Irit: Amnesty International has issued a 70-pg. report in which they say that Palestinian attacks on Israeli civilians constitute crimes against humanity....
Uri: "Yesss!"
Irit: Put aside your "Yesss" and "Wo-ho" for a second...
Uri: What this means is that, until now, when we opposed our getting killed we were considered to be an "interested party". Now people are coming along and actually saying that it's wrong to kill us....
Previously, Amnesty seemed to give express only token criticism of Palestinian attacks on Israeli civilians. Why have things changed? A couple of months ago we were on the verge on being treated as pariahs and Arafat was being handed everything on a plate.
Whereas now: the EU is not saying too much about Operation Determined Path and is pushing for PA reform, and humanitarian organizations are suddenly discovering PA corruption and getting disturbed about Israeli victims. Not to be too optimistic - there's still lots of people like Chris Patten and Mona Baker around - but something has changed..
Is it simply the Bush speech? If the answer is yes, then it shows how much the situation revolves around realpolitik rather than principle.
This just in: The PA calls the Amnesty report "biased and unbalanced" (details). From the article, it's clear what they really mean: in their view, their situation justifies any and all behaviour. The PA and the other organizations mentioned seem unable to relate to the doctrine that murder of civilians in simply wrong.
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