Qurei: Settler attacks signal Israel's rejection of peace

Date: 04 / 12 / 2008 Time: 09:29



Jerusalem – Ma’an – The head of the Palestinian negotiating team, former Prime Minister Ahmad Qurei said on Wednesday that widespread settler violence in the West Bank amounts to an unannounced rejection of a two-state peace agreement.

Qurei was referring specifically to rioting by Israeli settlers in the city of Hebron, which has left dozens injured. Settler groups have descended on Hebron over the last week fearing that the Israeli military will implement a court order to evacuate one settler-occupied house.

His remark came during a meeting with Swiss and Australian diplomats in Qurei’s office in the town of Abu Dis, in East Jerusalem.

The chief negotiator said that his team would not accept any agreement with Israel that does not fulfill Palestinians’ rights, specifically the right of return, self-determination and an independent Palestinian state.

a little more...
http://maannews.net/en/index.php?opr=ShowDetails&ID=33701

but really, are we looking at the future? Will these out-of-control Israelis have the power to prevent an eventual 2-state solution?

Can anyone answer the question of what the governments (settlement expansion has been a feature of EVERY gov't convened since 1967... even the "left" labor party) of Israel were ever, ever thinking, allowing hundreds of thousands of religious ideologues to settle in the WB?

The Israeli government removed those settlers in both cases, sometimes evicting them by force.

Had the Camp David proposal been accepted by the Palestinian side, Israel would have dismantled the vast majority of the West Bank settlements and evicted its residents as it did in Sinai in 1978.

It would not be pleasant or pretty, but I am hopeful that it would happen.

...so why not?

This should have been over 8 years ago in what will probably be Israel's best ever offer. Arafat blew it, Prince Bandar of S.Arabia called that decision a crime. Fast forward 8 years, many lives lost, are Palestinians better off now than they were 8 years ago?

And still, there are many who think Arafat made the right decision.

Israel is siding against some of their own citizens, taking up arms against their own citizens, in the interest of peace.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=124x226390

Lots of bloggers too, talking about how Palestinians end up getting shot in the midst of the Israeli civil war...

on people who don't believe the rule of law applies to them. Something like what this country had to do when we sent National Guard troops to the deep south during school desgregation.

Ultimately it seems to me to be in the interests of maintaining the integrity of the state, because you can't do that when you have large segments of the population who believe they can operate entirely outside the law with impunity.

It's closely related to the Israel argument that rocket attacks out of Gaza represent the Palestinians as a whole.

Qurei isn't saying that the settlers represent Israelis as a whole - he's saying they reflect the sentiments of the government...

and when the various jihadnkim attack it also:

amounts to an unannounced rejection of a two-state peace agreement.

i mean we do want to maintain a single standard......dont we?

A terrorist government, opposed to any form of peace, is obviously NOT a rejection of the two state solution, despite their very rhetoric to the contrary.

Some people just seem not to want to believe Hamas,

They think they know what Hamas believes better than what Hamas actually says and does.

I have always found that strange and puzzling, that anyone can believe there is hope for a two state solution with Hamas on board, since they have never changed their virulent rhetoric for a single minute, and are clear that annihilating Israel continues to be their top goal.