Today's absurdity comes from Ali Jarbawi, political scientist at Birzeit University and a former minister of the Palestinian Authority.
The latest speech by Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, before the United Nations General Assembly represented a significant departure in his thinking. Until last week, Mr. Abbas had been the firmest believer in and most loyal champion of direct negotiations with Israel under the exclusive sponsorship of the United States. He insisted constantly that these negotiations were the only way to reach a political settlement to the conflict.For the past six years, Abbas has been doing everything possible to avoid direct negotiations with Israel.
Over the years, he was extremely conciliatory toward Israel, and offered up one concession after another on several key issues, presuming that that would enable him to appease Israel and convince it to end its occupation and work with him to achieve a political settlement, which would finally allow for the creation of the long-awaited Palestinian state.Abbas has not made a single public concession to Israel - and he has bragged about his intransigence on multiple occasions.
None of Mr. Abbas’s conciliations or concessions to Israel ever bore fruit. In fact, over time, the country tilted increasingly rightward and its stubbornness and intractability toward the Palestinians grew.Leftist hero Yitzchak Rabin was far more hawkish at the time of his murder than Bibi is today. The only rightward tilt in Israel were as responses to the Palestinian Arab decision to support terrorists in 2001 and in 2014.
Mr. Abbas’s speech before the United Nations was one of his best since he became Palestinian president nine years ago.This is the speech where he said Israel was guilty of "genocide."
Really, the New York Times should at least pretend to publish op-eds that aren't so ridiculously easy to prove insane. Give me a little bit of a challenge, OK?
