progress in the Middle East

In April 2002 he was screaming about an Israeli “massacre” of up to 500 people in Jenin.***

Now when he criticizes Israel, Palestinian negotiator (a lifetime position, apparently) Saeb Erekat is reduced to spouting diplomatic language worthy of Kofi Annan:

“I urge members of the international community to take the appropriate response to Israel’s crimes in Gaza,” said Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator. “Condemnation is the least one would expect.”

Yes, I consider his measured remarks progress.

So, I’m sorry to have to say, is this: there was no international media event in Gaza a couple of days ago after Israeli forces opened fire on armed and dangerous extremists hiding—literally—behind chador-clad women, who, at the urging of radio broadcasters, had gone to their aid and rescue at a mosque, where they were hiding out.

BEIT HANOUN, Gaza (Reuters) - Israeli troops shot and killed two Palestinian women acting as human shields between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian gunmen hiding in a Gaza mosque on Friday, witnesses said, before the gunmen escaped. The dramatic events came on the third day of an Israeli assault on the Gaza town of Beit Hanoun, the largest operation it has conducted in the Gaza Strip in months

Then in today’s New York Times we read about the hideous neglect and mistreatment of women by Palestinians as a society.

Discriminatory laws, traditional practices and a severe shortage of emergency shelters combine to perpetuate violence against women by their family members and intimate partners in the Palestinian territories, according to a report to be issued on Tuesday by Human Rights Watch, a New York-based watchdog group. …

The offenses include domestic violence, rape, incest, child abuse and violent responses to so-called honor crimes, like adultery, that embarrass the clan, family or community.

Laws dating from Jordanian and Egyptian administration in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, respectively do not fully protect the rights of women, the report says. It notes, for example, that the laws provide reduced penalties to men who kill or harm female relatives who are accused of adultery, allow only male relatives to file incest charges on behalf of minors and absolve from criminal prosecution rapists who agree to marry their victims and remain married for three years.

While Palestinian society disintegrates before his very eyes, Ismail Haniyeh, resister par excellence, tries to play the masscre/slaughter card:

Haniyeh called on the international community to interfere and stop the Israeli operation. He expressed astonishment over the global silence over Israel’s military operations in the past three days.

“I call on everyone to carry the responsibility for the killing of women, children and elderly. I call on anyone who calls on us to make concessions to take a good look at what is happening here, to witness how Israel is daily massacring the Palestinian people,” he said.

Haniyeh declared that Israel’s actions would not manage to break or subdue the Palestinian people, and all of its cohorts in its scheme against the Palestinians will not achieve their goals. “This is not an escalation,” he said, “but a slaughter approved at the highest Israeli level, against everything Palestinian.”

Let’s see how this tactic works for him. Reportedly, Hamas and Fatah are close to a deal on a unity government, for the 672nd time. Wait: that was a couple of hours ago and I can’t fine a good link.

But it has been superseded by Mashaal’s threat to kidnap more Israelis, and his urging Palestinians never to accept the terms of the Quartet (chief among them, of course, the recognition of Israel’s right to exist—i.e., recognition of reality).:

Damascus-based Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal threatened on Tuesday that Hamas would kidnap more IDF soldiers if Israel does not free all Palestinian prisoners.

In an interview with Hamas radio station Voice of al Aksa, Mashaal added the kidnappers would stick to their demands until Israel “emptied them of their substance.”

The Hamas leader-in-exile also called for an establishment of a Palestinian Authority unity government on the basis of the prisoners’ document but stressed that such a government must not adhere to the demands of the international quartet.

Some progress, eh?

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*** Erekat’s defenders on the Internet are busy trying to “prove” that he didn’t call Jenin a massacre. Here’s a reprint from a CNN transcript on April 15, 2002, which proves that his defenders are liars. Erekat tells Bill Hemmer he stands by his original words (if not the numbers—i.e., he claims there was a “massacre”):

And I stand that there were crimes committed in this refugee camp. This was a flagrant violation of international law. And I stand by the term “massacres” were committed in the refugee camp. And I know for sure that witnesses told me that they dug graveyards and have buried a lot of people…