Left Margin

Middle East Peace Process - Reality or Charade?

By Carl Bloice
BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board
Black Commentator
September 1, 2010

http://www.blackcommentator.com/391/391_lm_mideast_reality_charade.php

The way the major mass media tells it, the only
significant dissenting Palestinian voice about the
wisdom of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas accepting
the invitation to travel to Washington for talks with
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and U.S.
President Barack Obama is the militant group Hamas.
Not by a long shot. Eleven groups, including the
Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP),
Hamas, Islamic Jihad, the Democratic Front for the
Liberation of Palestine, the General Command and others
have called  the negotiations under the present setup
unwise. They cite a threat of subjecting the rights of
the Palestinian people to the dictates of the U.S. and
Israel while the building of settlements in the
Occupied Territories continues and the siege of Gaza is
maintained. Their recent joint statement went on to say
that the process intends to create further "facts on
the ground," whereby the military occupation of
Palestinian land is legitimized.

"We have followed with great concern the increasing
external pressure, especially from the U.S. and Israel,
on the PLO leadership to shift from indirect
negotiations (which have not resulted in any progress)
to direct negotiations without clear and binding terms
of reference regarding a complete halt of all
settlement activities in the occupied Palestinian
territory - including in Jerusalem," said Dr. Mustafa
Barghouthi, a member of the Palestinian Parliament.
"The terms of reference should be based on
international law and UN resolutions and to include a
predetermined timetable to reach a final status
agreement. The agreement will necessarily include
ending the Israeli occupation of all territories
occupied in 1967 and enabling the Palestinians to
exercise the Right of Return, right to self-
determination, and the right to an independent and
sovereign state in the territory occupied in 1967 -
with Jerusalem as its capital."

On August 4, jailed Fatah leader Marwan Barghouthi said
talks with Israel have reached an impasse and their
continuation harms Palestinian national interests.
Speaking through his lawyer, the Palestinian leader
sometimes referred to as the Nelson Mandela of
Palestine, lashed out at the prospect of more of what
he called "fruitless negotiations."

Barghouthi called on rival Palestinian factions to
enter into a unity agreement and "reactivate" the
popular resistance movement in cooperation with
international solidarity movements as a viable
alternative to negotiations. "I hereby say clearly that
neither direct nor indirect negotiations are feasible
because there is no partner on the Israeli side. Israel
has no leaders like Charles de Gaulle or Frederik de
Klerk, but instead there are extremist leaders who are
adherent to a mentality of occupation, settlements, and
racism," he said.

Fatah, the largest Palestinian resistance group, is
clearly divided on the subject of the Washington
negotiations. For its leadership, represented by
Palestinian Authority President Abbas, another round of
failed peace talks "could spell political disaster,"
Edmund Sanders wrote in the Los Angeles Times last
week. "Abbas has bet his career on renouncing violence
and pursuing peace talks with Israel. But after nearly
two decades of negotiations, Palestinians still have no
state and frustration on the street is high."

It is against this backdrop that Abbas will arrive in
the U.S. capitol (assuming the trip actually does take
place) Thursday.

A key element in the maneuvering undertaken to bring
the "face-to-face" negotiations about was making
certain no objectives were spelled out in advance, that
there was no diplomatic framework for the talks. As of
this writing there's isn't even an agenda.

Part of the backroom dealing leading to the
announcement of the Washington talks involved the
sidelining of the quartet of Middle East peacemakers -
the U.S., the European Union, the United Nations and
Russia. The group issued a statement of support for the
talks, asserting they should "lead to a settlement,
negotiated between the parties, that ends the
occupation which began in 1967 and result in the
emergence of an independent, democratic and viable
Palestinian state." The Palestinian side welcomed the
Quartet's statement, however it was not mentioned when
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced the
scheduled negotiations, emphasizing that there were no
"pre-conditions." On Saturday, the EU said it will not
participate in the Washington talks and that its
foreign policy coordinator Catherine Ashton will be in
Beijing when they get under way.

The French government complained over the weekend that
the EU is being shut out of the Washington doings. "It
would be a shame if there were no European
representation," French Foreign Minister Bernard
Kouchner said in a speech Friday to French ambassadors,
adding that he had written a letter to Ashton
expressing his concern.

The major reason for the widespread pessimism
surrounding the upcoming talks is the reality that the
seemingly best laid plans could come to naught about
three weeks after they get underway. The Palestinians
have said they will continue to take part only if the
current ten month moratorium on Israeli building
expansion in Jerusalem is extended. In a letter to
world leaders, US President Obama, Russian President
Dimitri Medvedev, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, and
the EU's Ashton. President Abbas said, "A decision to
continue settlement construction would mean Israel
decided to stop negotiations, because talks cannot
continue if settlements continue." On extending the
moratorium Moshe Taalon, Strategic Affairs minister in
the Netanyahu government, has said, "The prime minister
is opposed to it. He said that clearly. The decision
was for 10 months. [On] Sept. 27, we are immediately
going to return" to construction and "Jerusalem is
outside the discussion."

The news agency AFP called the resumption of direct
peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians a
"diplomatic success " and "a welcome diplomatic coup
for US President Barack Obama," and then add the
caveat: "as long as negotiators steer clear of well-
known obstacles, political observers said."

"We are going forward with this with a strong sense
that these talks can succeed," Obama's counter-
terrorism adviser John Brennan told reporters. "There
are a number of issues that are outstanding," he added.
That's actually a rather breathtaking understatement.

The central question hanging over the diplomacy
remains: the occupation. There is a clear,
international consensus - embraced by the vast
overwhelming majority of governments -- that the
Israeli occupation over Palestinian territory captured
in the 1967 war must end and that Israeli forces must
withdraw and Palestinian self-determination guaranteed
in the West Bank and Gaza. It is spelled out in United
Nations Resolutions 22 and 338 and is contained in
every important peace proposal emanating from Arab
governments over recent years. Abbas told the Quartet
the Palestinians would abide by UN Security Council and
General Assembly resolutions, the Road Map agreement,
the Arab Peace Initiative, the Madrid conference, and
an agenda for direct talks which include the issues of
Jerusalem, borders, settlement, refugees, security,
water, and prisoners.

Daniel Levy, a former Israeli peace negotiator, told
the New York Times, "Abbas wanted a clear reference to
the 1967 lines; instead he was given 12 months to
continue making his case in the hopes that the
Americans will intervene decisively."

In the questionable likelihood that the Jerusalem
settlement issue can be finessed, the "negotiations"
could continue over the year President Obama has
allotted for a settlement but without a firm commitment
to end the occupation, no "peace process" is going
anywhere.

"As the caravans of Middle East peace negotiators
rumble into Washington next week for the umpteenth
time, the pervasive cynicism and sense of deja vu all
over again is overwhelming - and with good reason,"
wrote David Garner, Financial Times International
Affairs editor August 25. "The Middle East peace
process long ago turned into a tortured charade of pure
process while events on the ground - in particular the
relentless and strategic Israeli colonization of
occupied Palestinian land - pull in the opposite
direction to peace. `We have all been colluding in a
gigantic confidence trick,' is how one Arab minister
puts it, `and here we go again.'"

"While many factors had combined to hand veto powers to
rejectionists on both sides, the heart of the question
remains the continuing Israeli occupation. It is
essential to remember that the biggest single increase
of Jewish settlers on Arab land - a 50 per cent rise -
took place in 1992-96 under the governments of peace-
makers Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres at the high-water
mark of the Oslo peace accords. Many Israelis will
point to the perfidy of the late Yassir Arafat, who
wanted to talk peace but keep the option of armed
resistance dangerously in play. But what killed Oslo
was the occupation. The second intifada that erupted a
decade ago was essentially the Oslo war."

"A decade on, the Israeli settlement enterprise has
turned the occupied West Bank into a discontinuous
scattering of cantons, walled in by a security barrier
built on yet more annexed Arab land and criss-crossed
by segregated Israeli roads linking the settlements.
Last month, B'Tselem, the Israeli human rights group,
published a study showing Israel has now taken 42 per
cent of the West Bank, with 300,000 settlers there and
another 200,000 in East Jerusalem. The siege of Gaza
has turned that sliver of land into a vast, open-air
prison."

"The main feature of the present situation is the
disconnect between the high politics of the utterly
discredited peace process and these - in Israeli
parlance - `facts on the ground,' " wrote Gardner.

"A negotiated resolution," continued Gardner, "means
two states living in peace and security, and a
Palestinian homeland on the 22 per cent of Mandate
Palestine taken by Israel in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.
East Jerusalem would serve as the capital of the West
Bank and Gaza, with marginal land swaps to preserve
some Israeli settlements near Jerusalem. But what does
Mr. Netanyahu mean?

"He has been most clear on what he does not mean. For a
start, he has set his face against any concessions on
Jerusalem. He wants to keep most settlements except for
the far-flung `ideological' ones and the 100-plus
`outposts' established as pawns to be traded once the
chess game began. His idea of a demilitarized
Palestinian state is more like a sort of supra-
municipal administration than a self-determined,
independent government.

"Will he surprise us, on the hackneyed Nixon and China
principle that holds it is politicians of the right who
most easily close difficult deals? There is little to
suggest that."

Gardner continued, "The thinking of Mr. Netanyahu, son
of a celebrated promoter of Greater Israel, has always
been profoundly irredentist. While his nationalist
Likud faces the constraints of being in coalition with
an assortment of ultra-rightist and ultra-orthodox
parties as well as Labour, that was plainly his choice;
the centrist Kadima party was (and remains) an
alternative. To be fair, Israel's electoral system -
with a low threshold for entry into the Knesset that
makes multi-party coalitions inevitable - means lobbies
such as the settlers can take the national interest
hostage. But Mr. Netanyahu magnifies this by his choice
of partners and by diligently firing up the ultra-hawks
in the pro-Israel lobby in the US.

"As risks he has taken for peace, Exhibit A is the
much-hyped moratorium on settlement-building, which
expires next month and has, in any case, been
speciously interpreted. While the bulldozers to build
settlements have been idling, moreover, the bulldozers
demolishing Palestinian homes have been roaring: the
rate of demolition in and around Jerusalem has doubled
this year, while the army has just razed the village of
al-Farisiye in the Jordan Valley, in line with Mr.
Netanyahu's strategically obsolete obsession with
keeping the valley as Israel's eastern border.

"As diplomacy struggles to keep alive the viability of
a two-state solution, three rival systems of control
have crystallized in the occupied territories that
would make up a future Palestinian homeland: the
settlements; the crimped Palestinian Authority of Mr.
Abbas and Mr. Fayyad; and then Hamas, which Israel and
its Arab and western allies have tried and failed to
marginalize. Time is short for a negotiated outcome; it
may even have run out."

"The outlines of a deal are clear, in the (Bill)
Clinton parameters of 2000 and Arab Peace Initiative of
2002, endorsed by 22 Arab and 57 Muslim countries (as
well as Hamas, as part of the 2007 Mecca accord),"
wrote Gardner. "There has to be an end to the
occupation, and the US and Quartet cannot just allude
to this; they must demand it."

President Obama knows all this. The question now is:
will he act decisively or will he facilitate a farce
which accomplishes nothing but raising false hopes and
the illusion of progress extending past the November
elections?  The ball's in his court. He can act as most
of the world wises he would, or he could prolong the
agony and raise the risk of more violence in a region
that has seen more than its share. Wish I were more
optimistic.
_________________________

BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board member Carl Bloice
is a writer in San Francisco, a member of the National
Coordinating Committee of the Committees of
Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism and formerly
worked for a healthcare union.

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