Palestine Analysis: Breaking Down Israel's Counter Offer on Talks

On Thursday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that there would be no construction freeze in Jerusalem; however, he offered confidence-building gestures, such as allowing the opening of Palestinian Authority institutions in the eastern part of the city, transferring additional West Bank territory to Palestinian security control, and discussing all the core issues of the conflict during proximity talks with the Palestinian Authority.

Israel-Palestine Follow-Up:”Apartheid” Deportation Orders, Settlements

This counter-offer was put out by the Netanyahu Government through media organizations on Friday. The follow-up analysis was that Israel would announce an official shift in its Palestinian policy: willingness for an interim agreement in the West Bank that would include the establishment of a Palestinian state within temporary borders.


The formula of a Palestinian state within temporary borders was included in the second stage of the road map of 2003. However, this time the counter-offer, although it requires Israel to withdraw from more territory and perhaps even evacuate settlements, excludes the status of Jerusalem and only draws temporary borders with the West Bank.

U.S. Mideast special envoy George Mitchell met Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Netanyahu on Friday. Netanyahu, ready to take any dismissal of his offer as confirmation that the Palestinians are  “stubborn and rejectionist”, told Mitchell at the beginning of the meeting:

I look forward to working with the Obama administration to move peace forward. We are serious about it, we know you are serious about it and we hope the Palestinians respond.

Not only Ramallah rejected Israel’s counter-offer; Hamas’s leader in the Gaza Strip, Ismail Haniya, said Thursday that resumption of peace talks with Israel is a cover-up for the "Judaization of Jerusalem".

Meanwhile, the first signs of Israel’s new military order, which can deport tens of thousands of Palestinians from the West Bank, emerged. A Palestinian from the West Bank, Ahmad Sabah,was forcibly deported to the Gaza Strip on Wednesday, immediately after his release from detention in Israel.

Middle East Analysis: Cairo's Nuclear Move, Syria's Reaction

At last week's Obama-led summit on nuclear security, amidst speculation that many Arab and Muslim states would launch an ambush upon Israel's nuclear weapons, the deputy prime minister Dan Meridor summed up the conference: "Thus far, there has been no ambush."

On the same day, President Obama called on Israel to sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty as he called on other states, such as India, North Korea, and Pakistan, to join:

Israel Document: Strategic Affairs Minister on “Existential Struggle” and No Concessions

Whether we're talking about Israel or any other country, we think that becoming part of the NPT is important. And that, by the way, is not a new position. That's been a consistent position of the United States government, even prior to my administration.

Haaretz subsequently quoted Western envoys reporting that Israel may come under new pressure next month at a UN meeting on atomic weapons, with the US, Britain and France considering support for Egypt's call for a zone in the Middle East free of nuclear arms. In a working paper that reportedly Egypt submitted to fellow treaty members, Cairo said the conference should formally express regret that "no progress has taken place on the implementation of the (1995) resolution" that backed the idea of "a Middle East zone free of nuclear weapons as well as other weapons of mass destruction" and should call for an international treaty conference by 2011.

Although Israel's UN mission had no official comment on the Egyptian proposal, an Israeli diplomat told Reuters the Jewish state will be ready to discuss issues such as a nuclear-weapon-free zone once there is peace in the Middle East. One Western official said:

They [the Israelis] have an interest here. If the Arabs get something they want on Israel, they'll be more supportive on Iran's nuclear program and further sanctions. Israel would benefit from that.

So for Egypt, the nuclear move is a "win-win" situation. It can increase its stock through giving the image of "driving Israel to the corner" and by leading an international gathering through which new and stronger pressure can be put on Tehran.

However, to establish this leading role in the Arab world, Cairo needs the support of a very significant country:  Syria, which is the "closest" ally of Iran and the greatest conventionally-armed "threat" to Israel. With Saudi Arabia breaking the ice with Damascus, Syrian President Bashar Assad was due Tuesday night to land in Egypt.

What is Syria seeking from this "alliance"? Damascus would gain from Egyptian support to counter Israel's allegations that Syria transferred Scud missiles to Lebanon's Hezbollah. Secondly, Cairo, in its "big brother" role mediating Palestinian affairs, could increase Syria's influence in the Gaza Strip.

Middle East Inside Line: End of Saudi Peace Initiative?, Hamas-Israel-Egypt Triangle, Israel's Fear Industry

Jordan's King on Middle East: Talking to the Chicago Tribune on Thursday, Jordan's King Abdullah warned of violence if no progress is made in restarting Palestinian-Israeli peace talks. Abdullah said:

If we hit the summer and there's no active [peace] process, there's a very good chance for conflict, and nobody wins when it comes to that.

Referring to the Saudi peace initiative, in which moderate Arab and Muslim states would normalize relations with Israel in return for West Jerusalem's complete withdrawal from occupied territory, Abdullah said:

We managed to get an extension of the Arab peace proposal, which terminates in July. There will be a committee meeting of Arab countries in July, and for us as moderate countries, we're going to be challenged by everybody else.

Nothing has happened; Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is not interested in peace, so why keep the Arab peace proposal on the table?

As US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that Israel must do more to pursue peace with the Palestinians and to strengthen their institutions or risk empowering militant groups such as Hamas, Abdullah suggested the message to Washington that "Arabs have not played their last card":

I think it's up to us to do a lot of the heavy lifting at this stage.

Why should the burden be solely on Obama and Americans to stick their necks out if both parties are not willing to do enough of the groundwork?

Hamas-Israel-Egypt Triangle: As Hamas ordered the temporary closure of hundreds of smuggling tunnels around the town of Rafah, following Israel’s warning that Hamas was planning to seize tourists in Egypt's Sinai Peninsula), Israel Radio reported on Saturday that Egyptian forces had blown up a smuggling tunnel beneath the border with the Gaza Strip.

Meanwhile, a spokesman for the armed wing of Hamas (the Izz-as-Din al-Qassam brigades), Abu Obeidah, said a prisoner swap was not Hamas' only hope for detainees and that the group had a "strong strategy" for securing their release. He continued:

Useless, absurd peace talks failed to free the prisoners, but our fighters will release them by all means, including armed resistance.

The tension between Israel and Gaza is increasing, especially after Israel Defense Forces shot dead a Palestinian man on Friday. The Israeli army said he was attempting to plant a bomb along the border fence.

Israel's Fear Industry Goes Flat Out: Following an Iranian-hosted international disarmament conference which concluded that “a nuclear weapons-free Middle East requires the Zionist regime to join the Non-Proliferation Treaty," Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu underlined the “importance of the threat”:

Over the years, we have learned that the olive branch of peace will be achieved only if we remain strong, only if we are prepared to defend ourselves in the same way our fallen soldiers did at this site. They attacked from this site and other hills not out of lust for war, but out of belief in the righteousness of the goal of defending the Jewish people's one and only country.

President Shimon Peres filled in details:

We are a nation that yearns for peace, but knows, and will always know, how to defend itself.

Israel's strength springs from the strength of its faith, and its greatness emanates from the heroism of its sons. Today we grieve for their loss and are blessed by their legacy.

There are still those who wish to annihilate us. At their head is the autocratic Iranian regime that seeks to impose its rule on the Middle East, silence it with lethal weapons and launch an anti-Israel incitement campaign to deflect Arab fears.

On Monday, Defense Minister Ehud Barak tactically said that “there is no immediate existential threat from Iran” yet defined the challenge subtly as a “< href="http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1164024.html ">the number one potential existential threat to be stopped”:

I prefer to refrain from speculation about the future. Right now, Iran does not pose an existential threat to Israel. If Iran becomes nuclear, it will spark an arms race in the Middle East. This region is very sensitive because of the oil flow. The region is important to the entire world. The fact that Iran is not an immediate threat, but could evolve into one, means that we can't let ourselves fall asleep.

Barak’s summary last week also deserves consideration:

We have the pilots, the ground crews and the best planes in the world. Our air force is the supporting pillar of our operational capabilities against threats from both near and far.

Middle East Inside Line: Palestine Money to Israel?, Obama's Peace Plan, Netanyahu's Confession, and More

Palestinian Money Channelled into Israel?: Haaretz reports the Justice Ministry’s intervention between the Finance Ministry and the Civil Administration in Area C of the West Bank. The dispute is whether the Civil Administration in the West Bank should be compensated for hundreds of millions of shekels, to be used for operational expenses as well as for infrastructure and welfare services for Palestinians, collected in the West Bank and given to the State of Israel. According to international law, an occupying power is prohibited from claiming the benefits of economic activity in an occupied territory.

A lawyer at the Military Advocate General's Office said the transfer of such funds to the state was improper and should cease. The Civil Administration has requested that the money again be given directly to it. However, the Finance Ministry claims that in the past 15 years the state has invested in the West Bank more than double the amount it has collected.



New Peace Plan on the Way?: Speaking to columnist David Ignatius on Wednesday, two top officials in Washington stated that President Barack Obama is weighing the possibility of submitting a new American Middle East peace plan by this fall.

All core issues are to be discussed with the beginning of negotiations. One of the officials, with reference to Camp David in 2000, claimed that "90 percent of the map would look the same.”

It was also stated that the planned peace plan would be linked with other regional problems. One official told Ignatius:

We want to get the debate away from settlements and East Jerusalem and take it to a 30,000-feet level that can involve Jordan, Syria and other countries in the region.

Netanyahu's Confession on East Jerusalem: On the anniversary of his government’s coming to power, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Wednesday he has not yet worked out his differences with Washington over a disputed construction project in East Jerusalem.

In response, Kadima criticized Likud and Netanyahu harshly:

Netanyahu lives in Bibiland, not in Israel.

Netanyahu’s trickery is meant to throw sand in the eyes of the public and artificially blur the crushing failure of the most over-sized and wasteful government in Israel's history.

Unclenching Fists With Obama: Religious terms such as "Islamic extremism" are to be removed from the National Security Strategy document under President Obama. Breaking from the Bush Administration's language that “the struggle against militant Islamic radicalism is the great ideological conflict of the early years of the 21st century”, the strategy document is being re-written without any phrase that can target Islam.

Turkish-Israeli Relations: The tension between Turkey and Israel remains along with the continuation of defensive alliance between two countries. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Wednesday that “Israel is the main threat to peace in the Middle East.”

Erdogan said that it is impossible to praise a country that exerted such excessive force in Gaza, including the use of phosphorus weapons. He also criticized Israel for not signing the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, saying Israel should not be exempt from international supervision of its nuclear facilities.

On the same day, a ceremony was held in Turkey to mark the completion of a project in which the Israeli defense contracting firm Elbit upgraded 170 tanks for the Turkish army.

Middle East Inside Line: Jordan's Warning; Lieberman's Threat; Gaza's Unity; Turkey's Israel Tension

King Abdullah's Warning to Israel: In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Jordan’s King Abdullah warned on Tuesday that “Israel’s long-term future is in jeopardy unless there is permanent solution to the Middle East conflict”. He continued:

Over the Israeli-Lebanese border, if you spoke [to some Lebanese] today they feel there is going to be a war any second. [It] looks like there is an attempt by certain groups to promote a third intifada, which would be disastrous. Jerusalem as you are well aware is a tinderbox that could go off at any time, and then there is the overriding concern about military action between Israel and Iran.

So with all these things in the background, the status quo is not acceptable; what will happen is that we will continue to go around in circles until the conflict erupts, and there will be suffering by peoples because there will be a war.



The job of Jordan and the other countries in the international community is to keep common sense and keep hope alive until America can bring its full weight on the Israelis and the Palestinians to get their act together and move the process forward.

Lieberman's Threat over Ramallah's Plan: With no concrete steps towards the confidence-building measures demanded by the Netanyahu government, the Palestinian Authority’s chief negotiator Saeb Erekat told Voice of Palestine radio on Tuesday that Washington has reached a dead end in its attempts to revive Middle East peace talks. Erekat pointed to Israel’s failure to give guarantees, demanded by the US, that it not issue any more tenders to build on land where the Palestinians aim to establish a state, including East Jerusalem.

Meanwhile, referring to Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad’s statement that there would be a Palestinian state by 2011, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman warned the PA against plans to declare independence unilaterally, saying such a move could prompt Israel to annex parts of the West Bank and annul past peace agreements.

The Gaza Factions Meet: The four Palestinian factions in the Gaza Strip --- Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and the Popular and Democratic Fronts for the Liberation of Palestine --- met on Sunday, as a senior Egyptian official said that Cairo is concerned that the recent escalation of tensions on the Gaza border could lead to another Israeli invasion. On the same day, all factions said that they will cease firing Qassam rockets at Israel.

Israel-Turkey War of Words Continues: At a ceremony to mark the opening of an Arab-language television and radio company,  Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that Turkey will come to the defense of Muslims around the world:

We cannot be indifferent to the problems of the Islamic world of Jerusalem.

Our task is the integration with the Western world but we did not turn our back to the East. Arabs and Turks are brothers and we share the same values.

We cannot watch the murder of children in Gaza with indifference. We worry about the Gaza children but our hearts are also for the children of Haiti and Chile.

The Israeli Foreign Ministry’s response was immediate.  A statement issued in West Jerusalem said:

Israel is not interested in confrontation with any country, including Turkey. The impression that is being created is that the Turkish prime minister is seeking to integrate with the Muslim world at Israel's expense.

We suggest he find a more creative way, and to try to integrate with both the Muslim and Western worlds without turning into an extremist leader in the style of Hugo Chavez.

The Israelis also advised Erdogan to “be equally concerned for the killing of innocent civilians in Pakistan and Iraq at the hands of terrorist groups.”

Ankara's Search for "Balance of Power": In an interview with French newspaper Le Figaro, Erdogan repeatedly called Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad his “dear friend”, as he sent two messages to two different fronts. On the one hand, Erdogan reminded his “dear friend” that there should be no arms race in the region. On the other hand, he criticized countries pushing for another round of sanctions in the United Nations Security Council:

We consider that this question should be resolved diplomatically. Sure, sanctions are an issue at the moment, but I don't think that the ones being discussed can bring results.