Hell-bent (is that an appropriate figure-of-speech?) on the path to statehood, the Palestinian Authority has recently taken two important steps to assume its place amongst the other two dozen and more Arab countries, those paragons of proper political culture.
The first is that there will be no reconcilaitionbetween Fatah and Hamas, well not until after the holiday, it appears:
Fatah and Hamas have agreed to delay efforts to implement the reconciliation agreement until September, Fatah official in Gaza Diab Al-Loh said. Reconciliation committees will resume work after Eid-Al-Fitr, the three-day festival after the Muslim holy month of Ramadan at the end of August, the Fatah official said in a statement.
Why rush, we may ask It''s always more fun killing each other, I guess, or is the problem that the Hamas is too busy killing Israelis to be reconciled with the Fatah? Or maybe they are afraid that Fatah would request of them not to foil the bid for statehood and stop rocketing Israeli civilian population centers? And, of course, there’s no time like after-the-holidays time here in the region.Following up on that move of no reconciliation, we are informed that there will be little democracy happening on the ground. That statehood element is to be on hold as well:
Abbas postpones local elections in West BankPresident Mahmoud Abbas issued a decree on Monday postponing local West Bank elections scheduled for October 22. The presidential decree postpones elections "until appropriate circumstances" exist, the statement said, and gives time "to provide the Central Elections Commission with the opportunity to continue preparations for holding elections in all Palestinian districts." The postponement will also provide the "appropriate environment" for efforts to end "division and reaching reconciliation and national unity," the decree said. Local elections were last postponed in July 2011 to give more time to a reconciliation agreement between rival parties Hamas -- which rules the Gaza Strip and refuses elections until the electoral commission is reformed -- and Fatah in the West Bank, signed in May.I see they are really preparing themselves for full Arab statehood: no freedom of the press, human rights abuses, lack of adequate judicial transparency, donor funds embezzlement and now no elections.Great going there, Pals.P.S. And I just can’t wait to see on NBC will be reporting on developments like these.
It seems that
Al Jazeera English star joins NBC NewsAyman Mohyeldin, the Al-Jazeera English correspondent who became the face of that channel’s widely lauded coverage of the Arab Spring, has take a job as a foreign correspondent at NBC News...another sign of Al-Jazeera English’s growing acceptance by the American establishment...Mohyeldin, who was born in Cairo and grew up in the U.S. and Jordan, will be based in the Middle East.
Besides that connection to the “East Bank”, formally known as the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, founded by that illustrious Saudi Arabian refugee family that needed to flee the Arabian Peninsula in the early 1920s, is he properly professional enough for this corner of the Middle East?
As for a sneak takeover of a mainstream media outlet by Al-Jazeera, well, I guess it’s a case of when “main goes insane”?^