Another international Middle East peace meeting has come and gone. Another pointless get together where the only tangible achievement will be the increase in business for the local catering companies. Another club lunch where leaders can puff out their chests and make pointless declarations about peace making themselves sound far more important than what they actually are.
Another waste of time.
And it’s a waste time, because just as in every other conference, it will achieve nothing.
This time, it was France – the great hypocrite who ignore Jewish history in Israel – who wanted to host the conference as if they’re some important player in the world of international affairs. But they’re not really – they’re kind of insignificant and no one really listens to them anyway. They do make good baguettes though!
So in this meeting of extreme insignificance, they wanted to somehow put together an international strategy to force the parties, through economic or security packages, to get together and somehow make this dream of theirs for a two state solution come true. Because as soon as a two state solution happens, the sounds of peace will ring out throughout the world and butterflies will start singing melodies, and ISIS will lay down their arms and start singing karaoke songs instead. Children who were raised on the diet of hatred and intolerance and antisemitism, will suddenly put that aside and join the community of nations in peace and harmony.
Of course, no one seems to be too concerned that one of the 26 invited nations was not Israel – the country they are trying to force to make peace with an enemy who threatens their destruction. But hey – do they really need to be there? I mean – when Czechoslovakia was divided by the major powers of Europe in the Munich Agreement of 1938, including giving a portion of it to Hitler – they too weren’t invited. It was done to achieve “peace in our time” and how did that turn out?
But in another sign that being a leader of a country does not necessarily require you to be intelligent, French President François Hollande said that the collapse of the peace process will lead to the void being filled by extremists. So does that mean that Hamas is not an extremist organisation in his eyes? Because launching rockets on civilians and shooting and knifing innocent people as well as a stated goal of wiping out all Jews kind of sounds extreme.
But before you get too pessimistic, the good news is that the Saudi Initiative is still on the table, according to Saudi Arabian Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir and he believes, “it is a solid basis for resolving this longstanding dispute.”
I actually agree with him, because if Israel followed the Saudi Initiative, well then… there wouldn’t be an Israel and there’d be no Israeli-Palestinian conflict – just the usual range of wars of intolerance and ethnic cleansing that are happening already – a hallmark of the Arab world.
But before anyone thinks that France is being insensitive to Israel’s needs, a French official did say, “We know the path is difficult.” And it is. It’s not easy munching on a croissant, overlooking the Eiffel tower, your mistress in the other room and dictating to Israel about what they need to do to achieve peace.
Eventually, the conference ended with the participants reaffirming their commitment to “a negotiated two-state solution [as] the only way to achieve an enduring peace, with two states, Israel and Palestine, living side by side in peace and security.” Blah blah blah – the same old tune to a song no one is listening to anymore.
But the real key to judging whether this was a “successful” conference or not was the reaction of fiction writer, fantasy expert and PLO chief negotiator Saeb Erakat who was delighted, saying that the talks send a “clear” message to Israel that if it doesn’t to stop its “colonisation and apartheid policies in occupied Palestine,” extremism will rule the day, conveniently ignoring his own extremist party that teaches hatred from childbirth. Now, if Saeb Erakat is happy with something, it can only mean it’s not good for Israel.
The problem with a conference like this is not that it was particularly good or bad for Israel, but simply that they were bypassed and deemed too unimportant to be included. The Palestinians were also not at the conference, but for them, the one thing the Palestinian leadership enjoy more than anything else is turning this conflict over to international sources rather than dealing with it themselves, in the same way the international world created many of the fake countries that fill the Arab world.
The Palestinians do not want any responsibility, wanting the world to solve their problems and unfortunately, the world will bend over backwards to accommodate them.
