Wednesday, June 26, 2019
Elder of Ziyon
Let's examine what Mohammed Shtayyeh, the new prime minister of the Palestinian Authority, says to Christiane Amanpour on PBS:
Amanpour: Why would you boycott an event that is designed simply to explore, remember it's called a workshop, the opportunity to give billions of dollars, tens of billions of dollars, $50 billion to your people and the Palestinian Authority?
Shtayyeh: The figures are so exaggerated to the extent that we don't believe it, first.
Is that a reason to boycott?
Secondly, this economic workshop is totally diverse from any dimension. Economic problem in Palestine has nothing to do with the economic policy of anybody. The economic problem here, the crisis is the Israeli measures that are forced on us and the financial war that has been declared by the American administration on the Palestinian people, on the United Nations association for the Palestinian refugees. so the issue is not an economic issue.
The Palestinians are hoping for sovereign state. The issue is not economic.
We have seen this before.
Secretary Shultz was here in 1983. He came to say solving the problem has to do with improving the living conditions of the Palestinians.
This didn't materialize.
I can't find a record of that statement by Shultz, but Israel tried hard to improve the living conditions of Palestinians in 1983, by offering them essentially free housing in exchange for leaving the UNRWA camps.
After a number of Palestinians took Israel up on that offer, the Palestinian leaders hut down the program and even got a series of UN resolutions to stop Israel from moving Palestinians from decrepit camps into permanent housing. (UN A/38/PV.98 15 Dec. 1983)
If there was no progress towards improving living conditions for Palestinians in 1983, it is because the Palestinian leadership actively fought against it! Some reports say they threatened anyone who took Israel up on the offer.
Later, in 1988. Shultz tried again to jump start a Middle East peace process - and the Palestinians boycotted speaking to him.
Shultz`s efforts suffered a setback Friday when a group of prominent Palestinians stayed away from a scheduled meeting with him.
Shultz, in a gesture to the Palestinians, traveled to the American Colony Hotel in predominantly Arab East Jerusalem in the hope that they would ignore orders by the Palestine Liberation Organization not to attend the meeting.
When the Palestinians failed to appear, Shultz read a four-page ''statement to Palestinians'' in front of television cameras.
Now they are pretending that any lack of progress was the US' fault!
Shtayyeh goes on:
Then John Kerry promised the Palestinians $4 billion. This has never materialized.Kerry proposed a "Bahrain lite" plan in 2013.The person whose task was to implement this economic plan was Tony Blair, representing the Quartet.
Palestinians refused to cooperate with Blair, claiming he was too pro-Israel. He tried hard to improve their economic situation and they didn't want anything to do with him.
Now they are blaming the world for their own intransigence!
Speaking of Kerry, Shtayyeh wrote an op-ed in the New York Times blaming Israel for the failure of Kerry's attempt to find peace. This is a complete lie - the Israelis accepted the US framework for peace and Shtayyeh's team rejected it wholesale. (Of course, the NYT didn't fact check Shtayyeh's op-ed, claiming that Israel didn't do its promised partial freeze on settlement building and releasing prisoners.)
Amanpour: You're basically saying that if I get you right, there's no point having the cart before the horse, that promises and ideas of money and investment will not work outside a political framework?
Shtayyeh: Exactly. You are right. The whole exercise that has been there, what has been presented, it's simply a cut and paste issue [of previous plans.] We have seen it in several documents but the issue is not about fixed issues. This is like a desktop work. This is somebody who is totally divorced from reality.
The only reason any previous economic plan hasn't worked is because people like Shtayyeh have actively sabotaged them. It isn't that the world couldn't have helped improve the Palestinian economy - it is that leaders like Shtayyeh didn't want any economic improvement before they achieved their political ambitions, and to hell with the Palestinian people.
Now they are gaslighting the world by saying that the plans failed because of broken promises by the West.
The new Palestinian Arab prime minister is more of a liar than the last two. It is not surprising; he only has the job because his boss, Mahmoud Abbas, wanted his Fatah party to dominate the cabinet so the dictator dissolved the previous puppet government to forestall any chance of independent thought in the Palestinian Authority.
I'm not a fan of Christiane Amanpour, but she started off the interview with an excellent question - and failed to follow through and catch Shtayyeh on his lies.
I'm not a fan of Christiane Amanpour, but she started off the interview with an excellent question - and failed to follow through and catch Shtayyeh on his lies.
