I don't know if editors at The Scotsman intended this article on Benjamin Netanyahu's White House trip to be "news," "commentary," or a fuzzy in-between piece known as "news analysis."
But I do know it's in the paper's international news section. Ben Lynfield writes:
Before meeting US president Barack Obama at the White House on Monday, Israel's prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, gave a speech to American Jewish leaders with the standard desire-for-peace clichés, not taking into account that it is years of empty talk about peace while Israel entrenches occupation and grabs more land that has made Abbas's advocacy of negotiations unconvincing to many of his own people.
I wouldn't bat an eye if this were an op-ed or a properly labeled analysis.
But if this is what The Scotsman claims to be objective, acceptable news reporting, I can get the same tripe from the Palestinian media, where there's neither a pretense or expectation of fair coverage.
UPDATE 1:00 p.m.: This might be an example of an artificial Israeli "credibility gap," which Haviv Rettig Gur unspins:
The more likely source for this skepticism seems to be an effort to will Israeli intransigence into being so as to match the current Palestinian inability – born of internal Palestinian politicking – to come to the negotiating table.
Diplomats (and, as with Thomas Friedman, those who spend most of their days with them,) are unused to seeing a "conflict" in which the tactically weaker side might be the more belligerent one. With the Palestinian Authority demanding a total settlement freeze as a precondition for discussions, diplomats are striving to find an equivalent Israeli unwillingness to reach peace.
Gur's assessment is well worth-reading.
