Robert Duncan
4:20 pm
This past week, in Israel, the settlement of the West Bank continued. This in spite of the Palestinian cry for Israel to stop constructing settlements within their borders. This threatens to bring the peace talks to a grinding halt, due to Israel’s lack of concession to the first major issue being discussed in them. The international community is mostly siding against Israel, believing that the nation’s leader isn’t showing that he wants peace. Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, had before threatened that if the construction of settler homes on the West Bank continued, that he would not return to the peace talks. Thankfully, this is a promise that he did not keep, stating that he would not have any “quick reactions” to Israel’s failure to hear the international community. The UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon has reminded Israel again this past Monday that the construction on the West Bank is Illegal, and that he showed disappointment at Israel’s failure to listen to the UN’s pleas for an end to the settlements.
There is no question about it, the peace talks should be over now. If Abbas had kept his promise to walk out of the talks, the war would be yet again set in motion. The settlement of the West Bank by Israelis is illegal, and, in the eyes of the Palestinians, the UN is not doing much of anything about it. The UN has merely notified (more than once) the Israeli government that their actions are illegal, and failed to enforce the law. This hesitance to act on Israel’s defiance will result in a loss of confidence in the UN’s capability to act on it’s own laws, against one off it’s own members. This may cause an uprising In the Palestinian freedom organization “Hamas” that will cause the group to resume their violent war against Israel.
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2010/09/201092718349628699.html
No comments:
Post a Comment