Ayoon Wa Azan (Israel condemns itself)

If the peace process between the Palestinians and Israel is to be raised from the dead (like Lazarus in the New Testament of the Bible), then the negotiations must be conducted on the basis of ending settlements and of Jerusalem being the capital of the State of Palestine. I will not try to be diplomatic, and I say it outright that any negotiations without these two conditions are treason. I then start with the Palestinians and say that the split between the West Bank and Gaza, the equivalent of the tribal split between Qays and Yaman, is a crime against Palestine. While in Amman a week ago, following a meeting with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry announced that an agreement was reached to hold talks in Washington in the next few days. But the announcement seems to have come as a surprise to both the Palestinian and Israeli sides, evident from their subsequent official statements. Israeli war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu still insists on negotiations without conditions, that is, negotiations with the continuation of settlement building in the West Bank and Jerusalem. He then wants to put any agreement with the Palestinians to a referendum, as though the agreement is possible when I see it impossible to achieve with war criminals. Kerry is not proposing a solution based on two independent states living side by side in peace, but is trying to bribe the Palestinians with an economic peace through investments worth $4 billion. Is $4 billion all that Palestine is worth? Shame on them, for this is in the end the same scheme as Benjamin Netanyahu’s, and Shimon Peres before him. On the ground, the government of Israeli fascists prevents Palestinians who leave the occupied territories from returning, while residence permits have been withdrawn from 30,000 Palestinians. Netanyahu demands the Palestinians to accept Israel as a Jewish state, even as six large settlement blocks carve out the West Bank and a thousand walls separate Palestinian villages from other Palestinian villages, not to mention the disgraceful separation barrier, and the brazen theft of Palestinian homes in Jerusalem every day. Barack Obama has sold his soul to the Israeli devil, in line with the American saying, “If you can’t beat them join them.” Obama delivered on none of his promises outlined in his Cairo speech in 2009, and did the exact opposite. Meanwhile, the U.S. Congress is controlled by the Israel lobby, and the venal members of Congress say that Israel is a strategic ally for the United States against terrorism. This is a brazen lie; would there have been any terror against the United States if it had not completely committed itself to an alliance with this state of crime and occupation? Israel is the origin of all terror, and its own terrorism is what has spawned any terrorism in response. Some of the readers may perhaps recall that President Obama visited Israel last March. So what did he do there exactly? He tried to solve the dispute between Netanyahu and Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. I read that Texas governor Rick Perry will visit Israel in two months. He is probably thinking about running in the next presidential race, and he needs Israel’s blessing. Before him, Sen. Rand Paul, another possible candidate from Kentucky, visited Israel, and so did Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida and Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas. So is it Israel that now chooses who becomes the U.S. president? This is like the tail that wagged the dog. In the state of occupation and institutionalized criminality, Justice Minister Tzipi Livni said that a message had to be sent to extremists to say that violence and terrorism are unacceptable, though she was not talking about the terrorist government of Israel. The American immigrant Naftali Bennett, minister of economy, said that settlements would continue regardless of the negotiations. So I ask what the negotiations will be about then. The brothel bouncer Avigdor Lieberman, former foreign minister, proclaimed that a solution was impossible and what was needed instead is to manage the conflict. For his part, Deputy Defense Minister Danny Ayalon, a true heir to all the terrorists in the successive governments of Israel, said that Israel must learn from the mistakes of the past and not release the terrorists. I say that the terrorists are at large and some serve in the Israeli government like him, while the Palestinian prisoners are freedom fighters whose country is under occupation, from the River to the Sea. The European Union recently declared a boycott of all goods originating from Jewish settlements in the occupied territories. Indeed, such is the view held by the free world, and nations in the east and west, of Israel and its policies, not just by me or the Arab readers. I conclude as I began: Negotiations with Israel as such are futile and a betrayal of Palestine. The views expressed by the author do not necessarily represent or reflect the editorial policy of Arabstoday.