Undiplomats Come to the Fore

We note with sadness the lethal violence in East Jerusalem and the West Bank in recent days.  So far, neither Israeli nor Palestinian leaders are helping.

Mitchell Plitnick, a blogger with us for a time, is program director at the Foundation for Middle East Peace.  He’s written two pieces of note that we link to here:

1. This piece is on Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely’s statements last weekend that Israel will not leave the West Bank (click on its title): A Top Israeli Diplomat Publicly Admits What Netanyahu Won’t.
2. And this is from his post on Netanyahu’s UN speech, Silent Arrogance: Netanyahu At the UN:

If there was anything remarkable about the speech, it was Netanyahu’s hostile, condescending tone. Already, his “44-second pause” has become infamous. This pause, after Netanyahu accused the United Nations of tolerating genocidal threats from Iran, was accompanied by Netanyahu’s scowl at the entire assembly.

This Times of Israel article reports on a further example of the current Deputy Foreign Minister’s “diplomacy”:  Hotovely heckles Jordan’s foreign minister at UN session on Jerusalem.

And the following on Abbas’ UN speech is by Plitnick’s boss, Matthew Duss, president of the Foundation for Middle East Peace: Abbas’ Bold, Empty, Self-Defeating Move, an article in Slate subtitled, “The Palestinian leader says he will no longer abide by the Oslo Accord. Netanyahu must be thrilled.”  This selection sums up Duss’s view:

It’s worth noting here that Abbas is largely correct when he claimed that the Palestinians had met their commitments while Israel has ignored its own, particularly with regard to settlements, which U.S. officials have blamed for the collapse of the most recent round of peace negotiations in 2014. What Abbas didn’t do was offer any sort of plan to change this. In reality, Abbas’ speech offered the worst of both worlds: It delivered nothing tangible for the Palestinians, while at the same time handed the Israelis something inflammatory to bash him with.