John Kerry's latest "attempt" to bring Netanyahu and Abbas together reminds Uri Avnery of a sincere attempt at peacemaking launched in the early 1970s by a Swede named Gunnar Jarring:
"Jarring took his historic mission very seriously. He shuttled tirelessly between Cairo and Jerusalem. His name became a joke in Israel, and probably in Egypt, too.
The protagonists in those days were Anwar Sadat and Golda Meir. As we disclosed at the time, Sadat gave Jarring a momentous message: in return for getting back all of the Sinai peninsula, conquered by Israel in 1967, he was ready to make peace.
"Golda rejected this proposal out of hand. There was, of course, no meeting.
(A popular joke doing the rounds had Golda and Sadat facing each other from opposite banks of the Suez Canal. Golda shouted: 'Make Love not War!' Sadat looked at her through his binoculars and replied: 'Better war!')
"Everybody knows how this chapter ended. After Golda had rejected everything, Sadat attacked, won an initial surprise victory, the whole political world started to move , Golda was kicked out, and after four years of Yitzhak Rabin, Menachem Begin came to power and agreed the same peace with Sadat that had been proposed before the war.
"The 3000 Israeli soldiers and around 10,000 Egyptians who died in the war did not see it.
"Jarring, by the way, died in 2002, unsung and forgotten."
Kerry and Chutzpah » CounterPunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names
Kerry, Bibbi, and Abbas all come from an economic class that profit$ largely from the deaths of soldiers that Israel's eternal occupation of Palestine requires.
"Jarring took his historic mission very seriously. He shuttled tirelessly between Cairo and Jerusalem. His name became a joke in Israel, and probably in Egypt, too.
The protagonists in those days were Anwar Sadat and Golda Meir. As we disclosed at the time, Sadat gave Jarring a momentous message: in return for getting back all of the Sinai peninsula, conquered by Israel in 1967, he was ready to make peace.
"Golda rejected this proposal out of hand. There was, of course, no meeting.
(A popular joke doing the rounds had Golda and Sadat facing each other from opposite banks of the Suez Canal. Golda shouted: 'Make Love not War!' Sadat looked at her through his binoculars and replied: 'Better war!')
"Everybody knows how this chapter ended. After Golda had rejected everything, Sadat attacked, won an initial surprise victory, the whole political world started to move , Golda was kicked out, and after four years of Yitzhak Rabin, Menachem Begin came to power and agreed the same peace with Sadat that had been proposed before the war.
"The 3000 Israeli soldiers and around 10,000 Egyptians who died in the war did not see it.
"Jarring, by the way, died in 2002, unsung and forgotten."
Kerry and Chutzpah » CounterPunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names
Kerry, Bibbi, and Abbas all come from an economic class that profit$ largely from the deaths of soldiers that Israel's eternal occupation of Palestine requires.
