U.S. envoy: Mideast stability impossible without Israeli-Palestinian peace - Haaretz
Daniel Shapiro tells regional cooperation conference that Israel and the Palestinians must build a “strong foundation” to ensure a viable accord.
The United States’ ambassador to Israel, Daniel Shapiro, on Monday urged Israel and the Palestinians to return to the negotiating table before the instability in the Middle East spiraled further out of control.
“Negotiations based on the goal of a two-state solution must be resumed, and we are confident that bilateral negotiations are the only way to reach a lasting peace,” Shapiro told participants of the International Conference on Economic Regional Cooperation in Tel Aviv.
“While reaching peace will not ensure stability by any means, the lack of peace will decrease stability dangerously,” Shapiro warned. “Absence of peace will strengthen leaders who are hostile to peace.”
The U.S. ambassador said that in pushing for a peace agreement, Israel and the Palestinians must build a “strong foundation” to ensure a viable accord.
“As we all know, peace requires more than just an agreement on paper,” said Shapiro. “Peace must be built on strong foundations.”
Shapiro lauded Israel for its “strong history of reaching beyond its immediate neighborhood”, adding that “as the region’s oldest and most established democracy in the region, Israel upholds the values that the protesters in Tunisia, Egypt and Syria are pushing for.”
He also said that the U.S. was pushing Israel and Turkey to reconcile amid the recent crisis between the once close allies.
Regional cooperation is necessary for regional stability, Shapiro said, declaring: “Cooperation forms a foundation for peace between people, not just governments.”
In other words, the US is proud of their inability to properly analyze the situation.
First, it is now obvious that the situation between Israel and Fatah has nothing to do with Middle East stability. To make this assumption gives Fatah trump cards that shouldn’t be in their hands. And Abbas uses these trump cards.
Second, the US seems to have forgotten previous negotiations and treaties that were signed by Fatah—which are the foundation of future agreements. If past agreements are null and void by the the fiat of Fatah PR, then there can be no future agreements.
Three, since the Middle East is in chaos, there is no need for the US to tread lightly around Fatah dysfunction.
Four, a more sound strategy, evidently, would have been to encourage the nations surrounding Israel to stabilize themselves rather than focus on the charade of a peace process that hasn’t ever existed. (The definition of stabilize is not ‘to increase tyrannical, martial rule’. That lesson could have been learned in 1979.)
Five, even if point four wasn’t clear enough in 1979, it sure is clear now.