President George W. Bush did all of us a great favor when he once more articulated his stance on the Jewish settlements in the occupied territories during a joint press conference with Israel’s Ariel Sharon on April 11. “As I said last April, new realities on the ground make it unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final-status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949.”
Bush’s “new realities” were none other than the already existing settlement infrastructure in the West Bank, which was put together following the 1967 war. Those settlements violate international law as dictated in numerous UN resolutions. It’s no secret that the billions of dollars spent to erect and sustain those settlements have been provided willingly by successive US governments, whether Republican or Democrat. So there is nothing surprising that Bush finds it “unrealistic” to dismantle the Jewish-only “large population centers” in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. This renders much of the anticipated peace talks irrelevant for it sidelines international law, invalidates the US claim of being an honest broker in the so-called peace process and unequivocally declares support for the Israeli position on the matter.
The Israeli position is also clear and compels no ingenious interpretations. “It is the Israeli position that the major Israeli population centers (illegal Jewish settlements) will remain in Israel’s hands under any future status agreement, with all related consequences,” Sharon helped clarify further.
Both Bush and Sharon simply restated their positions, which are one and the same, save a few minor details. One of which is the issue of expansion of existing settlements.
Israel has been actively connecting the numerous Jewish settlements by Jewish-only bypass roads, which has compelled the creation of new “security zones” in the West Bank that were quickly incorporated into the ever-growing original settlement infrastructure.
The settlements’ locations have been selected on strategic grounds. They were mostly built within reasonable proximity from the 1967 border, to ensure territorial contiguity with Israel, while contributing to further territorial disintegration in the Palestinian territories. They seized the most fertile Palestinian land and most of the Palestinian water reserves. And with the introduction of the encroaching Israeli Apartheid Wall, the plan is near completion.
The wall is a de facto annexation of Palestinian land; it cuts off entire communities from their farms and livelihood outside their ever-shrinking population centers; it literally locks in whole towns and villages like Qalqilia; and it presents tens of thousands of Palestinians with two most difficult options: Either indefinite imprisonment or “voluntarily transfer”. Another challenge that Palestinian farmers must face is obtaining a permit from the Israelis to farm their lands swallowed up by the wall. If no permit is granted, no access is granted, and if the land is not farmed for a period of three years, according to Israeli law, it becomes the property of the State of Israel.
But the project is never complete without the absorption of the entire city of Jerusalem, including East Jerusalem. Thus the expansion of the largest illegal Jewish settlement of Maale Adumim. Once the 3500 units are complete, East Jerusalem will be physically disengaged from the rest of the West Bank, rendering the Palestinian demands for a capital in East Jerusalem equally “unrealistic”, according to President Bush’s logic.
Those who touted the “rift” between the Israeli and American positions on the settlements — inspired by Bush’s bashful criticism of settlement expansion — need not look beyond the vote results at the Geneva-based UN Commission on Human Rights (UNCHR). On April 14, 2005, the world’s foremost human rights body passed a resolution, condemning Israel’s illegal settlement expansion in the occupied territories. The resolution was widely approved, with the exception of two countries, one of which was the United States. US Ambassador Rudy Bochwitz, argued that the resolution was both “imbalanced and unjust.”
While again there was nothing shocking about the US position in the UNCHR or any other international body critical of Israel, it’s important to denote for it confirms that no meaningful change has occurred — or should be expected to occur — in the Bush administration’s policy regarding the issue of settlements.
Does not this demand a complete reversal in the Palestinian Authority’s unconditional surrender to and trust in Washington’s policies?
PA President Mahmoud Abbas and his circle of supposed pragmatic and “moderate” officials seem to completely ignore Bush’s position, reducing the Palestinian struggle to a mere quest for foreign aid.
It is only a matter of time before the Palestinians rebelled once more against Israeli oppression, American complacency and the PA’s submissive and subservient response to both.
My hope is that the American clarity in its support of Israel will be paralleled with a similar clarity on the heavy political cost that such unwarranted and provocative support entails. If the US government should carry on with its costly gamble for whatever strategic reasons it wishes to serve, the American people ought to think twice.
— Ramzy Baroud is an Arab-American journalist, the editor in chief of PalestineChronicle.com and a program producer at Al-Jazeera Satellite Television.
