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Abbas at the UN: Another Lost Chance for Peacemaking

(Huffington Post) David Harris - On Friday, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas addressed the UN General Assembly. Unfortunately, what he said did not advance the cause of peace. The speech was filled with recklessly incendiary language - "colonial military occupation," "brutality of aggression," "racial discrimination," "multi-pronged policy of ethnic cleansing," "war of aggression," "apartheid policies," "racist annexation wall," and more. Is that the language of a peacemaker determined to narrow the space between himself and his adversary? How does Abbas square that description of demonic Israeli policies with the fact that the West Bank's Arab population and GDP are growing impressively, in what he erroneously dubbed as "the only occupation in the world"? And he described the Palestinians as a "defenseless people," as if there hadn't been decades of terrorism, thousands of dead and injured Israelis, and lethal weapons, courtesy of Iran, in the hands of self-professed killers. The writer is executive director of the American Jewish Committee.
2011-09-28 00:00:00
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