The “road map” to nowhere

26Oct07

Aluf Benn, diplomatic correspondent for Ha’aretz, has written a couple of good pieces recently about the so-called “peace process”. Yesterday, he described how Olmert’s policy with towards negotiations is to “march in the no-man’s-land between talk and action”, conceding just enough to appease the international community and world opinion while not actually changing anything on the ground. Benn continues,

“In all of his appearances in Paris and in London, Olmert lowered expectations regarding the Annapolis summit. “It’s not a summit,” he said repeatedly. What is it? “When you say summit you think of several days of discussions and negotiations between the participants. That is not the goal of the meeting in Annapolis, which from the beginning was to create an environment that will encourage direct talks.” In other words, a photo op of statesmen expressing support for the “two-state solution” without discussing its content.

According to Olmert, the joint declaration to be presented at the summit will relate to all the “core issues,” but will not offer solutions – only guidelines for detailed negotiations later on. And even if an agreement is achieved in the future, its implementation will be subject to the “road map.” In other words, in the initial stage, ending Palestinian terror.

To translate the diplomatic language, Olmert is saying the following: I am responding to international expectations and talking to Mahmoud Abbas, although it is clear to me and to him that the situation on the ground will not change as a result of these talks. If I present a “diplomatic horizon” to the Fatah leaders, they may have a chance of surviving on the West Bank. And even if they fall and Hamas takes control of Ramallah, Nablus and Hebron, Israel will not be to blame. Meanwhile, we must not rush with negotiations, and implementation must be postponed, so that my coalition will not fall apart and my government will have an agenda.”

In other words, it’s the traditional Israeli policy of “endless negotiations”, designed to thrust the initiative onto the Palestinian side and develop Israel’s image as a peacemaker, even as the colonisation of the West Bank continues. It is an attempt not to achieve peace, but to place the “peace process” in deep freeze (or “formaldehyde“, to borrow Dov Weisglass’ phrase describing the ‘disengagement’ from Gaza).

Benn’s article confirmed that the Israeli government is continuing to insist on the “road map” as the framework for peace negotiations. He expanded on this today, writing:

“Israel is demanding that any future agreement between the two sides should be implemented in accordance with the stages set out by the road map. Furthermore, Israel has said any progress toward the establishment of a Palestinian state must meet the first requirement of the plan, which requires Palestinian security to undertake continuous and effective operations to counter terrorism in the territories…

During her meeting with U.S. National Security Adviser Steven Hadley yesterday, Livni said that the implementation of the agreements must be conditioned by the requirements of the road map…

The talks between the two negotiating teams are focused on the general framework of the settlement, and substantive issues have still not been discussed.”

This analysis is borne out by Tzipi Livni’s announcement yesterday, contradicting about a year of solemn promises by Ehud Olmert, that Israel will not remove any outposts in the West Bank until the Palestinian Authority makes a concerted effort to ‘fight terror’. Of course, the “Palestinian Authority” in fact has very little authority to do anything. The Palestinians do not have a state and the PA is not a government – it is an institution that has as much authority as Israel gives it, and no more. The demand that the PA start seriously clamping down on Palestinian militant groups even as Israel makes no moves to end the occupation amounts to demanding that the Palestinians surrender and cease resistance in exchange for a few vague promises that maybe, sometime in the future, Israel might possibly agree to withdraw. That’s simply never going to happen. Fatah was recruited to act as Israel’s enforcer in the territories during the nineties, carrying out a large scale repression of Hamas that involved widespread brutality and torture (under the command of Muhammad Dahlan). In return, all it got was increase settlement expansion. It is unlikely they will make the same mistake again.

The “road map”, described by the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee as “an irrelevance“, is perhaps the prime example of Israel’s policy of endless negotiations. The day after it signed the agreement, the Israeli government entered a series of 14 “reservations” that totally undermined the entire plan. See, for example, reservation nine:

“There will be no involvement with issues pertaining to the final settlement. Among issues not to be discussed: settlement in Judea, Samaria and Gaza (excluding a settlement freeze and illegal outposts); the status of the Palestinian Authority and its institutions in Jerusalem; and all other matters whose substance relates to the final settlement.”

Or reservation 10:

“The removal of references other than 242 and 338 (1397, the Saudi Initiative and the Arab Initiative adopted in Beirut). A settlement based upon the road map will be an autonomous settlement that derives its validity therefrom. The only possible reference should be to Resolutions 242 and 338, and then only as an outline for the conduct of future negotiations on a permanent settlement.”

This is important because UN resolutions 242 and 338 make no reference to Palestinian national rights.

Or, and this is particularly relevant to Benn’s articles above, reservation one:

“Both at the commencement of, and during the process, and as a condition to its continuance, calm will be maintained. The Palestinians will dismantle the existing security organizations and implement security reforms during the course of which new organizations will be formed and act to combat terror, violence and incitement (incitement must cease immediately and the Palestinian Authority must educate for peace).

These organizations will engage in genuine prevention of terror and violence through arrests, interrogations, prevention and the enforcement of the legal groundwork for investigations, prosecution and punishment. In the first phase of the plan and as a condition for progress to the second phase, the Palestinians will complete the dismantling of terrorist organizations (Hamas, Islamic Jihad, the Popular Front, the Democratic Front, Al-Aqsa Brigades and other apparatuses) and their infrastructure; collection of all illegal weapons and their transfer to a third party for the sake of being removed from the area and destroyed; cessation of weapons smuggling and weapons production inside the Palestinian Authority; activation of the full prevention apparatus and cessation of incitement.

There will be no progress to the second phase without the fulfillment of all above-mentioned conditions relating to the war against terror. The security plans to be implemented are the Tenet and Zinni plans. [As in the other mutual frameworks, the road map will not state that Israel must cease violence and incitement against the Palestinians].”

In other words, Palestinians must submit to complete, unilateral surrender, in return for which they might be awarded a “provisional” state with “certain aspects of sovereignty”, with “Israeli control over the entry and exit of all persons and cargo, as well as of its air space and electromagnetic spectrum.” It’s not enough that militant groups like Hamas cease violence against Israel in order to proceed with negotiations (Hamas did in fact observe a unilateral ceasefire for well over a year); rather, they must cease to exist altogether. As the late Tanya Reinhart wrote back in 2003, Israel “emphasized that a negotiated halt to terror is not sufficient and what is required is a visible clash between the new security forces and the opposition organizations (namely, a civil war)”. This was an impossible demand, and deliberately so. The structure of the road map is such that it allows Israel to delay any discussion about “final status” issues to some undetermined point in the distant future, while continuing to establish “facts on the ground” (settlements, the wall, etc.). Then, when the Palestinians inevitably continue to resist the occupation, Israel can throw up its hands in despair and wail about there being no Palestinian “partner for peace”.

The fact that Israel insists upon the road map as the only framework for “peace talks” plainly demonstrates its insincerity. It is clear what is required to end the conflict – the international consensus two-state settlement that has been sitting on the table gathering dust for over 30 years, in the fact of almost constant U.S./Israeli rejectionism. This is what Abbas is demanding, and this is what the Israeli government is studiously trying to avoid by focusing on “institution building” and “stopping terror” as a precondition to final status talks.

Meanwhile, the Israeli government has announced that it will subject the battered, desperate residents of Gaza to further sanctions, in the form of “limited” power cuts. This is text-book collective punishment, as B’Tselem and six other human rights organisations note:

“[T]he sanctions constitute a grave breach of the foremost principle of international humanitarian law: the obligation to distinguish between combatants and civilians. In addition, the decision is liable to constitute a violation of one of the absolute prohibitions of international law: the ban on collective punishment. The coalition believes that these sanctions will also not prevent armed groups from launching rocket attacks on Israeli communities.

The Israeli Cabinet’s claim that the proposed sanctions will not affect the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip is false. Limiting the electricity supply will drastically reduce the functioning capacity of hospitals and health clinics. In addition, limited electricity will reduce Gaza’s water pumping system, and will cripple its sewage system and water supply. Thus, the Cabinet’s decision not to cut Gaza’s water supply is not a humane gesture because the other sanctions will effectively diminish it in any case.

The human rights organizations urge the Cabinet to reverse its decision to impose collective punishment on the Gaza Strip ? a grave violation of international humanitarian law.”

UN special rapporteur for human rights in the OPT John Dugard summed up Israel’s policies towards Gaza in his August report (.pdf):

“Gaza has become a besieged and imprisoned territory as a result of the economic sanctions imposed by Israel and the West, following the election success of Hamas in the January 2006 elections, the capture of Corporal Gilad Shalit in June 2006 and the seizure of power by Hamas in June 2007. External borders have been mainly closed and only opened to allow a minimum of imports and exports and foreign travel. This has produced a humanitarian crisis, one carefully managed by Israel, which punishes the people of Gaza without ringing alarm bells in the West. It is a controlled strangulation that seriously violates norms of human rights law and humanitarian law but which apparently falls within the generous limits of international toleration.” [my emph.]

And, indeed, Palestinian appeals to the international community to put a stop to this collective punishment have thus far been met with silence.

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Tags: "peace process", collective punishment, road map