Bara(c)k's Generous Offer

What goes around comes around, as they say.

At the beginning of the decade we had Barak's famous 'generous offer' to Yasser Arafat, which the latter, so the story goes, spurned. Spurn! Spurn! And now, at the end of the decade, we've got Barack's generous offer to Benjamin Netanyahu, also spurned, which, as it turns out, was actually - you guessed it - another of Barak's generous offers, which just goes to show, if you're still with me, that if even Bibi's allergic to Barak's generous offers, Arafat can hardly be blamed for knocking him back way back when. Not to mention the fact that that loser Barak sounds like he couldn't even flog beer in a brewery. But, hey, I'm getting ahead of himself.

First, Barack's generous offer:

"The disclosure of the details of a letter reportedly sent by president Barack Obama last week to Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, will cause Palestinians to be even more skeptical about US and Israeli roles in the current peace talks. According to the leak, Obama made a series of extraordinarily generous offers to Israel, many of them at the expense of the Palestinians, in return for a single minor concession from Netanyahu: a 2-month extension of the partial freeze on settlement growth. A previous 10-month freeze, which ended a week ago, has not so far been renewed by Netanyahu, threatening to bring the negotiations to an abrupt halt. The Palestinians are expected to decide whether to quit the talks over the coming days. Netanyahu was reported last week to have declined the US offer. The White House has denied that a letter was sent, but, according to the Israeli media, officials in Washington are privately incensed by Netanyahu's rejection." (Obama letter suggests US not honest broker, Jonathan Cook, antiwar.com, 4/10/10)

Incensed? Did he say incensed? You bet. Despite the code of silence that prevails among these guys, some of them were so bloody incensed they could be overheard muttering: 'Those bloody Israelis never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity'.

"The disclosures were made by an informed source: David Makovsky, of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), a close associate of Dennis Ross, Obama's chief adviser on the Middle East, who is said to have initiated the offer." (ibid)

The offer? Oh yes, the offer:

"[I]n return for the 60-day settlement moratorium, the US promised to veto any UN Security Council proposal on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict over the next year, and committed to not seek any further extensions of the freeze. The future of the settlements would be addressed only in a final agreement. The White House would also allow Israel to keep a military presence in the West Bank's Jordan Valley, even after the creation of a Palestinian state; continue controlling the borders of the Palestinian territories to prevent smuggling; provide Israel with enhanced weapons systems and security guarantees and increase its billions of dollars in annual aid; and create a regional security pact against Iran." (ibid)

And Barak? Where does he fit in?

"In fact, the terms of Obama's letter were drafted in cooperation with Ehud Barak, Israel's defense minister..." (ibid)

Say no more.