Former prime minister Ehud Olmert proposed giving the Palestinians land from communities bordering the Gaza Strip and from the Judean Desert nature reserve in exchange for settlement blocs in the West Bank.
Diplomacy
“The Palestinians want to continue to build their state from below and at the same time to work with the United States and the European Union to force Israel into an arrangement from above.”
IOA Editor: This would be funny, it it weren’t so profoundly sad and grotesquely warped: The gang of war criminals running this nuclear empire that controls the daily lives of an entire occupied people, whom they bomb, starve, repress and violate at will, complain about being coerced by their subjects.
The point of contention hinges on a completely different issue: the peace process. Abbas insists that the talks on the permanent status agreement be based on the parameters of the 2003 Road Map, which received affirmation in a UN Security Council Resolution. The map is reminiscent, among other things, of the Arab peace initiative which focused on normalization in return for an Israeli withdrawal from the territories occupied in 1967.
Sweden’s initiative calls for the division of Jerusalem and the recognition of East Jerusalem as the capital of Palestine. The 27 European foreign ministers are to discuss a draft of the proposal, which is expected to be published on Tuesday. The draft proposal also reportedly hints that the European Union would recognize a unilateral Palestinian declaration of independence.
A classified report drafted by European consuls in East Jerusalem and Ramallah slams Israeli policy in East Jerusalem and recommends that the European Union take steps to strengthen the Palestinian Authority’s status in the city. It also advises taking various measures to protest Israeli policy in the city, as well as sanctions against people and groups involved in “settlement activity” in and around it.
IOA Editor: None of this is new, and much of it has been reported on the pages of the IOA before (search “Jerusalem” to find previous coverage). The EU has been issuing these reports annually, but keeping them secret. This year, perhaps in light of Israel’s campaign of death and destruction in Gaza, certain elements within the EU might be willing to challenge Israel on its carefully planned and calculated colonial program in the Occupied Territories. A welcome change, if it were to happen.
See also:
EU foreign ministers likely to call for division of Jerusalem
Israel stripped thousands of Jerusalem Arabs of residency in 2008
UN’s Middle East envoy urges halt to demolitions, evictions in East Jerusalem
The draft refers directly to the situation in East Jerusalem, calling on “all parties to refrain from provocative actions” and stating the EU Council “has never recognized the annexation of East Jerusalem. If there is to be a genuine peace, a way must be found to resolve the status of Jerusalem as capital of two states… On the issue of borders, the document states that the EU will not accept any changes made by Israel to the 1967 borders unless they have PA approval.
IOA Editor: Palestinian Authority forces should immediately pull their troops and armored vehicles out of West Jerusalem so as not to unnecessarily provoke its Jewish residents; they should also cease house demolitions which further victimize Jewish folk, inflicting homelessness and disease, especially now that the cold Jerusalem winter is only days away…
Despite the asymmetry between occupier and occupied, which is not properly reflected in this news story, the draft document, as reported, could form a good basis for future decisions by the EU – decisions that are long overdue.
The top United Nations envoy to the Middle East today reiterated Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s call for an immediate end to demolitions, evictions and the instalment of Israeli settlers in Palestinian neighbourhoods.
Peacemaking takes strategic skill. But we see no sign that President Obama and Mr. Mitchell were thinking more than one move down the board. The president went public with his demand for a full freeze on settlements before securing Israel’s commitment. And he and his aides apparently had no plan for what they would do if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said no.
IOA Editor: Even Mr. Obama’s natural allies, the US “liberal media elite” are not impressed by his ME peace initiative. What should the rest of us think? “Hope?” “Change?” Blah, blah. Incidentally, the New York Times has no criticism of Israel. None.
On June 19, 1967, a week and a half after the end of fighting in the Six-Day War, ministers, including Menachem Begin, were willing to give up on the gains made on the Syrian front in exchange for peace.
First we shape a new reality for ourselves; then we expect the entire world to adopt it, demand that our neighbors pay the cost, and complain that we have no partner for peace.
Noam Chomsky in BBC interview:The war in Afghanistan is “immoral.” He spoke to Stephen Sackur and answered viewer questions, among them several on the Middle East.
[I]t’s no exaggeration to propose that this idea, although well-meant by some, raises the clearest danger to the Palestinian national movement in its entire history, threatening to wall Palestinian aspirations into a political cul-de-sac from which it may never emerge. The irony is indeed that, through this maneuver, the PA is seizing — even declaring as a right — precisely the same dead-end formula that the African National Congress (ANC) fought so bitterly for decades because the ANC leadership rightly saw it as disastrous. That formula can be summed up in one word: Bantustan.
IOA Editor: See comments on article page.
[Lacking] the most essential elements of statehood: independence and sovereignty, and effective control over its territory… A Palestinian state that is recognised under these circumstances, with its territory partitioned, and subdivided into cantons, surrounded by walls, fences, ditches, watchtowers, and barbed wire, would scarcely be a state worthy of the name.
[T]here is a gradual mobilizing, galvanizing of public opinion such that… you can see the writing on the wall, that Israel is getting closer and closer to being held accountable… And in that respect you can say the Goldstone report marked a qualitative change. They recognized now for the first time that the shadow of accountability is hanging over them.
