The world won’t reverse position on Palestinian unity
The world won’t reverse position on Palestinian unity, Times of Israel, Raphael Ahren, June 15, 2014
(Please see also US strongly condemns teens’ kidnapping, blames Hamas and Algemeiner Editor Dovid Efune: Palestinian Unity Deal Creates Opportunity for Hamas to Seize Control (VIDEO) — DM)
“My impression is that there will be the usual declarations from all government against kidnappings and terrorism, but they will certainly not connect it with the unity government,” said Avi Primor, a former Israeli ambassador in Europe and currently the president of the Israel Council on Foreign Relations. “Principally, all of them are in favor of the unity government as they see it as a positive development.”
EU Foreign Policy chief Catherine Ashton, left, and Benjamin Netanyahu at a press conference in June. (photo credit: Amos Ben Gershom/ GPO/Flash90)
Neither the United States nor the European Union is likely to fall into lockstep behind Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s call to withdraw support for the recently established Palestinian unity government in the wake of the allegedly Hamas-planned kidnapping of three Israeli teenagers.
The pressure Netanyahu is trying to exert might work best in Washington, where the administration is faced not only with increasingly bloody Islamist violence in Syria, Iraq and elsewhere, but also with a Congress that is very unhappy about the Fatah-Hamas pact. But even if the US temporarily cut ties with Ramallah — if and when Hamas’s culpability is proven — certainly the rest of the world is unlikely to change course on intra-Palestinian reconciliation.
The entire international community, including the US, has said it will continue to work with the new Palestinian government, with the EU and many countries across the globe praising the move as a step toward peace. This is unlikely to change, officials and analysts who spoke to The Times of Israel agreed.
“My impression is that there will be the usual declarations from all government against kidnappings and terrorism, but they will certainly not connect it with the unity government,” said Avi Primor, a former Israeli ambassador in Europe and currently the president of the Israel Council on Foreign Relations. “Principally, all of them are in favor of the unity government as they see it as a positive development.”
Beyond the official statements required by political correctness, the world cares very little about the Israelis’ fate, he suggested. “There will be no empathy for us in Europe, because they think we brought the situation upon ourselves, not only because of the occupation and settlements and so on, but also because in their eyes we’re responsible for the collapse of the peace negotiations.” Israel had it coming because it did not go ahead as planned with the last release of Palestinian prisoners during the recent peace talks, many in the international community feel, Primor said.
The EU’s ambassador to Israel, Lars Faaborg-Andersen, condemned the kidnapping “in the strongest possible terms. My thoughts are with the bereaved families of the three missing youths and my hope is that they will be found unharmed as quickly as possible,” he told The Times of Israel on Sunday. And yet, he insisted, the current unity government cannot be blamed for something that Hamas, Islamic Jihad or any other terrorist groups might have done — because they aren’t part of the government.
“We don’t think this unacceptable kidnapping is something that the technocratic government can be held responsible for, because it consists of non-party-affiliated personalities,” Faaborg-Andersen said. “We consider Hamas a terrorist organization and we have no dealings with it. But Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other terrorist groups do not have representatives sitting in this government.”
The EU urged the Palestinian security forces to cooperate with Israel in the manhunt, he stressed, adding that based on conversations with people on the ground he understands that this is actually happening to the satisfaction of the Israeli authorities.
Washington’s reaction to the incident, if Hamas’s culpability is confirmed, might differ in style from that of the Europeans, but the approach will essentially be the same, according to Itamar Rabinovich, a former Israeli ambassador to the US.
“The basic attitude of the EU and the US is that Israel needs to be out of the West Bank,” he said. “They believe that if you don’t want mosquitoes, you need to dry up the swamp, and the swamp is the occupation. They don’t always say that out loud, but they mean it.”
(Update: Secretary of State John Kerry strongly condemned the attack on Sunday evening and linked it to Hamas, but made no indication that the US would reconsider its stance on the Palestinians unity government.)
From L-R: Eyal Yifrach, 19, Naftali Frenkel, 16, and Gil-ad Shaar, 16. (photo credit: courtesy)
Netanyahu has been blaming the unity government for the kidnapping of Eyal Yifrach, 19, Gil-ad Shaar, 16, and Naftali Frenkel, 16, even before he announced that Hamas was behind it.
“Those same elements in the international community that said that the Palestinian agreement with Hamas would advance peace now see the true results of this union,” he said Saturday evening. Speaking to the foreign press on Sunday, he recalled that Israel had warned the international community about the dangers of endorsing the Fatah-Hamas unity pact. These dangers, he said, “now should be abundantly clear to all.”
Since PA President Mahmoud Abbas agreed to form a government with Hamas backing, Jerusalem holds him responsible for the fate of the missing teens, Netanyahu said. “The Palestinian claim that the Palestinian Authority cannot be held responsible for an attack that took place in an area under Israeli security control is patently absurd,” he said, arguing that the party in control of the area from which the terrorists departed is to be held responsible for the attack, regardless of where it occurred.
This argument, too, will likely fall on deaf ears in the international community, Israeli pundits predict. The alleged perpetrator of the Brussels Jewish museum shooting came from France. No one, they argue, ever thought of holding President Francois Hollande responsible for it.
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WarSclerotic 
June 16, 2014 at 12:50 PM
How is it that only one president of all the nations of the world has the guts to tell the truth?
Miloš Zeman, the president of Czech Republic, gave the following speech last Monday at a reception to celebrate Israel’s Independence Day. Many thanks to Gemini for the translation from the official text posted at the Czech government’s website.
Speech by the president of the Czech Republic at the reception held to celebrate Israel’s Independence Day
May 26, 2014
Ladies and gentlemen,
Let me thank you for the invitation to celebrate Israel’s Independence Day. There are dozens of days of independence being celebrated every year in the Czech Republic. Some I may attend, others I cannot. There is one I can never miss, however: it’s the Israeli Independence Day.
There are states with whom we share the same values, such as the political horizon of free elections or a free market economy. However, no one threatens these states with wiping them off the map. No one fires at their border towns; no one wishes that their citizens would leave their country. There is a term, political correctness. This term I consider to be a euphemism for political cowardice. Therefore, let me not be cowardly.
It is necessary to clearly name the enemy of human civilisation. It is international terrorism linked to religious fundamentalism and religious hatred. As we may have noticed after 11th of September, this fanaticism has not been focused on one state exclusively. Muslim fanatics recently kidnapped 200 young Christian girls in Nigeria. There was a hideous assassination in the flower of Europe in the heart of European Union in a Jewish museum in Brussels. I will not let myself being calmed down by the declaration that there are only tiny fringe groups behind it. On the contrary, I am convinced that this xenophobia, and let’s call it racism or anti-Semitism, emerges from the very essence of the ideology these groups subscribe to.
So let me quote one of their sacred texts to support this statement: “A tree says, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him. A stone says, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.” I would criticize those calling for the killing of Arabs, but I do not know of any movement calling for mass murdering of Arabs. However, I know of one anti-civilisation movement calling for the mass murder of Jews.
After all, one of the paragraphs of the statutes of Hamas says: “Kill every Jew you see.” Do we really want to pretend that this is an extreme viewpoint? Do we really want to be politically correct and say that everyone is nice and only a small group of extremists and fundamentalists is committing such crimes?
Michel de Montaigne, one of my favourite essayists, once wrote: “It is gruesome to assume that it must be good that comes after evil. A different evil may come.” It started with the Arab Spring which turned into an Arab winter, and a fight against secular dictatorships turned into fights led by Al-Qaeda. Let us throw away political correctness and call things by their true names. Yes, we have friends in the world, friends with whom we show solidarity. This solidarity costs us nothing, because these friends are not put into danger by anyone.
The real meaning of solidarity is a solidarity with a friend who is in a trouble and in danger, and this is why I am here.
— Miloš Zeman, president of Czech republic, Hilton Hotel, 26th of May 2014
A watershed speech by Czech President Miloš Zeman
http://www.madisdead.blogspot.co.il/2014/06/a-watershed-speech-by-czech-president.html
and when asked to apologize, his staff gave this statement:
“President Zeman definitely does not intend to apologise. For the president would consider it blasphemy to apologise for the quotation of a sacred Islamic text.”