It’s all very well for ziobots like Ms Kershner to skip Jackass’ pronouncement, but Reuters (and AP and AFP) have reported it, it has already been picked up and copied repeatedly to YouTube for easy mass reproduction worldwide, and whether Jackass is just displaying his customary stupidity or this is a calculated move, either way, it knocks the ground out from almost 30 years of US prevarication and weasel tactics. I report and document it in detail further down – RB
Timing of Israeli Housing Plans May Be Part of a Political Calculation
Isabel Kershner, NYT, Aug 12 2013
JERUSALEM — Israel’s announcement this week that it was building more than 1,000 housing units in East Jerusalem and the West Bank appeared to be part of a political balancing act to satisfy many Israelis before it released 26 Palestinian prisoners, whose names were announced Monday. While Israel was not violating any formal agreement, analysts said the move had dealt a blow to the credibility of the fragile Palestinian leadership in the West Bank. Jackass Kerry spent months persuading the Palestinians to talk without a settlement freeze or a promise of negotiations based on 1967 boundaries. Zakaria al-Qaq, a Palestinian expert in national security at Al-Quds University in East Jerusalem, said:
For two years, the leadership has been preaching that it would not go back to the talks as long as settlement activity continued. Now the leadership is suddenly deaf and dumb. And if that principle is so easily abandoned, what of the other core issues for Palestinians, few of whom have much faith in talks anyway? Jerusalem has to be negotiated. Israel is determining the outcome of the negotiation before it has started.
The atmosphere was just as grim in Israel after the authorities announced the names of the 26 veteran Palestinian prisoners to be released late Tuesday or early Wednesday, the day the talks are to open, as part of the US-brokered deal for talks. Among them was one of the killers of Isaac Rotenberg, 67, a Holocaust survivor who was bludgeoned to death in 1994, and the man who killed an Israeli, Avraham Kinstler, 84, with an ax. Jackass said Monday that Israel’s announcements about settlements “were to some degree expected because we have known that there was going to be a continuation of some building in certain places.” But he added that one announcement may have been “outside of that level of expectation,” and that he intended to speak to Netanyahu late Monday or early Tuesday. Jackass told reporters on a visit to Colombia:
I’m sure that we will work out a path forward.
The discord between the Israelis and Palestinians underlines the gaping distance between them on crucial issues like the land and borders of a future Palestinian state. Much of the world views the settlements as a violation of international law. But Israeli officials have been blunt in rejecting criticism about their latest announcement. Mark Regev, a government spokesman, said Sunday:
The residential development is in areas that will remain part of Israel in any possible future peace agreement. This in no way changes the final map of peace. It changes nothing.
On Monday Regev expanded:
This has been the position of all Israeli prime ministers. Every peace plan that has been put on the table has included Israel’s retention of major settlement blocs, with varying details. The Palestinian negotiators accept it, too, at least privately, though they may deny it publicly. Does any serious person believe Maale Adumim is not going to remain part of Israel?
Some see the Palestinian protests as also intended for domestic consumption. Dore Gold a one-time adviser to Netanyahu, said:
The Palestinians may have understood from past negotiations that certain settlement blocs are going to remain in Israel under any agreement. But for internal purposes, they feel compelled to protest and complain.
The Palestinians have little unilateral power and a fractured political voice. The US and Europe have repeatedly pushed the sides to negotiate, but without securing an agreement. Western powers continue to rebuke Israel over the settlements, to little avail. After the European Union published new guidelines last month banning the financing of and cooperation with Israeli institutions in territory seized during the 1967 war, including the West Bank and East Jerusalem, Israeli leaders condemned the move, saying the Europeans were setting conditions that in Israel’s view even the Palestinians had abandoned. During a meeting with German foreign minister Guido Westerwelle here on Monday, Netanyahu said:
I believe the European guidelines have actually undermined peace. They’ve hardened Palestinian positions. They seek an unrealistic end that everybody knows is not going to happen, and I think they stand in the way of reaching a solution which will only be reached by negotiations by the parties, and not by an external dictate.
But Palestinian officials insist they have not accepted the Israeli concept of retaining settlement blocs and have agreed to only minor land swaps along the 1967 borders. One Palestinian official involved in the talks said:
The latest Israeli settlement plans are a stab in the back for everyone who has worked to have negotiations. It legitimizes the fears everybody had that the negotiations are just a smoke screen.
Niqnaq 