Stuck With Shtayyeh (and Thank God for Abbas UPDATE)

[see UPDATE at end]

The State Department announced yesterday that Secretary Kerry

"personally extended an invitation to send senior negotiating teams to Washington to formally resume direct final status negotiations...The Israelis will be represented by Justice Minister Tzipi Livni and Yitzhak Molcho, and the Palestinians will be represented by Chief Negotiator Saeb Erekat and Mohammad Shtayyeh. 

And Secretary Kerry subsequently announced that the U.S. Special Envoy for Israeli-Palestinian Negotiations will be Martin Indyk.  His deputy is Kerry's senior advisor - Frank Lowenstein.

As already noted by me, Lowenstein comes from the fringes of progressive radicalism.  And Raheem Kassam informs us that

the true motives of the second most senior Palestinian negotiator - advocating the destruction of the entirety of the State of Israel...for one of Abbas’s negotiators however, the recognition of the State of Israel is one step too far, and reveals how these peace talks are more than likely to be completely in vain.

The far Left has tried in the past to defend Shtayyeh but can you imagine Livni with her father's map of "both  banks of the Jordan"

on her Facebook account (okay, she wouldn't but let's be imaginative)?  What would be the reaction of the pro-Pals you need not guess.

Shtayyeh has a past and in 2011, we learned:

Dr. Muhammad Shtayyeh, a Palestinian minister and president of the Palestinian Economic Council for Development and Reconstruction didn’t seem as optimistic about the potential U.S initiative. He outlined the Palestinian leadership strategy, which included becoming a full member of the United Nations General Assembly. He also raised the possibility of taking Israel to the International court as a new avenue of the struggle against occupation. He also reiterated that the Palestinians don’t see a partner in Netanyahu’s government and therefore don’t have much hope in reaching a deal with it.

Dr. Shtayeh surprised the attendees by discussing the Palestinian Authority’s inability to continue its existence under occupation and warned that it could be dissolved if no political breakthrough is achieved. The Palestinian Authority was not created to offer municipal services to the Palestinian people. It was mandated to prepare the way for a Palestinian state and if the PA cannot deliver a state, it will not survive.

Well, now he can have fun negotiating with Israel but I need point out that if the PA can't even run and administer the most rudimentary municipal tasks, why give it a state to run?

Back in 2002, he wrote:

The donor countries say that they have invested some US$4.5 billion in the West Bank and Gaza since 1993. Do you think that they will continue donating now that the infrastructure they helped to build has been damaged or destroyed?

Well, we know they have continued with their largesse because they don't particularly like Jews and think the Arabs are a good weapon.  He also there turns the security aspect on its head, so:

They [the Israelis] have planted enmity in the heart and mind of every single Palestinian due to their actions during the continuous incursions and at the checkpoints.

But it was - and continues to be - the other way around.  Arabs initiate violence and terror and Israel wouldn't have been administering Judea and Samaria if it wasn't for the desire of the PLO to attack Israel in its pre-1967 borders. 

Two years ago, Shtayyeh laid out the "big issues" clearly:

— Fatah accepts and independent state using the 1967 borders. As he put it, they are willing to accept the state on "only 22 percent of what used to be called Palestine."

— Fatah accepts a shared Jerusalem, a united city with one governing body.

— Fatah accepts a demilitarized state.

— On the issue of refugee resettlement, he said that is something that will be decided at the negotiating table. But Fatah, he said, is "ready to sit down with the Israelis."

In Washington then, we have one inveterate liar (the 'Jenin massacre'; etc.) and another who doesn't recognize Israel and thought in 1998 that Netanyahu was "unfortunate" for Israel.  And both are ideologues for whom poliitcs is but an instrument.

UPDATE

Now this:

Abbas wants 'not a single Israeli' in future Palestinian state


(Reuters) - Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas laid out his vision on Monday for the final status of Israeli-Palestinian relations..."In a final resolution, we would not see the presence of a single Israeli - civilian or soldier - on our lands," Abbas said in a briefing...Abbas said he stood by understandings he said he reached with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, predecessor to more right-wing leader Benjamin Netanyahu, that NATO forces could deploy there "as a security guarantee to us and them."

...On the future of Jewish settlements on the West Bank and the status of Jerusalem - among the most contentious issues facing the two sides - Abbas signaled no softening of his stance.

"We've already made all the necessary concessions," he said.

"East Jerusalem is the capital of the state of Palestine ... if there were and must be some kind of small exchange (of land) equal in size and value, we are ready to discuss this - no more, no less," he said...Abbas said on Monday that he refused to endorse any half-measure whereby he would let Israel freeze construction in smaller, more far-flung settlements but allow it to build in the larger and more populous "blocs" closer to the 1967 lines.

"There was a request, 'We'll only build here, what do you think?' If I agreed, I would legitimize all the rest (of the settlements). I said no. I said out loud and in writing that, to us, settlements in their entirety are illegitimate."

Asked if the Americans may try to get Israel to agree to a de facto settlement freeze, the president made a broad smile and declined to answer: "I don't know."

The Cheshire Cat move.

 
And

Senior aide to the president Tayyeb Abdul Rahim, accompanying Abbas, told Reuters: "We're between two opinions: should Israel agree to stop building settlements, or should they agree to a state on the 1967 borders to go back to talks.

"What's stronger? (The second) means that all settlements are illegitimate. America is convinced of our point of view ... Israel has not yet agreed to a state on the 1967 lines, but it will go to the talks on that basis."

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