Fear and Loathing on the Israel-Palestine Negotiation Trail

Nightmare Theater: Where flesh eating diplo-zombies stumble out of midnight theater screenings of “Night of the Living Dead” that have been running since 1968, and materialize in the form of Martin Indyk , Tzippi Livni and John Kerry to lunge at the quivering necks of the hapless Palestine delegation who are once again participating in this new iteration of “getting down to the tough negotiations of hammering out the basis for new, serious sit-downs to talk about further talks without preconditions.” (but plenty of post-conditions: viz. Israel gets everything it wants and the Palestinian people get nothing.)

But why would the Palestinian Authority engage in such talks? Fear. Fear of losing their subsidy that keeps them in a standard of living way above the mass of Palestinian people. Fear of not being recognized by Western governments as substantial representatives of peace and reason. Fear of losing their titles and having to descend to level of Palestinian villagers (whom they fear might get tired of the PA’s lack of defense of their basic rights. Do the Palestinian villagers loathe the PA?…most likely many do.). Everyone knows the talks are a sham. Every day Israel steals the land that is supposed to be part of the Palestinian “state.”

Abbas and company also fear and loathe Hamas and hope to gain an advantage over them. Hamas loathes the PA, but they have worse trouble with the loathsome Egyptian military’s seizure of power and organized decimation of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Obama wants sham negotiations so he can palm them off as real, because he fears looking like a powerless namby-pamby. He wants to look like a statesman. Netanyahu is pretending to negotiate so the EU and the US won’t give him a hard time. While he and his minions loathe the “Arabs” who won’t just shut up and go away from Greater Israel (borders TBA). They participate in the fake talks and use them to angle for more freebies from the US. Netanyahu also assures the Zionist right that they won’t ever give up any land that they have already taken and will eventually take all of it.

And what about our new Secretary of State? John Kerry always looks like he has to take a pee really bad, but has to hold it in while he gives a platitudinous speech. He reminds me of the comedian Pat Paulson who was a regular on the Smothers Brothers Show (in the 1960s).Every presidential election they had a running gag of “Pat Paulson for president,” who’s campaign speech consisted of looking dazed and confused while raising an index finger in the air and saying: “Why Not?”


Obama and Netanyahu along with the mad dogs of Zionism (AIPAC, WZO, ADL, and the Senators and Representatives they have bought, and the “diplomats” they have placed in the State Department) loathe the fact that Palestine’s status was upgraded by the UN from “observer” to that of a “non-state member.” And they feared that the PA would take Israel to the International Court of Justice and most likely get a favorable ruling against Israel’s violation of human rights. Of course neither Israel nor the US recognize the court’s jurisdiction, but other nations do and it makes the US and Israel look worse than they already are.

So the US told the PA to participate in the fraudulent negotiations and not cause trouble with the International Court and paid them off to comply.

As for Israel? Hey! The negotiations have always worked out well for them for the last twenty years….so why not?