Ahmad
This week, the eyes of the international community have been firmly fixed on Annapolis, USA, the venue of the lastest round of talks on the near-intractable crisis in the Middle East. The fate of the Palestinian people remains at the heart of the instability in that region of the world. For as long as the Palestinian people continue to be denied the right to a homeland, the Arab and Islamic world, will not accept the state of Israel as a partner, while the United States will continue to be seen as a partner, while the United States will continue to be seen as a super power which abets the injustice and crimes perpetrated against the Palestinian people by the Zionist state of Israel. Yet, the whole world longs for the untangling of that crisis so that the two peoples can live in security and peace. That is why the Annapolis process has caught so much attention. But can all Palestinian people? What will Israel and its perpetual backer, also masquerading as the peacemaker, the USA, give? The slightly edited article below provides a very useful insight.
In Annapolis, conflict by other means Robert Blecher and Mouin Rabbani November 26,2007 (Robert Blecher, an editor of Middle East Report,and Mouin Rabbani, a contributing editor, are International Crisis Group analysts based respectively in Jerusalem and Amman).
At an intersectionin front of Nablus city hall, a pair of women threaded a knot of waiting pedestrians, glanced left, then dashed across the street. “What’s this?” an onlooker chastised them. “Can’t you see the red light?”Not long after, his patience exhausted, the self-appointed traffic cop himself stepped off the curb and made his way to the other side of the boulevard. Such is life in the West Bank on the eve of the meeting in Annapolis, Maryland, where the Bush administration intends to create the semblance of a “peace process” between Israel and the Palestininans for the first time since it assumed office. There is excitement in Palestinian towns about the urban order newly emerging from years of chaos; there is a willingness to play by the rules even as many remain convinced that doing so will not get them very far; and, lastly, there is the reality that when the waiting grows tiresome, people will again take matters into their own hands. As for the Annapolis meeting itself, it is being greeted with indifference, with few believing it will lead to either meaningful change in their daily lives or substantive progess toward the end of an Israeli occupation now in its fifth decade.
Israel and Palsetininan negotiators are also once again playing by the rules, cajoled by the United States to return to the table following the Hamas takeover of the Gaza Strip in June and Palestinian Resident Mahmoud Abbas’ subsequent formation of an interim government in Ramallah. This would be no small feat, as negotiators over the core issues of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, for which the Palestinian leadership has long been clamoring, have been frozen for more than six years. But today, with Palestinians deeply divided and the international community deeply invested in perpetuating their division, negotiations have become a venue for struggle as much as a means, raising opposition- among Israelis and Paletinians aloke, though in different ways- to what was already a contentious process.
The Annapolis meeting was announced by a Bush administration that was unsure how to address the mess created by its six years of nelect of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, yet eager to salvage an achievement from it catastrophic Middle East policy and cognizant of the need to rally Arab support for a possible confrontation with Iran. In July, Bush announced an “international meeting” whose agenda was something of a mélange: Anchored in boilerplate about Palestinian institutional reform, it also offered “diplomatic support” for Abbas’ and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s biweekly discussions. At the time these talks were focused on delimiting a “political horizon”- that is, the rough contours of what a Palestinian state would look like- but as the conversations took on a genial tone, Ramallah’s aspirations for what Annapolis could accomplish rose. The commentariat began to bruit about prescriptions for what it would take to accord Abbas a major diplomatic victory and thus transform the Palestinian political order. Would Israelis and Palestinians agree to a framework agreement fro peace, thereby succeeding where their predecessors had failed, or only produce a more general declaration of principles, as had already been done in 1993? The negotiating teams, appointed in early October, did not meet even the most modest of expectations in this regard.
As the gaps between the two sides remained unbridgeable, domestic fronts opened up as well. Olmert’s coalition partners threatened to abandon the government if Annapolis should yield the knid of result from which Abbas could make political hay, while Hamas withdrew the mandate to negotiate it had extended to Abbas in a 2006 agreement and confirmed in an accord brokered by the Saudis in 2007. What, then, could the two sides agree on?
First, they agreed that whatever they decide in Annapolis will be implimented only in accordance with the “road map”, the 2003 document sponsored by the so-called Quartet of the US, the UN, Russia and the European Union. The road map required the relative normalization of daily life before any discussions of the “final status” issues-borders,settlements, water, Jerusalem, Palestinian refugees-could get underway. For Plestianians, this meant ensuring Israeli security, including the disbanding of the militias, as well as transforming the Palestinian Authority into an efficient and effective institution. For Israelis, it meant measures aimed at making Palestinian life under occupation a bit more bearable. But with armed groups having seized the initiative from the Palestinian leadership, and Israel attaching conditions that vitiated its acquiescence of any import, the document was dead on arrival.
More than four years later and the two years after the road map’s proclaimed expiration date- it has a new lease on life. For Olmert and his colleagues, the road map’s resurrection offers a way to divorce final status negotiations from the act of talking about them to the Palestinians, thus enabling Israeli officials to cast their glance at the horizon without sacrificing crucial support at home.It also allows for continued insistence on Paletinian securitry reform, though Palestinian officials, all the way up to the Primr Minister Salam Fayyad, seem to need no prodding in this direction.
As for Abbas, the road map permits him to insist that Israel undertake a range of measures that Palestinians have been demanding for a long time:s settlement freeze, the reopening of Palestinian institutions in East Jerusalem, removal of restrictions on Palestinian freedom of movement and dismantling of outposts (that is, settlements that are not just illegal under international law but also unauthorized by the Israeli government) built since 2001. And since Abbas is confident that the Palestinians have already made good progress toward meeting their commitments, the road map is, in his estimation,cost-free.
Second, Israeli and Palestinians agreed to continue talking. On the other hand this development ought not to be dismissed:Not since January 2001 have final issues been on the table, and after six years of stonewalling Palestinian demands to take them up anew, the Israeli government finally relented.The atmosphere surrounding the Annapolis meeting has accordingly lightened of late: Press accounts, which had been poking fun at the administration’s inability even to name a date for the talks, began taking the meeting more seriously. The State Department, which semi-comically insisted early on that the meeting was “not a conference,” so as to botto m out the low expectations, took to dropping the C-word regularly in briefings. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice even says she hopes two sides can strike a final deal “in this president’s term, and it’s no secret that means about a year.
But on the other hand, what seems to be victory of sorts should be recognized fro the failure that it is: Annapolis was not supposed to be a launching pad for final status talks, as an adviser to the Palestinian negotiation team put it. Rather, the Maryland meeting was supposed to mark the halfway point to a final status agreement. If the two teams could not agree, in the course of nearly two months, upon a short statement of the most basic parameters for a resolution- the 1967 border with minor and reciprocal territorial modifications, a divided Jerusalem as the capital of two states, a negotiated solution to the refugee question-why would another eight months (as the Palestinian team wanted) or 14 (as Olmert suggested) help? After 15years of on-again, off again negotiations, why would time be the salient variable? And even should Israeli and Palestinian negotiators find common ground before Bush’s term ends, what hope does either government have of selling it at home?
Public opinion in Israel, like that in the Occupied Terriotories, has long been equivocal: A majority of the population supports a two-state solution to the conflict , though it is substantially less willing to accept concessions on specific final status issues. But even before he could plumb the nuances of public opinion, Olmert found himself confronted with political difficulties that limited whatever maneuvers he might have been willing to assay.
Securing recognition of Israel as a Jewish state has been a regular feature of Israeli- Palestinian negotiations(thought not of Israel’s successful negotiations with Egypt and Jordan):During the Oslo talks of the early 1990s, Israeli negotiatorsdemanded Palestinian recognition of Israel as a legitimate political entity; at Camp David in July 2000, then- Prime Minster Ehud Barak insisted that Yasser Arafat recognize the historical connection of the Jewish people to the Temple Mount (Haram al- Sharif); and now, leading into Annapolis, a raft of Israeli politicians have made Palestinian recognition of the Jewish character of the state a central issue-and for some, a prerequisite- for final status negociations. In the context of “separation from the Palestinians,” a phrase which disengagement thrust to the forefront of political discourse, the emphasis on the Jewishness of the state has become all the more prominent.Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni has lnog been among the most outspoken in this regard, holding that the future state of Palestine will represent the national solution for the Plaestinians of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Defense Minister Ehud Barak numbers among those seeking recognition of Israel as a Jewish state, but his lack of enthusiasm for Annapolis amd whatever may come after does not stem primarily from ideology. As a result of Camp David fiasco and eruption of the fall 2000 intifada, during which he was also prime minister, he fundamentally mistrusts the Palestinian security services, a concern that resonates publicly following Israel’s war with Hizballah in 2006 and continued rocket fire from Gaza.
Barak has provoked the ire of many of his Labor Party colleagues who lament his defection from the Israeli “peace camp,” but his opposition cannot be dismissed simply as politickingfor personal gain. Indeed, if Israel’s most sought after asset is security, why should it sign an agreement with a leader who cannot provide it?Any agreement the parties reach will be shelved until that elusive day when the Palestinian security services- still under the constraints of occupation- prove themselves more adept than the Israeli army. So why negotiate now, with a leader who, due to the breakdown of his accord with Hamas, lacks a mandate to speak for his entire people?If Israel finds itself in subsequent negotiations with someone other than Abbas, its Palestinian interlocutors may well insist on reopening negotiations-much like new Israeli leaders did in the 1990s- pocketing the concessions that Israel makes in this round.
The Palestinian national movement is more sharply fractured than at any time in its recent history. The June2007 Islamist seizure of power in the Gaza Strip, and the appointment of a rival Government by Abbas whose authority is confined to the West Bank, has a added an unprecedented territorial dimension to the schism.
Prospects for reconciliation are meager at best, with Abbas’ Fatah movement and Hamas more concerned with consolidating power within their respective areas of influence and undermining their rivals’authority,and with dialogue limited to informal authority, and with dialogue limited to informal contacts aimed at exploring the basis upon which substantive talks might take place at a later stage. Hamas seems to be increasingly in the grip of a radical faction that has no interest in a deal that would entail relinquishing Islamist hegemony over the Gaza Strip.
While many in Fatah are dissstified with the exclusion of Fatah from the key portfolios in the Fayyad government, only a minority advocates angagement with Hamas now. One former security commander, when asked about Hamas’ strength in the West Bank, issued a sharp rejoinder: “That’s the wrong question and the wrong approach. Fatah should not deal with Hamas by overpowering it. It should be about dialogue, not by arms by embarrassing it over what it did in Gaza. “But his is a rare voice; it is more common for Fatah notables to denounce parley with those they consider putschists and declare they will accept nothing less than a reversal of fortunes.
Israel and the international community,which bears significant responsibility for the state of affairs because of their policies towards the Palestinians since the 2006 elections that gave Hamas control of the Palestinian Legislative Council, have only deepened the rift with their insistence that Israeli- Palestinian diplomacy and Palestinians rivals; in the grip of them, the prospects are virtually zero.
Both Abbas and Hamas are betting, in opposite directions, on the Annapolis meeting and the process it may spawn. Abbas hopes to show that bilateral negotiations can achieve what resistance cannot, both in terms of diplomatic process and improvements in daily life. Hamas is wagering that precisely the opposite will occur,and that, once chastened, Fatah will have no choice but to revive its partnership with the Islamist, on the latter’s terms. Yet even should the international custodians of this process provide Abbas with sufficient goods to dissuade Fatah from resuming dialogue with Hamas, the Islamist movement assumes that the fruits of the process will ultimately redound to its benefit, as did those of the Oslo process when Hamas in 2006 won control of the legislature. And should the process further threaten Hamas’ position, it need not stand by. Abbas is in no position to conclude a historic compromise without the safety net of a national consensus including Hamas – much less implement one in the teeth of active and perphas armed Islamist opposition.
Ramallah’s ham-fisted approach is the reason that Nasir al-Din al-Sha’ir, the Islamist former deputy prime minister of education in the national unity government, believes that “in the long term, the big loser will be the Palestinian Authority. Repression plays into Hamas’hands. Every person who is fired,every person who isn’t accorded his rights- each has families and neighbours. Hamas’ hands. Every person who fired,every person who isn’t accorded his rights- each has families and neighbors. Hamas has only been in power for a year in its entire history. If you pull Hamas out of power, you are returning it to its normal postion where it is most comfortable.”
Nobody, not even Hamas respresentatives, disputes that the movement’s popularity has shrunk from the unsually high level of support that it won in the 2006 legislative elections. But it is fanciful to think that the movement has shriveled to the point of irrelevance. Difficult as conditions are, and may yet become, for the Islamist movement, its continued military and political potency poses two fundamental challenges to Abbas. First, he cannot credibly claim to represent the Palestinian people in his dealings with Israel and the international community, particularly if the Gaza Strip is excluded from any benefits the Annapolis process may produce. Second, he cannot hope to legitimize any peace agreement he may reach with Israel.
Hamas,no less than Abbas,faces dilemmas of its own. It confront external pressure and the consequences of its own brutal campaign to impose internal order- and, no less important, the contradictions born of governance. Palestinians have begun to wonder how Hamas can claim the mantle of the resistance even as it abstains from it, and how it can oppose the Annapolis meting yet reap the fruits of “peace process”w writ large.
With Israelis and Palestinians agreeing to little more than resumption of talks on final status issues and the gradual implementation of the road map, the Annapolis meeting seems poised to morph into the Annapolis process,belatedly signaling that its predecessor, the Oslo process,has been superseded. The change in nomenclature is entirely appropriate, not only because Oslo has, in practice, been dead for six years,but also because the “two-state solution” means something very different today than it dis in 1993, when the Oslo process got underway. Then, the callfor two states was the preserve of the left, of Palestinians and their allies, whereas today, pinning down a two-state settlement seems just as important to other parts of the political spectrum, if not more so. Rice has told Congress that the window for a two-state settlement may be closing, with Islamic radicals the ultimate beneficiaries if it closes; Olmert openly worries about a South Africa- like struggle that will be more difficult for Israel to combat;and Livni couches her support for two states in the soothing formula of “empowering the moderates.” US and Israeli politicians and diplomats see an abyss to circumnavigate, a greater evil that only a new partition of historic Palestine can avoid.
Partisans of a comprehensive peace must ask the question of whether it will be possible to achieve this end via the excusion of Hamas. In narrow terms, this route will ensure that neither party will get what it wants out of an Annapolis process: for Israel, security, and for Ramallah, the flexibility to conclude and ratify an eventual accord. But more broadly, the ongoing diplomatic and financial blocade of Hamas raise questions as to the nature of the “endgame” being contemplated: Will it turn out to be a vehicle for the realization of Palestinian self-determination or – as demography takes precedence over territory in the Israeli political calculus- an instrument to constrain it?
Any particulary if the Annapolis process does not materialize,will it amount to a means for Israel to buy time and further tighten its grip on the West Bank, or will effective measures, such as a settlement freeze be built in to neutralize the element of time while negotiators consider their options? Given the doubts that have already enveloped the Annapolis meeting, it seems unlikely to succed where Oslo collapsed into renewed conflict. Not only are many of the structural flaws of the Oslo process still present in its anticipated Annapolis successor, but today there is the added problem that the parley’s sponsors see progress toward Israeli-Palestinian peace and an escalation of inter-Palestinian conflict as indivisible objectives.
Ishaq M. Kawu was right
I totally agree with Uncle Ishaq Modibbo Kawu, Daily Trust colunmist that if the corrupt governors succeed in destroying Nuhu Ribadu, we should forget the battle against corruption. M. D. Adano, Okene, Kogi State
