GOING IT ALONE

Jerusalem-based researcher and analyst Jeremy Sharon makes some pertinent points about the current Israaeli mindset about peace talks with the Palestinians in today's Australian Go-it-alone lessons hard learned.

If the peace process is to go anywhere, the lessons that Israel has learnt in the past two years also must be taken on board by the international community. If they are simply ignored, then Israelis will never feel confident enough to finally withdraw from the West Bank and an atmosphere of trust will be impossible to establish.

Under such conditions, the situation in the Middle East will continue to fester and prospects of peace will remain extremely dim.

Sharon alludes to the role of the media in partly helping create this mood and there can be no better example than the appalling material coming from such media groups as Fairfax here in this country.

Yesterday's effort from Jason Koutsoukis Little Hope for Middle East Accord in 2011 demonstrates yet again how analysis becomes tainted when important facts are ignored.

The two sides "sat down for face-to-face talks on September 2. The talks were polite, perfunctory and ultimately a waste of time." However, Koutsoukis omits to mention that there were no face to face talks for over nine months while Israel enforced a freeze on building within its settlements. He knows that there is no Israeli policy of settlement expansion but rather, that any growth is taking place within the existing settlements.

It seems customary among Fairfax writers to forget that Hamas is committed to destroying Israel but Koutsoukis continues to mention that no peace deal is "possible" while Hamas is left out of negotiations.

Give us all a break, please.

We know that Israeli PM Netanyahu is committed to two states but does either of the Palestinian leaderships really "want the two-state solution after all"?

Rhetorical question Jason.

Then there's the Mavi Marmara which we all know wasn't a humanitarian mission in the first place (unless the only thing we read about the conflict is the Age). We know the flotilla carried useless supplies that even Hamas didn't want. Out of date medicine anyone?

How anyone could be so naieve or delusional as to think that the IHH provocateurs (nine of who died after the IDF had to come on board to save its soldiers under attack) were "citizens"?

Oh that's right.

"Israel said" the lives of its soldiers were threatened. Nevermind that the visual evidence proved what they said was the truth and that others (including the journalist apologists who quoted them) were not.

Naturally, Fairfax readers wouldn't know because most of the facts are only found in the blank pages.