Envoy’s damning verdict revealed as violence takes Gaza closer to civil war
The first few paragraphs seem to bear that impression out:
The highest ranking UN official in Israel has warned that American pressure has “pummelled into submission” the UN’s role as an impartial Middle East negotiator in a damning confidential report.
The 53-page “End of Mission Report” by Alvaro de Soto, the UN’s Middle East envoy, obtained by the Guardian, presents a devastating account of failed diplomacy and condemns the sweeping boycott of the Palestinian government. It is dated May 5 this year, just before Mr de Soto stepped down.
The revelations from inside the UN come after another day of escalating violence in Gaza, when at least 26 Palestinians were killed after Hamas fighters launched a major assault. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, head of the rival Fatah group, warned he was facing an attempted coup.
Mr de Soto condemns Israel for setting unachievable preconditions for talks and the Palestinians for their violence. Western-led peace negotiations have become largely irrelevant, he says.
Oh, wait? He condemned Palestinians for their violence?
· The international boycott of the Palestinians, introduced after Hamas won elections last year, was “at best extremely short-sighted” and had “devastating consequences” for the Palestinian people
· Israel has adopted an “essentially rejectionist” stance towards the Palestinians
· The Quartet of Middle East negotiators – the US, the EU, Russia and the UN – has become a “side-show”
·The Palestinian record of stopping violence against Israel is “patchy at best, reprehensible at worst”
That’s a lot of at best/at worst-ing.
In January last year, the Quartet [US, Russia, EU and UN] called on the newly elected Hamas government to commit to non-violence, recognise Israel and accept previous agreements. When Hamas refused to sign up to the principles, the international community halted direct funding to the Palestinian government and Israel started to freeze the monthly tax revenues that it had agreed to pass to the Palestinians. Several hundred million dollars remain frozen.
That’s just plain mean! Just because they don’t recognize your right to exist, do you think it’s fair to withhold money?
Mr de Soto, who had opposed the boycott, said this position “effectively transformed the Quartet from a negotiation-promoting foursome guided by a common document [the road map for peace] into a body that was all-but imposing sanctions on a freely elected government of a people under occupation as well as setting unattainable preconditions for dialogue”.
Like, stop training children to want to attain glorious martyrdom by killing Jews? It’s a non-starter.
In the heaviest day of fighting in Gaza for months, Hamas appeared to make its first concerted effort to seize power in Gaza. There was a wave of co-ordinated attacks, which appeared to overwhelm the larger but less effective Fatah force. “Decisiveness will be in the field,” said Islam Shahwan, a spokesman for the Hamas military wing.
Fatah’s central committee called an emergency meeting in Ramallah, in the West Bank, and said it would suspend the activities of its ministers in the government. Fatah would pull out of the government if the fighting failed to stop, it said.
This just has to stop. I recommend that we send Clarissa Pinkola Estes to sit them all down with a cup of tea and talk some sense into their heads.
Speaking of the Guardian (Council), participation in the production/dissemination of pron could become a capital offense:
Iran’s parliament on Wednesday voted in favor of a bill that could lead to death penalty for persons convicted of working in the production of pornographic movies.
With a 148-5 vote in favor and four abstentions, lawmakers present at the Wednesday session of the 290-seat parliament approved that “producers of pornographic works and main elements in their production are considered corruptors of the world and could be sentenced to punishment as corruptors of the world.”
The term, “corruptor of the world” is taken from the Quran, the Muslims’ holy book, and ranks among the highest on the scale of an individual’s criminal offenses. Under Iran’s Islamic Penal Code, it carries a death penalty.
The “main elements” refered to in the draft include producers, directors, cameramen and actors involved in making a pornographic video.
So, maybe that explains why certain forms of feminism don’t seem too repelled by Islamic patriarchy.
If Israel would have never existed, would the UN still exist?
So Hamas and all of the other legions of splodey-dopes in Palistine get an “oh, by the way, Palestinian violence, BAD!”
The never ending circle jerk that is the shreiking justification for civilian targeted terrorism astonishes me. When will these people just get tired of it all and realise that the legacy of Arafat is a fat Swiss Bank account and a pepetual violence machine that runs on young men and women.
There are times when I want to weep for the majority of Palistinians caught in this vortex of misery and death. The shocking part is I can feel that way and not carry a sign that says “Death to Zionism.”
Nuance; it’s what’s for dinner.
It kind of reminds me of a kid with really bad obsessive compulsive disorder.
“Why did it rain, Billy?” “Jews and America.”
“Why were the Arabs killing each other, Billy?” “Jews and America.”
“Why was there a recession in Thailand, Billy?” “America and the Jews.”
“Billy, that was different. You changed the order there. Why was that?” “The Jews made me do it. And the Americans via CIA mind control sattelites.”
“Well, that’s okay then. So tell me, who made bin Laden attack on 9/11?”
The damn shame of it all is the UN shouldn’t be a pathetic brothel for third world dictators and corrupt old world socialists to advance their agendas, it could be something useful – but as corruption and anti-semitism and rampant statism rot the place, it reduces what was at least a noble idea into a bad joke. This can only encourage tyrants, in the same way that human rights groups giving up their causes in order to serve as tools of the left wing agenda renders them ineffective, easily manipulated and ignored laughing stocks.
Behold the fruit of Arafat’s generation-long indoctrination of Palestinian youth: a society where self-immolating violence is not only common, but normative. Does anyone in this terror squat grow up wanting to be a fireman, a doctor, a nurse?
An explosive nurse?
How about explosive nursers instead?
TW: below39? No, beneath contempt.
Well, Gaza isn’t occupied, and that’s where the the Palestinians are killing each other at a brisk pace. If “Would y’all quit killing everybody in sight?” is an unattainable precondition for dialogue, then fuck dialogue.
tw: That’s my theory67 and I’m sticking to it.
See what profiling gets you? You misogynistic bastards!
Believe it or not, I looked up “florid prose” in my dictionary and found a picture of Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes. She must have got her PhD in Writing Good!
When indeed? I just marvel that every member of al-Qaida in Iraq hasn’t been gutted in some dark alley every time I hear about something like the destruction of the mosque in Samarra. Are they all crazy, or just most of them? I keep thinking that wiser heads will prevail, but they seem to have a deficit of wiser heads in that neighborhood.
And what few they do have are hard to find, being all ducked down behind shit and everything.
Ahh the UN: the perfect nexus of naive idealism, catastrophic stupidity, and rampant corruption.
Jeff,
Has anyone ever asked these yahoos how they can “get” money from somewhere that doesn not “exist?”
I mean, some multi-million dollar consultant is crafting these talking points, and this alligator-boots big-wig figures those dumb “Pali’s” won’t figure out that, gee, there’s a gaping hole in their marketing plan: In order for someplace to give you money, that place has to exist.
More good petro-dollars up the pimp’s nose, I’m afraid.
The ones most likely to be seen generally have just stopped bouncing around inside what’s left of a bus or pizza parlor.
I find the lessons in human flight being taught in Gaza perplexing.
Without a really, really long running start those Palestinians will never fly very far.
Bingo.
<blockquote>The fighting took a grisly turn on Sunday, when Hamas militants kidnapped a member of the elite presidential guard of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah, took him to the roof of a 15-story apartment building and threw him to his death.
…
And just before midnight, a Hamas activist was thrown off the 12th floor of a building and killed, security officials said.blockquote>
[url=”http://fredericksburg.com/News/apmethods/apstory?urlfeed=D8PMG43G3.xml” target=”_blank”]Palestinian Infighting Flares in Gaza
[/url]
And I may ask myself, “How do I work this thing?”
Oops, wrong thread.
That’s my favourite kind of Secret UN Document.
If it weren’t for the majority of Palestinian civilians caught in this nightmare, the dark side of my soul would rejoice in the idea of those two groups of thugs killing each other off.
steaveaz: Priceless!
Even though it doesn’t exist, it’s full of Joooos, who control all of the money on the planet.
At the risk of seeming insensitive, I’m compelled to point out that these civilians have no problem with murdering Israeli civilians. What we have here is a disagreement over which band of murderers the populace supports.
MarkD:
…and something else to note is that a majority of these civilians voted for Hamas and Fatah in free elections.