US credibility as Peace Broker in Israel Palestine eroding.

What is being brokered has never really been peace but the surrender of the Palestinians to Israeli demands with some token recognition in return. The US is far from a neutral broker. It is clear that the US is a huge supporter and ally of Israel. However, the Palestinians are so weak and powerless that they really have very little leverage and so must depend upon the US biased as it may be. Egypt and other Arab countries who might seem to be natural allies seem to have little power although some moves have been made to negotiate a peaceful resolution of the conflicts between Hamas and Fatah.

Antiwar.com
US Credibility as Peace Broker Eroding by the Day

Posted By Ellen Massey

In the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, movement in the standoff between the two sides can be as often backward as it is forward. The past couple of weeks have seen moves from both sides that have garnered the attention of the world, but forward progress remains elusive.

Not least among these moves was Israel’s announcement Tuesday that it had approved building 900 additional units in Gilo, a controversial Israeli settlement in East Jerusalem, part of the Occupied Territories.

Outrage came from many corners, including the White House, which took a brief break from President Barack Obama’s Asia trip to declare the administration’s "dismay" at the Israeli plan.

"At a time when we are working to re-launch negotiations, these actions make it more difficult for our efforts to succeed," said White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs in a strongly worded statement released Tuesday.

Gibbs went on to condemn other Israeli actions in East Jerusalem that have been effectively changing the facts on the ground.

"The U.S. also objects to other Israeli practices in Jerusalem related to housing, including the continuing pattern of evictions and demolitions of Palestinian homes. Our position is clear: the status of Jerusalem is a permanent status issue that must be resolved through negotiations between the parties," the statement said.

This disapproval was echoed by the State Department and U.S. allies, including the British Foreign Office and France’s Foreign Minister Bernard Koucher.

The approval of the new units in Gilo, called a "routine process" by an aide to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, follows an announcement last weekend by the Palestinian Authority that it plans to seek international approval of a Palestinian State through a vote by the U.N.

The move has been labeled unilateral and was strongly opposed by both Israeli and U.S. politicians. Two U.S. senators attending a conference in Jerusalem said that the U.S. would likely veto any such proposal that came before the U.N. Security Council.

"I hope and presume that the United States would veto such a move if it ever came to the Security Council," Sen. Joe Lieberman said during a press conference during the Saban Forum in Jerusalem.

Addressing an audience at the Saban Forum Sunday night, Netanyahu warned that, "There is no substitute for negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, and any unilateral path will only unravel the framework of agreements between us and will only bring unilateral steps from Israel’s side."

One Israeli official, Environmental Minister Gilad Erdan, indicated in an interview with Israel Radio that such steps might include more annexation of the Israeli-occupied West Bank, according to Reuters. Members of Israel’s Labour Party backed away from such statements.

However, Palestinians insist that the move is not a unilateral one, but instead is seeking re-affirmation of the two-state solution.

In an interview with IPS on Monday, Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat said, "What we intend to do is to take to the United Nations Security Council a request that the international community re-endorse the two-state solution based on the pre-Jun. 5, 1967 borders. The key are those borders."

The heightened rhetoric between Israelis and Palestinians comes amidst increasing frustrations with the stalled peace process. Just 10 days before he announced the diplomatic push to gain international support for a state, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas declared that he would not run in the Palestinian Authority elections, scheduled for January 2010.

Last week, in statements made on the anniversary of Yasser Arafat’s death, Abbas called for perseverance in the pursuit of an independent Palestinian state and reconciliation with Hamas. He also emphasized that he would not return to negotiations with Israel without a true settlement freeze.

Abbas’s declared intention to step down, and his renewed emphasis on an independent, unified Palestinian state follow key moves, pressed upon him by the U.S., that have harmed Abbas’s credibility with his own people.

The first of these was the September meeting between Abbas, Netanyahu and Obama in New York. Abbas was pressured to attend despite the fact the Israel had refused to implement a settlement freeze, a precondition that Palestinians said must be met before they would return to negotiations.

The second move was Abbas’s decision in early October, made under intense U.S. pressure, to withdraw Palestinian support for a vote in the Geneva-based U.N. Human Right’s Council on the Goldstone Report, the 500-page U.N. document that declares that both Israel and Hamas committed war crimes during the intense fighting in Gaza last winter.

A new report from the International Crisis Group called "Palestine: Salvaging Fatah", notes that the Obama administration recognizes that Abbas has taken several blows to his legitimacy and power in recent weeks. Indeed government officials interviewed for the report expressed concern that Abbas might follow through on his threat to not run in the January elections.

If Abbas steps down, the future of Palestinian Authority and of the peace process itself would be uncertain at best, many experts have said.

"Nobody is better for the peace process platform," said Khalil Shikaki before an audience of hundreds at the Middle East Institute’s annual conference last week. Shikaki is the director of the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research in Ramallah and a senior fellow at the Crown Center for Middle East Studies at Brandeis University.

However, since Netanyahu’s election, the stability that Abbas has delivered has, in essence, meant the maintenance of the status quo, Shikaki said.

.....
Indeed the Obama administration seems frustrated by the non-starts in the peace process and also seems to be watching its leverage on the two parties slip away.

"I wish I could stand before you today and point to substantial progress toward our goals, [but] I cannot," William Burn, State Department undersecretary for political affairs, told those at the MEI conference, referring to the administration’s efforts to restart peace talks.

With Tuesday’s approval of the new building in East Jerusalem, Israel also blatantly ignored requests earlier in the week by Obama’s Middle East Peace Envoy George Mitchell to stop the expansion of Gilo, according to Ynetnews.com.

The Palestinian’s bid for U.N. approval also signals that they’ve lost faith in the United States ability to broker negotiations.

The next steps for the United States in seeking a negotiated peace between Israelis and Palestinians seem more unclear than ever.

(Inter Press Service)

THe Palestinian Follies

This is another interesting analysis of the Palestine situation perhaps a rather surprising analysis for someone usually noted for his rather right wing views and his involvement in the plundering of the assets of the former Soviet empire by enterprising entrepreneurs under the guidance of Americans such as Sachs himself. He was part of what might be called the Harvard University Deconstruction Crew. He also is famous for using shock therapy policies to solve crises of the collapse of socialist economies in countries such as Poland. He later worked on global poverty issues and was employed by the UN supposedly pro bono but actually paid 75 k a year to solve his own poverty problems until someone found out!


The Palestine follies

By Jeffrey D. Sachs

American foreign policy in the Middle East experienced yet another major setback this month, when Hamas, whose Palestinian government the United States had tried to isolate, routed the rival Fateh movement in Gaza. In response, Israel sealed Gaza’s borders, making life even more unbearable in a place wracked by violence, poverty and despair.

It is important that we recognise the source of America’s failure, because it keeps recurring, making peace between Israel and Palestine more difficult. The roots of failure lie in the US and Israeli governments’ belief that military force and financial repression can lead to peace on their terms, rather than accepting a compromise on terms that the Middle East, the rest of the world and, crucially, most Israelis and Palestinians, accepted long ago.

For 40 years, since the Six-Day War of 1967, there has been one realistic possibility for peace: Israel’s return to its pre-1967 borders, combined with viable economic conditions for a Palestinian state, including access to trade routes, water supplies and other essential needs. With small and mutually acceptable adjustments to those borders, these terms would enable peaceful co-existence of two states side by side. Perhaps three-fourths of both Israelis and Palestinians support this “land for peace” compromise, while one-fourth holds out for complete victory over the other side.

Rejectionists on both sides repeatedly undermined efforts to realise that compromise. Starting in the early 1970s, religious Israeli settlers and hardline Israeli nationalists pushed Israel into a disastrous policy of creating and expanding settlements on Arab lands in the West Bank, in violation of common sense and international diplomacy. That policy blocked peace ever since, setting the stage for decades of bloodshed.

Nor have extremists on either side shrunk from political murder. Islamic militants killed Anwar Sadat, the Egyptian peacemaker, while a Jewish militant killed Yitzhak Rabin, the would-be Israeli peacemaker. Violent extremists on both sides have ratcheted up their actions whenever the majority succeeded in getting closer to peace.

For the past 10 years, the greatest practical barrier to peace has been Israel’s failure to carry out any true withdrawal to its 1967 borders, owing to the political weight of hundreds of thousands of settlers in the West Bank and the religious and secular communities that support them. This remains the crucial truth; the rest follows as tragedy.

Even when the US or Israel have tabled peace offers, such as at Camp David in 2000, they have included convoluted ways to sustain the West Bank settlements and large settler populations, while denying an economically viable and contiguous Palestinian state.

The most recent debacle began when President George W. Bush called for Palestinian democracy in 2004, but then refused to honour the democratic process. Hamas, a radical movement, won the Palestinian election in January 2006, but not before blatant pre-election meddling by the US in favour of Fateh, which merely helped to boost Hamas’ legitimacy. Then, after Hamas won, the US and Israel immediately orchestrated a cutoff of finances to the newly elected government, including even Israel’s transfer of Palestine’s own customs revenues, which Israel collects as the occupying authority in control of the borders.

Rather than act pragmatically, and deal with Hamas in government on the basis of its actions vis-à-vis Israel, the US and Israel demanded from the outset that Hamas recognise Israel’s right to exist as a precondition for continued financial flows.

The US and Israel believed that they could force Hamas into submission even before negotiations with the new government began. This is the hubris of believing that brute force and threats, rather than actual negotiation, can yield solutions. The result was predictable, despite US and Israel expressions of shock at recent developments. US and Israeli pressure deeply compromised Palestinians’ access to water, food, medicines and physical safety, especially in overcrowded Gaza.

Although Israel formally withdrew from Gaza, its complete control over the borders, infrastructure, transport and taxation, together with its regular military incursions in response to shelling from Gaza and its killings and capture of senior Hamas officials, left Palestinians there desperate. In this mix, violence escalated. Hamas did not fold in negotiations. Instead, conflict broke out between Hamas and Fateh, leading to Fateh’s collapse and desperate flight from Gaza. In a near-parody of external interventions, the US and Israel encouraged President Mahmoud Abbas of Fateh to dismiss the Hamas-led government, and to declare a new Fateh-led government in the West Bank.

Gaza is now under Hamas control, and the West Bank is perhaps under nobody’s control. Israel has said that it will squeeze Gaza still further, as if the population can be crushed into submission. But there are far too many weapons and young men prepared to die for that to occur. There is, alas, still only one settlement possible, based on true compromise, not unilateral imposition. No amount of machinations by outside powers or internal forces will impose a settlement. Israel and Palestine will have to reach an agreement based on the fact that they share a small and contested space.

The problem is that hatred and demographic changes are making, many people believe, even the two-state solution impossible. A few hope for a single secular democratic state. But many more have lost all hope. My view is that a two-state solution of peace and mutual respect remains possible, but perhaps for not much longer.



The writer is professor of economics and director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University. ©Project Syndicate, 2007. www.project-syndicate.org

Friday-Saturday, June 22-23, 2007

The Triumph of US/Israeli policy in Palestine

This is just a part of a longer article available at .Counterpunch
In contrast to some other commentators Loewenstein thinks that US/Isreali policy is triumphing. However, she claims that Fatah and Abbas have not had much benefit from being supported by Israel and the US. By the way it is not long ago that Fatah under Arafat was a terrorist organisation that could not be bargained with. As usual there are the good terrorists (Fatah) and the bad ones (Hamas). Western media just seem to play along changing the wording to meet the new situation. As this article points out at one point references to the fact that Hamas was elected with a majority in the Authority will be less and less mentioned.


Brothers-in-Arms
The Triumph of US/Israeli Policy in Palestine
By JENNIFER LOEWENSTEIN

Contrary to the many claims that the Hamas takeover of the Gaza Strip represents the failure of US and Israeli policies in Palestine, the violent civil infighting that has dominated the Gaza Strip over much of the last year and a half and that led directly to the Hamas coup of June 2007, marks yet another major foreign policy victory for the occupiers. Hamas will never be allowed to remain in power in Gaza so we must fear for the future of that tiny, desperately overcrowded strip of land and its 1.4 million inhabitants; additionally, Abbas ­in order to maintain his role as "Good Guy"- will have to accede to the dictates of Israel and the United States or suffer the same fate as his predecessor, Yassir Arafat.

Western nations are standing by in silence as the deadly siege of Gaza and the dismemberment of the West Bank continue unabated. What we are witnessing in full view each day are unprecedented steps taken by the world's only superpower and its favorite client state, Israel, to ensure the death of a nation. While friction between the two key political factions in the occupied Palestinian territories has long undermined the smooth functioning of internal affairs, it was the direct, cynical involvement of US and Israeli policy-makers in these affairs that guaranteed the breakdown of internal stability and paved the way for the Hamas "coup" in Gaza.

Media reports have been careful to leave out important facts leading up to the coup such as that Hamas was the legitimate, democratically elected ruling party in the Palestinian territories following the January 2006 Palestine Legislative Council elections; that it was the US-Israeli dismissal of those election results that fueled the civil infighting between Hamas and Fatah; that obvious US backing of Fatah against Hamas helped create popular mistrust of Fatah increasing Hamas' popularity in Gaza and leading directly to Hamas' takeover of the Fatah military apparatus in the Gaza Strip. In other words, there were real and understandable reasons for the coup. But in the end, Hamas' seizure of the power it should have had in the first place ends up serving the interests not only of Mahmoud Abbas and the warlord Muhammad Dahlan. It also provides the perfect opportunity for US-Israeli policy in the region to move forward with even fewer objections, if that is possible to imagine, than have heretofore been made. Who will stand up for a "terrorist organization that seeks the destruction of Israel"? The line has been beaten into our heads with every mention of the word "Hamas" for years. We should not expect a change in the behavior of the American public or of other western audiences until, when Israel is mentioned, we immediately say to ourselves, "a terrorist state that seeks the destruction of Palestine." Seeks and is succeeding in it.


II.

Watching the barbarous killing between brothers in Gaza, a power struggle between rival factions seething in frenzy like the great prison in which they thrive, Israeli and American political analysts can rest their cases with confidence. Across the spectrum of debate, these experts can expect vindication by the media juries who, in sanctimonious indignation at the brutality meted out by partisans of Fatah or Hamas, have assembled all the "evidence" they need to justify our righteous war against Muslim-Arab terrorists and their internecine blood feuds.

That the US has temporarily chosen a weak, compliant leader, Mahmoud Abbas, and the power thirsty warlord, Muhammad Dahlan, to back during the bitter strife between key Palestinian factions testifies not to a belief that one side is trustworthy and deserves our support, but rather to the ease with which the Americans and their clients pick and choose their pawns in their bitter regional cockfights. Today's statesmen were yesterday terrorists, their titles dependent on the needs of the superpower and its clients: yesterday Fatah was on the US State Department's list of foreign terrorist organizations and its leader, Yassir Arafat, was a declared "terrorist," "irrelevant," and exiled in his presidential compound in Ramallah until his mysterious death. Fatah's military wing, the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades is still listed as a foreign terrorist organization. Neither of these factors apparently bothers the current leadership which understands that power and prestige are most easily acquired and unchallenged when bequeathed from above.

Truth be told, the Abbas/Dahlan alliance elicits far greater contempt in the eyes of the masters than the more independent and genuine resistance faction headed by Hamas. The numerous meetings and photo-ops between Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Abbas, and US President George Bush and Abbas, are little more than tactical stunts to make it look as though genuine negotiations are taking place. In fact, Abbas has been repeatedly by-passed and shunned when Israeli and US negotiators make the real policy decisions; decisions that remain one-sided and dismissive of any demands-other than those that are entirely self-serving-that Abbas and his entourage have made. The arms and funding channeled through Abbas' Fatah (for his clique represents only one of the many spin-off Fatahs that emerged during the second Intifada) signify little more than the conduit through which US-Israeli policies can be secured. For all the claims about US backing of Fatah, neither Abbas nor Dahlan have yet to benefit on the ground from this "support". Indeed, the ease with which Hamas was able to wrest control of Gaza indicates just how little US support for Fatah was worth there. Nevertheless, the same pipeline of support for "Fatah" has done a great deal to bolster perceived US and Israeli national security interests in the same region.


III.