For a US Campaign fact sheet on the Annapolis conference, click here.
For talking points on the Annapolis conference, written by US Campaign Steering Committee member Phyllis Bennis, see below.
UFPJ Talking Points #53
Middle East Talks in
Annapolis:Photo-Op or
Talk-Fest
By Phyllis Bennis
Institute for Policy Studies
15 November 2007
** There is one thing certain about the
international (or regional or bilateral) Middle East peace conference (or
meeting or get-together) called by Condoleezza Rice (or George Bush or Elliott
Abrams) for November (or maybe December): it’s going to be held in Annapolis,
Maryland (probably).
** Rice’s sudden renewal of
interest in and commitment to a new Middle East “peace process” has two main
goals: buying support from Arab regimes for Washington’s war in Iraq and
escalating threats against Iran, and providing a photo-op to restore Rice’s
tarnished legacy.
**The agenda for the talks has not yet been finalized, but it will not
include the goal of reversing Israeli occupation and dispossession and ending
Israel’s discriminatory apartheid policies.
**Because of U.S.-Israeli control of the agenda, “success” in Annapolis
will depend on whether the Palestinian leadership can be coerced to sign on to a
U.S.-Israeli text that many Palestinians will view as further abandonment of
Palestinian national goals, and many in international civil society will see as
violations of international law and human rights. There are serious questions
whether the meeting as currently envisioned will be convened at all because of
Palestinian refusal to accept U.S.-backed Israeli
preconditions.
**With the U.S.-Israeli-led international
boycott remaining intact, the conference is unlikely to lead to any even
short-term improvement in the humanitarian crisis exploding across Gaza.
*****
There is serious doubt about even the
official viability of the conference.Ten days from the anticipated opening, invitations have not been issued
(because Arab governments and even the Palestinian leadership have not so far
agreed to U.S.-Israeli terms), an agenda has not been announced, and no
preliminary statement of goals and/or principles has been agreed to. Palestinian
officials have so far – at least publicly – rejected at least some of Israel’s
preconditions.
Besides her urgent need to
update her legacy (which is currently that of the person who stood before the
world at the United Nations and announced “we don’t want a ceasefire yet” as
Israeli jets bombarded Lebanon in summer 2006), Secretary of State Condoleezza
Rice urgently needs to win flagging Arab government support for the Bush
administration’s failing war and occupation in Iraq and its escalating
mobilization against Iran.While most
Arab governments remain quite happy to join the U.S. crusade, their people do
not share support for the occupation of Iraq or for the anti-Iranian fervor now
ascendant in Washington. As a result, the unpopular and often unstable Arab
regimes (absolute monarchies, family dynasties and military regimes masquerading
as democracies) must provide some kind of concession for the Arab rulers to
pacify their restive populations. The latest version is to offer a high-profile
(however low the results) diplomatic show aimed at allowing Arab governments to
announce that the U.S. is now helping to give the Palestinians a state. As the
New York Times described it, “now the United States is mired in Iraq and
looking for a way to build good will among Arab allies.”
The Bush administration apparently
anticipated that Arab governments, at the highest levels, would welcome
invitations to Annapolis. But so far, even Jordan and Egypt, the two Arab
governments with full diplomatic relations with Israel, have hesitated, and
Saudi Arabia has remained unconvinced. Even if the Arab governments agree to
participate, they may send low- to mid-level officials, without the political
clout – and photo-op value – of kings and prime
ministers.
The stated U.S. goal for the Annapolis
meeting is to realize a two-state solution. But in fact, if the conference takes
place at all, the result will be to continue the approach of the long-moribund
2003 “Roadmap to Peace.”It will, at
most, provide a high-visibility launch of a new edition of the same
Israeli-Palestinian “peace process” that has failed so many times before:a process based on acceptance of Israeli
dominance over Palestinian lives and territory. Its real goal will be to create
something that the U.S. can anoint as an “independent Palestinian state,” while
leaving largely unchallenged Israeli strategic, military, and economic
domination over the entire area of
Israel-Palestine.
The meeting’s agenda will not be based on
what international law, as well as Palestinian and global public opinion,
requires for a just, lasting and comprehensive settlement of the conflict:an end to Israeli occupation and settlement
projects, realization of the Palestinians’ rights of self-determination and
return, and an end to Israeli discrimination and apartheid policies.
If the U.S.-Israeli goals for Annapolis are
realized, they would probably lead to the following “two-state solution”
results:
Borders
A Palestinian “state” would be announced on
a series of non-contiguous truncated Bantustan-like cantons comprising something
less than 50% of the West Bank plus Gaza.Israel might, with great fanfare, charitably “adjust” very slightly the
current route of the Apartheid Wall to seize slightly less land that the current
route (which Israeli Foreign Minister Tsipi Livni earlier announced would be the
basis for any border).All of the West
Bank’s major water aquifers will remain on the Israeli side of the
Wall.
Settlements
All the major
West Bank settlement blocs would remain intact on the Israeli side of the Wall,
leaving between 180,000 and 200,000 of the current 250,000 West Bank settlers in
place. With great fanfare most of the 105 small symbolic “outpost” settlements
constructed since 2001, which together house only about 2000 settlers, will be
dismantled.The entire Jordan Valley
would remain in Israeli hands. In exchange, Palestinians would be offered a
“land swap” which would almost certainly involve a significantly smaller amount
of land, of far less arability and
viability.
Refugees
The Palestinian right of return, codified
not only in general international law but specifically in UN resolution 194
(1949), has already been officially rejected by Israel but also by the United
States, in the Bush-Sharon letter exchange of April 2004. Israel’s Annapolis agenda plans to reassert
that rejection though a demand that the Palestinians accept language recognizing
the “Jewish character” of Israel, or accepting the definition of Israel as “the
state of the Jewish people” as opposed to a state of its own citizens.So far Palestinian officials have indicated
they will not accept that language, which Israeli Prime Minister Olmert says is
a precondition to any negotiations. The rejection of the right of return will be
further entrenched by an Israeli “offer” to Palestinian refugees the privilege
of “returning” to the erstwhile new “Palestinian state,” rather than the
right to return to their actual home territory inside what is now
Israel.
Jerusalem
International law (UN Security Council resolution 181, which divided
Palestine into what was supposed to become a Jewish and an Arab state) calls for
Jerusalem to belong to neither state, but rather to be a “separate body” under
international jurisdiction. Virtually no governments (not even the U.S.)
recognize Israel’s annexation of occupied Arab East Jerusalem, and numerous UN
resolutions have reaffirmed that East Jerusalem is occupied territory. The
Israeli settlements in East Jerusalem (known as neighborhoods, not settlements)
include over 200,000 Israeli settlers, and they will remain in Israeli hands.
The Israeli position in Annapolis will call for continuing Israeli control of
all of Jerusalem, with some kind of Israeli-controlled “autonomy” for
Palestinian neighborhoods and parts of the Old City’s Muslim shrines.
If the U.S.-Israeli agenda for Annapolis
succeeds with an official Palestinian imprimatur, the already reduced legitimacy
of the Palestinian Authority could diminish further, and the existing
Palestinian political crisis, especially the Fatah-Hamas divide, could be
seriously exacerbated.It is important
to remember that that the U.S. as well as Israel bear significant responsibility
for the divisions, tensions and violence inside the Palestinian polity. In his
leaked confidential report, former UN representative to the so-called Quartet,
Peruvian diplomat Alvaro de Soto stated directly that “the U.S. clearly pushed
for a confrontation between Fatah and Hamas – so much so that, a week before
Mecca [the Saudi-brokered unity agreement between the two factions], the U.S.
envoy declared twice in an envoys meeting in Washington how much ‘I like this
violence,’ referring to the near-civil war that was erupting in Gaza in which
civilians were being regularly killed and injured, because ‘it means that other
Palestinians are resisting Hamas’.”
The talks in Annapolis will
likely not even address the current humanitarian (as well as political) crisis
currently ravaging the 1.6 million people of Gaza. The U.S.-Israeli-led
international boycott of Gaza, as well as Israel’s designation of Gaza as an
“enemy entity” will remain in place.Israel’s restrictions on the supply of fuel and electricity to
Gaza have already began to bite; with electricity supplies down the availability
of fresh water is diminishing, and the declining stocks of transport fuel are
expected to reach crisis point some time in the next few days. New U.S. aid to the Palestinians recently proposed by the
Bush administration remains stalled in Congress pending “success” at Annapolis;
in any case, that aid is almost entirely limited to support, especially
military/security assistance, for the Fatah-led government in Ramallah, with
virtually nothing designated for the desperately impoverished Gaza Strip.
________________________________
Phyllis Bennis is a Fellow
of the Institute for Policy Studies and serves on the steering committee of the
U.S. Campaign to End Israeli Occupation.She is author of Understanding the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict: A
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