Profile of a Rigged Peace Process

Profile of a Rigged Peace Process

by Stephen Lendman

Count the ways. Tzipi Livni is Israel's chief negotiator. She's hardline. She supports occupation harshness. She deplores Palestinian sovereignty.

She's a wolf in sheep's clothing. She's an unindicted war criminal. She favors Pax Israeliana. She does so in the worst sense. She doesn't negotiate. She demands.

Isaac Molho's attending. He's Netanyahu's personal envoy. He represents his hardline views. They're one way. They spurn Palestinian rights.

Molho's a senior E.S. Shimron, I. Molho, Persky & Co. partner. He practices corporate law, company liquidations and rehabilitation, telecommunications, entertainment law, and intellectual property.

He represents large corporations, institutions, and foreign governments. He's Jerusalem-based honorary Consul General of Austria.

He chairs the Israel Museum board. He's a Board of the Jewish People Policy Planning Institute member. He's closely tied to Western interests.

He's a longtime Netanyahu associate. He's currently his personal envoy/peace talks negotiator. He part of the rigged process.

America's no honest broker. It never was. It's not now. It's involvement assures failure and betrayal. John Kerry is Israel's man at State.

His pro-Israeli voting record's impeccable. It's second to none. He favors maintaining a longstanding special relationship. He supports Israel's worst crimes.

He supports moving America's embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Doing so is illegal. In 1947, the UN declared it an international city. It remains so today.

He calls Jerusalem "Israel's indisputable capital." In 2009, he signed a Senate resolution opposing Palestinian self-determination.

He's bad news. He one-sidedly favors Israel. He deplores Palestinian rights. His involvement assures failure and betrayal.

So does Martin Indyk's appointment. He's Obama's special envoy. Mazin Qumsiyeh's a distinguished Palestinian academic.

He calls appointing him "to broker a deal between another wolf and a chicken quite a feat. We will see how fast this chicken will get fleeced."

Indyk's an unapologetic Zionist hardliner. He's an Israeli lobbyist. He was Clinton's ambassador to Israel. He had no US citizenship at the time. An accelerated process secured it. It took less than two weeks. He was America's only foreign-born US Israeli ambassador.

He was Clinton's Near East and South Asian Affairs senior director. He was on his National Security Council. He was principal presidential advisor on Arab/Israeli issues, Iraq, Iran and South Asia.

He was born in England. He grew up in Australia. During the 1973 Yom Kippur War, he was a kibbutz volunteer. He emigrated to America.

In 1982, he was AIPAC's deputy research director. In 1985, he founded the pro-Israeli Washington Institute for Near East Policy. It's an AIPAC offshoot.

In May 2002, Zionist billionaire Haim Saban founded the Brookings Institution's Saban Center for Middle East Policy. It's a pro-Israeli front group.

Indyk served as its founding director. He's Brookings' Foreign Policy Program vice president and director. He's taking leave for his current assignment. He's unapologetically pro-Israeli. He spurns Palestinian rights.

He's always been this way. He's no honest broker. He never was. He's not now. His deplorable record shows it. His appointment assures no chance for what Palestinians most want.

Saeb Erekat's the PA's chief negotiator. He's a longtime Israeli collaborator. Al Jazeera's Transparency Unit exposed him. A previous article discussed its Palestine Papers.

They're voluminous. They're detailed. They show Erekat betrayed his people. He unconditionally surrendered. So did Mahmoud Abbas.

He's a coup d'etat president. He's illegitimate. Israel rigged his election. His term expired in January 2009. He refuses to call new elections. He's Israel's enforcer.

He and Erekat are longtime Israeli collaborators. They pretend otherwise. They sold out at the 1991 Madrid Conference. They've done it ever since. They're well rewarded for services rendered. Their agenda reflects treachery.

On February 13, 2011, the Los Angeles Times published a stunning piece. It was totally out of character. It headlined "The Palestinian people betrayed," saying:

"A massive archive of documents leaked to Al Jazeera and Britain's Guardian newspaper offers irrefutable proof that years of negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians have been an empty sham."

"The papers make clear that the time has come for Palestinians and anyone interested in the cause of justice to abandon the charade of official diplomacy and pursue other, more creative and nonviolent paths toward the realization of a genuine, just peace."

"The papers give the lie to Israel's claim that it yearns for peace but lacks a Palestinian 'partner.' "

"And they reinforce the sense that Israel has gone along with these negotiations only to buy time to expropriate more Palestinian land, demolish more Palestinian homes, expel more Palestinian families and build more colonies for the exclusive use of Jewish settlers in militarily occupied territory, thereby cementing new realities on the ground that would make a Palestinian state a geophysical impossibility."

"The major revelation from the documents, indeed, is the illustration they furnish of just how far the Palestinian negotiators were willing to go to placate Israel."

"Men like Saeb Erekat, Mahmoud Abbas and Ahmed Qurei - the lead Palestinian negotiators in all these years - are of a type that has come forth in every colonial conflict of the modern age."

"Faced with the overwhelming brute power with which colonial states have always sought to break the will of indigenous peoples, they inhabit the craven weakness that the situation seems to dictate."

"Convinced that colonialism cannot be defeated, they seek to carve out some petty managerial role within it from which they might benefit, even if at the expense of their people."

"These men, we must remember, were not elected to negotiate an agreement with Israel."

"They have no legitimacy, offer zero credibility and can make no real claim to represent the views of Palestinians."

"And yet they were apparently willing to bargain away right(s) at the very heart of the Palestinian struggle."

They betray(ed) the Palestinians inside Israel by agreeing to Israel's definition of itself as a Jewish state, knowing that that would doom Israel's non-Jewish Palestinian minority…"

They legitimized "institutional racism…" They increased "the prospect of further ethnic cleansing…"

They facilitated slow motion genocide. It's been ongoing for decades. So have fake peace talks. They're an exercise in duplicity, failure and betrayal. This time's no different. Illusion substitutes for reality.

A Final Comment

AP reporter Matthew Lee surprises. Several times he challenged State Department spokespersons. He did so responsibly. He supports Edward Snowden's right to speak freely. He's entitled to a public forum.

He questioned Martin Indyk's appointment. He's one-sidedly pro-Israeli. He assures failure and betrayal. His exchange with State Department spokeswoman Jennifer Psaki went as follows:

ML: Now, beyond logistics, when he announced or appointed Ambassador Indyk to this post, the Secretary said that the Ambassador knows what has worked and what hasn