Indyk vs. Indyk

[Jefferson23]

by Jamie Stern-Weiner | published May 12, 2014 - 11:31am

Israelis and Palestinians share responsibility for the collapse of Middle East peace talks. That was the message delivered on Thursday by US special envoy to the peace process Martin Indyk, in a speech to the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP). Israel issued tenders for 4,800 settlement units during the talks, he noted, while on the Palestinian side, accession to international treaties and reconciliation with Hamas had been “unhelpful” to US efforts to rescue an already faltering process.

More generally, Indyk argued, the parties’ lack of any “sense of urgency” made it impossible to bridge the gaps between them. Israeli politicians and their constituents were in no rush to abandon a “comfortable status quo,” while Palestinian officials found it “easier” to “appeal to international bodies in their supposed pursuit of ‘justice’ and their ‘rights’” than to “make the gut-wrenching compromises necessary to achieve peace.”

As a diagnosis of the talks’ collapse, Indyk’s speech flattered Israel. As unnamed “senior American officials” -- Indyk apparently among them -- had explained to veteran Israeli journalist Nahum Barnea earlier in the week, the negotiations were not derailed by “both sides.” The “primary sabotage,” they insisted, “came from the settlements.” Far from lamenting the Palestinians’ evasion of necessary compromises, the officials listed Palestinian President Mahmoud ‘Abbas’ many concessions, including on issues at the core of the conflict. Whereas Indyk’s speech credits Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with having displayed a measure of “flexibility,” the officials made clear that Netanyahu at most, and at the last minute, and only in reference to his own extremist positions, budged an “inch.”

We did not, as Indyk suggests, need another six months of talks to “define” what those positions were. Leaked internal documents from previous rounds, published by Al Jazeera three years ago as the Palestine Papers, delineate them with painful clarity. They show that Israel’s terms for settling the conflict have remained consistent for more than a decade: annexation by Israel of the major settlement blocs, on approximately 9 percent of the West Bank; and a nullification of the Palestinian refugees’ right of return.

http://merip.org/indyk-vs-indyk

[azurnoir]

1. of course Israel is in no hurry for 'peace' as it already has it to a great degree

it controls all of the important land and resources in the West Bank, keeps Gaza under it's boot-heel, and Bibi IMO has essentially hunkered down and is waiting for Obama's term to pass-as all US Presidents do

Israel seems to think it can keep the status-quo forever

[Jefferson23]

2. Yep....clear as a bell that agenda..although depending on Abbas' ability to honor his people

with a fight, Bibi may get just what he wants, when he wants it.

The recent Peres article places Abbas as willing to have conceded the majority of the WB...horrifying
for many reasons, and what percentage of those citizens he represents knew he was planning
on doing that three years ago? They all need to be replaced.