Tuesday, April 20, 2010
[The following, by Eamonn McDonagh, is crossposted from Z Word.]
5. El País (i)
The March 14th editorial in El Páis dealing with fallout from Biden's visit is titled "Dark Horizon", and starts like this,
The U.S. Vice President, Joseph Biden, arrived in Tel Aviv last week with the intention of promoting a rapprochement between Israelis and Palestinians, but he was received by the Netanyahu Government with the announcement of new settlement projects: 112 housing units in the West Bank and 1,600 in East Jerusalem.
There's a small mistake in this. The announcement about the 112 housing units in West Bank came before Biden arrived in Israel. The editorial goes on,
The trip was intended to reinforce the start of a new round of peace talks aimed at a two-state solution, a step that Washington deems necessary to deal with the most important challenge in the region; halting Iran's nuclear programme while avoiding an attempt by Israel to do so through a military strike.
The idea of the principal merit of the two-state solution being that it would help halt the Iranian nuclear programme while lessening the chance that the Israelis might use force to halt it themselves is an original one, to say that the least. It seems to rest on some vague notion that the motive for the ayatollahs nuclear drive is that they are stung by the injustice of the Palestinians not having a state and were that situation to be rectified they would devote their energy to other matters. This is not a view that would seem to coincide well with what is known about the ideology and activities of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The editorial continues,
Although Netanyahu apologized for the bad timing of the announcement, after it was condemned by the United States, he did not backtrack on its substance and forced Biden, in last speech, at the university [of Tel Aviv] to underline the fact that the settlements endangered the lives of American soldiers and could unleash a bloody conflict in a volatile region.
Assuming that Biden actually delivered the text of the speech that is on his official website, El País is quite wrong to maintain that he said that Israeli settlements are endangering the lives of American soldiers in Iraq or anywhere else. The editorial concludes,
President Obama's promise, explicitly made in Cairo, to work for the creation of a Palestinian state, which Netanyahu subsequently agreed to, now faces obstacles which may be insurmountable. On the Israeli side, the current prime minister's government includes extremist groups who are very reluctant to make the slightest concession to the Palestinians, among them the ultra-nationalist party lead by the Foreign Minister, of Russian origin, Avigdor Lieberman and Eli Yishai, leader of the ultra-Orthodox Shas party, who in his role as Interior Minister set the cat among the pigeons with his announcement on settlements in East Jerusalem. The Palestinians, for their part, are divided between the terrorists who rule Hamas and the weakened Fatah, without electoral legitimacy, which governs the West Bank. "The demographic reality makes it difficult for Israel to be the Jewish home and a democratic state," Biden said in his speech and pointed to the urgency of the creation of two states. But any negotiation can only begin with a halt to settlements so Netanyahu's policy must be interpreted as an open provocation to Obama's plans in the region, plans which may founder and so open the doors to a dark horizon.
First a factual error, what Biden actually said was,
It's no secret the demographic realities make it increasingly difficult for Israel to remain both a Jewish homeland and a democratic country in the absence of the Palestinian state.
So, in Biden's view there no contradiction between a state being a homeland for Jews and being democratic. You could argue that the editorial writer immediately follows the misquote with a reference to the urgency of creating a Palestinian state but still, it's noteworthy that such a patently absurd statement should have made it into the final text.
And then there's the reference to Lieberman being of "Russian", (in fact, Moldovan) origin. What purpose does it serve here? Given that it's not a secret that Israel is a country which has attracted immigrants from all over the world and that Lieberman's biography is well known, it's hard to see it as other than a grace note meant to remind readers that in the writer's view, there is something inherently odd and inauthentic about Israel.
However, although it repeats the new received wisdom that settlement activity is the only obstacle to a renewal of peace talks, it does not hold that they are the only obstacle to peace and makes no bones about the deficits and weaknesses on the Palestinian side of equation. And, unlike the The Guardian's editorial, there are no whispers of hatreds that long predate the foundation of Israel or the growth of Palestinian national consciousness.
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This is the third post in a series of five. The first is here and the second here.
Listed below are links to blogs that reference this entry: Biden's Visit in The Guardian and El País III.
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[The following, by Eamonn McDonagh, is crossposted from Z Word.] 6. El País (ii) Juan Miguel Muñoz is the Jerusalem correspondent for El País and nobody who has followed his coverage of the Israel-Palestine conflict in recent years can have... Read More
[The following, by Eamonn McDonagh, is crossposted from Z Word.] 7. Conclusion There are far more similarities than differences in the two papers coverage of the crisis. Both see Israel as entirely at fault, whether through malevolence or incompetence,... Read More
Cant believe you missed this Solomon. These 2 are going at it in Foreign Affairs mag. And in cas you missed it: Khalidi is being printed in Foreign Affairs mag. They both appeared on CNN's Fareed Zakaria GPS. I cant find the video though.
Ron Radosh lays it out here...
http://pajamasmedia.com/ronradosh/2010/04/18/why-rashid-khalidi-is-happy-the-obama-middle-east-policy-and-the-palestinians/
I've read a bit about it. Frankly I've been too swamped recently to keep up with the same pace I've been posting at the past few months. Solomonia don't pay the bills.
Indeed.