The Arab League has backed the plans of US Secretary of State John Kerry to restart talks between the Palestinians and the Israelis, based largely on the peace plan advanced by Saudi Arabia in 2002.
Those 11 years have seen further humiliation and pauperization of the people of the occupied territories, the continued construction of illegal settlements on the West Bank and in East Jerusalem, the murderous siege of the Gaza ghetto, the walling off of Palestinian territory, the theft of Palestinian land and water, the desecration of mosques and shooting dead of stone-throwing kids. And all the time Israeli has turned with innocent eyes to the international community and claimed to be frustrated in its search for peace but rather the victim of Arab aggression.
Every secretary of state before him, has made some sort of commitment to bringing peace to Palestine, but there is something different about Kerry. Perhaps most obviously, though he has traveled to the Middle East himself half a dozen times and sent trusted aides on an almost constant round of lower-level visits, Kerry has done no megaphone diplomacy. It appears that he is not interested in being seen and being heard, to be trying to do something. He seems more concerned with getting on with the job of revisiting a set of well-rehearsed and well-tried arguments and seeking a form of words, undiscovered or previously rejected, that will allow peace talks to proceed.
The backing of the Arab League this week will undoubtedly strengthen his position, because the League is fully behind the core of the Saudi plan — the recognition of Israel’s pre-1967 borders, in return for the evacuation of the occupied territories, including East Jerusalem and the resolution of Palestinian refugee claims. For Israel, that offer of peace and recognition ought to be the highest goal. That it is almost certainly not, reflects the immense challenge that Kerry now faces.
Israel was born in conflict and has thrived in conflict. Its armed forces and its intelligence services are intertwined with government like snakes. It has a citizen army that is on constant alert. Recruits are indoctrinated to believe in the horrors Israel faces from the Arab world in general and the Palestinians in particular. To defend itself against these looming dangers, Israel demands and receives billions of dollar of military and economic aid from US taxpayers every year. In addition the US Zionist lobby gathers in hundreds of millions more to support extremist causes such as the building of settlements which even the Israel authorities initially consider to be illegal.
The reality is that in the secret calculations that are made within the core of the Israeli government, a genuine and lasting peace is a development much to be feared. There is uncertainty that Israelis will know how to live without the presence of conflict. Certainly there will be considerable financial disadvantages to peace.
Naturally however no Israeli government can admit this. So successive administrations have sought to sabotage the peace process with a variety of stratagems, the most successful of which has been the building of illegal settlements. Knowing that it would be virtually impossible for the Palestinians to enter into talks while the illegal construction went on, it has been a simple matter for the Israelis to say with one breath, that they wish to negotiate and with the next that, by the way, we are building a few more settlements.
Thus it was entirely predictable that this week Israel should have announced 700 new illegal homes. It was equally predictable that Israel should have reacted angrily to a long-overdue tightening of EU rules on the disbursement of any financial assistance to Israel. The aim is to stop funds going to organizations or companies that are associated with any of the occupied territories. Indeed such was Israeli “anger”, that one of Benjamin Netanyahu’s ministers even suggested that this move would sabotage the peace talks resumption that Kerry is seeking to organize.
When Israel is seeking to protect its interests, there is no limit to what it will do, be it massacre, targeted assassination, provocation, lying or cheating. The awful reality is that however much the Palestinians, the rest of the Arab world and even John Kerry and the Obama administration itself want a negotiated settlement, the Israelis simply do not. Unless Washington closes its open purse strings, the Israelis can afford to remain obdurate and nothing will change.
Editorial: Kerry gives peace a chance
