So the Peace Talks are on again in Sharm el Sheikh, with Hilary duly mouthing the usual blandly optimistic assurances, and Abbas strong-armed into appearing so that Obama can claim a "win" for his party's November election purposes.
One more set of "Peace Talks", like so many before, and yet we are supposed to believe that this time some magical, miraculous formula will produce results. Just how stupid do we look?
And yet, beyond the hopelessness, there is a deeper issue which is a large part of the reason why the talks are hopeless; the Palestinians are not represented at these talks.
Mahmud Abbas is a puppet representative. He never did represent the half of Palestinians residing in Gaza; his "election", if you can call such a heavily-rigged farce an election, was only in the West Bank. And that term of office expired in February of 2009. He has no authority to represent anyone, even in the West Bank, let alone Gaza.
Hamas, on the other hand, is the democratically elected government of the Palestinian people in Gaza. Yet the US and Israel insist that Hamas is a terrorist organization, and will not be allowed to participate in any "Peace Talks", now or ever.
So, we invite the unelected leader to to the "Peace Talks", and refuse to even speak with the elected leaders.
And we call this building democracy?
If you'd like to hear what the people of Gaza have to say, in their own words, here it is.
Yeah, it's all a big show so the politicians can look like they're TRYING to establish peace even though they are 100% certain that nothing is going to actually be accomplished.
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