{"id":250112,"date":"2016-06-16T07:09:06","date_gmt":"2016-06-16T07:09:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/paris-conference-a-tired-and-cliched-failure\/"},"modified":"2016-06-16T15:26:16","modified_gmt":"2016-06-16T15:26:16","slug":"paris-conference-a-tired-and-cliched-failure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/latest-news\/paris-conference-a-tired-and-cliched-failure\/","title":{"rendered":"Paris Conference a Tired and Clich\u00e9d Failure"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Matthew Duss is right. The Paris Peace Conference is different, and the fact
\n that the United States\u2019 stronghold of supposedly trying to resolve conflicts
\n in the Middle East is being challenged, is a point worth noting. Yet, this is
\n hardly important. \u201cThe multilateral nature of the conference is a Palestinian
\n strategic victory, marking another step toward the internationalization of the
\n peace process,\u201d Duss wrote in Tablet magazine.<\/p>\n

Some 20 years ago, the Palestinian leadership allocated the responsibility
\n of obtaining justice and human rights for its people to the international community.
\n That was clearly a blunder, one which has been reenacted from the United Nations
\n to the US.<\/p>\n

Since then, the American political establishment has moved from being unconditionally
\n pro-Israel, to adopting Israeli political priorities as US national security
\n imperatives. That shift was certainly more exaggerated during the George W.
\n Bush administration than under that of US President Barack Obama. But despite
\n Obama\u2019s perceptibly sour relations with Israel\u2019s right-wing Prime Minister,
\n Benjamin Netanyahu, a clearly defined and different US foreign policy is yet
\n to be articulated. If anything, the Obama administration is offering Israel
\n yet more money, and has done everything in its power to thwart Palestinian efforts
\n at achieving any of its political goals, whether at the United Nations or at
\n other international institutions.<\/p>\n

But the advent of the French \u201cpeacemaking\u201d initiative between Israel and Palestine
\n is unlikely to alter this already skewed picture.<\/p>\n

Those who are expecting France to bring about a paradigm shift are likely to
\n be disappointed. The French, just like the Americans, are also governed by domestic
\n concerns and by regional and international ambitions. Passing the baton from
\n US Secretary of State, John Kerry, to French Foreign Minister, Jean-Marc Ayrault,
\n will not change much. It is merely a further indication of American sidestepping,
\n if not decline in terms of its Middle East leadership. The fact is the French
\n peace initiative-turned-conference in Paris on June 3 is likely to fizzle into
\n the vacuum of a dead \u201cpeace process\u201d. So, why the colossal waste of time?<\/p>\n

If you have been following the Middle East \u201cpeace process\u201d issue in the last
\n quarter of a century, you are certainly aware that the \u201cnegotiations table\u201d
\n is nothing but a metaphor for buying time and obtaining political capital. The
\n Israelis require time to finalize their colonial projects in the form of escalating
\n illegal colonies on occupied Palestinian land; and the Palestinian leadership
\n uses the \u201ctalks\u201d to acquire political validations from a so-called \u201cpeace-broker\u201d,
\n namely the US.<\/p>\n

The US, in turn, has used the futile \u201cnegotiations\u201d to further assert itself
\n as the \u201ccaretaker\u201d of the Middle…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Matthew Duss is right. The Paris Peace Conference is different, and the fact that the United States\u2019 stronghold of supposedly trying to resolve conflicts in the Middle East is being challenged, is a point worth noting. Yet, this is hardly important. \u201cThe multilateral nature of the conference is a Palestinian strategic […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519,18],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-250112","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire","7":"category-latest-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250112","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=250112"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250112\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=250112"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=250112"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=250112"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}