"Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will ask Germany's leader to drop her support for a proposal endorsing a Palestinian state in virtually all of the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem when he meets with her this week, Israeli officials said Wednesday." AP
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Yes, when all else fails the Israelis know that they can go to the Germans and the Germans will do what they are told to do. This is understandable. Anyone who has contemplated the film footage of people being herded directly from boxcars to gas chambers at Treblinka and Sobibor should understand the psychological vulnerability of the Germans. German guilt is undeniable and the Germans do not attempt to deny it.
On the other hand, the Palestinians are not the Germans of the 3rd Reich, and the United States liberated many of the camps. We did not run them and yet we are as obedient as the Germans.
Natanyahu glowers at the mention of the 1967 boundaries and speaks darkly of "reality,' his reality. Since he takes that position, it must be said that without the 1949/1967 Armistice lines as a basis, the international vision of two states, Israel and Palestine in historical Palestine, is simply a farce.
Israel seized the West Bank and the Gaza Strip by force of arms in 1967. Soon thereafter the UN Security Council created Resolution 242 which called and still calls for the withdrawal of Israel's forces from all that land that had been seized from Jordan and Egypt. The principle involved being that the time has passed when lands taken in war can be annexed merely because the conquerer wants them. That principle lies at the heart of the UN's very purpose. Natanyahu's attitude calls into question the issue of whether or not Israel ever intended to do other than retain permanently as much of the West Bank as it could manage.
Natanyahu by word, and body language has made it clear that he holds the United states in contempt as a "cash cow" that can be manipulated easily through deception and trickery. At his meeting with President Obama he could not refrain from defying Israel's greatest benefactor by open and blatant rejection of the basic premises of Obama's speech the previous day. How much do we give the Israelis a year?
Natanyahu's next move is to address his henchmen and flunkies in Congress in an effort to rally his "troops" against the president of the United States. In this effort he will be supported by the editorial page of the Washington Post which today stood firmly on the side of Natanyahu against Obama.
Presumably it is obvious to all that an effort to admit an independent Palestine to the UN will be met by a US veto in the Security Council. The Washington Post will applaud that as well. pl
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110406/ap_on_re_mi_ea/ml_israel_palestinians_7
