That's one way of putting it, with Hamas as intent as ever on destroying Israel, and Fatah's remaining committed to armed "resistance" despite its attempts at putting on a friendlier face to the Western public. Not to mention the rampant corruption and misappropriation of aid for weapons. No, we're "not there yet."
An update on this story. "Mideast: EU rejects calls for a Palestinian state," from AdnKronos International, November 17:
Brussels, 17 Nov. (AKI) - The European Union on Tuesday rejected calls by the Palestinian Authority to declare a Palestinian state in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Swedish foreign minister Carl Bildt, whose country currently holds the presidency of the EU, said conditions in the Palestinian territories "were not there yet" for such a move.
Bildt was speaking before a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Brussels.
He said in regard to the establishment of a Palestinian state that "...there has to be one first. We would be ready to recognise a Palestinian state, but conditions are not there as of yet."
Bildt's came after US state department spokesman Ian Kelly echoed similar concerns, saying "We support the creation of a Palestinian state that is contiguous...the best way to achieve that is negotiation between two parties."
So, the policy in the coming years is to force Israel to make more land concessions, even as disastrous as past ones have proven (see also: Gaza).
Earlier this week, Palestinian officials, led by chief negotiator Saeb Erekat, announced that they would seek recognition of a state from the United Nations Security Council, without a solution to the conflict with Israel.
The US - Israel's biggest ally - however, has veto power in the Security Council, and could in theory exercise it to prevent the unilateral declaration.....
"We would be ready to recognise a Palestinian state, but conditions are not there as of yet."
'Not there 'yet'...Uh huh...I guess he has some high expectations for the future...How about Jordan...that's probably doable...I'm not sure Allah is willing on that one, but he might be...Next time I see him I will ask him about it...
Occasionally even the EU stumbles into the truth, though of course it will veer back into error quite soon, the contiguous land "problem" comment by Ian Kelly of the State Department (another dense institution) being something the EU will latch onto with stupid enthusiasm. The nonsense continues.
"The US - Israel's biggest ally..."
One can arguably reverse this as well - Israel-US biggest ally.
Some say that Israel is the canary in the mine. I prefer to say:
Israel is the battle-hardened, visibly-scarred, hard-to-anger, fearless-not-reckless, country on point against an enemy we call evil.
America is truly blessed to have many loyal allies.
Jew Lover
l think some EU elites understand a wee bit about islamists as their own homegrown ones need a place to fight out of Europe.
Agreed, except that I would change 'we call' to 'that is.'
Where the hell is John Bolton when you need him?!?
"Swedish foreign minister Carl Bildt, whose country currently holds the presidency of the EU, said conditions in the Palestinian territories "were not there yet" for such a move."
and
"Palestinian state that is contiguous..."
Two comments.
1. When Carl Bildt rotates out of the presidency of the EU, it'll all be up for grabs again, similar to how U.S. policies veer erratically according to which party is in power. All it will take is for a president who is sympathetic to the Palestinian cause to change the situation, and the ratchet will click one more notch. Too bad there isn't a ratchet release of some kind that would permit reversing some of the ratchet steps that have been taken in the past.
2. I still haven't seen any discussion about just how a "contiguous" Palestinian state is to be constructed. I assume this to mean something that would include both Gaza and the West Bank, which are physically disjoint. The only way they could be included in a "contiguous" state is to steal something from Israel to join them together.
There is another possibility I haven't seen mentioned yet: Define "Palestine" as being the 10 x 50 km chunk of land called Gaza, declare the problem solved and be done with it. Of course a better way would be for Jordan to simply announce that all "Palestinians" are being given Jordanian citizenship (and since they are actually Jordanian anyway this shouldn't be a problem) with incentives to physically move there, leaving Israel in possession of Gaza and the West Bank and all of Jerusalem. And, of course, the U.S. should move its Embassy to Jerusalem, which Israel considers it capitol city.
Maybe, just maybe, the EU will have the-long-over-due epiphany that nothing short of giving “the Palestinians” everything will satisfy them. “The Palestinians” will always refuse to make peace. Making peace just isn’t part of the program of *the religion of peace*. Once a society becomes fully Islamized the infighting and bloodshed continues till the whole unholy bloody mess implodes. May the world one day bid good riddance to the plague that is Pisslam.
There can never be peace between the Arab and Israelis. Israelis should be allowed to purchase Gaza,the West Bank, and Israeli lands currently owned by Arabs. Then Israel should expel all Arabs from all areas, including Israel proper.
Racist? No. Read Palestinian rhetoric. They do not want piece and continually incite their people to violence.
I nominate - Jordan!
"We support the creation of a Palestinian state that is contiguous...the best way to achieve that is negotiation between two parties."
................................
"Contiguous"—that would either mean Israel's ceding huge swaths of territory to the "Palestinians", or would result in Israel herself being bisected, and unable to properly defend herself.
Somehow it is not important that Israel's territory be "contiguous".
The "Palestinians" will never "be there"...
As soon as the peoples of Western Europe realize what Islam is all about -- and they are being forced to realize, for the Muslims in their midst are doing the forcing -- they will, slowly, come to understand not the non-existent "plight" of the non-existent "Palestinian people," they will change, and change in favor of Isael. They will come to realize that, as they become aware of what is truly happening in their own countries, now faced from within with what is a quite-unnecessary danger, that of Muslim populations that cannot, save at the edges, among the least-Muslim of Muslims, integrate, and that believe they have not only have a right but a duty to remove all obstacles to the spreadd, and then the dominance, of Islam. That goal will be, is being, pursued by all means, and those means include, in addition to terrorism and its ever-present threat, such means as the Money Weapon, campaigns of Da'wa, and demographic conquest (discussed openly among Muslims, and sometimes even, as by Boumediene at the U.N. in 1974, and Qaddafy a few years ago, Arab or other Muslim rulers). That goal requires the slow or rapid undoing of the political and legal instittuutions of Infidel nation-states, the undoing of social arrangements and understandings, the undoings of the very freedoms, and solicitousness for the individual, that characterize advanced Western democracies, and are regarded as the accomplishment of many centuries of thought.
And as they begin to better comprehend Islam, those Europeans will, necessarily, begin to realize as well that the war against Israel has no end and is unsusceptible of a "solution" for the Arab and Muslim claim, or the Arab Muslim claim, is not to be met, nor assuaged, by any reduction in Israel's size. Already absurdly tiny, Israel is now, in its current borders (including the "West Bank" which is the name the Jordanians gave to those parts of Judea and Samaria, part of the Mandate for Palestine that was always intended to be included in the tiny territory allocated for the Jewish National Home by the League of Nations), existing in a state of permanent peril that no other state must endure, and for any of those other states to lecture or hector Israel on why it should surrender more territory, is both cruel and absurd -- and once Islam is grasped, both that cruelty, and that absurdity, of such pressures and demands on Israel -- not least by the confused and ineffectual Obama Administration, that has no idea how to deal with Islam, and is very likely going to stick with the folly in Afghanistan because it did not prepare the proper framework -- for the Cairo speech and what it signified for now still makes it impossible for the Obama Administration to see things aright, to recognize and act on the recognition that Islam is the problem, and the American government must stop squandering men, money, materiel, morale, and attention (needed for many other things) on hopeless efforts to make Muslim societies happier or more prosperous and Musliim states more unified, but instead welcome every fissure, ethnic, sectarian, and economic, pre-existing within the Camp of Islam.
Many who never knew, or forgot, the real story of the wars or War being made on Israel, which we now understand well enough to describe, accurately, as a Jihad against Israel that began against the Jews even before the existence of the State, during the Mandatory period, when it was clear that the Jews would not behave as submissive dhimmis, a Jihad that has been pursued steadily ever since, by the Muslim Araabs, against the Infidel nation-state of Israel, by open warfare, by terrorism, by economic boycotts, by diplomatic pressure, by every means, and that war will never come to an end, but it can be held intelligently in check if Israel remains overwhelmingly stronger, militarily, and if in addition the Arabs and other Muslims are convinced that Israel is overwhelmingly stronger. And Israel, if pushed back still further, as dhimmis, e, way that the Jihad against Israel, if cruelly pressured to give up control of the "West Bank" to which it has a legal, moral, and historic claim, will be far weaker and will be perceived as much much weaker, by its enemies, who will not for one minute be assuaged, but will merely have their appetites for Jihad whetted -- and not only for Jihad against Israel, but against all Infidels, including most importantly those in Western Europe.
Despite the BBC and The Guardian and Agence France-Presse and Der Spiegel and so on, the peoples of Western Europe will come to understand Islam, and will come to realize that the narrative, the cunning re-packaging of the unappeasable murderous hostility to Israel as merely a fight for "national liberation" or for the "Palestinians" -- a "tiny people" invented precisely after the Six-Day War, by Arab propagandists and their able, and well-paid, Western advisers and collaboratores, and by now such words as "occupied" have worked their daily poison, but despite all this, relief is on the way. The cavalry is coming, and the cavalry is being summoned because of the aggressive and violent behavior of Muslims world-wide, and that cavalry is nothing more, and nothing less, than an awakening to the texts, the tenets, the attitudes, the atmospherics, of Islam -- and, inexorably, to the real nature of the conflict between Arab and Jew, which is merely a local case of the permanent Jihad against all Infidels, everywhere, who oppose the dominance, over themselves, of Islam.
Yours is an optimistic post, Hugh, and one with which I am in agreement respecting the awakening of the West to the menace which is Islam, though many more Islamic barbarities will occur before the awakening is complete. Then the West will know what to do.
I've mentioned UN Res. 242 before, but it bears mentioning again. 242 allows for Israel to have defensible borders, which are not the pre-1967 borders. Demanding a contiguous state for the 'Palestinians' would not allow Israel to have these borders that 242 calls for. In effect, demanding Palestinian contiguity (sp?) is a direct violation of Israel's rights as a nation, as guaranteed by the UN. But that is nothing new.
The only consistency to U.N. resolutions is in the uniformity of their hostility toward Israel. There is no requirement in practice that the resolutions be consistent with previous resolutions in the details, as long as the overall thrust is directed at condemning Israel. By now we all know that the OIC bloc is incapable of doing anything that's rational in matters involving Israel, even in things that might actually be in their own self interest, if it isn't expressible in concepts framed by Shariah law. Unfortunately, this includes hatred for the Jews, for which reducing them to dhimmitude, or if that's not possible then chasing them out of the ME, is part and parcel.