Why is the U.S. so oblivious to all of this? Why does it think that it is tolerable for people (Palestinians, in this case) to have to live under these conditions, under this occupation?

Here is a synopsis of what we’ve posted on our sister blog, www.UN-Truth.org, in recent days:

The latest U.S. position — scrapping its efforts to get Israel to extend its one-time unilataral settlement “moratorium” which expired on 26 September — is simply resuming former American positions. “The recommendation to decide on borders first, because this would determine which settlements are ‘illegal’, dates back a position formulated by the previous U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice during the Annapolis process of negotiations that began at the end of November 2007, just over three years ago. The flaw here is that Israeli negotiators [and apparently also the Americans] seem to believe that the Palestinians they are dealing with will accept large-scale territorial swaps which may legitimize the major Israeli “settlement blocs” in the West Bank. However, for Palestinians, all the Israeli settlements constructed on land that Israel occupied in the 1967 war are illegal. And, there is absolutely no evidence whatsoever that the Palestinians are ready to do engage in swaps on such a large scale, though Palestinian negotiators have stated that a compromise may be reached on something about halfway between the 2.4 percent or so of the West Bank that the Palestinians have suggested, and the 9 percent or so that they say the Israelis have put on the table … All of this is predicated on the assumption that the Palestinians will agree, now, to go ahead with the tweaked American approach while Israeli construction in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, proceeds apace… and here again, there is little evidence that the Palestinian leadership will be able to agree to do so, even if it wanted to”. We published this last week, here.

A day later, we wrote this: At the Saban Forum in Washington on Friday, “Clinton indicated that sometime between September and 10 December ‘both sides decided together to pursue a framework agreement that would establish the fundamental compromises on all permanent status issues and pave the way for a final peace treaty’. So, how does the U.S. intend to proceed, now that it has announced it has abandoned attempts to persuade Israel to reinstate a ‘moratorium’ on settlement building in the West Bank (including East Jerusalem)?
Note the key phrase here, core issues:
…”in the days ahead, our discussions with both sides will be substantive two-way conversations with an eye toward making real progress in the next few months on the key questions of an eventual framework agreement. The United States will not be a passive participant. We will push the parties to lay out their positions on the core issues without delay and with real specificity. We will work to narrow the gaps asking the tough questions and expecting substantive answers. And in the context of our private conversations with the parties, we will offer our own ideas and bridging proposals when appropriate” …

But, what does it mean to say that the U.S. will deepen its support for Palestinian “state-building efforts”, while seeming to disagree with moves (at least, unilateral moves) to seek United Nations membership + recognition for a Palestinian State? On the face of it, this can only mean one thing: the U.S. will continue to throw money at the Palestinian Authority, while doing nothing to end the occupation… and the day-to-day misery and depression among Palestinians will continue, as the risk of mini-explosions of violence grows. [However, there is no prospect now of any outright revolt, or any new Intifada -- both because there is "no decision" for this, as Hanan Ashrawi recently said, and there has simply been no preparation at all, either].

So, just more of the miserable and soul-deadening status quo, with misleading statistics about Palestinian economic growth [in the West Bank], and a slight rise in Palestinian income [again, only in the West Bank], and extremely misleading stories about the Ramallah “bubble” and the frenetic nightlife [NOT] of its party people. Can’t the U.S. do any better than this?
This was posted here.

Earlier in the week, we had these observations: “Meanwhile, in the face of the now-widely-proclaimed death of U.S.-led peace efforts, the latest Palestinian debate (beyond one state vs. two) is:
(1) whether to move, in the United Nations (Security Council and General Assembly) to secure full membership + recognition for the State of Palestine (this is the position of the two-staters, including the current Palestinian leadership), or
(2) to disband Palestinian Authority, and make Israel face up to its costly responsibilities as occupier (this is the position of those Palestinians who are furious and fed up with false negotiations and who believe in continued resistance — though it will surely cost the Palestinians dearly).

But, for Palestinians, the Israeli refusal to extend its unilateral ten-month settlement ‘moratorium’ is the reason for the failure of American efforts to restart negotiations. Israelis say, in riposte, that Palestinian ‘preconditions’ undid any deal.

There is considerable Israeli commentary this week to the effect that Palestinian moves to seek recognition + UN membership are only ‘empty threats to squeeze concessions from Israel’. The energy being put into public argumentation against this strategy to legitimize a Palestinian state, however, belies the claim that it is an empty threat … Israelis also say that the furious Palestinian reaction to Israeli demands for recognition as a Jewish State have raised many major questions. Palestinians say this is an unreasonable demand that was not required for Israeli peace deals with neighboring Egypt or Jordan, and they also argue that it is Israeli code for refusal to deal justly with the Palestinian refugee issue which also gives an advance pass to possible further ethnic cleansing. (Israeli-Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel have strongly urged the Palestinian Authority to reject this Israeli demand, also for the reason just given.)

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) is reported to have told his team to move to Plan B, while Egypt — playing the good cop — is asking the Palestinian leadership to hold off until an Arab League meeting next week (16 December) which will endorse whatever the Palestinians want (with significant Egyptian input). Meanwhile, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton may, or may not, present some kind of formal American proposal. And U.S. Special Envoy George Mitchell is due back in the area at the end of the weekend. This was published here.

This Akiva Eldar report is posted here.

About a week ago, as the NY Times reported from Washington on 15 April, Obama said that a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was “a vital national security interest of the United States”.

As the NY Times wrote: “It was just a phrase at the end of President Obama’s news conference on Tuesday, but it was a stark reminder of a far-reaching shift in how the United States views the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and how aggressively it might push for a peace agreement. When Mr. Obama declared that resolving the long-running Middle East dispute was a “vital national security interest of the United States,” he was highlighting a change that has resulted from a lengthy debate among his top officials over how best to balance support for Israel against other American interests. This shift, described by administration officials who did not want to be quoted by name when discussing internal discussions, is driving the White House’s urgency to help broker a Middle East peace deal. It increases the likelihood that Mr. Obama, frustrated by the inability of the Israelis and the Palestinians to come to terms, will offer his own proposed parameters for an eventual Palestinian state … Mr. Obama’s words reverberated through diplomatic circles in large part because they echoed those of Gen. David H. Petraeus, the military commander overseeing America’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In recent Congressional testimony, the general said that the lack of progress in the Middle East created a hostile environment for the United States … The glimmers of daylight between United States and Israeli interests began during President George W. Bush’s administration, when the United States became mired in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Three years ago, Condoleezza Rice, then secretary of state, declared during a speech in Jerusalem that a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians was a ‘strategic interest’ of the United States … ‘In the past, the problem of who drinks out of whose well in Nablus has not been a strategic interest of the United States’, said Martin S. Indyk, a former United States ambassador to Israel and the vice president and the director of foreign policy at the Brookings Institution. He said there was an interest now because of the tens of thousands of troops fighting Islamist insurgencies abroad at the same time that the United States was trying to curb Iran’s nuclear ambitions. ‘Will resolving the Palestinian issue solve everything? Mr. Indyk said. ‘No. But will it help us get there? Yes’. The administration’s immediate priority, officials said, is jump-starting indirect talks between Israelis and Palestinians. There is still a vigorous debate inside the administration about what to do if such talks were to go nowhere, which experts said is the likeliest result, given the history of such negotiations. Some officials, like Gen. James L. Jones, the national security adviser, advocate putting forward an American peace plan, while others, like the longtime Middle East peace negotiator Dennis B. Ross, who now works in the National Security Council, favor a more incremental approach … Several officials point out that Mr. Obama has now seized control of Middle East policy himself, particularly since the controversy several weeks ago when Israeli authorities announced new Jewish housing units in Jerusalem during a visit to Israel by Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. Mr. Obama, incensed by that snub, has given Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a list of demands, and relations between the United States and Israel have fallen into a chilly standoff”… This NY Times article can be read in full here.

Obama’s big discussion with Netanyahu in the White House was actually a month ago, on 23 March.

Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal reported that “Senior U.S. officials said the Obama administration has discussed in recent weeks the possibility of the White House setting out its own benchmarks and timelines for the peace process if current efforts to resume negotiations fail. They said such a step wouldn’t be unlike the steps taken by former President Bill Clinton in late 2000, where he set parameters calling for a Palestinian state based on the pre-June 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as the capital. Still, U.S. officials said such a move by the Obama administration wasn’t imminent. And they stressed that they hoped the Israelis and Palestinians would agree to voluntarily return to direct talks. U.S. officials said Mr. Netanyahu’s government has been communicating much of its position through the White House’s senior Middle East adviser Dennis Ross, at times bypassing the Obama administration’s special Mideast peace envoy George Mitchell. That decision has been interpreted by some in the administration as an attempt to sideline Mr. Mitchell in favor of Mr. Ross, who has advocated U.S. cooperation with Mr. Netanyahu, rather than confrontation. Mr. Ross has publicly taken positions in line with Mr. Netanyahu’s government, particularly the centrality of stopping Iran’s nuclear program as a means to underpin Mideast peace efforts … Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu conveyed to the White House this weekend his rejection of a U.S. call for a total Israeli construction freeze in East Jerusalem, calling into question the path toward Middle East peace, according to officials briefed on the diplomacy … In an interview with ABC News on Sunday, Mr. Netanyahu said stopping construction in Jewish neighborhoods of East Jerusalem ‘is totally, totally a nonstarter’.”  This article is published here.

With characteristic, and delicious, irony, Akiva Eldar wrote in Haaretz today that “The prime minister’s response Thursday on Channel 2 that ‘there will be no freeze [in construction] in Jerusalem’, is like Bill Clinton’s ‘I did not have sex with that woman’. Benjamin Netanyahu did not insist this time that he will continue construction in Ramat Shlomo, Gilo and Har Homa – something he is leaving for Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin and Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman to do … The two were aware that the moment they were swearing that ‘united Jerusalem’ would never be divided, Barack Obama’s envoys were packing their bags for a visit to the region. The Israelis knew that special envoy George Mitchell was not being sent to the eternal capital just to hear Netanyahu insist on developing the real estate business in East Jerusalem. Mitchell put up with a lot on his way to a peace agreement in Northern Ireland and did not come here to nail shut the coffin of the peace process. He does not want to bury Israel’s relations with the White House.  The signs were thick Thursday that behind the proclamations of a ‘unified Jerusalem’, a quiet accord was in the works with the Americans … The key thing is that the Palestinians don’t read in the paper that the interior minister approved new construction in the Holy City”. This Akiva Eldar report is here.

A few days earlier,  Akiva Eldar wrote this on Israel’s Independence Day celebrations held at the beginning of this week (according to the Jewish calendar, while the rest of the world marks the date as  May 15):  “This was one of our most independent years ever. Completely independently, we decided to welcome the vice president of the United States with an announcement of new construction in East Jerusalem; the deputy foreign minister independently humiliated the Turkish ambassador; the foreign minister independently boycotted the president of Brazil; the Knesset independently sabotaged relations with the European Union via legislation that would limit its donations to human rights groups; the government independently decided to bait the Muslim world by declaring holy sites in the occupied territories as ‘heritage sites’ …  Sixty-two years after Israel declared independence, its right-wing government is entitled to decide that the time has come to annex Ariel, Ma’aleh Adumim and the Jordan Valley – just as the Labor government did 43 years ago, when it decided to annex a sizable territory to Jerusalem. This year, too, Israeli citizens are entitled to celebrate Jerusalem Day in the only capital in the world that hosts not a single embassy. Benjamin Netanyahu can even propose that U.S. President Barack Obama append his list of questions to the Wye Agreement, the road map and the Annapolis Declaration. After all, Israel is an independent country … The winning phrase of the 62nd year of Israel’s independence is undoubtedly the angry response Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon would make to reports that the Obama administration intends to present its own peace plan. The man who was Israel’s ambassador to Washington said that by doing so, the U.S. would become a ‘party to the conflict’.  In other words, today, the U.S. is not a ‘party to the conflict’. The implication is that in order to respect Israeli independence, the American administration is required to forever put up with the Israeli occupation and ignore the settlements. The U.S. is a ‘party to the conflict’ only when Israel requires an airlift of arms, sanctions against Iran or a veto of unpleasant resolutions at the United Nations.  Shortly after the previous independence day, it seemed that Netanyahu had struck the right balance on how the conflict should be resolved between the particularist worldview he shares with most members of his government and the positions of the world’s major powers. Moreover, it appeared that the support he expressed in his speech at Bar-Ilan University for a solution of two states for two peoples reflected recognition of the fact that Israel’s independence will not be complete until the Palestinians receive their own independent state.  Instead, the Netanyahu government has implemented the views of the majority of independent Israel’s Knesset, which supports the policy of settlements in the West Bank and deepening the Jewish hold on East Jerusalem. To fend off pressure from abroad, Netanyahu has once again transformed the Jewish Diaspora into a defensive army against the might of the nations of the world. The leader of ‘independent’ Israel has transformed Jewish activists into ‘parties to the conflict’ between his government and the American administration (we, of course, are allowed to meddle in American politics)” …  This Akiva Eldar analysis was published here.

Meanwhile, just to be perfectly helpful, Netanyahu has made a proposal that he knows perfectly well Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has rejected for years. As Haaretz reported Friday, “Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is amenable to an interim agreement in the West Bank that would include the establishment of a Palestinian state within temporary borders. Netanyahu considers such an interim step a possible way to unfreeze the stalled political process that was created because of the Palestinian leadership’s refusal to resume talks on a final settlement. However, the prime minister insists on delaying discussion on the final status of Jerusalem to the end of the process, and refuses to agree to a freeze on Jewish construction in East Jerusalem. Netanyahu and his aides have held intensive contacts in recent days with representatives of the U.S. administration in an effort to contain the crisis in the relations between the two countries … The formula of a Palestinian state within temporary borders was included in the second stage of the road map of 2003, but the Palestinians, and Mahmoud Abbas at their head, opposed it then and oppose it now, considering it a recipe for keeping Israeli occupation of the territories in place. Three Israeli politicians – Defense Minister Ehud Barak, President Shimon Peres and MK Shaul Mofaz of Kadima – tried to advance the idea of a Palestinian state within temporary borders during the past year, as a reasonable recipe for breaking out of the current political stalemate that was created since elections in Israel. Netanyahu is now leading toward their view, after losing hope of moving toward a permanent settlement with Abbas. If this initiative progresses, it is expected to result in objections from the parties on the right, who oppose any concession to the Palestinians. Establishing a Palestinian state in the West Bank, or even a partial framework with temporary borders, will require Israel to withdraw from more territory and perhaps even evacuate settlements. But if the Palestinians reject the idea – as is expected – Netanyahu will be able to claim that they are once more missing an opportunity for a settlement by being stubborn and rejectionist”… This Haaretz report 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.

Akiva reports that it will be based in large part on “a report drawn up at the end of 2008 by 10 senior figures from the two principal political parties in the United States. One of them, former Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker, has in the interim been appointed a senior economic adviser to the president. The authors of that report recommended to the president that he replace ‘the conditions of the Quartet’ with a readiness to recognize a Palestinian unity government, on condition that that government would agree to a cease-fire with Israel, authorize Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas to conduct negotiations on a final-status solution, and bring the agreement to a referendum” …

Akiva Eldar’s article continues: “Since Netanyahu refuses to accept the principle of a Palestinian state being established alongside Israel, he would have some difficulty complaining about the U.S. relieving Hamas of the same demand. The report’s authors proposed that the president adopt the following positions with regard to the components of a final-status agreement: an Israeli withdrawal to the 1967 borders, with the exception of large settlement blocs; Jerusalem being the capital of both Israel and Palestine, and divided on a demographic basis; adoption of a special regime in the Old City; the rehabilitation of refugees within the Palestinian state, with Israel accepting a degree of responsibility for the problem; and the stationing of a multinational force in the territories during an interim period”.

In this article, Akiva says that “The experts who drew up the report placed the Palestinian channel ahead of the Syrian channel in urgency, and expressed the opinion that 2009 constitutes the last opportunity for a partition solution”.

Akiva noted that “In his column in The New York Times last week, Roger Cohen wrote that the approach of Volcker and the other authors of the report, an updated version of which Volcker recently presented to the president, was to a large extent in keeping with the approach of Obama’s national security advisor, James Jones, and special emissary George Mitchell. The 10 members of the team that prepared the report included Brent Scowcroft and Zbigniew Brzezinski, both of whom headed the National Security Council; former Democratic congressman Lee Hamilton, former Republican senator Chuck Hagel; James Wolfensohn, formerly president of the World Bank as well as the Quartet’s Middle East emissary; and Thomas Pickering, a former under secretary of state. All of them are members of the U.S. Middle East Project, headed by Henry Siegman. True, Siegman is considered a member of the ‘far left’, but Netanyahu will have a hard time accusing him of anti-Semitism, since he is an ordained Orthodox rabbi, and he served as executive director of the American Jewish Congress”.

On the new government coalition put together by Netanyahu, Akiva wrote that “One paragraph that stands out in the coalition agreement between Likud and the Labor Party is that which states that “the government will take steps to enforce the law with regard to the illegal [settlement] outposts.” (Someone apparently forgot that their name was laundered to ‘unauthorized’). This is the first time that a politician has dictated a demand viv-a-vis himself.
According to data collected by Peace Now, Defense Minister Barak not only defaulted on his commitment to freeze construction in the settlements and to dismantle at least 24 outposts, but 1,518 new buildings were constructed on his watch last year in the territories, 261 of them on outposts. Barak found devious ways to circumvent the High Court of Justice’s order to evacuate the outpost of Migron, which had been set up on stolen private land. Hagit Ofran, a member of Peace Now’s follow-up team, says that there are no grounds for the claim made recently before the Court that the Israel Defense Forces had evacuated 30 outposts. In return for the settlers’ agreement to evacuate some of their mobile homes, the vast majority of which were in any case unoccupied, Barak gave the go-ahead for ‘new neighborhoods’, a code name for new settlements.
The coalition agreement makes no mention of renewing the work of the ministerial committee for applying the recommendations of the report on the outposts, which was intended to block practices of this kind. Nor does a single word appear in it about the voluntary evacuation by settlers who live east of the separation fence, an idea that had won the wall-to-wall support of the Labor faction and even received the blessing of Barak himself”.

And, Akiva, points out, “the report presented to President Obama calls for Israel to evacuate all of those settlements. Those that are willing and those that are not”.

The article, published today in Haaretz, can be read in full here .

Eldar reported that in the interview — the publication coincides with the 15th Anniversary of the signing of the Oslo accords — “Abbas stressed that he will not agree to an interim arrangement such as a state in temporary borders. Any agreement must address all the components of the conflict, including Jerusalem and the right of return, he said; therefore, ‘nothing is agreed until everything is agreed’ … The outlines of an agreement are well known, he said, and Israel’s internal political disputes are apparently the reason no progress has been made. ‘We presented our ideas and demands regarding the six issues’ [borders, security, refugees, Jerusalem etc.], Abbas stated, ‘but have not received any answer from the Israeli side’ … [T]he West Bank and Gaza must be united, or there will be no Palestinian state. Nonetheless, he insisted that this must be achieved only through diplomatic means. ‘We erred when we made the second intifada into an armed struggle, and I will do everything to prevent a third armed intifada’, he said …

“Regarding the refugees, the Palestinian president said: ‘We understand that if all five million refugees return to their homes, the State of Israel will be destroyed’. Nonetheless, he added, Israel must discuss both its responsibility for the refugee problem and a practical right of return. ‘Palestinians who do not return to Israel will be able to return to Palestine’, he continued. He also said a solution to the refugee problem would be based on the Arab peace initiative of 2002, which stated that the solution must be based on United Nations Resolution 194, but acceptable to Israel. Abbas pointed out that every Muslim nation in the region, including Iran (prior to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s election as president), adopted the Arab initiative. ‘I presented the document with the Iranian signature to Olmert, but he did not respond’, Abbas said. ‘Regrettably, to this day no debate has been held by the Israeli cabinet’…”

The English-language summary of the Haaretz interview with Mahmoud Abbas can be read here.

“In addition to keeping the situation in the Gaza Strip quiet, Olmert has an additional series of means at his disposal that can enhance the status of the Palestinian partners, until the political situation in Israel is clarified. All he has to do is pull out of the drawer the list of promises he made to Abu Mazen (and to the Americans) and instruct the defense establishment to uphold them in spirit and in practice. The prime minister, after all, claims that he is continuing to carry out his duties in the best possible way even during the very difficult times he is experiencing”.

The full Akiva Eldar article can be read here .

In the same article, Eldar also proffered this information: “Olmert cited political constraints as his excuse for refusing to mention the June 4, 1967 borders in the Annapolis declaration, and for refusing to commit to a time frame for concluding the negotiations. He explained that Avigdor Lieberman had threatened to take his party Yisrael Beitenu out of the government and to bring about early elections”. Akiva Eldar’s inside insights were published in Haaretz here.