The American "Palestinian" General Dayton steps down ... !!

[So the PA is still not willing to enter proximity talks. It is still making demands as preconditions. They hope to get what they can without having to negotiate at all..]

Lt. General Dayton, steps down 

HAARETZ

[..] The Palestinians are concerned that Dayton’s departure signals the Obama administration’s intent to lessen its involvement in the peace process.

Washington plans to replace Dayton with another three-star general of the same rank.

Meanwhile, the Palestinian Authority is pressuring the U.S. to abandon talks on possible confidence-building steps by Israel and to begin discussions on extensive Israeli withdrawals from the West Bank, Palestinian sources told Haaretz on Tuesday.

The Palestinian Authority is adamantly refusing to enter negotiations based on piecemeal Israeli gestures. It is instead urging Washington to pressure Israel to withdraw from wide swaths of territory and transfer overall security responsibility for all West Bank towns to the Palestinian armed forces.

PA officials told U.S. special envoy George Mitchell, who is mediating proximity peace talks between the two sides, that they have no interest in conducting prolonged negotiations with Jerusalem over Israeli gestures that resemble those offered as part of the “Jenin 2″ project.

As part of that initiative, which was hatched over two years ago, Israel agreed to scale back its security operations in the Jenin area and grant the Palestinian Authority security forces extensive freedom of operation. The plan was overseen and aided by Lt. General Dayton.

The Palestinians said recently that they will not accept a limited Israeli offer of PA security responsibility over Nablus, Tul Karm and Qalqilyah, similar to the defense arrangement currently in place in Jenin. Rather, the PA will insist that it be given complete authority over these areas and that Israel limit its activities there to an absolute minimum.

In addition, the Palestinians are demanding that their security forces be permitted to operate in Area C of the West Bank – which is now entirely under Israeli military and civilian administration. Israel opposes this request, while the United States has yet to make known its position on the matter.

The Jenin project involved the deployment of Palestinian units which had been armed and trained by Dayton’s staff in Jordan. After initial birth pangs, the initiative has been hailed as a success by Israel, the Palestinian Authority and the United States. Yet the three parties have since been unable to reach an agreement on the transfer of additional West Bank territories to PA security control.

“We have not discussed confidence building measures and we have no intention of doing so,” a senior Palestinian official told Haaretz. “This will not turn into a substitute for negotiations on a permanent status agreement. If [Israel] wants to carry out withdrawals without endless discussions, then it is welcome to do so.”

PA officials are wary that a move by Israel to partially relinquish security control over a town such as Nablus will be interpreted as an extraordinary gesture from Jerusalem, even though in practice the Israel Defense Forces would continue to operate freely within the town limits.

Senior Palestinian officials complain that the IDF continues to carry out arrests deep within West Bank towns, including Jenin. Such Israeli operations cast the PA in a difficult position in the eyes of the Palestinians.

As a result, Ramallah is seeking to restore the security equilibrium in the West Bank to what it was prior to the outbreak of the second intifada in September 2000.

Israeli defense officials are divided as to the extent to which the Palestinians are prepared to take on greater security responsibility. Despite the improved performance of the PA security arms, some high-ranking members of the IDF and the Shin Bet security service believe it is still too soon to discuss a wide-ranging withdrawal. Yet the current calm in the West Bank is likely to compel Washington to press Israel to pull back its forces to their positions before September 2000 – as Jerusalem had agreed to do according to the road map. 

Israpundit

May 26, 2010

Note:

"After initial birth pangs, the initiative has been hailed as a success by Israel, the Palestinian Authority and the United States."   Wrong!  Who is measuring this "success"?  Certainly not the IDF!  

IDF Prepares for Potential Attack from US-Trained PA Military

http://llphfreedom.blogspot.com/2010/05/idf-prepares-for-potential-attack-from.html

"This is a trained, equipped, American-educated force," Mizrahi said. "This means that at the beginning of a battle, we will pay a higher price. A force like that can shut down an urban area with four snipers… It is a proper infantry force facing us and we need to take that into account. They have attack capabilities and we do not expect them to give up easily."  May 24, 2010 

and

The Folly of America Training the Palestinian Army

We suspect that Lt. Gen. Dayton would retire rather than be in that position, but that would suit the PA as well. He has already done the job they wanted done. He’s built their army and now they want to use it as they see fit. .... March 19, 2010

Hmm!  on March 19th it was predicted Dayton would "step down" - his job is done; and Israel will one day reap what has been sowed by Dayton and the American military.  In another article a few months ago, it was noted that 2,000 of these trained Palestinians joined Hizbollah's army. 

  Bee Sting 

Comments on Israpundit 

on March 19, 2010

The Folly of America Training the Palestinian Army

1. 
   
   
   
   
   
   yamit82 says:

   March 19, 2010 at 11:34 pm

   Were I to become prime minister of Israel the Sirst thing I would do is to fire every military officer above the rank of
   colonel.
   
   They are all politicized and corrupted by America.
   Then I would close the Israeli Supreme Court.
   We almost lost the Yom Kippur War because of built in group think, we called conceptia (conception) Now we seem to have
   reverted to that kind of stasis in thinking again.
2. 
   
   
   
   
   
   BlandOatmeal says:

   March 20, 2010 at 12:00 am

   It makes sense for the US to train the Pal army, because the US has abandoned Israel as an ally and plans to replace it with the Pals at the earliest opportunity.
3. 
   
   
   
   
   
   Michael Sunstar says:

   March 20, 2010 at 2:11 pm

   Reminds me of Janet Reno’s excuse under the Clintonian regime: “We wanted to give money to Hamas so we could track how they spend their money!”
   Dummy. Dumb. Dummies. Now that an Islamic president Obama is in charge, it’s worse than ever for the dumb, dumb, dumbocratic party!
4. 
   
   
   
   
   
   ayn reagan says:

   March 20, 2010 at 5:54 pm

   Hitlery Clinton:
   

   At a time when elements of the American Left embraced the Palestinian cause and condemned Israel, Hillary was telling friends that she was “sympathetic” to the terrorist organization and admired its flamboyant leader, Yasser Arafat. When Arafat made his famous appearance before the UN General Assembly in November 1974 wearing his revolutionary uniform and his holster on his hip, Bill “was outraged like everybody else,” said a Yale Law School classmate. But not Hillary, who tried to convince Bill that Arafat was a “freedom fighter” trying to free his people from their Israeli “oppressors.” (1)
   Of course Hillary’s feelings about the PLO and Israel are only one aspect of her character, often a person’s true nature is more closely revealed in a more intimate setting. In an early showcase of Hillary’s diplomatic skills Christopher Anderson relates an experience that she and her future husband had during a trip to Arkansas in 1973.
   It was during this trip to his home state that Bill took Hillary to meet a politically well connected friend. When they drove up to the house, Bill and Hillary noticed that a menorah-the seven branched Hebrew candelabrum (not to be confused with the more common and subtler mezuzah)-has been affixed to the front door.
   “My daddy was half Jewish,” explained Bill’s friend. “One day when he came to visit , my daddy placed the menorah on my door because he wanted me to be proud that we were part Jewish. And I wasn’t about to say no to my daddy.”
   To his astonishment, as soon as Hillary saw the menorah, she refused to get out of the car. “Bill walked up to me and said that she was hot and tired, but later he explained the real reason.” According to the friend and another eyewitness, Bill said, “I’m sorry, but Hillary’s really tight with the people in the PLO in New York. They’re friends of hers, and she just doesn’t feel right about the menorah.” (2)
   In a conference call to the Israeli consuls general on Saturday night, Michael Oren (Israel’s ambassador to the United States) informed his diplomatic colleagues that relations with the U.S. were in a state of crisis not seen in 35 years. What should have been a minor incident between trusted allies has been used by the Obama administration for their own political purposes. The Jerusalem Post reports .
   THERE ARE now ominous signals that to obviate their failures, White House strategists are cynically distancing themselves from us in order to curry popularity by capitalizing on the anti-Israel hatred which has engulfed the world.
   Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has been busy escalating a perceived insult to Vice President Biden (the poorly timed announcement of the approval of new homes in Ramat Shlomo) into a stinging rebuke of Israel’s commitment to the peace process. For an administration which coddles dictators and reaches out to rogue states it is troubling to watch their treatment of our closest and most reliable ally in the middle east.
   That Hillary should treat Israel in such an undiplomatic way should not really come as a surprise. In his book American Evita, Christopher Anderson writes.
   At a time when elements of the American Left embraced the Palestinian cause and condemned Israel, Hillary was telling friends that she was “sympathetic” to the terrorist organization and admired its flamboyant leader, Yasser Arafat. When Arafat made his famous appearance before the UN General Assembly in November 1974 wearing his revolutionary uniform and his holster on his hip, Bill “was outraged like everybody else,” said a Yale Law School classmate. But not Hillary, who tried to convince Bill that Arafat was a “freedom fighter” trying to free his people from their Israeli “oppressors.” (1)

   http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2010/03/hillary_and_israel_you_cant_te.html