If nobody took President Bush’s one-year deadline for Mideast peace, announced at the Annapolis conference in November last year, seriously it was not because of the limited time and sheer intractability of the issues like the future of Jerusalem, the fate of Palestinian refugees and the exact borders of a Palestinian state. The fact is that nobody, at least in the Arab world, believed that the Bush administration was serious in its intentions.
Events have proved them right. After more than 250 meetings between Palestinian and Israeli negotiators, we are just now getting a glimpse of what has been happening once the handshakes were over and the doors closed.
After chief Palestinian negotiator Ahmed Qorei spoke for the first time in detail about the yearlong talks, we know why the talks have failed to produce an agreement. Nothing of what Israel has offered is acceptable to Arabs or nothing has convinced Israel that the Bush administration expects them to offer anything that would be acceptable to Arabs. Israel’s initial proposal to annex 7.3 percent of the West Bank, which was then reduced to 6.8 percent, is totally unacceptable. The Israeli offer to give some of its own territory as compensation is not an equal trade in size and quality. More important, some of the areas Israel wants to annex are crucial to a viable Palestinian state envisioned as the goal of the peace negotiations.
Israel’s offer to allow 5,000 Palestinian refugees over five years is a slap in the face even though the Palestinians are not seeking the return of all refugees and their descendants, a group that numbers several million.
If the US was serious about peace, it should have stopped Israel constructing more Jewish settlements. Since Annapolis work has begun on some 1,200 new homes in the occupied territories.
And on Jerusalem, the only reply Israel could give to the Palestinian demand that the city be the capital of their state was a “no comment.”
Small wonder, there has been no outward sign of progress, let alone a breakthrough. Obviously, the negotiations are nowhere near the stage in which decisions are required by decision-makers and not negotiators. Interestingly, though, tomorrow the UN Security Council is expected to vote on a US-sponsored draft resolution “hailing” the progress made in these so-called peace talks.
If approved, it will be the Security Council’s first resolution on the conflict between the Palestinians and Israel after November 2003, when it endorsed the “road map” peace plan for eventual Palestinian statehood.
Washington’s official line is that it is crucial for the push for a two-state solution to be sustained and for the council to express its support so there is no pause in the negotiations. The highly unpopular Bush administration hopes this resolution will also help draw attention to the good it argues it has done for the Middle East and counter some of the criticism it has faced for its 2003 invasion of Iraq.
Should the UN vote on this sham peace process? Qorei’s revelations serve as a record of the Israeli position, which is that after 40 years of occupation, Israel is seeking a permanent annexation of the West Bank. There would, of course, be negotiations from time to time and a process that never leads to peace.
Let us hope the Obama administration would make a difference to this all too depressing situation.
