Hebron Shooting Threatens to Derail Peace Talks

Israeli Officials Treat Shooting as Indictment of All Palestinians Everywhere

The Qassam Brigades may have taken credit for today’s shooting attack at Mount Hebron, which killed four Israeli settlers, but the real culprits in the minds of a number of Israeli officials were clear, all Palestinians, everywhere, were really to blame.

The whole world can see tonight that Israel desires peace while the Palestinians want violence and terror,” declared Israeli MP Ofir Akunis (Likud). Other officials said the attack proved that peace talks were a bad idea and still others called for “retaliation” by announcing massive expansions of settlements in the West Bank.

There are already concerns that the talks will derail the US brokered direct peace talks, though those talks haven’t actually started yet. Even US officials, who remain confident of a peace deal despite all reason, are expressing concern.

Which means this might actually derail the talks before Israel’s settlement expansions get a chance to derail them, and officials from both sides will have to come up with new ways to blame one another for the failed talks, having already both condemned each other already for a failure of talks that hasn’t happened yet based on a settlement expansion that hasn’t happened yet either.

Author: Jason Ditz

Jason Ditz is Senior Editor for Antiwar.com. He has 20 years of experience in foreign policy research and his work has appeared in The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, Forbes, Toronto Star, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Providence Journal, Washington Times, and the Detroit Free Press.