A day after the Palestinian Authority and Hamas reached a national unity agreement, Israel announced the suspension of the never-ending peace talks. The Israeli position was echoed instantly in Washington by one of Israel’s unofficial agents, congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen from Florida, who called for an “immediate suspension of US aid to the Palestinian Authority”.

The Gaza accord, signed by several Palestinian groups, including the two antagonist parties Fatah and Hamas, consisted of five main points:

1. Forming new national unity government,
2. Holding elections,
3. Reforming the security forces
4. Social reforms and
5. General liberties.

The agreement was obviously a national issue affecting good democratic governance. Logically, one could surmise that Israel would be very interested in negotiating peace with an entity representing all Palestinians factions.

Peace vs Zionist dream

Reaching a peace agreement, however, could put an end to the Zionist dream. Israel has used the Sisyphean peace talks to delay the inevitable by transplanting Jews-only squatter colonies to create new facts on the ground.

According to the Israeli organization Peace Now, while “talking peace” for the last nine months, Israel issued permits to build 14,000 new Jews-only homes in the occupied land violating Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention.

Israel simply wants to talk, but not to reach an agreement. In a speech on 28 January at a security conference held at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv, Trade and Industry Minister Naftali Bennett – head of a major political bloc in the government – threatened to resign if his government considered withdrawing from the occupied West Bank.

Bennett described the possibility of a peace agreement that might even allow some Jews-only colonies to remain inside the future state of Palestine as “the loss of a moral [Zionist] compass”. Deputy Defence Minister Danny Danon told the Jerusalem Post last month that he would “resign from his post if a diplomatic arrangement to extend the talks with the Palestinians is reached”.

Palestinian legitimacy

A Palestinian unity government would also deflate the excuse Israeli right wing hawks use to question the viability of any peace deal reached with the Palestinians. They want the division among the Palestinians to continue so that they can challenge Mahmoud Abbas’s mandate to speak for all Palestinians.

Bennett, an American millionaire-turned-Israel-politician and squatter, had cast doubts on Abbas’s legitimacy, arguing that “If we reached an agreement with him, more than 60 per cent of the Palestinians in Gaza will not accept it”.

The ex-Moldavian nightclub bouncer and illegal squatter, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, went further asserting that Abbas “does not represent Palestinians in Gaza and his legitimacy in the West Bank is questionable. Signing an agreement with Abbas is merely signing an agreement with Fatah, the faction which he heads.”

Earlier in the year, Israeli government ministers also chastised America for its role in the peace process.

The Israeli defence minister spewed a barrage of insults directed at the US secretary of state, John Kerry, calling his effort “not worth the paper it is printed on”, a glory hound “messianic”, and urging him to “leave us [Israel] alone”.

Stockholm syndrome

Exhibiting classic symptoms of the Stockholm syndrome, Kerry who was supposed to be a mediator between Israel and the Palestinians, declared this week: “I will not allow my commitment to Israel to be questioned by anyone.”

Instead of expressing “commitment” to a foreign nation, Kerry and his partisan colleagues should heed the warning of America’s founding father, George Washington. In his farewell speech, he urged fellow citizens to be wary of “excessive partiality for one foreign nation” and to be vigilant to the “wiles of foreign influence”.

George Washington must be turning in his grave watching his partisan successors prostrating to agents of a foreign country, not to “good faith and justice”.

I hate to tell you George, but today’s American officials are more committed to the foreign entity of Israel than to justice.

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A version of this article was first published by the Gulf Daily News newspaper. The version here is published by permission of Jamal Kanj.