British Parliamentarians Call for Action as Israel and US Stall for Time

By Terry Walz CNI Staff The Foreign Affairs Committee of the British parliament released a report August 13 that soundly criticized the British government's policies toward Israel and the Palestinians in the last six months, thereby sharply criticizing American policies aimed at undermining the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority. The report, " Global Security: The Middle East," devotes almost 40% of its pages to the question of Israel and Palestine, underlining the importance the group attaches to that conflict in its review of Middle East security issues. It termed the effort of the government to isolate Hamas after the Mecca Agreement last March - the result of which was the emergence of a national university government in Palestine - as "counterproductive," and that a new effort to form a national unity government that includes Hamas should be encouraged. In the last six months, the American government has strong-armed its Quartet partners (the United Nations, the European Union, and Russia) not to negotiate with Hamas unless it agreed preconditionally to recognize Israel, forsake violence, and subscribe to the existing agreements between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. In response to the Report, Israeli Foreign Minister Tipi Livni said in today's Haaretz, ""This is wrong. This is a mistake. Big mistake. Huge," tapping the table for emphasis, "?any compromise with terror, any compromise with these extremists, can lead to undermining the new government in the Palestinian Authority." Although the Israelis ignored Mahmud Abbas from the time of his election as president in 2005 until the announcement of the Mecca Agreement, they discovered his usefulness once Fatah was expelled from Gaza. The report also condemned the European Union financial boycott of the Palestinian Authority after the Mecca Agreement as "very damaging" and suggested it offered no reward for the Palestinians for modifying their behavior as had been urged by the international community since the democratic elections in Palestine brought Hamas to power in 2006. For this failure to act, the violence between Hamas and Fatah in the spring and summer should have been expected, the Report added. "Given the failure of the boycott to deliver results, we recommend that the [British] Government should urgently consider ways of engaging politically with moderate elements within Hamas as a way of encouraging it to meet the three Quartet principles. We conclude that any attempts to pursue a 'West Bank first' policy would risk further jeopardising the peace process." The report urges the British government to pressure Israel to allow international aid reach Gaza, which faces a profound humanitarian crisis. It also stated that Israel was shirking its responsibilities to the suffering Gazans under international law. It said that the "Roadmap for Peace" had "largely become an irrelevance in the dynamic of the Arab-Israeli conflict," and that the Quartet had some responsibility in this. However, the Roadmap "must remain the basis for a solution to this conflict." The US government's call for a "peace conference" in the fall must be seen as part of its larger effort to stall and ultimately to block on behalf of Israel any effort to negotiate seriously with the Palestinians. US House Foreign Affairs Committee chairman Tom Lantos (D-CA) visited Israel recently and after a tour with Livni of the West Bank via a helicopter told reporters that a "premature removal of checkpoints [from the West Bank] is a guarantee of violence and terrorism erupting." He also said he did not expect any serious new developments in the Middle East until after the November 2008 presidential election.

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