[NYTr] After Annapolis - Part 1

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

sent by MichaelP -activ-l

Get a sense of the discourse both before and aftrer. Below are
several articles, some from Haaretz newspaper in Tel Aviv, that provide
different perspectives on what happened at Annapolis or why something
more significant couldn't happen (written in advance).

TIKKUN - November 25 2007
http://files.tikkun.org/current/article.php?story=20071125065746428

After Annapolis

What is likely to happen with the process of negotiations between
Israel and Palestine begun at Annapolis? We present here some of the
current analyses of what did and did not happen, and what's next. New
Today:  Ad from Gush Shalom, articles from Rami Khoury, Tom Segev and
Jeff Halper.

WHILE Olmert was on the way to Annapolis, the settlers carried out a 
pogrom in the West Bank village of Funduk.

WHILE the leaders shook hands in Annapolis, the Israeli army killed
eight Palestinians.

WHILE Olmert expressed "understanding for the sufferings of the 
Palestinians", the blockade that starves the population there went on.

Olmert gave the conference a wreath of beautiful promises. He must
prove that they are not rubber checks.

                              ***

Daily Star (Lebanon) - Nov 29, 2007
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=1&categ_id=5&article_id=87090

Peace talks are likely to fail, just as the 'road map' did
 
By Rami G. Khouri

The Annapolis conference on Tuesday was full of lofty rhetoric,
intriguing new promises, a few bold commitments, and a tantalizing cast
of characters -- alongside plenty of rehashed rhetoric, rigid positions,
and regurgitated, failed diplomatic mechanisms. It left us with as many 
questions as answers about whether this was a serious Arab-Israeli 
peace-making endeavor, or a hoax garnished with Chesapeake Bay clam
cakes.

Annapolis the day after looks remarkably like the day before, because
we can only judge it once the substantive negotiations start. It was 
impressive to see so many leaders and officials seeking a breakthrough
for permanent peace on the single most important radicalizing and 
destabilizing issue in the Middle East: the Arab-Israeli conflict. A
few dramatic twists were evident: renewed American engagement, Saudi
and Syrian participation, and the pledge by Palestinians and Israelis
to finalize a peace agreement within one year. These were largely 
neutralized, however, by lofty but vague rhetoric and a slightly
desperate resort to discredited diplomatic processes that have
repeatedly and catastrophically failed in the past 16 years, since the
1991 Madrid peace conference.

The Annapolis process needs time to reveal if it will succeed or fail, 
with the real test yet to come in the form of the hard bargaining on
the core issues of refugees, settlements, Jerusalem, borders and
security. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President
Mahmoud Abbas offered nothing new, suggesting minimal will to
compromise on their entrenched positions. The joint understanding
between the two parties as well as President George W. Bush's speech
were more significant affairs, but they were also equally problematic.

The joint statement did not specifically refer to United Nations 
resolutions as reference points to resolve the conflict, unlike all 
previous peace-making attempts at Madrid, Oslo, Taba and Camp David.

Instead, it made the United States the judge and arbiter of compliance 
with the requirements of the "road map." The US has played this
monitoring role before, and failed spectacularly. Its past failure was
due to a combination of pro-Israeli bias, structural diplomatic
incompetence, chronic insincerity and weak resolve. It will be
important to see if any of these conditions have changed. We should
know within a few months at most.

The US has not proved to be an impartial, persistent or effective
mediator in the Middle East since the mid-1970s (unlike in Northern
Ireland, where it performed brilliantly and helped bring that conflict
to an end). Washington's commitment, in the 2005 Bush letter to Israeli
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, to supporting Israel's views on borders,
settlements and refugees would seem to disqualify it from its new
self-appointed role as impartial compliance monitor, mediator and
arbiter.

Bush's references to Israel as the homeland of the Jewish people also 
brings the US down on the Israeli side of the current tug-of-war over 
whether Israel is a Jewish nation or the state of all its people, 
including one-fifth of its citizens who are Christian or Muslim Arabs.
A "Jewish state" would also seem to imply that no compromise can be
reached on the repatriation of Palestinian refugees, as required by UN 
resolutions.

Making the 2003 Quartet road map a centerpiece of the diplomatic path 
ahead is deeply unimpressive. The road map has proven to be hollow, 
ineffective and unrealistic. For the Annapolis parties to commit again
to implementing moves on the ground that they previously and repeatedly 
failed to implement is amateurish diplomacy.

The road map is not a balanced and clear document. It has been
interpreted in very different ways by Israelis and Palestinians on key
issues such as settlement expansion or terrorism, which partly explains
why it was never implemented. If the US- and Israeli-dominated Quartet
was a failure, the US alone in a supervisory position will almost
certainly prove to be worse 
- especially during a US presidential election year when slightly 
hysterical pro-Israeli expressions are the order of the day.

The commitment to negotiate tirelessly and to try to achieve a full
peace accord within a year is valiant, but also romantic in view of the
huge differences on core issues that have to be negotiated.

Neither side has signaled any tangible willingness to make the crucial 
concessions needed for a full and lasting peace. Both are also both 
constrained by serious domestic political opposition.

Annapolis looks dangerously like the 2000 Camp David II negotiations
all over again, when a time-pressed American president rushed Arabs and 
Israelis into a negotiation that they were not prepared for and were
not able to deliver on politically.

Most Palestinians and Israelis want a peaceful resolution of their 
conflict, and are prepared for serious, reciprocal compromises.

Sadly, Annapolis seems to confirm again, neither side has been able to 
generate the bold, quality leadership required to mobilize public
support to achieve such a peace. A decisive, constructive shift in
American, Arab and European engagement in the negotiations could rescue
this precarious process.

[Rami G. Khouri is published twice-weekly by THE DAILY STAR.]


******

The 29th of November, then and now

By Tom Segev

On Saturday night, November 29, 1947, many of the Jews in the Land of 
Israel went out to dance in the streets of the cities. They were 
celebrating the United Nations decision to establish a Jewish state in 
part of the country. The Arabs were also supposed to get a state, but
they went to war.

In his new book, Yoav Gelber, a professor of history at the University
of Haifa, ponders what would have happened had the Arabs agreed to the 
Partition Plan adopted by the UN 60 years ago today. "We can only
guess," writes Gelber cautiously.

Such guessing fires the imagination: It is possible that everything
would have happened as it did, from one war to the next. The Zionist
movement invested great efforts into attaining a majority in favor of
partition, but the borders proposed by the UN were far from being an
answer to its yearnings. Had the Arabs agreed to those lines, the
Zionists might have rejected them.

In any case, everyone knew that it was not the UN that would determine
the borders of the country, but rather the outcome of the war. Israel
today controls an area about twice the size of the area it was allotted
on November 29, 1947. The partition resolution can therefore be seen as
the mother of all the ensuing diplomatic fictions, from Security
Council Resolution 242 to the "road map."

In recent months, we have marked a number of significant dates that 
offered an opportunity for similar pondering: the 90th anniversary of
the Balfour Declaration, the 70th anniversary of Lord Peel's partition
plan, the 40th anniversary of the Six-Day War, the 30th anniversary of
Anwar Sadat's visit. There is no point in asking who is to blame, the
questions which usually dominate such discussions. There is a point to
trying to understand why it is so difficult for the two sides to end
the conflict, and where they erred.

It is not easy to understand why so many Israelis still believe that a 
large Israel without peace is better than a small Israel with peace,
and why Israeli patriotism is usually identified with expanding borders
rather than with the desire for Jewish and democratic borders.  But the
really important question is this: Who has more to lose in the present
situation? The answer is clear: Israel. Not only because of Iran, Hamas
and the weakness that was revealed in the Second Lebanon War.  With
every settler who moves to the territories and with every Palestinian
child who is killed by Israel Defense Forces fire, Israel loses some of
the moral justification that led to the decision on the 29th of
November 60 years ago. The Palestinians have already lost almost
everything they had.

The partition resolution reflected the assessment that Jews and Arabs 
cannot live together.  The fact is that most of them really do not
believe today that they will see the advent of peace; Annapolis has not
changed that. But from a historical perspective, the gap between the
basic positions of the sides seems to have been gradually reduced over
the years.  There was a time when Israelis and Palestinians refused to
speak to one another, the Palestinians refused to recognize the State
of Israel and Israel refused to agree to the establishment of a
Palestinian state. All that is behind us. Most Israelis and most
Palestinians agree in principle to dividing the country between them.

There are some who believe that a Palestinian state on the West Bank
and in the Gaza Strip will be unable to survive. That may be true, but
Gaza and the West Bank could also be part of the Hashemite Kingdom of
Jordan. The decision to make peace with King Hussein without returning
the West Bank to him can thus be considered a mistake that we will
regret for a long time to come.

In the time that has passed since the November 29 resolution,
generations of politicians, legal scholars and economists have arisen,
who have thought about alternatives to partition. There were Arabs who
wanted to throw Israel into the sea, there were Israelis who wanted to
expel the Arabs to the desert. The idea of living in some kind of
binational framework has also come up repeatedly. There are people who
believe in it now.  Most are neither Israelis nor Palestinians, but
pundits in other countries. They suggest to the Israelis that they give
up their state and to the Palestinians that they give up the state they
don't yet have. That is a nice post-Zionist idea, for the End of Days.

                           ***
November 28, 2007

When the Roadmap is a One Way Street:

Israel's Strategy for Permanent Occupation

By JEFF HALPER

One may well think that the struggle inside the Jewish community of
Israel is between those of the political right, who want to maintain
the settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank so as to "redeem"
the Greater Land of Israel as a Jewish country, and those of the left
who seek a two-state solution with the Palestinians and are thus
willing to relinquish enough of the "territories", if not all, in order
that a viable Palestinian state may emerge.

This is not really the case. Polls and the make-up of the Israeli 
government suggest that perhaps a quarter of Israeli Jews fall into the 
first group, the die-hards, while not more than 10 per cent support a
full withdrawal from the occupied territories. (Virtually no Israeli
Jews use the term "occupation," which Israel denies it has.)  The vast
majority of Israeli Jews, stretching from the liberal Meretz party
through Labour, Kadima and into the "liberal" wing of the Likud,
excepting only the religious parties and the extreme right-wing led by
former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the current minister of
strategic affairs, Avigdor Lieberman, share a broad consensus:  for
both security reasons and because of Israel's "facts on the ground",
the Arabs (as we [Israelis] call the Palestinians) will have to settle
for a truncated mini- state on no more than 15-20 per cent of the
country between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River.

What's more, it's agreed that the decision whether to relinquish any 
territory and how much is an exclusively Israeli decision. We may
proffer to the Palestinians some kind of a "generous offer" if they
behave themselves and it suits our purpose, but any initiative in the
direction of "peace" must be unilateral. The Palestinians may indicate
a preference, but the decision is ours and ours alone. Our power, our
all-encompassing concern for security and the plain fact that the Arabs
just don't count (except as a nuisance factor) limit any peace process
to, at best, a willingness to grant them a tiny Bantustan on four or
five cantons, all encircled by Israeli settlements and the military.
Israeli control of the entire Land of Israel, whether for religious,
national or security reasons, is a given, never to be compromised.

This is, of course, completely unacceptable to the Palestinians. That
by itself doesn't matter, but it does raise a fundamental problem. In
any genuine negotiations leading to just, sustainable and mutually
agreed-upon agreement, Israel would have to give up much more than it
is willing to do.  Negotiations must take place once in a while, if
only to project an image of Israel as a country seeking
peace--Annapolis being merely the latest charade--but they can never
lead to any real breakthrough because two- thirds of the Jewish public
support a permanent Israeli presence in the occupied territories,
civilian and military, that forecloses a viable Palestinian state.

How, then, does Israel retain its major settlements, a "greater"
Jerusalem and control over territory and borders without appearing
intransigent? How can it maintain its image as the only seeker of peace
and the victim of Arab terrorism, effectively concealing its own
violence and, indeed, the very fact of occupatio n in order to shift
the blame to the Palestinians?

The answer for the past 40 years of occupation is the status quo,
delay, while quietly expanding the settlements and strengthening its
grip on Judea and Samaria (again, we do not use the terms "occupation"
or "occupied territories"  in Israel, not to mention "Palestinian").

Just look at the run-up to Annapolis and the negotiations Israel is 
promising.  Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said recently that 
"Annapolis is a landmark on the path to negotiations and of the genuine 
effort to achieve the realization of the vision of two nations:  the
State of Israel--the nation of the Jewish people; and the Palestinian
state--the nation of the Palestinian people". Sounds good, doesn't it?
Now look at the pre-conditions Israel has imposed just in the two weeks
before Annapolis:

Redefining Phase 1 of the Road Map.

The first phase of the Road Map, the very basis of
negotiations, calls for Israel to freeze its settlement construction.
That is something Israel will obviously not do.  So, on the basis of a
letter former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon received from President Bush
in 2004--a fundamental change in American policy that nevertheless does
not commit the other members of the Road Map "Quartet", Europe, Russia
and the UN--Israel announced that it defines the areas considered
"occupied" by the Quartet as only those areas falling outside its major
settlement blocs and "greater" Jerusalem. Thus, unilaterally, Israel
(and the US apparently) reduced the territory to be negotiated with the
Palestinians from 22 per cent to a mere 15 per cent, and that truncated
into fragmented cantons.

Requiring recognition of Israel as a "Jewish state."

The Palestinians are required to formally recognize the state
of Israel. They did so already in 1988 when they accepted the two-state 
solution, at the outset of the Oslo process and repeatedly over the
past two decades.

Now comes a fresh demand: that before any negotiations they recognize 
Israel as a Jewish state. Not only does that introduce an entirely new 
element that Israel knows the Palestinians will not accept, but it 
prejudices the equal status of Palestinian citizens of Israel, a full
20 per cent of the Israeli population. This leads the way to transfer,
to ethnic cleansing. Tzipi Livni, Israel's foreign minister, recently
told a press conference that the future of Israel's Arab citizens is in
a future Palestinian state, not in Israel itself.

Creating insurmountable political obstacles.

Two weeks before Annapolis was to convene, the Israeli
parliament, the Knesset, passed a law that a majority of two-thirds
would be required to approve any change in the status of Jerusalem, an
impossible threshold.

Delayed implementation.

OK, the Israeli government says, we'll negotiate.  But the 
implementation of any agreement will wait on the complete cessation of
any resistance on the part of the Palestinians. Given the fact that
Israel views any resistance, armed or non-violent, as a form of
terrorism, this erects yet another insurmountable obstacle before any
peace process.

Declaring a "transitional"  Palestinian state.

If all else fails--actually negotiating with the Palestinians
or relinquishing the occupation not being an option--the US, at
Israel's behest, can manage to skip Phase 1 of the Road Map and go
directly to Phase 2, which calls for a "transitional" Palestinian state
before, in Phase 3, its actual borders, territory and sovereignty are
agreed upon.

This is the Palestinians' nightmare: being locked indefinitely in the 
limbo of a "transitional"  state.  For Israel it is ideal, since it
offers the possibility of imposing borders and expanding into the
Palestinian areas unilaterally yet, since its fait accompli is only
"transitional," seeming to conform to the Road Map's requirement to
decide the final issues through negotiations.

The end result, towards which Israel has been progressing deliberately
and systematically since 1967, can only be called apartheid, which
means "separation"  in Afrikaner, precisely the term Israel uses to
describe its policy (hafrada in Hebrew). And it is apartheid in the
strict sense of the term: one population separating itself from the
rest, then dominating them permanently and institutionally through a
political regime like an expanded Israel locking the Palestinians into
dependent and impoverished cantons. The overriding question for the
Israeli government, then, is not how to reach peace. If peace and
security were truly the issue, Israel could have had that 20 years ago
if it would have conceded the 22 per cent of the country required for a
viable Palestinian state.  Today, when Israel's control is infinitely
stronger, why, ask the Israeli Jewish public and the government it
elects, should we concede anything significant? We enjoy peace with
Egypt and Jordan, and Syria is dying to negotiate.

We have relations with most Arab and Muslim states. We enjoy the
absolute and uncritical support of the world's only superpower,
supported by a compliant Europe.  Terrorism is under control, the
conflict has been made manageable, Israel's economy is booming. What,
ask Israelis, is wrong with this picture?

No, the issue for Israel is rather how to transform its Occupation from 
what the world considers a temporary situation to a permanent political 
fact accepted by the international community, de facto if need be or,
if apartheid can be finessed in the form of a two-state solution, then 
formally.  And here's the dilemma, and the source of debate within the 
Israeli government: does Israel continue with the strategy that has
served it so well these past 40 years, delaying or prolonging
negotiations so as to maintain the status quo, all the while
strengthening its hold over the Palestinian territories or, at this
unique but fleeting moment in history when George Bush is still in
office, does it try to nail it all down, forcing upon the Palestinians
a transitional state within the framework of the Road Map?

Olmert, following Sharon, is pushing for the former. Netanyahu,
Lieberman, the right-wing (including many in Olmert's own party) and,
significantly, Labour Chairman and Defence Minister Ehud Barak, always
a military hawk, are resisting out of fear that even a process of
pretend negotiations might get out of hand, creating expectations on
Israel.  Better, they say, to stay with the tried-and-true policy of
status quo which can, if cleverly managed, extend indefinitely.

Besides, Bush is a lame duck, and no pressure will be put on Israel
until June 2009, at least six months after the next American president
is inaugurated, Democrat or Republican. We're just fine until then; why
rock the boat? The only tricky time for Israel is the two years in the
midst of a presidential term. We can weather that.

Annapolis?  We'll try cautiously for apartheid, hoping that Abu Mazen 
[Mahmoud Abbas], prodded by Quartet envoy Tony Blair, will play the
role of collaborator.  If that doesn't work, well, status quo is always
a reliable default.

In the meantime, as long as the Israeli public enjoys peace-and-quiet
and a good economy, and as long as it remains convinced that security
requires Israel to retain control of the territories, no pressure will
come from the home front for any meaningful change of policy. Given
this political landscape in Israel, in the territories and abroad, it's
hard for Israeli leaders to conceal their ebullient feeling that,
whether formally or not, "we've won".


[Jeff Halper is the Coordinator of the Israeli Committee
Against House Demolitions (ICAHD)  and a candidate, with the
Palestinian peace activist Ghassan Andoni, for the 2006 Nobel Peace
Prize. He can be reached at jeff at icahd.org ]