On why "diplomacy" won't work

The Qatari paper AlArab this morning (Thursday Jan 8) says Qatar is still demanding that the Security Council vote on a binding resolution calling among other things for immediate withdrawal of the occupation forces from Gaza, and immediate opening of all border crossings. A much more ambiguous proposal concocted by Egypt and Sarkozy, and supported by Condi and others, calls for negotiations with Israel and others on monitoring of border crossings, and so on and so forth, and the effect at the UN seems to have been to preempt the Qatari resolution. The Qatari representative said the foot-dragging, and the failure by the Security Council to take unambiguous action constitutes implicit support for the continuation of the Israeli war-crimes. The paper says:

[The Qatari foreign affairs minister] urged the Security Council to protect the health and educational institutions [in Gaza], which are secure areas and attacks on them are criminal. And he said delay in issuing this resolution constitutes a green light to Israel to continue its war-crimes in blatant violation of international laws and practices; and the delay is also contrary to the mandate of this Council...

AbdulBari Atwan in his op-ed this morning recites a number of ways in which the Sarkozy/Egyptian proposal helps Israel in its campaign against Gaza in a column headed "A poisoned initiative that should be rejected".

Historian Bashir Nafie, also writing in AlQuds alArabi, explains why any negotiation with the Israeli authorities is bound to fail. He writes:

In the second week of this war, the Hebrew state and the Israeli people are helping the world to understand the collective fanaticism being lived by that state and its people.

There has been no state in history this small and marginal in the international order that has enjoyed such enormous support from the great powers in the world. But the Israelis have no concern for the world. They are unable to free themselves from the creed of dominance and oppression; and once they have unleashed their military madness, this creed is converted into a collective delusion of racial dominance--and not just with respect to Palestinians and Arabs only, they also isolate themselves rigidly from human values and shared humanity. They do not take into account the world's laws of humanity, and they have no concern for the cries or the public opinion of the people of the world, or even for what is dictated by simple pragmatic reason. This is a state outside the world--outside the minimum level of commonality. And outside of simple reason.

And because that is the way it is, it would be naive to imagine the possibility of arriving at a lasting negotiated peace between this state and its Arab neighbors. There is no solution to this conflict, because a solution requires all parties to behave in a reasonable way. This state exists, fights and defines itself in an area beyond reason. How can a state hope to make peace with its neighbors when it brings shame on those who have ventured to make peace with it? When it arrogates to itself the right to blockade and to kill, without the slightest trace of anxiety or concern? A state that is convinced that the prestige of its blood is greater than that of the blood of others and its well-being means nothing but hunger and misery for others. And its existence nothing but the extinguishing of the existence of others?