Do you remember December 7, 2004? Oh, you must. That’s the day all the newspapers announced that Israel, the Palestinians, Egypt, the U.S. and Europe had reached a comprehensive solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It was in Ha’aretz, on the AP wires. They were talking about a multilateral peace conference in Washington in the Spring. There was a feeling of optimism and hope.
Well, the blush sure is off that rose. The conference got moved from Washington to London. Israel isn’t going to participate. And they’re not going to talk about a settlement at all. They’re going to focus instead on reforming the Palestinian Authority. At his press conference in Ramallah, Blair said:
First of all, let me make it very clear what we can and can’t do. There is a Conference envisaged by the Road Map which is the Conference at which there are discussions about the final status negotiation. That is not for me to undertake. What we can do, however, is to make sure that after the Presidential election and with the disengagement being what we want to be which is the first step of the process towards creating a viable Palestinian State, we can help with the development of those institutions necessary on the Palestinian side to create that viable state.
Abbas embraced the Blair’s proposal. He didn’t really have much choice, since aid from the World Bank has been tied to Palestinian reform (read: participation in the Conference). But he did state:
Our political objective is the ending of the occupation that has started in 1967, an independent sovereign Palestinian State and to find a just and agreed upon solution for the issue of the refugees and our strategic orientation and decision is that it is the negotiated solution that we are pursuing.
What we demand from the Israeli side, and what we expect from the Israeli side, is the cessation of aggression against our Palestinian people, and this necessitates the return to stability and order and security and we will fulfil all our commitments to achieve this purpose, and we expect from the Israeli side to stop the building of the wall, to stop the expansion of the settlements, and to release political Palestinian prisoners. All those steps would encourage the Palestinian people to pursue supporting progress on that level.
Ahmed Qureia, the Palestinian Prime Minister, was more blunt.
[W]e are capable and have the means and expertise for peace and negotiations… It is the Israeli side that requires rehabilitation for peace not us… We are in need of a peace conference and not a meeting.
Blair is facing the political reality of two sides that are far apart on the issues and deeply mistrustful of each other. Perhaps it is premature for a full-fledged peace conference. But the Palestinians are not the only ones who need to take substantive steps to end aggression in order to restore trust. Israel has not yet actually evacuated a single settlement in Gaza; and, more importantly, it continues to appropriate Palestinian land in the West Bank for expanding settlements there (see my last post).
I believe that ending terrorist attacks on Israel is the morally right thing for the Palestinians to do. Whether it is strategically right (and whether it will stick) depends very much on Israel’s response and on the pressure that other countries are willing to exert on Israel.
There seems to be a committed leadership on the Palestinian side. Abbas’s demands are not unreasonable. If Sharon is serious about peace, he should halt construction of the wall and take immediate steps to stop the growth of the West Bank settlements. He should also indicate that he is willing, once the initial steps have been taken, to discuss borders and refugees.
If he doesn’t - well, at least we will know who dropped the ball.
Farce
The Israelis are phenomenally good at creating self-serving memes, like the insistence that hostilities must cease (on the bad guy side only, naturally - that would be the Palestinians) before they’ll mention the Peace word. The reality that can’t be mentioned is that the Israelis will never negotiate with the Palestinians without being dragged to the table like balking mules, which no one is prepared to do. Witness the ignominous and craven caving of Blair.
And so it goes.
Bad farce
Am I the only person who thinks the term “roadmap” is idiotic and insulting as well as farcical? It (purposefully?) suggests that negotiating peace between the Palestinians and Israel would be as simple as planning a car trip from Boston to New York, if only the Palestinians would come to their senses, turn over their arms to the Israelis and behave themselves. And, the media repeats and repeats and repeats that inspid substitute for a genuine policy initiative with the mindlessness of an advertising commercial. Bah, humbug!
Come to think of it, however, “craven” describes Blair perfectly. Nice choice of language! Now if Blair can only inspire the Palestinians to be equally craven everything will be just ducky, and America can move on to its next imperial conquest.
Gerald,
I just came across
Gerald,
I just came across this comment on peacespalestine, by Michel Sabbah, Patriarch of Jerusalem: Peace cannot be held hostage to those who still see violence as a means of obtaining justice and peace.
Really, is there anything to add?
Craven Blair
The craven Blair said that Palestinians have to stop the violence and he completely ignored Israel’s violence. According to Anti-Zionist notes (see link on the right) Israel is using terror to provoke the Palestinian violence Blair claims to want stopped. Now, we have seen Palestinian leaders bowing down to such one sided diplomacy before, at Oslo. Look where it ended, Sharon leading 3,000 armed men up the hill and destroying even the peace process, let alone peace itself.
And, no Gerald, you are not alone. Even my most apolitical friends agree that the term “roadmap” sounds deliberately childish. It sounds to me like an adviser of Bush was making things simple for him by showing him an A-Z type map and saying, “look this is where we are, and this is where we want to be, so…etc”. And then maybe Bush misunderstood what he was being told and announced it to the world.
Jews sans frontieres