Haniyeh: Rejection of new plan proof Israel doesn't want peace

[bemildred]

Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh on Friday said Israel's rejection of a new European peace initiative was proof the country did not want peace.

Haniyeh said the rejection was "proof that Israel doesn't want any form of stability or quiet in the region."

The initiative, sponsored by Spain, Italy and France, calls for increased international intervention in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

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MK Tzachi Hanegbi (Likud), Chairman of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, said on Friday that "The Initiative presented by Spain is uncalled for, and if it's accepted, it would prevent Israel from operating against terrorist infrastructure in Gaza."

Haaretz

[papau]

1. As far as we know, even the European Union is not interested in the idea."

plus there has been no endorsement of the idea by Hamas because the idea would mean they'd have to stop the rocket firing into Israel.

But I do love the quote that this proves Israel does not want peace - I bet that gets a lot of media! :-)

[bemildred]

2. Omitted paragraph:

Haniyeh also said the initiative contained "good points" that should be studied further.

Sounds like "interest" to me. Not that I disagree with you all that much, this is clearly about taking the obvious opportunity to make propaganda points. But Ms Livni would serve her cause better if she made interested noises while picking at the details and stalling, sort of like what the Russians do WRT the Iran issue. The way this is done does make Israel look rejectionist, where a little bullshit would blunt that perception. I suppose they are annoyed at Spain etc. for butting in, but that is no excuse.

[papau]

5. I hope there is interest - by both parties - but I'm not a believer - yet :-) n/t

n/t

[Englander]

3. Peaceniks in Israel;

'Peace never

>snip

"We are a minority," cries Michael Warschawski, co-chairman of the Alternative Information Centre and member of Taayosh (Co- existence), a Palestinian-Israeli gathering of mostly left-wing activists focussed mainly on Israeli society. "Our voice is terribly marginal."

Since the day he moved to Israel from France as a theology student in the years following the Nakba, Warschawski, or rather Micado, as his often Palestinian friends call him, has been speaking, writing, demonstrating, getting beaten up and jailed for opposing Israeli occupation of Palestinian land and what he refers to, again and again, as "the oppressive treatment" of Palestinians.

Micado is just over 50, energetic and dedicated. But speaking to Al-Ahram Weekly in East Jerusalem, his body language reflects utter frustration with what his government is doing, whether to Palestinians -- be they Israeli citizens, residents of occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank, or inhabitants of Gaza. With the segregation by the wall, humiliation at checkpoints, imprisonment of over a million Palestinians in Gaza: only a very few Jewish Israelis -- "20, 30, 40 or maybe a few more" -- are willing to oppose such measures. It makes Micado angry and ashamed that so few of his countrymen will champion justice. He asserts that speaking out against Israel's occupation and discrimination against its own citizens, not only the Palestinians of 1948, but Jews of Arab origin, is not about politics or international law. It is first and foremost about being human. "It is what I think a good Jew, indeed any religious person, should do, which is to spare the other. As a Jew with a long history of oppression and demonisation, I cannot accept what Israel is doing to Palestinians."

It is this "sense of responsibility", he says, together with awareness of how few people there are willing to stand by Palestinian rights, that has kept him in the country. "It is true that I love the landscape of Jerusalem but I feel I have a challenge to live up to. to speak to those Israelis, whom I almost pity, against the misleading Zionist propaganda to which they have been constantly subjected." It is a challenge he accepts against the odds. Polls conducted during the recent Israeli war on Lebanon point to the increasing fragility of the Israeli peace camp; most Israelis -- including the bulk of the left, the traditional bastion of peace activism -- were supportive of the war, looking to the elimination of Hizbullah.

Indeed the lack of anti-war protests prompted criticism from within. In the last days of the war, Yariv Oppenheimer, secretary-general of left-wing Zionist Peace Now movement, told the press there was no peace now. Micado speaks of "the collapse of the peace movement in Israel". Some peace activists see the heyday of the call for peace in the wake of the 1982 Sabra and Shatila massacre, though others were dismayed by the impact they made on the image of Israel. For Micado, those were "more active times", but even then, he says, many would not acknowledge the truth of what the Israeli government was doing, not only in Lebanon but, more significantly, to Palestinians under occupation. Now, there is no longer even a modicum of acknowledgement of the need for compromise.

http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2006/820/re91.htm

[nicoll]

4. Good idea

I thought it was a good move for Spain to make. The international community as an interest in a peaceful resolution of the conflict because it in-directly effects them. They also have a moral reason for being involved, because it was the international community that made all the mess with the 1947 partition plan. Why did the UN divide the Palestinian side up into three parts in December 1947?