2 for 2, or 2 for 1?
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
NYT
Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu of Israel, the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, and President Obama all spoke at the U.N. last week and, honestly, it is hard to decide whose speech was worse. Netanyahu’s read like a pep rally to the Likud Central Committee. Abbas’s read like an address to an Arab League meeting. Obama’s read like an appeal to Jewish voters in Florida. The president meant well, but domestic politics required that he whisper where he once spoke bold truths to both sides.
The whole soap opera was just another reminder of how broken the peacemaking effort is today and how much both sides still suspect the other of really wanting two states for one people rather than two states for two people.
I’ll explain that in a moment, but, first, let me note that the Israeli newspaper Haaretz summed up the Netanyahu and Abbas performances perfectly, saying: “From these two narratives of demand and complaint, it appeared as if the Israeli-Palestinian conflict traveled in a time machine back to the end of the last century, and decades of dialogue were wiped out — to the great joy of the extremists on both sides. Not peace, but rather the very fact of direct contact between the parties is once more perceived as a goal, and even that is increasingly fading into the distance.”
That is, indeed, where we are — questioning whether the two sides will even talk to each other anymore, let alone negotiate an implementable deal. Yet both sides act as if time is on their side. I beg to differ.
(More here.)
NYT
Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu of Israel, the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, and President Obama all spoke at the U.N. last week and, honestly, it is hard to decide whose speech was worse. Netanyahu’s read like a pep rally to the Likud Central Committee. Abbas’s read like an address to an Arab League meeting. Obama’s read like an appeal to Jewish voters in Florida. The president meant well, but domestic politics required that he whisper where he once spoke bold truths to both sides.
The whole soap opera was just another reminder of how broken the peacemaking effort is today and how much both sides still suspect the other of really wanting two states for one people rather than two states for two people.
I’ll explain that in a moment, but, first, let me note that the Israeli newspaper Haaretz summed up the Netanyahu and Abbas performances perfectly, saying: “From these two narratives of demand and complaint, it appeared as if the Israeli-Palestinian conflict traveled in a time machine back to the end of the last century, and decades of dialogue were wiped out — to the great joy of the extremists on both sides. Not peace, but rather the very fact of direct contact between the parties is once more perceived as a goal, and even that is increasingly fading into the distance.”
That is, indeed, where we are — questioning whether the two sides will even talk to each other anymore, let alone negotiate an implementable deal. Yet both sides act as if time is on their side. I beg to differ.
(More here.)
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