Dennis Ross and David Makovsky are out to deceive the
President of the United States ,
Donald Trump so as to con the people of Palestine ,
thus give Netanyahu what he wants. And when all hell will break loose, as it
surely will, they'll blame the fiasco on the American President as they always
do.
The two characters co-wrote: “The way forward on
settlements,” an article that also came under the subtitle: “Advice for Trump
from two veteran Mideast negotiators,” published
on January 19, 2017 in the New York Daily News. What they do in this piece is
blame Barack Obama for the failures that resulted from the advice they have
been giving for decades … as indeed they will blame future failures on Donald
Trump if he makes the mistake of taking their advice.
Their blueprint for the next set of failures to take place
under Trump is so clear; a teenager can read it like reading a book for
kiddies. Look what they chose to be the first thing they say with regard to the
situation in Palestine :
“Israeli settlements are a problem – and make peace difficult to achieve.
Historically, however, settlements have not been the main impediment to peace,
as Israel has dismantled
them when it withdrew from the Sinai and from Gaza ”.
With ambiguity hanging in the air about settlements being a
problem but not an impediment, the writers go on to blame the lack of progress
in the peace talks on Obama's “special focus on this issue.” Why is that?
Because “Obama called for a complete settlement freeze,” they say. And that's
their way of telling the new President he should publicly declare it's okay
with him if Jews from America
or anywhere in the world traveled to Palestine ,
pushed the indigenous people out of their homes and their lands, and took their
properties without negotiation and without an agreement.
And just as they tried – a few weeks ago – to con President
Trump into moving the American embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem (intending to
scuttle any possible progress after this happens,) their intention this time is
to get his commitment on the issue of settlements, and use that as a license to
rob a people already subdued by the use of America's most advanced weapons. And
Israel
will continue after that to scuttle every effort at making progress in the
peace talks … assuming there is going to be any.
But why do Ross and Makovsky believe that the Trump
Administration would fall for this demonic trick? They believe it because they
paved the way for it, and convinced themselves they can pull it off. Look what
they did in this regard. First, they said this: “Incoming Presidents like to
demonstrate how different they are from their predecessors … a change from the
Obama approach is needed.” That's playing on Trump's ego.
And then, speaking of settlements, they pull a fraud and
mutilate history like this: “Israel
demonstrated a readiness to dismantle them when it withdrew from the Sinai and
from Gaza .”
This quotation is an abbreviated version of what they actually said. Let's look
at it first, and then look at the expanded version.
The insinuation here is that Israel
is ready to dismantle the settlements in the West Bank because it did so
previously in the Sinai and in Gaza .
But that's misleading because the fact remains that Israel
never relinquished an inch of Arab soil voluntarily, as it was kicked out of
the Sinai, the Eastern Golan, Gaza and Southern Lebanon . It continues to occupy the West Bank because the inhabitants there are helpless,
having no means to defend themselves.
We now look at the expanded version of their claim. We see
how Ross and Makovsky distorted reality by inserting lies into the text. They
say that Israel withdrew
from the Sinai as part of a peace treaty with Egypt . The fact is that there was a
war and not a peace treaty to retake the Sinai. It went on for six years, from
1967 to 1973. The final Egyptian storming of Israel 's defenses took place with
the involvement of the largest number of tanks in history. As to the air
battles, the Egyptians set a trap for Israel's air force, and managed to down a
third of it in the first few hours of the war. And that's not how people
negotiate a peace treaty.
Despite the fact that Anwar Sadat had informed President
Nixon he had no intention of going into Israel , both the Americans and the
Israelis feared he will not keep his word. And so Kissinger suggested they stop
the fighting and negotiate the modalities of Israel 's pull out from the rest of
the Sinai. In the interest of saving lives, Sadat accepted Kissinger's
suggestion, stopped chasing the Israelis out, and negotiated a timetable for
the remaining Israeli troops to get out.
Because Sadat did not want Egypt
to occupy or annex Palestinian territory, he told Manachem Begin to keep Gaza or let it go free. Israel kept Gaza for a while, recruited members of the
Muslim Brotherhood and trained them to fight Arafat's PLO. Instead of doing
that, the Brotherhood members gave themselves the name Hamas, turned against
the Israelis and kicked them out of Gaza .
And that's not how settlers withdraw unilaterally.
The Palestinians of the West Bank know this history, and
treat with contempt any suggestion that Israel will dismantle settlements
without being pressured by the international community or by an insurrection
that might be named a Third Intifada.
To avoid the latter, the PLO leadership is doing all it can
to have the world pressure Israel to stop its criminal activities, ditch the
idea that God gave every riffraff calling himself a Jew the right to rob
Palestinian property, and sit down to discuss the modality of vacating the West
Bank peacefully.