The Day In Israel: Tues Nov 30th, 2010
David Lange
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PA President Mahmoud Abbas has continued his attack on “settlement” building, the palestinian equivalent of distracting someone by telling them to look at something in the distance while you go about doing what you are doing.
Which in the palestinian’s case is terrorism and incitement.
In a message read at the UN’s headquarters in New York Monday, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas called West Bank settlements a “time bomb,” AFP reported.
As the world body commemorated International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, a message from Abbas said that the deterioration in the peace process “requires bringing a decisive and final end to the vicious Israeli settlement campaign.”
The PA president continued, saying that continued settlement “constitutes a time bomb that could destroy everything we have accomplished on the road to peace, at any moment,” AFP reported.
He certainly has a fixation with bombs.
Meanwhile, the above report reminds us that yesterday, the UN commemorated International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, which deliberately coincides with the anniversary of the day the UN General Assembly adopted the Partition Plan in 1947.
A plan which was met with violence from the palestinians. To quote the anything-but pro-Israel BBC:
The Arab League and Palestinian institutions rejected the partition plan, and formed volunteer armies that infiltrated into Palestine beginning in December of 1947.
In other words, the UN is showing solidarity with the palestinians for rejecting a plan put forward by the General Assembly and reacting to it with violence.
Updates (Israel time; most recent at top)
9:00PM: Future Darwin Award Candidate of the day:
A Palestinian youth holds a burning tyre during clashes in the East Jerusalem neighbourhood of Issawiya November 30, 2010. Clashes between Palestinian stone-throwers and Israeli police broke out on Tuesday after Israel's Jerusalem municipality demolished a Palestinian house in Issawiya. The municipality said the home was built without a city permit. Palestinians say such permits are impossible to obtain. REUTERS/Baz Ratner
8:55PM: Wikileaks: the gift that keeps on giving.
Israelis can’t be blamed for mistrusting Arabs, according to remarks by the ruler of the Arab state of Qatar released by the WikiLeaks group in the latest of a string of surprising revelations.
Qatar’s Emir, Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, made the comments in a meeting with U.S. Senator John Kerry on February 23. A report of their discussions, obtained by the WikiLeaks group, was filed by America’s Ambassador to Qatar Joseph LeBaron.
The cable said:
“The Israeli leaders need to represent the people of Israel, who themselves do not trust Arabs. The Emir said this is understandable and ‘we can’t blame them’ because the Israelis have been ‘under threat’ for a long time.’
Booya.
4:18PM: More “peace partner” shenanigans, courtesy of PMW:
A song and dance group that has recently performed hate and violence promotion songs in the PA has been honored and turned into an official Palestinian national band by decree of PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas. Among the performances that have been broadcast by the Alashekeen band on PA TV was a dance and song about conquering Israel through war. Israeli cities Lod and Ramle as well as Jerusalem are presented as Palestinian cities to be liberated through “Jihad” by Palestinians who have “replaced bracelets with weapons.” The song says: “Pull the trigger” to “redeem Jerusalem, Nablus and the country.” It also describes Israelis as “despicable” and says that “the Palestinian revolution awaits [them].”
The band’s logo includes the Palestinian flag next to the map of Israel presented as “Palestine” covered by a Kafiya, the Arab scarf.
I’m not sure if I’m more offended by what they are singing about, or their singing itself.
1:35PM: After the Wikileaks cables were leaked, Israeli PM Binyamin Netanyahu said the revelations were good for Israel.
I wonder if he believes they were good for him.
After being exposed as harshly criticizing the government’s handling of the Second Lebanon War during his stint as opposition chairman, a WikiLeaks cable now suggests that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the US after winning the Knesset elections that he supports a land swap concept.
In a document sent on February 26, 2009 from the US Embassy in Tel Aviv, Netanyahu expressed support of a land swap as part of a peace agreement. He stressed to the US that Israel does not wish to control Gaza and the West Bank but rather prevent rockets being fired from those areas.
Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman is a staunch supporter of the land swap concept, however Netanyahu has never publically sided with him on the issue.
Meanwhile, I am updating my Wikileaks post with the additional Israel-related cables not mentioned on The Guardian site.
11:20AM: Another report on the Israeli Football League, including the mandatory (but nice) Judean Rebels/co-existence angle.
9:38AM: It’s bad enough that they are distorting history. But now the BDSers are misrepresenting the meaning of the words “Flash mob,” which does not mean a group of ugly women getting together and performing something that barely resembles a dance.
9:10AM: Does it make sense that I am furious about what Wikileaks has done, but simultaneously not unhappy that some of the information is now in the public domain?
Here’s one example.
President Shimon Peres admitted to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu that the Oslo peace process he helped initiate was based on a mistaken premise, according to an April 2007 cable of a conversation Netanyahu had with US Congressman Gary Ackerman, the Wikileaks website revealed Monday.
Netanyahu was opposition leader at the time and Peres was vice premier.
“Netanyahu commented that Shimon Peres had admitted to him that the Oslo process had been based on a mistaken economic premise, and as a result European and US assistance to the Palestinians had gone to create a bloated bureaucracy, with PA employees looking to the international community to meet their payroll,” Ackerman reported in a document first revealed by Channel 10 reporter Nadav Eyal.
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