{"id":558,"date":"2004-07-07T09:21:43","date_gmt":"2004-07-07T13:21:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/wordpress\/?p=558"},"modified":"2010-05-08T13:50:08","modified_gmt":"2010-05-08T19:50:08","slug":"man-of-peace-sharon-refuses-to-meet-mideast-envoy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/?p=558","title":{"rendered":"“Man of Peace” Sharon Refuses to Meet Mideast Envoy"},"content":{"rendered":"

JERUSALEM, July 6<\/a> – Israeli officials are refusing to meet a group of Mideast mediators who are in the region to discuss Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s plan to withdraw from the Gaza Strip, officials said Wednesday.<\/p>\n

Christina Gallach, spokesman for EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana, confirmed that the Israelis had called off a scheduled meeting.<\/p>\n

She noted that at last month’s summit of the Group of Eight industrial powers, participants had decided to send Quartet representatives to meet with Israeli and Palestinian officials to discuss how the Gaza pullout could advance efforts the road map.<\/p>\n

”The Quartet is in the immediate future not going to meet the Israeli representatives, as it had been foreseen,” she said. She said she did not know why the Israelis had called off the talks.<\/p>\n

The Israeli government officials said the time for working with the Quartet had not yet arrived. They expressed concern that European policies might hurt Israeli interests. Israel has often accused Europe of being pro-Palestinian.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The article goes on to suggest that the Bush administration has abandoned the road map in favour of Sharon’s Gaza pullout.<\/p>\n

I wonder why the author believes they were ever serious about the plan.<\/p>\n

Conn Hallinan’s June 1, 2004 contribution<\/a> to the Global Beat Syndicate<\/i> made some prophetic points :<\/p>\n

We can ill afford another war, but the Israelis might be persuaded to take the field on our behalf. Is White House support for Sharon’s land grab a quid pro quo for a coming American-backed Israeli attack on the last two independent countries in the region?<\/p>\n

The problem, of course, is that the world is not a chess game, and the pieces do not always do what you want them to do.<\/p>\n

For the time being, the U.S. drive to control the bulk of the world’s oil reserves, and the Sharon government’s push for a greater Israel and the elimination of regional rivals, finds common ground. But if Israel crosses U.S. interests, the so-called “Jewish lobby” and the born-agains would find themselves out in the cold in a minute.<\/p>\n

The crisis in the Middle East is not a clash of civilizations, less so a hijacking of American foreign policy by right-wing Israelis and Christian fundamentalists. It is business as usual.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

JERUSALEM, July 6 – Israeli officials are refusing to meet a group of Mideast mediators who are in the region to discuss Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s plan to withdraw from the Gaza Strip, officials said Wednesday. Christina Gallach, spokesman for … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-558","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pdXTf-90","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/558","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=558"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/558\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13621,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/558\/revisions\/13621"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=558"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=558"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=558"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}