Tuesday, August 06, 2013
Kerry’s Success Worse than His Failure
By Nicola Nasser*
The critical issue of the ever expanding illegal Israeli
colonial settlements on the Occupied Palestinian
Territories (OPT) in the West
Bank (WB), which are peace killing in eastern Jerusalem
On July 29, 2013, those negotiations were resumed in Washington , D.C.
According to Albert Einstein, “doing the same thing over
and over again and expecting different results” is “insanity,” but that is
exactly what John Kerry seems to have achieved after six tours of shuttle
diplomacy in the Middle East since he was
sworn in as the U.S. Secretary of State.
Unless the issue of settlements is addressed in accordance
with international and humanitarian law as well as in compliance with the
resolutions of the United Nations, Kerry will be shooting himself in the legs
and his success in his peace mission would be worse than his failure. The EU’s
recent anti-settlement move highlighted this fact.
However, Kerry seems and sounds determined to pursue his
mission on the basis of contradictory terms of reference, laid down by the official
letter sent by the former U.S. president George W. Bush to former Israeli
premier Ariel Sharon in April 2004, whereby the United States pledged to annex
the major Jewish settlements to Israel, to redraw its borders accordingly and to
exclude the right of return of Palestinian refugees from any agreement in the
future on solving the Arab – Israeli conflict in Palestine peacefully.
Top on the agenda of the
resumed negotiations are borders and security; Israel has never defined its borders
nor respected the borders set by the United Nations resolution No. 181 of 1947;
in the name of security, it demands borders that compromise the viability of
any independent Palestinian state on the WB.
From U.S. and Israeli perspectives, “the resumption of
negotiations is seen as an objective in itself,” in the words of Ghassan
al-Khatib, the former spokesman of the Palestinian Authority (PA).
David Ignatius on August 2 described kerry’s efforts as a
“mission impossible,” which if it fails “this time, it will cost the parties
dearly;” he described the ensuing negotiations as “a kind of a benign trap,
once the prey have been lured inside, it’s difficult for them to escape without
either accomplishing .. peace or damaging themselves.”
Indeed in the long run, success of the resumed
negotiations warn of creating a political environment that would give
“legitimacy” to a new Israeli military assault on the Gaza Strip to remove the
“armed resistance” there to their outcome, with the overt blessing of the U,S.
sponsor of the negotiations and the discreet blessing of the Arab “peace
partners.”
However, the expected failure of kerry’s efforts could be
worse than the failure of the Camp David summit meeting in September 2000 of
late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak
and U.S. former president Bill Clinton.
By sending his negotiators to Washington
Abbas has already antagonized his old allies among the
members of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) - including the Popular
Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), which is considered the third
influential Palestinian power after the two rivals of Fatah and Hamas - who
accuse him of reneging on their consensus not to resume negotiations without a
stop to the expansion of Israeli colonial settlements first.
National reconciliation between the PLO and Hamas will be
put on hold for at least the nine months which the negotiators set as the time
frame for their negotiations.
His decision put on hold as well any Palestinian new
attempt to join international organizations to build on the UN General
Assembly’s recognition of Palestine
The new talks are merely “the beginning of the beginning”
of “a long process” in which “there is no guarantee” for success, according to former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.
All this boils down to
winning Israel Israel
Kerry’s personal success seems to have pressured Palestinians
into being fooled again into jumping to “final status” negotiations as the best
way to absolve Israel
Bitter Past Experience
The Palestinian wide –spread opposition to the resumption
of talks is accusing Abbas of being a “believer” in peace who is about to get
“stung from the same hole twice,” in reference to the bloody outcome of the
U.S. – hosted Camp David summit in September 2000.
Then, the U.S.
administration of Clinton
Linking the WB and Gaza by
a “corridor” that allows free movement of people and goods between them was another
commitment that has yet to be honored by Israel
“Trying” and failing is better than “doing nothing,” Kerry
said, but the failure of the Camp David trilateral summit led to the second
Palestinian Intifada (uprising); ever since both the failure and the uprising
were additional pretexts for the successive Israeli governments not to honor
both commitments; moreover, both pretexts were the justification they used to
reoccupy militarily all the PA areas and to coordinate with the U.S. the
“removal” of Arafat and the “change” of his regime.
The critical issue of the illegal Israeli colonial
settlements on the WB will make or break the new Kerry – sponsored talks. On
July 29, James M. Wall wrote: “Israel plays the peace process game not to give
away ill-gotten gains, but to protect them;” settlements come on top of those “gains;”
they were “gained” under the umbrella of the “peace process,” with the tacit
blessing of the well - intentioned Palestinian negotiator who did not make
their removal a precondition to the resumption of peace talks right from the
start.
The 2000 summit collapsed because of the Israeli
insistence on continued building of colonial settlements, especially in eastern
Jerusalem , which doomed to failure the peace
process launched in Madrid
Obama appealed to the
negotiators to “approach these talks in good faith,” but the Secretary General
of the PLO Executive Committee, Yasser Abed Rabbo, questioned the “good faith” of
the U.S. and Israel who were “conferring about security” without the
Palestinians, as if it was “their bilateral security,” although security is “a
central and fundamental issue of ours and concerns our future as a whole.” Abed
Rabbo’s Israeli partner in the Geneva Initiative, former cabinet minister Yossi
Beilin, writing in The Jerusalem post on July 30, questioned the “good faith” of
Netanyahu who “has reneged on all that he has said throughout his
political career.”
Defying the bitter experience of twenty – year old peace
process and strong opposition at home, Abbas seems voluntarily dragged into his
last test of U.S.
* Nicola Nasser is a
veteran Arab journalist based in Bir Zeit, West Bank of the Israeli-occupied
Palestinian territories. nassernicola@ymail.com
