HonestReporting has just published its latest communique: ‘Quality Problems at Reuters and Atlantic Monthly’
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Further points on the Atlantic Monthly article ‘Will Israel Live to 100?’ (req. registration to view):
* Says Schwartz, ‘Even assuming that a comprehensive settlement could be reached, Israel’s long-term prospects are bleak.’ How’s that for cynical? Is there any doubt that a country that’s weathered everything Israel has for the past 55 years, and managed to forge a ‘comprehensive settlement’, would figure out how to handle the demographic issue?
* Schwartz repeatedly refers to the conflict as a longstanding ‘Palestinian – Zionist contest (or conflict)’. A far more accurate term is ‘Arab-Israeli conflict’, for there was no meaningful ‘Palestinian’ identity until the late 60’s. Moreover, Schwartz refers even to Arab Israelis as ‘Palestinians’, despite the fact that most Arab Israelis would not define themselves that way.
* Schwartz suggests that the motivation for Sharon’s disengagement plan was his ‘fearing that more and more Palestinians believe time is on their side, and that they will thus be tempted by the ‘one-state solution.’ Actually, Sharon has repeatedly stated that his plan is motivated by security concerns, and it was bourne of the lack of a Palestinian peace partner.
* What is the basis for Schwartz’s claim that until 1967, Arab Israelis lived ‘under military rule’?
* What ‘territory’, ‘existing peace plans’, and ‘cantons’ does Schwartz refer to here?:
Sharon’s unilateral efforts at disengagement—which would have preserved more Jewish settlements and granted the Palestinians less territory than do existing peace plans, and which would have created a separate but hardly sovereign Palestinian entity composed of detached cantons—have spurred Abbas to enter negotiations.
Sharon’s plan does not detail what territory Palestinians receive in a final settlement. It focuses only on Gaza and four Israeli communities in the northern West Bank.
