More Israeli-Palestinian Peace Negotiations
By Ron Forthofer
22 September, 2010
Countercurrents.org
People in the U.S. and around the world are used to talk, talk and more talk about peace between Palestinians and Israelis, but essentially all there is to show for this talk is a failed process and no peace. As a result, expectations for the current round of U.S.-mediated direct negotiations between the Israeli government and Palestinian officials who are acceptable to the U.S. and Israel are not high.
Some of these low expectations are also due to the limited space the negotiators have for maneuvering. For example, Jewish fundamentalists/settlers have threatened to bring down Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu's government if he extends the current partial freeze on settlement construction. Complicating matters, Palestinian Authority President Abbas has questionable legitimacy to serve as the representative for Palestinians. For one thing, his presidential term expired almost two years ago. In addition, Hamas is the democratically elected representative of the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, not Abbas. Palestinian refugees in the Palestinian diaspora seemed to be forgotten in these negotiations.
A key reason for the low expectations is that Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu has indicated that he won't continue the partial ban on settlement construction that is to expire on September 26th. He has taken this position despite knowing that President Abbas said he wouldn't continue the newly started negotiations unless Israel extends the ban.
It's always easy to be skeptical about the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations based on their history of failure. For example, in 1991 negotiations were held in Madrid. Unfortunately these negotiations didn't yield much progress. The lack of progress was not surprising given Israeli Prime Minister Shamir's position on the negotiations: "I would have carried on autonomy talks for ten years. Meanwhile we would have reached half a million Jews in Judea and Samaria."
If you look at how things played out, there were indeed negotiations throughout the 1990s. Formal negotiations ended in January 2001 when the effort at Taba, Egypt came close to an agreement but eventually failed. Participants at Taba agreed that they needed only a little more time to complete the negotiations, but then outgoing Israeli Prime Minister Barak pulled the Israeli position off the table. Ariel Sharon, the incoming Prime Minister, did not restart negotiations.
Shamir's goal of half a million Jews in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, was essentially reached last year with an estimate of over 192,000 Jewish colonists in East Jerusalem and over 304,000 Jewish colonists in the rest of the West Bank.
The presence of these colonists greatly complicates the creation of an independent Palestinian state. Their presence also makes the achievement of a just peace more difficult, further threatening Israelis' sense of security.
Unfortunately the Obama administration backed off its original position requiring a settlement freeze as a precondition for direct negotiations. Note that in 1967, Theodor Meron, then legal adviser to Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, discussed the idea of Israeli colonies in the recently occupied territories. "My conclusion," he advised the Israeli Government on September 18, 1967 "is that civilian settlement in the administered territories contravenes explicit provisions of the Fourth Geneva Convention." Given that all Israeli colonies in the West Bank are illegal, why wouldn't the U.S., at a minimum, support a total permanent freeze on additional illegal construction? There is certainly a strong case for a much more aggressive U.S. position based on long established laws and conventions.
However, not only does the U.S. fail to oppose illegal Israeli acts, it often acts as an enabler of these acts. The U.S. position certainly challenges the idea of the U.S. being an honest mediator.
Will the negotiations continue after September 26th? If not, will the Palestinians again be castigated for their principled support of international law? Will some pundits repeat the oft-repeated canard that Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity? We shall see.
Ron Forthofer, Ph.D.is a retired Professor of Biostatistics at the University of Texas School of Public Health, Houston, Texas and former Green Party candidate for Congress and for Governor of Colorado [email protected]
