Outrageous, scandalous and ludicrous! This is how one should describe the botched mission of special US envoy to the Middle East George Mitchell whose efforts to alter Israel’s position on the Jewish settlements issue were trounced last week. He left the region empty-handed amid shock and outrage among the Palestinians.

Mitchell’s mission was doomed from the beginning. The Palestinians had insisted, and rightly so, that Israel honor previous commitments, under the road map, and again at Annapolis and as stipulated by the Quartet, to freeze all settlement activities in the occupied territories including what is termed “natural growth”. From a legal perspective this freeze must include East Jerusalem as well.

No Israeli government, whether it was led by Likud, Labor or Kadima, has ever observed such a condition, and in the past few years the rate of Israeli settlement activity has picked up pace in defiance of agreements and understandings made between Israel and the Palestinian Authority through US mediation.

Across the Israeli political spectrum there has always been an inclination to fatten and expand existing settlements or create new ones. Differences, if they even exist, tend to focus on location, purpose, viability and future of these outposts. On East Jerusalem there is complete agreement; that it is not occupied territory and therefore Jewish constructions there are not settlements.

The result is over 300,000 Jewish settlers living in the West Bank on confiscated Palestinian land. Add East Jerusalem to this and the figure is almost half a million. The situation here is different from Sinai and Gaza Strip where the settlers were a few thousands at the most. It is difficult, if not impossible, to think that an Israeli premier could muster the power and public backing to remove tens of thousands of settlers from the West Bank and dismantle their homes.

The settlements are of course illegal, built on occupied territory that was taken through force. But since the 1967 war, the growth of West Bank settlements — both authorized by the government and not — has been phenomenal. Israel has changed the physical, demographic, economic and political characteristics of this enclave in such a way that makes it almost impossible to realize the goal of building an independent, viable and contiguous Palestinian state there.

From a legal point of view, the settlements should never have become a subject for negotiations. Israel has been in stark violation of international laws, Geneva Conventions and scores of UN resolutions through its settlement activities on Palestinian land. But Israel proponents claim that the West Bank is in fact disputed territory; that it never belonged to a sovereign state. That argument has been debunked by the International Court of Justice and by High Contracting Parties to the Fourth Geneva Convention, among others.

But in spite of the overwhelming support of Palestinian rights by the international community, the fact that the big powers had never stepped in to force Israel to cease and desist its illegal activities in the occupied territories, gave the usurping state a free hand. Since 1967 Israel was never penalized for its violations against Palestinians and their land, thanks to America’s automatic veto at the UN Security Council, and European collusion.

The declared objective of restarting the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations is the creation of an independent Palestine based on the two-state solution. There are a number of issues on the table awaiting the negotiators: Fate of the settlements, refugees and East Jerusalem, among others. By refusing to budge on settlements and insisting that the future of Jerusalem is nonnegotiable, Israel has dislodged two of the three main pillars of peace talks. The third, refugees, is about to fall as well. By stating that Arabs must recognize Israel as a Jewish state, the fate of the “right of return” for millions of Palestinian refugees, as unrealistic as it may seem today, has been sealed.

Against such backdrop one wonders what the negotiators will talk about if the negotiations are ever resumed. The government of Benjamin Netanyahu has never committed itself to the two-state solution. In fact the coalition will certainly collapse if Netanyahu goes ahead and forces a freeze of some kind on settlement activities or accepts to include Jerusalem on the agenda.

The government actions reveal its true colors and leanings. As Mitchell was preparing to fly to Israel, Netanyahu and his Defense Minister Ehud Barak gave the go-ahead to plans to build 455 units in and around Jerusalem in addition to the 2,500 units already approved. The argument is that the new units will be built in settlements near Jerusalem and along the Green Line; territories that Israel will never give up even if it reaches a peace deal with the Palestinians.

Settlers have become a political force that no Israeli politicians can afford to ignore. The irony is that their numbers and that of the settlements grew, along with their influence, at expeditious rates immediately following the signing of the Oslo Accords. It was never the intention of successive governments to give up on settlement activities.

Israel has made up its mind about all the remaining issues in the so-called final status negotiations, and it is unlikely that US attempts to resurrect the peace process will bear fruit at the end. Since America is unwilling to risk the repercussions of a showdown with Israeli leaders over “obstacles” to peace, the Palestinians, always the weaker party, will be expected to offer compromises. For them it has become a zero-sum game.

The future of peace talks looks grim and as President Barack Obama attempts to tackle this thorny and intractable issue, he will be well advised to launch a thorough review of the reasons behind his country’s fraudulent policy in dealing with the Arab-Israeli conflict over the decades, starting with the failure to stop Israel from carrying out its systematic colonization of Palestinian lands. For Washington too, the peace process has become a zero-sum game. Even though Israel appears to be having its cake and eating it too where the future of the occupied territories is concerned, the failure to achieve genuine and credible peace with the Palestinians will always threaten its existence.

— Osama Al Sharif is a veteran journalist and political commentator based in Amman.