A twisted mind

A couple of weeks ago, I criticised Human Rights Watch for adopting a ‘balanced’ approach to the violence of the coloniser and the violence of the resistance to colonisation. Well, Former CIA Director James Woolsey, in an interview with IsraelNationalRadio's Alex Traiman, has done them one better.

"An Arab Muslim living in Jaffa," Woolsey said, "enjoys freedom of speech, religion, and expression, and can vote for his representatives in the Knesset, and doesn't go to sleep worrying that some government element might come and kill him. I think that once the Palestinians start treating Jewish settlers with that same degree of humanity - and they're very, very far from doing that now - at that point I think we have to seriously consider how they could have some degree of self-governing. I won't get into the question of borders, but what I think is that the Palestinians must be held to the same standards as Israel regarding how they treat the other. I am sure this will be many decades from now, though, because their children are taught the Wahhabi doctrine of being suicide bombers and the like."

Now that’s a twisted mind! Colonists and usurpers who have invaded their land, encroach further and further into it, demolish their homes, orchards, and infrastructure, prevent them from accessing their agricultural land, their schools, hospitals, and jobs, take their precious water, and kill and injure them at will with complete impunity are somehow entitled to the same rights as an indigenous minority living quietly in a colonists’ city? No settler, no Israeli government, nor, I daresay, Woolsey himself, has ever suggested that the colonists should have some kind of political rights in the PA. They are all universally considered part of Israel. In fact, the whole idea of building that vast network of settlements and roads was precisely to create ‘facts on the ground’ that would prejudice any future discussion of Israel’s border. And I wouldn’t be so sure that Palestinians in Jaffa sleep as peacefully as he reckons, either.

Meanwhile, in the very same issue, Arutz 7, reports that according to WorldNetDaily (WND),

Negotiations have been quietly proceeding apace for the past two or three weeks, according to sources quoted by WND reporter Aaron Klein, after PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas suggested to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert late last month that the two men switch to “back channel talks” in order to avoid media coverage.

According to Egyptian and EU sources, one of the plans currently under consideration involves handing over control of central and southern Yesha [Hebrew acronym for ‘Judea and Samaraia’, i.e the West Bank – HF] to PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas’s security forces. In northern Yesha, the transfer of responsibility to Abbas’ security forces over the area would be monitored by Jordan and EU observers.

But it looks a lot like an article to scare their readers, who, according to a recent post from Sol Salbe, would be principally settlers themselves.