Sidelined: U.S. fails for the second time in Quartet discussions on ‘Jewish state’

This article originally appeared in Mondoweiss.

While the Diplomatic Quartet scrambled to avert action on Palestine at the Security Council, the Obama administration was reportedly busy lobbying to commit the Quartet to affirming Israel’s Jewish character.  That the Quartet statement’s purpose was not achieved and that the Obama administration’s efforts failed further highlights the death of the Oslo era and the decreasing relevance of the U.S. in a fast changing Middle East.

The weak Quartet statement only proposed a timeline for more negotiations, and the Palestinian Authority (PA) didn’t find anything in the statement that might coax them to talk with an Israeli government continuing to colonize Palestinian land.  The UN bid by the PA further sidelines a Quartet whose envoy is strongly biased against the Palestinians.

And the Obama administration’s failure to turn the Quartet into even more of a biased mediator marks the second time they have failed to do so; Daniel Levy first reported for Foreign Policy that the U.S. tried to get the Quartet to state that Israel was the “homeland of the Jewish people” for the first time in July. (See this excellent piece in Mondoweiss—originally in the Journal of Palestine Studies—explaining why Palestinians can’t recognize Israel as a Jewish state.) The U.S. failure to get the Quartet to agree to sign on to Israel’s new condition that the Palestinians become Zionists surely marks a new, and low, era for U.S.-brokered negotiations.

Jonathan Cook correctly writes in the National that the whole Palestinian bid for statehood represents a death knell for the U.S. role in Israel/Palestine:

If Mahmoud Abbas, the long-suffering head of the Palestinian Authority, has  achieved anything for his people at the UN, it is not imminent statehood but the  fatal discrediting of the US as arbiter of a Middle East peace. US President  Barack Obama’s promised veto on a Palestinian state declares the demise not only  of the Oslo process but also of the US role as an honest broker.

The Palestinian statehood bid is fast making the U.S., who has spent decades as Israel’s lawyer, irrelevant. No one is crying over the loss.

Will the Palestinian Authority collide with popular resistance in September?

The Palestinian Authority’s (PA) bid for United Nations recognition of a Palestinian state remains on track, despite heavy pressure from the U.S. and Israel.  But what has received scant attention is the possibility that the September bid may also result in a collision between popular, grassroots Palestinian resistance to the Israeli occupation and the PA’s preferred avenues to statehood.

Following imprisoned Palestinian leader Marwan Barghouti’s call for mass marches ahead of the September UN gambit for a state, the Palestinian Authority echoed Barghouti’s call.

“All of us are talking about resistance and it must be every day,” PA President Mahmoud Abbas said in late July.   Al Jazeera English reported August 1 on the PA’s planned mass rallies:

Palestinian officials have said they will begin mass marches against Israel’s occupation of the West Bank on September 20, the eve of a largely symbolic UN vote expected to recognise their independence.

Yasser Abed Rabbo, a Palestinian official, said leaders hope to attract millions of people, and the protest will be the first of a prolonged effort.

He said the campaign would be called “Palestine 194″ because the Palestinians hope to become the 194th member of the UN.

“The appeal to the UN is a battle for all Palestinians, and in order to succeed, it needs millions to pour into streets,” Abed Rabbo said.

But this week, the form of the PA’s planned “resistance” became clear, and it will certainly not mark the end of coordination between PA security forces and the Israeli military, one of the most important–and disliked among Palestinians–results of the Oslo era.

Haaretz reported last Friday that:

The Palestinian Authority has ordered its security forces to prevent demonstrations planned for September from escalating into violent confrontations with Israel, especially in potential friction points like the roadblocks and settlements.

Senior Palestinian Authority figures issued the orders to the Palestinian security forces in recent weeks out of concern that there may be violent clashes between thousands of Palestinian demonstrators and Israel Defense Forces at the end of September, following a vote at the United Nations General Assembly for recognition of a Palestinian state

In similar messages relayed to the IDF, the PA made clear that it intended to prevent largescale violent protests which would heighten tensions and undermine security cooperation between the two sides.

Last week PA President Mahmoud Abbas called on all Palestinians to participate in non-violent marches which are part of a series of events planned by the Authority for late September. Earlier this week, the General Secretary of the PLO Executive Committee, Yasser Abed Rabbo, announced that plans to hold a mass rally on September 20 when UN deliberations in New York begin.

The Palestinian demonstrations are scheduled to take place in the centers of Palestinian cities – and not in locations where they may lead to friction with Israelis. Moreover, the PLO is sponsoring the events and the security forces are charged with overseeing order.

The PA, it seems, intends to coopt Palestinian resistance against the occupation. But it is highly unlikely that will fly with grassroots activists involved in the popular committees that demonstrate against the illegal separation barrier and settlements in the West Bank every week.  A confrontation between the PA and Palestinians seems likely, and is not without precedent.  As Adam Shatz pointed out in a recent piece n the London Review of Books, the PA turned back protesters who attempted to march to the Hawara checkpoint outside Nablus during the May 15 protests marking the Nakba.

In a statement sent to me by activists in the West Bank, a coalition of popular committees in the West Bank said July 29:

The popular committees against the wall and settlements confirms that next September is the immense popular battle for the recognition of the State of Palestine, number 194 at the UN.

The popular committees against the wall and settlements, in addition to the national committee for popular struggle and the popular struggle coordination committee,  have discussed the issue regarding the intention of the Palestinian Authority to go the UN for the recognition of the Palestinian State.

All confirmed the right of the Palestinian people to have their state fully recognized with its capital Jerusalem through going to the UN, guaranteeing holding to the Palestinian fixed rights.

The committees consider the coming September a very important phase of struggle in the history of the Palestinian cause and calls upon the Palestinian people in its all categories wherever they are to actively engage and participate in such a phase. They also calls upon the Palestinian leadership not to tie going to the UN against going back to negotiations.

The committees commit themselves to initiate  to work in order to develop intensive action and mobilize people to expand the struggle for recognition of a Palestinian State in the Palestinian and the international arenas using an immense popular struggle program.

Therefore, the committees call upon our Palestinian people in all their locations in Palestine and Diaspora,  the fellow Arab countries and the International arena of supporters, solidarity movements and friends  around the world to stand with us and act in their communities for the recognition of the Palestinian state to become the state number 194 in the United Nations.

Call on the International movements to mobilize with us on the 21 of September, to make the day a world wide day in support of the right of Palestian people to their own state in freedom, democracy and self determination.

While the popular committee statement expressed support for the UN bid, it is clear that popular struggle leaders are not going to simply gather in Palestinian cities and stay put, especially considering the fact that the popular struggle confronts the Israeli military head on every week.  Come September, the PA’s statehood bid could lead to a confrontation with its own people.

Corporate media delete U.S. role in Hamas-Fatah split

In response to the youth of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank rising up on March 14 and 15 to call for Palestinian political unity, both the leaders of Fatah and Hamas pledged to enter into talks aimed at reconciliation.  Most recently, President Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah “met with senior Hamas officials to discuss a proposed trip to Gaza and efforts to mend internal Palestinian division by forming a unity government,” the Ma’an News Agency reported.

With those talks came a spate of articles in the U.S. corporate media about the efforts at reconciliation.  But in providing background on why these talks are happening, and the roots of the split between Hamas and Fatah, media outlets have deleted the crucial role the U.S. played in fomenting that split.

The New York Times explained that:

[Abbas had] not set foot in Gaza in the four years since a brief, bloody civil war there sent him and his Fatah colleagues fleeing to the West Bank…Hamas won Palestinian legislative elections in early 2006, and, for a brief time, Fatah and Hamas had a national unity government. But tensions between them led to the fighting and a break in communications.

TIME magazine’s Karl Vick similarly put it this way:

Mahmoud Abbas, who heads the Fatah party that governs the West Bank, has accepted an invitation from rival Hamas to travel to the Gaza Strip. The visit would be the first since Hamas drove Fatah operatives out of Gaza in 2007 — throwing some off from the tops of buildings — in the turmoil that followed Hamas’ surprise victory in elections months earlier.

All of these accounts don’t mention where the “turmoil” and the breakup of the short-lived national unity government between Hamas and Fatah following the 2006 elections came from.  The expose of the Bush administration’s role in the split by David Rose in Vanity Fair remains essential reading for those wanting to understand the roots of the split.

Some crucial excerpts:

Vanity Fair has obtained confidential documents, since corroborated by sources in the U.S. and Palestine, which lay bare a covert initiative, approved by Bush and implemented by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Deputy National Security Adviser Elliott Abrams, to provoke a Palestinian civil war. The plan was for forces led by Dahlan, and armed with new weapons supplied at America’s behest, to give Fatah the muscle it needed to remove the democratically elected Hamas-led government from power. (The State Department declined to comment.)

But the secret plan backfired, resulting in a further setback for American foreign policy under Bush. Instead of driving its enemies out of power, the U.S.-backed Fatah fighters inadvertently provoked Hamas to seize total control of Gaza…

Within the Bush administration, the Palestinian policy set off a furious debate. One of its critics is David Wurmser, the avowed neoconservative, who resigned as Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief Middle East adviser in July 2007, a month after the Gaza coup.

Wurmser accuses the Bush administration of “engaging in a dirty war in an effort to provide a corrupt dictatorship [led by Abbas] with victory.” He believes that Hamas had no intention of taking Gaza until Fatah forced its hand. “It looks to me that what happened wasn’t so much a coup by Hamas but an attempted coup by Fatah that was pre-empted before it could happen,” Wurmser says…

Without this back story, why there is a bitter Hamas-Fatah split remains obscured.  The least the U.S. media could do is provide a sentence explaining these facts.

WikiLeaks Revelations About Israel/Palestine Counters Conventional Media Narrative

As Peter Hart of Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting notes, “WikiLeaks document dumps are largely what media want to make of them,” and the major U.S. newspapers have so far played up the WikiLeaks revelations about Iran and various Israeli and Arab officials’ alarm over Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons program.

The headlines on two New York Times articles read:  “Around the World, Distress Over Iran,” and “Iran Is Fortified With North Korean Aid.”  The Washington Post, whose overall coverage of the classified diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks has been lacking, has a piece titled, “Netanyahu says WikiLeaks cables show Arab states share Israeli concerns about Iran’s nuclear program.”

But that’s not all the latest documents from WikiLeaks show about politics in the Middle East.  Other leaked cables that have so far been ignored by mainstream media concern Israel’s perception of the Palestinian Authority (PA)–perceptions that undermine the conventional narrative on Israeli-Palestinian negotiations and relations.

The conventional narrative, which closely follows establishment discourse on Israel-Palestine, is that Israel and the Palestinians are engaged or have been engaged in “peace talks” with the goal of bringing about a Palestinian state in the near future.  The Palestinian Authority and Israel are in conflict with each other over issues such as building settlements in the West Bank.  While these talks go on, the West Bank is enjoying an unprecedented period of economic prosperity and a stable governing entity that can bring about a Palestinian state.  Articles about this diplomatic tango dominate U.S. media coverage of the region because that’s what elites in the U.S., Israel and Palestine are engaged in (see, for example, here, here, and here from the New York Times).  In sum, mainstream media coverage is much more about the “process” than the “peace” when it comes to discussing the so-called “peace process.”

If media would report on them, the diplomatic discussions that have been revealed by WikiLeaks add much needed context to understanding the relationship between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

You wouldn’t know it from reading major U.S. papers, but the Palestinian Authority essentially functions as a subcontractor for the Israeli occupation, and WikiLeaks confirms this fact further.  For instance, the PA’s security forces have been used to drive Hamas, the Islamist movement that was democratically elected in 2006 and controls the Gaza Strip, underground, as Hamas opposes (violently in some cases) engaging Israel in “peace talks.”  In the immediate run-up to PA President Mahmoud Abbas’s direct talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the PA cracked down harshly on Palestinian dissidents who opposed the resumption of negotiations with Israel.

From a number of WikiLeaks documents, we learn that Israel is quite happy with the PA, though worried about its long-term political viability, and even attempted to coordinate the brutal 2008-09 assault on the Hamas-run Gaza Strip with the PA.

In one cable from 2009, Amos Gilad, an Israeli defense ministry official, is quoted as saying “that Israeli-PA security and economic cooperation in the West Bank continues to improve as Jenin and Nablus flourish, and described Palestinian security forces as the ‘good guys.’”  Another cable from 2007 quotes Netanyahu as candidly saying that the “entire Palestinian economy [is] based on graft and patronage,” which runs contrary to the rosy descriptions of the West Bank economy Americans routinely hear from the likes of Thomas Friedman.

But don’t expect media to report on this.  It would prove that “peace talks” and the diplomatic tango that accompanies them, which is all the media reports on, is a facade.

‘West Bank First’ Approach Failing Miserably

Elliott Abrams, one of the key players in the attempted U.S.-backed coup in 2007 to install Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah party as the sole Palestinian entity in the West Bank and Gaza Strip has a short piece in Foreign Policy arguing for more of the same “West Bank first” approach to Palestine.

Abrams’ suggestion has been in place since the end of the Bush administration’s second term, and it has produced absolutely nothing good.

The “West Bank first” approach refers to the policy, first begun by the Bush administration and continued by the Obama administration, of showering the Palestinian Authority-controlled West Bank with aid, international backing and training for security forces in an attempt to weaken the Hamas-run government in Gaza by drawing a stark contrast between the living conditions in the West Bank and Gaza.  The approach also further legitimizes the decades-long Israeli goal of separating the West Bank from Gaza, therefore precluding the possibility of a viable Palestinian state.

Not only is this approach undemocratic and dismissive of Palestinians’ electoral choices, it is also failing miserably.  Hamas is doing a much better job at governing than the Palestinian Authority.

Professor Menachem Klein, an Israeli who teaches at Bar-Ilan University, writes today in Ha’aretz:

A question: Which government functions better, that of Salam Fayyad in the West Bank or that of Hamas in the Gaza Strip? Answer: The Hamas government. Another question: Which of the two governments would stop functioning without foreign aid? Answer: The West Bank one.

Ismail Haniyeh’s government functions well, despite the blockade of Gaza, the diplomatic boycott and the lack of assistance from large international organizations. Fayyad’s considerable personal abilities, the success of his technocratic government in improving living conditions in the West Bank, the excellent foreign relations maintained by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and the extensive aid Fayyad’s government receives have not created a more effective government than the one run by Hamas. These are the conclusions of a new study by Dr. Yezid Sayigh from King’s College, London.

Furthermore, the popular belief that the Hamas regime is brutal while the Abbas-Fayyad government is democratic is also mistaken. Hamas came to power in real, democratic, internationally-monitored elections – a process unprecedented in the Arab world. By contrast, President Abbas’ legal term of office ended long ago, yet he has not left office.

 

 

Barack Obama Cements U.S. Role as ‘Israel’s Lawyer’

One of the more famous lines about the U.S. role in the “peace process” between Israel and the Palestinian Authority is Aaron David Miller, a former Middle East negotiator for the U.S., saying that “for far too long, many American officials involved in Arab-Israeli peacemaking, myself included, have acted as Israel’s attorney, catering and coordinating with the Israelis at the expense of successful peace negotiations.”

President Barack Obama may have vowed to the world in June 2009 in Cairo that “America will not turn our backs on the legitimate Palestinian aspiration for dignity, opportunity, and a state of their own,” but the Obama administration has betrayed that promise and has instead continued to act as Israel’s lawyer.  The U.S. role in the current peace negotiations, and specifically the news of President Obama’s letter of guarantees to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, proves that the U.S. is not an honest broker.  (The “America as Israel’s lawyer” meme falls apart when we consider that the U.S. and Israel don’t follow the relevant laws during “peace talks”).

In an effort to save “direct peace talks” between Netanyahu and Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian Authority president, from collapsing over the expiration of the “settlement freeze,” Obama reportedly has offered “military hardware, support for a long-term Israeli presence in the Jordan Valley, help with enforcing a ban on the smuggling of weapons through a Palestinian state, a promise to veto Security Council resolutions critical of Israel during the talks and a pledge to forge a regional security agreement for the Middle East.”  Israel would merely have to agree to extend the so-called “settlement freeze” for two-months to obtain that generous package.

But ending settlement construction should not be seen as a concession the Israelis give to the Palestinians; rather, it should be a base requirement for Israel, as all settlements are illegal under international law.

What is Obama offering the Palestinians to cajole them to get back to table?  “An offer by the United States to formally endorse a Palestinian state based on the borders of Israel before the 1967 Middle East war, something for which the Palestinians have long pushed.”  The lopsided nature of the two offers is clear.  The U.S. is acting as Israel’s lawyer once again, disregarding legitimate Palestinian demands based on international law while guaranteeing Israel a whole slew of things it wants.

Writing in Al Jazeera, Lamis Andoni comments:

The equation is hugely unbalanced. In exchange for a partial two-month settlement freeze, Israel is offered US endorsement of all of its “security needs” – as defined, of course, by Israel.

Included within this are assurances aimed at stopping the infiltration of weapons into Palestinian territories and the positioning of Israeli troops in the Jordan Valley – all of which is consistent with the Israeli vision of a demilitarised Palestinian state. The letter effectively offers to consolidate the integration of Israeli security interests into US national strategy and pledges to engage Arab parties and Israel in discussions on a “regional security architecture”; a convoluted euphemism for an arrangement to address Israel’s need to confront Iran.

Furthermore, the letter promises that after the initial 60-day extension of the freeze, the US would not ask Israel for another – leaving the status of the settlements to be decided only as part of final status negotiations.

The terms are such that they would only serve Israel’s strategic goals and further strengthen the Israeli hand at already asymmetrical negotiations.

Under such conditions, the construction of colonies would continue unabated as soon as the extended freeze expired, leaving Palestinians unable even to raise the issue of Israel’s ongoing land grab. The letter offers Israel what it wants, while effectively setting the stage for the legitimisation of settlement building and the fulfillment of Israeli plans to annex the major settlements as part of a final deal.

Once again, the U.S. is acting “as Israel’s attorney, catering and coordinating with the Israelis at the expense of successful peace negotiations.”

 

The Paradox of ‘Peace Talks’: ‘Success’ Means Failure for Palestinians

Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas has capitulated to the Israeli demand that direct “peace talks” continue to go on between Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu despite the coming resumption of full-scale settlement building in the West Bank when the so-called “settlement freeze” ends.  This confirms many observers’ fears about a sham agreement being signed between Israel and the PA.  Under intense pressure from the United States and Israel, the PA is going to sign away Palestinian rights guaranteed to them under international law and will deliver a huge setback to the cause of Palestinian self-determination.

This is the central paradox of the current “peace talks.”  The “success” of the peace talks, as Palestinian analyst Nadia Hijab points out in a Al Shabaka policy brief released today, is in fact a “worse scenario” than the peace talks collapsing.  If Abbas signs an deal with Netanyahu, it will inevitability be a sham agreement that boxes Palestinians into bantustans and ignores Gaza and Palestinian refugees.

Hijab writes:

The United States appears determined to push for a framework agreement within a year and both Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Mahmoud Abbas, President of the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority (PA), are aiming for that goal. Such an agreement, U.S. peace envoy George Mitchell explained in a September 2 press conference, would be more than a declaration of principles but less than a peace treaty. In it, the two sides would reach the “fundamental compromises” necessary for a peace accord. Like its predecessor, the Obama administration has already indicated that the accord would still have to be fleshed out and then implemented over the course of several years – which virtually ensures that it will be delayed if not derailed as happened to past peace accords.

If the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and PA were unable to secure a sovereign state and rights through U.S.-brokered negotiations with Israel between 1993 and 2000, when they were in a much stronger position, they are highly unlikely to do so today with such a badly skewed Israeli-Palestinian power dynamic. Instead, next year is likely to see a grand ceremony where Palestinian leaders will sign away the right of return and other Palestinian rights in an agreement that would change little on the ground. The plan of the PA’s appointed prime minister, Salam Fayyad, to declare a Palestinian state in 2011 could unwittingly contribute to this outcome by providing the appearance of an “end of conflict” while the reality remains unchanged. If the rest of the world sees that the government of “Palestine” is satisfied with international recognition and a U.N. seat, they will be happy to move on to other problems leaving the Palestinians at Israel’s mercy.

Such a scenario could sound a death-knell for Palestinian human rights. The Palestinian people have shown a remarkable capacity to regenerate resistance and evolve new strategies after suffering harsh setbacks over the past century. But there may be no recovery this time around. A “peace agreement” would end the applicability of international law to the resolution of the conflict; permanently fragment the Palestinian people; and demobilize Arab and international solidarity.