Saturday, April 30, 2011

Netanyahu Chooses Bravado

When the Egyptian uprising began, the first thing that came to mind was that Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu would do everything he could to help President Mubarak remain in power, as head of one of only two countries that had made peace with Israel.  He should have realized that his options were diminishing.

Three months later, Egypt’s temporary leaders have brokered a peace agreement between the two rival Palestinian factions, Hamas in Gaza and Fatah in the West Bank. As  Marwan Bishara, Al Jazeera's senior political analyst, noted, the geopolitical situation hadn’t exactly been helpful to the Palestinians up to now, but President Abbas lost his patron when Mubarak resigned on February 11th, and now Hamas faces a similar possibility, as Syria’s Bashar Al-Assad struggles to remain in power.

As the Palestinians seize the moment, President Netanyahu continues to declare that Fatah must choose between peace with Israel and reconciliation with Hamas. He is no more in touch with reality than our own Representative Paul Ryan.

1 comment:

  1. Some Egyptian woman, shortly after the success of the Egyptian revolution said something that really stick with me: "In Tunisia and then in Egypt, the leaders made good, sensible suggestions, but they were consistently made two weeks too late. Israel, don't be two weeks too late! talk and make concessions while you can."

    ReplyDelete