Kerry Lowers His Sights as Netanyahu Creates More Obstacles.........

By Rachelle Marshall

Outside the U.S. Embassy in Amman, Jordan, activists demonstrate against U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and his peace proposal, Jan. 29, 2014. (Khalil Mazraawi/AFP/Getty Images)

As talks between Israel and the Palestinians passed their halfway point, each participant was following a different agenda. With chances of a peace agreement fading, Secretary of State John Kerry tried desperately to maintain a show of optimism; Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu was determined to see that the talks failed and that Palestinians bore the blame; and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas had no illusions about the outcome but was determined to stick it out.

At Camp David in 2000 Prime Minister Ehud Barak offered the Palestinians a mini-state in the West Bank composed of separate enclaves surrounded by Israeli territory. Nearly 14 years later, Netanyahu is offering even less. His stipulations at the start of negotiations included Israeli sovereignty over all of Jerusalem, the stationing of Israeli troops in the Jordan Valley, and no right of return for Palestinian refugees. All run contrary to the Palestinians’ demands for a return to the pre-June 1967 borders, a capital in East Jerusalem, and implementation of U.N. Resolution 194 affirming the Palestinians’ right to return to their homes. Palestinian negotiators led by Saeb Erekat nevertheless remained at the table.

When the talks were well under way, Netanyahu came up with a deal breaker by announcing that Israel’s “minimal requirement” was that the Palestinians recognize Israel as a Jewish state. This was “an essential condition,” he said, although Israel had made no such demand when negotiating peace with Egypt and Jordan. Netanyahu knew no Palestinians could accept this  demand, since doing so would mean legitimizing the second-class status of Palestinian Israelis, nullifying the refugees’ right of return, and denying the Palestinians’ long history in Palestine and their unjust expulsion from their land in 1948.

“It’s my narrative, it’s my story,” Erekat said. “I’ve never heard in the history of mankind that others must participate in defining the nature of others. It’s ridiculous.” Even an Israeli cabinet member, Yair Lapid, objected, saying, “My father did not come to Haifa from the Budapest ghetto in order to get recognition from Mr. Abbas.” Jews elsewhere in the world might also object to conflating the Israeli nation with Judaism in view of Israel’s violations of Judaism’s most basic principles, with their emphasis on justice, compassion and respect for law.

These objections seemingly had no effect on Kerry, who suggested that Abbas recognize Israel as a Jewish state in exchange for Israel’s acceptance of the 1967 borders as the basis of future talks. In other words, he was asking Palestinians to trade their historic rights merely for a chance to discuss the 1967 borders as the boundaries of their future state, with no guarantee that Israel would accept those boundaries in the final agreement.

In fact, Israel’s intent was clear. On Jan. 6, four days after Kerry had visited Israel, the government gave final approval to building 272 new apartments deep inside the West Bank in the settlements of Ofra and Karnei Shomron. A week later the government announced plans to build 1,400 new units, including 600 in East Jerusalem, which Israel annexed after the 1967 war, and the rest in the West Bank. “A government that is seeking a two-state solution would not further entrench the conflict by building in the settlements,” Lior Amihai of Peace Now said.

Kerry had lured the Palestinians back to the negotiating table without a settlement freeze but with the promise of future economic benefits and Israel’s agreement to release 104 long-term prisoners. So far there has been no sign of economic benefits, and with each release of prisoners Israel announced plans to construct more settlement housing.

The trade-off angered both sides. Right-wing Israelis complained that linking the release of murderers with settlement construction was immoral, and a furious mob of right-wing protesters surrounded Netanyahu’s office and had to be dispersed by police. As more new construction was announced, the Palestinians renewed their threat to seek redress from U.N. agencies, including the International Criminal Court—and they are likely to do so when the talks end.  

All but overlooked in the discussion was Netanyahu’s statement referring to “the protection of settlements in the land of Israel” as a “vital interest.” It was in effect a declaration that the West Bank is an integral part of Israel—and will remain so. The Knesset already is considering a bill to annex the settlements in the Jordan Valley, where 60,000 Jews occupy some of Palestine’s most fertile land. A Labor-backed bill to prohibit the government from annexing West Bank land unless it was authorized in a peace treaty was voted down.

Still Kerry struggled on and came up with a new plan. If there was not to be the comprehensive peace agreement he and President Barack Obama had envisioned at the beginning of the talks, there would at least be what administration officials called a “framework” accord by the end of April. The object, Kerry said, was to achieve enough of “a convergence on core issues that the two sides can make headway toward an agreement leading to an independent state.”

Jewish settlers from the illegal settlement of Maaon take photos of an elderly Palestinian shepherd after they pushed him to the ground near the village of Umm el-Kheir, in the southern Hebron hills, Jan. 25, 2014. (Hazem Bader/AFP/Getty Images)

The framework would not be signed and would contain reservations by both sides. Palestinians could rightly conclude that this meant another set of vague promises, like the Oslo accords and George W. Bush’s “roadmap,” that Israel has no intention of fulfilling. “It is buying time without a solution, extending the negotiations for a year,” said Zakaria al-Qaq of Al Quds University. Hanan Ashrawi, veteran negotiator and official of the Palestinian Liberation Organization, called the proposal a sham. “I can’t believe how naive, or disingenuous and complicit the Americans are,” she said.

As if to underline her words, Vice President Joseph R. Biden delivered an effusive eulogy at former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s funeral on Jan. 13. Sharon, who was knicknamed variously as “Butcher” and “Bulldozer,” and denounced by some human rights groups as a war criminal, was the architect of the rapid expansion of settlements that enabled Israel to cement Israel’s hold on the West Bank (see pp. 22-25). “He left us too soon,” Biden said, and reiterated America’s “unflagging” commitment to Israel.

As hopes for a peace agreement dwindled, Netanyahu and his ministers blamed Palestinian “incitement” as a prime obstacle to peace. When Kerry arrived in Jerusalem on Jan. 2, Netanyahu complained, “In the six months since the start of peace negotiations, the Palestinian Authority continues its unabated incitement against the State of Israel.” Like an antiphonal chorus, Yuval Steinitz, minister of strategic affairs, charged, “They are poisoning Palestinian children with deep hatred of Israel and the Jewish people,” and Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman accused Abbas of “diplomatic terrorism.”

Israel’s accusations would seem ludicrous if they were not backed up by a powerful Washington lobby and a Congress eager to do Israel’s bidding. Common sense suggests that a population suffering under 47 years of oppressive military occupation, theft of their land, and destruction of their economy doesn’t need inciting to arouse their hatred. Children who see their parents humiliated at checkpoints, whose homes are broken into at night and vandalized by soldiers, who themselves have been yanked from their beds, handcuffed and dragged off to jail, and bullied into incriminating their neighbors do not need textbooks to tell them to hate Israel.

During the current round of peace talks, Israeli forces increased their raids on villages and refugee camps, killing more than 23 Palestinians in 2013. Said Jasir, 85, died on Jan. 2 when soldiers fired excessive amounts of tear gas into his home in Kafr Qaddum while they were dispersing a rally commemorating the founding of the Fatah movement.

Palestinians also had to contend with more than 1,100 attacks by armed settlers in 2013. Israeli soldiers seldom intervene. A typical attack reported by B’Tselem on Jan. 8 took place when masked settlers invaded Urif, a village near Nablus, and pelted the local school with stones. When students threw the stones back, soldiers fired tear gas at them. Last year the army was filmed driving through Urif in the middle of the night with sirens blaring, throwing stun grenades and shouting, “Good morning, Urif!” The nightly torment went on for two weeks.

The ordeal that tens of thousands of Palestinians endure every day was illustrated in all its horror on Jan. 4, when Muhammed Yakoub, the father of seven children, was crushed to death in the crowd at the Ephraim/Taybeh checkpoint near Tulkarem. Every morning some 10,000 Palestinian workers are herded into a pen at the checkpoint, where they wait to get to jobs in Israel, and every morning guards process them with deliberate slowness. On the day Yakoub died the treatment of Palestinians like cattle bound for slaughter proved fatal.

In only a few places on earth are the hardships greater than in Gaza, where the people are enduring one of the longest sieges in history. Israel’s frequent closing of the one commercial border crossing means residents often go without heat or light for 18 hours a day because there is no fuel. Meanwhile, Israeli guards continue to shoot and often kill Palestinians who come too close to the border fence, whether to check on their crops or collect gravel for building material.

Perhaps the cruelest aspect of Israel’s occupation policy is that it has forced the formerly self-sufficient territories to depend on foreign aid to survive. The World Bank’s 2013 report concluded that “The most significant impediment to economic viability in Palestinian Territories is the multilayered system of restrictions imposed by the Israeli government.” Border closings prevent farmers from exporting their produce, and import restrictions on building materials and machinery have left 70,000 construction workers without work. Israel recently blocked installation of a high-tech cargo scanner donated by the Netherlands to be installed at the crossing from Gaza into Israel to facilitate exports. Israeli officials gave no explanation.

By now Obama and Kerry must surely have learned what four U.S. presidents and secretaries of state learned before them: that Israel will gladly negotiate forever while building more settlements and refusing to allow the establishment of an independent Palestinian state. After the failure of the Camp David negotiations in 2000, Yasser Arafat was widely accused of not wanting peace because he had turned down Barak’s seemingly generous offer. The response by the late columnist Charley Reese in this magazine is still relevant.

“It was, in fact, an offer that no Palestinian could have accepted,” Reese wrote. “First, Palestinians would have had to kiss goodbye to West Bank and Gaza land already confiscated by the Israelis. They would have had no control over their borders or the water under their feet. They would have had to write off the rights of Palestinian refugees, acknowledge Jewish ownership of the land underneath the third holiest site in Islam, and they would have gotten in return a non-viable country cut into giblets at the mercy of the Israelis.” (See Aug./Sept. 2001 Washington Report, p. 13.)

As for the charge that Palestinians are terrorists, Reese wrote in the same column: “It is not they who have used tanks, advanced war planes and helicopter gunships against civilians; it is not they who use death squads and assassinations; it is not they who imposed collective punishments on innocent human beings.”  

In view of recent happenings in the region, it seems all the more remarkable that the Palestinians have remained pro-democratic and free of the religious and tribal conflicts that are plaguing the region. In Egypt, a referendum in mid-January endorsed a constitution that gives added power to a military that has outlawed all dissent, shut down the opposition media, and jailed thousands of members of  the Muslim Brotherhood. Anyone who campaigned for a no vote was arrested.

In Syria the rebellion against President Bashar al-Assad has turned into a region-wide war between al-Qaeda and other Sunni factions against Shi’i, with secular groups that originally protested the Assad government’s denial of human rights now outnumbered by militant religious groups.

Sunni militants in Syria have attacked Hezbollah sites in Lebanon and move freely in and out of Iraq, where they have joined forces with Sunnis fighting the government of Shi’i Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. Al-Maliki’s mass arrests of Sunnis, and neglect of Sunni communities, have boosted recruitment by al-Qaeda and contributed to its growing strength in Iraq. The city of Falluja, which was largely destroyed by the Americans, again came under siege, with local tribes as well as al-Qaeda fighting the army. Residents of Fallujah, Ramadi and other Sunni cities are reportedly more sympathetic to al-Qaeda than to the government.

Having invested 4,000 American lives and a trillion dollars in Iraq, the U.S. is reluctant to see the government displaced by extremists, and Obama has accordingly agreed to send the Iraqis Hellfire missiles and other weapons. But the sectarian violence is not likely to end as long as al-Maliki maintains the oppressive policies that provoked it.

Kerry was able to persuade the more moderate rebel groups in Syria to attend a conference in Geneva on Jan. 22 to discuss an orderly transition once Assad is ousted, and Tehran asked to attend the meeting. The request was backed by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and U.N. special envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, but despite Iran’s importance as a regional power, the U.S. said no (see story p. 28). Meanwhile, as Iran complies with its recent agreement to freeze nuclear activities in return for the easing of sanctions, a Congress more responsive to Israel’s wishes than to the White House is threatening to impose new sanctions.

Robert M. Gates, former defense secretary under George W. Bush and Barack Obama, writes in his new book Duty that when Bush was under pressure to take military action against Iran or support an Israeli attack on that country, Gates warned him, “We must not make our vital interests in the entire Middle East, the Persian Gulf and Southwest Asia hostage to another nation’s decisions—no matter how close an ally.” Israel’s obstruction of Kerry’s recent peace efforts and its threats to attack Iran indicate how damaging to America’s interests that alliance is.

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Rachelle Marshall is a free-lance editor living in Mill Valley, CA. A member of Jewish Voice for Peace, she writes frequently on the Middle East.

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