re: #363 Killgore Trout

The peace process is all but dead because Hamas is on the State Department’s terror list, which would prohibit the US from providing financial assistance to the Palestinian Authority - the situation that has largely been the case since 2006 when Hamas won elections, but the ensuing Palestinian civil war made the issue moot since the US could deem the aid to the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank under Fatah and claim the aid wasn’t going to Hamas.

With a potential reconciliation deal in place between Fatah and Hamas, that issue reemerges, if Hamas and Fatah actually reconcile and allow elections - and adhere to the results of the elections this fall.

Warning that Israel could become an apartheid state isn’t the same thing as being an apartheid state. It recognizes that Israel’s demographic situation is perilous when you consider Palestinians living in Gaza and the West Bank - a situation that even Ariel Sharon recognized. So too do the Israelis like Netenyahu. Disengagement was one way to get around the situation, but that didn’t work out with Gaza, where Hamas now rules with an iron fist.

The notion that Israel could become an apartheid state is meant to cajole Israel into taking actions that would result in a disengagement or a peace deal of some sort. In effect, it’s recognizing the need for another Sharon-type move by Netenyahu and the Israelis, because they can’t expect the Palestinians to do anything.

A peace deal wont come between Israel and the Palestinians as long as Hamas refuses to recognize Israel’s rights, and wont accept deals done previously. That makes the reconciliation between Hamas and Fatah even more of a death knell for the peace process.

And as for Abbas’ statements re: the Holocaust remembrance day, they were all well and good, except for the part of trying to engage in some serious historical revisionism and moral equivalency by claiming parallels between the Holocaust and what the Palestinians have endured since Israel’s condition.

The two are in no way comparable, and it was the false equivalency that is repugnant.