From Ian:
It is time to break up the Quartet
Khaled Abu Toameh: Europe's "Good Terrorists": Because They Might Destroy Israel?
It is time to break up the Quartet
For different reasons, each of the four Quartet members is unqualified to negotiate an Israeli-Palestinian agreement.
• The EU: when not involved in promoting the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, attempting to sanction Israeli citizens, or labeling food from Israel (all the easier to boycott), the European Union (an increasingly oxymoronic term) is busy negotiating its own continued existence. It has never been a neutral arbiter in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.
Jennifer Rubin noted three years ago that the EU “strives for relevance but its anti-Israeli tendencies make it particularly unsuited to play any constructive role in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.” The EU was also instrumental in the UN’s International Court of Justice’s (ICJ) denunciation as illegal Israel’s wall that ended the wave of successful Palestinian suicide bombers. Its statement on November 18, 2003, declared that: “Palestinian land has been confiscated to build the wall.” Fortunately the ICJ’s rulings are non-binding, including the order for Israel to compensate the Palestinian people for inconveniences the wall had caused.
• The UN: like the EU, the UN has been reliably in favor of the Palestinians and opposed to Israel ever since it voted to divide the former British Mandate into two nations. Since then it has denounced Israeli “occupation” 2,342 times and “settlements” 256 times, as compiled by Eugene Kontorovich and Penny Grunseid.
Meanwhile, it ignores or rationalizes Palestinian terrorism. In January of this year, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon excused Palestinian terrorism by noting that “it is human nature to react to occupation.”
• Russia: the nation that in the past decade has invaded Ukraine and Georgia, and annexed Crimea, has no moral standing in negotiations over which territories will comprise a Palestinian state. Historically, Russia has supported Palestinian terrorism. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas earned his PhD in Holocaust denial at a Russian university. And Russia is an avowed ally of Israel’s enemies – Iran and Syria especially.
• The US: once upon a time the fourth member of the Quartet could be relied upon to defend Israel from attacks at the UN, but not under this president. Obama feigned outrage over the Russians interfering in the US election, but did little to conceal his interference in the Israeli election, sending his own campaign pros and spending American taxpayer funds in an attempt to ensure the defeat of Benjamin Netanyahu. Many interpreted the line about “building a wall” in Obama’s final speech to the UN as a shot at Trump, but it seems more likely a shot at Israel.
According to its mandate, the Quartet was created “to help mediate Middle East peace negotiations and to support Palestinian economic development and institution-building in preparation for eventual statehood.”
The problem is that the Palestinians have refused statehood repeatedly for one reason: it could not coexist with a State of Israel. Yasser Arafat’s insistence on a “right of return” that would flood a nation of eight million Jews with twice as many Muslims ended the 2000 Camp David talks. The stated purpose of the Quartet is untenable until the Palestinians change. As Golda Meir purportedly said: “We will only have peace with the Arabs when they love their children more than they hate us.”
The only redeeming value of the Quartet (and the real miracle of the past eight years) is that Obama didn’t turn it into a Quintet by installing Iran as the fifth member.
Khaled Abu Toameh: Europe's "Good Terrorists": Because They Might Destroy Israel?
Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri would like the Europeans to understand that they need not worry about terrorism by the Islamist movement because the attacks will be directed only against Israel.
The European Court of Justice (EJC) is sending the message to Hamas that Europeans see no problem with Hamas's desire to destroy Israel and continue to launch terrorist attacks against Jews. This message also undermines those Palestinians who still believe in a peace with Israel.
The EJC recommendation to remove Hamas from the EU's terrorism blacklist comes at a time when countries such as Egypt, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates and even Saudi Arabia, as well as the Palestinian Authority, are doing their utmost to weaken Hamas.
Appeasing terrorists is a dangerous game: it has already backfired on its foolhardy players and will continue to do so. This is exactly how Muslims conquered Iran, Turkey, North Africa and much of Europe, including Hungary, Greece, Poland, Romania, and the Balkans -- countries that still recall a real "occupation," an Islamist one, and abundantly want none of it.
The EU and the ECJ need to be stopped before they do any more harm to Palestinians, Christians and Jews -- or to Europe.





















