A PALESTINIAN VIEW

Accounts of the Annapolis process

by Mkhaimar Abusada

The election of Barack Obama to the White House has revived efforts at stimulating peace negotiations between Palestinians and Israelis. These last broke off at the end of 2008 when Israel launched its war on Gaza and the ruling Kadima party subsequently lost elections to the current right wing coalition under Binyamin Netanyahu in February 2009.

The US administration led by Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has made it clear to Israel that the two-state solution is the only basis for any peaceful settlement to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and that Jewish settlement expansion in the West Bank must be completely halted, including what Israel calls natural growth. In his speech at Cairo University on June 4, Obama warned that ongoing settlement construction undermined the peace process and, by implication, US interests.

Settlements and their expansion have always been a sticking point in Palestinian-Israeli peace negotiations and the Annapolis process proved no exception. Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator, insists that Israel's continued settlement building is ultimately what "poisoned the atmosphere" during the Annapolis process. In a recent interview with Newsweek, he said 60 percent of conversations with his Israeli counterparts during the Annapolis process were devoted to arguments over the settlements.

President Obama and Hillary Clinton are right to take a harder line on settlements. In spite of Olmert's moderate rhetoric, his policies were deeply flawed. During the last full year of his term, construction tenders for new buildings in the settlements increased dramatically--by a multiple of 38 in East Jerusalem, according to one study. Olmert and his dovish government failed to remove the hardest-core outposts deep in the West Bank, illegal even under Israeli law and which seven in 10 Israelis are eager to abandon, according to polls.

For Israel, however, settlements are the purest expression of the Zionist ethos. Long-established Israeli policy to create these facts on the ground has made it impossible to establish a contiguous Palestinian state. This in return has moved Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to refuse any negotiations with Netanyahu before he accepts international demands regarding settlements.

In a recent interview with the Washington Post, Abbas reiterated that he would wait for the Obama administration to force a recalcitrant Netanyahu to freeze Israeli settlement construction and publicly accept the two-state formula before being willing to enter into negotiations.

George Mitchell, the US peace envoy, is now shuttling between Cairo, Tel Aviv and Ramallah to restart the stalled peace negotiations. Trying to build on what progress was made during the Annapolis process, he hopes to reach an agreement within two years. One problem he is facing is that Netanyahu does not want to start where those negotiations ended.

At the end of his term, Olmert tried one last maneuver in an effort to secure a legacy of his own. In an interview with Newsweek, Olmert revealed that he met with Abbas in September 2008 and produced a map of Israel and the Palestinian territories. He says he offered Abbas 93.5 to 93.7 percent of the Palestinian territories, along with a land swap of 5.8 percent and a safe-passage corridor from Gaza to the West Bank.

He also confirmed that the Holy Basin of Jerusalem would come under no sovereignty at all and be administered instead by a consortium of Saudis, Jordanians, Israelis, Palestinians and Americans. Regarding refugees, Olmert says he rejected the right of return and instead offered, as a "humanitarian gesture", a small number of returnees, although "smaller than the Palestinians wanted--a very, very limited number."

Saeb Erekat confirmed that Olmert had made the offer. "It's very sad," Erekat said. "He was serious, I have to say." But time eventually ran out. A few months after Olmert presented his offer, Israel declared war on Gaza. Shortly after that, Olmert was out of power.

Abbas acknowledged that Olmert had shown him a map proposing a Palestinian state on 97 percent of the Palestinian territories though he complained that the Israeli leader refused to give him a copy of the plan. He also asserted that Olmert "accepted the principle" of the right of return of Palestinian refugees and offered to resettle thousands in Israel, but that Abbas had turned it down. "The gaps were too wide," he said, especially on Jerusalem.

Abbas is certainly in no position to accept a peace agreement offering less than what Yasser Arafat rejected in Camp David in 2000. Abbas also can't accept any offer before he overcomes the deep division between his Fateh movement, which controls the West Bank, and Hamas, which rules Gaza and has vowed to reject any agreement reached by Abbas with Israel.

In his speech on June 25, Khalid Mishaal, the leader of Hamas, reiterated his movement's conditions for peace: a full end to the Israeli occupation, an independent and sovereign Palestinian state on all land occupied in 1967, with East Jerusalem its capital, and the right of return for Palestinian refugees based on UN resolution 194.

That, in other words, is the Palestinian consensus. Neither Olmert in 2008 nor Ehud Barak in 2000 came close enough, even if Olmert's offer may be seen as more serious than Barak's or indeed the Clinton parameters. Unfortunately, it is hard to imagine Netanyahu and the current right-wing coalition coming anywhere close to this or going the extra necessary distance.- Published 29/6/2009 © bitterlemons.org

Mkhaimar Abusada is a professor of political science at al-Azhar University in Gaza.