Peace talks: a sort of blind-man's bluff

http://a-mid-east-journal.blogspot.com/2010/07/peace-talks-sort-of-blind-mans-bluff.html

by Neville Teller

Sunday, 4 July 2010

Next Tuesday, 6 July, Israel's Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, is due to visit Washington.  His previous scheduled date with President Obama. inconveniently coinciding as it did with the Gaza flotilla debacle, was hastily cancelled.  The last time the two actually met the climate was frosty, as the US President presented the Israeli PM with a list of required actions aimed at restoring sufficient confidence on the Palestinian side to allow the proximity talks initiative to go ahead.

Those, by and large, Netanyahu met, and indeed the US special Middle East envoy, George Mitchell, was able to set up and subsequently maintain the arm's-length negotiations that have been dubbed "proximity talks".  The process even survived the Gaza flotilla incident, and Mitchell returned to the Middle East last week to initiate the fifth round. 

This, according to a report in yesterday's (Saturday's) edition of the London-based Arab language newspaper, Al-Hayat, has yielded an unexpected outcome.   The report, not as yet officially confirmed, is that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has handed  Mitchell a list of firm proposals for reaching a peace agreement with Israel.   

Abbas is said to have proposed the creation of a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders, but with a land swap encompassing 2.3 per cent, which would leave larger Israeli settlement blocs, such as Gush Etzion, Pisgat Ze'ev and Modi'in Ilit, in Israel's hands, along with a swathe of land overlooking Ben-Gurion International Airport.  In return, the Palestinians would get land bordering the southern West Bank in addition to land for a passageway between the West Bank and Gaza.

Abbas is also reported to have presented a softened stance on East Jerusalem, which would become the future capital of the Palestinian state.  Abbas reportedly proposed that Israel should retain control over the Old City's Jewish Quarter and Western Wall. The rest of the Old City, while under Palestinian sovereignty, would be open to worshippers of all religions.

Included in the scheme are suggestions on borders and security arrangements.

This package, if the reports are accurate, must be regarded as a good opening gambit on Abbas's part.  While certainly unacceptable to Israel as it stands, it undoubtedly contains more accommodating elements than previous negotiations have yielded.  And once the concept of a land swap is on the table, there is room for manoeuvre, discussion and agreement.  The concept of a roadway of some sort linking the West Bank and Gaza has been contained in previous Israeli proposals, notably in the last set offered by Ehud Olmert, when prime minister, and never formally responded to by Abbas.

The sticking point, of course, lies in the final status of Jerusalem.  The most far-reaching of previous Israeli suggestions – those sponsored by Ehud Barak, currently Defense Minister, and Ehud Olmert – envisaged the capital of a Palestinian sovereign state as being in a new municipality, perhaps to be called Al-Quds, created from current Arab-occupied districts of East Jerusalem amalgamated with adjoining areas containing a number of Arab-occupied towns.  This concept may indeed still be negotiable within the terms of Abbas's new proposals.  A real intractable – though perhaps not insoluble – problem will be sovereignty over the Old City and access to the holy places.  This is where the hard bargaining will eventually be required.

Whether Netanyahu will respond immediately is doubtful.  Last Friday, in an interview on Israel's TV, he called on Abbas to enter direct negotiations.  “I’m ready anytime,” he said. “Let’s not waste another 15 months before we sit down together.”  He added that he was willing to discuss the end of the Israeli government's West Bank building freeze, set to end in September, and that he was prepared to go to Ramallah to negotiate with Abbas if the PA President would come to Jerusalem.

"Willing to discuss" the end of the settlement freeze he may be, but here Netanyahu is caught in something of a pincer.  On the one hand four ministers in his fragile coalition cabinet – Avigdor Lieberman, Moshe Ya'alon, Benny Begin and Eli Yishai – want construction on the West Bank to be resumed as soon as the official moratorium expires.  On the other, in discussions with President Obama next week, Netanyahu is likely to be questioned closely about the possibility of extending the moratorium on West Bank construction in one form or another.  Obama is expected to suggest this to Netanyahu in order to enable direct talks to take place, for American officials are pressuring Abbas to start talking face-to-face with Israel.

This coming week, if Netanyahu is capable of demonstrating just a touch of statesmanship, he has the chance of bringing the US President alongside a joint vision of where the peace process should lead.  The question is: does Netanyahu in fact, have a clear vision to impart?  What sort of future does he envisage for the region?  Does he have a destination he wishes to reach, or a clear direction on how to get there?

As noted columnist, Aluf Benn, wrote last week:  "Instead of citing hostile statements from the archives of the Palestine Liberation Organization, Netanyahu needs to present Obama with a practical proposal that can be neatly packaged and marketed. His current formula – ‘a demilitarized Palestinian state alongside a Jewish state’ - is yawn-inducing… Compare that with phrases like ‘the ingathering of the exiles,’ ‘peace,’ ‘an end to the conflict,’ and ‘disengagement,’ as enunciated by his predecessors. These messages electrified the public and tilted world governments toward Israel."

Meanwhile, Palestinian sources close to Abbas are quoted as saying the Palestinian leader expects more effective US participation in peace talks, with some suggesting that Abbas wants the Obama administration to impose a settlement if negotiations fail. 

Nor is he the only one.  Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit, present at a meeting in Paris last Thursday attended by the PA Prime Minister, Salam Fayyad, said that if the arm's-length negotiations do not make progress by September, Arab leaders would begin to push the UN for the unilateral creation of a Palestinian state.

"The Arab League foreign ministers," he said, "would agree on the need to act in the Security Council.  The state should not be delayed beyond this year. Who should decide? The Quartet is not enough.  The Security Council is the venue."

Yet all these statements and discussions, actual and potential, are perpetuating a sort of fictional drama in which all the parties involved appear willing players.  Who questions the presumption that Mahmoud Abbas is negotiating on behalf of  the whole Palestinian people?  But is he?  Is the reality not that he speaks only for those resident in the West Bank?  Does George Mitchell, or President Obama, believe that a "successful" end to the negotiations, even if achieved at face-to-face talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, would be acceptable to Hamas – let alone Iran or Syria?  Would Hamas, the de facto (though not the de jure)  government of the Gaza Strip, feel bound by agreements reached in its absence from the negotiating table (not that Hamas would agree to sit down with Israel in the first place)?  it is as if all parties have willingly put on blindfolds in order to play a game of blind-man's bluff.

And the game would continue, even if the talks ended in failure.  Far from Ahmed Aboul Gheit's dire last-ditch scenario solving anything, the reality is that Hamas has set its face against endorsing a Palestinian state alongside Israel, and there seems little softening of their attitude.  The sort of response from Hamas that would follow a two-state solution imposed by diktat of the Security Council requires little imagination.

The truth is that the regional problem requiring the most immediate attention in the Middle East is the bitter and bloody inter-Palestinian feud between Hamas and Fatah.  Until that is resolved – and resolved in a way that brings Hamas willingly alongside Mahmoud Abbas in his peace negotiations – any "settlement" of the Israel-Palestinian issue could be only partial and unstable. 

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Copyright 2010 by the author. This work is posted at http://www.a-mid-east-journal.blogspot.com/. Please do link to it, quote excerpts and forward it by email with this notice. Distributed by ZNN. To subscribe send email to znn-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

Bibi and Barack straighten out a few things

http://a-mid-east-journal.blogspot.com/2010/07/bibi-and-barack-straighten-out-few.html

by Neville Teller

Wednesday, 7 July 2010

When Israel's Prime Minister met US President Obama in Washington yesterday, the atmosphere was described as very friendly, and the discussions went well.  Later, both men were adamant that the relationship between the USA and Israel was not only strong but unbreakable.  Obama called the meeting "one more step in the extraordinary friendship between the US and Israel, which has grown closer and closer as time goes on."

This cordial outcome might suggest that Benjamin Netanyahu (generally known within Israel as "Bibi") had brought to the White House a vision for the future of the Middle East that Obama could sign up to.

The President's immediate and longer-term aspirations for the Israel-Palestine issue seem clear enough.  Having invested a good deal of effort in promoting negotiations between the Palestinian Authority and Israel – indirect in the first instance –he is now seeking direct face-to-face talks between the two parties. And the objective? That, too, is clear – a peace agreement leading to a the establishment of a sovereign Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza.

Netanyahu does not demur from either proposition, though – as they say – the devil is in the detail.  He reiterated his call, delivered in Israel before he left for the States, for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to meet him and move to face-to-face negotiations on Palestinian statehood.  It was "high time," Netanyahu said, to begin direct talks.

Several obstacles lie on the road to total agreement between Netanyahu and Obama – for example, Israel's 10-month freeze on construction in the West Bank, imposed in November 2009 and due to expire in September.  Or, even more fundamental, the question of how many of the settlements would remain within Israel's sovereignty as part of a peace settlement.  That some would, as part of a "land swap" agreement, has already been acknowledged by Abbas himself, Arab-language newspaper Al-Hayat recently reported.

Abbas is said to have proposed a land swap involving some 2.3 per cent of West Bank territory, which would leave larger Israeli settlement blocs, such as Gush Etzion, Pisgat Ze'ev and Modi'in Ilit, in Israel's hands, along with a swathe of land overlooking Ben-Gurion International Airport.  In return, the Palestinians would get land bordering the southern West Bank in addition to land for a passageway between the West Bank and Gaza.

In the press conference following their meeting, Netanyahu endorsed Obama's hope that direct negotiations would get under way "well before" the 10-month Israeli freeze on settlement construction in the West Bank expires.  But Israel's senior English-language newspaper, the Jerusalem Post, claims to have learned of a proposal under which Obama might hint at the US accepting Israeli control over the major settlement blocs, if Netanyahu extends the settlement freeze in the West Bank.  This idea was originally part of former US president George W. Bush's 2004 agreement with Israel's then-prime minister Ariel Sharon.

However If the Palestinian Authority remains unwilling to enter direct talks, Netanyahu is likely to come under heavy internal pressure to re-commence construction in the West Bank. If he accedes to it, then the Arab League support for the continued PA participation in peace talks is almost certain to be withdrawn. 

Both Obama and Netanyahu were complicit – as so many parties to discussions about the Israel-Palestine issue are – in pretending that the peace talks, indirect or face-to-face, can somehow incorporate the Gaza Strip, even though it is under the control of Hamas, a terrorist Islamic régime supported by Iran and Syria, and resolutely opposed to any accommodation with Israel.  How to square that particular circle is a problem that has been resolutely ignored so far, but will eventually have to be faced.

The Gaza flotilla episode and its aftermath – a relaxation of Israel's land and sea blockade – featured in the discussions between Prime Minister and President.  Netanyahu had brought with him to Washington a detailed list of goods Israel will not allow into the Gaza Strip. Originally negotiated by Tony Blair, the Quartet's special Middle east envoy, this "negative" list, setting out a catalogue of prohibited imports, replaces the system operating so far of a list of permitted goods, and was welcomed by the US administration.

The two nations seem eye-to-eye also on their reaction to the establishment of a committee, on behalf of the United Nations Human Rights Council, to investigate the storming of the Mavi Marmara by Israeli commandos, and the subsequent death of nine Turkish citizens.  Headed by a former president of the International Criminal Court, Canadian Philippe Kirsch, the committee begins work today, after its full membership is announced.

The US, which had welcomed the formation of an independent committee of inquiry in Israel under former justice Jacob Turkel, is opposed to an international probe into the events.  France and Britain are reported to share Washington's view on the issue.  A US diplomat in New York is reported to have said: "As far as the US administration is concerned, at a time when it is trying to resume the peace process, the investigation into the events of the flotilla … could not have come at a worst time."

Turkey persists in demanding an apology from Israel for the attack, but evidence is mounting of Turkish government complicity in conceiving, assisting and involving itself in an enterprise, pre-planned and carefully designed, to provoke a violent encounter with Israel.  Fronted by a Turkish non-governmental organisation – the IHH – and concealing its intentions under the cloak of delivering humanitarian aid, the plan appears to have involved the smuggling on board the lead ship, the Mavi Marmara, which itself carried no humanitarian aid at all, of 40 armed and dangerous thugs who subsequently took over control of the ship from its unsuspecting captain. 

How deep will the UN Human Rights Committee probe in its investigation?  If it confirms the growing evidence that the whole Gaza Freedom flotilla enterprise was an operation specifically designed, and carefully planned, to induce a violent confrontation with the Israeli military, it may be difficult to determine whether it is Israel or Turkey that is the more deserving of an apology. 

Copyright 2010 by the author. This work is posted at http://www.a-mid-east-journal.blogspot.com/. Please do link to it, quote excerpts and forward it by email with this notice. Distributed by ZNN. To subscribe send email to znn-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

A peace deal by 2011?

http://a-mid-east-journal.blogspot.com/2010/07/peace-deal-by-2011.htm

by Neville Teller

On Thursday 8 July, Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed the Council of Foreign Relations in New York. 

The good news is that he said a peace deal with the Palestinians could be signed by next year.  He stressed his own willingness to engage in the process, and repeated his call for direct negotiations with the Palestinians. 

The bad news is that, though he stressed that a partner was needed in order to make this happen, he did not specify the main obstacle to a comprehensive agreement – the fact that Hamas rules in the Gaza Strip, and that Hamas is dead set against an accommodation with Israel 

The speech to the Council of Foreign Relations was the concluding engagement in Netanyahu's trip to the US, and he returned to Israel that evening.  During the day Netanyahu gave interviews to CNN, ABC and CBS news networks.  In all his speaking engagements, Netanyahu reiterated his call for direct negotiations between Israel and the PA.

Netanyahu's visit to the US is generally considered successful in burying the strains of the past few months and re-establishing cordial relations between Israel and the USA.  What remains uncertain is whether differences will eventually re-emerge over, for example, the issue of the settlement freeze. 

Relying on hope rather than probability, in his speech to the Council of Foreign Relations Netanyahu dismissed the idea that an extension of the freeze should be a precondition for continued negotiations.  The 10-month settlement freeze is due to expire on 27 September, and he hinted that the moratorium on West Bank construction would not be renewed,  The likely impact of a renewal of settlement building on Arab opinion in general, and Palestinian opinion in particular, does not require much imagination.

The subject came up during an interview Netanyahu gave to Larry King on America's top-rated talk show. Asked if he would extend beyond September the 10-month moratorium on housing starts in settlements in the West Bank, Netanyahu said it was time for the Palestinians to drop preconditions for face-to-face talks.

"Let's just get into the talks," he said, "and one of the things we'll discuss right away is this issue of settlements and that's what I propose doing.  I put on a temporary freeze – seven months passed by but the Palestinians didn’t come, and now they need another extension.  It requires courage on the Palestinian side to stand up and do what the late president of Egypt Anwar Saddat did – to say 'It’s over, enough with the bloodshed.'"

Wisely, perhaps, Netanyahu did not spell out the fatal price Sadat paid for his courage.  It is, perhaps, going a little far to ask someone to put his neck willingly on the chopping block.  No doubt Netanyahu also has the fate of his predecessor as Israeli Prime Minister, Yitzhak Rabin, in mind from time to time.

Asked if he would sit down at the negotiating table with Hamas, Netanyahu said he "would sit down with anyone who recognizes our existence and is not calling for our destruction."   Is that, King might have asked, a "yes" or a "no"?  Of course what it represents is an invitation to Hamas to modify their unyielding approach to the idea of the two-state solution – and, incidentally, to their objection to the establishment of a sovereign Palestinian state.  This they oppose because the idea carries in its train recognition that Palestine must live alongside Israel – and it is to Israel's destruction that Hamas, alongside its sponsors Iran and Syria, and its brothers-in-arms Hezbollah, is dedicated.

Following his return to Israel, Netanyahu will, reports indicate, apply himself to taking the political steps necessary to have Kadima join his coalition government. Natan Eshel, the director of the Prime Minister's Bureau, met a number of days ago with a senior member of Kadima and passed on to him an itemised proposal for joining the coalition. According to a report in Israel's Ma'ariv newspaper yesterday, Netanyahu's offer would give Kadima head, Tzipi Livni, the role of Israel's chief negotiator in talks with the Palestinians.  The presumption is that the PM does not intend to restructure his coalition or redraw its guidelines.

PA President Mahmoud Abbas was reported on Wednesday in the official Palestinian Authority daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida  as supporting negotiations with Israel at present because it is the only option. However, the newspaper quotes Abbas as saying: "If you [Arab states] want war, and if all of you will fight Israel, we are in favour. But the Palestinians will not fight alone because they don't have the ability to do it."

Some might find this comment dispiriting.  Personally, I find it quite hopeful.  Whatever the motive for talking peace, let the two parties only talk it.  As regards the proximity talks, and even the face-to-face negotiations that might follow, it is almost certain that they are seen by a significant proportion, perhaps even a majority, of Arab opinion as a step towards the ultimate goal of a Middle East somehow shorn of Israel. 

My reaction?  Let’s have the peace, and Israel will then have the task of defending the subsequent status quo.  After all, on the other side of the fence, hard-line Israeli settlers may have a parallel ultimate objective somewhere in mind regarding the Arab population of the West Bank.  Let both parties dream their dreams, but let realpolitik rule in the political sphere.  The important thing is a peace agreement – the only way to achieve some sort of accommodation and stability.  Who knows what benefits a period of peace might not yield for the region in the long-run?  An unprecedented economic, financial and trade boom on the lines of Hong Kong or Singapore, through an  Israel-led confederation including Jordan and Egypt, and even Lebanon and Syria, is not way outside the bounds of possibility.

Copyright 2010 by the author. This work is posted at http://www.a-mid-east-journal.blogspot.com/. Please do link to it, quote excerpts and forward it by email with this notice. Distributed by ZNN. To subscribe send email to znn-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

Face-to-face talks – a problem or two

http://a-mid-east-journal.blogspot.com/2010/07/face-to-face-talks-problem-or-two.html

by Neville Teller

Improbable as it may have appeared over the past six months – given the succession of events that have tested the peace process almost to its limit – direct talks between the Palestinian Authority and Israel are becoming more likely by the day.

Following the visit of Israel's Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu to Washington last week, the US administration has, it appears, been putting PA President Mahmoud Abbas under intense pressure to agree to move from the proximity phase of the negotiations to face-to-face discussions.  Abbas has been cautious about entering direct talks until now. Following a successful visit to Washington last month, though, the Palestinian President may now be more willing to enter direct talks, feeling greater confidence that US backing will mean this round of talks will produce results.

And indeed in Ramallah a few days ago Palestinian Authority officials said that direct talks with Israel were not ruled out, but that the PA was waiting for US special Middle East envoy George Mitchell – who is scheduled to return to the region shortly – to see if he has replies to a number of questions presented to him by the Palestinians.  These include whether Israel would be willing to freeze construction in all West Bank settlements and in east Jerusalem, and to recognize the "4 June 1967 lines" as the future borders of a Palestinian state.

As for the settlement freeze, during his visit to Washington Netanyahu was asked repeatedly whether he would extend the 10-month building moratorium that expires on 26 September.  All his responses indicated that he wanted this issue to be on the table as an element in direct negotiations, but that he did not intend to provide an unequivocal answer in advance.

The other substantive issue in the minds of PA President Abbas and his officials is whether the borders of the future sovereign state of Palestine – and therefore of the future Israel – are to be a return to the status quo on the day before the Six-Day War, which began on 5 June 1967.

The phrase "the line of 4 June 1967" has been part of the Arab-Israeli peace process lexicon for over five years.  During a visit to Bahrain on 4 February 2010, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said: "we believe that the 1967 borders, with swaps, should be the focus of the negotiations over borders."

This was an error in terminology that she subsequently corrected.  For the fact is that in 1967 there was no recognized international border between the West Bank and Israel.  What existed was the 1949 Armistice Line – basically where Israeli and Arab forces found themselves at the formal end of Israel's first battle against the combined Arab armies that surrounded it.

On the Egyptian and Syrian fronts there had been a history of international boundaries between the British Mandate and its neighbours.  But along the Jordanian front the armistice line was the position on the ground when the fighting stopped.  In fact, Article II of the Armistice with Jordan explicitly specified that the agreement did not compromise any future territorial claims of the parties, since it had been "dictated exclusively by military considerations." 

As Dr Dore Gold, the renowned expert on Middle East affairs, has pointed out, after the Six-Day War the architects of UN Security Council Resolution 242 insisted that the old armistice line had to be replaced with a new border. Thus US Ambassador at the time, Arthur Goldberg: "historically, there have never been secure or recognized boundaries in the area"; adding that the armistice lines did not answer that description. 

"Which is why," Dr Gold writes, "Resolution 242 did not call for a full withdrawal from all the territories that Israel captured in the Six Day War; the 1949 Armistice lines were no longer to be a reference point for a future peace process."

President Lyndon Johnson made this very point  in September 1968: "It is clear, however, that a return to the situation of 4 June 1967 will not bring peace. There must be secure and there must be recognized borders."

This issue, interesting historically though it is, is far from an insuperable difficulty to achieving a final PA-Israeli peace agreement.  The Arab call for a return to the pre-Six Day War situation is as much an emotional attempt to erase the humiliation inflicted on the combined Arab forces at the time, as a requirement to be scrupulously observed.  Although the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative refers to the 1967 lines, and the 2003 Road Map speaks of ending "the occupation that began in 1967," all sides acknowledge that a final agreement will incorporate land swaps aimed at ensuring secure borders for both Israel and the future Palestine.

When might the direct face-to-face talks begin?  Chief PA negotiator Saeb Erekat has confirmed that President Obama has urged the PA to agree to direct negotiations, but said he was unaware of reports suggesting that they could commence by the end of this month (July).  Other reports, also unconfirmed, have said that Obama wanted to kick off the talks at a trilateral meeting between him, Netanyahu and Abbas on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly meeting in New York in September.

Netanyahu was due to be travelling to Sharm-el-Sheikh this week to discuss the question of direct talks with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.  President Abbas is expected to meet with the Egyptian leader shortly afterwards. Abbas has made it clear that, just as occurred before the start of the proximity talks, he would require backing from the Arab League foreign ministers before agreeing to launch direct negotiations with Israel.   The question of Arab League approval will doubtless feature high on the agenda in Netanyahu's meeting with President Mubarak.

So despite setbacks, obstacles, the odd problem or two, we continue to inch our way forward.

Copyright 2010 by the author. This work is posted at http://a-mid-east-journal.blogspot.com/. Please do link to it, quote excerpts and forward it by email with this notice. Distributed by ZNN. To subscribe send email to znn-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

No willing peace partner: Iran vs Israel-Palestine

http://a-mid-east-journal.blogspot.com/2010/07/no-willing-partner.html

by Neville Teller

Yesterday (Tuesday, 20 July) David Cameron made his first journey to Washington as Britain's new prime minister.  After an unprecedented three-hour visit to the White House, and a private face-to-face discussion lasting a full hour, the two leaders emerged to face a joint Press conference dominated by two issues.  The first was the release of the convicted Lockerbie bomber, Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi, from a Scottish jail eleven months ago on humanitarian grounds and any role that America's current hate-figure, BP, may have had in it. The second was the situation in Afghanistan, and the withdrawal process for US, British and NATO forces.

Scour the internet and the press as you may, and you would be fortunate indeed to find references to any interchange the two men may have had on current issues in the Middle East. 

But, swamped by matters of more immediate interest, both the Israeli-Palestinian peace process and Iran's nuclear development programme did come up for discussion.  The President and the PM agreed on the necessity of starting direct talks between Israel and the Palestinians. On that issue, according to a White House press statement, Cameron said: "We desperately need a two-state solution between Israel and the Palestinians that provides security, justice and hope. It is time for direct talks, not least because it is time for each, Israel and Palestine, to test the seriousness of the other."

On the topic of Iran, President Obama said that he was united with Prime Minister Cameron on the threat posed by Iran's nuclear programme, and warned that further defiance by Iran will lead to further isolation of the Islamic regime. 

During the joint press conference Cameron reiterated this message: "America and Britain, with our partners, stand ready to negotiate, and to do so in good faith. But in the absence of a willing partner, we will implement with vigour the sanctions package agreed by the United Nations Security Council, and in Europe we will be taking further steps as well."

Odd that the question of a "willing partner" should feature so strongly in considering possibly delicate negotiations with Iran on nuclear matters, but should be conspicuous by its absence when discussing an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal.  For the fact of the matter is, as distinguished Middle East commentator Barry Rubin recently observed: "There is a partner for talks and shorter-term cooperation (ie the Palestinian Authority) but no partner for full peace.  Iran, Syria, Hamas and Hezbollah are not amenable to diplomacy."

And there, as Shakespeare has it, is the rub – which the Concise Oxford dictionary defines as a difficulty or impediment.  Indeed.  The opening of direct discussions, if or when they come about, may encompass all manner of outstanding issues, but the one issue they cannot resolve is the indisputable fact that the Gaza Strip is in the hands of an Islamist terrorist organisation that is viscerally opposed to any accommodation with Israel.

As Barry Rubin points out, revolutionary Islamism is advancing and the US, given its current policy, isn’t exactly a bulwark battling against it.  He points to the need for the US to have a worked-out strategy in place to contain Iran when – not, he says, if – it gets nuclear weapons, and even more with how to deal in the Gaza Strip with Hamas, a repressive revolutionary Islamist dictatorship and a client of Iran.

Not that the leaders of Fatah in the Palestinian Authority do not themselves recognise the problems that Hamas poses.  "The worst thing that has happened to us,"  is how the PA chief negotiator, Saeb Erekat, characterised the Hamas coup d'état in Gaza in a recent TV interview. 

But wringing one's hands over an unsatisfactory state of affairs goes no way towards solving it.  Either Hamas must be driven out of Gaza by fair means (ie democratic elections) or foul (ie militarily) – or the organisation must be induced to come to terms with its internecine rivals, Fatah, and accept the outcome of peace negotiations.  This would require Hamas to agree to a two-state solution – the only feasible option currently on the table – and therefore, by implication, the existence of Israel within secure boundaries alongside a sovereign Palestine.

The leaders of the Western world, and the organisations closely involved – the UN, the EU, the Quartet – never seem to approach this fundamental issue in their many interventions.  It is as if all the parties concerned had voluntarily donned blindfolds so as to avoid seeing what was in front of their noses –  that Islamist terrorism, wreaking havoc across the world, the reason for major commitments of forces and resources in Iraq and Afghanistan, and for the continued imposition of UN sanctions on Iran and its nuclear ambitions, is the same Islamist terrorism at work in southern Lebanon and in the Gaza Strip. 

There is a community of interest, which would involve also many "moderate" Muslim countries, in combating fundamentalist Islamism, a movement totally ruthless in pursuing its objectives, sacrificing not only the lives of its own adherents by supporting and celebrating its suicide bombers, but also slaughtering innocent people in droves.

Joined-up thinking is called for.  One fears the call will go unheeded.

Neville Teller, born in London, is a graduate of Oxford University.  A writer for BBC radio and the audiobook industry, he has also been commenting on the Middle East  for the past 30 years.  His book “One Man’s Israel” was published in 2008, and he has been writing his blog “A Mid-East Journal” (http://.a-mid-east-journal.blogspot.com/) since January of this year.  He was awarded an MBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours, 2006 "for services to broadcasting and to drama."

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Copyright 2010 by the author. This work is posted at http://a-mid-east-journal.blogspot.com/. Please do link to it, quote excerpts and forward it by email with this notice. Distributed by ZNN. To subscribe send email to znn-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

The Friends of Israel Initiative

http://a-mid-east-journal.blogspot.com/2010/07/friends-of-israel-initiative.html

by Neville Teller

To coin a thought – people possess an infinite capacity to amaze and astound.  Who could ever have predicted that in the middle of 2010 considerable numbers of well-respected figures, virtually all of them non-Jewish, from countries all around the world, would come together to defend Israel against the insidious and growing campaign to delegitimize her waged by her enemies and supported by numerous international institutions.

Who are these people, prepared to take so unfashionable and therefore so courageous a stand? 

The "Friends of Israel Initiative" is led by former Spanish Prime Minister José María Aznar.  The list of members includes Peru's former president Alejandro Toledo, former Italian Senate president Marcello Pera, former United States Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton, British historian Andrew Roberts, Northern Ireland's Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Lord Trimble.  With a working budget of almost £1 million a year, FII has been funded by a dozen private donors from Spain, America, Israel, France, Italy and Britain.  

It was in May 2010 that José Maria Aznar brought together a high level group in Paris to launch a project aimed specifically at asserting Israel's position as a legitimate democratic sovereign nation, an integral part of the Western world and of fundamental importance to its future,  Although the FII acknowledge that the Israeli-Palestinian peace process is important, the members of the group are even more concerned about the rising tide of radical Islamism and the prospect of a nuclear Iran, both of which threaten the entire world.

The Mexican newspaper El Financiero defines the purpose of the Initiative as to "reaffirm Western values," and counteract "anti-Semitic criticism of Israel."  According to Spain's ABC News Internacional , the Initiative is founded on the conviction that "the campaign against Israel corrodes the international system from within, beginning with the United Nations."

The Friends of Israel Initiative is committed to act consistently and diligently in its effort to disseminate its members’ vision of Israel as a democratic, open, and advanced nation like any other, and that it should be perceived and treated as such.  Israel, the organisation maintains, is a sovereign democracy which like all the others is, of course, capable of making mistakes.  Nonetheless, it asserts, this should not be used as an excuse to question Israel’s right to exist, its legitimacy, or its basic rights as an independent state. "Israel is an inextricable part of the West." they maintain; "we stand or fall together."

Earlier this month (July) José María Aznar wrote:  "It is easy to blame Israel for all the evils in the Arab world, and some are even ready to sacrifice the future of Israel if a new understanding with the Muslim world were to be achieved in return. However, to weaken Israel is a serious mistake since it is our first line of defence in the region; if Israel fell into the hands of its enemies, the West as we know it would cease to exist.

"To defend Israel’s right to exist in peace and within defensible borders requires a moral clarity that has mainly gone lost in Europe - this spectre is also looming over the United States. The West is what it is, thanks to its Judeo-Christian roots.  If the Jewish part of those roots is upturned and Israel is lost, then we are lost too. Today, to defend Israel is to defend the West.  With this initiative we aspire to make that reality ever more patent."

Last Monday (19 July) saw the Initiative open a front in the UK.  At the invitation of the Member of Parliament Robert Halfon, and hosted by the Henry Jackson Society, the FII was launched in Britain's parliament building, the Palace of Westminster.  The next launch will be in Washington in September, followed by Rome and then another event in Paris.

In advancing its campaign the group is casting its net wide.  It appears to recognise that radical Islamism poses as great a threat to the moderate Muslim world as to the West.  The group is considering visiting Arab countries in the coming year, as well as addressing the United Nations and the European Parliament. There has already been contact with Egypt and the United Arab Emirates. The reach will then be widened to embrace entertainment (including a possible visit to Hollywood, science, and other areas beyond politics.

Israeli-Palestinian non-negotiations: Position report

http://a-mid-east-journal.blogspot.com/2010/07/july-reviewed.htm

by Neville Teller

David Cameron, Britain's prime minister, approves of blunt speaking, so let's be blunt.  His remarks in Turkey on Monday (26 July) about Gaza, compounded by his comments in India later in the week concerning Pakistan, were gaffes  –  little more than simplistic headline seekers, devoid of context. 

The phrase he uttered in Turkey that has gone round the world is "Gaza is a prison camp" – the underlying assumption, understood even if not spoken, being that Israel is the prison guard.  But as Ephraim Sneh, the former Israeli deputy minister of defence, has said:  "Cameron is right – Gaza is a prison camp, but those who control the prison are Hamas. I'm totally against the double standards of a nation which fights the Taliban but is showing its solidarity with their brothers, Hamas.  It's very regrettable that the British PM doesn't understand that. It reflects a lack of understanding and is a very bad sign. Cameron doesn't understand that 1.5m people live in Gaza under the repressive regime of Hamas – and yet he blames Israel."

In his references to Gaza, David Cameron did not once mention Hamas. 

And speaking of prison camps, Gaza has certainly been nothing less for Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier snatched by Hamas and held hostage for more than four years, despite the most intensive efforts of mediators, both Egyptian and German.

Turkey's prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, approves of Hamas and calls the Iranians "our friends, our brothers".  David Cameron, in urging Turkey's acceptance into the EU*  extolled Turkey's unique position in facing two ways, East and West, because it could act as a bridge between Europe and Islamist states such as Iran.

Two days later he was condemning Pakistan for facing two ways, and allying itself both with the West and the forces it was opposing.  The inconsistency is glaring.  Did he, one can't help speculating, stop to consider that what is sauce for the Pakistani goose is sauce for the Turkish gander? 

Putting Cameron's gaffes to one side, July has been dominated by a single, simple issue  –  when and how can the current arm's-length "proximity" talks between Israel and the Palestinians be upgraded to direct face-to-face negotiations.  Both the principals – PA President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, face dilemmas over the matter.

Diplomatic activity around the question has been intense.  In his visit to Washington early in July, Israel's prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, took care to restore the cordial relations with the US that had been badly damaged earlier in the year.  Knowing that President Obama has invested a deal of personal capital in achieving a Middle East accord, Netanyahu played along.  Even before leaving Israel, he was calling on PA President Mahmoud Abbas to enter direct negotiations, declaring himself ready to do so at any time and in any location.  This call chimed in nicely with the pressure already being applied by Washington on Abbas to come to the table  –  so nicely that Netanyahu made a point of repeating it while in the States, not once but several times.

Abbas, while certainly not wishing to appear to the world as rejectionist, laid down certain pre-conditions  –  and he has stuck to them, right up to 29 July, the day the Arab League met to discuss the possibility of direct talks.  Abbas has been demanding that Israel agrees to a complete halt in settlement construction and  –  while allowing for land swaps and adjustments  –  accepts a Palestinian state in territories overrun by Israel during the 1967 Six Day War, namely the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem.  He is quoted by Egypt's state-owned news agency as saying that when he receives written assurances on those matters, "I will go immediately to the direct talks,"

For his part, Netanyahu has consistently refused to commit himself to any pre-conditions.  "Let's just get to the talks," he said in a TV interview in the States, "and one of the things we'll discuss straight away is this issue of settlements."

Abbas held off responding to the diplomatic pressure exerted on him from Washington until the scheduled meeting of the Arab League on 29 July.  Already regarded with suspicion by more extreme Palestinian and Muslim opinion, Abbas had needed the cover provided by the Arab League before even commencing the proximity talks.  How much more would he need it when the prospect of talking face-to-face with Israel's prime minister was being mooted?

And then, in the last week of July, an internal Palestinian document was leaked to the Associated Press.  It revealed the type of argument that the US has been using in its efforts to drag Abbas to the negotiating table.  The document apparently revealed that President Obama's special peace envoy to the Middle East, George Mitchell, warned Abbas that if he does not agree to direct talks, President Obama will not be able to help the Palestinians achieve a state of their own.

In response, the Palestinian president seems to have reiterated the line he has been following for some weeks, namely that he first wants to see progress on the issue of the borders of a future Palestinian state. The internal Palestinian document warned Abbas that to give up on those demands would be political suicide.  The thought arises that to do so could, perhaps, amount to literal suicide, too  – a dilemma indeed for the PA president.  But even so, it is surely not necessary to make these matters a pre-condition for entering negotiations.  Direct talks would almost certainly start with an assumption that most of the West Bank and certain Arab-occupied neighbourhoods in and around Jerusalem would indeed be included within a new sovereign Palestine.  As for Gaza, it has already be evacuated by Israel, and it would be up to Abbas and the PA to sort out its governance and their relationship with Hamas, its de facto rulers. 

All of which doubtless explains the somewhat equivocal outcome of the Arab League meeting.  For the Arab League foreign ministers authorised the Palestinian Authority to enter into direct negotiations with Israel, but left it up to PA President Mahmoud Abbas to decide on the timing.

The timing is all-important, for Israel's moratorium on building in the West Bank settlements is due to expire in September, and there are fears in Washington and Jerusalem that Abbas will play a waiting game right up to the wire  –  creating a real dilemma for prime minister Netanyahu.  Abbas is well aware that Netanyahu is himself under intense pressure from within his cabinet to authorise the resumption of West Bank construction the instant the moratorium expires.

Danny Danon, a Likud member of the Knesset, knows the exact moment the 10-month freeze on new settlement construction will end  – 6:06 p.m. Tel Aviv time on September 26.  Danon has said that he and opponents of the freeze were not planning to let it last any longer than that.  “When the sun sets," he said, "people will start to build.”  He told the press that opponents of the freeze are already planning a large ceremony for that moment, complete with tractors that will break ground for new homes.

Abbas wants to put Netanyahu through the painful dilemma of either going along with the hard-liners who are demanding an immediate restart to West Bank construction, or facing them down and continuing the negotiations.  If he chooses to go along with them and finally authorises the restating of construction, then he will have been wrong-footed in the eyes of the USA and world opinion.  If he does face them down, then Abbas will be perceived to have won his point by sheer persistence. 

This is why officials in Jerusalem believe that Abbas will attempt at all costs to delay the beginning of direct peace negotiations with Israel, probably waiting until the temporary settlement freeze expires, before declaring his own decision on the matter. They also assume that the Palestinian president, waving the impending dilemma in front of Netanyahu's nose,  will use the time to try to convince him to continue the freeze or at least to take other "equal" measures in respect of West Bank construction.

How will things pan out?  There's the whole month of August to get through first – and on the basis of precedent, almost anything can happen in that time, and probably will. 

*Note on Turkey's application to join the European Union

First made in 1987, it has been outstanding largely on account of Turkey's 1974 invasion and seizure of northern Cyprus, and its continuing  stand-off with Greece ever since.  France and Germany also fear the uncertain role a large and predominantly Islamic society might play within a European political and economic bloc.  In May 2009 French President Nicholas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel jointly questioned the wisdom of Turkey seeking full membership of the European Union.  They emphasized their objection to the EU's enlargement to include Turkey, argued that any misguided expansion might endanger its operational effectiveness, and instead reiterated their support for "privileged partnership" as an alternative framework to regulate Turkish-EU relations  –  an offer immediately and robustly rejected by Turkey.

Neville Teller, born in London, is a graduate of Oxford University.  A writer for BBC radio and the audiobook industry, he has also been commenting on the Middle East  for the past 30 years.  His book “One Man’s Israel” was published in 2008, and he has been writing his blog “A Mid-East Journal” (http://.a-mid-east-journal.blogspot.com/) since January of this year.  He was awarded an MBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours, 2006 "for services to broadcasting and to drama."

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Eilat rocket attack – too clever by half?

http://a-mid-east-journal.blogspot.com/2010/08/eilat-rocket-attack-too-clever-by-half.html

by Neville Teller

The pattern is so unvarying that it has become predictable.  Every so often the Israeli-Palestinian kaleidoscope gets a good shake, and the pieces assemble themselves into a design suggesting the possibility of an accord.  No sooner does this happen than forces opposed to compromise unleash some act of violence calculated to inflame public opinion and frustrate such an outcome.

Last Thursday (29 July) Arab League foreign ministers gave PA President Mahmoud Abbas the green light to proceed to direct face-to-face peace talks with Israel as soon as he deems it appropriate to do so.  After months of indirect talks and relative lack of progress, there is now a broad international coalition backing the US call for the resumption of direct talks.  Britain, France, Italy and Germany have been working actively behind the scenes to push the Palestinians back to direct negotiations.  In addition it was only a few weeks ago that Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Shimon Peres met with Egyptian and Jordanian leaders, and received their support for direct talks.

With the Israeli settlement moratorium set to expire in late September, and demands from hard-liners growing on Netanyahu not to renew it, there is an increasing desire on all sides to avoid a new crisis and ensure that progress is made ahead of the critical moment.  The next possible step is a possible trilateral meeting in Washington next week between Israeli, Palestinian and American negotiators. This is a Palestinian initiative to which the Obama administration is attempting to win Israel's agreement  –  its aim: to set the terms of reference, agenda and timetable for direct negotiations.  If Israel agrees to the meeting, it will be the first significant direct talks with the Palestinian Authority since Benjamin Netanyahu became prime minister last year.

 This positive and gathering momentum towards peace has proved too much for the visceral Islamist rejectionists that abound in Hamas-dominated Gaza.  The result:  a barrage of rockets fired pretty indiscriminately towards Israel's Red Sea resort of Eilat, but in the event wreaking death, casualties and destruction in the adjacent Jordanian resort of Aqaba.

"Preliminary information,"  reported Egypt's official news agency, "indicates that Palestinian factions from the Gaza Strip are behind that operation."  A number of terrorist groups with links to Hamas, Hezbollah, Al-Qaeda and other global Jihadi bodies, are known to be operating in the Sinai peninsula, engaged in smuggling arms into the Gaza Strip and attempting to penetrate into Israel  – which is why Israel's Counter Terrorism Unit recently issued a serious travel warning to tourists contemplating travelling to Sinai and Egypt.

But today (Wednesday, 4 August) Cairo security officials told the Egyptian news daily al-Youm al-Saba'a  that Hamas was responsible for the rocket attack.  According to the report, Hamas operatives infiltrated into the Sinai Peninsula from Gaza to fire the rockets, so that it would appear as if they had been fired by an Egyptian terror group.
           

Hamas have denied responsibility.  Their spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri criticized Egyptian security sources' allegations, calling them "politically motivated".

People who launch rockets randomly into civilian areas simply in order to create terror and stir up conflict are not usually very sophisticated in their thinking.  They cannot be expected to consider carefully the possibly unanticipated results of their actions.  This latest rocket attack may prove to be a case in point. For one outcome appears to be a closing of ranks between Israel and Jordan in opposing the extremists.

On Monday, shortly after the rocket attack, Israel's President, Shimon Peres, said that Israel and Jordan were now working together in the fight against terror.  Fears in Amman about the increasing influence of the Iranian-led axis, with its connections to Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon, had already led to stronger defence ties between the Israeli and the Jordanian armed forces. The Katyusha rockets that struck in Aqaba were likely meant to hit Eilat, but they did make clear that the terrorists who are moving freely throughout the Sinai Peninsula threaten not only Israel, but also neighbouring Jordan. 

The end result  –  a more concentrated and concerted move against them  –  may be far from what the terrorists intended.

Neville Teller, born in London, is a graduate of Oxford University.  A writer for BBC radio and the audiobook industry, he has also been commenting on the Middle East  for the past 30 years.  His book “One Man’s Israel” was published in 2008, and he has been writing his blog “A Mid-East Journal” (http://a-mid-east-journal.blogspot.com/) since January of this year.  He was awarded an MBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours, 2006 "for services to broadcasting and to drama."

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The Lebanon incident  –  an opportunistic confrontation

http://a-mid-east-journal.blogspot.com/2010/08/lebanon-incident-opportunistic.html

Sunday 8 August 2010

by Neville Teller

Enemies of a peace accord between Israel and the Palestinian Authority abound.

In the Middle East the Iran-Syria-Hamas-Hezbollah axis also embraces extreme Islamist organisations world-wide to form what is coming to be known as "global jihad"  –   a combination of groups and bodies intent on waging war against non-Muslims in general, but directing their terrorist activities especially against Christians, Jews and western-style democracies. 

These organisations, and the individuals who are sympathetic to their aims, have a long list of reasons for confronting Israel at any time – and have no hesitation in inventing more as opportunity presents itself.  At the moment Israelis and Palestinians seem to be edging towards direct peace negotiations.  This would certainly not suit the agenda of global jihad, and the traditional way of undermining such moves is to mount some sort of terror attack calculated to result in retaliation.  The rocket attack on Israel's southern city of Eilat last week was just such a move  –  a move that went disastrously wrong when it resulted in death and damage in the adjacent Jordanian city of Aqaba.

At the moment a new confrontation with Israel might divert attention from the fifth set of United Nations sanctions about to be imposed on Iran; or it could serve to turn the world's gaze away from International Court of Justice indictments that seem about to be issued against senior Hezbollah figures over the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri. 

Iran's President Ahmadinejad has even chosen this moment to repeat his denial of the Holocaust and his claim that the events of 9/11 were a conspiracy engineered by the United States.  Yesterday  – Saturday 7 August –  according to a report by the official Iranian news agency IRNA, he again asserted, as he has in the past, that the attack on the Twin Towers was a “big fabrication” used to justify the US invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan.

Speaking at a Tehran conference, Ahmadinejad said there was no evidence that the death toll at New York's World Trade Center, destroyed in the attacks, was as high as reported and said "Zionists" had been tipped off in advance. No "Zionists" were killed in the World Trade Center, according to Ahmadinejad, because "one day earlier they were told not go to their workplace".

"They announced that 3,000 people were killed in this incident," he told a gathering of the Iranian news media, "but there were no reports that reveal their names. Maybe you saw that, but I did not."

In point of fact there is available online a published list of all those killed on 11 September 2001.  According to official US figures, 2,995 people from more than 90 countries were killed in the attacks, including 19 hijackers and all passengers and crew aboard four commandeered airliners.

In this febrile atmosphere, the incident on the Lebanese-Israel border last week assumes some sort of context.

What are the facts?

At 9 am last Tuesday (3 August) following standard procedure, the officer commanding a unit of the Israel Defense Forces on the Lebanese border, not far from the Israeli kibbutz of Misgav Am, informed the United Nations Interim Forces in Lebanon (UNIFIL) that the army planned to prune several trees within Israeli territory in order to remove branches that were interfering with electronic detection devices.

Where were the trees? 

Next day (Wednesday) a UNIFIL spokesman said that the organization had established that "the trees being cut by the Israeli army are located south of the Blue Line on the Israeli side."

And what is this "Blue Line"? 

The blue line is a UN-drawn recognised international border between Lebanon and Israel, established in 2000 following the cessation of hostilities. To be crystal clear, stretching behind the blue line towards Israel there is an enclave, the edge of which is marked by a security fence.  Both enclave and fence are in Israel proper.  Since the Second Lebanon War four years ago, Israel has frequently operated inside the enclave. In some places the "blue line" is very close to the fence, while in others the enclave is as much as 800 metres wide.

To return to Tuesday morning.  The pruning work on the trees was scheduled to begin at 9 a.m., but Israel accepted UNIFIL’s request to delay the action for two hours. In the meantime, in accordance with standard operating procedure, UNIFIL informed the Lebanese army of what was planned.

What happened in those two hours?

That is a matter of some speculation.  There is some evidence that a Lebanese army officer with Hezbollah sympathies decided to exploit the situation.  A sniper was briefed and a unit put on alert.  The Lebanese media were tipped off, and a TV crew arrived near the scene to film the attack.  A Lebanese marksman fired two or three shots, one of them at the head of a senior IDF officer, who was killed, and the other in the chest of a junior officer, who currently remains in a serious but stable condition.  Lebanon says that at least three of its soldiers and a journalist were killed in the resulting exchange of fire.

What else has emerged about this incident?

Well, a Lebanese military spokesman told the Lebanese newspaper A-Nahar on Wednesday that the Lebanese Army was first to open fire  –  adding, however, that it was their right "to defend Lebanon's sovereignty."   Subsequently the UN peacekeeping force has confirmed that the tree whose branches were being cut back was indeed in Israeli territory.  Finally a chief UNIFIL official confirmed on Wednesday that Israeli soldiers did not cross the border with Lebanon before the clash.

Immediately following the incident urgent messages flew from western capitals to Jerusalem and Beirut urging de-escalation and restraint, while the UN Security Council held a closed-door session which resulted in nothing more incisive than a short statement reiterating the call on both sides to show restraint.

Restraint is indeed the only response likely to spike the guns of those who are intent on stirring up the maximum trouble in the region.  For the moment Israel has contented itself with official letters to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon and Vitaly Churkin, President of the United Nations Security Council, explaining that the attacks by the Lebanon army threaten stability, peace, and security in the region, and that "in response to this grave incident Israel exercised its right of self-defense, responding with the appropriate measures on LAF positions in the area."

What moral can be drawn from this incident?  That the war waged by the enemies of peace is opportunistic and relentless, and that only steadfastness of purpose will overcome them.

On Wednesday morning, Israel Defense forces returned to the site and uprooted the trees without interference.

Neville Teller, born in London, is a graduate of Oxford University.  A writer for BBC radio and the audiobook industry, he has also been commenting on the Middle East  for the past 30 years.  His book “One Man’s Israel” was published in 2008, and he has been writing his blog “A Mid-East Journal” (http://a-mid-east-journal.blogspot.com/) since January of this year.  He was awarded an MBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours, 2006 "for services to broadcasting and to drama."

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Copyright 2010 by the author. This work is posted at http://a-mid-east-journal.blogspot.com/. Please do link to it, quote excerpts and forward it by email with this notice. Distributed by ZNN. To subscribe send email to znn-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

Direct talks: a triumph of hope over optimism

http://a-mid-east-journal.blogspot.com/2010/08/direct-talks-triumph-of-hope-over.html

by Neville Teller

Will Friday 20 August 2010 go down in the history of Israel, to say nothing of a putative future Palestine, as a seminal date  –  the day when the objective of secure, peaceful co-existence moved from mere aspiration to the start of practical achievement?

Do any factors of significance mark 20 August out from literally scores of dates, strewn across the recent history of the Middle East, marking the inauguration of well-intentioned efforts to reach a settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?  To list only a few, there were the Madrid  Conference in 1991, the Oslo Accords signed on the White House lawn on 13 September 1993, the Wye River Memorandum in 1998, the Camp David Summit in 2000, the Taba summit in 2001, the Arab Peace Initiative in 2002, the Road Map for Peace promulgated by the Quartet, and the Geneva Accord, both in 2003, and the Annapolis process in 2007.

What are the bare facts about this newest bid for a settlement?

At a press conference held on 20 August, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced that Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas, have been invited to begin direct peace talks in Washington on 2 September.  The meeting is intended to "re-launch direct negotiations to resolve all final status issues, which," according to Clinton, "we believe we can complete in one year." Clinton said she herself would host the first direct Israel-Palestinian negotiating session on 2 September, and that President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt and King Abdullah of Jordan have also been invited to join that first discussion.

Hamas – a fly in the ointment

http://a-mid-east-journal.blogspot.com/2010/08/august-reviewed.html

by Neville Teller

Until the 20th, August seemed, with a slight variation or two, to be "business as usual" on the Middle East scene.  True, in their meeting on 29 July the Arab League had given a green light to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to enter direct peace talks with Israel – but their green light cast a flickering and uncertain beam in his direction.  He could do so, the League indicated, if and when he wanted to.  "Less than a full-hearted endorsement" was the general verdict.

Behind the scenes, and certainly not on public view, the fast and furious political, diplomatic and organisational activity can only be the subject of wild surmise.  First and foremost, intensive negotiations between the US, the PA and Israel were under way to satisfy the two principals that each would be surrendering nothing of their starting positions if they were actually brought face to face under US auspices.

Abbas needed cover from Arab leaders for the action he would be taking – action vehemently opposed by a substantial proportion of Arab public opinion.  So as part and parcel of the deal being assembled, Washington succeeded in persuading Egypt's President Mubarak and Jordan's King Abdullah to associate themselves with the initiative to restart face-to-face talks between Israel and the Palestinians.  Both were invited, and both agreed, to attend an opening session in Washington.  Abbas would not be facing Israel alone.  Two major Arab nations would be at his side, endorsing his decision to talk peace.

Abbas had selected two issues as his bottom line for entering new talks with Israel, and he had stuck with them through thick and thin, despite the blandishments and pressure from the US.  He wanted Israel to undertake that the borders of a new, sovereign state of Palestine would be essentially the boundaries that Israel crossed during the Six Day War in 1967 –  although he had already indicated that these were not sacrosanct, and could be subject to agreed adjustments and "land swap" arrangements.    His second requirement was that Israel agree to cease all new construction both in the West Bank and in Jerusalem.

For his part, Israel's prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, had been proclaiming for several weeks, in Washington and in Israel, that he was not only willing, but eager to enter into direct peace talks with the PA – provided there were no pre-conditions.

Washington was presented with a dilemma.  Keen as the Obama administration was for the major political coup that an Israeli-Palestinian peace accord would provide, here they had one of the parties demanding two preconditions before agreeing to talk, and there they had the other demanding no preconditions before agreeing to do so.  Diplomatic ingenuity of a high order was called for.

The solution?  Two separate calls to the parties to participate in the opening events.  The first would be a direct invitation by US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, at a press conference in Washington, during the course of which she would say that the parties would enter the talks with no preconditions.  The second would be a statement issued by the Quartet (the US, the EU, the UN and Russia), urging both principals to accept the US's invitation and restating the Quartet's support for “the pursuit of a just, lasting and comprehensive regional peace as envisaged in the Madrid terms of reference, Security Council resolutions and the Arab Peace Initiative.”  But the documents quoted by the Quartet indeed call for a sovereign Palestine within pre-1967 boundaries and for a complete cessation of all construction in areas beyond the "Green Line" – which includes East Jerusalem.

Thus by clever sleight-of-hand Israel was able to respond affirmatively to the US's formal invitation, while the PA's response referred specifically to the Quartet's statement as the basis for their acceptance.  The circle squared!

But with this type of juggling necessary as its opening gambit, one cannot help speculating about the chances of a positive outcome to the process as a whole.  And of course the usual suspects are at work intent on undermining any move towards an end to the dispute, and even to a new sovereign Palestine if it means living alongside Israel with peace and security for both.

No sooner had the Arab League nodded in the direction of peace talks than a rocket attack was launched at the Israeli Red Sea resort of Eilat.  In the event the one or two that fell in Eilat caused little damage, but death and damage was wreaked on the neighbouring Jordanian resort of Aqaba.  The most likely explanation of where responsibility lay was provided by the Egyptian news daily al-Youm al-Saba'a, which reported Cairo security officlals' belief that Hamas operatives infiltrated into the Sinai Peninsula from Gaza to fire the rockets, so that it would appear as if they had been fired by an Egyptian terror group. 

The next day came the extraordinary attack from the Lebanon side of the border separating that country from Israel.  A Lebanese army officer with Hezbollah sympathies  took it upon himself to fabricate an incident – and make sure that the media were there to record the event.  He took advantage of a two-hour delay to a planned Israeli tree-pruning operation, requested by the UN monitoring teams, to brief a sniper. put a unit on alert and tip off the Lebanese media.  A TV crew duly arrived near the scene to film the attack. A Lebanese marksman fired two or three shots, one of them at the head of a senior IDF officer, who was killed, and the other in the chest of a junior officer, who was seriously wounded. Lebanon says that at least three of its soldiers and a journalist were killed in the resulting exchange of fire.

Before the end of August UNIFIL had completed its investigation into the incident.  Its conclusion:  Lebanese soldiers shot and killed an Israeli battalion commander earlier this month in an unprovoked attack.

Finally – no surprise this – the verdict of Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas prime minister of Gaza, on the peace initiative: "Palestinians across the globe will not support any movement holding absurd talks with Israel."  In those few words Haniyeh managed a strike at two of his main targets – Hamas's rival party within the Palestinian world, Fatah, and the very concept of seeking peace with Israel.  It is not difficult to perceive Hamas's ultimate objectives, both internal and external.  As regards their internal struggle, they seek domination of the Palestinian people by overcoming and eliminating their Fatah rivals, thus gaining control not only of Gaza but also of the West Bank.  As for their main external aim,  it is somehow, in the words of one of Hamas's main sponsors and patrons, Iran's President Ahmadinejad, to achieve for Israel the fate of being "wiped off the map"  –  or, in another translation, "eliminated from the pages of history".   One or the other. 

It is against this sort of background that, on 2 September, the inaugural meeting of an initiative with the specific aim of reaching a peace accord between Israel and the Palestinian Authority within just twelve months, will take place.

Anyone who hopes for peace between the parties in this long-drawn-out conflict must surely wish those participating – whatever their private motives, reservations, intentions, plans –  a successful outcome to a brave, perhaps foolhardy, venture.

Neville Teller, born in London, is a graduate of Oxford University.  A writer for BBC radio and the audiobook industry, he has also been commenting on the Middle East  for the past 30 years.  His book “One Man’s Israel” was published in 2008, and he has been writing his blog “A Mid-East Journal” (http://a-mid-east-journal.blogspot.com/) since January of this year.  He was awarded an MBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours, 2006 "for services to broadcasting and to drama."

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Copyright 2010 by the author. This work is posted at http://a-mid-east-journal.blogspot.com/. Please do link to it, quote excerpts and forward it by email with this notice. Distributed by ZNN. To subscribe send email to znn-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

If not now – when?

http://a-mid-east-journal.blogspot.com/2010/09/if-not-now-when.html

by  Neville Teller

In the few days since the re-launch of direct peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians, the media has been overflowing with the direst of dire predictions about the inevitability of their failure.  None other than His Excellency the Israeli Ambassador to the United Kingdom, Ron Prosor, has drawn a convincing comparison between these prophets of doom and the two Muppet Show characters, Statler and Waldorf.  Up there they sit, these two thoroughly disagreeable old men, in the balcony box in the Muppet Theater, heckling every aspect of the show and flinging insults right, left and centre, at the players.

Of course the obstacles to achieving the ambitious objective of an accord between the Israelis and the Palestinians within twelve months are formidable – and I am certain that no-one realises the fact more than the two principals: Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.  Neither of them are fools, and yet both have signed up to this new peace initiative, and to its achievement in the space of a year.

"We understand the suspicion and scepticism that so many feel, born out of years of conflict and frustrated hopes," said US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton at the opening ceremony, "but by being here today you each have taken an important step toward freeing your peoples from the shackles of a history we cannot change."

George Mitchell, President Obama’s Middle East envoy, who joined the negotiations, said that at this first meeting the two leaders decided to begin putting together a framework agreement on all major issues – including borders, Jerusalem, Jewish settlements and security – that will "establish the fundamental compromises necessary" to flesh out a comprehensive peace deal.

In declaring that he believed a deal was possible within the twelve-month timeframe, Abbas said: "We're not starting from scratch, because we had many rounds of negotiations between the PLO and the Israeli government."  Netanyahu said: "Together we can lead our people to a historic future that can put an end to claims and to conflict. This will not be easy. A true peace, a lasting peace, will be achieved only with mutual and painful concessions from both sides … from my side and,” he said, addressing Abbas direct, “from your side."

Mitchell announced that Netanyahu and Abbas had agreed to meet again in a fortnight in the Middle East, and every two weeks after that.  Hillary Clinton and Mitchell will attend the first of those meetings on 14 September in the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh.

To be realistic – indeed sceptical – about the initative and its likely success is entirely understandable, but whatever one’s reservations about the process, the motives of those participating, and the formidable problems that lie in the way of achieving a positive outcome, it cannot be denied that this was a hopeful beginning.  The parties met under the auspices of the only feasible mediating power, they shook hands, they each pledged themselves to addressing the issues in a serious and positive spirit, they agreed the objective being sought and the period within which it might be achieved. 

Equally serious, however, is the determination of Hamas and its fellow extreme Islamist partners to derail this new initative with a wave of terror.  Abu Ubaida,  a spokesman for the Hamas military wing has said: "We declare that the actions of resistance have gone into a new and advanced stage of co-operation in the field at the highest levels in preparation for more effective attacks against the enemy.”  Ubaida was referring to a meeting last week between Hamas and 12 other militant Palestinian groups in Gaza to plan this new terror campaign. 

This threatened upsurge in indiscrimate violence represents a sea change from the terror of the past, horrific though this has often been.  Hamas has claimed responsibility for two shooting attacks against Israeli cars in the West Bank last week.  Last Tuesday, they slaughtered four people, one of them a pregnant woman.  Later a Hamas spokesman designated the incident an “heroic attack.”  A spokesman for the group's military wing said that no options had been ruled out, and that suicide bombings could be used to target Israel.  The objective?  To torpedo the new drive for peace.

In the past, however strained their explanation, Hamas and other Islamist groups, have almost invariably justified their terrorist attacks by referring to some previous counter-terrorist action by Israel, and claiming that their attack was a legitimate response.  Not this time.  Now the threat is quite simply to disrupt the peace process, and by whatever means.  In short, they offer no justification for what was done last week, and what is threatened for the future, except their determination to undermine, disrupt and destroy any chance of peace between Israel and the Palestinians, and to scupper the prospect of an independent sovereign state of Palestine.  Their stance is simple nihilism.

Of course, their campaign is directed quite as much against the Palestinian Authority and its Fatah President, Mahmoud Abbas, as against Israel itself.  The fact that the two latest attacks were carried out in the West Bank was an implied declaration that the Hamas writ runs outside Gaza just as surely as it does inside – and that, in the final analysis, Hamas seeks to dominate the entire Palestinian people, not merely those in the Gaza Strip whose governance it seized in a bloody coup in June 2007.

This, it goes without saying, is fully understood by the PA – which explains the immediate security crackdown by Abbas's security forces across the West Bank.  Hundreds of Hamas activists were arrested, and two suspects linked to the second attack, in which two Israelis were wounded, have been arrested.  Israeli security forces, too, have been placed on a high level of alert and have set up new checkpoints on roads in the West Bank.

Meanwhile, Israel’s arch-enemy, Iran’s President Ahmadinejad, has been unable to resist giving the extremist pot an extra stir.  During a pro-Palestinian rally in Tehran he declared: "The nations of the region are able to eliminate the Zionist regime from the face of the earth," adding that “its life has come to an end".  He joins Hamas in asserting that Mahmoud Abbas has no authority to participate in peace talks on behalf of Palestinians.

One might well riposte:  “If not the elected President of the Palestinian Authority, then who?”

Long, slow and painful has been the journey to the present situation, where Netanyahu and Abbas can actually meet in Washington, under the auspices of the President of the United States, and in the presence of President Mubarak of Egypt and King Abdullah of Jordan, and do so in a positive spirit, declaring their determination to try to reach a final accord.  Taking all this into account, one might indeed also ask:  “And if not now  –  when?”

Neville Teller, born in London, is a graduate of Oxford University.  A writer for BBC radio and the audiobook industry, he has also been commenting on the Middle East  for the past 30 years.  His book "One Man's Israel" was published in 2008, and he has been writing his blog "A Mid-East Journal" (http://a-mid-east-journal.blogspot.com/) since January of this year.  He

was awarded an MBE in the Queen's Birthday Honours, 2006 "for services to broadcasting and to drama."

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