Reuters runs interference for Palestinians

In a story appearing on its website this morning, Reuters reports that Israeli Environment Minister Gilad Erdan told Israel radio that if the Palestinians were to unilaterally declare a state, Israel:

should also consider ... passing a law to annex some of the settlements

For the Palestinian mercenaries advocates at Reuters, this suggestion amounts to a declaration of war by Israel so they assemble an army of 5 writers and an editor to defend and advise the Palestinian Arabs.

While talk of unilateral actions on both sides could easily be avoided were PA President Mahmoud Abbas to accept Israel's offer of unconditional negotiations, he has steadfastly refused.  Reuters however, cannot bear to acknowledge Palestinian intransigence so their correspondents twist themselves into knots in an effort to relieve the Palestinians of responsibility:

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has said negotiations cannot resume until Israel halts settlement expansion.

There's that prickly "cannot" again -- a bit like insisting one cannot pay his taxes because the local IRS office is too far away.  For Reuters, the Palestinians are never accountable for their own behavior.

Reuters is then good enough to advise the Palestinians on how they might go about achieving statehood:

Recent examples suggest they might take the same route as Israel's founders in 1947 and simply seek U.N. support for a resolution calling for statehood, which is what East Timor did to become the first new state of the 21st century in 2002.

We wonder: if the Palestinians chose this route and in response, Israel annexed the settlements around Jerusalem and chased the remaining Arabs off the land as the Arab Legion did to the Jews living in Jerusalem in 1948, would Reuters spend the next 60 years referring to the area as "Jewish East Jerusalem" (as they currently refer to the area with the racist epithet "Arab East Jerusalem")?  Somehow, we think not.

As an alternative path to statehood, Reuters suggests:

Or they might declare independence without going to the U.N. as Kosovo did when it became the world's newest state in 2008, knowing it could not win Security Council endorsement because of a threatened Russian veto, but would receive quick recognition by most NATO and European Union governments.

Reuters fails to inform its readers that the Palestinians declared a state over twenty years ago but owing to the fact that they did not control the territory they claimed (some of the land was actually in Israel proper), the effort went nowhere.  Moreover, and with great irony, the Palestinians relied on UN resolution 181 to affirm their "state" which they had always rejected as it provided the legal basis for the state of Israel.

Apparently, neither the Palestinians nor Reuters believe that sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.