Hasan Abu Nimah, The Electronic Intifada, 18 February 2009
".....The peace mirage, however, is all deception with no fascination. The so-called "peace process" and the resulting negotiations long ago became ends in themselves: profitable or self-serving for the participants and failure-disguising for all concerned. For Israel, it is ideal to give the impression that it is engaged in peace talks while it continues to occupy and colonize Palestinians and deny their rights, as if the situation on the ground would have no effect on any negotiations. And for the Palestinian Authority which failed completely (due to its own corruption as well as Israeli occupation) to establish any real gains for the Palestinian people, the continued negotiations became the sole reason for its existence and the only way for those who control it to earn a living.....
Hence there has been endless chasing after the mirage by people who know or should know the mirage is just that, but who nevertheless insist that the water is real and they will soon drink it......
We have reached the point now where every setback is reinterpreted as a "window of opportunity." Take for example the recent Israeli elections.....
But the peace process industry will always be ready to deny reality and chase the mirage. Israel as a whole is so extremist and intransigent that even a right-wing, settlement building, warmongering national unity government of Kadima and Likud would be welcomed warmly by the "international community" as a peace government for which we should be thankful and eager to engage.....
I wish we could dismiss these failed policies and their practitioners as the joke that they are. But those who pay the price for so much international negligence, complicity, lack of courage and accountability, are innocent people, most horrifyingly in Gaza. But their reality, their anger, their resistance is one that the mirage cannot conceal any longer."
".....The peace mirage, however, is all deception with no fascination. The so-called "peace process" and the resulting negotiations long ago became ends in themselves: profitable or self-serving for the participants and failure-disguising for all concerned. For Israel, it is ideal to give the impression that it is engaged in peace talks while it continues to occupy and colonize Palestinians and deny their rights, as if the situation on the ground would have no effect on any negotiations. And for the Palestinian Authority which failed completely (due to its own corruption as well as Israeli occupation) to establish any real gains for the Palestinian people, the continued negotiations became the sole reason for its existence and the only way for those who control it to earn a living.....
Hence there has been endless chasing after the mirage by people who know or should know the mirage is just that, but who nevertheless insist that the water is real and they will soon drink it......
We have reached the point now where every setback is reinterpreted as a "window of opportunity." Take for example the recent Israeli elections.....
But the peace process industry will always be ready to deny reality and chase the mirage. Israel as a whole is so extremist and intransigent that even a right-wing, settlement building, warmongering national unity government of Kadima and Likud would be welcomed warmly by the "international community" as a peace government for which we should be thankful and eager to engage.....
I wish we could dismiss these failed policies and their practitioners as the joke that they are. But those who pay the price for so much international negligence, complicity, lack of courage and accountability, are innocent people, most horrifyingly in Gaza. But their reality, their anger, their resistance is one that the mirage cannot conceal any longer."
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