The Road Map: curiosier and curiosier

[humus_sapiens]

Official PA Website: Release of Palestinains Detainees "not referred to in the "roadmap"."

http://www.imra.org.il/story.php3?id=17568

...
"The issue of prisoners is issue number one,” said Palestinian Minister of Prisoner Affairs Hisham Abdel-Razeq. "It is the key for calm and stability, for the continuation of the cease-fire and for the continuation of the political process.”
...

IMHO, we need to learn from our Arab cousins. It takes a lot of hutzpah to call an arbitrary requirement to release thousands of terrorists, the requirement that's not in the RMP and actually contradicts its declared goal (at least on paper) of peace, responsibility and stopping terror.

The real reasons (in no particular order) for this request, IMHO:

1. The more goodwill and "confidence building" Israel provides, the nastier and longer the list of Arab "issues" with Israel is gonna get. Until Israelis learn to put the foot down and say NO!

2. The terror infrastructure is depleted, needs revitalization.

3. Abbas needs to show "something". But he hasn't done anything on his side, because he's afraid of HAMAS. Actually, this shows clearly the intentions of our "friends", as well as how much they care about their own stability and peace.

4. For them, this is a way to find out the limits of what they can get away with. Just like sending Arab children to throw rocks at soldiers.

[humus_sapiens]

HonestReporting on the same point:


...
A key component of the road map is the uprooting of terror groups. The PA, however, rather than directly confront Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Fatah, cut a deal with them on the side — a hudna, or tactical ceasefire.

The hudna between the PA and terror groups sets an outrageous (and under-reported) condition for suspending Palestinian terror: Israel's "release of all prisoners and detainees, Palestinian and Arab...without condition or restriction."

Remarkably, Israel has been willing to release scores of prisoners as a goodwill gesture, and on Sunday the Israeli cabinet approved the release of an additional 300.

The PA's reaction: PA minister Abdel Razek said the PA will stop implementing the road map peace plan and will halt all negotiations with Israel if Israel doesn't release all of the Palestinian prisoners. And Radi Jarai, deputy PA minister, said "there is a hudna that has been announced and Israel has to fulfill its obligations in accordance with this agreement."

Look what's happened: The road map, accepted by both the PA and Israel to international fanfare, has been taken hostage by the hudna, an internal Palestinian deal that Israel never agreed to.

The world media, in surreal fashion, have accepted this shift, allowing Hamas to set the terms for road map progress:

--- The New York Times reported this week: "The release of Palestinian prisoners is just one of many demands placed on both sides under the Mideast peace plan, known as the road map."

Actually, the road map says absolutely nothing about release of Palestinian prisoners. Only the hudna — which Israel never agreed to — demands a prisoner release.

[The Times removed this line in a later edition, but the original edition is still in wide circulation — for example, on Yahoo News]

Comments to: letters@nytimes.com

--- Los Angeles Times: "Along with prisoner releases, the next important element in moving ahead with the 'road map' is the Palestinian demand that Israel withdraw from more of the West Bank."

Again, prisoner releases are not a part of the road map. And according to the road map, the PA's obligation to uproot terror is clearly "the next important element."

Comments to: letters@latimes.com

--- BBC: "Israeli officials say members of Hamas or Islamic Jihad are not included among those to be freed, a decision which could jeopardise the truce and threaten the entire peace process."

Note the BBC's logic: Israel's refusal to immediately release over 6,000 prisoners (many of whom are convicted murders) jeopardizes the "truce." The BBC would have us believe that Israel, therefore, is the guilty party for the possible failure of the road map.

Comments to: newsonline@bbc.co.uk

Stage One of the road map demands that the PA "arrest, disrupt, and restrain" terror groups, eliminating their influence. How have those same terror groups not only wrestled control of the PA's negotiations, but convinced the media that their outrageous demands are actually integral to the roadmap?!

Associated Press twists the truth a complete 180 degrees, presenting the basic tenets of the road map as some kind of Israeli-American subplot:

"Beyond policing the truce, Israel and the United States want the Palestinians to disarm and dismantle extremist groups... "

Israel and the United States? The road map is authored by the Quartet of the US, EU, UN and Russia. Abu Mazen and the PA agreed and committed to these terms. No, it is not just "Israel and the United States [who] want the Palestinians to disarm and dismantle extremist groups."

Comments to: feedback@ap.org

HonestReporting encourages members to monitor their local media for distortion of the agreed terms of the road map, and the trend to hold Israel responsible for internal Palestinian agreements.


If you write to the press (or anywhere, for that matter), please be polite, brief and authentic. Unlike me.

[yoyo]

Our new “peace partner”
16 July 2003

What a feeling of euphoria today, Saddam Hussein has apparently vanished into thin air and the International Community have decided to bring peace to Israel and her 30 year old new neighbour called “the Palestinians”. Even our “best friend” George W. Bush, which according to some is “the best friend we ever had in the US” has decided to nail the problem once and for all. New time, new “peace move”, he has made history by being the first US President that speaks of an “independent” and “viable Palestinian state”. Who said Bush is ignorant and does not understand the world, he is perfectly in tune with Europe (old and new)!

In a move that would make his ex-president of a father proud, Bush - the son - decided to call his own “peace” conference in Aquaba at the end of June. Arafat, rightly being sideline by Israel and the US, Bush has finally found a leader “not compromised with terror”. Or should I say a “reformed” Holocaust denier and financer of many terrorist acts against Jews around the world. I present Abu Mazen reborn to his original “likeable” name: Mahmoud Abbas. This is not schizophrenia, it is an Arab tradition to have two names, one for the good guy and one for the bad guy.

Mazen came to Aquaba with one message “we renounce violence and the armed intifadah is over”. In 1974 as in 1993 Arafat came with the same message...We all know the results! But let me give this new “peace partner” the benefit of the doubt. After all if a “good willed” society can give birth to evil, maybe one can assume that a terrorist based society can give birth to good. After all teshuva is a tenet of Judaism. So for the moment I shall call him Abbas and drop his “nom de guerre” Mazen.

So Abbas went out of his way to “compromise” at Aquaba although he could not “compromise” enough to accept the existence of Israel as a Jewish State. Maybe Abbas is like his “predecessor”, Arafat, who was willing to have a 2 states solution: a state of Palestine living peacefully side by side with a state full of Palestinians. Who knows what goes through the mind of an Arab leader? Apparently Jews cannot possibly know, as the world keeps on reminding us, we “do not understand Arab peaceful intentions”.

After this brilliant show at Aquaba we should all hope for a “new peaceful Middle East”, as journalists across the world have us believe. Abbas went back to his camp to implement this new stage-by-stage solution called the Road Map. For the next-to-nothing he gave, he came back home being called “a traitor” from the many terrorist groups, so he decided to tell them the truth “every thing I gave and said was cleared by Arafat first”. Arafat? I thought he was supposed to be replaced? Let’s not belittle him, there may just be a simple explanation – Arafat has become his advisor.

Abbas also stated that “he” accepted the Road Map and “he” is committed to it, “unlike” Ariel Sharon who has roughly 14 objections. Whilst Ariel Sharon, with all his “objections” was uprooting settlers from the Land of Israel, to please the new Centurion W. Bush, Abbas had to start disarming the terrorists (according to the plan he, not Sharon, wholeheartedly approved). Let’s not be too brutal, Abbas method was to sit down and talk it over with them. When they refused to disarm, he proposed to buy their arms 4 times their worth. If I were a cynic, which I’m not, I would say that he proposed for Western money to pay four times the price of their arms to allow them to sell one gun and buy four. This little exercise never worked either so he came with a brilliant idea – a Hudna*. Now this is just great, the Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Fatah can now enjoy the summer and get a well-deserved holiday of 3 months to compensate for their hard work of blowing up Jews. But don’t you go and think that they are doing nothing with their free time; they are setting up camp across the territories controlled by the PLO for kids and they are training them...FOR MARTYRDOM! This Hudna could not come at a better time, a few days earlier terrorists were getting targeted every day. Now they can reorganize, retrain and recruit a new generation of homicide bombers.

Mahmoud Abbas may be a “weak man” like US Ambassador Kurtzer said but he has found the answer to every difficult question: the threat resignation. Every time he has to deliver, Mr. Abbas give a theatrical resignation. Every time he does it, he knows that Bush will ask Sharon to make life a bit “easier” for him. In other words Abbas says “hold me back...I am leaving...hold me back”. He must have learnt it from Peres. The last time he failed to destroy the terrorist’s infrastructure, he threatened to resign and like clockwork Bush phoned Sharon to ask him to “free more terrorists”. No joke, Abbas has apparently a huge problem with the terrorists currently in the territories and his life would be easier if he had more. I wonder if Bush would advise an alcoholic to drink more in order to get better.

This “fragile” cease-fire, according to Abbas, was the result of extremely painful negotiations and Israel should do everything to help him keep it. The Hamas agreed, then Islamic Jihad agreed, then the Fatah reluctantly signed up to this. Wait a minute, I thought if there was one party for who Abbas was speaking for, in Aquaba, it was his own party: the Fatah. If he wasn’t talking for the Fatah and the PLO, in the name of whom was he speaking for? Himself? Anyway, last in - first out, the Fatah could not keep it up more than 24 hours. The need to blow up Jews seems to be too strong to resist. Since the Hudna, which officially no one broke, Abbas own party have blow up a family in their own home, knifed a bystander, shot citizen and soldiers alike and recently kidnapped a taxi driver. To our “best friend” administration in the US these are “enemies of peace” but the top Fatah guy is “a man worth of trust” to conduct the Road Map to a “successful” conclusion.

This entire circus would be amusing if it did not cost so many lives, however it does. Abbas and Mazen are one and the same, Arafat is still in control, the terrorists will not get disarmed and in the meanwhile Centurion W Bush keeps the pressure for Israel to evacuate Jews from the Land of Israel. You may ask why I sometimes refer to W. Bush as “Centurion”? That is because, I am afraid that Israel seems to have, today, the same relationship with the US that it had with Rome 2000 years ago. And if we don’t want to finish the same way, maybe it is time to stop this international circus once and for all and let the world know that 2000 years of kicking Jews around is truly over. The world may take time to forget an old habit but it is no reason to stop us making a start in reminding them.

-----------------------

* Hudna - Describes a 'cease-fire', an Arabic word which refers more accurately to a tactical truce. Its origin and meaning are deeply rooted in the Islamic tradition. In the year 628 AD, when surmising that his forces were too weak to overcome the rival Kuraysh tribes, the Prophet Mohammed concluded a ten-year truce accord with the Kuraysh. This agreement became known as the Hudaybiyya Accord, after the place where it was signed. Yet, less than two years later, having consolidated their power, the Muslim forces attacked the Kuraysh tribes and defeated them, allowing Mohammed to conquer the city of Mecca. Since that time, the term Hudna has been understood by Muslims as a tactical cease-fire that is intended only to allow a shift the balance of power. Once the balance of power has shifted, and the groundwork has been laid for a Muslim victory, the truce can then be broken

Source: Israel Embassy (Washington DC)
http://www.israelemb.org/articals/2003/June/2003062700.htm