Palestine-Mandate

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice met Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in the Muqata’a Presidential Compound in Ramallah at noon on Sunday.

The main message Rice heard from Palestinian officials was a demand, yet again, to put pressure on Israel to stop its settlement activities on occupied Palestinian land.

But this is one argument that seems to have been won in advance – though how much pressure will be put, and how effectively, remains in question.

In her opening statement at the press conference, Rice said, “It’s important to have an atmosphere of trust and confidence…Actions and announcements are having a negative effect.” She did not specify which actions, or which announcements, but from the apparently satisfied reactions of President Abbas and members of his team, it seems she was referring to something Israel had done or said.

No party should be taking steps to pre-judge the outcome of the negotiations, Rice said sternly. She added that the US will not consider such actions or announcements as influencing the final status negotiations between the parties, and that the solution will be achieved on the basis of UN Security Council resolutions 242 and 338.

However, in response to a question from a journalist, Rice indicated that the US would not support a draft resolution being discussed in the UN Security Council about the recent announcements of expansion in Ramat Shlomo and other settlements around Jerusalem. “My strong view,” Rice stated, “is that this is not an issue which will benefit from Security Council action.” She did say that she was concerned, in particular, about those outposts “which are illegal under Israeli law.”

As to what pressure she might put on Israeli officials to stop settlement activities, Rice explained that “the Israeli government is a sovereign government and taking its own decisions, but it is Israel that has a strong interest in building an atmosphere of confidence…and so it is in Israel’s interest to do everything it can to build confidence.”

While en route to the region, Rice was asked in an exchange with journalists on board her flight to Tel Aviv on Saturday evening: “Are you not annoyed that every time you go there, there is a new announcement of settlements, either just before you come or just after you leave?”

Rice replied: “Unfortunately, there have been a few whether I’m coming or not.. Look, it’s a problem. And I think it’s a problem that I’m going to address with the Israelis. And … as the President said today …it gives us every reason that we really ought to be determining the boundaries of the state, because what’s in Israel will be in Israel at that point, and what’s in Palestine will be in Palestine. And that’s the best way to resolve this, but you know, I repeat, we’ve talked a great deal about the importance of Roadmap obligations, and this one isn’t being met”.

Rice also said that she will be talking with Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad — “so I’ll also have an opportunity to talk about what is another track of Annapolis. The negotiations are one track, but the – improving the lives of the Palestinians and building the institutions of the Palestinian state is another track, and that’s the one in which I’m most involved with Prime Minister Fayyad”.

It appears that Rice will be having one “trilateral meeting” — apparently today, Sunday — with Rice meeting the heads of the two negotiating teams — Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi LIvni, and Palestinian former Prime Minister Ahmad Qurei (Abu Alaa).

Rice will have dinner on Sunday evening with embattled Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

A second “trilateral meeting” will be held on Monday, nvolving Fayyad and Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak — who, as Prime MInister Olmert has said, is in charge of the West Bank (and, from a distance, of Gaza).

This meeting with Barak and Fayyad will focus on “improvement of the lives of Palestinians” through greater ease in “movement and access”: On this point, however, Rice refused to be drawn into a pointed criticism of Israel for failing to meet another Road Map obligation. Instead, she said politely, more could be done in this regard.

“I do think that there are improvements in Jenin on all of the elements, improvements on security with the Palestinians having responsibilities there, improvements in terms of movement and access, and the beginnings of improvements in terms of the economic side. I am told that there are other areas where there have been some improvements in movement and access as well; for instance, you know rather than — more random stopping of vehicles rather than every vehicle, that kind of thing. But it’s not enough, and there certainly and clearly needs to be more. And I understand the security considerations as well as anyone, but the obligation was undertaken to improve the lives of Palestinians and we’re going to have to work very hard if we’re going to make that true in a broader sense”

But both problem areas — continued Israeli settlement building, and humiliating hindrances in movement — are equally pressing, and have an equally awful impact on the present and on the future in the occupied Palestinian territory.

In a situation in which there is a media black-out on the negotiations themselves, Rice nonetheless offered a glimpse into the current approach, in which she denied reports that she has suggested the two parties focus first on defining the borders: “Part of the difficulty in negotiations like this is that the issues are intertwined. You know, borders and security, issues concerning Jerusalem, and issues concerning borders, and issues concerning refugees — they’re all part — and by the way, not only the big four of final status, but also issues of state-to-state relations, issues of economic relations. They’re all very intertwined. And I believe the parties have adopted the right strategy here, which is that they work on all of them, recognizing that some may move more quickly than others, but also recognizing that nothing can be agreed till everything is agreed. And it’s just very difficult to imagine a circumstance under which you could separate somehow the border issue from these other important issues. That doesn’t mean that you can’t work on the border issue separate from the others, but it’s hard to imagine that you could really resolve it without dealing with the companion issues … I’ve encouraged the parties not to hesitate to push ahead if something is moving, but the idea that you could have a separate agreement, I think that just doesn’t make sense”.

Gaza was hardly mentioned in Rice’s discussion on Saturday with journalists en route to the region, except to say that “Everybody knows that the situation in Gaza is extremely difficult”, and “We all know what needs to happen in Gaza”.. Hamas, in Rice’s view, is ultimately responsible for all the problemsi n Gaza, and, she noted, Egypt is working hard to find a solution.

The solution, according to Rice is that: “The rocket fire needs to stop. There needs to be a more sustainable circumstance for the people of Gaza, meaning that there will need to be sustained openings of the crossings, enough at least to permit humanitarian conditions to – humanitarian needs to be met. And ultimately, I would hope that they can get back to something that looks more like the Movement and Access Agreement of November 2005, which everybody’s focused on as an endpoint”.

Gaza was also hardly mentioned in the Rice-Abbas press conference on Sunday. Abbas said something about hoping to reach an agreement “that will put an end to the suffering in the Gaza Strip”, and about re-gaining national unity “based on the Yemeni initiative that was adopted by the Arab summit in Damascus. If we succeed, it is quite important we regain national unity on the basis we have described”, he added.

Haaretz’ veteran correspondent Amira Hass wrote on Thursday that “The negotiations over the future of our land, from the sea to the river, and the two peoples living in it, are proceeding along two parallel channels. It has been that way since the Madrid and Oslo talks for 17 years now. One channel is between the Palestinians and Israelis - such as Tuesday’s meeting in Jerusalem between chief Palestinian negotiator Ahmed Qureia and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni. The other is being conducted between the Israelis and themselves … The Palestinians have declared that they are not retreating from the international resolutions regarding a solution (for example the June 4, 1967 borders), and are demanding an immediate end to construction in the settlements. The Israelis are demanding that the Palestinians fight terror. The talk is the same as it was nine and 12 years ago, which makes the current negotiations virtual only. The real progress is in the intra-Israeli channel. In these negotiations, the future of more than 10 percent of the West Bank has already been decided: the area west of the separation fence/wall … It seems that in the intra-Israeli negotiations the size of the enclaves of the prospective Palestinian state overlap more and more with the land registered as privately owned with the Civil Administration. In the intra-Israeli negotiations, the boundaries of the concessions over Jerusalem have also been drawn: After Israel took most of the available, unoccupied land of the Palestinian villages and neighborhoods to prevent them from expanding and to create its own settlements - called neighborhoods - Israel agreed to relinquish the residents. The land to us, the people to the Palestinian Authority. And the world will glorify Israel for its willingness to compromise and tear from its heart holy parts such as Anata and Kafr A’qab. Despite domestic opposition, the eternal representatives of the Palestine Liberation Organization and PA - Mahmoud Abbas, Ahmed Qureia and Saeb Erekat - continue to take part in these virtual negotiations. On Tuesday, following a meeting with Abbas, the Fatah Central Committee warned that continued settlement construction is likely to wreck the negotiations. The warning may have been for internal consumption only, but similar alarms were sounded in 1996 and 2000. Israelis dismissed them in the belief that the participation by senior Palestinian officials in the virtual negotiations is what counted. To the Palestinian public, the warnings did not sound hollow. It is impossible to predict how the Palestinian people will interpret the warnings this time around, and whether they will see them as a signal that they have the right to explode in anger once again over their continuing dispossession from their lands and future”. Amira Hass’ commentary on the negotiations is published here.

Israeli settlement activities were discussed — but certainly not resolved — at a meeting between the Israeli and Palestinian negotiating teams on Monday.   Now, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas are scheduled to hold a “summit” meeting on Thursday on the subject, which the Palestinians have indicated must be resolved for any further progress to be made.

The announcement that approval has been given for 307 - then 500 - additional homes in Har Homa, which is on a formerly-wooded hilltop between Jerusalem and Bethlehem, is only part of the picture.

There has also been discussion in the press of additional building in Maale Adumim — which an Ir Amim study-tour guide said recently has jurisdiction over a larger physical area than Tel Aviv — and in Atarot,  where a now-disused airport for Jerusalem sits, between Ramallah and Jerusalem, where Jewish housing is growing rapidly in several areas.

In 1997, Israel announced plans to build 6500 homes in Har Homa.  [N.B., so far, only about 2,500 housing units have been built — and many of them appear to be empty.]   The UN Security Council met for weeks, the U.S. vetoed a draft resolution, and the UN General Assembly met in a “uniting for peace” process.

Akiva Eldar wrote recently that “In the Palestinian Authority (and the Israeli peace camp) this plan was seen as another step in a scheme to cut off their capital from the West Bank. Yasser Arafat threatened to declare the establishment of an independent state and the Palestinian Legislative Council announced a general strike in the territories. That crisis was the focus of Arafat’s visit to the White House the following month. Clinton asked the Palestinian leader to be sensitive to Netanyahu’s ‘coalition pressures’. Arafat explained that he, too, had troubles at home and begged the president to at least demand that Israel delay the implementation of the decision to establish the neighborhood … On the other side were the settlers and the activists from the right. They were flanked by then-mayor [of Jerusalem] Olmert, who a short while earlier had pushed Netanyahu into the Western Wall tunnel - an adventure that ended with the death of 16 Israeli soldiers and dozens of Palestinians. Olmert declared that Har Homa was ‘the most substantive test of the government’s ability to withstand pressure and demonstrate leadership’ … The response today of spokesmen for the Olmert government gives rise to the fear that the Annapolis conference did not change the situation on the Israeli side. They claim that ‘the neighborhood is within the area of the municipal boundaries of Jerusalem, over which Israeli law is binding, and therefore there is no prohibition to building there, just as there is no obstacle to building in any other part of Israel’. We have already forgotten that the prime minister agreed that everything would be open to negotiation, including Jerusalem. Is this the way to build a wall to fortify the status of PA President Mahmoud Abbas? And what will ‘the world’ do - all those people who were in attendance at Annapolis - if Olmert decides to hide behind ‘pressures from the coalition’ and approves the new construction?”    Akiva Eldar’s analysis in Haaretz is here.

Haaretz says that a “summit” between Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to discuss Israeli settlement activities will be held on Thursday 27 December.

Haaretz reports that “Official sources in Jerusalem say the Har Homa imbroglio is the result of a decision by low-ranking government bureaucrats in the Housing Ministry. They say that Olmert was not informed of the decision in advance, but on the international front, these explanations do not seem to be enlisting much support. Moreover, the Har Homa affair exposed the differences in the perceptions that both parties adhere to. As far as Israel is concerned, the neighborhood is an integral part of unified Jerusalem, and not part of the territories. Construction at Har Homa is not subject to the same bureaucratic maze that any construction in the territories - be it a house, shack or electricity line - must endure before it is approved. The Palestinians and their supporters in the international community do not make that distinction. To them, any Israeli construction east of the Green Line, which was Israel’s border before the 1967 Six-Day War, is an illegal settlement. They treat construction in East Jerusalem much the same as they treat construction in the settlement blocs in the West Bank. To the Palestinians, construction in the territories is an obstacle to peace and an act that jeopardizes the negotiations. In addition, the Palestinians realize that Israel - which is expecting its first visit by U.S. President George W. Bush next month - is at a disadvantage internationally as far as settlements are concerned. Their objective is to dominate the headlines until Bush arrives. But the problem goes deeper than head-butting in the media. Israel has demanded that the Palestinians fulfill their duties according to the road map plan for peace, which the U.S. devised for both parties. But Israel has failed to meet its own obligations such as the evacuation of settlements, a total freeze on all construction in the territories and allowing the Palestinians to reopen their institutions in East Jerusalem”… The Haaretz report on Thursday’s Abbas-Olmert “summit” is here.