessions, especially when international law is the measuring stick to evaluate the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Tel Aviv unlawfully claims the entire West Bank, which it has no legal entitlement to under international law, as its own territory. Israeli leaders present the attenuation of their territorial claims on the West Bank, which they have been busy annexing during the bogus peace talks, as some type of concession to the Palestinians.

The so-called “Israeli settlements” in East Jerusalem and the West Bank are categorically rejected by the United Nations as illegal. They are a brazen violation of international law. Israel’s settlements in the West Bank have unanimously been identified as a war crime under the 1998 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court by all of the International Criminal Court’s judges. The US is also an accomplice in this, because Washington has prevented international action from being taken against Israel. A spade should be called a spade: these Israeli settlements in the West Bank are nothing more than Israeli colonies.

There are no Israeli concessions, just demands

It is comical to hear US Secretary of State John Kerry ask for both Israel and the PA to make “reasonable compromises.” To put it bluntly, it has actually been the Palestinians which have made the real compromises and then, on top of it, have been the ones that have been forced by both the US government and Israel into gradually making more and more concessions. In addition to the recognition of the approximate 80% of Palestine that is demarcated within Israel’s 1967 borders by Palestinian officials, about 60% or more of the West Bank’s territorial space is occupied by Israeli settlements/colonies.

The Israeli Hafrada (Separation) Wall or Apartheid Wall has cut off East Jerusalem and the most economically important lands of the West Bank off from their Palestinian inhabitants and owners. Palestinians are not even allowed to manage their own resources and their fresh water is stolen on a daily basis by the Israelis. Notwithstanding all this, the corrupt Palestinian negotiators, which have no popular or legal mandate to represent the Palestinian people, have been willing to recognize and keep the bulk of the Israeli settlements/colonies in the West Bank (on the best land) and to forfeit the legal rights provided by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights to the Palestinian people to return to their occupied homes."

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