Crunch Year Ragbag - Part I

8/7/2019 Crunch Year Ragbag - Part I

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CRUNCH YEAR RAGBAG PART 1

The Palestine Papers

Palestinian Papers: What the Al Jazeera Blockbuster Means MJRosenberg

Palestine Papers confirm Israeli rejectionism Jonathan Cook

The Palestine Papers: Why the leak is so serious VenetiaRainey

Israel will never get a better deal than the one it rejectedGideon Levy

Only serious dissent on the Palestinian street will change thegame: Former PLO negotiator Diana Buttu on the PalestinePapers and the Egyptian uprising Alex Kane

Negotiations and the like

Why We Fail An Analysis Dr. Lawrence Davidson

A False Friend in the White House Steven WaltUtterly Wrong: U.S. Will Veto The UN Resolution Condemning

Settlements MJ Rosenberg

Good riddance, 'peace process' Josh Ruebner

Global unpopularity wearing down Israeli government JonathanCook

The Next War? Alain Gresh

Security Council deliberations as to UN vote on settlements (USveto)

Palestinians to Seek UN Recognition for Independent State inSeptember

The UN is ripe for advancing the Palestinian agenda, ShlomoShamir

People get ready theres a train a-comin, Larry Derfner

Middle East Peace Talks Still Deadlocked Despite InternationalEfforts as Accord on Final-Status Issues Remain Elusive,Security Council Told - United Nations Security Council

Americans Support Anti-Settlement UN Resolution Mitchell PlitnickThe Death of the Israeli Left The Final Nail in the Coffin JonathanCook

Why the US will Not Do Something about Palestine, Virginia Tilley

With settlement resolution veto, Obama has joined Likud,Gideon Levy

No, Egyptian uprising wont hurt the peace process NoamSheizaf


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'Economic peace' betrays the hand of a grasping Israeli rightJonathan Cook

Statement by United Nations High Commissioner for HumanRights, Navi Pillay

Report of the Special Rapporteur on the situation of humanrights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967,

Richard FalkBriefing to the Security Council by Special Co-ordinator for theMEPP, Robert Serry

We Deserve Better, Angela Godfrey-Goldstein

Egypt

Egypt on the Brink: The Arab World at a Tipping Point?MichaelHudson

Egypt's uprising and its implications for Palestine Ali Abunimah

Palestinians in Gaza react to Egypt, Tunisia uprisings Pam Bailey

Israel staunchly on the side of Arab tyrannies Yossi Gurvitz

Israel urges world to curb criticism of Egypt's Mubarak BarakRavid

Israelis are not hostile to the Egyptian revolution, they are simplyanxious By Noam Sheizaf

Revolution spreads to Egypt's deprived Sinai Mohammed Omer

The Egyptian Revolution: First Impressions from the FieldMohammed Bamyeh

In Egypt it was silence or shouting. Now it's a greatconversation Ahdaf Soueif

Shy U.S. Intellectual Created Playbook Used in a RevolutionSheryl Gay Stolberg

The Genie is Out of the Bottle Uri Avnery

Humans are the Routers Shervin Pishevar

For the full Palestinian Papers clickhere

Palestinian Papers: What the Al Jazeera BlockbusterMeans

By MJ Rosenberg, Political Correction, January 24, 2011

Al Jazeera's stunning revelations about Israeli-Palestinian negotiationshave different meanings for Israelis, Americans and for Palestinians.

The bottom line is that, despite the assurances it gave to thePalestinian people that it was driving a hard bargain with the Israelis,
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the Palestinian Authority accepted Israel's position on every key point:borders, Jerusalem, settlements, refugees.

On no major issue did the PA hold the line. None.

The Palestinians offered Israel everything Israel wants and Israel stillsaid "no" with the backing of the United States.

So what does it mean?

For Palestinians, it means that the Palestinian Authority understandsthat with the United States solidly backing every Israeli position nomatter how extreme, the only thing it can do is negotiate for crumbs. Itnever told the Palestinian people that it was unable to represent themin any serious way. Its credibility is in tatters, although it is hard not tohave sympathy for the PA. What can it really do when it, not Israel, hasno negotiating partner and, on top of it, America sits on its face like athousand pound gorilla?

For Israelis, they can be reassured (if they are on the right) that theyhave a government that intends never to give up anything. The

settlements even mega-settlement Ariel, smack dab in the middle ofthe West Bank are safe. All of Jerusalem will be theirs. Above all,they need not worry about negotiations because Israel is not reallynegotiating. It is playing at negotiating.

The Israeli left learns nothing new here except that the Netanyahugovernment has no interest in peace on any terms and that more warsare inevitable. It needs to bring this government down and elect oneexpressly dedicated to ending the occupation. (Yes, that could takeyears.)

As for Americans, we learn, as if we didn't know, that due to the

pressure of AIPAC, we simply lie about the whole conflict. We pretendthat the Palestinians still need to make concessions for peace whenthere are none left to make. No matter what the provocation thebrutal attack on Gaza flotilla, the blockading of Gaza, Israel's lies aboutthe Goldstone Report, the land grabs in Jerusalem, the shootings ofinnocent Palestinians, the monstrous behavior of settlers we aresilent UNLESS we can enthusiastically endorse Israel's position. We arenot an honest broker. We are no broker at all. Worst of all, we know(the Al Jazeera papers confirm this) that we are endorsing Israelipositions that we know not to be true.

Why do we do it? The same reason we don't ban assault weapons. Alobby (only in this case, the lobby of a foreign government) is dictatingour policies with no regard for the greater American good.

So what's next? One, the United States must now absolutely refuse toveto the UN resolution condemning settlements or demonstrate to theworld that, despite the Al Jazeera revelations, we are still utterly inIsrael's pocket (I won't hold my breath). And, two, the PalestinianAuthority must reach out to Hamas with the goal of calling newelections in which Palestinians can choose a legitimate democratically-


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elected leadership which can then in the name of all Palestinians declare the state.

Yes, such a declaration will be symbolic. But what a symbol! Palestinewill be a country, with a flag flying at the UN and a seat in the GeneralAssembly. It will not control territory...yet. But it will have a powerfulvoice that will be heard throughout the entire world. Nelson Mandelahad a lot less when he started.

There is no alternative. The Palestinians must declare their state andthen reach out to the majority of Israelis who will welcome itsestablishment and will join with it to help make a symbol a reality.

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Palestine Papers confirm Israeli rejectionism

By Jonathan Cook, The Electronic Intifada, 25th January 2011

For more than a decade, since the collapse of the Camp David talks in

2000, the mantra of Israeli politics has been the same: "There is noPalestinian partner for peace."

This week, the first of hundreds of leaked confidential Palestiniandocuments confirmed the suspicions of a growing number of observersthat the rejectionists in the peace process are to be found on theIsraeli, not Palestinian, side.

Some of the most revealing papers, jointly released by Al-Jazeeratelevision and Britain's Guardian newspaper, date from 2008, arelatively hopeful period in recent negotiations between Israel and thePalestinians.

At the time, Ehud Olmert was Israel's prime minister and had publiclycommitted himself to pursuing an agreement on Palestinian statehood.He was backed by the United States administration of George W. Bush,which had revived the peace process in late 2007 by hosting theAnnapolis conference.

In those favorable circumstances, the papers show, Israel spurned aset of major concessions the Palestinian negotiating team offered overthe following months on the most sensitive issues in the talks.

Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian Authority president, has triedunconvincingly to deny the documents' veracity, but has not beenhelped by the failure of Israeli officials to come to his aid.According to the documents, the most significant Palestiniancompromise -- or "sell-out," as many Palestinians are calling it -- wason Jerusalem.

During a series of meetings over the summer of 2008, Palestiniannegotiators agreed to Israel's annexation of large swaths of EastJerusalem, including all but one of the city's Jewish settlements andparts of the Old City itself.


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It is difficult to imagine how the resulting patchwork of Palestinianenclaves in East Jerusalem, surrounded by Jewish settlements, couldever have functioned as the capital of the new state of Palestine.

At the earlier Camp David talks, according to official Israeli documentsleaked to the Haaretz daily in 2008, Israel had proposed somethingvery similar in Jerusalem: Palestinian control over what were thentermed territorial "bubbles."

In the later talks, the Palestinians also showed a willingness torenounce their claim to exclusive sovereignty over the Old City'sflashpoint of the Haram al-Sharif, the sacred compound that includesthe al-Aqsa mosque and is flanked by the Western Wall. Aninternational committee overseeing the area was proposed instead.

This was probably the biggest concession of all -- control of the Haramwas the issue that "blew up" the Camp David talks, according to anIsraeli official who was present.

Saeb Erekat, the PLO's chief negotiator, is quoted promising Israel "the

biggest Yerushalayim in history" -- using the Hebrew word forJerusalem -- as his team effectively surrendered Palestinian rightsenshrined in international law.

The concessions did not end there, however. The Palestinians agreedto land swaps to accommodate 70 percent of the half a million Jewishsettlers in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem and to forgo therights of all but a few thousand Palestinian refugees.

The Palestinian state was also to be demilitarized. In one of the papersrecording negotiations in May 2008, Erekat asks Israel's negotiators:"Short of your jet fighters in my sky and your army on my territory, canI choose where I secure external defense?" The Israeli answer was anemphatic "No."

Interestingly, the Palestinian negotiators are said to have agreed torecognize Israel as a "Jewish state" -- a concession Israel now claims isone of the main stumbling blocks to a deal.

Israel was also insistent that Palestinians accept a land swap thatwould transfer a small area of Israel into the new Palestinian statealong with as many as a fifth of Israel's 1.4 million Palestinian citizens.This demand echoes a controversial "population transfer" longproposed by Avigdor Lieberman, Israel's far-right foreign minister.

The Palestine Papers, as they are being called, demand a serious re-evaluation of two lingering -- and erroneous -- assumptions made bymany Western observers about the peace process.

The first relates to the United States' self-proclaimed role as honestbroker. What shines through the documents is the reluctance of USofficials to put reciprocal pressure on Israeli negotiators, even as thePalestinian team make major concessions on core issues. Israel's"demands" are always treated as paramount.


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The second is the assumption that peace talks have fallen intoabeyance chiefly because of the election nearly two years ago of aright-wing Israeli government under Benjamin Netanyahu. He hasdrawn international criticism for refusing to pay more than lip-serviceto Palestinian statehood.

The Americans' goal -- at least in the early stages of Netanyahu'spremiership -- was to strong-arm him into bringing into his coalition

Tzipi Livni, leader of the centrist opposition party Kadima. She is stillwidely regarded as the most credible Israeli advocate for peace.

However, Livni, who was previously Olmert's foreign minister, emergesin the leaked papers as an inflexible negotiator, dismissive of the hugeconcessions being made by the Palestinians. At a key moment, sheturns down the Palestinians' offer, after saying: "I really appreciate it."

The sticking point for Livni was a handful of West Bank settlements thePalestinian negotiators refused to cede to Israel. The Palestinians havelong complained that the two most significant -- Maale Adumim,outside Jerusalem, and Ariel, near the Palestinian city of Nablus --

would effectively cut the West Bank into three cantons, underminingany hopes of territorial contiguity.

Livni's insistence on holding on to these settlements -- after all thePalestinian compromises -- suggests that there is no Israeli leadereither prepared or able to reach a peace deal -- unless, that is, thePalestinians cave in to almost every Israeli demand and abandon theirambitions for statehood.

One of the Palestine Papers quotes an exasperated Erekat asking a USdiplomat last year: "What more can I give?"

The man with the answer may be Lieberman, who unveiled his ownmap of Palestinian statehood this week. It conceded a provisional stateon less than half of the West Bank.

A version of this article originally appeared in The National, publishedin Abu Dhabi.

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The Palestine Papers: why the leak is so serious

By Venetia Rainey, The First Post, JANUARY 25, 2011

Following an extraordinary leak of 1,600 documents, including maps,strategy papers and emails, the search for peace between Israel andPalestine looked to be in tatters. The documents, apparently leakedfrom the Palestinian side, appear to show that while the Palestinianshave made huge concessions during the last decade of peace talks,nothing they have offered has been good enough for the Israelis.

The concessions included an offer made in 2008 by the Palestinians toallow Israel to annex all but one of the disputed Jewish settlements
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built in east Jerusalem. Tzipi Livni, the then Israeli Foreign Minister,rejected the proposal because it did not include all the settlements.

The extent of the Palestinian offers are considered by commentatorstoday so over-the-top that they would never be accepted by themajority of Palestinian people. As a result, the leak could mean thecollapse of the West Bank's ruling coalition, the PLO (PalestineLiberation Organization).

how do we know the documents are authentic? The documents wereobtained by the Qatar-based al-Jazeera news network and shared withthe Guardian. The newspaper claims to have identified the bulk asauthentic by consulting former participants in the talks and diplomaticand intelligence sources.

The US State Department is "reviewing" the documents but "cannotvouch for their veracity".

The chief negotiator for the Palestinian Authoritys (PA), Saeb Erekat,who has come out worst from the revelations so far, called them a

"bunch of lies". Ahmed Qureia, another PA negotiator, said that "manyparts of the documents were fabricated, as part of the incitementagainst the Palestinian Authority". PLO president Mahmoud Abbas hasclaimed that the documents have been purposefully twisted, insistingthat the PA, "say things very clearly. We do not have secrets."

Tzipi Livni, Israeli foreign minister from 2006 - 2009, yesterday put outa statement saying, "We do not intend to comment on internal recordsor Palestinian interpretations, whether they are correct or not."

What are the key points of the leak so far? Palestinian negotiatorswere willing to give up huge swathes of East Jerusalem. This iscontroversial because, according to international law, this area hasbeen illegally occupied by Israel since 1967 and is publicly claimed byPalestinians for their future capital. But the huge concession, whichincluded the heavily disputed Arab neighbourhood of Sheikh Jarrah,was not deemed enough by then foreign minister Tzipi Livni.

For the first time ever, there was a suggestion that some sort ofinternational body could be created to control the highly-sensitiveHaram al-Sharif area. Known to Jews as the Temple Mount, the area isthe holiest site in Judaism and the third holiest site in Islam.

Are there more documents to come? Yes. They are mooted to includereports that:

The PA was willing to discuss limiting the number of Palestinianrefugees granted the right of return to 10,000 over 10 years.

Palestinian leaders were tipped off about Israel's plan to invade theGaza Strip in late 2008, a claim President Mahmoud Abbas hasstrenuously denied in the past.

Who stands to gain from this leak?

Hamas. They have claimed right from the start that negotiations are adead end, and have also refused to recognise any peace settlement
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negotiated by Fatah, arguing that Mahmoud Abbass party are nolonger the legally elected representatives of the Palestinians. Theyseized power by force in the Gaza Strip, but were never strong enoughto do so in the West Bank. This information will give them renewedvigour, and give weight to their idea that diplomacy only leads to aceding of Palestinian rights.

Speaking to al-Jazeera from Beirut, a Hamas spokesman said the Fatah

leadership was "not honest". He added: "They have no credibility tonegotiate. They were negotiating for what the Israelis would accept[and] for what the Americans may support, not what the Palestiniansare looking for. This is why they betrayed their own people."

A small comfort for the Palestinian negotiating team is that thedocuments seem to show that Israel did indeed have a willing peacepartner, the complete opposite of the picture the Israelis tried to paint.Jonathan Freedland, writing in todays Guardian, said: "In the blamegame that has long attended Middle East diplomacy, this could see ashift in the Palestinians' favour."

Who stands to lose?Fatah. Mahmoud Abbas is the leader of the PLOs largest faction,Fatah. His official mandate to head the Palestinian National Authority -the West Bank and Gaza's governing body ran out in January 2009.He remains in power, however, despite his government being seen ascorrupt and crucially weak in the face of Israel and the US.

Abbas and his party now face serious opposition from both opposingfactions and their own people. Todays Guardian editorial said: "ThePalestinian Authority may continue as an employer but, as of today, itslegitimacy as negotiators will have all but ended on the Palestinian

street."Fatahs lead negotiator, Saeb Erekat, is shown to be increasinglydesperate in the face of an ever-immovable Israel. In a discussion withUS envoy George Mitchell, he said, "What good am I if I'm the joke ofmy wife, if I'm so weak? They can't even give a six-month freeze togive me a figleaf."

What are the implications for the peace process? The revelations willcement the suspicion among the Palestinian people, already fed upwith years of stalemate and political posturing, that there is no point innegotiating with Israel. As former PLO representative Karma Nabulsi

says: "These officials have led a new generation to believe thatparticipating in public governance is base and self-seeking, that joiningany political party is the least useful method to advance principals andcreate change."

The leaked documents also suggest that a two-state solution could bean impossible aim. The offers made by the Palestinian negotiators arealready way beyond what most Palestinians would accept, whilst Israeliofficials still say it isn't enough. No matter how far each side stretches,
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they can't seem to meet in the middle. These documents bring thathome once and for all.

What will the fall-out be? The leaks will cause few ripples in Israel, asthe leaders have spoken and acted in private exactly as in public. TzipiLivni in particular, currently leader of the opposition party, Kadima, willlikely come out of it well. The main Israeli papers - Ha'aretz, Ynet andthe Jerusalem Post - are covering the leak, but not to the extent that al-

Jazeera or the Guardian are, which further suggests that none of thiscomes as a big surprise to the Israelis.

In the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, however, these documents willadd fat to an already simmering fire. An atmosphere of discontent anddisillusionment has been hanging over Palestinians since the lastintifada, and there is a high possibility of civil unrest. If nothing is doneto reassure them that there is another way forward to statehood, arenewed war/intifada may not be far off.

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Israel will never get a better deal than the one itrejected

ByGideon Levy, Haaretz, 27 January 2011

One upon a time there was a farmer who wanted to save on feed.Every day he would reduce the amount of food for his horse, see that itworked, and continue cutting and cutting until the horse had nothing toeat. The horse died.

This hackneyed tale has now been revived, emerging from thePalestine Papers leaked to the Arabic satellite channel Al-Jazeera.

The Israeli farmer closed his hand, and the Palestinian horse was fit todie. One of them saved, the other expired. The Palestinians hadalready conceded most of their world, and greedy Tzipi Livni insisted:what about Har Homa and Maaleh Adumim?

Terror has stopped, they're coordinating targeted killings to serveIsrael. Selling their souls to the devil, they're for the closure on Gaza.Mahmoud Abbas explains, like an Israeli propagandist, that the returnof the refugees will destroy the state of Israel. Maybe 10,000 a year,

they're still trying - in vain. Livni doesn't agree.They conceded most of the settlements in Jerusalem, the Old City isalso no longer exclusively in their hands, and nothing. Betar Ilit andModi'in Ilit are ours, and that's not enough for Israel, as if it hasforgotten that the 1967 borders are the Palestinian compromise.

What more do we want? What more will Israel ask of the dying horse, amoment before it gives up the ghost? A Palestinian state in greaterAbu Dis? Hatikvah as its anthem? And what will happen then, when the
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horse dies? A wild pony will emerge that will never agree to live underthe conditions of the old horse.

Never, but never, will Israel be offered a better deal than the one nowrevealed - and what came of it? Israeli rejection. Rejectionism. No, no,no, absolutely not.

And yes to what? To continuing the occupation, perpetuating the

conflict. From now on we can say to our children: For Har Homa we'llcontinue living on the edge of the volcano. That is the terrible truth.The settlers have vanquished Israel. It is not hard to imagine howpossible it would have been to return the West Bank to its owners hadthere not been hundreds of thousands of settlers living in it.

Were it not for this enterprise, there would have been peace. Now thatit is established, Israel is no longer able to get up on its feet andextricate itself from its stranglehold.

Generations of Israeli diplomats have held discussions with theirPalestinian counterparts, understanding the gravity of the moment,

and even becoming more flexible, until the fear of the settlers seizesthem. Neither Israel's security nor the country's future concerns them,only the fear of withdrawal, and none of them can overcome it.

They're always close to a solution, within reach and yet light-yearsaway. All the peace proponents through the generations, Yitzhak Rabinand Shimon Peres, Ehud Barak, Ehud Olmert and Livni, were fearful oftaking the only step that would bring peace: evacuating settlements.

After the night when the documents were released by Al-Jazeera, withLivni represented by an announcer speaking English with a particularlyrepellent Israeli accent, a major uproar could have been expected thenext day, not only in the Palestinian street and in the Arab world, butalso in the streets of Israel.

And what a (predictable ) surprise: the Palestinians and the Arabsraised an outcry against the far-reaching concessions of the PalestinianAuthority, threatening to crush it once and for all, and in Israel: silence.

Who cares about another fateful missed opportunity? Who cares thatfor this West Bank Story of real estate, Maaleh Adumim and Ariel, weare condemned to more lives of war, danger and ostracism.

Who cares that for a decade our leaders brazenly lied to us, deceivedus by saying that there's no partner, that the Palestinians are evading

giving answers, that there is no Palestinian proposal, and above all,that Israel wants peace, not the Palestinians.

We eagerly bought the lies, and now that they've been exposed, weremain apathetic. Riots? Protests? Fury at those who missed thechance and misled the nation? Not in our backyard.

Now the horse will gradually die. Once we said that Yasser Arafat wasthe last obstacle to an agreement, and that if he would just beremoved peace would come. Now his successor, Abbas, will also fade


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away, the most moderate Palestinian leader of all time, deceived,bitter and despairing.

In Har Homa another neighborhood will be built, in the Balata refugeecamp another generation will rise, determined to wage battle, and inthe streets of Tel Aviv - the good times will roll.

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Only serious dissent on the Palestinian street will changethe game: Former PLO negotiator Diana Buttu on thePalestine Papers and the Egyptian uprising

By Alex Kane, MondoWeiss, 4 February 2011

The publication of nearly 1,700 leaked files by Al Jazeera onnegotiations between the Israeli government and the PalestinianAuthority has been largely overshadowed by the uprising in Egypt. Butthat doesnt mean they dont matter for the future of Israel/Palestine.

I recently caught up with Diana Buttu, a former spokesperson for thePalestine Liberation Organizations Negotiations Support Unit, a teamthat is mentioned throughout the Palestine Papers and where it issuspected the leak came from. Buttu discussed the meaning of thePalestine Papers, what they say about the peace process, and thecurrent Egyptian uprising and what it may mean on the Palestinianstreet.

Alex Kane: Could you talk about your overall take on the leakeddocuments that have been published by Al Jazeera?

Diana Buttu: Having now gone through a lot of the documentsof

course, not all of the documents, but many of themthe overallimpression that Im left with is that of a very powerful party, which isIsrael, trying to continue their control and authority over a very weakparty being the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). But the storydoesnt just stop there.

I think that its become, at least clear to me and perhaps to others,that this mantra weve been hearing for many, many yearsthat we allknow what a solution is going to look like, we all know what asettlement is going to look likeis actually not the case, particularlywhen you read the transcripts of the Israeli officials. Thats one major

thing that I come away with.The second major conclusion that I walk away with is that of a PLOleadership stubbornly sticking to one strategy, and only one strategy:negotiations, and only negotiations, despite the fact that there are somany other options out there. Its as though theyve corneredthemselves by demanding negotiations, and then when they actuallyhappen, they didnt have any other strategy to get out of negotiationsin the event that Israel was going to be stubborn.
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AK: What would you say these revelations mean for the entire peaceprocess?

DB: I dont think there really is a peace process. Theres been a lot ofprocess, but not a whole lot of peace, and I just dont think that thingsare going to change. It hasnt changed over the course of the past 17years. I dont think this is going to make the United States wake up,and its certainly not going to make the Israelis wake up, and in fact I

dont think the PLO will wake up, unless theres some very seriousdissent, and I just dont see that happening right now, even thoughdiaspora Palestinians are quite upset about whats going on. But wehavent seen that translate into anything on the streets of Palestine. Idont think this is going to change anything in the peace process.Theyre going to continue doing this over and over again because thisis the way theyve done it for the past 17 years, and unless there is asea change of opinion that makes the PLO stand up and take notice ormakes any of the other parties stand up and take notice, Im afraidthat its just going to be the same old, same old.

AK: Given that theres been a muted reaction on the Palestinian streetat the same time that theres an uprising going on in Egypt, do you seeany possible connection between these events in the future?

DB: Right now I dont see that theres going to be a connection. Itsimportant to step back: part of the reason why were seeing a mutedreaction in Palestine is because of the way the documents werepresented. Whether you believe the documents or you dont believethe documentsand I have no reason to question the documents,particularly after members of the PLO have come out and verified theauthenticity of the documentsthe main problem is that they werepresented in somewhat of a sensationalist way.

One example that I can give is that Al Jazeera tied the assassination ofal-Madhoun, who is a member of Fatah, of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade,to the Palestinian Authority (PA), and they tried to claim that becausethe Israelis made a request for this man to be assassinated, thatsomehow the PA acquiesced or condoned his killing. Thats a bit of astretch. There is a lot of security cooperation that takes place betweenthe PA and Israeland its outrageous, it includes torture and massarrestbut there was really no proof to bring it to the level that the PAwas actually collaborating with Israel over this mans killing.

And so, in the way that the documents were presented, the debate in

Palestine now has not turned into a debate over the main issues, whichare accountability, transparency, red lines, whether we should believein this negotiations process, and whether the PLO has adoptedalternative strategies. None of that is going to take place becauseinstead the debate is currently over whether Al Jazeera crossed theline. And until we see something different, where its not a question ofshooting the messenger, but we have the message thats presented ina coherent way without the sensationalism, then I dont think weregoing to have any real debate any time soon, unfortunately.
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AK: Would you say that theres been a marked shift in the negotiatingposture of Palestinians since you last were part of a team involved innegotiations, is that shift represented in the Palestine Papers, andlastly, if so, what does that shift represent?

DB: Yes, theres definitely a shift, and the reason why there was a shiftis twofold. One is that the second intifada took place, and the PLO wassuddenly stuck. Rather than capitalizing on the intifada, and the people

power that it brought them, they ended up somehow being apologeticfor the intifada and therefore backtracked on some positions. Whatwere the positions they backtracked from? At the time that I was there,there was still a claim for the right of return.

Its interesting, if you look at the documents from roughly 2000-2004,the positions that are taken are actually quite principled in someinstances. For example, there is a demand for the right of return. Thereis the notion that all of the settlements are illegal. There is then a littlebit of a backtrack by saying land swaps, but on a one-to-one basis.And so you see this kind of principled position, but then theres a

backtracking, and one of the reasons was the intifada and thecomplete failure on the part of the PA to use the intifada to theiradvantage, to actually harness popular support and alter theirnegotiating position.

The second reason, and I think this is the much more dangerousreason, is that during the period that I was there and a little bit after,you saw initiative after initiative come forward, and all of theseinitiatives, while never accepted by the PLO directly, were tacitlyaccepted by the PLO. For example, the Geneva Initiative wassomething that was never adopted by the PLO, and yet, you see acouple of things that are interesting. The first is those commercials you

saw with Erekat and others in which they come forward and say Ineed a partnerthose were all sponsored by the Geneva Initiative.And if you see, for example, the statements that American officialshave come forward and said, theyve all been saying the same thing,which is that this reflects what happened during the negotiations.But it didnt. It reflects what happened after the negotiations fell apart.It was their own initiatives that they were putting forwardtheNusseibeh-Ayalon initiative, the Geneva Initiativeand this is where itbecomes dangerous, because the Americans and others seem toassume that silence equals acquiescence. And unfortunately, the PLOfalls into the trap of de facto acquiescing to these initiatives, when

they align themselves with these things, such as they did with thevarious commercials, and when they dont come out and completelyreject them. I think this is why were now seeing a shift. While therewere principled positions, if you believe in a two-state solution, the PLOhas consistently undermined its own position because they didnt reallyknow how to deal with the intifada and because they never reallyobjected to these major initiatives that were put on the table.

AK: And lastly: I know that you dont think the papers will have a hugeimpact on the ground, but with the combination of what the Palestine
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Papers revealed and the unrest and uprising in Egypt, do you thinkthat any of this popular anger in Egypt might be translated onto thestreet in Palestine and directed at either the PA or Israel?

DB: Optimism is one thing, but if Im to speculate, I think the answer isgoing to be no. And I think its important to keep in mind that whatsgoing on in Egypt is a little bit different than whats happening inPalestine, and theres a lot of issues mitigating against another

uprising.The first is that the government of Salam Fayyad has tried to do a goodjob, using donor funds, to create a middle-class, and to give credit, andall of these sorts of things, and theyve largely managed to silence alot of dissent.

The second major factor is that there is a very repressive police regimethat is now in place. It hasnt been in place for as long as the Mubarakregime was in place, but nonetheless this is something new forPalestinians.

A third factor is that people arent really examining the merits of thepapers, but rather in the way they were presented.

And the fourth thing is that the Palestinian street is already verydivided, and if theres one message that people are calling for, its thatof national unity. And I think that people fear that going against theauthority will somehow serve to undermine any attempts at nationalunity, even though there really are none right now. There also may bea fear factor of not wanting Hamas to take over.

Its not ripe in the same way that Egypt was ripe. Again, not to say thatit wont happen. I just dont think its going to happen in the shortterm.

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Why We Fail An Analysis

By Dr. Lawrence Davidson, 21 January, 2011

According to Laura Rozen, a journalist specializing in foreign policymatters and writing in Politico (13 January 2011), the Obamaadministration is seeking new ideas from outside experts on how toadvance the peace process. This is because the president and hiscounselors are utterly stuck following the failure of last years effortsto strong arm Mahmoud Abbas and bribe Benjamin Netanyahu intonegotiations. Quoting an administration consultant, Rozen tells usthere is no pretense of progress. With the State of the Union comingup and the new GOP Congress, they [the administration] are taking afew weeks to regroup and solicit ideas to push forward andto give areal jump-start to the negotiation process.
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On the surface this would appear to be welcome news. The WhiteHouse entourage having this revelation that their process, and that oftheir predecessors too, have all failed and so we need some new,progressive thinking about peace in the Holy Land. Maybe there shouldbe a new approach that would play to the leverage the U.S. can bringto bear on both parties (and not just the Palestinians). But then Rozenproceeds (in a completely dead pan style) to explain to us how the

administration is going about its search for new ideas from outsideexperts.

Two separate efforts have been set up to brainstorm these new ideas:

1. One task force has been convened by Sandy Berger and StephenHadley. Who are they? Berger was National Security (NSC) Adviser toBill Clinton. He was a prominent actor at the Camp David 2000Summit. How about Hadley? He was Assistant to Undersecretary ofDefense Paul Wolfowitz during George W. Bushs first term of officeand then National Security Adviser to the president during Bushssecond term. In these positions he worked closely and comfortably not

only with Wolfowitz but also men like Dick Cheney and DonaldRumsfeld.

2. A second effort [is] led by Martin Indyk. And who is Martin Indyk?Indyk served twice as U.S. Ambassador to Israel as well as being amember of the National Security Council under Clinton. Before that hewas deputy research director for AIPAC and served eight years as theexecutive director of the pro-Israel Washington Institute for Near EastPolicy (WINEP), which he helped co-found. WINEP is supported byAIPAC. According to Rozens report one of the first things Indyk hasdone in his search for new ideas is to seek out, among others,senior NSC Middle East/Iran adviser Dennis Ross. And who is Dennis

Ross? Ross was Bill Clintons Middle East envoy in the 1990s. Beforethat he was on Ronald Reagans National Security Council and, alongwith Indyk, helped co-found WINEP.

These are the people who the Obama administration is looking to fornew thinking about the peace process. One is left simply amazed atthis development. Almost, but not quite, speechless. For all these men,Berger, Hadley, Indyk and Ross are strongly biased in favor of Israel,and among the folks who have been running the U.S. side of the peaceprocess at least since the 1980s. They are not outside experts at all.They are retreaded inside experts whose records, with very minor

exceptions, in regard to the peace process, are ones of failure. Goingto these people for new ideas that will jump-start peace talks in theMiddle East is like going to Supreme Court Justice Anthony Scalia for aforward looking and progressive take on the U.S. Constitution. Such aneffort is a standing contradiction. It is a rigged game designed to getyou the opposite of what you claim to seek.

The unavoidable question is why is the Obama administration wastingits time and our money doing this? The answer has to be first andforemost domestic politics. Although Barack Obama would,understandably, still like to make a positive impact on the Palestinian-
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Israeli impasse he is convinced that any effort in this regard mustconform to the wishes of domestic political forces led by the Zionistlobby. For instance, what would happen if he decided that all thoselisted above were hopeless failures and, instead of going to back tothem, he was going to turn to, say, Rashid Khalidi, the Edward SaidProfessor of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia University? Khalidi isundoubtedly an expert on the Middle East and the Palestinian-Israeli

question. However, he is also very much in favor of justice for thePalestinians. If President Obama was to consult Khalidi there would bean immediate knee jerk reaction in Congress consisting of quite literalscreaming and yelling. AIPAC would call Obama a man seriouslylacking in judgment and Khalidi a friend of terrorists. The presidentspossibilities for re-election would, allegedly, recede dramatically. Onthe other hand there is no doubt that he would get new ideas froman outside expert.

The political pragmatist might argue, what good are new ideas ifthey cannot be implemented? But this position accepts the sameassumption noted above, that any U.S. president mustbe tied down by

the political power of the Zionist lobby. It is, in fact, an assumption thatmust be challenged if any future progress is to be made. Thus, thepresident should take a chance. He should consider making a new andforceful initiative and demand Israeli compliance like Eisenhower did atthe end of the Sinai Crisis of 1956. He should go to the Americanpeople and explain what he is doing and why. He should use everypresidential prerogative there is, including the negative ones, to assureIsraeli cooperation, etc. Oh, this is political suicide, answers thepolitical pragmatist, it will never work. But, as is obvious, nothing elsehas worked to date. We are spending enormous sums to subsidizeIsraeli obstinance and, according to General David Petraeus, the manwho leads the American effort in Afghanistan, doing so is helping to killAmerican soldiers. So, go ahead Mr. President, take the bull by thehorns already.

Alas, he will not. And Rozens report is proof positive that the presidentwill not do this. He is first and foremost a domestically orientedpolitician cut out of a very standard mold. Politically, then, it has beenjudged safer to resurrect the dead in the form of Berger, Hadley, Indykand Ross. So, there you have it. What is necessary for success in thepeace process is always assumed to equal political failure at home. Onthe other hand, political success at home (which entails letting the

Zionist lobby set the criteria for what is possible) equals continuedfailure of the peace process. It also equals ever increasing danger forU.S. interests in the Middle East and Muslim world. This latter equationis not based on an assumption. It is an historically demonstrated fact.

This is why we fail. No one wants to seriously test the old standingassumptions. Our political system is ossified. It is trapped in a lobbydriven, financially corrupt rut. And until we find a way out of it we aredoomed to go around in circles. That is what the administrationspseudo effort at seeking new ideas from outside experts amounts to,going in a circle. Round and Round and Round and Round
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Back to Top

A false friend in the White HouseByStephen M. Walt, February 20, 2011

Last Friday the United States vetoed a U.N. Security Council Resolutioncondemning Israel's continued expansion of settlements in theoccupied territory of the West Bank. The resolution didn't questionIsrael's legitimacy, didn't declare that "Zionism is racism," and didn'tcall for a boycott or sanctions. It just said that the settlements wereillegal and that Israel should stop building them, and called for apeaceful, two-state solution with "secure and recognized borders. Themeasure was backed by over 120 countries, and 14 members of the

security council voted in favor. True to form, only the United Statesvoted no.

There was no strategic justification for this foolish step, because theresolution was in fact consistent with the official policy of everypresident since Lyndon Johnson. All of those presidents has understoodthat the settlements were illegal and an obstacle to peace, and eachhas tried (albeit with widely varying degrees of enthusiasm) to getIsrael to stop building them.

Yet even now, with the peace process and the two-state solution flat-lining, the Obama administration couldn't bring itself to vote for a U.N.

resolution that reflected the U.S. government's own position onsettlements. The transparently lame explanation given by U.S. officialswas that the security council isn't the right forum to address this issue.Instead, they claimed that the settlements issue ought to be dealt within direct talks between Israel and the Palestinians, and that thesecurity council should have nothing to say on the issue.

This position is absurd on at least two grounds. First, the expansion ofsettlements is clearly an appropriate issue for the security council toconsider, given that it is authorized to address obvious threats tointernational peace and security. Second, confining this issue to"direct talks" doesn't make much sense when those talks are goingnowhere. Surely the Obama administration recognizes that itsprolonged and prodigious effort to get meaningful discussions goinghave been a complete bust? It is hard to believe that they didn'trecognize that voting "yes" on the resolution might be a much-neededwake-up call for the Israeli government, and thus be a good way to getthe peace process moving again? Thus far, all that Obama's MiddleEast team has managed to do in two years is to further undermine U.S.credibility as a potential mediator between Israel and the Palestinians,and to dash the early hopes that the United States was serious about
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"two states for two peoples." And while Obama, Mitchell, Clinton, Ross,and the rest of the team have floundered, the Netanyahu governmenthas continued to evict Palestinian residents from their homes, itsbulldozers and construction crews continuing to seize more and moreof the land on which the Palestinians hoped to create a state.

Needless to say, the United States is all by its lonesome on this issue.Our fellow democracies -- France, Germany, Great Britain, Brazil, South

Africa, India, and Colombia -- all voted in favor of the resolution, butnot the government of the Land of the Free. And it's not as ifNetanyahu deserved to be rewarded at this point, given howconsistently he has stiffed Obama and his Middle East team.

For more on this latest sad chapter in the annals of American MiddleEast diplomacy, see M.J Rosenberg here and here, the Magnes Zionisthere and here, and Gideon Levy here.

As these commentators recognize, the real reason for Obama'smisguided decision was the profound influence of the Israel lobby.Indeed, few observers have missed this simple and obvious fact. One

can only conclude that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton's repeatedclaims that they are "friends of Israel" and devoted to its security arenothing more than empty, politically expedient rhetoric. Whatever theymay say, the policies they are pursuing -- including this latest veto --are in fact harmful to Israel's long-term future. The man who declaredin Cairo on June 4, 2009 that a two-state solution was "in Israel'sinterest, the Palestinians' interest, America's interest, and the world'sinterest" must have changed his mind, because his actions ever sincehave merely hastened the moment when creating two viable states willbe impossible (if that is not already the case). Then remember whatformer Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said in 2007, "if the two-state

solution fails, Israel will face a South African style struggle for politicalrights." And "once that happens," he warned, "the state of Israel isfinished."

If Obama were a true friend of Israel, in short, he'd be doing whateverhe could to keep it from expanding its ruinous occupation and makingthe Zionist vision unsustainable. And given that Congress remainshopeless on this issue, he could have shown he was a true friend byinstructing his U.N. Ambassador, Susan Rice, to vote for the resolution,as a diverse array of foreign policy experts had suggested. He wouldalso have devoted some portion of his first two years in office to

explaining to the American people why some "tough love" was neededon both sides (i.e., not just the Palestinians), and he would haverecruited America's democratic allies in a genuine effort to bring theIsraeli-Palestinian conflict to a fair and stable end. Had he done thesethings, most Americans would have supported him. Instead, his lameactions are just enabling the occupation, and for the most cynicaldomestic political reasons (like safeguarding his re-election prospectsin 2012). Even worse, he did it at a moment when the Arab world is inferment, and when the voice of the Arab street is beginning to beheard. But instead of aligning itself with international law, basic
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principles of justice, and its own stated position, the Obamaadministration caved. Again.

If the United States hopes to be on the right side of history, it is time tostart thinking about what its policy should be when everybody finallyacknowledges that "two states for two peoples" is no longer a practicalpossibility. This is going to happen sooner or later, and anyone who isstill advocating for a two-state solution at that point is going to sound

like an ignorant fool. Not because of the flaws in that option, but simplybecause it will be impossible to implement. What alternative solutionwill the president and secretary of state support then? Ethniccleansing? A binational, liberal democracy in which all inhabitants ofIsrael/Palestine have equal civil and political rights? Or permanentapartheid, in the form of disconnected Palestinian Bantustans under defacto Israeli control? That awkward reality may not be apparent whileObama is president (which is probably what he is hoping), but it will bea damning legacy to leave to his successor, as well as a tragedy fortwo peoples who have already known more than their share.

Postscript: Some readers may think I am being too defeatist here,and they might cite in evidence Bernard Avishai's New York TimesMagazine essay detailing the alleged "near-miss" peace talks betweenOlmert and Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas in 2008. Avishai'saccount portrays the two leaders as close to a deal and suggests that itwould not be that hard to resurrect a similar deal today. It's aninteresting article, but there are at least four problems with hisoptimistic account. First, Olmert was the lamest of lame ducks by2008, because he was due to be indicted on corruption charges andeveryone knew it, so the talks themselves were something of a side-show. Second, even had this not been the case, it is by no means clear

that Olmert could have sold the Israeli public on the proposed deal.Third, it is not even clear that the two sides were that close to anagreement, given Olmert's insistence that Israel could not withdrawfrom Ariel and Maale Adumim (two settlement blocs that thrust deepinside the West Bank). Fourth, and probably most important, politicaltrends in Israel are headed the other way (among other things, AvigdorLieberman wasn't foreign minister back then), which makes theOlmert/Abbas talks even less relevant. For excellent critical responsesto Avishai's piece, see Noam Sheizaf, Matthew Taylor, and Ilene Cohen.

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Utterly Wrong: U.S. Will Veto The UN ResolutionCondemning Settlements

By MJ Rosenberg, February 14, 2011

Anyone who thought that the United States has learned anything fromthe various revolutions upturning the Arab world has another thinkcoming. We didn't.
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On Thursday, as the Egyptian revolution was culminating with thecollapse of the Mubarak regime, the Obama administration announcedthat it intends to veto a United Nations Security Council resolution,sponsored by 122 nations, condemning Israeli settlement expansion.

This is from AFP's report on what Deputy Secretary of State JamesSteinberg told the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

"We have made very clear that we do not think the Security Council isthe right place to engage on these issues," Deputy Secretary of StateJames Steinberg told the House of Representatives' Foreign AffairsCommittee.

"We have had some success, at least for the moment, in not havingthat arise there. And we will continue to employ the tools that we haveto make sure that continues to not happen," said Steinberg.

There is so much wrong with Steinberg's statement that it is hard toknow where to start.

First is the obvious. Opposition to Israeli settlements is perhaps the

only issue on which the entire Arab and Muslim world is united. Iraqisand Afghanis, Syrians and Egyptians, Indonesians and Pakistanis don'tagree on much, but they do agree on that. They also agree that theU.S. policy on settlements demonstrates flagrant disregard for humanrights in the Muslim world (at least when Israel is the human rightsviolator).

Accordingly, a U.S. decision to support the condemnation ofsettlements would send a clear message to the Arab and Muslim worldthat we understand what is happening in the Middle East and that weshare at least some of its peoples' concerns.

The settlement issue should be an easy one for the United States. Ourofficial policy is the same as that of the Arab world. We opposesettlements. We consider them illegal. We have repeatedly demandedthat the Israelis stop expanding them (although the Israeli governmentrepeatedly ignores us). The administration feels so strongly aboutsettlements that it recently offered Israel an extra $3.5 billion in U.S.aid to freeze settlements for 90 days.

It is impossible, then, for the United States to pretend that we do notagree with the resolution (especially when its language was carefullydrafted to comport with the administration's official position).

So why will we veto a resolution that expresses our own views?Steinberg says that "we do not think the Security Council is the rightplace to engage on these issues."

Why not? It is the Security Council that passed all the majorinternational resolutions (with U.S. support) governing Israel's role inthe occupied territories since the first one, UN Resolution 242 in 1967.

He then adds, with clear pride, that "We have had some success, atleast for the moment, in not having that [the settlements issue] arisethere."
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Very impressive. The United States has had no success whatsoever ingetting the Netanyahu government to stop expanding settlements to stop evicting Palestinians from their homes in East Jerusalem tomake way for ultra-Orthodox settlers and no success in gettingIsrael to crack down on settler violence, but we have had "somesuccess" in keeping the issue out of the United Nations.

The only way to resolve the settlements issue, according to Steinberg,

"is through engagement through the parties, and that is our clear andconsistent position." Clear and consistent it may be. But it hasn'tworked. The bulldozers never stop.

Of course, it is not hard to explain the Obama administration's decisionto veto a resolution embodying positions that we support. It is thepower of AIPAC, which is lobbying furiously against a U.S. veto (actuallynot so furiously; AIPAC doesn't waste energy when it knows that itscongressional acolytes and Dennis Ross in the White House itself will do its work for them).

The power of the lobby is the only reason we will veto the resolution.

Try to come up with another one. After all, voting for the resolution (or,at least, abstaining on it) serves U.S. interests in the Middle East at acritical moment and is consistent with U.S. policy.

But it would enrage the lobby and its friends who will threatenretribution in the 2012 election.

Simply put, our Middle East policy is all about domestic politics. Andnot even the incredible events of the past month will change that.

That is why U.S. standing in the Middle East will continue todeteriorate. We simply cannot deliver. After all, there is always anotherelection on the horizon and that means that it is donors, not diplomats,who determine U.S. policy.

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Good riddance, 'peace process'

Don't lament the end of negotiations that put Israeli demands,backed almost unconditionally by the U.S. and at theexpense of basic Palestinian rights, first and foremost.

By Josh Ruebner, The Los Angeles Times, January 28, 2011

Aaron David Miller, a former Israeli-Palestinian "peace process" pointperson in the George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and George W. Bushadministrations, is correct to assert in his Jan. 26 Times Op-Ed articlethat the recent cache of formerly secret documents on Israeli-Palestinian negotiations leaked to Al Jazeera "are bound to have achilling effect on a process already in the deep freeze."
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He errs, however, in lamenting the potential demise of a U.S.-sponsored "peace process" that is premised on Israel's demands, notPalestinian rights.

"As harmful as these leaks are to Palestinians, the Israelis don't lookvery good either," Miller notes. The Palestine Papers, as the leaks areknown, portray Palestinian negotiators bending over backward toconcede their rights, with Israel pocketing the concessions while

demanding even more.Take, for example, a U.S.-Israeli-Palestinian trilateral meeting in 2008in which the lead Palestinian negotiator offers to allow Israel to annexall but one of its illegal East Jerusalem settlements, which Israel rejectsout of hand as not being generous enough.

The illegality of its settlements has no consideration whatsoever inIsrael's negotiating posture on the issue, because, as then-IsraeliForeign Minister Tzipi Livni declared in a 2007 bilateral meeting, "I ama lawyer.... But I am against law international law in particular. Lawin general. If we want to make the agreement smaller, can we just drop

some of these issues? Like international law, this will make theagreements easier."

Miller should have added, however, that the Palestine Papers don'tconvey U.S. mediation efforts under both the George W. Bush andObama administrations in a positive light either. U.S. interlocutorsare portrayed as backing Israel's negotiating positions and pressuringPalestinians to agree to them. As, for example, when former Secretaryof State Condoleezza Rice told Palestinian negotiator Ahmed Qurei inMay 2008, after he informed her that no Palestinian leader wouldaccept Israel's future annexation of the illegal Ma'ale Adumim

settlement, "Then you won't have a state!"Perhaps more than anyone else, Miller should know that the dynamicsof a U.S.-sponsored "peace process," as currently configured, arebound to fail. In a May 2005 Op-Ed article in Washington Post, "Israel'sLawyer," Miller candidly admitted that "many American officialsinvolved in Arab-Israeli peacemaking, myself included, have acted asIsrael's attorney, catering and coordinating with the Israelis at theexpense of successful peace negotiations. If the United States wants tobe an honest and effective broker on the Arab-Israeli issue surely itcan have only one client: the pursuit of a solution that meets the needsand requirements of both sides."

Yet this sensible advice goes unheeded every time the United Statesattempts to mediate the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and PresidentObama's halfhearted attempts to restart negotiations that broke downlast fall after only a few weeks illustrate the point. Politico's LauraRozen reported earlier this month that the White House has convenedtwo different task forces to provide the administration with new ideasfor moving its efforts to achieve Israeli-Palestinian peace forward.

These new ideas are desperately needed, but the president won't findany by looking in all the old places. The efforts are being headed up by
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Sandy Berger, Stephen Hadley, Martin Indyk and Dennis Ross; in otherwords, many of the primary architects of failed U.S. "peace process"efforts under Bush I, Clinton, Bush II and Obama himself, and probablythe exact same people Miller had in mind when referring to "Israel'sattorneys."

Ross, now eclipsing George Mitchell, the special envoy for Middle Eastpeace, in all but title as the main policymaker on Obama's approach to

the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, is the last person in the world tolook to for new ideas, especially ones that are not biased in Israel'sfavor.

In his 2004 book, "The Missing Peace," Ross revealed his managementstyle: " 'Selling' became part of our modus operandi beginning apattern that would characterize our approach throughout the Bush andClinton years. We would take Israeli ideas or ideas that the Israeliscould live with and work them over trying to increase theirattractiveness to the Arabs while trying to get the Arabs to scale backtheir expectations. Why did this pattern emerge? The realities dictated

it."It is difficult to imagine a statement more revelatory than this of theUnited States abdicating any pretension to be an "honest broker."

The Palestine Papers only reinforce and provide additional evidence forthe extreme bias in U.S. policymaking admitted to by Miller and Ross.Given that the U.S. "peace process" efforts appear to be congenitallygamed to favor Israel's interests, it's no wonder they fail.

As evidenced by Palestinian diplomatic efforts to take their quest forstatehood to the United Nations this fall, the breakdown of aprofoundly flawed "peace process" opens up new and exciting

opportunities for Palestinians to achieve their long-denied rights and ajust peace. Israel will continue to suppress both of these outcomes aslong as U.S. diplomacy has its back, no matter how egregious itscontempt for human rights and international law is.

Josh Ruebner is the national advocacy director of the U.S. Campaign to End theIsraeli Occupation. He is a former Middle East affairs analyst for the CongressionalResearch Service.

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Global unpopularity wearing down Israeli government

By Jonathan Cook, The Electronic Intifada, 10th March 2011

Benjamin Netanyahu's advisers conceded last week that the Israeliprime minister is more downcast than they have ever seen him. Thereason for his gloominess is to be found in Israel's diplomatic andstrategic standing, which some analysts suggest is at its lowest ebb inliving memory.
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Netanyahu's concern was evident at a recent cabinet meeting, whenhe was reported to have angrily pounded the table. "We are in a verydifficult international arena," the Haaretz newspaper quoted him tellingministers who wanted to step up settlement-building. "I suggest we allbe cautious."

A global survey for Britain's BBC published on Monday will have onlyreinforced that assessment: Israel was rated among the least popular

countries, with just 21 percent seeing it in a positive light.A belated realization by Netanyahu that he has exhausted internationalgoodwill almost certainly explains -- if mounting rumors from his officeare to be believed -- his mysterious change of tack on the peaceprocess.

After refusing last year to continue a partial freeze on settlement-building, a Palestinian pre-requisite for talks, he is reportedly preparingto lay out an initiative for the phased creation of a Palestinian state.

Such a move would reflect the Israeli prime minister's belated

recognition that Israel is facing trouble on almost every front.The most obvious is a rapidly deteriorating political and militaryenvironment in the region. As upheaval spreads across the MiddleEast, Israel is anxiously scouring the neighborhood for potential allies.

Unwisely, Israel has already sacrificed its long-standing friendship withTurkey. With the ousting of Hosni Mubarak, Netanyahu can probably nolonger rely on Egyptian leaders for help in containing Hamas in Gaza.Israel's nemesis in Lebanon, Hizbzllah, has strengthened its grip onpower. And given the popular mood, Jordan cannot afford to be seenaiding Israel.

Things are no better in the global arena. According to the Israeli media,Washington is squarely blaming Netanyahu for the recent collapse ofpeace talks with the Palestinians.

It is also holding him responsible for subsequent developments,particularly a Palestinian resolution presented to the United NationsSecurity Council last month condemning Israeli settlements. The WhiteHouse was forced to eat its own words on the issue of settlements byvetoing the resolution.

The timing of the US veto could not have been more embarrassing forUS President Barack Obama. He was forced to side publicly with Israel

against the Palestinians at a time when the US desperately wants tocalm tensions in the Middle East.

Over the weekend, reports suggested that Netanyahu had been furtherwarned by US officials that any peace plan he announces must be"dramatic."

Then, there are the prime minister's problems with Europe. Netanyahuwas apparently shaken by the response of Angela Merkel, the Germanchancellor, when he called to chastise her for joining Britain and Francein backing the Palestinian resolution at the UN. Instead of apologizing,


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she is reported to have berated him for his intransigence in the peaceprocess.

Traditionally, Germany has been Israel's most accommodatingEuropean ally.

The loss of European support, combined with US anger, may signaldifficulties ahead for Israel with the Quartet, the international group

also comprising Russia and the United Nations that oversees the peaceprocess.

The Quartet's principals are due to hold a session next week.Netanyahu's officials are said to be worried that, in the absence ofprogress, the Quartet may lean towards an existing peace plan alongthe lines of the Arab League's long-standing proposal, based on Israel'swithdrawal to the 1967 borders.

In addition, Israel's already strained relations with the PalestinianAuthority are likely to deteriorate further in coming months. The PA hasbeen trying to shore up its legitimacy since the so-called Palestine

Papers were leaked in January, revealing that its negotiators agreed tolarge concessions in peace talks.

A first step in damage limitation was the resolution at the UNdenouncing the settlements. More such moves are likely. Most ominousfor Israel would be a PA decision to carry out its threat to declarestatehood unilaterally at the UN in September. In that vein, MahmoudAbbas, the Palestinian Authority president, said on Saturday that heexpected an independent Palestinian state to become a permanentmember of the UN.

The other prospect facing the PA -- of collapse or being swept away bystreet protests -- would be even more disastrous. With the PA gone,Israel would be forced to directly reoccupy the West Bank at greatfinancial cost and damage to its international image. Palestinians couldbe expected to launch a civil rights campaign demanding full rights,including the vote, alongside Israelis.

It is doubtless this scenario that prompted Netanyahu intouncharacteristic comments last week about the danger facing Israel ofsharing a single "binational state" with the Palestinians, calling it"disastrous for Israel." Such warnings have been the stock-in-trade notof the Greater Israel camp, of which Netanyahu is a leading member,but of his political opponents on the Zionist left as they justify pursuing

variants of the two-state solution.Netanyahu reportedly intends to unveil his peace plan during a visit toWashington, currently due in May. But on Monday Ehud Barak, hisdefense minister, added to the pressure by warning that May was toolate. "This is the time to take risks in order to prevent internationalisolation," he told Israel Radio.

But, assuming Netanyahu does offer a peace plan, will it be too little,too late?


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Few Israeli analysts appear to believe that Netanyahu has had a realchange of heart.

"At this point it's all spin designed to fend off pressures," Yossi Alpher,a former director of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel AvivUniversity, wrote for the Israeli-Palestinian dialogue websiteBitterlemons. "The object of the exercise is to gain a day, or a week, ora month, before having to come up with some sort of new spin."

Indications are that Netanyahu will propose a miserly interim formulafor a demilitarized Palestinian state in temporary borders. TheJerusalem Post reported that in talks with Abbas late last yearNetanyahu demanded that Israel hold on to 40 percent of the WestBank for the foreseeable future.

His comments on Tuesday that Israel's "defense line" was the JordanValley, a large swath of the West Bank, that Israel could not afford togive up suggest he is not preparing to compromise on his hardlinepositions.

His plan accords with a similar interim scheme put forward by AvigdorLieberman, Netanyahu's far-right foreign minister and chief politicalrival on the right.

Palestinians insist on a deal on permanent borders, saying Israel woulduse anything less as an opportunity to grab more land in the WestBank. At the weekend Abbas reiterated his refusal to accept atemporary arrangement.

Herb Keinon, an analyst for the right-wing Jerusalem Post, observedthat there was "little expectation" from Netanyahu that thePalestinians would accept his deal. The government hoped instead, hesaid, that it would "pre-empt world recognition of a Palestinian state"inside the 1967 borders.

A shorter version of this article originally appeared in The National, publishedin Abu Dhabi.

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Will there be a strike? and if so, where?

Israel: the next war

The USs failure under Barack Obama to impose peacebetween Israel and the Palestinians makes a new war likely

By Alain Gresh, Le Monde Diplomatique, 29th December 2010

In March 1973 the Israeli prime minister Golda Meir visited USpresident Richard Nixon in Washington. He told her that the Egyptianpresident Anwar Sadat was prepared to negotiate a full treaty, andMeir assured him that Israel wanted peace, but that she would preferan interim agreement as Cairo was not to be trusted. She said Egyptsprimary aim was to force Israel to withdraw to the line of 4 June 1967,


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then resurrect the UN plan for the partition of Palestine that had beenadopted in 1947; a solution to the problem of Palestine would have tobe discussed with Yasser Arafat and the terrorists.

Israeli journalist Aluf Benn reported this conversation, on the basis ofdocuments disclosed by Wikileaks, and drew a parallel between thesituation then, when Israels refusal to negotiate led directly to war andto Egyptian troops crossing the Suez Canal in October 1973, and prime

minister Benyamin Netanyahus current evasive response to PresidentBarack Obama. Benn notes that Netanyahu, who returned from the USand rushed to the front in October 1973, would do well to refresh hismemory by listening to the tape of Meir and Nixon and asking himselfwhat he can do to avoid repeating her mistakes and keep fromdragging the country blindly toward a second Yom Kippur disaster (1).In that war the Israeli army lost 2,600 troops.

Israels refusal to accept Obamas proposal to halt settlements on theWest Bank (but not in East Jerusalem) for three months in return forunprecedented promises or bribes, according to columnist Thomas

Friedman (2), who is not known for sympathy to the Arabs confirmedthat Obama is unable to exert any real pressure on Israel and thatNetanyahu rejects any compromise. Netanyahu, like his predecessors,claims to want peace but he wants the humiliating peace imposed byconquest and based on denial of Palestinian rights. In secretnegotiations over the past year, he has repeatedly told the Palestiniansthey had to accept Israels security concept, keeping Israeli troopsstationed in the Jordan valley along the barrier (on the Palestinianside) and the occupation of a substantial part of the West Bank (3). Hedid not say how long the occupation would last.

This deadlock is forcing the Israeli army to draw up plans for further

wars based on the security concept that anyone who refuses toaccept Israels rule in the region is a terrorist to be eliminated. Noother country, not even the US, has such a comprehensive securityconcept, which means that Israel is permanently at war. Who will theIsraeli army attack next? Gaza? Two years ago Israeli tanks and aircraftreduced buildings to rubble and killed hundreds of civilians in what theGoldstone report describes as war crimes and probably crimesagainst humanity. But Hamas is as strong as ever. How long will Israeltolerate this? Lebanon? In July-August 2006, the Israeli army failed tobring down Hizballah but succeeded in destroying the country;Hizballah is now stronger than ever and the Israeli high command

cannot rule out the possibility of a major operation and occupation ofpart of Lebanon (4). Iran? At the risk of starting a major conflict fromIraq to Lebanon, Palestine to Afghanistan?In the Middle East unrestinevitably leads to war. This time, unlike 1973, Israel would take thefirst direct step, but it will face far more effective enemies and, asIsraeli peace campaigner Uli Avnery points out, the hostility of worldpublic opinion (5). Brazil, Bolivia and Argentina have recognised thePalestinian state within the pre-1967 borders and there has been aletter from 26 European elder statesmen (including Chris Patten,Giuliano Amato, Felipe Gonzles, Lionel Jospin, Hubert Vdrine,
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Romano Prodi, Javier Solana), who are anything but extremists, callingon the European Union to impose sanctions if the Israeli governmenthas not reviewed its policy by the spring. Human Rights Watchpublished a report on 19 December (Israel/West Bank: Separate andUnequal) about the systematic discrimination against Palestinians,calling on the US government to withhold US funding from the Israeligovernment equivalent to expenditure on settlements (more than

$1bn).Avnery concludes: Somebody wrote this week that Americas supportof Israel is a case of assisted suicide. In Israel, assisting suicide is acrime. Suicide itself, however, is allowed by our laws. Those whom thegods want to destroy, they first make mad. Lets hope we recover oursenses before it is too late.

(1) Aluf Benn, Netanyahu is telling Obama what Golda told Nixon, Haaretz, Tel Aviv,15 December 2010.(2) Reality Check, The New York Times, 11 December 2010.(3) Dan Ephron, 16 hours in September, Newsweek, 11 December 2010.(4) See Anshel Pfeffer, Is the IDF prepping for a third war with Lebanon?, Haaretz,

19 December 2010.(5) Ship of Fools 2, Gush Shalom, Tel Aviv, 18 December 2010.

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UNITEDNATIONS S

SecurityCouncil

S/PV.648418 February 2011

Provisional

Security CouncilSixty-sixth year

6484th meetingFriday, 18 February 2011, 3 p.m.New YorkPresident: Mrs. Viotti (Brazil)

Members: Bosnia and Herzegovina Ms. olakovi
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China Mr. Li Baodong

Colombia Mr. Osorio

France Mr. Araud

Gabon Mr. Moungara Moussotsi

Germany Mr. Wittig

India Mr. Manjeev Singh Puri

Lebanon Mr. SalamNigeria Mr. Onemola

Portugal Mr. Moraes Cabral

Russian Federation Mr. Churkin

South Africa Mr. Sangqu

United Kingdom of Great Britain andNorthern Ireland

Sir Mark Lyall Grant

United States of America Ms. Rice

AgendaThe situation in the Middle East, including thePalestinian question

The meeting was called to order at 3.55 p.m.

Adoption of the agenda

The agenda was adopted.

The situation in the Middle East, including the Palestinianquestion

The President: Under rule 37 of the Councils provisional rules ofprocedure, I should like to invite the representatives of Afghanistan,Algeria, Argentina, Austria, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Belarus,Belgium, the Plurinational State of Bolivia, Botswana, BruneiDarussalam, Chile, Comoros, Costa Rica, Cuba, Cyprus, the DemocraticPeoples Republic of Korea, Djibouti, Ecuador, Egypt, Finland, Greece,Grenada, Guatemala, Guinea, Guyana, Iceland, Indonesia, Iraq, Ireland,Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, the Lao Peoples Democratic Republic, Lesotho,Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Mali, Malta, Mauritania,Mauritius, Mexico, Morocco, Namibia, Nicaragua, Norway, Oman,

Pakistan, Papua New Guinea, Peru, the Philippines, Qatar, Saint Vincentand the Grenadines, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Serbia, Slovenia, Somalia,the Sudan, Sweden, Switzerland, Tajikistan, Tunisia, Turkey,Turkmenistan, the United Arab Emirates, Uruguay, the BolivarianRepublic of Venezuela, Viet Nam, Yemen and Zimbabwe to participatein this meeting.

At the invitation of the President, Mr. Reuben (Israel) took a seatat the Council table; the representatives of the other

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