When US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice pays yet another visit to the Middle East at the start of this new year, she will face many of the remnants of problems of the year just passed, and one new one, a new Jewish settlement on the rise in the West Bank.
The 30 settler houses that will be built in the Jordan Valley violate the road map, which calls for a complete halt to all settlement activity, and every agreement ever reached between the Palestinians and Israelis as well as all UN Security Council and General Assembly resolutions. The EU and the State Department have criticized the Israeli decision; Rice, too, will issue a similar rebuke on her visit. It will all come to naught.
The construction of the Maskiot settlement at a former army base in the northern Jordan Valley will begin within weeks, say Israeli officials, adding to the thick historical fact that no accord, no international law, no government, whether friend, ally or foe, have ever prevented Israel from building a new settlement or expanding an old one.
This latest settlement, composed as it is of some of the 8,000 Gaza settlers who withdrew in 2005 under former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s disengagement plan, is proof that the settlement evacuation of that supposedly heated summer was nothing but a staged showpiece, and was not the traumatic affair the Israeli government tried to tell the world. There was never any intention that the Gaza settlers were to be thrown out onto the streets or from land they claimed to be theirs. They were to be resettled, in pleasant environs and on another piece of land they lay claim to. What would be a more expedient place than in another piece of occupied Palestinian land?
Any move by Israel that would allow the creation of a new Jewish settlement would make Rice’s trip, aimed at the complicated task of reviving peace talks, even more difficult. A new outpost would also damage whatever prospects lie in the intriguing idea that Mahmoud Abbas and Ehud Olmert are prepared to hold back-channel talks to resolve the intractable disputes that derailed previous peace efforts, including the final borders of a Palestinian state, the status of Jerusalem and the fate of Palestinian refugees. The cropping up of a new settlement will harm prospects for any talks, secret or public.
Secret negotiations are not new; behind-the-scenes diplomacy is as ancient as talking. The 1993 Oslo Peace Accord was negotiated secretly. However, talks far from the cameras and headlines in many cases give the impression that something is being cooked up behind peoples’ backs and that in this case, Israel, negotiating from a position of military strength, will come out the victor of any such dealings away from the spotlight.
Should Abbas seriously entertain back-channel work with Israel, he would do well to remember that though he is described as a moderate by Israel and the US, the label does not mean he should frit way Palestinian rights.
