The Most Hopeless Middle East Peace Talks Ever

Posted by shergald | Aug 22, 2010 | 11 |

…..’hopeless’ was Huffington Post’s rendering of the New York Times coverage of the recently announced resumption of peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians, which spoke of ‘scant hopes from the beginning.’

Who cannot agree?

Last week, Israeli journalist Gideon Levy, speaking in Dundee, Scotland on a tour sponsored by the Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign, talked about Israel’s abandonment of the pretense of diplomacy in favor of a policy of provocation and raw military power, with the ultimate aim of denying Palestinians any chance of forming their own independent state.

And a week before that, Chris Hedges, speaking at a fund raiser for the US Boat to Gaza campaign, called the “peace process (a) cynical, one-way route to the crushing of the Palestinians as a people.”

Levy is really talking about the racist Likud agenda of the present government, which will screw Palestinians by offering them a group of Bantustans inside of what will become Greater Israel, the ultimate Likud goal.
Is it any wonder why Moumoud Abbas, the Palestinian leader at this time, has little faith in the peace process which is being encouraged by Mitchell, Clinton, and Obama, and even Netanyahu, who refuses preconditions, but then dictates conditions that can only lead the Palestinians into an unacceptable Apartheid existence? Obama, in one year or so, has turned himself from the savior of Middle East peace (per his Cairo speech) into Netanyahu’s poodle (a phrase coined by Booman), which well describes Obama’s latest obsequious pandering of the Israel Lobby.

The New York Times article is long, but here are a few paragraphs.

JERUSALEM — The American invitation on Friday to the Israelis and Palestinians to start direct peace talks in two weeks in Washington was immediately accepted by both governments. But just below the surface there was an almost audible shrug. There is little confidence — close to none — on either side that the Obama administration’s goal of reaching a comprehensive deal in one year can be met.

Instead, there is a resigned fatalism in the air. Most analysts view the talks as pairing the unwilling with the unable — a strong right-wing Israeli coalition led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with no desire to reach an agreement against a relatively moderate Palestinian leadership that is too weak and divided to do so. “These direct negotiations are the option of the crippled and the helpless,” remarked Zakaria al-Qaq, vice president of Al Quds University and a Palestinian moderate, when asked his view of the development. “It is an act of self-deception that will lead nowhere.”

(snip)

“Abbas is naked before his whole community,” observed Mahdi Abdul Hadi, chairman of the Palestinian Academic Society for the Study of International Affairs, an independent research institute in East Jerusalem. “Everyone knows that this Israeli government is not going to deliver anything.”

Most Palestinians — and many on the Israeli left — argue that there are now too many Israeli settlements in the West Bank for a viable, contiguous Palestinian state to arise there. Settlement growth has continued despite a construction moratorium announced by Mr. Netanyahu. Moreover, support for many of the settlements remains relatively strong in Israel. In other words, if this view holds, the Israelis have closed out any serious option of a two-state solution. So the talks are useless.

(Link to the rest of the article above.)

And yes, it contains mention of all of the “generous offers” Israel made to the Palestinians in the past, and it does so without blinking, without reference to the Oslo Hoax, which allowed the settlement of the Palestinian territories to double under the Clinton administration, Barak’s so-called “generous offer” at Camp David 2000, which he later confessed he was not able to deliver, or Olmert’s alleged secret offer, which was leaked a year later after negotiations stopped.

None of these Israeli efforts were bona fide. Except for a few months during the Rabin administration, the colonization of Palestinian lands never ceased, it continues today, and will continue during these so-called peace talks. Is there more to know about where the talks will lead?

Netanyahu’s tact here, after the ploys of past Israeli PMs Shamir and Sharon, is to continue talking while establishing more facts on the ground. But today, it is Obama who is leading the Palestinians into this old trap.

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shergald

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shergald on August 22, 2010 at 1:02 pm

Reflections from Mondoweiss:

NYT’ finally lets its readers know that 2SS is all but over
Philip Weiss
August 21, 2010

In a story about the resumption of direct talks between Palestinians and Israelis today, the Times’ Ethan Bronner glumly concedes that the two-state solution is likely DOA:

Most Palestinians — and many on the Israeli left — argue that there are now too many Israeli settlements in the West Bank for a viable, contiguous Palestinian state to arise there. Settlement growth has continued despite a construction moratorium announced by Mr. Netanyahu.

Moreover, support for many of the settlements remains relatively strong in Israel. In other words, if this view holds, the Israelis have closed out any serious option of a two-state solution. So the talks are useless.

This is a significant development.

Anyone who has visited the West Bank and East Jerusalem can see that the idea of two states is all but utopian given the reality of Jewish colonization; but the ideal/fiction of two states must be endorsed in Washington and New York if you are going to be taken seriously, because saying otherwise means that you think the Jewish state is finished. I have known people to privately concede that the idea of a two state solution is crazy but publicly say that they believe in it–in order to be taken seriously. Yesterday on the beach here in Cape Cod, with my mom, I heard a leftwing friend explain to a rightwing friend that she is “for the two-state solution”– a good reminder of the fact that believing in two states is still an avant-garde position, in Jewish life, in complete defiance of the reality, that there is one state there, administered effectively by one side. Bronner’s statement opens the real hope that the Times will begin to inform its readers about the actual state of affairs in Palestine and allow them to start thinking of more creative ways to end the oppression and statelessness of Palestinians. As Noam Sheizaf does in the post above.

On a related note: Bronner quickly blames the end of the two state solution on the Palestinians, saying that they have repeatedly rejected Israel offers of Partition. I have some sympathy for this view–if I were Palestinian, I would think, if we hold out long enough, we will get a majority Palestinian state–but then wouldn’t you do the same thing in the same dispossessed situation?

Also Bronner quotes two Palestinians in the piece but, emphasizing the “Israeli perspective,” far more Israelis. I count four Israelis, including neocon Dore Gold– who despite working for Israeli governments makes $96,000 a year as a scholar of the American Enterprise Institute. The Times says that the piece includes reporting from Ramallah by Khaled Abu-Akr. Naturally I wonder if one or both Palestinian quotes were provided by him; and if Bronner interviews Palestinians; or if the fact that his son is now serving in the IDF makes it hard for him to get Palestinians on the phone? Just making trouble.

No wonder no one listens to Bronner.
shergald on August 22, 2010 at 4:00 pm

The settlements (i.e., cities, towns, and villages) Israel has built in the West Bank, which it proposed to enlarge while peace negotiations continue. The ethnic cleansing of the Jordan Valley has not stopped either.

Another version: The Palestinian Gulag showing the areas appropriated. These include the border regions and the Jordan Valley to the right.
shergald on August 22, 2010 at 4:17 pm

There’s so much stuff out there on these phony negotiations that there is not enough room for all of it. Here’s your one-state.

Chris Hedges: Formalizing Israel’s Land Grab

Time is running out for Israel. And the Israeli government knows it. The Jewish Diaspora, especially the young, has a waning emotional and ideological investment in Israel. The demographic boom means that Palestinians in Israel and the occupied territories will soon outnumber Jews. And Israel’s increasing status as a pariah nation means that informal and eventually formal state sanctions against the country are probably inevitable.

Desperate Israeli politicians, watching opposition to their apartheid state mount, have proposed a perverted form of what they term “the one-state solution.” It is the latest tool to thwart a Palestinian state and allow Israel to retain its huge settlement complexes and land seizures in East Jerusalem and the West Bank. The idea of a single state was backed by Moshe Arens, a former defense minister and foreign minister from the Likud Party, in a column he wrote last month in the newspaper Haaretz asking “Is There Another Option?” Arens has been joined by several other Israeli politicians including Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin.

The Israeli vision, however, does not include a state with equal rights for Jewish and Palestinians citizens. The call for a single state appears to include pushing Gaza into the unwilling arms of Egypt and incorporating the West Bank and East Jerusalem into Israel. Palestinians within Israeli-controlled territory, however, will remain burdened with crippling travel, work and security restrictions already in place. Palestinians in the occupied territories, for example, cannot reclaim lost property or acquire Israeli citizenship, yet watch as Jews born outside of Israel and with no prior tie to the country become Israeli citizens and receive government-subsidized housing. Palestinians in the West Bank live in a series of roughly eight squalid, ringed ghettos and are governed by military courts. Jews living in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, like all full Israeli citizens, are subject to Israeli civilian law and constitutional protection.

Chris Hedges
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/formalizing_israels_land_grab_20100816/
observer393 on August 23, 2010 at 12:33 am

What could the Palestinians possibly get by attending? Why are the attending? What do their oppressed people think about them attending?
- shergald on August 23, 2010 at 8:57 am
  
  All good questions.
  
  By accepting negotiations while Israel continues to ethnically cleanse them from East Jerusalem, the Jordan Valley, and other locales, and it expands their 200 plus settlements taking further lands, in some sense they have accepted the colonization, and nothing will get the Israelis to withdraw.
  - observer393 on August 26, 2010 at 11:19 pm
    
    I think this is the object of this, to create an “accepted” fait accompli. And the Palestinians even these quisling leaders knpow it is wrong but ar epressured by the West in general and the uS in specific. Rock and hard place.
    
    The West and particularly the US are not going to allow a single state by default solution with a muslim majority. They want to protect the Jewish state (as opposed to the rather quaint notion of a secular Israel). A fait accompli accepted agreement allows the international legal cover and if need be the shipping of arms and troops to protect the Jewish state against “terrorists” (meaning the oppressed Palestinians who have been given no option except “terrorism”).
    
    The leadership of the Palestinians need to find a way out of attending or the people of Palestine need to overthrow thewm, whihc is hard with Israeli backed and armed Dahlanian gangs controlling the West Bank with exteme violence from them never far away.
    
    The end games of this land are being played and although Israels hand seems strong a few mistakes by them see it crumble.
homeruk on August 23, 2010 at 9:39 am

So, I guess there’s just no point in trying is there…you and some other no doubt erudite scholars say it’s going to fail so why even bother? Let’s just leave Palestine to Israel’s will; let’s just withdraw from any contribution to trying to get peace.

I really really really don’t understand what there is to gain about declaring these talks dead in the water before they’ve even begun. Or do you think that if Obama stops giving any money to Israel that will somehow mean that Netanyahu will stop settlements and break bread with Hamas?
- shergald on August 23, 2010 at 11:09 am
  
  First of all, it was the experts who expressed pessimism, simply because there is a long precedence for calculated failure going back to Oslo and the Camp David ruse of 2000.
  
  Only a fool cannot put together the significance of continuing settlement expansion, full speed instead of the previous slowed pace during the negotiations, and the continuing ethnic cleansing, especially in the Jordan Valley where entire Palestinian villages are being obliterated.
  
  While “peace” talks are talking place, Israel’s colonialism of Palestinian lands is also proceeding. You don’t have to be a historian or scholar to put it all together. It another deception, and the Palestinians will again be blamed for failure.
shergald on August 23, 2010 at 9:38 pm

Richard Silverstein (Tukan Olam) weighs in with more pessimism, so long as Obama and the Quartet fail to exert pressure, and that is not likely to happen:

Why U.S.-Brokered Israeli-Palestinian Peace Talks Will Fail

The ink isn’t even dry on the press release announcing Israeli-Palestinian peace talks beginning under U.S. auspices on September 2nd, before just about everyone except Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton is sighing with abject resignation and conviction that they will be a failure. Why? First, because the U.S. president has not publicly told the sides what the consequences of failure will be. There must be a downside for the parties that will keep them in line when the going gets tough (as it assuredly will). With no downside, Bibi will play Obama like a tin fiddle. Second, Bibi doesn’t want the talks to succeed and will do absolutely nothing to make them work. Why should he? Where’s the benefit to him? His coalition is filled with far-right yahoos who will scream bloody murder at the first sign of weakness from their leader. Does he need such headaches? Does he relish the idea of retiring to a plush office at the Shalem Center so he can gaze fondly at a portrait of his sugar daddy, Shelly Adelson, on the wall? Not likely.

Frankly, I can’t see anything in this for Mahmoud Abbas either, and have no clue why he agreed to participate. Did he enjoy having endless coffees with Ehud Olmert in Jerusalem and Ramallah so much that he wants to resume the pleasure, except his time in Washington? What will he get from this? Another upgrade of his D.C. digs from third world backwater semi-official would-be embassy to almost embassy of a soon to be nation in waiting?

If this is all the Obama administration has up its sleeve it has a losing hand. But if it has a backup plan in the certain event of failure, then it might still wrest victory from the jaws of defeat. If it is prepared and possibly even expects failure and has a Plan B which would call for an internationally imposed settlement on both sides, then he might be onto something. In the end, the only thing that can save the parties from mutually assured destruction is external intervention.

http://www.richardsilverstein.com/tikun_olam/2010/08/21/why-u-s-brokered-israeli-palestinian-peace-t
alks-will-fail/
shergald on August 24, 2010 at 2:59 am
Stephen Walr concurs.

Don’t fall for the direct-talk hype: The ‘peace process’ is still going nowhere

Foreign Policy Magazine
August 20, 2010
If you think today’s announcement that the Israelis and Palestinians are going to resume “direct talks” is a significant breakthrough, you haven’t been paying attention for the past two decades (at least). I wish I could be more optimistic about this latest development, but I see little evidence that a meaningful deal is in the offing.

Why do I say this? Three reasons.

There is no sign that the Palestinians are willing to accept less than a viable, territorially contiguous state in the West Bank (and eventually, Gaza), including a capital in East Jerusalem and some sort of political formula (i.e., fig-leaf) on the refugee issue. By the way, this outcome supposedly what the Clinton and Bush adminstrations favored, and what Obama supposedly supports as well.
There is no sign that Israel’s government is willing to accept anything more than a symbolic Palestinian “state” consisting of a set of disconnected Bantustans, with Israel in full control of the borders, air space, water supplies, electromagnetic spectrum. etc. Prime Minister Netanyahu has made it clear that this is what he means by a “two-state solution,” and he has repeatedly declared that Israel intends to keep all of Jerusalem and maybe a long-term military presence in the Jordan River valley. There are now roughly 500,000 Israeli Jews living outside the 1967 borders, and it is hard to imagine any Israeli government evacuating a significant fraction of them. Even if Netanyahu wanted to be more forthcoming, his coalition wouldn’t let him make any meaningful concessions. And while the talks drag on, the illegal settlements will continue to expand.
There is no sign that the U.S. government is willing to put meaningful pressure on Israel. We’re clearly willing to twist Mahmoud Abbas’ arm to the breaking point (which is why he’s agreed to talks, even as Israel continues to nibble away at the territory of the future Palestinian state), but Obama and his Middle East team have long since abandoned any pretense of bringing even modest pressure to bear on Netanyahu. Absent that, why should anyone expect Bibi to change his position?

So don’t fall for the hype that this announcement constitutes some sort of meaningful advance in the “peace process.” George Mitchell and his team probably believe they are getting somewhere, but they are either deluding themselves, trying to fool us, or trying to hoodwink other Arab states into believing that Obama meant what he said in Cairo. At this point, I rather doubt that anyone is buying, and the only thing that will convince onlookers that U.S. policy has changed will be tangible results. Another round of inconclusive “talks” will just reinforce the growing perception that the United States cannot deliver.

The one item in all this that does give me pause is the accompanying statement by the Middle East Quartet (the United States, Russia, the EU and the U.N.), which appears at first glance to have some modest teeth in it. Among other things, it calls explicitly for “a settlement, negotiated between the parties, that ends the occupation which began in 1967 and results in the emergence of an independent, democratic, and viable Palestinian state living side by side in peace and security with Israel and its other neighbors.” It also says these talks can be completed within one year. Sounds promising, but the Quartet has issued similar proclamations before (notably the 2003 “Roadmap”), and these efforts led precisely nowhere. So maybe there’s a ray of hope in there somewhere, but I wouldn’t bet on it.

Meanwhile, both Democrats and Republicans here in the United States will continue to make pious statements about their commitment to a two-state solution, even as it fades further and further into the realm of impossibility. Barring a miracle, we will eventually have to recognize that “two-states for two peoples” has become a pipe-dream. At that point, U.S. leaders will face a very awkward choice: they can support a democratic Israel where Jews and Arabs have equal political rights (i.e., a one-state democracy similar to the United States, where discrimination on the basis of religion or ethnicity is taboo), or they can support an apartheid state whose basic institutions are fundamentally at odds with core American values.

Equally important, an apartheid Israel will face growing international censure, and as both former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and current Defense Minister Ehud Barak have warned, such an outcome would place Israel’s own long-term future in doubt. If that happens, all those staunch “friends of Israel” who have hamstrung U.S. diplomacy for decades can explain to their grandchildren how they let that happen.

As for the Obama administration itself, I have only one comment. If you think I’m being too gloomy, then do the world a favor and prove me wrong. If you do, I’ll be the first to admit it.

http://walt.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/08/20/don_t_fall_for_the_hype_the_peace_process_is_still_go
ing_nowhere
By permission.
shergald on August 25, 2010 at 8:10 pm
The message reverberates everywhere like this one from US Campaign to Stop the Occupation.

Top Ten Reasons for Skepticism
While the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation fully supports a just and lasting Israeli-Palestinian peace and hopes that the Obama Administration is successful in these efforts, it nevertheless has profound reasons to be skeptical about the likelihood of success for the following reasons (not necessarily listed in order of importance):

No more photo-ops, please. There is a desperate need for a just, comprehensive and lasting peace in the Middle East. Negotiations can be a key to that. But the last thing Palestinians and Israelis need are phony negotiations. They only breed disillusionment, resentment, and cynicism about the possibility of Israeli-Palestinian peace based on human rights and justice. So rather than enter into negotiations for the sake of negotiations, the Obama Administration should exert real political pressure on Israel by cutting off military aid to once and for all get it to commit to dismantling its regime of occupation and apartheid against Palestinians, and make clear that the framework for all negotiations will be based on international law, human rights, and UN resolutions. As long as it fails to do so, U.S. civil society must keep up the pressure through campaigns of boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) to change these dynamics and by joining up with the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation.
The United States is not evenhanded. For decades, the United States has arrogated the role of convening Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. To convince the world that it is suitable to play this role, the United States declares that it is evenhanded, when it in fact arms Israel to the teeth and is aware that Israel will employ these U.S. weapons to conduct its human rights abuses of and apartheid policies toward Palestinians. Under international law, an outside party that provides weapons to a party in an armed conflict violates laws of neutrality. The United States is scheduled to provide Israel with $30 billion in weapons from 2009-2018 (part and parcel of a broader strategy to further militarize the region with an additional $60 billion in weapons sales to Gulf States). The United States cannot credibly broker Israeli-Palestinian peace while bankrolling Israel’s military machine and simultaneously ignoring Israel’s human rights violations.
Israeli colonization of Palestinian land continues. In one of its most abject policy failures, the Obama Administration has contented itself with resuming direct negotiations without securing an Israeli freeze on the colonization of Palestinian land, despite spending an initial nine months trying to do so. Israeli colonization of Palestinian land, including the expansion of settlements, the eviction of Palestinians from their homes, the building of the Apartheid Wall, continues apace. Previous failed rounds of negotiations have demonstrated that Israel utilizes negotiations as a fig leaf to actually increase its pace of colonization of Palestinian land, and there is every reason to believe that it will continue to do so. Meanwhile, Israel’s ongoing colonization of Palestinian land creates difficult-to-reverse “facts on the ground” that only make a two-state solution–purportedly the end game of the negotiations–less achievable.
Negotiations supersede accountability. The Obama Administration, building on decades of previous U.S. efforts to shield Israel from accountability, has worked actively to scuttle international attempts to hold Israel accountable for its previous violations of international law and human rights, and its commission of war crimes and possible crimes against humanity. Both after the Goldstone Report and Israel’s attack on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla, the United States used its leverage at the United Nations to prevent Israel from being held accountable, arguing that accountability undermines prospects for peace negotiations. On the contrary, for peace negotiations to be successful, Israel must be held accountable for its actions and shown that it will pay a price for its illegal policies. Otherwise, it has no reason to alter its behavior.
No terms of reference. In his August 20 press briefing, Special Envoy for Middle East Peace George Mitchell confirmed that the United States is not insisting on any guiding principles for the negotiations, or “terms of references” in diplomatic parlance, and that these terms will be worked out by the parties themselves. In other words, Israel will be free to marshal its overwhelming power to refuse to negotiate on the basis of human rights, international law, and UN resolutions, the only viable basis for a just and lasting Israeli-Palestinian peace. Instead, Israel–backed by the United States–will negotiate based on its own exclusive terms of reference, namely what is in Israel’s “security interests.” As in previous failed rounds of negotiations, Palestinian rights will not enter into the conversation.
No timeline. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton believes that negotiations “could” be concluded within a year. Of course, successful Israeli-Palestinian negotiations could be wrapped up within in a year. In contrast to “peace process industry” pundits, there is nothing intrinsically complex or complicated about resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict if Israel were to negotiate in good faith by declaring an end to its policies of occupation and apartheid against Palestinians. After all, South Africa concluded negotiations to end apartheid within a few months once the decision had been made to transition to democracy. However, Israel has given no indication whatsoever that it is prepared to alter its policies toward Palestinians, setting the stage for prolonged and fruitless negotiations.
Can a leopard change its spots? A recently-leaked video from 2001 shows current Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu arrogantly bragging that “I actually stopped the Oslo Accord [shorthand for the failed 1993-2000 Israeli-Palestinian “peace process’].” (The Institute for Middle East Understanding has provided a useful translation and transcript of the video here.) His current Foreign Minister, Avigdor Leiberman, lives in an illegal Israeli colony built on stolen Palestinian land and has openly declared his support for ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. With this negotiating team in place, how can Palestinians expect even a bare modicum of fairness and justice to emerge from these negotiations?
Increased U.S. military aid to and cooperation with Israel make it less likely to negotiate in good faith. In July, Assistant Secretary of State for Political-Military Affairs Andrew Shapiro told the Brooking Institution that “I’m proud to say that as a result of this commitment [to Israel’s security], our security relationship with Israel is broader, deeper, and more intense than ever before.” Indeed, it is. President Obama has requested record-breaking levels of military aid to Israel, and stepped up joint U.S.-Israeli military projects, such as the missile defense system “Iron Dome.” This increased level of military aid only makes Israel more reliant on military might in its attempt to subdue Palestinians into submission, and less likely to negotiate with them fairly as equals.
All the parties are not at the negotiating table. Special Envoy for Middle East Peace George Mitchell, who previously brokered a peace agreement in Northern Ireland, when discussing its success often referred to the necessity of having all the parties to the conflict around the negotiating table. What held true though for negotiations in Northern Ireland, apparently doesn’t apply to Israel/Palestine since Hamas, which currently governs the Israeli-occupied and -besieged Gaza Strip and legitimately won the 2006 legislative elections held at the behest of the United States, was not invited to participate in the negotiations. If, by some long-shot, an agreement were to emerge from these negotiations, it is difficult to see how it would be implemented without having Hamas as part of the discussions.
Negotiations help Israel mitigate its growing international isolation. Last, but certainly not least, images of Israeli and Palestinian political leaders negotiating presents the world with a false sense of normalcy and allows Israel the opportunity to state that it is making a legitimate effort to achieve peace. With Israel as the party pressing for direct negotiations, it is quite transparent that its desire for these talks has more to do with easing its growing international isolation and defusing the energy from the international movement for boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS), rather than with genuinely negotiating a just and lasting peace. This point brings the analysis full circle: advocates for changing U.S. policy toward Israel/Palestine to support human rights, international law, and equality should not be lulled into complacency by the resumption of negotiations, but need to keep up the pressure with campaigns of BDS to change the dynamics that will eventually lead to the possibility of a just and lasting peace.

http://endtheoccupation.org/article.php?id=2743

The Most Hopeless Middle East Peace Talks Ever

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