reports Khaled Amayreh from the West Bank
As sounds of the drums of war coming from Israel are
getting louder and louder, Palestinian Authority (PA)
leaders are showing growing signs of impatience with
the slow-moving talks with Israel.
Visibly frustrated Palestinian officials have been
speaking of Israel's "lack of will" to reach a genuine
final-status settlement that would end the
40-year-old Israeli occupation of the West Bank,
East Jerusalem and Gaza Strip.
This week, Palestinian Prime Minister Salam
Fayyad was quoted as saying that he didn't see
any real possibility for reaching a peace deal with
Israel in the year 2008. Fayyad's assessment is
clearly at odd with President Bush's outspoken
predictions that 2008 will witness the creation of
a sovereign and territorially contiguous Palestinian state.
Fayyad, a financial-data analyst by training, is not
known for making hyperbolic statements. Hence,
his pessimistic appraisal of peace talks with Israel
should be taken seriously.
According to Palestinian officials, there are several
reasons for Palestinian frustration: First, Israel's
understanding and interpretation of the roadmap
(the main legal reference upon which Israeli-Palestinian
peace talks are based) is substantially different from
the Palestinian understanding of the American-
conceived plan.
"Israel views the roadmap as negotiable and open to
modifications. For our part, we are demanding that it
be implemented right away without any further delay,"
says Nimr Hammad, a political advisor to PA President
Mahmoud Abbas. Hammad said, "Israeli practices were
leaving no room for optimism. If talks with Israel fail
we will call for an urgent Arab conference to take a
collective stand."
In fact, Israel and the PA have never been able to
formulate a common understanding of the roadmap
and what it exactly means. The main reason for that
is Israel's insistence that the territories Israel seized
during the 1967 War are actually disputed not occupied.
Obviously, this stand is inconsistent with the rule of
international law and all UN resolutions pertaining to
the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
On 11 February, Fayyad, in a speech to Arab Americans,
diplomats and journalists, said Israel was reneging on
commitments to the roadmap. "Annapolis was a major
step forward, but I cannot say we are not having
difficulties. In the two months following Annapolis,
Israeli incursions and bombings of Palestinians and
their property claimed the lives of 165 people, injured
another 521, and caused untold damage to property.
What I see has not happened, not happened to the
extent it should or it can, is progress on these issues,
progress on the implementation of commitments under
the roadmap. I don't see sufficient commitment on the
part of Israel to the settlement freeze."
Fayyad spoke of continuing Israeli settlement building
particularly in East Jerusalem where Palestinians would
like to have their future capital. He also complained
about the continued presence of hundreds of roadblocks
and checkpoints in the West Bank, which he said were
choking the Palestinian economy and seriously limiting
Palestinian mobility in their own country.
Israel, however, seems to give little or no concerns to
Palestinian objections. This week, the Israeli press
quoted Housing Minister Zeev Boim as saying that,
"bids will go out soon to build 1,100 apartments for
Jews in East Jerusalem." Boim, a former deputy
defence minister, said 350 settler units would be built
in the Har Homa settlement and 750 in Pisgat Zeev,
north of Jerusalem. More to the point, the
fundamentalist Jewish mayor of Jerusalem, Uri
Lupliansky, has defied the Israeli government with
regard to settlement expansion in East Jerusalem.
According to Haaretz, Lupliansky vowed that he would
turn Jerusalem into an "illegal outpost".
There is no doubt that the Jerusalem issue and the large
Jewish colonies built on the West Bank since 1967 make
up the most difficult problem facing peace talks, in
addition to the strategic issue of Palestinian refugees.
Hatem Abdul-Qader, a PA official in charge of the
Jerusalem File opined that Israel "simply wants to
Judaise as much as possible of East Jerusalem to the
point where there will be no Jerusalem left and then
they will tell us what you see is what you get. But then
the very idea of Palestinian statehood would be futile
and impossible, and the entire two-state solution
concept would be finished forever. Israel is simply
killing the two-state solution by continuing Jewish
demographic expansion in Arab East Jerusalem."
There is an additional problem, or more correctly,
excuse. Israel is utilising the situation in Gaza to the
fullest to drag its feet with respect to peace talks with
the Palestinians. It is preparing to launch a large-scale
incursion into the blockaded coastal territory, controlled
by Hamas. The declared goal is to stop the so-called
rockets fired by Palestinian guerrillas onto Israeli
territory. However, the real reason is to destroy the
Hamas government in order to lower the ceiling of
Palestinian national expectations.
Israeli leaders, including Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, have
been warning non-stop that no peace deal would be
possible and no Palestinian state could be created unless
the homemade projectiles fired from Gaza onto
neighbouring Jewish settlements were stopped. However,
with the starved and blockaded Gaza under the authority
of Hamas, Israel and the US know quite well that the
PA leadership are helpless to put an end to the firing of
the mostly futile rockets.
Palestinian officials see constant Israeli invocations of the
rockets and Sderot as a red herring and an easy excuse
to evade having to deal with the central issues of the
peace process, including Jerusalem, the refugees
and ending the occupation.
"Israel is only seeking excuses. Israel is more interested
than anybody else in the continuation of the current
situation in Gaza since these rockets, which are really just
firecrackers, are used as a valuable propaganda asset to
continue slaughtering the Palestinians in Gaza and
indulging in stalling tactics in the West Bank," said former
PA security official Jebril Rajoub.
The hawkish Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak says
openly Israel's ultimate goal in Gaza is to destroy the
Hamas government. However, a bloody and extended
Israeli blitz into Gaza wouldn't be without serious, even
grave, political ramifications on the entire peace process.
"A bloody invasion of Gaza by Israel would turn Hamas
and other Palestinian resistance groups towards Al-Qaeda,
and Mahmoud Abbas would be made to look like
Antoin Lahd," said one Hamas lawmaker in Gaza on
condition of anonymity. Lahd was the quisling commander
of the Israeli-backed defunct South Lebanese Army,
who was forced to flee to Israel following the Israeli
withdrawal from South Lebanon in 2000. "Without
Hamas there can be no peace, and the entire area may
turn into another Iraq."
Caption: A Palestinian girl mourns the death of
a Hamas militant, who was killed in an Israeli air
raid, during his funeral in Gaza
C a p t i o n 2: A Palestinian girl mourns the death of a
Hamas militant, who was killed in an Israeli air raid,
during his funeral in Gaza
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