French FM: It seems Israel no longer wants peace

[ensho]

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1127198.html


France fears that Israel no longer desires a Middle East peace deal, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said on Tuesday, adding that Paris remained deeply opposed to settlement building in the West Bank.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held unusually low-profile talks with U.S. President Barack Obama on Monday and is due to meet French President Nicolas Sarkozy on Wednesday.

Speaking on France Inter radio, Kouchner made clear he was not expecting any swift break through in Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations.
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"What really hurts me, and this shocks us, is that before there used to be a great peace movement in Israel. There was a left that made itself heard and a real desire for peace," Kouchner said.

-snip-

Obama recently eased U.S. pressure on Israel over the settlements, calling for restraint in construction where he had earlier pushed for a freeze. But Kouchner signalled no such softening of French opposition.
-snip-
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[aquart]

1. I'm always impressed by European opinions on Jews.

[Aramchek]

3. do you approve of settlement expansion in the West Bank?

[MUAD_DIB]

4. What's your opinion on Israeli expansionism into Palestinian lands?

[LeftishBrit]

5. Kouchner is half-Jewish FWIW.

[notadmblnd]

2. did it ever?

[LeftishBrit]

6. Rabin did.

The present government is particularly right-wing.

[shira]

8. I agree, but have you read Rabin's last speech to the Knesset just 1 month before the assassination?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=124x291767#291811

Barak and Olmert went way further than Rabin was willing to go, but for some reason they're perceived as more hawkish than Rabin.

[Alamuti Lotus]

9. For once we agree on something

I would agree that Rabin's image has been largely distorted by history.

[shira]

10. compared to Rabin, Netanyahu appears about as 'dovish', dontcha think?

from the link...
http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/MFAArchive/1990_1999/1995/10/PM%20Rabin%20in%20Knesset-%20Ratification%20of%20Interim%20Agree

We view the permanent solution in the framework of State of Israel which will include most of the area of the Land of Israel as it was under the rule of the British Mandate, and alongside it a Palestinian entity which will be a home to most of the Palestinian residents living in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.

We would like this to be an entity which is less than a state, and which will independently run the lives of the Palestinians under its authority. The borders of the State of Israel, during the permanent solution, will be beyond the lines which existed before the Six Day War. We will not return to the 4 June 1967 lines.

And these are the main changes, not all of them, which we envision and want in the permanent solution:

A. First and foremost, united Jerusalem, which will include both Ma'ale Adumim and Givat Ze'ev -- as the capital of Israel, under Israeli sovereignty, while preserving the rights of the members of the other faiths, Christianity and Islam, to freedom of access and freedom of worship in their holy places, according to the customs of their faiths.

B. The security border of the State of Israel will be located in the Jordan Valley, in the broadest meaning of that term.

C. Changes which will include the addition of Gush Etzion, Efrat, Beitar and other communities, most of which are in the area east of what was the "Green Line," prior to the Six Day War.

D. The establishment of blocs of settlements in Judea and Samaria, like the one in Gush Katif.

Can you imagine Netanyahu quoting verbatim from Rabin today and how Netanyahu would be blasted as some far rightwing warmonger for uttering the same 'dovish' words?

[Alamuti Lotus]

11. I do believe he appears "dovish" by comparison, that is not necessarily any complement

The Left in Israel and establishment-liberals around the world have largely eulogized Rabin not for what he was, but for what they'd prefer to remember that he could be. I've never been much for hero-worship, be they living or dead; it tends to distort reality beyond recognizable levels. Netanyahoo's record is mostly bluster compared to suspected war criminals Ehud Barak, Shimon Peres, and company, including "Break Their Bones" Rabin himself. Netanyahoo's philosophy is more hardline nationalist and racist in nature, and perhaps a scarier bogeyman when stripped from the context of tangible actions, but their long and much more demonstrable record of aggression and violence speaks for itself, while he mostly just speaks.

It could be said, however, that the strength of the Resistance since Rabin's time (both in formerly-occupied Lebanon and in occupied-Palestine) has forced the hand of what is considered a 'settlement' to be in different terms than what he considered to be a permanent solution in his time. Though I will not say it is really much to speak of, because it isn't, a bit has changed in 13 years in that regard. Thus the comparison you are making is somewhat akin to judging stale apples next to bitter kiwi.

[azurnoir]

7. something that should be kept in mind

from Irgun to Herut to Likud

In the ninth Knesset elections in May 1977, the center-right Likud alliance emerged victorious and replaced the previously dominant Labor alignment for the first time in the history of independent Israel. The Likud Bloc, founded in 1973, consisted of the Free Center, Herut (Tnuat HaHerut or Freedom Movement--see Appendix B), Laam (For the Nation--see Appendix B), and Gahal (Freedom-Liberal Bloc--see Appendix B). In large part, Likud was the direct ideological descendant of the Revisionist Party, established by Vladimir Jabotinsky in 1925.

The Revisionist Party, so named to underscore the urgency of revision in the policies of the WZO's Executive, advocated militancy and ultranationalism as the primary political imperatives of the Zionist struggle for Jewish statehood. The Revisionist Party demanded that the entire mandated territory of historical Palestine on both sides of the Jordan River, including Transjordan, immediately become a Jewish state with a Jewish majority. Revisionist objectives clashed with the policies of the British authorities, Labor Zionists, and Palestinian Arabs. The Revisionist Party, in which Menachem Begin played a major role, contended that the British must permit unlimited Jewish immigration into Palestine and demanded that the Jewish Legion be reestablished and that Jewish youths be trained for defense.

The Revisionist Party also attacked the Histadrut, whose Labor Zionist leadership under Ben-Gurion was synonymous with the leadership of the politically dominant Mapai. Ben-Gurion accused the revisionists of being "fascists"; the latter countercharged that the policies being pursued by Ben-Gurion and his Labor Zionist allies, including Chaim Weizmann, were so conciliatory toward the British authorities and Palestinian Arabs and so gradual in terms of state-building as to be self-defeating.

In 1933 the Revisionist Party seceded from the WZO and formed the rival New Zionist Organization. After 1936 the revisionists rejected British and official Zionist policies of restraint in the face of Arab attacks, and they formed two anti-British and anti-Arab guerrilla groups. One, the Irgun Zvai Leumi (National Military Organization, Irgun for short) was formed in 1937; an offshoot of the Irgun, the Stern Gang also known as Lehi (from Lohamei Herut Israel, Fighters for Israel's Freedom), was formed in 1940. These revisionist paramilitary groups operated independently of, and at times in conflict with, the official Zionist defense organization, the Haganah; they engaged in systematic terror and sabotage against the British authorities and the Arabs.

After independence Prime Minister Ben-Gurion dissolved the Irgun and other paramilitary organizations such as Lehi and the Palmach. In 1948 remnants of the dissolved Irgun created Herut.

http://countrystudies.us/israel/96.htm

also the flag of Irgun also known as the flag of Altalena which depicts all of what was Transjordan as Israel

http://www.crwflags.com/FOTW/FLAGS/il%5Eugr.html

and before it is brought up that well Israel under Begin gave the Sinai back to Egypt that area was never part of Transjordan