Ahead of the 5th meeting in five months between Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Israeli sources said that Olmert was interested only in the “declaration of principles on core issues” while Palestinian sources made it clear that Abbas wanted to formulate a detailed document that would set out the Israeli position on the main issues: Jerusalem, permanent borders and refugees.
Both parties are trying to agree on as many issues as possible in order to be able to present both their points of contention and agreement to US Secretary of State Condoleezza Condoleezza Rice when she comes to the region in mid-September and before the upcoming international Middle East peace summit in November.
Aside from Abbas-Olmert meeting, the rightist Hebrew daily Makor Rishon said recently that “Yesha”, the body representing the Israeli Settlements in the West Bank is negotiating illegal settling outposts in the Palestinian territories with Defense Minister Ehud Barak.
Once again, talks are reportedly being held on how many outposts the settlers will evacuate voluntarily in exchange for the state “laundering” other outposts as the agreement Barak reached with the Yesha in 1999 when he was prime minister and defense minister.
Judging by the previous round, the settling outposts slated for laundering will indeed be legalized, the settlers will vacate a few rusty shacks, and most of the outposts will remain in place. The defense minister’s office is not embarrassed to say that Barak “is studying the issue and has not yet formulated a position.”
The incentive for these talks is not an Israeli commitment to enforcing the law in the West Bank, sparing the Israel forces from having to devote troops to defending land thieves and saving the Israeli public treasury tens of millions of shekels a year in expenses.
Nor does the urgency stem from the previous government’s promise, under the International Quartet’s road map peace plan, to evacuate all outposts established after March 2001.
The talks also have no connection to the report on the outposts that Israeli Attorney Talia Sasson submitted to the then Prime Minister Ariel Sharon two and a half years ago. Just as with the nine houses that were evacuated in the Amona outpost north of Ramallah in early 2006, here too, were it not for fear of a petition by the anti-settlement Israeli watchdog Peace Now to the Israeli High Court of Justice, it is very doubtful the Israeli authorities would have roused from their lengthy slumber.
According to the Makor Rishon, the motive for the emerging agreement is the defense minister’s need to respond to Peace Now’s petition, which demands that the state evacuate the Migron outpost northeast of Ramallah — the largest illegal outpost in the Palestinian territories.
Yesha was “kind” enough to “agree” to relocate the outpost after it became clear that there was no legal way to regularize the status of an outpost built almost entirely on private Palestinian land. But law-abiding nations do not wait until nongovernmental organizations and the legal system force the authorities to enforce the law and abide by international agreements.
Aside from the legal problem, the expansion of the settlements, particularly the outposts, clearly contradicts Olmert’s talk of peace.
What significance could there possibly be to negotiations with the Palestinians on an agreement of principles for ending the occupation if the Israeli government is at once holding negotiations with the settlers on legalizing outposts in the very heart of the West Bank?
Barak, who also heads the Labor Party, has repeatedly declared that he learned the requisite lessons from his mistakes during his previous term as prime minister and defense minister.
But his forgiving attitude toward Israeli lawbreakers in the Palestinian territories shows he is determined to repeat this grave error.
Nevertheless, overall responsibility for the failure to implement the decision to evacuate the outposts rests with Olmert and the government as a whole.
Every day the outposts remain in place is another day in which every member of the government is abusing his office and a waste of time to conclude an agreement on final status issues before or after the Washington meeting.
