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With the beating of war drums sounding louder by the day, the US is
nevertheless engaging its Middle East protagonists in an elaborate dance
for peace that it hopes will resolve the Israel/Palestine conflict after
a November summit. But, in all the flurry of preliminary talks
intended to establish a joint statement of principles, Israel is showing
no signs of good faith. This leaves the Palestinian negotiators as
unequal as ever in their desire to be partners for peace.
History should give everyone pause to reflect. Past peace talks have
never amounted to anything and there is nothing to suggest that this
summit will achieve anything either. One has only to recall the failures
of Oslo, Camp David, Taba, the Saudi Peace Plan, the Road Map and the
Geneva Accord. Yet, the Palestinians are again allowing themselves to
be swept up in the diplomatic contredanse, with America confidently
waving on the show.
Although a seasoned performer, the efforts of the US as interlocutor
have never been balanced, and without an unbiased third party mediator,
these talks have no chance of success. In fact, everything has been so
stage-managed that by the time the summit comes around, we will probably
already know what we know now – that peace without justice can never
work.
To complicate matters further, a majority of Israelis believe the US has
no right to determine the concessions that either side may have to make
in reaching an agreement.1 The bone of contention for
Israelis is the fate of Jerusalem which they believe belongs to them,
despite its international status and despite the overwhelming number of
Palestinian neighbourhoods in East Jerusalem that Israel illegally
annexed after the 1967 War.
If the peace conference fails, the festering frustrations built up in
the fourteen years of zero-advances since Oslo, may well spill over
inciting a third intifada, which in turn could blow out Middle
East tensions already at boiling point. Some would regard this as part
of the “constructive chaos” based on Sunni-Shia divisions planned for by
US neo-cons - otherwise known as the “discord” model long used by Israel
to divide and rule 2 – and used by the US to
devastating effect in Iraq.
Certainly, a US war on Iran requires Arab “Sunni” support to
counterbalance what the US posits as the Iranian “Shia” threat. But,
the US knows that as long as the Palestine question remains unresolved,
it would be almost impossible to get the populace of any of the Arab
countries to provide that support. Hence, the talk about mass aid and
“institution-building” in Palestine that might pacify the people enough
to allow Arab states to normalise their relations with Israel and then
make them more amenable to an eventual strike on Iran. This though is
no solution to the dangerous issues of our time and of no honourable
benefit to the Palestinians.
All in all, the current moves towards peace are looking very much like
the empty promises US President George W Bush made about a Palestinian
state in 2001 in the hope that those promises would draw Arab public
opinion into his anti-terrorism coalition. If that were indeed the
case, a third intifada would be more than likely. No doubt
Israel would again announce that it has no partner for peace and with US
backing would move very quickly to try and quell such an uprising.
However, it would not win the hearts and minds of the Arab populations.
While it might put paid to US plans for an Arab-Iranian conflict, who
knows what other conflagration not imagined in the neo-con “constructive
chaos” scenario, might be ignited if Israel’s deputy prime minister
Avigdor Liebermann has his way and packs Palestinians onto buses for
collective transfer out of East Jerusalem.3 Such
incendiary ideas should spur on the parties to negotiate a fair
settlement of all the issues before any racist “solutions” take hold.
But so far, there has been very little movement in the preliminary
talks: Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas says
“our demand is an independent, viable,
Palestinian state in all of the occupied territories since 1967”4
and Israel’s Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni says that she does not want
expectations to leap ahead of developments on the ground because without
“realistic” goals anything more ambitious is doomed to fail.5
The developments of which Livni speaks should in fact stop the
preliminary peace dalliances in their tracks: no checkpoints have been
dismantled as promised, and instead, dozens more have been erected6;
no illegal settlement outposts have been evacuated as promised, but more
are being built and others expanded. As for Jerusalem, nothing has been
promised, but Israel is doing everything to take it all from the
Palestinians and turn it into a Jewish-only city. This will also make
impossible the refugees’ right of return to their former homes.
It is quite clear that Israeli Prime Minister Olmert is provocatively
creating obstructive moves that require Abbas to side-step as he tries
to keep this dance for peace moving forward with US help. Past
experience ought to put the Palestinians on high alert: the issues are
not new, they are not complicated and it is high time that they are
re-visited before the summit begins.
On Israel’s settlement enterprise
There is no doubt that Israel has been intent on appropriating as much
land as possible before it is forced to compromise on a peace deal that
might define its final borders. In effect, the peace process will give
legitimacy to the 9.5 per cent of West Bank land that Israel has stolen
from the Palestinians. What is not much talked about is some 30 per
cent of prime agricultural land in the Jordan Valley which Israel has
annexed for a border with Jordan.
These illegal expropriations have changed the contours of the 1949
armistice line that define the Palestinian territories occupied since
1967. None of these land grabs have received condemnation from the US.
Instead, in a letter to the then Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon,
President Bush said that “it is unrealistic to expect that the outcome
of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the
armistice lines of 1949 . . .”7 In other words,
Israel’s expropriations should be considered a fait accompli and
leave the Palestinians with only 55 per cent of the West Bank. Once the
Wall is completed, and taking into account the military buffer zones
around the Israeli settlements, the restricted reservation areas, the
security checkpoints, and all the Israeli-only roads, the land left to
the Palestinians (including Gaza) will be much less than 12 per cent of
their original homeland, Palestine.
This much we know from former Israeli Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben-Ami:
in 1998, he said that “the Oslo agreements were founded on a
neo-colonialist basis, on a life of dependence of one on the other
forever”.8 As clearly emerged after Camp David in
2000, that dependence has been steadily advancing towards an apartheid
situation with illegal settlement building separating one Palestinian
enclave or bantustan from another. And, no one seems to think it odd
that Israel continues building those illegal settlements while the world
still dances to the tune of a two state solution on land that has almost
all been appropriated by Israel and is politically, economically and
socially unworkable.
When Olmert began his prime ministerial term, he made a half-hearted
attempt to dismantle a few illegal settlements in the West Bank and
destroyed nine houses in the Amona outpost. But, this led to such a
violent backlash that he quickly backed down.
9Then he began tinkering at the edges in September by
reconvening the ministerial committee set up a year ago to finally look
at Israeli attorney Talia Sasson’s report written two years earlier.10
Her report exposed Israel’s approval of new settlements on
privately-owned Palestinian land in violation of its own decisions and
regulations, and Sasson had specifically concluded, that no new law was
needed to evacuate these outposts. Yet rather than acting on the
report, the current committee has charged various professionals to come
up with new planning and building laws in the settlements and to find
explanations for why there are discrepancies in the number of outposts.11
In the interim, Olmert has made no move to stop settlement building.
Olmert says an agreement of principles must first be reached before the
outposts are dismantled, but on his record, ordinary Palestinians would
have a hard time believing that he ever intends to evacuate the
settlements built in their midst. In fact, the road map peace plan which
Olmert invokes to justify a gradual withdrawal, actually obligates
Israel to evacuate more than 100 outposts in the first stages of the
plan and not later.12 To date only 4 of these
outposts have been removed in 4 years, while 44 new ones have gone up.
Such machinations to ensure that Israel’s colonial enterprise proceeds
are not unusual. When Sharon promised the US administration that he
would evacuate every outpost in Gaza and the West Bank, no one noticed
that while he was disengaging from Gaza, he was in fact continuing with
settlement expansion in the West Bank at a very rapid pace. Now this
month, Defence Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer has said that he will close
down outposts built without permission, but while he claims to have had
about 11 dismantled,13 settlement building is still
going on.
This is why the manoeuvres we are seeing now en route to November’s
peace summit are so ludicrous: there can be no Israeli-Palestinian
agreement on peace as long as Israel’s settlement enterprise continues
and Israel is showing quite blatantly that it has no intention of ending
it, especially with the Jerusalem project now in its sights.
On Israel’s Greater Jerusalem project
Well may Abbas say “we want peace, but not for any price”.14
Yet, even as he vowed “that there will be no Palestinian state, regardless of its
size, without Jerusalem as its capital”, Israel’s army was already
seizing some 113 hectares of land from four outer suburbs of occupied
East Jerusalem to construct a new Jerusalem-Jericho road for
Palestinians, that according to the army will “improve the quality of
[their] life”.15 However, the Palestinians know full
well that this is an Israeli subterfuge for edging them out and pushing
the boundaries to create a Greater Jerusalem that does not include
them.
Israel has been quite open about its intention to take all of Jerusalem
and its environs. When Israel unilaterally gave itself sovereignty
over the whole of Jerusalem in 1967, it defied international law which
regards Jerusalem as occupied. Then Israel set about physically
changing the city. In 1994, its push for a Greater Jerusalem began when
former Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin ordered the annexation of
the controversial E-1 area between Jerusalem and the illegal Israeli
settlement Ma’ale Adumim in the Palestinian West Bank which “is almost
the last reservoir of land for the Arabs of East Jerusalem” 16and
covers an area of some 53 square kilometers (an 85 per cent increase to
the current built-up area of Ma’ale Adumim). 17Objections
came not only from the Palestinians, but also from the international
community, particularly the US, but those objections have not stopped
Israel from inching towards the E-1 plan ever since.
Israel’s moves on Jerusalem are nakedly confrontational in the current
climate of peacemaking. While the new road will give the appearance of
connecting the two Palestinian population centres, in reality,
Palestinians will find access into and out of Jerusalem city more and
more restricted as Israel proceeds with the E-1 plan. The most the
Palestinians will get is contiguity through a by-pass road yet to be
built: Israel, on the other hand, will gain territorial contiguity
between the Israeli settlement Ma’ale Adumim and Jerusalem, rendering
any hope of a Palestinian capital in that part of the city - home to the
sacred Dome of the Rock –and any hope of the Palestinian refugees
returning to the homes they fled temporarily during the outrages of the
1948 war, impossible.
On Palestinian refugees
If Jerusalem poses a serious stumbling block in the peace negotiations,
an even greater one is the refugees’ right of return. President Bush
has made it clear that if the refugees are allowed to return it will be
to whatever land remains for a future Palestinian state.18
With a prison-like Bantustan system already in place, the best the
Palestinians can hope for is an apartheid situation as Israel locks them
in on all sides.
Dr Salman Abu Sitta, the general-coordinator of the Right of Return
conference has already warned Abbas of the pitfalls in this latest push
for peace, not least Israel’s desire for Palestinians to recognise and
accept that it is a “national state for the world’s Jews”, thereby
forever precluding the Palestinian refugees’ right to return to their
homes.19 .
Dr Sitta’s meticulous and extensive research into the history and
location of more than 600 Palestinian villages has convincingly
validated the claims of the Palestinian refugees who were mercilessly
stripped of their homes and land by Jewish militant gangs in the lead up
to, and after the establishment of the state of Israel. After 60 years
of eking out a miserable existence in camps with no recognition of their
dispossession and their right to return home under international law,
these Palestinians continue to sit on the sidelines while others dance
around them. They need to be properly heard before any decisions are
made that could wipe their existence from the pages of history. It is
their legal and inalienable right and is the most vexing of all the
problems.
However, irrespective of the difficulties, many Palestinians would be
wondering just how Palestinian academic Sari Nusseibeh arrived at the
conclusion that they would be prepared to forgo that inalienable right
in return for a full Israeli withdrawal to the pre-1967 borders,
including east Jerusalem and the Old City. 20That
concession might benefit some Palestinians - and even that is
questionable - but it would certainly be at the irreversible expense of
the 4 million Palestinians struggling to make sense of their stateless
existence in refugee camps. Only with their consent could such a
bargain be struck, yet despite all the years of misery and suffering -
and then Western cajoling - they steadfastly refuse to accommodate
Israel by forfeiting their rights.
International law has long ruled on the matter: Israel’s mass
dispossession of some 750,000 Palestinians in 1948 was ethnic cleansing
and a war crime. Furthermore, Israel reneged on the conditions for its
admission to the UN as a member state: it has not complied with UN
resolution 181 accepting the Partition of Palestine or resolution 194
which would allow the Palestinians to return to “their homes”. Instead,
Israel has done everything to undermine international law and UN
resolutions which have consistently supported the legitimacy of the
Palestinians’ right to return to their original homes.
On a unified Palestinian voice
While the refugees are largely at one in their determination to uphold
their rights, the rest of the Palestinians are in disarray. They have
been deliberately and systematically pushed into separate camps. That
in itself augurs badly for the peace talks and they will most certainly
founder if a deal is brokered with one side and not another.
The rejection of the Palestinians in Gaza – actually the Hamas
Government - by their own president has been probably the most shocking
development in the whole peace process. Although Abbas seemed to be
having second thoughts when he recently admitted on his Asian tour that
Hamas is part of the Palestinian people and is needed to secure a future
Palestinian statehood.21 Clearly, uniting the
Palestinians has to be a priority if any sense is to emerge from these
peace talks and there are signs that others agree.
A bipartisan group of eight former top US policy-makers is urging
President Bush to reverse his isolation policy and begin “genuine
dialogue” with Hamas.22 Similarly, the European Union
has said that it would lend its support to Abbas “if he reconciled with
Hamas”. 23Only Israel is intent on relentlessly
punishing the people in Gaza, or more likely goading the people into
firing more rockets into Israel so that it can mount a full-scale
invasion. The consequences of that are too horrific to contemplate, and
yet, all the signs are there as Israel continues to cut off power and
fuel supplies to the already impoverished people.
Equally, it would be iniquitous for Abbas to ignore the precarious
existence of Palestinians living in Israel. They should not be left to
struggle against Israel’s determination to make all of Israel an
exclusively Jewish state. They should not be left to become a sub-class
in a racist society nor victims of transfer and ethnic cleansing. They
need to be included in an equitable arrangement that will not see them
diminished as a people.
Before any decisions are made, the Palestinian Authority (PA) should
charge their diplomatic representatives abroad to canvas the opinions of
Palestinians living in the Diaspora. They have every right to be
involved in the process, particularly in light of the momentous
decisions being considered. After all, the rights for which thousands of
Palestinians have struggled and lost their lives cannot be relinquished
or compromised unless it is with the consensus of all Palestinians. By
compartmentalising them into occupied Palestinians, Israeli
Palestinians, refugee Palestinians, Diaspora Palestinians and
Palestinians in Gaza as if they are somehow each masters of their own
destiny, dilutes their historical struggle for justice as one people.
Conclusion
The realities on the ground cannot be avoided. Expending efforts on
institutional state-building and economic revival are hardly likely to
give people peace when they are having to deal with Israel’s violent
intrusions on their lives. Moreover, expectations are higher than any
reform initiatives can bring about. If Abbas really wants to deliver on
Palestinian hopes for a better future, he must show that he has a
commitment to seeing justice done not just paying lip-service to it. Any
more concessions from the Palestinian negotiators before final status
issues are agreed upon, will end up redefining the conflict, a situation
that would be untenable to the Palestinian people.
It is enough that Israel has led the Palestinians in a never-ending
tortuous dance of false expectations since Oslo. The only way forward
is to ensure, as former UN special coordinator for the Middle East peace
process, Alvaro de Soto said, “unity and
integrity of third party mediation efforts, and clarity of strategy.24
Unfortunately, there is nothing to suggest that the US will conduct
these peace talks seriously and fairly, or that it would allow an
independent party to mediate in its place.
And so the peace dance goes on – one shuffle forward and two quick steps
back with a lot of swaying from side to side in between. The deadliness
of this show is never revealed behind the smiles, the performers hoping
the spectacle will be enough to lull everyone into believing that this
peace is worth having. It may have worked with Oslo, but onlookers are
a lot wiser now. We have yet to see if the participants are too –
Palestine’s future depends on it.
Footnotes:
1- Peace Index Project by the Tami Steinmetz Center for Peace Research
and the Evens Program in Mediation and Conflict Resoltion of Tel Aviv
University, Angus Reid Global Monitor: Polls & Research, 21 October 2007
2- “. . . decades of controlling and oppressing Palestinian society
allowed Israel to develop a different approach to divide and rule: what
might be termed organised chaos, or the "discord" model, one that came
to dominate first its thinking and later that of the neocons.” –
Jonathan Cook, “End of the Strongmen”, Counterpunch, 19 December 2006
3- Johann Hari, “Ethnic cleansing returns to Israel’s agenda” The
Independent, 13 November 2006
http://comment.independent.co.uk/commentators/johann_hari/article1963583.ece
4- Abbas: “We want peace, but not for any price”, IMEMC, 6 October 2007
http://www.imemc.org/article/50734
5- “Livni warns Rice: Summit could fail due to unreasonable goals”
Haaretz, 2 September 2007
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/899709.html
6- “UN: Israel has added dozens of new roadblocks in West Bank”, Haaretz,
21 September 2007
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/906087.html
7- President Bush’s letter to former Israeli Prime Minister Sharon of
14 April 2004 was ratified in both Houses of the US Congress.
8- Shlomo Ben-Ami, “From Oslo to a Lasting Peace,” The Independent
(UK),
December 7, 1994
9- Uri Avnery, “A Trap for Fools”, Counterpunch, 23 July 2007
10- Summary of the Talia Sasson report concerning unauthorised outposts
http://www.fmep.org/documents/sassonreport.html
11- “Government to decide which outposts illegal”, Ynetnews, 2
September 2007
http://www.ynetnews.com/Ext/Comp/ArticleLayout/CdaArticlePrintPreview/1,2506,L-3444510,00.html
12- Testimony by “Peace Now” Director of the Settlements Watch Project
before the Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs Subcommittee of the
Senate Foreign Relations Committee, 15 October 2003
13- “Israel Begins to Dismantle Unofficial Settler Outposts”, The New
York Times, 10 November 2007
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F04E4DA1F3EF932A35754C0A9649C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all
14- “Abbas: We want peace, but not for any price”, IMEMC, 6 October
2007
http://www.imemc.org/article/50734
15- “Israelis grab more land near East Jerusalem”, Agence France Presse
(AFP) 10 October 2007
16- Akiva Eldar, “Rabin supported it, too”, Haaretz, 9 October 2007
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/910756.html
17- EU Report on East Jerusalem, 28 November 2005
18- President Bush’s letter to former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel
Sharon of 14 April 2004.
19- “Abu Sitta warns of Israeli trap”, The Star, 11-14 October 2007
http://star.com.jo/viewNews/DetailNews.aspx?nid=6031
20-Khaled Abu Toameh “Nusseibeh: Right of return for withdrawal to ’67
borders” The Jerusalem Post, 29 October 2007
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1192380675529&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
21- “Abbas confident solution will be found by 2009”, The Jerusalem
Post, 22 October 2007
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1192380619438&pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull
22- Jim Lobe, “MIDEAST: November talks must be inclusive, urge US
greybeards”, IPS, 10 October 2007
http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=39599
23- Tovah Lazaroff “EU: ‘We’ll back Abbas if Hamas included’”, The
Jerusalem Post, 13 October 2007
http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=39599
24- Rami G Khouri “Critical Clarity from Humanitarians”, Agence
Global, 24 October 2007
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