A coalition of 21 prominent aid agencies, including the likes of Oxfam International, Save the Children UK, CAFOD, CARE International UK and Christian Aid, published a report (.pdf) this week condemning the failure of the ‘Quartet’ ( the EU, Russia and the UN, led by the U.S.) to achieve significant humanitarian or political progress in the occupied territories. They conclude that in five of the ten areas targeted for improvement by the Quartet, including the “three areas where progress is now most urgent” (settlements, restrictions on movement and access and ending the blockade of Gaza), “there has been either no progress or an actual deterioration in the situation.”
Statements condemning Israeli settlements have not been accompanied by “concrete measures” to ensure Israel’s compliance. This “marked failure to hold the Israeli authorities to their obligations” has resulted in a significant “acceleration in construction” of settlements and “no serious attempts by the Israeli authorities to dismantle outposts”. According to Peace Now (.pdf), in the first half of 2008 the pace of construction “almost doubled in all of the settlements and outposts on both sides of the Separation Barrier”. This is part of an “intensive” effort “intended to create a territorial connection between the blocks of settlements and isolated settlements in the heart of the West Bank”, thereby “[e]liminating the Green Line” and with 
it any chance of a two-state settlement. The number of tenders issued for building projects in the settlements in the first half of this year was up 550%, while tenders issued for East Jerusalem increased by a factor of 38.
The settlements and their associated infrastructure – the annexation wall, the outposts, the thousands of miles of restricted roads “connecting illegal Israeli settlements and usurping Palestinian land” and the closure policy, discussed below – combine to make nearly 40% of the West Bank inaccessible to Palestinians, with “devastat[ing]” consequences for Palestinian social and economic life.
Israel’s contempt for international denunciations of its settlement policies was dramatically illustrated when, the day after the Quartet issued its June 24 statement expressing “deep concern” at continuing Israeli construction in the West Bank and calling for a complete settlement freeze, it “announced new settlement building or tendering in Neve Yaacov, Beitar Illit, Har Homa, Pisgat Ze’ev, Ariel, and Maskiot.” Similarly, almost immediately after agreeing to halt settlement activity at the Annapolis conference last November the Israeli government published tenders for the construction of 747 housing units in East Jerusalem. These acts are timed to send a very clear message to Palestinians and others that Israel has no intention of withdrawing to its legal borders, irrespective of any “peace process”.
Rejecting claims of a ‘new reality’ in the West Bank (also dismissed by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs and the World Bank), the report warns that the Palestinian “economy continues to stagnate”. Aside from occasional “isolated successes”, there has been “little demonstrable progress in … invigorating the Palestinian economy”. Despite Israel’s repeated promises to remove restrictions on movement in the West Bank, the number of roadblocks actually increased over the past six months, while the average weekly number of ‘flying’ checkpoints has increased by approximately 10% in recent months. This in the context of a 62% increase in roadblocks and checkpoints since the Agreement on Movement and Access (AMA) was signed in 2005. The relationship between these restrictions and “the expansion and protection of illegal Israeli settlement activity” has, the report notes, been “well documented”, by the UN, human rights organisations and many others. As the World Bank reported last week, the evidence that “the current restrictions correlate to settlement locations and expansions” is “[o]verwhelming”. Indeed, Israeli military experts have repeatedly proposed alternative locations for the checkpoints and other restrictions that would inflict less humanitarian and economic hardship on the Palestinians without conceding anything in terms of Israel’s security. Their proposals have not, needless to say, been implemented.
Construction of the wall, ruled illegal by the International Court of Justice four years ago, has continued apace. When complete the wall will annexe nearly 10% of the most fertile West Bank land, severing over 400,000 Palestinians from their land, their jobs, basic services and each other and isolating East Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bank. The British government has acknowledged that the wall constitutes an attempt by Israel to “create facts on the grounds” to “prejudice future final-status negotiations”, a situation it evidently finds perfectly acceptable, judging by its decision to unconditionally upgrade Israel’s bilateral ties with the EU earlier this year. Israel’s closure policy has resulted in “the annexation of land and water supplies, and the forced displacement of Palestinians”, and has generally had a “profound effect on the lives of Palestinians in the West Bank”. It has, for example, “significantly contributed to the fact that over half the population (57.2 per cent) is living in poverty … with one of the highest unemployment rates in the world.” As the UN OCHA concludes, Israel has constructed in the West Bank,
“an entrenched multi-layered system of obstacles and restrictions, fragmenting the West Bank territory and affecting the freedom of movement of the entire Palestinian population and its economy. This system is transforming the geographical reality of the West Bank and Jerusalem towards a more permanent territorial fragmentation”.
In Gaza meanwhile, the blockade continues despite the ceasefire, which has been highly successful in reducing the violence despite occasional “violations on both sides”. While there have been slight increases in imports of humanitarian and commercial goods, these remain very “limited” and are “failing to meet the basic needs of Gaza’s population.” The blockade has led to the closure of a full 98% of Gaza’s factories, and there has been “no relaxation of the total ban on exports, without which there can be no regeneration of the Gazan economy.” As such the humanitarian situation (.pdf) in Gaza remains “dire”, with no sign of imminent improvement (quite the opposite – current trends point only to “deepening poverty”). The World Bank and the IMF recently concluded, once again, that while Israel’s network of settlements and restrictions remain in West Bank, and while the siege of Gaza continues, no amount of aid or reform will revive the Palestinian economy, which looks set to slide further into de-development and aid dependency.
In short, under the cover of the hand-shakes and photo-ops of the Annapolis “peace process”, the systematic destruction of Palestinian society and annexation of Palestinian land has been sharply accelerated. The aid agencies’ report twice suggests that, given its failure to achieve anything positive of note either politically or economically in the occupied territories, it will soon become “necessary to question what the future is for the Middle East Quartet.” In fact, the U.S. and the EU, at least, are guilty of far more than a failure to act – they have both actively supported and facilitated many of the policies described above. Indeed, while the report emphasises that “[t]he only sustainable solution to the crisis is a comprehensive peace settlement between Israelis and Palestinians based on international law”, the Quartet has failed to even mention the authoritative ICJ judgement outlining Israel’s legal obligations, due largely to the rejectionist influence of the United States. Instead it remains formally committed to the “road map” – a framework almost universally recognised to be, in the words of the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, “an irrelevance” – and refuses to pursue any concrete measures against Israel’s flagrant violations of international law. At the very least, the UN should contemplate John Dugard’s advice (.pdf) and consider removing itself from the charade, thus depriving it of whatever false legitimacy it currently enjoys. This fraud has continued long enough.
Cross-posted at The Heathlander
