It was, apparently, the first in a series of donor meetings planned for 2011.

The next planned donor conference is scheduled to be held in Paris in June 2011, to support “the Palestinian national development plan for 2011-2013″.

{The UN describes the AHLC here as “a 12-member committee that serves as the principal policy-level coordination mechanism for development assistance to the Palestinian people. The AHLC is chaired by Norway and cosponsored by the EU and US. In addition, the United Nations participates together with the World Bank (Secretariat) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The AHLC seeks to promote dialogue between donors, the Palestinian Authority (PA) and the Government of Israel (GoI)”. The Portland Trust, which seems to set the policies that Tony Blair follows, notes here that “The AHLC was established on 1 October 1993 (this is two weeks after the signing of the first of the Oslo Accords) . It serves as the principal policy-level coordination mechanism for development assistance to the Palestinian people. Norway is the chair of the committee, the World Bank acts as secretariat and the EU and US are co-sponsors. The members are: the Palestinian Authority (PA), Government of Israel (GoI), Canada, Egypt, International Monetary Fund (IMF), Japan, Jordan, United Nations (UN), Russia, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia”. It is worth noting that the Portland Trust’s publication, Palestinian Economic Bulletin, is prepared by the Palestine Economic Policy Research Institute (MAS) in Ramallah.}

The Norwegian Chairman reportedly said that “the international donor group in support of the Palestinians (AHLC) welcomed reports that the Palestinian Authority has crossed the threshold for a functioning state in terms of its successful institution building. This was the assessment of the Palestinian Authority’s performance in key sectors studied by the World Bank, the IMF, and the UN. Moreover, according to the IMF, the Palestinian reforms have come so far that not only is the public financial management system ready to support the functions of a state; it has even become a model for other developing countries”. These remarks are posted here.

This report also reported that Støre said: “many donors noted that the lack of political progress leaves the negotiating track out of sync with the far advanced state-building efforts of the Palestinian Authority. This is why all parties concerned must stand firm behind the stated goal of negotiating a framework agreement on permanent status and a subsequent comprehensive peace treaty by the agreed target date in September”.

The full text of the Chairman’s summary is not available on the Norwegian website — or, at least, the various web addresses given for it are not working.

[It has to be said that most all of those involved here are internet-impaired...]

After the meeting, the EU High Representative Ashton said in a public statement: “The Palestinian Authority has made significant progress on this state-building agenda. Today Palestinian institutions compare favorably with those in established states [!!!] … I’m proud to say that the EU has been instrumental in the institution building process. For 2011, we have already earmarked €300 million for it. Yet it’s clear that these achievements can only be sustainable in the event of a political breakthrough. The international community should not let these concerted efforts go to waste. This opportunity should not be missed. We reaffirm our readiness to contribute to a negotiated solution within the timeline set by the Quartet.”

Quartet Representative Tony Blair issued a report, “Action in Support of Palestinian Authority State-Building” [the pdf file on the Quartet Representative website is "damaged and cannot be downloaded"]. Blair said in a statement that “Palestinian state building under the Palestinian Authority and Prime Minister Fayyad is a bright light amongst a lot of diplomatic darkness. It shows what can be done, how the Palestinians are able to govern a state, and therefore the vital importance of re-energising the political process. Palestinian state building is also an important factor in addressing Israel’s real security concerns”…

The website is even more emphatic on another page, reporting here that “Quartet Representative Tony Blair said ‘credible political negotiations’ were needed on a ‘very urgent’ basis to ‘revive the political process’.”

[See the recent post on our sister blog, here, that Tony Blair is moving the Quartet Representative's Office in East Jerusalem -- which he visits about once a month -- from the American Colony Hotel up the hill to a new building still under construction on Nablus Road, just below the Ambassador Hotel... ]

On Gaza, Blair said “we still have a long, long way to go”…

Quite an understatement.

UPDATE: Haaretz later reported here that “earlier this week donor states to the Palestinian Authority, which held a conference last week in Brussels, condemned in its concluding statement uncoordinated aid flotillas to Gaza. The conference called on all parties to use land terminals to the Strip and avoid provocations. The statement is signed by the chairman of the conference, Norwegian Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Store. A major force behind the clause was intense lobbying from the Israeli delegation to the conference, comprised of the coordinator of government activities in the territories, Maj. Gen. Eitan Dangot, and Foreign Ministry diplomats”.

Salam Fayyad’s remarks at the joint press conference can be viewed on this page here, and his answer to a journalist’s question is posted here.

“We Palestinians have made a declaration of statehood going back to 1988 … We’re not looking for yet another declaration of a state, nor for a virtual state”, Fayyad said, “we’re looking for a genuine fully sovereign state of Palestine on territory occupied in 1967 in Gaza Strip and the West Bank, with East Jerusalem as its capital … and an end to the Israeli occupation”…

[The Al-Jazeera Transparency Unit, which archives its leaked Palestinian Papers, has a couple of interesting related documents -- three, from 2008 discussions, are posted here, here, and here.]

Here are the links to the various reports submitted to this AHLC meeting in Brussels on 13 April 2011 — (they are not so easy to find…and the IMF report took days to locate):
The World Bank report is posted here.
The IMF report is supposed to be posted here — it is on the IMF country page here — but it doesn’t open, or maybe it doesn’t download…
UPDATE: The 35-page IMF report was finally located on the UN’s UNISPAL website here.
Salam Fayyad’s report for the Palestinian Authority is posted hereand a summary is posted here.
Israel’s report is posted here.
The report signed by Tony Blair for the Office of the Quartet Representative (www.quartetrep.org) does not download from the Quartet’s website — the error message reads “the file is damaged but could not be repaired” — but a link does work through Tony Blair’s Facebook page (http://www.facebook.com/TonyBlair) which is “liked” by over 18,000 people, and which has a greater emphasis on his Faith Foundation than on his work for the Quartet. The link that does work is here.
The report of the UN Special Coordinator, Robert Serry, is posted here, and an accompanying press release is posted here.

This report and analysis by Nathan Brown can be read in full here.

UN Special Coordinator Robert Serry to the left, Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon on the right, photo by Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs

In a press summary sent to journalists by email, the Israeli Foreign Ministry reported that “The Deputy Foreign Minister emphasized that Jerusalem is an extremely important and sensitive issue not just for Israel, but for the Jewish people as a whole. Ayalon stressed that Jerusalem remains the eternal and indivisible capital of Israel and as such Israeli law is applicable there. There is a consensus view on this issue, not just in Israel but around the Jewish world. The Deputy Foreign Minister reemphasized the important humanitarian steps that Israel has taken in Judea and Samaria towards the Palestinian population there. ‘We would like to further alleviate the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip and at the same time it is important that the international community will increase the pressure on Hamas to release Gilad Shalit’ Ayalon told Serry during the meeting”.

In other words, Serry received a resounding rebuff.

On the 2nd of August, the day two families of Palestinian refugees were evicted from their homes by Israeli Border Police at gunpoint and replaced by Jewish settlers, Serry issued a statement saying that “today’s totally unacceptable actions by Israel… to allow settlers to take possession of these properties.” And, he said, the evictions violated the International Quartet’s calls for Israel to “refrain from provocative acts in East Jerusalem.”

Now, it has been seized upon — largely for its lurid appeal (it’s sensational, runs against official positions, appears to be based on deep insights, and, it sells) to propagandists — by some of the Israeli and pro-Israeli media crowd.

Do Palestinians (at least those in the West Bank) really want a State?

Now, one writer in the Jerusalem Post (he’s Shmuel Rosner, based in Washington), has written — reviewing articles written in recent months — that the question of the moment is: “Do Palestinians really want a state”. And the answer, he wrote, is this: “In sum, two years ago, an open question, more recently, no, no and no“.

Rosner then went on to mock a comment by Ed Abington, former US Consul General in Jerusalem and former adviser to the Palestinian Authority, who, Rosner wrote: ” has commented yesterday on my link to these new articles with this sarcastic massage: “I’m sure Kaplan and Grygiel are right; most Palestinians would prefer to live under Israeli occupation forever than accept responsibility for running their own affairs. Duh“.

Yes, Duh. Because the Palestinians do want a state. The question for them is, what kind? And, of course, there is no real debate on the Palestinian political scene that might illuminate the issues on there side — they are too busy looking over their shoulders, worrying about what their enemies and rivals would say. So, instead of hashing out the issues amongst themselves, the Palestinians are just developing their critique of Israel.

There have been no real intellectual advances, of course.

Meanwhile, the Palestinian stasis is calling their wish to have a state into question.

Rosner summed up the arguments — most recent first, and which, as it can be seen, all involve some form of mocking and/or disparagement of the Palestinians — in his two postings here and here. Here are his references (with additional excerpts added by myself):

Robert Kaplan in the Atlantic:
The statelessness of Palestinian Arabs has been a principal feature of world politics for more than half a century. It is the signature issue of our time. The inability of Israelis and Palestinians to reach an accord of mutual recognition and land-for-peace has helped infect the globe with violence and radicalism—and has long been a bane of American foreign policy … Obviously, part of the problem has been Israeli intransigence. Despite seeming to submit to territorial concessions, one Israeli government after another has quietly continued to bolster illegal settlements in the occupied territories. The new Israeli government may be the worst yet … The prospects for peace under this government are fundamentally bleak. And yet this Israeli government faithfully represents the Israeli electorate, which is in utter despair over the impossibility of finding credible partners on the Palestinian side with which to negotiate … But there is a deeper structural and philosophical reason why the Palestinians remain stateless—a reason more profound than the political narrative would indicate … [Then, Kaplan builds on an argument developed in an essay by someone else, which was not specifically about the Palestinians, and goes on to postulate that]: “Instead of actively seeking statehood to address their weakness, as Zionist Jews did in an earlier phase of history, groups like the Palestinians now embrace their statelessness as a source of power … [A] state is a target that can be destroyed or damaged, and hence pressured politically. It was the very quasi-statehood achieved by Hamas in the Gaza Strip that made it easier for Israel to bomb it. A state entails responsibilities that limit a people’s freedom of action. A group like Hezbollah in Lebanon, the author notes, could probably take over the Lebanese state today, but why would it want to? Why would it want responsibility for providing safety and services to all Lebanese? Why would it want to provide the Israelis with so many tempting targets of reprisal? Statelessness offers a level of ‘impunity’ from retaliation”. This article can be read in full here.

Rosner, who (being in the US, might be more aware of this) wrote that the question is, “Do the Palestinians really want a state?”, summarized Bradley Burston in Haaretz as writing: “rather than just the flag they already have and the representative at the United Nations they already have, and the righteous indignation that they have in spades”? But, Burston also wrote this, significantly blaming the Palestinians alone for the Second Intifada, and therefore (his argument says) for turning the entire Israeli political scene so bitter and demanding): “Do Palestinians really want a State? At first blush, the question seems preposterous. The Palestinian people have voiced their acute desire for an independent state since the day, whatever it may have been, that they became the Palestinian people. In fact, until recently it seemed that nearly the whole world, Eastern and Western Europe, the entirety of Asia and Africa, many of the nations of the Americas – everyone, that is, except for the United States and Israel – wanted there to be an independent Palestine. In time, even Israel and Washington came around. In a surreal turn, Ariel Sharon, the mantra of whose ashram had long been “Jordan is [the real] Palestine,” announced his support in 2003 for the U.S.-sponsored road map peace plan, which provided for, though would fail to deliver, an independent Palestinian state by 2005. But even as Sharon rammed the road map through the cabinet, the cause of Palestinian statehood was being undermined – by the Palestinians themselves … As Arafat stood by, losing his place in history even as he sought to keep his place among the Palestinians, bomb after bomb after bomb distanced Palestinians from the state they nearly had, could already have had, should have had, by the end of the last decade. The Palestinians, still shrouded in the self-pitying, self-adoring arrogance of the truly humiliated – the same arrogance they so fiercely hate in the Jews – are still busy proving what a victory the Intifada was. Yet the real proof of the outcome of the Intifada lies in the change in Hamas declarations. For the first time, they have begun to speak of a demand for an Israeli return to the 1967 borders, as opposed to a Jewish withdrawal to the Mediterranean and beyond. If nothing else, the reference to the 1967 borders demonstrates the danger to the Palestinians that the world will come to accept the Sharon-Bush vision of West Bank settlement blocs as part of Israel. Thanks to the Intifada, Palestine is shrinking before the Palestinians’ very eyes … Today, the question of whether the Palestinians can take the steps necessary to maintain a state – that is to say, whether they really do want a state, rather than just the flag they already have and the representative at the United Nations they already have, and the righteous indignation that they have in spades – remains an open question. If they would rather demand the right of return until the end of time, rather than accepting some formula that amounts to a lesser gain, and with it, a Palestinian state, then the question is answered. If they would rather insist on the right to violent resistance against Israel – allying themselves in the minds of others, if not in their own, with terrorist movements that bedevil civilized countries worldwide – rather than a renunciation of armed struggle and entrance into the community of nations, then we have their answer. If they insist on a one-state solution, then it is a one-state solution that they will get, and that state will be Israel. Today the question of what the Palestinians really want, and whether what they really want at this point is a state, is being asked more and more … Do the Palestinians really want a state? What they have told us in deed and in word is ‘Yes, but on our own terms’. They either mean that or they don’t. If they do, I’ll wager that they’ll have themselves some form of a state by somewhere around 2028. Forty years bumbling and blustering and procrastinating their way through the wilderness. My guess is that they’re smarter than that, though. They’ll do as Lenny Bruce once bitterly quipped: ‘Be a man – sell out’. They’ll do what we do. Lie to themselves, swallow the compromises they can’t disguise with feints of word and gesture. I wish them luck. They’re going to need a lot more of it than they’ve had ’til now”. This can be read in full here.

Josef Joffe in The Wall Street Journal – this, not surprisingly, is a sophisticated and well-written argument based on the premises of the Israeli right-wing, particularly the Likud, but also including Kadima. Joffe says the problem is that Palestinians elected Hamas (the obvious flaw in this point is that voters in the West Bank also elected Hamas, but never mind) in the wake of Israel’s (in his view) entirely benevolent “disengagement” from Gaza, which (in his view) offered the Gazans, at least, a chance of having their own state (despite Israel’s continuing control over Gazan sovereignty). But, according to Jaffe’s argument, the real and main issue is Iran — and, like the Israeli political echelon, he exhibits no sense of perspective, he does not view Israeli intents to suppress any effort of Iran to assert regional leadership as part of the problem. No, Iran is completely to blame. Joffe writes: “It was Kassam time, with Hamas firing the missiles and Israel tightening the blockade. This is known, in the media vernacular, as a “spiral of violence.” But if the missiles were the answer to the blockade, why did Hamas target the border passages and the power plant next door that supplied Gaza with electricity? So much irrationality makes perfect sense if we posit a different strategic game. Hamas’s object is provoking Israel to prove that it doesn’t care about the consequences. Indeed, it wants bad things to happen to its own people. This will mobilize the ‘Arab street’ and the world’s media against Israel while demonstrating its absolute imperviousness to pain and threats of more. ‘Bring it on’, is great for Hamas’s credibility, pride and honor, but for the purpose of statehood, it would behave very differently. It would wheel and deal, cajole and dissimulate. It would play quid pro quo, not Kassams against F-16s … [But] double-statehood is not their No. 1 priority. They want it all, and if they can’t get it, they would rather nurse their honor, pride and sense of righteous victimhood than engage in the sordid business of compromise. At any rate, the simple two-state solution is now off the table. Most Israelis (minus the settlers and their supporters) have come around to two states. But never again will Israel vacate territory (as in Gaza) without making sure that it won’t turn into a strategic springboard against the heartland. Never again will Israel relinquish control over a border like the Philadelphi Corridor that served as entry point for Iranian missiles into Gaza. It will insist on a strategic presence in the Jordan Valley. Nor can Israel yield military control over the West Bank. What a twist of fate. Today, it is the Israeli Defense Force that guarantees the survival of Fatah and President Mahmoud Abbas against Hamas, Jihad and their Iranian sponsors. Here is the bitter irony. Fatah might want to make peace, but doesn’t have the power to deliver; Hamas has the power, but it doesn’t want peace, dreaming about a ‘final solution’ that wipes Israel off this part of the map … The upside is that today Palestine is less than ever the ‘core’ of the Middle East conflict. The real issue is Iran and its reach for regional hegemony. The conventional wisdom has it that peace for Palestine would weaken Tehran’s mischief potential, robbing it of a rallying point for the Arab masses. Actually, it is the other way round. Iran will use its power, through its proxies, to demolish whatever deal might be hashed out by Israel and the Palestinian Authority. For Iran’s game is not a two-state solution, let alone peace. Rather, its object is to intimidate America’s Arab supporters and to eliminate Israel as America’s strongest regional ally. So for the Obama administration, Israel/Palestine has become an intractable sideshow on a vastly enlarged stage that extends from Haifa to Herat”…This argument can be read in full here.

Now, apparently, the report — containing “recommendations for U.S. Middle East peacemaking” — has been released. Entitled “A Last Chance for a Two-State Israel-Palestine Agreement”, it can be read in full here].

It suggests the following:
“1. Present a Clear U.S. Vision to End the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict … The U.S. parameters should reflect the following fundamental compromises:
• Two states, based on the lines of June 4, 1967, with minor, reciprocal, and agreed-upon modifications as expressed in a 1:1 land swap, to take into account areas heavily populated by Israelis in the West Bank;
• A solution to the refugee problem consistent with the two-state solution, that does not entail a general right of return, addresses the Palestinian refugees’ sense of injustice, and provides them with meaningful financial compensation as well as resettlement assistance;
• Jerusalem as home to both capitals, with Jewish neighborhoods falling under Israeli sovereignty and Arab neighborhoods under Palestinian sovereignty, with special arrangements for the Old City providing each side control of its respective holy places and unimpeded access by each community to them;
• A non-militarized Palestinian state, together with security mechanisms that address Israeli concerns while respecting Palestinian sovereignty, and a U.S.-led multinational force to ensure a peaceful transitional security period. This coalition peacekeeping structure, under UN mandate, would feature American leadership of a NATO force supplemented by Jordanians, Egyptians and Israelis. We can envision a five-year, renewable mandate with the objective of achieving full Palestinian domination of security affairs on the Palestine side of the line within 15 years.
2. Encourage Israeli-Syrian Negotiations
3. A More Pragmatic Approach Toward Hamas and a Palestinian Unity Government”.

Kathleen and Bill Christison took the report apart, in an article published in Counterpunch on 15 April, in which they wrote: “The end of George W. Bush’s long tenure and the advent of Barack Obama have now given rise to other initiatives that are as naïve and myopic as the aid pledges [to reconstruct Gaza]– myopic because, wittingly or not, they come from a starting point that is totally centered on Israel and its demands and totally oblivious to Israel’s barbaric behavior”…

The Christison’s critique continued: “Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton speak earnestly of the ‘inevitability’ and the ‘inescapability’ of a solution based on two states, without regard to the growing impossibility of a real Palestinian state or to the fact that Israel is killing off any prospect for such a state and is in fact openly killing off the Palestinians. The early months of the administration, and the appointment of George Mitchell as special Middle East envoy, are bringing out others who, more enamored of the process than of any prospect of genuine peace, blindly pursue the ‘peace-process industry’ regardless of realities on the ground or the virtual guarantee of failure. Probably the most detailed plan purporting to lay out a path toward a two-state solution was actually written before Obama took office and is only now being publicized. This plan — entitled “A Last Chance for a Two-State Israel-Palestine Agreement” — was drawn up in December by a group of well meaning U.S. elder statesmen, including Brent Scowcroft, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Lee Hamilton, and Paul Volcker, the only one of the ten to enter the Obama administration. The elders were drawn together by Henry Seigman, a former head of the American Jewish Committee and scholar of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict who has distinguished himself in recent years by his frank, realistic criticism of the Israeli occupation. The proposal is a 17-page blueprint for achieving the impossible. It approaches the conflict from an Israel-centered perspective and indeed, by heavily emphasizing the need to meet Israel’s security needs, contains the prescription for its own failure. The report devotes a remarkable one-fifth of its entire length to an annex on “Addressing Israel’s Security Challenges”, in addition to considerable verbiage devoted to this subject in the body of the document. There is no mention whatsoever of any need to ensure Palestine’s security against threats from Israel”.

The Christisons write that “The impulse behind this plan is admirable: it recognizes the centrality of the Palestinian- Israeli conflict to other issues and U.S. interests in the Middle East; it urges that the new administration overturn the Bush administration’s eight years of disengagement from the conflict and do so quickly; it calls for engaging Hamas; and it urges that the peace effort be undertaken even at the cost of angering ‘certain domestic constituencies’. But the plan itself is naïve and oblivious to the brutal realities of the situation, which existed even before the Gaza assault. Because it takes no account of Israel’s lethal intentions toward the Palestinians or its responsibility for the current level of violence, the report actually encourages Israeli intransigence while blithely assuming that this rigidity can be overcome by issuing a plan on a few pieces of paper while the U.S. continues to send Israel the arms necessary to destroy Palestine. The report exists in a never-never land in which Israel has no responsibility for occupying Palestinian land and has concerns only for its own security but no obligations to the Palestinians. The report refers repeatedly to the ‘chicken and egg’ security situation in the occupied territories — as if it cannot be determined whether Israel’s occupation or Palestinian resistance to it came first, as if the occupation is not the reason for Palestinian resistance, as if the Palestinian suicide bombings that the report says cause Israel ‘understandable anxiety’ might have arisen out of nowhere rather than precisely out of Israel’s oppression. The plan addresses the requirements of peace between the two envisioned states almost solely in terms of Israel’s needs — not only its security needs, but its settlements needs and its concerns about Palestinian refugees’ right of return. For instance, while it calls for the border between the two states to be ‘based on’ the lines of June 1967 with only minor reciprocal modifications, it recommends that the United States ‘take into account areas heavily populated by Israelis in the West Bank’. Although the language minimizes the magnitude of this issue, this passage means that accommodation must be made for major Israeli settlement blocs, which include approximately ten percent of the small Delaware-sized West Bank, cover virtually the entirety of East Jerusalem, and include fully 85 percent of the 475,000 settlers in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. In April 2004, George Bush gave Ariel Sharon a letter that officially granted U.S. approval to Israel’s retention of what Bush called ‘major [Jewish] population centers’ in the West Bank, thus altering what had been almost 40 years of U.S. policy supporting a virtually full Israeli withdrawal from the occupied territories. Bill Clinton’s ‘parameters’ outlined in 2000 had done the same on a somewhat smaller scale by proposing to allow Israel to retain its settlements — referred to by the anodyne term ‘neighborhoods’ — in East Jerusalem. The latest proposal by the elder statesmen repeats this Clinton dictum and in general endorses both Clinton’s and Bush’s declarations unilaterally ceding Palestinian land to Israel, without negotiation or consultation with Palestinians”.

Moreover, the Christisons argue, “This proposal also gives away the Palestinians’ right of return. Although it gives a nod to the refugees’ ‘sense of injustice’ and calls for ‘meaningful financial compensation’, it declares, again unilaterally and pre-emptively, that resolution of the refugee problem should ‘protect Israel from an influx of refugees’ — meaning that the right would not be available to all or even most refugees who might choose to return to the homes and land inside Israel from which they were expelled. This provision would ‘protect’ Israel from any requirement that it rectify the massive injustice it perpetrated in 1948 and would require that the victims be satisfied, after 60-plus years, with a little money and a home somewhere outside their own homeland”.

A main point, according to the Christisons, is that “The major element of the elders’ report proposes that the Palestinian state would be non- militarized and would be policed by a U.S.-led, UN-mandated multinational force that would function for five years but would have a renewable mandate, the intention being to permit Palestinians to control their own security affairs (and of course be able to guarantee Israel’s security) within 15 years. The force would be a NATO force supplemented by Jordanian, Egyptian and — amazingly enough — Israeli troops. The Alice-in-Wonderland aspect of this particular proposal is the elders’ assumption that Palestinian sovereignty would somehow be respected even as the Palestinians were being forced to turn their security over to a multinational force that included not merely elements of multiple outside armies, but troops from the very oppressor the Palestinians are presumed to have just shed by attaining statehood”.

And, they write, “This is the kind of ‘peace-process industry’ nonsense that renders proposals such as this utterly meaningless. The proposal gives away, before negotiations have begun, more than any state-to-be could ever possibly afford to give. It cedes territory in what would be the Palestinian state before Palestinians are even able to sit down at the negotiating table. It cedes, without cavil or apology, the Palestinians’ right to redress of a gross injustice that is, and has been from the beginning 60-plus years ago, the fundamental Palestinian grievance against Israel. It cedes Palestinian sovereignty and security by inviting in an international security force including troops of precisely the occupying force that the Palestinians seek to be rid off. And it cedes any viability in the new so-called state. The elders who composed this document should know better. Some of them have actually worked as specialists on the Arab-Israeli conflict in the past, and the proposal’s convener Henry Siegman has been working on this issue for decades. But the proposal exhibits so little understanding of the extent to which Israel has already absorbed the West Bank into itself that it would appear that none of these individuals has ever even visited the region” …

This critique of the recommendations recently made to Obama was published on Counterpunch here.

“The Obama transition team also helped persuade Israel to end the bombing of Gaza and to withdraw its ground troops before the Inauguration. According to the former senior intelligence official, who has access to sensitive information, ‘Cheney began getting messages from the Israelis about pressure from Obama’ when he was President-elect. Cheney, who worked closely with the Israeli leadership in the lead-up to the Gaza war, portrayed Obama to the Israelis as a ‘pro-Palestinian’, who would not support their efforts (and, in private, disparaged Obama, referring to him at one point as someone who would ‘never make it in the major leagues’). But the Obama team let it be known that it would not object to the planned resupply of ‘smart bombs’ and other high-tech ordnance that was already flowing to Israel. “It was Jones”—retired Marine General James Jones, at the time designated to be the President’s national-security adviser—’who came up with the solution and told Obama, “You just can’t tell the Israelis to get out”.’ (General Jones said that he could not verify this account; Cheney’s office declined to comment.)
…
“One issue that may be a casualty of an Obama rapprochement with Syria is human rights. Syrians are still being jailed for speaking out against the policies of their government. Sarah Leah Whitson, the Middle East director for Human Rights Watch, said that Assad ‘has been offering fig leafs to the Americans for a long time and thinks if he makes nice in Lebanon and with Hamas and Hezbollah he will no longer be an outcast. We believe that no amount of diplomatic success will solve his internal problems’. The authorities, Whitson said, are ‘going after ordinary Syrians—like people chatting in cafés. Everyone is looking over their shoulder’.”
…
“Assad, in his interview with me, acknowledged, ‘We do not say that we are a democratic country. We do not say that we are perfect, but we are moving forward’. And he focussed on what he had to offer. He said that he had a message for Obama: Syria, as a secular state, and the United States faced a common enemy in Al Qaeda and Islamic extremism. The Bush White House, he said, had viewed the fundamentalists as groups ‘that you should go and chase, and then you will accomplish your mission, as Bush says. It is not that simple. How do you deal with a state of mind? You can deal with it in many different ways—except for the army’. Speaking of Obama, he said in his e-mail, ‘We are happy that he has said that diplomacy—and not war—is the means of conducting international policy’.

“Assad’s goal in seeking to engage with America and Israel is clearly more far-reaching than merely to regain the Golan Heights. His ultimate aim appears to be to persuade Obama to abandon the Bush Administration’s strategy of aligning America with the so-called ‘moderate’ Arab Sunni states—Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan—in a coördinated front against Shiite Iran, Shiite Hezbollah, and Hamas.

“ ‘Of course, the Iranians are nervous about the talks, because they don’t fully trust the Syrians’, Itamar Rabinovich said. ‘But the Assad family does not believe in taking chances—they’re very hard bargainers. They will try to get what they want without breaking fully from Iran, and they will tell us and Washington, “It’s to your advantage not to isolate Iran”.’ Rabinovich added, ‘Both Israel and the United States will insist on a change in Syria’s relationship with Iran. This can only be worked out—or not—in head-to-head talks’.

“The White House has tough diplomatic choices to make in the next few months. Assad has told the Obama Administration that his nation can ease the American withdrawal in Iraq. Syria also can help the U.S. engage with Iran, and the Iranians, in turn, could become an ally in neighboring Afghanistan, as the Obama Administration struggles to deal with the Taliban threat and its deepening involvement in that country—and to maintain its long-standing commitment to the well-being of Israel. Each of these scenarios has potential downsides. Resolving all of them will be formidable, and will involve sophisticated and intelligent diplomacy—the kind of diplomacy that disappeared during the past eight years, and that the Obama team has to prove it possesses”.
This Seymour Hersh article can be read in full in The New Yorker here.

Clinton: “We will continue to coordinate closely in the Middle East and cooperate on Gaza, humanitarian aid, and the never-ending pursuit of a just and secure peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians”.

Kouchner: the talks were “mainly on Middle East”

Then Kouchner (but not Clinton), mentioned Gaza:
“[W]e are really very anxious about the situation of the people of Gaza, and we were in agreement together with Madame Secretary of State to make pressure on both side to open the crossing. The Gaza people, they need so-called humanitarian assistance. And we’ll do it together another time, even if this is difficult, because we are facing – all of us – the electoral process in Israel and the idea – very important idea of Abu Mazen, the president of the PLO, the Palestinian Authority, to set up – to try to set up a government of national unity. And we are, of course, supporting Abu Mazen, and we must strengthen him, but it will take some time. Meanwhile, we must access to the people – we must accede to the people – sorry. For the rest, we were at complete agreement to support the Egyptian initiative, and you know that some talks are now – have been developed in Cairo in between the Hamas delegation, the PLO delegation, and we are waiting for the result of that with a very great support to the Egyptian. And there is a meeting in the – I think the – yes, the 2nd [n.b. I think he must have said 22nd] day of February [or maybe he meant the 2nd of March?], yes, in Cairo, and I hope we’ll get better support to Gaza people before this date

In response to a question about Hamas from a journalist:
Kouchner: “Hmm. (Laughter.) Okay. Well, Hamas, you know, we said several times we have no official talk with Hamas. It is, for the time being, impossible. Why? Of course, we have indirect talk in supporting the Egyptian initiative. We were obliged to go through – I mean, the Turks, and the Norwegian people, the Russian, et cetera. And of course, the Egyptian, mainly the Egyptian, because they are talking to Hamas. Why aren’t we talking officially to Hamas? Because they are not part of the peace process. And we’ll certainly talk to them when they would start to talk to the Palestinian themself, to PLO, and certainly, when they would accept the peace process, the signatures of PLO on the Israeli-Palestinian documents and mainly the Arab initiative of peace. That’s the answer. But certainly, this is part — and Tony Blair was right in saying so. In Gaza, if you are not setting up a sort of common task force to get access to the people or this government of national unity, it will be difficult, I know – we know that.

Clinton: “And I would only add that our conditions respecting Hamas are very clear: We will not in any way negotiate with or recognize Hamas until they renounce violence, recognize Israel, and agree to abide by, as the foreign minister said, the prior agreements entered into by the PLO and the Palestinian Authority” …

“QUESTION: Yeah. Given Prime Minister Olmert’s comments yesterday, why should – why should anyone still – or why should anyone not believe that Israel is controlling U.S. foreign policy as it relates to the Middle East?

MR. MCCORMACK: I did see the reports of his comments, and let me just start off by saying I don’t know the context of the comments. I don’t know if they are reported accurately. I don’t know if the Israeli Government would say, yes, that is an accurate quote.

What I can tell you is that the quotes as reported are wholly inaccurate as to describing the situation – just 100 percent, totally, completely not true. And I can – you know, I can vouch for that, having been up there at the United Nations the entire time, witnessed Secretary Rice’s deliberations with her advisors. I knew about the phone calls that she was doing and I can tell you a couple things.

One, very early on in the process, as far back as Wednesday, the Secretary decided that we were – we, the United States, weren’t going to be put in a position of vetoing a resolution, made the decision to support going forward with a resolution. At that point, there was a debate whether or not we were going to try to get a presidential statement or a resolution. We decided that point – at that point that we were going to go for a resolution and we weren’t going to be – if we could get one that was agreeable to all the members of the Security Council, we weren’t going to be in a position to veto it.

Second, that afternoon, all that afternoon, Thursday afternoon, Secretary Rice’s recommendation and inclination the entire time was to abstain, for the reasons that she described both during the Security Council session and subsequently in interviews. So I can tell you with 100 percent assurance that her intention was 100 percent to recommend abstention. She, of course, consulted with Steve Hadley at the White House as well as with the President. I’ll let the White House describe any interactions between the President and Prime Minister Olmert. But – so this idea that somehow she was turned around on this issue is 100 percent, completely untrue.

QUESTION: How could the prime minister of Israel get such a – you know, how – he certainly is under the impression that he singlehandedly prevented the United States from voting for this resolution. Why would he – why would –

MR. MCCORMACK: Matt – Matt, I –

QUESTION: How could he –

MR. MCCORMACK: You would have – you’d – Matt, I can’t tell you. You would have to –

QUESTION: (Inaudible.)

MR. MCCORMACK: And again, I can’t – you know, I can’t posit and vouch for the – whether those remarks are accurate.

QUESTION: Did the Secretary speak with the President before – just before the vote on – on the resolution?

MR. MCCORMACK: She spoke with him a couple times, a couple of times. One – I think once prior to the President speaking with Prime Minister Olmert, and then once afterwards, as well. But again, I can tell you 100 percent – with 100 percent assurance that her intention, again, going into the conversation with the President, was that she was going to abstain.

QUESTION: Well, what does this say about Prime Minister Olmert, then?

MR. MCCORMACK: Matt, look, I can only –

QUESTION: – (Inaudible) this Administration’s last week in office –

MR. MCCORMACK: Yeah.

QUESTION: – and dealing with someone who has – you know, is the leader until February of your closest ally in the Middle East –

MR. MCCORMACK: Matt, look, I can only say – I can only –

QUESTION: Have you –

MR. MCCORMACK: Matt, I can only account for –

QUESTION: Have you asked for clarification from the Israelis about these comments?

MR. MCCORMACK: I’m not – I don’t think so. I don’t think that we have.

QUESTION: So you’ve just – just – you’re just dismissing them? I mean, you’ve just decided that they’re not worthy of –

MR. MCCORMACK: Well, the facts – it’s the facts – I mean –

QUESTION: (Inaudible.)

MR. MCCORMACK: – all I’m doing is –

QUESTION: (Inaudible) any kind of a response?

MR. MCCORMACK: You know, look, I – again, Matt, you know, I’m – if the Israeli Government – if they, you know, feel it necessary, they will clarify, correct the record, whatever. I don’t know. All I can do is offer the facts as they are from the American side.

QUESTION: Well, but you haven’t asked them for any kind of clarification?

MR. MCCORMACK: Not that I know of, no. Not that I know of. Look, Secretary Rice and Prime Minister Olmert have a very good working relationship. They’ve worked through some very tough issues –

QUESTION: (Inaudible) he said this?

MR. MCCORMACK: No, I don’t think so. I don’t think –

QUESTION: (Inaudible.)

MR. MCCORMACK: She doesn’t have any – she hasn’t had any –

QUESTION: Has she – well, will she talk to him again while she’s still in office?

MR. MCCORMACK: I don’t know. She – if she has occasion to, you know, in terms of the substance, I’m sure she will.

QUESTION: Was the Secretary embarrassed by the fact that – or ashamed that she had – that she told the Arab – the Arab foreign ministers that the U.S. would support the resolution, and then had to abstain?

MR. MCCORMACK: That’s an inaccurate representation of events. No, she was not at all embarrassed or ashamed of the actions that we took, not only in pushing through an important resolution, a good resolution, the text of which we supported, the objectives of which we supported; but also, she felt as though the way that the United States voted in that Security Council chamber was the right way to vote.

QUESTION: Well, this is the elected leader of – under – indicted – albeit, you know, one with corruption charges pending against him – of your – the elected leader of your closest ally in the Middle East. And I find it surprising that you’re not – that you’re not trying to get a clarification on these comments.

MR. MCCORMACK: Perhaps – you know, perhaps we will, Matt. I – you know, I can only speak to what we’ve done. But – and again, all I can offer is – are the facts. I can’t vouch that Prime Minister Olmert was quoted correctly in the story or the context of the remarks at all. You’ll have to talk to the Israeli Government about that.
…
[Other questions are taken, then back to this issue]
…
Matthew.

QUESTION: Yeah, I need to get back to this UN thing for just a second because –

MR. MCCORMACK: Oh, good.

QUESTION: – I think the diplomacy is – it’s over my head, at least. Why would the Secretary work so hard for three days on something that she planned not to vote for (inaudible)?

MR. MCCORMACK: Matt, you are – no, that’s not what I said. I said that we were –

QUESTION: Is this (inaudible).

MR. MCCORMACK: On Wednesday, she decided we’re not going to be put in the position of vetoing a resolution, so it excludes that possibility. So you have two possibilities left: voting for it or abstaining. And she decided, given where the state of negotiations were in terms of the Mubarak initiative, that abstaining would give the best possibility for those negotiations to move forward and actually resolve the situation on the ground. We believed that a resolution could help in that, but ultimately it was not going to solve it. You had to have concrete understandings in order to fully resolve the situation on the ground. And that was only going to happen via the Mubarak initiative.

Look, that’s our assessment. We believed that it was important to give the Council an opportunity to speak on this issue. It was obviously very important for the Arab foreign ministers that were there. We supported the text. We supported the objective.

But the fact of the matter is that resolution wasn’t going to solve the problem on the ground. It could help, and we didn’t want to do anything that would have hindered the ability to resolve the situation on the ground.

QUESTION: Well, how could voting for it have hindered –

MR. MCCORMACK: Matt, you’ve – we’ve gone over this how many different times round and round?

QUESTION: Yeah, but –

MR. MCCORMACK: You’re venturing into flagellum equus mortuus territory. Look, I tried to explain it as best I can.

QUESTION: Tell the entire world that this is beating a dead horse. It’s not.

MR. MCCORMACK: No, I’m not – no, Matt, look, I’ve answered – I’m only trying to point out I have answered this question, or tried to answer this question, many times.

QUESTION: (Inaudible) resolution to begin with. You wanted a presidential statement. Then when the Arab foreign ministers said that they would not leave without there being a resolution, you decided – is this correct – you decided that, yes, you would work and –

MR. MCCORMACK: Any – Matt –

QUESTION: – work toward a resolution. At that point, you had already decided that you wouldn’t vote for it?

MR. MCCORMACK: That’s not what I said, Matt.

QUESTION: That’s why I’m asking.

MR. MCCORMACK: Well, I tried to explain it the best I can. You can go back in the transcript and read it.

Look, anytime you go into a – you know, multilateral diplomacy, you have a number of different options. And you have to decide at what point you foreclose various options and what pathway you are going to end up going down. The Secretary decided on Wednesday that we were open to pursuing a resolution. That was a pathway that we were ready and willing to go down. And again, this is all based on trying to help resolve the situation on the ground.

At that point, on Wednesday, you had the very beginnings of this Mubarak initiative – over Tuesday and Wednesday. We thought that that had some promise. So – and again, we thought that perhaps a resolution could help with that. So we were ready to explore that going forward.

And again, as time progresses, and we had hoped that the Mubarak initiative would have progressed a bit further than it had. It hadn’t. At that point, we thought a resolution would help the situation. And we thought that taking the course of abstaining on the text, which we supported, was the right way to go”.

The briefing was concluded at 10:46 a.m.

DPB # 6 – January 13, 2009

Haaretz today carries a report on the opinion of Prof. Yuval Shany, an expert in international law from Hebrew University’s law faculty, about possible violations during the current IDF operation: “The relevant question, he said, is ‘whether the operation is proportionate to the provocation that led to it. When a single Qassam [rocket] is fired, the state cannot invade and conquer an entire country. There must be a measure of proportion between the action and the reaction. But here, we are not talking about a single Qassam, but about years of Qassams’. Israel, he continued, ‘is permitted to use force to the degree necessary to end the attacks against it. Therefore, it [the operation] is legal as long as it is meant to prevent the attacks’ … However, Shany stressed, by law, Israel would not have the right to use force to effect regime change in the Gaza Strip. Israel would also have no right to deliberately target Palestinian civilians, even though Hamas deliberately targets Israeli civilians: One side’s illegal actions do not entitle the other side to violate the law as well. ‘In wartime, it is permissible to attack military targets only’, Shany explained. ‘This means targets that make a significant contribution to the other side’s war effort: Qassam launchers, Hamas fighting forces, weapons storehouses and [smuggling] tunnels’. Military targets can be struck even if civilians will very likely be hurt, as long as the harm to civilians is proportionate, he explained. This depends on factors such as the military value of the target, the extent of the harm suffered by civilians and the measures taken to minimize this harm. Thus, with regard to two specific dilemmas faced by Israel – whether to attack mosques being used as weapons storehouses, and also hospitals where senior Hamas commanders are holed up – Shany said: ‘A mosque is a more acceptable target than a hospital, because with a hospital, the assumption is that the harm to civilians will be far greater’. And in fact, Israel has chosen to strike mosques, but not hospitals. However, the professor added, even a hospital does not have total immunity: Firing missiles at it would be unacceptable, but a commando force could be sent in to capture wanted Hamas men. Regarding claims that Israel has deprived Gaza of fuel and electricity, and prevented the evacuation of the wounded, Shany said that once Israel has taken control of the Strip, it must enable the population’s humanitarian needs to be met. This includes an obligation to treat the wounded and to supply food, water and electricity. ‘The longer the army remains in an area, the greater its obligation to supply the local population’s needs becomes’, he added. Similarly, when Israel warns civilians to leave a house before an attack, it must ensure that they have somewhere to go and access to basic necessities such as food and water. Nevertheless, Shany noted, when United Nations agencies examined Israel’s conduct during the Second Lebanon War in 2006, they praised its practice of dropping leaflets to warn civilians to leave before bombing, saying this reduced civilian casualties…” This report can be read in full here.

Palestinian-American businessman Sam Bahour, who lives and works in the West Bank wrote today on the TPM blog that: “I watch in shock, like the rest of the world, at the appalling death and destruction being wrought on Gaza by Israel; and still it does not stop. Meanwhile, we see a seemingly never-ending army of well-prepared Israeli war propagandists, some Israeli government officials, and many other people self-enlisted for the purpose, explaining to the world the justifications for pulverizing the Gaza Strip, with its 1.5 million inhabitants. Curious about how Israel, or any society for that matter, could justify a crime of such magnitude against humanity, I turned to my Jewish Israeli friends today to hear their take on things. One after another, the theme was the same. The vast majority of Jewish Israelis has apparently bought into the state-sponsored line that Israel was under attack and had no other option available to stop Hamas’ rockets. More frightening is the revelation that many Israelis—including one person who self-identifies as a ‘leftist’—are speaking of accepting the killing of 100,000 or more Palestinians, if need be”.

In his post, Bahour said there were actually plenty of other options, and he named a few, including: accepting that there is an Israeli military occupation of Palestinian territory; accepting an international presence in the occupied territory; accepting lawful non-violent resistance to the occupation; and opting not to interfere in internal Palestinian politics. But, he wrote, “The fact of the matter is that you had a long list of options open to you! So many, indeed, that it boggles the mind that your government has apparently been able to blind you to all of them…so that today, as the bombs shriek over Gaza, you can say, and evidently sincerely mean it: ‘We had no other option’. Nevertheless, even with all these options effectively invisible to you, there is nothing on this earth—not law, not politics, not even a desperate and lengthy campaign of rockets creating widespread fear and even some civilian deaths on your side of the border—there is nothing that can justify, by Israel or any other country on this earth, the decision to opt for a crime against humanity as your chosen response. Nothing!” This post can be read in full here.