Goldstone or Peace Talks: You Can't Have Both

Goldstone or Peace Talks: You Can't Have Both

Israel Matsav has a report that Israel is demanding the Goldstone report be taken off all tables before any peace talks resume; he then adds that this probably isn't tactical manouvering but rather a fundamental requirement:

I don't believe she's threatening to cut off 'peace talks' (I did not hear the
original interview with Shalev, but Monsters and Critics says "Israel threatened
Wednesday that it would not renew peace talks with the Palestinians, unless a
United Nations report accusing it of having committed war crimes during last
winter's Gaza war was dropped)." What she's doing is stating reality that Israel
cannot make the types of 'concessions' that the 'international community'
expects us to make so long as the Goldstone Report is hanging over our right to
self-defense. And I believe that nearly all Israelis would agree with that
assessment.

Of course, had the findings of the report been in any way credible, it would have been wrong to allow Israel to browbeat anyone this way - even tho the story of diplomacy is always about who can browbeat whom, Norwegian professors notwithstanding. So far, I've read perhaps a quarter of the report, and am wearily making my way through it, and it's ghastly. Not for its findings, but for the extent to which it is a blatant attempt to smear Israel irrespective of what the reality was. Should it not go away, it really will make any future Israeli concessions suicidal.

I'll write more about this if and when I ever finish reading the abomination.

Originally posted by Yaacov Lozowick's Ruminations