Tragedy
And Travesty At Annapolis
By Stephen Lendman
27 November, 2007
Countercurrents.org
November
27 at Annapolis kicks off the latest Israeli-Palestinian Middle East
peace process round that may be an historic first. It's the first time
in memory the legitimate government of one side is excluded, and that
alone dooms it. Like previous rounds, it's more pretense than peace,
and as Jonathan Steele puts it in his November 16 Guardian column "The
Palestinian path to peace does not go via Annapolis....so what do....Palestinians
do next....In their decades-long bid for justice, they have tried everything:"
armed struggle to compromise, but nothing works and the reason is simple.
Their sincerity isn't matched by Israel, the West, other Arab states
and the US most of all with all the muscle in its hands to push or constrain
Israelis to be serious and fair. That's the problem. How can one side
negotiate in good faith without a willing partner.
Nothing new will be introduced
this time; the conference is for one day; no peace negotiations will
be held; Israeli Prime Minister Olmert calls the summit "a meeting,
not a negotiating session;" respected Middle East correspondent
Robert Fisk says Olmert "has no more interest in a Palestinian
state than....Ariel Sharon;" no advance agreement of intentions
or principles has been reached; and it's still not sure who's coming.
Further, Gaza remains under
siege, the West Bank is also terrorized, settlements continue being
built, Palestinian land keeps being taken, more lives in the Territories
are being lost, suffering remains unbearable, and hope for the beleaguered
people again will be dashed. Their message on the ground is clear, but
no one's listening. They won't accept surrender for peace. They want
nothing less than freedom and justice in their own unoccupied land.
Israel won't give it to them, so the struggle continues.
But just in case, neoconservative
hard-liners are taking no chances on something of substance from Annapolis
reports Jim Lobe in his November 22 Electronic Intifada article. Skepticism
or not about prospects this time has them united to assure Israel gives
nothing away now or ever. Secretary Rice is their target because she's
pushing for her kind of no state-two-state solution by January, 2009
when a new administration takes over. It doesn't matter how flawed it
is as long as something resembling progress emerges.
But even that's too much
for hard-liners like super-hawk Frank Gaffney who calls any type Palestinian
state "a dagger pointed at the heart of Israel and a new safe-haven
for terror aimed at the United States and other Western nations."
Others like him agree and support continued Middle East war until the
entire region is subdued under US-Israeli control. That means no concessions
at Annapolis, defeating Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, no pullback
from Iraq, and attacking Iran. A very scary scenario as another peace
offensive gets underway with its participants pretending it's real.
Looking Back at Past
Peace Process Futility
Until the late 1980s, the
US and Israel were content to ignore regional and other calls for peaceful
diplomacy, but that began to change with the outbreak of the first intifada
mass uprising in 1987 when oppressed Palestinians fought back and caught
the media's attention. The region exploded again when Saddam Hussein
invaded Kuwait in August, 1990, and the Gulf war followed in 1991. When
it ended, the US and Soviet Union jointly sponsored the watershed Madrid
peace conference at which Israel negotiated face-to-face with Syria,
Lebanon, Jordan and the Palestinians for the first time. They continued
after its conclusion on two parallel tracks to resolve past conflicts
and sign bilateral peace treaties along with multilateral negotiations
on issues affecting the whole region.
Madrid promised hope and
was the catalyst for the Oslo Accords and their Declaration of Principles
that were signed on the White House lawn in September, 1993. They began
secretly with a post-Gulf war weakened PLO and delivered betrayal. They
established a vaguely-defined negotiating process, specified no outcome,
and let Israel delay, refuse to make concessions, and continue colonizing
the Occupied Territories. In return, Palestinians got nothing for renouncing
armed struggle, recognizing Israel's right to exist, and leaving major
unresolved issues for indefinite later final status talks. They included
an independent Palestinian state, the right of return, the future of
Israeli settlements, borders, water rights, and status of Jerusalem
as sovereign Palestinian territory and future home of its capital.
Israel got more as well -
the right to establish a new Palestinian Authority (PA) to police a
restive indigenous population. Yasser Arafat and other PLO leaders were
in exile in Tunis following the 1982 Lebanon war. They got to come home,
take control of their people, and be rewarded for being Israel's enforcer.
Oslo I led to Oslo II that
was signed in Taba, Egypt in September, 1995, countersigned in Washington
four days later, and made things even worse with its complex document.
It called for further Israeli troop redeployments beyond Gaza and major
West Bank population centers and later from all rural areas except for
Israeli settlements and designated military zones. The process divided
the West Bank into three parts with each having distinctive borders,
administration and security control rules - Areas A, B and C plus a
fourth area for Greater Jerusalem. A complicated system was devised
as follows:
-- Area A under Palestinian
control for internal security, public order and civil affairs;
-- Area B under Palestinian
civil control for 450 West Bank towns and villages with Israel having
overriding authority to safeguard its settlers' security; and
-- Area C with its water
resources under Israeli control and its settlements on the West Bank's
most valuable land with them all connected by special by-pass roads
for Jews only.
Israel has total control
of the Territories and occupies most of the West Bank with its expanding
settlements, by-pass roads, separation wall, military areas and no-go
zones overall that are off limits to Palestinians in their own land.
The Sharm el-Sheikh Memorandum
came next and was signed by Yasser Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister
Ehud Barak on September 4, 1999. Its purpose was to implement Oslo II
and all other agreements since Oslo I in 1993 that included the following:
-- a 1994 Protocol on Economic
Relations;
-- a Cairo Agreement on Gaza
and the Jericho Area the same year;
-- the 1994 Washington Declaration
and Agreement on Preparatory Transfer of Powers and Responsibilities
between the two parties; and
-- the 1995 Protocol on Further
Transfer of Powers and Responsibilities. Both sides agreed to resume
"permanent status" talks and discuss other elements of a peace
plan relating to Israeli troops redeployments, land transfers, safe
passage openings between Gaza and the West Bank, a Gaza seaport, prisoner
releases and other issues related to security, normal civilian life
activities, international donor community aid, and a timetable for final
status talks on the toughest issues.
"Permanent status"
talks followed in July, 2000 at Camp David where Bill Clinton hosted
Yasser Arafat and Ehud Barak. Betrayal was again planned and delivered,
but the major media called Barak's offer "generous" and "unprecedented"
with Arafat spurning peace for conflict. Barak insisted Arafat sign
a "final agreement," declare an "end of conflict,"
and give up any legal basis for additional land in the Territories.
There was no Israeli offer in writing, and no documents or maps were
presented.
All Barak offered was from
a May, 2000 West Bank map dividing the area into four isolated cantons
under Palestinian administration surrounded by expanding Israeli settlements
and other Israeli-controlled land. They had no direct links to each
other or to Jordan. The cantons consisted of: Jericho, the southern
canton to Abu Dis, a northern one including Nablus, Jenin and Tulkarm,
and a central one including Ramallah. Gaza was left in limbo as a fifth
canton that was resolved when Israel disengaged from the Territory in
August and September, 2005 but kept total control over it and right
to reenter any time. The Barak deal was so duplicitous that if Arafat
accepted it any hope for real peace would be dashed. He didn't and was
unfairly blamed.
The Foundation for
Middle East Peace (FMEP) analyzed the deal as follows:
-- Israel only proposed relinquishing
control of from 77.5 - 81% of the West Bank excluding East Jerusalem
and likely intended to keep the Jordan Valley;
-- Israel claimed sovereignty
over all West Jerusalem, one-third of occupied East Jerusalem, and as
later developments proved wants all Greater Jerusalem exclusively for
Jews;
-- Israel wanted control
of the Temple Mount that Palestianians call al-Haram al-Sharif or Noble
Sanctuary and is the site of the sacred Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa
Mosque.
Barak's Camp David deal was
all take and no give with no chance for reconciliation or resolution
of the conflict's most intractable issues. It was all pretense by design,
but when Ariel Sharon took over in February, 2001 he ended all further
peace negotiations.
It stood that way until George
Bush unveiled the Quartet's fake "road map" for peace in a
June 24, 2002 speech. In it, he called for an independent Palestinian
state along side Israel in peace by 2005 with good faith efforts on
both sides to achieve it. The process was to be in three phases, but
its prospects were doomed from the start. After the plan's launch, the
region was beset by violence, Israel increased its land seizures and
targeted assassinations, Palestinians responded in kind, and the humanitarian
situation in the Territories became so dire it was impossible convincing
either side that the road map was credible. It wasn't, and it failed
like all previous efforts before it.
That's where things stood
until Condoleezza Rice restarted the current Annapolis round to salvage
a warmaking administration, reinvent it as a peacemaker, and manage
to manipulate a fake outcome to prove it. The scheme is this, and George
Bush spelled it out on November 21 when he spoke to Israeli, Palestinian
and Egyptian leaders to lay the groundwork for Annapolis:
-- forty-nine countries were
invited;
-- who's coming isn't sure,
but Iran wasn't invited;
-- Saudi Arabia accepted
with reservations; and
-- Syria was a maybe but
AP reported November 25 it will now send its deputy foreign minister
unlike other attendees sending foreign ministers; Syria will come because
the occupied Golan is on the agenda, even though, like the Saudis, it
has no formal relations with Israel.
Others listed are members
of the Quartet, G-8, Arab League, permanent members of the Security
Council along with Israel and the Palestinian Abbas quisling government
with its legitimate one excluded that renders the process a sham.
Rice is pathetic saying "very
clear signs" are evident, and "everybody's goal is the creation
of a Palestinian state" with both sides on board for it. Israeli
Prime Minister Olmert is just as bad claiming "Annapolis will be
the jumping-off point for continued serious and in-depth negotiations
(that won't) avoid any issue or ignore any division (in) our relations
with the Palestinian people for many years." Nearly sixty to be
exact and over 40 under occupation with no serious effort ever for resolution.
Snags still remain in the
window dressing surrounding the conference with both sides so far unable
to reach an acceptable joint statement to be presented in Maryland.
If they're still apart when it starts, the conference will end with
Rice's statement and not a joint Israeli-PA one. Either way matters
little as once again fanciful language will substitute for substantive
results. With Gaza under siege, Hamas uninvited, and an illegitimate
government in its place, peace and any progress toward resolution can't
happen. That's how it's always been and will remain until Israel begins
negotiating in good faith. But that won't happen until the world community
accepts nothing less because world public opinion and people of conscience
demand it.
Stephen Lendman
lives in Chicago and can be reached at [email protected].
Also visit his blog site
at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to The Steve Lendman News and Information
Hour on TheMicroEffect.com Mondays at noon US Central time.
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