The entire world is now busy with the American demand for starting "direct talks" between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. One might be tempted to think that world peace depends on turning the "proximity talks" into "direct talks". Never have so many words of sanctimonious hypocrisy been poured out on such a trivial subject.
The "proximity talks" have been going on for several months now. It would be wrong to say that their results have been close to zero. They were zero. Absolute zero. So what will happen if the two parties sit together in one room? One can predict with absolute certainty: Another zero. In the absence of an American determination to impose a solution, there will be no solution.
So why does Barack Obama insist? There is one explanation: throughout the Middle East, his policies have failed. - Uri Avnery
Uri Avnery is a leader of Gush Shalom, an Israeli peace group. He knows what he is talking about. Because Obama is unable and/or unwilling to impose any consequence on Israel for its intransigence, there will be no progress for peace,instead the war against the Palestinian people continues unabated, and aided, generously, with US government funding.
If the goal is to create peace in the Middle East, then Obama has failed miserably. However, if the goal is to get re-elected, then this tact of making real demands of Palestinians (complete with threatened consequences if they do not tow the line) and mumbling concerns to Israel, and then blaming Palestinians for the lack of progress, then he is doing brilliantly.
(Obama) hoped to achieve much without investing anything at all, and was easily defeated by the Israel lobby. To hide the shame, he needs something that can be presented to the ignorant public as a great American victory. The renewal of "direct talks" is meant to be such a victory. --From Avnery again.
the ends we hope for are not talks, but actions that lead to peace. What are we seeing instead? More home demolitions, more village demolitions, refusal to even freeze construction in illegal Israeli settlements, much less any hint that the settlements will be abandoned by Israel to make way for a Palestinian state. All this is well-known to readers of diaries here on Daily Kos... but the general public is largely ignorant of Israeli actions, and there are some who do very much want that to stay that way.
Time to look honestly at the results so far for Obama's efforts in the Middle East.
The process of demolishing Palestinian homes never ceased. On June 6th, for example, a year after the demolition of more than 65 structures and the
forced displacement of more than 120 people, including 66 children, nine
families of Khirbet Ar Ras Ahmar in the Jordan Valley, totaling 70 people,
received a new round of "evacuation orders." A week later the Israeli High
Court ordered the Civil Administration to "step up enforcement against
illegal Palestinian structures" in Area C, the 60% of the West Bank under
full Israeli control. And so, on July 13th, upon Netanyahu’s return (tom's edit: from his talk with Obama) (Palestinian homes are not demolished without an OK from the Prime Minister’s Office), three homes were demolished in the Palestinian East Jerusalem neighborhood of Issawiya, followed by three more homes in Beit
Hanina. The Jerusalem Municipality also announced the planned demolition of
19 more homes in Issawiya this month. In 2010, at least 230 Palestinian structures have been demolished in Area C, forcibly displacing 1100 people, including 400 children. Approximately 600 others have been otherwise affected." Two-thirds of the demolitions for 2010 have occurred since Netanyahu’s meeting with Obama. More than 3,000 demolition orders are outstanding in the West Bank, and up to 15,000 in Palestinian East Jerusalem. - Israeli peace activst Jeff Halper
Busy year. But demolished homes is not the only thing Palestinians have "gained".
Settlements continue to be built, of course. The much-trumpeted "settlement freeze" amounted to no less than a temporary lull in construction. (Indeed, Netanyahu never used the word "freeze"; in Hebrew he refers only to a
"pause.") According to the August report of Peace Now’s Settlement Watch, at
least 600 housing units have started to be built during the freeze, in over
60 different settlements – meaning that the rate of construction is about
half of that during the same period in an average year when there is no
freeze. Given that the approval process has never been halted – the Israeli
government announced the planned building of 1600 housing units in the
settlements when Vice President Biden was visiting, if you recall – making
up for lost time when the "freeze" ends in late September will be an easy
task. According to Ha’aretz, some 2,700 housing units are waiting to be
constructed. The fact that the so-called settlement freeze did not really end settlement construction is obvious. The American government seems ready to accept
lip-service only from Israel, as against overt and brutal threats towards
the Palestinians if they do not acquiesce to the charade.
The problem, as Halper explains, goes way beyond a "settlement freeze" or lack thereof.
Just as destructive of any real peace process, however, is the fact that the
focus on settlement freeze deflects attention from attempts by Israel to
create "irreversible facts on the ground" which will defeat the very process
of negotiation. Even if Israel did respect a settlement freeze, there is no
demand, no expectation, absolutely nothing to prevent it from continuing to
build the Wall (the enclosing of the Shuafat refugee camp inside Jerusalem
and the town of Anata is being completed in these very days, and the village
of Wallajeh, some of which spills into Jerusalem, is losing its lands,
ancient olive trees and homes even as we speak). Nothing is preventing
Israel from continuing to impoverish and imprison the Palestinian population
through its twenty-year economic "closure," including the siege on Gaza,
having reduced the Palestinian economy to ashes. Nothing stands in the way
of completing a system of parallel (though not equal in size and quality)
apartheid highways, big ones, going through Palestinian lands, for Israelis;
narrow ones for Palestinians. Nothing keeps Israel from expelling
Palestinian from their homes so that Jewish settlers can move in – on July
29th nine families living in the Muslim Quarter of the Old City, returning
home at night from a wedding, found themselves locked out of their homes by
settlers and prevented from entering by the police. (Palestinians, of
course, have no legal recourse to reclaiming their properties, whole
villages, towns and urban neighborhoods, farms, factories and commercial
buildings, confiscated from them in 1948 and after.)
....
And nothing, absolutely nothing, stops
Israel from demolishing Palestinian homes – 24,000 in the Occupied
Territories since 1967, and counting.
Zero? Absolutely Zero? I would say that Obama's Israel policy has accomplished even less. The war against the Palestinian people continues day by day. By rewarding Israeli intransigence (under Obama, the US has INCREASED MILITARY AID to Israel, even beyond Bush's very generous support) it is taking us even further from peace. This is the perspective of the people on the ground in Occupied Palestine. Palestinians had high hopes for Obama, and he was quite popular, that is no longer the case. For damn good reason.
Obama's refusal, for political reasons, to impose consequences for Israel for its unwillingness to follow international law or support the human rights of Palestinians makes citizen action the only viable alternative. First, we must tell the story about what the Israeli regime, sponsored by US taxpayers, is doing to the Palestinian people. We must make known what is happening on the ground. Then we must support the call for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions called for by the Palestinian people. Only then can we expect real progress, when the Israeli regime knows that civil society is doing what most governments, so far, refuse to do, only then will Israel know that there is a cost to continuing the status quo.
Cheer-leading current US policy may be safe politics, but it will contribute absolutely zero to creating peace in the Middle East. There are alternatives. We can make history We can make a better future.