But, when U.S. Vice President was on an official three-day visit to Israel and the region, there were serial announcements about an increase of housing units in areas of Jewish population concentration (ok, let’s call them “settlements”) in what was the West Bank before the Israeli occupation in the June 1967 war, but which Israel insists is its unilaterally-defined “Greater Jerusalem Municipality” which will be eternally united [except for areas that Israel will unilaterally decide to cut off by The Wall, because of their dense Palestinian population].

The U.S. Administration was not amused — and let this be known both privately and publicly.

Gershon Baskin writes, in an email he sent around today, that “The facts of what really transpired are not completely known to the public. There are rumors and only limited clear facts really known. The following is what I have been able to piece together – with a clear reservation that if this scenario is incorrect then the projections may also be incorrect; however, if it is correct the situation is in fact the most serious crisis in Israel-US relations, perhaps, ever. Prior to the decision of the Arab League to support the launching of the proximity talks, the PLO presented Mitchell with a three page document with questions and firms positions regarding the beginning of the negotiations. The Palestinian paper included: negotiations will be based on the green line, the negotiations should begin where the Olmert proposal to Abbas ended, the negotiations must include all of the permanent status issues and there must be a total settlement freeze, including Jerusalem, throughout the course of the negotiations. I was told by someone who is usually a reliable Palestinian source that Senator Mitchell gave Abbas a paper with the US responses include [sic - it should probably read including, or requiring] US assurances that the Israeli building in East Jerusalem would be frozen during the period of the negotiations. If this is true, I can only assume that Netanyahu agreed to it, although he probably also agreed that there would be no Israeli announcement of this policy. Again, if this is true, then advancing the planning process of the 1600 units in Ramat Shlomo and other plans that were advanced in the District and Local planning committees at the same time is a direct breach of trust with the US and is therefore, much more serious than a bureaucratic mishap or a simple decrease in trust between the parties prior to negotiations. The depth of the breach also determines to a certain extent the depth of the policy options”.

Gershon continues: “Certainly Netanyahu’s announcement in the Knesset in front of the Brazilian President that regardless of the mishap, Israel would continue to build in all parts of East Jerusalem is a clear sign of the decision of this government to go head-to-head with President Obama. Netanyahu’s announcement followed the Clinton-Netanyahu 43-minute phone call reported in depth by Clinton and by the State Department spokesperson to the world. Clinton include three demands to Israel: (1) the withdraw the plan for the 1600 units in Ramat Shlomo, (2) to provide serious gestures to the Palestinians such as a prisoner release and checkpoint removals; and (3) to announce that all permanent status issues would be on the table during the negotiations. Netanyahu’s statement that the building in Jerusalem would continue following the US demands is a direct frontal attack on the Obama administration and cannot be viewed in any other terms”.

Then, Gershon wrote: “As I read the Israeli political map, Netanyahu, in coordination with his allies in Congress, AIPAC, and other US Jewish organizations have made a decision that President Obama will be, as far as they are concerned, a one term President. In this respect, they seek to weaken the President, regardless of the repercussions in the international community. Mid-term Congressional elections are only eight months away and the strategic map of key Congressional races has been mapped out with the goal of winning those races in Congress with the most pro-Obama members that are vulnerable. The challenge to the President by the Israeli government on the issue of building in East Jerusalem is one that will largely determine if the President is perceived in Israel , the region and the world as weak or strong. If the US administration gives in to the Government of Israel after making this such a pinnacle issue, the prestige, power and reputation of the President will be severely damaged. Ironically, Israel needs a strong US President to take on the international community vis-à-vis Iran and the Israeli challenge could in fact weaken the President and the United States . The Government of Israel does not perceive that it is the party that has climbed high up the ladder. In fact, I have been asked in the past 2 days, by the Israeli national Security Advisor and the Director of the Policy Planning Research department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Israel: ‘what will bring the Palestinians down from the top of the tree?’ ” …

Gershon asks: “Why did Netanyahu make the challenge? One, because this is his ideological position. Two, because of the coalition pressure, especially from Lieberman and Shas who have turned the issue of Israel standing up against the world in to the new Israeli worldview. Lieberman says it everyday, we will no longer give into to any international pressure, we will make the world respect Israel ! And with a not to distant leadership crisis in Shas, Eli Yishai is building his leadership around the issue of Jerusalem as the Jewish Protector of Jerusalem. Three, there is the scenario spelled out above of a determined course to weaken the President and to ensure that he will not have a second term”.

Then, he says: “With the current Israeli coalition, there is no chance at all of moving forward on the peace process with the Palestinians. It is not at all sure that it is possible to move forward as long as Netanyahu is at the head of the government. There is hope, however, that the same dynamic that has influenced other Israeli leaders to radically change their positions could also happen to Netanyahu – as Rabin, Sharon and Olmert all stated: what you see from here is different than what you see from there”.

As Gershon sees it, for the U.S.:

1. Backing down is not an option. If the US were to give into Israeli pressure, the US administration would be perceived as weak, inconsistent with their own policies, and ineffectual. The prestige of the Office of the President would be compromised and Obama as an individual would be seen as a push-over which would have deep repercussions for the US foreign policy throughout the world and especially in the Middle East . US backing down would also strengthen the myth of the power of the Jewish Lobby in the United States and would probably lead to a direct rise in anti-Semitism throughout the world. So it is essential for the President that at least the three demands issued by Secretary Clinton are met by Israel . It is likely that Secretary Clinton’s position will be strengthen from the Quartet principles meeting in Moscow today.

There is no option for the US to do nothing. It would be advised that whatever the US does, it should be done in coordination and in full collaboration with the full Quartet”.

UPDATE: Obama has invited Netanyahu to meet him in Washington next Tuesday…

UPDATE TWO: The American Task Force on Palestine’s Hussein Ibish (who happens to be Lebanese) has posted some advice to the Palestinians on his blog (Ibishblog.com):
“The Obama Administration and the Netanyahu Cabinet, especially its right wing including Interior Minister Yishai of Shas who made the decision and the announcement, have been on a collision course for many months. Their visions of long-term peace and short-term negotiation strategy are totally incompatible, and as I’ve noted in the past, we now find ourselves in a most unusual situation in which the American position is closer to the Palestinian perspective on both of these registers than to the Israeli view. The added complication is that because of domestic political considerations, the United States is still politically much closer and provides much more support to the side in the Middle East conflict it now disagrees with more. In other words, yet again, there is a fairly radical gap between policy and politics that is rendering the quest for a reasonable peace agreement, and even reasonable terms for the resumption of negotiations, dysfunctional. For the Palestinians in this situation, obviously less is more. The controversy has had a life of its own, and the less Palestinians did and do to stoke the flames, at least in any obvious way, the more traction it will have for them. When other people (in this case the Israeli government) are doing your heavy lifting for you, sit back and let it happen. For the most part, Palestinians have done and said what they should have: very little. For those who are wondering why the Ibishblog has been silent on this controversy until now, consider the usefulness sometimes of saying little to nothing, and the silliness of a knee-jerk and adolescent impulse to always want to comment on everything right away, when sometimes judicious silence can be the most effective commentary of all. Netanyahu has managed to dig himself a remarkably deep hole, and it is imperative that Palestinians do not, as they have so many times in the past, pull him out of it through their own miscalculations. This can be done by incautious words as well as ill-considered deeds. What has happened that is so useful for the Palestinians is that American and international perceptions, especially in Washington, have now been reoriented in an extremely healthy manner” …

Ibish concluded: “Palestinians need to take a very sober and cautious approach to dealing with the ongoing US-Israel confrontation over settlements. If they overplay their hand, they will fail to reap any political or diplomatic benefits from what is an extraordinary opportunity. Not only do they have to not overreact, and to cast themselves as helpful and constructive in contrast to the defiance and obduracy of the Israeli cabinet, they have to understand what is genuinely useful to them and what is not. Palestinians DO benefit from a measure of tension between Israeli and American positions that allows the United States to be more evenhanded and to use its leverage and special relationship with Israel to push Israeli policies in the right direction. However, Palestinians WILL NOT benefit from a boiling over of US-Israeli tensions that produces a level of mistrust that, while not affecting the broader strategic special relationship, prevents any serious US influence on Israeli policies, and, worse, that might induce an administration to actually walk away from the issue and abandon peace efforts. There is no point in hoping for an end to the US-Israel special relationship, since there is no way of achieving this in the foreseeable future, and no need to achieve it in order to realize an end to the occupation. Palestinians can and should look for opportunities to leverage the special relationship and use it to pursue a goal that is in not only the Palestinian and American national interests, but in Israel’s as well, even if the present Netanyahu government does not fully understand this. That’s an achievable aim, and the present US-Israel confrontation offers a rare and extraordinary opportunity to push the ball towards that goal line”. This post can be read in full here.

See our sidebars, here, on the Road Map and on Israel’s reservations.

Eldar continues: “Netanyahu argues that Sharon reached an oral agreement with George W. Bush that the construction freeze would not apply to the ’settlement blocs’ and that the United States would take into account natural-growth requirements. The prime minister therefore expects the Palestinians to honor not only formal agreements to which they were a party, but also informal understandings reached behind their backs between Israel and America. Yet when the Palestinians demand an acknowledgment of understandings they reached with the Olmert government on a number of final-status principles, Netanyahu says this is a ‘precondition that predetermines the outcome of negotiations’. The prime minister also contemptuously rejects the Palestinian demand that the talks be resumed where they were halted in December 2008. He is not prepared to even listen to the parameters for a final-status agreement proposed by Bill Clinton in December 2000. Netanyahu insists he has the right to start negotiations from square one, ignoring every agreement already reached with the Palestinians. He has even forgotten the Wye River Memorandum of 1998, under which he undertook, in Clinton’s presence, to transfer 13 percent of Area C to the Palestinians. Netanyahu sticks only to those clauses in the interim agreement (Oslo 2) that removed responsibility for the Palestinians’ welfare from Israel’s hands and left Israel in control of Area C (60 percent of the West Bank). And of course, Netanyahu is totally committed to those clauses that require the Palestinians to combat terrorist infrastructure and incitement and refrain from asking the United Nations to condemn the injustices of the occupation. Netanyahu is setting conditions for negotiations that no country would accept. His opposition to a settlement freeze and his refusal to resume talks where they left off expose his Bar-Ilan declarations as a cunning diversionary tactic”. This Akiva Eldar article can be read in full here.

Gorenberg is, in this article, reviewing a recent book by Israeli political sociologist Lev Luis Grinberg, entitled Politics and Violence in Israel/Palestine.

Gorenberg writes that “The starting point of Grinberg’s analysis is that Israel doesn’t have borders, or perhaps has too many of them: ‘If we would ask Israelis … where the state of Israel is — where its borders are — we would never receive a simple answer. … There is no consensus among Jewish citizens of the state where its borders are, where they should be, or even what the legitimate procedure is to decide on them’.”

The argument is not unlike that made by the current + previous American Secretaries of State (Clinton, Hilary + Rice, Condoleezza) who had insights about the importance of setting boundaries as an essential step in solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. (”Then we’ll know what is legal and what is not” — as if we don’t now, because it can all be negotiated, both of these women have said. Israel’s former Foreign Minister and Kadima Party leader Tzipi Livni, however, has pooh-poohed this idea by saying that Israel had no intention whatsoever of withdrawing and just “throwing the keys” over The Wall to the other side…)

Gorenberg says that “This matters, first of all, because modern democracy depends on borders that aren’t messy. ‘A precondition of democracy’, as Grinberg writes, is ‘the existence of recognized borders … which define the equal citizens of the state’. Physical boundaries allow creation of the social reality he calls ‘political space’ — the arena in which the institutions of state meet people who represent us and negotiate and compromise and make policy. When there aren’t clear borders, when there’s no agreement on who should be represented or how, violence replaces politics — as happens again and again between Israelis and Palestinians. Taking off from Benedict Anderson’s classic definition of the nation as an ‘imagined community’, Grinberg pays careful attention to imagination, positive and negative. Imagination allows us to see political representatives as standing in for us, making politics possible. Imagination lets us envision a different future. As a result of the first Palestinian Intifada in the late 1980s, many Israelis — including the influential top brass of the military — could imagine a border between Israel and the Palestinians and a political rather than a military solution to the conflict. That act of imagination opened up the space for negotiation with the Palestinians under Yitzhak Rabin’s leadership. Imagined realities can also be illusions. In the late Oslo years, Israelis imagined that they already lived in the era of peace and ignored worsening conditions in Palestinian society. When the Second Intifada erupted in 2000, imagination allowed Israelis to magnify real dangers into overwhelming ones. Wanting ‘national unity’ in the face of the threat, they let generals set policy. Debate between civil groups with alternative answers to the crisis sank to distant background noise. In Grinberg’s terms, ‘political space’ vanished. The book’s analysis does not reach the present day, but its implications do. With violence low at the moment, most Israelis can imagine that Israeli security measures alone ended the intifada and that the current quiet can last indefinitely. This is an illusion, and a dangerous one: It ignores the Palestinian Authority’s role in restoring order in the West Bank. It also ignores the frustration with blocked diplomacy that is again rising among Palestinians — and international impatience with the Netanyahu government’s foot-dragging. Imagination shapes behavior. Believing the illusion that things can go on as they are, Israelis have largely abandoned debate of alternatives. The space for politics remains closed … In fact, if there’s a reason to quibble with Grinberg, it’s his assertion that the myth of the Whole Land of Israel — of permanent Israeli possession of everything between the Mediterranean and the Jordan — has largely been undermined in mainstream Israeli politics. Netanyahu is evidence that the myth still moves extremely influential people. In physical terms, Netanyahu’s imagined Israel is the whole land. In political terms, it includes only Jews”…

Gorenberg’s book review can be read in full here.

Col. (Res.) Shaul Arieli, on the other hand, has a very concrete, reality-based view of borders. Now a member of the board of directors for Israel’s Council for Peace and Security, Arieli was an aide to former Prime Minister Ehud Barak during the heady days of the Camp David talks hosted by former U.S. President Bill Clinton in July 2000, and at the Taba talks that took place in January 2001, just before Barak was voted out of office. Arieli went on to become the map expert for the Israeli team of the Geneva Initiative co-launched by Israel’s Yossi Beilin and the P.L.O.’s Yasser Abed Rabbo.

In an article published this weekend in Haaretz, Arieli reveals surprising new details about Israeli and Palestinian negotiating positions: “One of the most difficult issues to be faced in the negotiations between us and the Palestinians relates to the number of settlers who are supposed to be evacuated. The number stands at between 110,000, according to Mahmoud Abbas’s suggestion, and the 70,000 that Ehud Barak and Ehud Olmert have suggested. The total number of Israelis living across the Green Line is currently half a million”.

Is it really possible that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas wants only one quarter of the Israeli/Jewish settlers evacuated from the West Bank (including East Jerusalem)?

Arieli notes that “In 1947, when a UN commission determined the partition borders, it left behind some 10,000 Jews in the planned Arab state. It saw in their presence, just as in the presence of an Arab minority in the Jewish state, a kind of guarantee that would ensure cooperation between the new states. And indeed, the presence of a Jewish minority in Palestine will serve as a challenge to both states and will oblige them to relate to questions of civic equality, cultural autonomy and participation in government … A solution whereby the settlers remain under Palestinian government will relieve Israel of having to deal with their evacuation, but it is likely to undermine Israel’s stance with regard to territorial exchanges … A solution that leaves settlers in Palestinian territory will necessitate relating to the scope of the area including 96 settlements that is not included in Israel’s territorial demands, or to the 107 that are outside the Palestinian proposal. Their joint area covers between 83,000 and 114,000 dunams, which constitute 1.5 to 2.0 percent of the area of the West Bank, according to the respective positions of the sides … The sides will not be able to evade dealing also with the status of these lands. Since 1967 and to this day – despite rulings by the High Court of Justice which barred it – Israel has continued to build settlements and outposts on private land. They today constitute some 40 percent of the lands of the settlements that lie east of the separation fence. Both Israel and Palestine will be obliged to show great generosity toward the owners of these lands, so that they will be willing to accept the settlers as their neighbors. In order to make this solution more feasible, steps must be taken to block the continued intensification of its disadvantages. First, Israel must cease expanding the settlements that lie outside the line of its positions. The permission granted ‘during the year of freeze’ for some 1,500 new housing units east of the fence, and the granting of national priority status to isolated settlements, are not the way to do this. On the other hand, stopping the ‘laundering’ and the evacuation of unauthorized outposts – of which, according to Peace Now figures, approximately 84 are located either completely or partly on private land – can reduce the private lands problem. Palestine and Israel can exist with a Jewish and Arab minority in their midst. The establishment of a Palestinian state will ensure, firstly, that the Palestinians will be able to realize their right to self-determination outside the borders of Israel, and secondly, that those who do not grow accustomed to being a minority will always be able to emigrate to the homeland of their nation that lies across the border”. Arieli’s thoughts on this matter can be viewed in full here.

Another view was expressed in a recent press conference given by Major-General (Res) Giora Eiland at Mishkenot Shaananim in West Jerusalem, who said that there was no way it would be economically feasible or possible to relocate what he said would be “120,000 Israeli citizens — fifteen times more than the number of Israelis evacuated from Gaza five years ago — including from really big towns with a lot of emotional significance to Israelis”.

Eiland did not elaborate on which “towns” (settlements) carried such emotional significance for Israelis, or why.

Nor is it clear how Eiland arrived at the figure of only 120,000 settlers (out of 500,000 — including those in East Jerusalem) who would have to be evacuated…

Eiland put the direct cost — and, he stressed, this would be only the civilian cost, not including the military expenses — of such a “relocation operation” at more than $30 billion U.S. dollars. “These figures are not affordable”, Eiland said. In addition, he added, such a “relocation” would also entail a need to “redesign the infrastructure of the state of Israel”….

“QUESTION: There’s been several Arab media or Middle Eastern media reports that George Mitchell offered his resignation, and just seeing if you might be able to confirm – it was – which was refused.

MR. CROWLEY: I have no idea. (Laughter.) I mean, look. He is – if you know George Mitchell, he’s committed to this and he is an extraordinarily patient man. When you look – when he talks about his experiences in Northern Ireland over several years, that – he understands that it will just take hard work and determination that finally will create that tipping point where the parties will commit, seriously address the issues, and move towards a settlement. So I don’t – I see nothing but determination in George Mitchell’s eyes“…

Why do people wait so long to say these things?

What would have happened if he had said it loudly, publicly, insistently, repetitiously, at the time?

If he’s here, at the Quartet’s quarters in The American Colony Hotel in East Jerusalem once a month, that’s a lot.

It’s not that the problems here aren’t urgent.

But, as a seasoned politician, Blair doesn’t want to waste his “image” on just spinning his wheels for nothing.

But now, the U.S. is hard up. The Obama Administration’s efforts have not “yielded fruit”, crushing everybody’s hopes.

And, just as there have been calls over the past year-and-half or so for Tony Blair to resign as Quartet representative [and for the UNSG to resign as well], there have been calls on the past couple of months for George Mitchell to resign.

But, that would be to admit defeat — and that won’t happen, at least not quite yet.

So, now there is new idea: a decision for Blair + Mitchell to work together.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton announced yesterday in Washington that “Consistent with Prime Minister Fayyad’s plan for a future Palestinian state, Tony Blair, as the Quartet representative, will intensify his partnership with Senator Mitchell in support of the political negotiations”, as we also reported here.

While I wondererd if it were an upgrade, or a downgrade — I’d say it’s an upgrade, because from the time of his appointment (immediately after leaving his post as Prime Minister of the U.K.) until now, Tony Blair was restricted to dealing with “economic” improvement of the Palestinian situation, a battle in which he has declared victory numerous times.

Now, with this new announcement from Washington, Blair is now upgraded to working in support of “the political negotiations”, mainly but not exclusively in efforts to revive direct Israeli-Palestinian talks.

This is a little bit confusing. Surely the reporter doesn’t mean all of Area C? This is where the Israeli settlements are located, and Israel will not turn them over to the PA, at least not now. Area C, a designation of Palestinian territory where Israel retains full security control according to terms of the Oslo Accords (which divided the West Bank into Areas A, B, and C in the mid-1990s), comprises over 60% of the West Bank.

Some of the West Bank’s prime agricultural land is also Area C — as are most major and many minor roads. Palestinians living in Area C have had great difficulty in getting permits to build (n.b. — except, as I have written many times before on this blog, in the “Seam Zone” of Dahiet al-Bariid on the Israeli side of The Wall, and their permits were obtained from the ar-Ram municipal council, on the Palestinian side of The Wall).

There have been rumors in the regional media for weeks about discussions of possible “upgrading” of at least parts of Area C into Area B (where there is supposed to be joint Israel-Palestinian security control), and of Area B into Area A (where there is supposed to be full Palestinian control, such as the city of Ramallah).

According to today’s YNet report, the Palestinian source said that “The Israelis have expressed their willingness to seriously implement a real ease of restrictions, and not a fictitious one, which would help the Palestinian Authority … We will see how Mitchell’s ideas are accepted by Arab states before we deliver response to the American side,’ he added. The source also said that according to Mitchell’s latest offers, the negotiations between Israel and the PA would resume in stages and on two different levels. According to the source, the parties would first clarify the basic guidelines of the talks on an indirect channel. If the first stage is believed to be a success, it would be followed by negotiations between high-ranking officials. ‘In any case, it must end with a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders’, the source stated. Nonetheless, the PA sources found it difficult to estimate whether Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas planned to return to the negotiation table, but said that Mitchell’s proposals guaranteed a real examination of the talks’ framework and each party’s need to meet its commitments. ‘The same question remains whether the Israelis are serious or not’, the source said. ‘We don’t want talks about willingness to make far-reaching moves, but actions on the ground – led by a stop to settlements’.” This article by Ali Waked is posted
here.

At the beginning of the month of January, Ali Waked reported in YNet that “The Palestinian sources said senior Egyptian and American officials are scheduled to hold discussions over the course of the next two weeks in hopes that they will give US special Mideast envoy George Mitchell the opportunity to present an agreement on the resumption of peace talks as early as the second half of January. The sources said the negotiations will be based on the ‘Clinton outline’, according to which Arab neighborhoods in east Jerusalem will be under the sovereignty of the Palestinian Authority, while the Jewish quarters will remain under Israeli rule. According to the sources, a team led by chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat had met with Israeli negotiators headed by Netanyahu advisor Attorney Yitzhak Molcho to determine the general guidelines for the peace talks. [n.b. - reports emerged elsewhere during the month that Erekat was meeting Israel's State President Shimon Peres, informally, on a weekly basis]
One of these guidelines states that the process will result in the establishment of an independent Palestinian state and that all of the core issues, including Jerusalem and the status of the Palestinian refugees, would be put on the table. The parties, said the sources, agreed that the 1967 borders would be the basis for any negotiation. The Palestinians said Israel refuses to put a time limit on the negotiations, which they said would be conducted during the temporary settlement construction freeze recently declared by Israel”…

This same article, published on 1 January, also reported that “Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met Mubarak in Cairo earlier this week. According to the Prime Minister’s Office, ‘The two leaders discussed ways to jumpstart the peace process with the Palestinians, as well as the efforts to release kidnapped soldier Gilad Shalit’ … During his talks with Mubarak, Netanyahu stated that Israel’s conditions include Palestinian recognition of Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state and the demilitarization of a future Palestinian state. The PM stressed that while he does not oppose discussions on the core issues, the refugee issue would not be resolved by Israel and Jerusalem’s status as Israel’s united capital was indisputable. According to his past statements, Netanyahu would agree to the establishment of a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders without ceding territories that include large settlement blocs or settlements that are deemed vital to Israel’s security”. [n.b. - I am not so sure about how liberally the last sentence should be interpreted...]. This article can be viewed here.

Coming back to Area C, The Independent’s veteran correspondent in Lebanon, Robert Fisk, was apparently in Israel and the West Bank recently. He published two articles yesterday, fuming about restrictions and conditions for the Palestinians living in Area C — a designation he called a “sinister sobriquet”. [Fisk also argues that the real disaster is in the West Bank, not in Jerusalem -- a view which is the inverse of the positions of many Israeli activists...]

In the first, entitled “Why does the US turn a blind eye to Israeli bulldozers? Most of the West Bank is under rule which amounts to apartheid by paper”, Fisk wrote that “This majority of the West Bank – known under the defunct Oslo Agreement’s sinister sobriquet as ‘Area C” – has already fallen under an Israeli rule which amounts to apartheid by paper: a set of Israeli laws which prohibit almost all Palestinian building or village improvements, which shamelessly smash down Palestinian homes for which permits are impossible to obtain, ordering the destruction of even restored Palestinian sewage systems. Israeli colonists have no such problems; which is why 300,000 Israelis now live – in 220 settlements which are all internationally illegal – in the richest and most fertile of the Palestinian occupied lands. When Obama’s elderly envoy George Mitchell headed home in humiliation this week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu celebrated his departure by planting trees in two of the three largest Israeli colonies around Jerusalem. With these trees at Gush Etzion and Ma’aleh Adumim, he said, he was sending ‘a clear message that we are here. We will stay here. We are planning and we are building’. These two huge settlements, along with that of Ariel to the north of Jerusalem, were an ‘indisputable part of Israel forever’. It was Netanyahu’s victory celebration over the upstart American President who had dared to challenge Israel’s power not only in the Middle East but in America itself. And while the world this week listened to Netanyahu in the Holocaust memorial commemoration for the genocide of six million Jews, abusing Iran as the new Nazi Germany – Iran’s loony president supposedly as evil as Hitler – the hopes of a future ‘Palestine’ continued to dribble away. President Ahmadinejad of Iran is no more Adolf Hitler than the Israelis are Nazis. But the ‘threat’ of Iran is distracting the world. So is Tony Blair yesterday, trying to wriggle out of his bloody responsibility for the Iraq disaster. The real catastrophe, however, continues just outside Jerusalem, amid the fields, stony hills and ancient caves of most of the West Bank”. This Robert Fisk article is published here.

In the second of his two articles published yesterday, whose title asserts that “Palestine is slowly dying”, Fisk writes that “A drive along the wild roads of Area C – from the outskirts of Jerusalem to the semi-humid basin of the Jordan valley – runs through dark hills and bare, stony valleys lined with deep, ancient caves, until, further east, lie the fields of the Palestinians and the Jewish settlers’ palm groves – electrified fences round the groves – and the mud or stone huts of Palestinian sheep farmers. This paradise is a double illusion. One group of inhabitants, the Israelis, may remember their history and live in paradise. The smaller group, the Palestinian Arabs, are able to look across these wonderful lands and remember their history – but they are already out of paradise and into limbo. Even the western NGOs working in Area C find their work for Palestinians blocked by the Israelis. This is not just a ‘hitch’ in the ‘peace process’ – whatever that is – but an international scandal. Oxfam, for example, asked the Israelis for a permit to build a 300m2 capacity below-ground reservoir along with 700m of underground 4in pipes for the thousands of Palestinians living around Jiftlik. It was refused. They then gave notice that they intended to construct an above-ground installation of two glass-fibre tanks, an above-ground pipe and booster pump. They were told they would need a permit even though the pipes were above ground – and they were refused a permit. As a last resort, Oxfam is now distributing rooftop water tanks. I came across an even more outrageous example of this apartheid-by-permit in the village of Zbeidat, where the European Union’s humanitarian aid division installed 18 waste water systems to prevent the hamlet’s vile-smelling sewage running through the gardens and across the main road into the fields. The £80,000 system – a series of 40ft shafts regularly flushed out by sewage trucks – was duly installed because the location lay inside Area B, where no planning permission was required. Yet now the aid workers have been told by the Israelis that work ‘must stop’ on six of the 18 shafts – a prelude to their demolition, although already they are already built beside the road – because part of the village stands in Area C. Needless to say, no one – neither Palestinians nor Israelis – knows the exact borderline between B and C. Thus around £20,000 of European money has been thrown away by the Israeli ‘Civil Administration’ [n.b. - despite its name, this is a part of the Israeli military]. But in one way, this storm of permission and non-permission papers is intended to obscure the terrible reality of Area C. Many Israeli activists as well as western NGOs suspect Israel intends to force the Palestinians here to leave their lands and homes and villages and depart into the wretchedness of Areas B and A. B is jointly controlled by Israeli military and civil authorities and Palestinian police, and A by the witless Palestinian Authority of Mahmoud Abbas. Thus would the Palestinians be left to argue over a mere 40 per cent of the occupied West Bank – in itself a tiny fraction of the 22 per cent of Mandated Palestine over which the equally useless Yasser Arafat once hoped to rule. Add to this the designation of 18 per cent of Area C as ‘closed military areas’ by the Israelis and add another 3 per cent preposterously designated as a ‘nature reserve’ – it would be interesting to know what kind of animals roam there – and the result is simple: even without demolition orders, Palestinians cannot build in 70 per cent of Area C. Along one road, I discovered a series of large concrete blocks erected by the Israeli army in front of Palestinian shacks. ‘Danger – Firing Area’ was printed on each in Hebrew, Arabic and English. ‘Entrance Forbidden’. What are the Palestinians living here supposed to do?”
This Robert Fisk article can be read in full here.

According to another report also posted this evening in Haaretz. “Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said on Saturday that he was considering the U.S. proposal to start indirect talks with Israel. Abbas was referring to a proposal made by U.S. Mideast envoy, George Mitchell, who suggested that negotiations between Israel and the PA would take place in the format of proximity talks, similar to the indirect negotiations that Israel held with Syria under Prime Minister Ehud Olmert” …

his Haaretz article continues: “Mitchell proposes that he travel between Jerusalem and Ramallah, relaying messages to the two sides on various core issues, including borders, Jerusalem, refugees and security. At a later stage the talks might be taken over by low-level officials on both sides to evaluate if negotiations can be continued at top levels. Speaking to reporters in London, Abbas said he intended to consult with other Arab states over the U.S. proposal. He said he was under no pressure from the Arab states to restart negotiations and instead emphasized the need for a complete building freeze in the settlements. Abbas added that the PA and Israel had come to a security agreement that would be implemented once Israel Defense Forces troops pulled out of Palestinian land. On Friday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu agreed to the release of hundreds of Fatah prisoners as part of efforts to jump-start the peace talks”. This report is published here.

In a briefing at the U.S. State Department in Washington on 26 January, Acting Deputy Department Spokesman Mark C. Toner told journalist that “Special Envoy for Middle East Peace George Mitchell completed a series of meetings in Lebanon, Syria, Israel, the Palestinian territories, Jordan and Egypt. We remain committed to achieving our goal of comprehensive peace in the Middle East. With the Israelis and Palestinians, Special Envoy Mitchell continued the two-pronged approach we have consistently pursued: (1) To encourage the parties to enter negotiations to reach agreement on all permanent status issues; and (2) to help the Palestinians build the economy and institutions that will be necessary when a Palestinian state is established. The two objectives are mutually reinforcing. Each is essential. Neither can be attained without the other. Special Envoy Mitchell will be following up with the parties in the coming days and he will return to the region in the near future”.

At about the same time, Israel’s Defense Minister Ehud Barak “called on Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to return to the negotiating table. ‘I am proud to be a member of a government that has taken upon itself the responsibility of addressing issues pertaining to the Road Map’, he said. While Israel is the strongest country in the region, Barak said that time ‘is not on our side. We need to stand with our eyes open and stable feet… to look for a crack or a window to make peace’, he said. ‘We have a paramount interest in establishing defined borders between ourselves and the Palestinians, that will set the stage for two states for two peoples’.” Barak also said that “uranium enrichment on Iranian soil cannot be legitimized, since this will lead to an Iranian military nuclear capability”. These remarks were reported by the Jerusalem Post here.

The two men reportedly met again on Sunday, in Amman — after Mitchell had a second meeting while in the region with Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu. — and no details of the second meeting have been released.

But, according to the Ma’an report today, Presidential aide Nimr Hammad said “that Abbas asked first that Israel commit to a settlement freeze even for a limited period of time. He also asked that negotiations be on the basis of a withdrawal” to the lines of 4 June 1967.

The Presidential aide offered the following summary of the Friday meeting:

“Mitchell: The Israelis have requested renewed negotiations, saying they froze settlements for ten months.

“Abbas: Go to Jerusalem and see for yourself the settlement activity and Judaization of the city – you’ll see the situation on the ground looks nothing like a settlement freeze.

“Mitchell: The Israelis could take confidence-building steps like releasing prisoners, removing checkpoints, changing areas classified as “C” [according to the Oslo Accords] to “B” classification, and areas “B” to “A.”

“Abbas: This is a good thing.

“Mitchell: But there’s a prerequisite for that, resuming negotiations.

“Abbas: We welcome these ideas but not as preconditions for talks.

“After this dialogue, Mitchell suggested indirect negotiations between other parties, during which he would shuffle between other sides, including the Palestinians, Syrians, and Lebanese.

This summary account of last Friday’s Abu Mazen-George Mitchell talks is published here.

Separately, Ma’an also reported today that “Peace talks with the current Israeli administration are doubtful on account of its ’stubbornness, procrastination, refusal to respond to the requirements of peace and to recognize East Jerusalem as the capital of a Palestinian state’, said member of Fatah’s Central Committee Nabil Sha’th on Tuesday”. This was reported by Ma’an here.

Meanwhile, Haaretz reported that one of its journalists have done an nvestigation on the ground in the West Bank, and discovered that “Israel claims to have eased Palestinian movement in the West Bank, but the Palestinians insist that more roadblocks have been appearing throughout the area. It turns out both Israel and the Palestinians are telling the truth, Haaretz has learned … The number of manned checkpoints across the territory has remarkably decreased, particularly those placed near central large cities – as per U.S. President Barack Obama’s demand. However, the Palestinian Authority has complained of a growing number of roadblocks. A Haaretz probe reveals that while the number of checkpoints with a consistent Israel Defense Forces presence has indeed dropped, the army has been positioning more roadblocks with only sporadic supervision on an operational basis. This phenomenon is true not only along the Green Line, but also near major cities in the northern West Bank – including Ramallah, Nablus and Tul Karm … The unmanned roadblocks have not eased movement, according to the Palestinians, because of the severe traffic jams they create. The IDF troops sporadically manning these stations tend to carry out meticulous searches, again causing severe delays and making movement slow. The IDF admitted that its troops sometimes conduct extensive searches at the unmanned roadblocks, but said such checks were warranted by specific intelligence information”. This report was published on the Haaretz website here.

On this point, YNet followed up today on an earlier report, and stated that “A senior American diplomat recently told representatives of the Israeli Defense and Foreign ministries, ‘I don’t want your security officers to check our cars. What if there are settlers among them? I will not have my people end up like (slain Prime Minister Yitzhak) Rabin’. The remark was made by Tim Laas, the regional security officer at the American Consulate in Jerusalem, during a discussion in the office of Deputy Inspector General Meir Ben-Yishai, head of security at the Israel Police. The discussion was held following a serious diplomatic incident, which took place about two months ago at the Gilboa crossing in the Jenin area, when a Defense Ministry inspectors stationed at crossing between Israel and the Palestinian Authority stopped a convoy of vehicles belonging to the American Consulate. The security guards asked the convoy passengers to identify themselves, but the latter refused to open a door or a window and barricaded themselves inside the vehicles in protest of the Israeli demand to run a security check, blocking the crossing for hours”.

The inviolability of diplomatic vehicles is something that arises episodically in the West Bank and in Gaza, as Israeli soldiers try, periodically, to erode long-standing diplomatic conventions. It is not entirely clear from the YNet report today how this is being resolved — but it sounds like yet another version of “We’ve done a thorough investigation and found that we are right and you are wrong”.

The YNet report, somewhat incomprehensibly, says that “Following the incident, the Defense Ministry filed a complaint with the Foreign Ministry against the American Embassy and is considering filing a complaint with the police against the Palestinian drivers. Laas said during the discussion, ‘It’s inconceivable that American diplomats should have to open a door to identify themselves. I find it unacceptable to have a simple guard run a security check on senior officials and diplomats. We are not a Coca Cola truck’. A representative of the American Embassy apologized for the incident during the meeting. Foreign Ministry representative Gil Lainer said that ‘there are procedures and rules and they must be honored’. Deputy Inspector General Ben-Yishai concluded the discussion by saying that the Americans acted inappropriately and that the security guards were simply trying to check the Palestinians driving the vehicles. At the end of the discussion it was decided to form new procedures, according to which only Palestinian drivers would be checked and passengers refusing to identify themselves would be detained for an unlimited period of time“. This YNet report can be read in full here.

The Director of Policy and Government Relations at the Washington-based group Americans for Peace Now (APN is a spin-off of the original Israeli Peace Now movement), Lara Friedman, wrote last week in a post entitled Democracy in jeopardy: Israel intensifying efforts to quash dissent, published here on the APN website that “It is clear to all of us who work on issues related to peace, human rights or Israeli civil society, that the government of Israel is deliberately and systematically upping the ante and increasing the pressure on those who do not toe the Israel policy line. We are seeing this in the treatment of foreigners who have anything to do with the Palestinians … We are seeing it, too, in the outrageous tactics being used against peaceful and legal protests against the situation in Sheikh Jarrah … And we are seeing this in the heavy-handed approach to foreign diplomats posted to Israel … Israel’s foreign minister is accusing diplomats of smuggling money into Gaza and is establishing a new policy requiring that diplomats and their cars be searched before entering Gaza … [n.b. - The original report is published in translation from the Hebrew on Didi Remez' blog here, which notes that Israeli authorities are vowing to conduct intensified searches at Erez crossing to prevent the transfer of amounts more than 90,000 N.I.S., or shekels, even divided among multiple vehicles ...].

Lara Friedman then comments that “In one fell swoop Israel is (a) implicitly accusing foreign diplomats of financing Hamas and (b) throwing away hundreds of years of diplomatic custom that makes diplomats (their persons and their vehicles) immune from search. Does Israel seriously expect diplomats to agree to this? Of course not, but the result will be a ‘chilling effect’ – as in, no country will agree to have its diplomats subjected to such treatment and therefore diplomats will stop going to Gaza. This is just the latest effort to make life difficult for diplomats whose job it is to deal with the Palestinians.  Precedents include the harassment of US diplomats entering and exiting the West Bank, under the pretext that they might be smuggling Palestinians into Israel.  The implication, of course, is that Israel cannot trust US diplomats – like General Keith Dayton – not to smuggle terrorists into Israel. (The original headline of the linked article, which ran as a Jerusalem Post ‘exclusive’, read ‘US consulate car tried to run over checkpoint guard‘ – this is the headline that still shows up in google and in the tab on the top of the JPost page; it was subsequently amended to ‘nearly runs over guard’ – perhaps after a US protest – but the original has been copied all over the internet) … We are also seeing this with attacks – some by the government, some by Knesset firebrands and their supporters (and not opposed in any way publicly by the government) – on funding for Israeli NGOs working on these issues”…

Meanwhile, Akiva Eldar reported in Haaretz today that “Monday morning, as George Mitchell was on the way home from another diplomatic mission short on breakthroughs, Saeb Erekat did not sound dismayed. On the contrary, the head of the Palestinian negotiation team vehemently argued that the American envoy’s last visit actually moved up the moment of truth for the White House. The veteran adviser to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s favorite move of throwing the ball into the Palestinians’ court stopped working with the Americans. They are patiently waiting for the prime minister’s answer to two questions: First, is he ready for the negotiations to pick up where they left off at the end of the former prime minister Ehud Olmert’s term? Second, does he accept the principle that the territory transferred to a Palestinian state will be the same size as the territory captured by Israel in the West Bank and Gaza during the Six-Day War. The international community’s patience, Erekat concluded, is wearing thin. Erekat is not alone in his thinking. Over the weekend, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon pointed at Israel as not only the one responsible for the stagnation in the diplomatic process, but also for the thawing of the freeze on construction in the settlements. Two months after the government decision on November 26 to freeze construction in Jewish settlements for 10 months, you’d have to be blind, an idiot, or a member of the Yesha Council of settlements to use the term ‘freeze’ to describe the real estate situation in Judea and Samaria … The Civil Administration confirmed that the freeze also applied to industrial and commercial zones, and that surveys conducted last week in the Ariel region found several violations of the freeze order and an injunction to halt the construction was even issued. So what? As mentioned, two days ago Haaretz documented bulldozers at work there (and also in the Barkan industrial zone) … It seems that the freeze on the construction of new industrial zones in national priority zones of the government in the heart of the West Bank is not at the top of the defense minister’s list of priorities. He apparently was busy upgrading the status of Ariel University Center of Samaria. Netanyahu’s colleagues will probably explain to the Americans that besides for the settlers, factories also experience natural growth”. This Akiva Eldar report can be read in full here.

Here is an extended excerpt from the Haaretz article:

“I do not believe that in the foreseeable future there is a possibility of an agreement with the Palestinians on all the issues, especially on the problematic core issues,” says Udi Dekel, who headed the negotiations task force in the previous government. Dekel spoke on Thursday at a conference on the unofficial “Geneva Initiative” peace plan … He was highly critical of the negotiating tactics of former prime minister Ehud Olmert and his Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni in their dealings with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and the head of his negotiating team, Ahmed Qureia. “The biggest mistake was that everything was based on the premise that nothing is agreed until everything is agreed,” Dekel said. “We thought at the time that this could provide the necessary flexibility in the negotiations, but in practice, every time someone showed flexibility, the other side tried to pin him down. Therefore, I suggest that the model be changed and that whatever is agreed is implemented.”

The Haaretz article continued:
“According to Dekel the Palestinians refused to show any flexibility in their positions during the talks, preferring to remain stalemated rather than lower their aspirations. “The Palestinian approach was in principle the demand of 100 percent of their rights from 1967. The practical aspect interested them less. They are not willing to discuss any further compromise,” he said. “We tried to build scenarios, some of them were imaginary, about specific compromises, but we found the Palestinians taking an approach of ‘all or nothing.’” Dekel said that agreement was reached on the need to reach full accord and that four stages toward that end had been determined. He said that American involvement, which intensified as time went on, encumbered the negotiations. “So long as the two sides negotiated, there was some progress. The minute (Secretary of State Condoleezza) Rice’s teams went into the details the two sides barricaded themselves behind their basic positions, and instead of the negotiations progressing, they regressed,” Dekel said. “The Palestinians understood that the Americans were closer to their position on the issues of Jerusalem, the borders and security, and opted to wait it out.” Dekel said at Thursday’s conference that in spite of the difficulty in achieving a settlement the need for a change in the situation was urgent. He proposed adoption of a plan floated by Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad under which the focus would be the swift establishment of a Palestinian state, with borders and security the first issues to be negotiated. “The rest would be discussed in parallel but the establishment of a state would not be conditional on an overall agreement,” Dekel said. “The two sides are not ready for this at the moment and we should not believe that there is a way to get the sides to understand that this is the only relevant solution in this time frame.” Dekel maintains that Israel’s position in the negotiations was meant to include within its territory as many settlers as possible. “On the issue of security we are talking, first and foremost, on defensible borders. And when we look at the maps, in the end we evaluate the borders on the basis of how many residents we will not have to move from their homes and the defensible borders issue becomes of secondary importance.” He added that the Palestinians came to the negotiations more prepared than the Israelis and were ready with drafts of their proposals while his staff were lacking notes from past negotiating rounds. “When I went to look for the material from the year 2000 [from Camp David talks and Taba] we could [not] find anything. It seems as though someone made sure it disappeared. That is why we restarted collecting the material, and were assisted by documents from the Geneva Convention,” Dekel said. Responding to Dekel, Shaul Arieli, who coordinated the negotiating task force a decade before him, said that when his teams ended their activity in 2000 they lodged all relevant documents with the national archive and the prime minister’s office. “Therefore,” Arieli said. “If you did not find the material, then someone worked very, very hard, for the material to disappear.”

This account was reported in Haaretz here.