U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry left Washington Monday with a new a brainstorm of meeting with Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas in Jordan to advance the dead and buried “peace process” while leaving Israel off the itinerary.
Kerry also will meet with officials of the Arab League, which has backed the 2002 Saudi Arabia plan to “normalize” relations with Israel as soon as the country simply transfers 600,000 Jews from their homes and turns over hundreds of billions of dollars in infrastructure over to the Palestinian Authority, along with all of land in Judea and Samaria and half of Jerusalem.
His itinerary leaves it out in the open that the real powers-to-be are the Arab League countries, the ones with the oil. “We all are familiar with the importance of the Arab peace initiative,” State Dept. Spokeswoman Jen Psaki told reporters Monday. “And the representatives of the Arab League, they’ve asked for an update or they discussed that with him [Kerry] in April. So he’s providing that for all of them on Wednesday.”
The Arab League wants an “update,” meaning what is Netanyahu prepared to give up this time around?
Psaki could not provide any reason for Kerry’s not planning to go to Israel and to meet Abbas in Jordan, and not Ramallah.
“We have no plans to visit Israel. If there are additional meetings – I expect we’ll know later this afternoon,” Psaki added.
This whole trip sounds freaky. Kerry it not planning to meet with Prime Minister Netanyahu and does not even know which Arab League officials will receive him, according to the spokeswoman. But she added, “We’re still finalizing the meetings.”
“The Secretary would not be going back to the region if he did not feel there was an opportunity to keep making steps forward and providing an update to representatives of the Arab League as part of that.,” Psaki said Monday.
Kerry apparently has lots of ideas that something dramatic will occur, which is exactly is what everyone was led to believe last month when he tossed his schedule into the trash can and remained in the region for an extra day.
So what happened? Nothing.
Kerry left a day later than planned with no press conference, no joint statements, no nothing except to say that “real progress” had been made and said that a resumption of talks “could be within reach.”
The Hebrew-language Yediot Acharonot newspaper last month reported that Kerry had threatened Abbas to soften off or face receiving zero dollars from the United States in the future.
Kerry is not bothering with Netanyahu now. Abbas has set pre-conditions before resuming direct talks, which he calls “negotiations,” meaning “give me what I want or I will take it myself.” Kerry wants to break Abbas, and if he succeeds, then the monkey is on Netanyahu’s back.
It is an old story that goes like this: Abbas insist all or nothing, Then he “compromises” and insists on only a part of his demands, leaving the rest of them for the next round.
Israel then is faced with a phony “Great Compromise” and obviously is not interested in peace if it does not accept such a grandiose gesture.
If Kerry does not succeed, he will probably be back for a seventh time, leaving less important matters such as Syria and Egypt to underlings.
