Israel’s government is playing a bit fast and loose with the facts these days, and is looking for a wholesale revision of the past week of moves by them and the Palestinian Authority to portray their moves as “retaliation” for things the PA hadn’t actually done yet.
Last Saturday, Israel was scheduled to release the final batch of Palestinian prisoners, but amid growing complaints from their coalition’s far-right, they reneged on the deal, never even holding the cabinet meeting to discuss the release.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, in reaction to Israel reneging on the release, signed 15 international conventions on Tuesday, mostly UN-related. The PA confirmed Wednesday that they would back out of those signatures if Israel followed through on the prisoner release, because apparently better late than never.
Instead, Israel announced today that it has “cancelled” the release outright, and is doing so to punish the Palestinians for Abbas’ convention signings, even though those came three days after the prisoners were supposed to be released, and in direct retaliation for the release not happening.
Israeli officials say they aren’t done there, and are going to take other measures to really stick it to the Palestinians, including harsh new restrictions on the PA, and the revocation of a permit to install cell phone infrastructure in the Gaza Strip.
Why on earth do you add "these days" to the opening sentence? The appearance of that phrase indicates that before "these days", the Israeli government did not play fast and loose with the facts. I'd love to know exactly when you think that was.
What more can the 'deluded ones' do now that 60Y of threats mass murder and land theft are coming back to bite them.
Abbas finally grew some balls and is finally heading to the UN. Without Obama willingness to continue circumventing UN resolutions, Israel is up the proverbial creek without a paddle.
never even holding the cabinet meeting to discuss
Nice detail. Reminds me of e.g. the insistence that US not even talk to Iran (as Flynt Leverett mentioned was US policy). There's definitely a will with them to control discussion, even prevent it. It's easy to imagine some fear in Israel's gov't that 'the right' would get wind of a meeting.
Then there's this amazing capacity to call any aggression 'retaliation,' or even 'revenge.' I can't even think of it as desperation–it's the character there, and what they get away with.
It's important to Israel's leaders to always portray themselves as victims, even when the facts utterly fail to support that assertion. Israeli and US leaders may choose to delude themselves with a revisionist version of events, but no one who has been paying attention is fooled.
Bingo…when the "facts" fail to support the assertion, then the "facts" must be wrong and …wait…the "real" facts are right here…and the US will back them up with their "facts" – which we provided them by diplomatic courier.