09 October 2010 By
Jonathan Cook The disclosure of the details of
a letter reportedly sent by President
Barack Obama
last week to
Benjamin Netanyahu, the
Israeli prime minister, will
cause Palestinians to be even more sceptical about US
and Israeli roles in the current peace talks. According to the leak, Obama made
a series of extraordinarily generous offers to Israel,
many of them at the expense of the Palestinians, in
return for a single minor concession from Netanyahu: a
two-month extension of the partial feeze on settlement
growth. A previous 10-month freeze, which
ended a week ago, has not so far been renewed by
Netanyahu, threatening to bring the negotiations to an
abrupt halt. The Palestinians are expected to decide
whether to quit the talks over the coming days. Netanyahu was reported last week
to have declined the US offer. The White House has denied that a
letter was sent, but, according to the
Israeli media, officials in
Washington
are privately incensed by Netanyahu's rejection. The disclosures were made by an
informed source: David Makovsky, of the
Washington Institute for
Near East Policy, a close
associate of
Dennis Ross, Obama's chief
adviser on the
Middle East, who is said to have
initiated the offer. The letter's contents have also
been partly confirmed by Jewish US senators who
attended a briefing last week from Ross. According to Makovsky, in return
for the 60-day settlement moratorium, the US promised
to veto any
UN Security Council
proposal on the
Israeli-Palestinian
conflict over the next year, and
committed to not seek any further extensions of the
freeze. The future of the settlements would be
addressed only in a final agreement. The White House would also allow
Israel to keep a military presence in the
West Bank's
Jordan Valley,
even after the creation of a Palestinian state;
continue controlling the borders of the
Palestinian territories
to prevent smuggling; provide Israel with enhanced
weapons systems, security guarantees and increase its
million of dollars in annual aid; and create a
regional security pact against
Iran. There are several conclusions the
Palestinian leadership is certain to draw from this
attempt at deal-making over its head. The first is that the US
president, much like his predecessors, is in no
position to act as an honest broker. His interests in
the negotiations largely coincide with Israel's. Obama needs a short renewal of
the freeze, and the semblance of continuing Israeli
and Palestinian participation in the "peace process",
until the US Congressional elections in November. Criticism by the powerful
pro-Israel lobby in Washington may damage Obama's
Democratic party unless he treads a very thin line. He
needs to create the impression of progress in the
Middle East talks
but not upset Israel's supporters by making too many
demands of Netanyahu. The second conclusion -- already
strongly suspected by
Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian
president, and his advisers -- is that Netanyahu,
despite his professed desire to establish a
Palestinian state, is being insincere. The White House's private offer
meets most of Netanyahu's demands for US security and
diplomatic assistance even before the negotiations
have produced tangible results. For Netanyahu to
reject the offer so lightly, even though the US was
expecting relatively little in return, suggests he is
either in no mood or in no position to make real
concessions to the Palestinians on statehood. The Israeli newspaper
Haaretz reported last Friday that
senior
White House
officials were no longer "buying the excuse of
politicial difficulties" for Netanyahu in holding his
rightwing governing coalition together. If he cannot
keep his partners on board over a short freeze on
illegal settlement building, what meaningful permanent
concessions can he make in the talks? The third conclusion for the
Palestinians is that no possible combination of
governing parties in Israel is capable of signing an
agreement with Abbas that will not entail significant
compromises on the
territorial integrity
of a Palestinian state. One US concession -- allowing
Israel to maintain its hold on the Jordan Valley,
nearly a fifth of the West Bank, for the forseeable
future -- reflects a demand common to all Israeli
politicians, not just Netanyahu. In fact, the terms of Obama's
letter were drafted in cooperation with Ehud Barak,
Israel's
defence minister
and leader of the supposedly leftwing Labor party.
When he was prime minister a decade ago, he insisted
on a similar military presence in the Valley during
the failed
Camp David talks.
Ariel Sharon, his successor and founder
of the centrist Kadima party, planned a new section of
the separation wall to divide the Jordan Valley from
the rest of the West Bank, though the scheme was put
on hold after American objections. Today, most Palestinians cannot
enter the Jordan Valley without a special permit that
is rarely issued, and the area's tens of thousands of
Palestinian inhabitants are subjected to constant
military harassment. B'Tselem, an Israeli human rights
group, has accused Israel of a "de facto annexation"
of the area. But without the Jordan Valley,
the creation of a viable Palestinian state – even one
limited to the West Bank, without Gaza -- would be
inconceivable.
Statehood
would instead resemble the Swiss-cheese model the
Palestinians have long feared is all Israel is
proposing. Jonathan Cook is a writer and
journalist based in
Nazareth, Israel. His latest
books are "Israel and the Clash of Civilisations:
Iraq,
Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East" (Pluto
Press) and "Disappearing
Palestine: Israel's Experiments in Human Despair" (Zed
Books). His website is
www.jkcook.net
Comments 💬 التعليقات |