Israel Update for November 2007

David Dolan

As final preparations were made for the Israeli-Palestinian peace parlay to be convened just outside of Washington DC, indications were rife that the short conference would prove to be a huge disappointment, if not a total bust, for its US sponsors. Senior Palestinian and Israeli officials voiced deep skepticism that the ballyhooed international gathering would do anything more than give the two sides a new platform from which to spell out their extremely divergent visions of what a final peace accord should look like.

Disputes over the text of a joint Israeli-Palestinian "common declaration" remained unsettled up to the final deadline, along with the list of who exactly would even attend the conference. The joint declaration is supposed to serve as a basic guideline for future peace negotiations. Analysts said the failure to agree on its wording after months of give and take between Israeli and Palestinian negotiators amply illustrated how difficult it will be to make any real progress on the final status issues.

American officials expressed satisfaction that steady State Department pressure upon Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries had convinced them to send delegations to the summit. Still they were embarrassed when a senior Saudi official said Arab participants would not even shake hands with Israeli leaders at the conference. Syria's last minute decision to send its deputy foreign minister was welcomed by both Israeli and US officials, although discussions about the disputed Golan Heights are not expected during the short international gathering.

Many continue to speculate that the real reason for the series of high level American government visits to the turbulent region this year, especially by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, has precious little to do with a non-existent final peace accord between Israel and her Palestinian antagonists, but far more to do with probably imminent US military action to halt Iran's headlong rush to acquiring nuclear weapons. They say that until the Iranian-Syrian-Hizbullah-Hamas doomsday threat to Israel's very existence is fully and finally dealt with, talk of a final status Israeli-Palestinian peace accord remains utopic at best.

Fantasy Land

Just one week before the scheduled start of the long heralded Israeli-Palestinian peace conference at the US Naval Academy in Annapolis Maryland, just outside of Washington DC, the actual dates for the event were still not even settled, let alone any concrete details of what was expected of the White House sponsored international gathering. Although the summit dates were finally announced just before the American holiday of Thanksgiving-November 27 and 28-savvy Israeli and Arab pundits continued to scratch their heads over the seemingly Alice in Wonderland timing of the Bush Administration's controversial peace push that is supposedly designed to bring a final end to the long and bitter Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is under scrutiny by several official police investigations over alleged criminal activity (yet another probe was begun in November). This has contributed to his fall to unparalleled low levels in Israeli popular opinion polls this year. Experts say Olmert's legal problems do not exactly add to the stable political environment that all agree is necessary to secure widespread public and legislative support for any controversial final peace deal, especially since an accord will undoubtedly involve the uprooting of tens of thousands of Jews from their homes.

The Prime Minister's political woes were compounded during the month by the lukewarm support for the American summit that he received from his chief government partner, Defense Minister Ehud Barak. The Labor party leader, whose continuation in Olmert's coalition government is essential if it is to survive, expressed strong misgivings over the US-sponsored summit. Barak warned that regional tensions might only be exacerbated by a failed or stalemated gathering; a sentiment echoed by Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and other Middle East leaders.

Political commentators also note that Olmert's Palestinian counterpart, Mahmoud Abbas, is still reeling from the Hamas coup that ousted the Palestinian Authority from the Gaza Strip last June. Fears are growing that the militant Muslim group may soon attempt to wrest power from Abbas in Judea and Samaria. The violent Hamas seizure of the Gaza Strip alone seems to make this the absolutely least likely time to pursue a final peace accord, say many bewildered analysts. On the eve of the summit, Hamas warned Abbas not to make any concessions to either Israeli or American leaders.

Just before he departed for the United States, PM Olmert again defended his decision to participate in the international parlay despite huge problems at home (a prolonged teachers strike for one thing, which has left hundreds of thousands of Israeli students at home for many weeks and their frustrated parents at wits end). He told reporters in Jerusalem that "the status quo with the Palestinians simply cannot continue." He opined that the political stalemate that followed the collapse of the Oslo peace accords in the year 2000 "will lead to results that are much worse than a failed conference."

However Israeli opposition politicians and political analysts largely agree that maintaining the status quo under the present political circumstances, while indeed not entirely satisfactory, is still much better than a failed summit that has the large potential of sparking off another round of major Palestinian street violence, if not another Middle East war.

Peace conference skeptics noted that the official Palestinian position on what should constitute a final status accord actually stiffened in the run-up to the Annapolis summit, with Palestinian leaders announcing they will never recognize Israel as a Jewish state. The hard-line Palestinian position was later endorsed by an Israeli-Arab political movement that includes the three Arab parties with seats in the Israeli Knesset.

The announcements seemed to indicate that both the Palestinians and legislators representing over one million Arab citizens of Israel plan to cling to the traditional PLO demand that several million Palestinians living elsewhere, especially in Jordan, Syria and Lebanon, be allowed to move to ancestral family locations inside of today's Israeli borders. Jewish Israeli politicians from left and right agree that this would ultimately lead to Arabs forming a majority in their democratic state, effectively destroying its Jewish character from within.

War Clouds Still Gathering