Brith Sholom Media Watch Alert #695, 4/27/14

To:       Brith Sholom Media Watch Subscribers
From:   Jerry Verlin, Editor  (jverlin1234@verizon.net)
Subj:    Brith Sholom Media Watch Alert #695, 4/27/14
 
 
This Week In The Inq:  Flight From Reality On What Caused Peace Talks To Fail
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OK, I’ll begin by confessing that exchanging “land for peace” never seemed to me a balanced proposition, particularly with folks already possessing ninety-nine and forty-four one-hundredths percent of the Middle East who even then won’t accept the legitimacy of your twice-sliced claim to the fraction of that less than one-percent that you’d have left.
 
But what’s going on right now in the “Israeli-Palestinian peace process” isn’t even about Israel exchanging “land for peace.”  Oh, no.  It’s about Israel exchanging land, to which it has a substantial and by me superior claim, plus other tangible concessions, for just time-limited talk about that ephemeral peace.
 
The media watch issue is the stark difference between what Abbas demands Israel concede just for peace talks to continue and how the mainstream media described causes of current peace talks’ collapse to Western readers, e.g., of the Philly Inquirer (Inq).
 
Khalad Abu Toameh’s Jerusalem Post article, “Palestinians Set New Conditions for Peace Talks to Continue,” on April 3, laid out what Abbas now demands and offers in exchange. 
 
Toameh’s April 3 JP article led:  “The Palestinian Authority has set new conditions for agreeing to extend the peace talks with Israel after April, PA officials in Ramallah said Thursday.”  [emphasis added throughout]  These new conditions include:
 
***  “Israeli recognition of the pre-1967 lines as the future borders of a Palestinian state with east Jerusalem as its capital”
 
***  “release of 1,200 more Palestinian prisoners” including “three senior terrorists”
 
***  “complete cessation of settlement construction, the imposition of PA sovereignty over Area C in the West Bank, a halt to Israeli military operations in PA-controlled territories, and ‘reunion’ permits for 15,000 Palestinians.”
 
***  “Still other conditions include reopening the Gaza border crossings, lifting the blockade on the Gaza Strip, and permitting the return of Palestinian terrorists who were deported to the Gaza Strip and Europe after they sought shelter from the IDF in the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem in 2002.”
 
“Ziad Abu Ein, a Fatah official who attended the meeting in Ramalah with Erekat, said that if Israel accepts these conditions and releases the fourth batch of prisoners, then the PA would agree to pursue the negotiations until the end of the year.”
 
 On Thursday and Friday this week, the Inq ran mainstream media news articles on “Israeli-Palestinian peace process” collapse. 
 
Thursday’s Washington Post article (Inq, Thu, 4/24/14, A6, WP, “Fatah-Hamas Deal Could Threaten Mideast Talks”) was on its face a balanced article.  It credited the “surprise reconciliation” with “upending U.S.-backed peace talks with Israel just days before a deadline to end or extend them”; cited “near-daily rocket attacks on Israel” from Gaza; and stated that “both the United States and Israel have branded Hamas a terrorist organization.” 
 
What’s missing is any reference to the magnitude of the substantive demands being made by Abbas’ Fatah, the non-terrorist-branded-branch of this dynamic duo, upon Israel just to continue the talks for eight months – total cessation of Israeli construction in Judea, Samaria and historic Jerusalem, while Palestinian Arab construction there goes on unabated; Israeli acceptance of the 1949 Israel-Jordan ceasefire lines, as though the 1967 war and UN resolution 242 never happened, as the new western Palestine Arab state’s borders; release of over a thousand convicted terrorists; etc.  Western public awareness that Abbas is making these demands just to continue the talks for eight months would weaken Western public perception of him and Fatah as “moderate.”
 
Indeed, the Inq’s Friday article (Inq, Fri, 4/25/14, A20, McClatchy, Inq-headlined as “Israel Halts Peace Talks”) had a paragraph two sentence contrasting “the extremist Islamist group Hamas” with “the more moderate Fatah faction of Mahmoud Abbas.”
 
Both the headline and lede of this gave the impression, less than a week before talks would expire unless Israel accepted all of “more moderate Fatah’s” demands for their renewal, that, as the Inq charmingly put it: “Israel Halts Peace Talks.”  McClatchy lede:
 
     JERUSALEM:  Responding to a unity accord among Palestinian factions, Israel said Thursday that it was suspending negotiations with the Palestinians, breaking off nine months of talks brokered by Secretary of State John Kerry.
 
What are they playing at?  Was it not relevant to McClatchy and Inquirer readers that these Nine Months of Peace Talks Brokered by Kerry that were so cavalierly Halted By Israel would have halted themselves in less than a week if Israel did not agree to retreat to the 1949 ceasefire lines, cease building homes for Jews in existing-sites in Judea-Samaria, and in the heart of Jerusalem, release a thousand convicted terrorists, end the blockade of a place that rockets Jews “nearly-daily,” etc., etc., all just to induce the “moderate” Fatah to continue talking about peace until the end of the year?
 
Regards,
Jerry