Forward admits: Israel and its partisans lied about "no partner for peace"

Forward, JJ Goldberg - Well, well, well, isn’t this awkward? After all that talk about Israel having “no partner” for peace, it turns out the Palestinians were ready to make a deal after all, on terms that weren’t far from Israel’s bottom line.....

Sounds like good news, doesn’t it? Actually, it’s extremely embarrassing. Israel’s leaders and allies have been saying for years that peace was impossible, that Israel was willing to make “painful” concessions but there was nobody to talk to on the Palestinian side...

Now it appears the Palestinians were willing to settle for much less. That bit about Israel having no partner was a fib.

.....What’s most shocking about all this is that Israelis by and large aren’t shocked. The progress of negotiations has been common knowledge for years, at least among the well-informed. Enough has leaked out to the press to make these latest leaks sound like more of the same. Some favor the Palestinians’ terms, some think they’re a trap, but few seem to doubt they’re real.

Then there’s the organized American Jewish community. They’ve been caught completely off guard. The leaders of the main centrist organizations, who never lack for grand posturing, were silent as of this writing. The right is in a tizzy, doing handstands to explain it away.... The one thing nobody seems able to get their minds around is the idea that Israel might be in the wrong here. That would be much too awkward.  Read more