Israel-Palestine: The Golden Key to Proximity Talks? East Jerusalem (Yenidunya)

Soon after Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Silvan Shalom said, "It's time that [Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas] decides to sit with Israel and conduct real negotiations whilst Jerusalem is out of any talks and is Israel's eternal capital," Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman declared that proximity talks would be launched in two weeks.

However, as Haaretz reported that there is a de facto freeze in the eastern sector of Jerusalem; Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat insisted that construction in East Jerusalem will continue. He continued:

We are going to build, we are not going to stop it, it's illegal to stop it. And we'll continue to do the best and the right thing for the city of Jerusalem.

Israel-Palestine: Netanyahu’s “Gestures” After Talks with Mitchell (Yenidunya)

In this atmosphere, the Jerusalem District Planning and Construction Committee will convene next Tuesday, its first gathering since it affected the visit of US Vice President Joe Biden with its approval of new building. It will discuss general plans and then consider a small number of housing units in the eastern part of the city, although it is yet unknown whether the units are meant for Arabs or Jews.



Meanwhile, Jordan's King Abdullah II again warned,  ahead of a meeting this weekend of the Arab League in Cairo, that the situation in the Middle East could "explode" due to Israel's building of settlements in East Jerusalem. Abdullah had said two weeks ago:

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.

On Saturday, the Arab League's Monitoring Committee for the Arab Peace Initiative is scheduled vote on US proposals of Washington. The League has already stated that there would be no approval of proximity talks if there was no freeze in East Jerusalem.

Israel-Palestine: Washington's Carrots and Sticks for Netanyahu and Abbas (Yenidunya)

Following his second meeting with U.S. Mideast envoy George Mitchell, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu briefed his government on Sunday and said that it would soon become clear whether there would be Middle East peace talks. He added that Israel and the United States want to "begin a peace process immediately."

In a statement summing up his visit, Mitchell said he held "positive and productive talks" with Israeli and Palestinian leaders in an effort "to improve the atmosphere for peace and for proceeding with proximity talks".

On Thursday, the leader of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, received an official invitation to the proximity talks. In this message to Ramallah, the Obama Administration confessed that Washington had been unable to get a commitment from Israel to halt construction in East Jerusalem but had received a guarantee that Israel would refrain from "significant" actions in the eastern part of the city during negotiations.



To  get Ramallah's consent for the beginning of proximity talks, the Obama Administration also put forward the idea of an Obama-Abbas meeting, an invitation confirmed by Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat and Abbas aide Yasser Abed Rabbo, told Palestinian radio that there is talk about an invitation for Abbas to visit Washington, possibly next month.

Washington also reportedly lined up possible sanctions against Israel in case of a failure to comply with its commitments. American officials reported said that if Netanyahu takes an uncompromising stance in the negotiations, like the one he displays in public, Israel's Labor Party might quit the coalition and pave the way for a new government.

The US message to Netanyahu: "natural growth" is OK in East Jerusalem during negotiations, along with other confidence-building measures, as long as you are ready to change your position on East Jerusalem's status and to come to terms with Ramallah on other border issues at the end of indirect talks. Otherwise, the Labor Party will be out, the coalition government collapses, and you will lose your Premiership.

And to Abbas: if you co-operate and accept that Israeli "natural growth" is not a barrier to discussions leading to a settlement, you will get the public acclamation, symbolised by your trip to Washington, of being an international leader.

Israel: Colonising East Jerusalem, Deporting Palestinians (Cole)

Parallelling the assessment of EA's Ali Yenidunya, Juan Cole considers the latest steps by the Israeli Government:

The new Israeli policy of deporting Palestinians from the West Bank on arbitrary grounds has kicked in with Ahmad Sabah, who has just been deported to Gaza and separated from his family in the West Bank. The measure contravenes the Geneva Convention of 1949 on the treatment of occupied populations, and it also goes contrary to the undertakings Israel made toward the Palestine Authority in the course of the Oslo peace negotiations.

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

The episode underlines the ways in which their forced statelessness leaves Palestinians (almost uniquely among major world nationalities) completely vulnerable to loss of the most basic human rights. That he was forcibly moved to Gaza by the Israelis suggests that many of those singled out for potential deportation from the West Bank may be moved to the small slum along the Mediterranean, which the Israelis have cut off from its traditional markets and which they keep under a blockade of the civilian population (a war crime). The Israeli establishment has decided not to try to colonize Gaza, and its isolation and hopelessness make it an attractive place for them to begin exiling West Bank residents, thus making more room for Israeli colonists.


The new policy, which is illegal six ways to Sunday in international law, is the brainchild of the government of far rightwing Likud leader Binyamin Netanyahu.

Netanyahu, an Israeli hawk and expansionist, slapped President Barack Obama in the face again Thursday when he confirmed that he refused to halt construction of new homes in Palestinian East Jerusalem, which is militarily occupied by Israel.

Netanyahu’s announcement is probably the nail in the coffin of any two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (in which the Israelis have thrown most Palestinians now living beyond the Green Line off their land and deprived them of citizenship in a state and all the rights that go with such citizenship). Palestinians are so despairing that only 57 percent even believe in having an independent Palestinian state any more. The rest are resigned to becoming Israelis in the distant future, when demographic realities and perhaps world-wide boycotts of Israel for its Apartheid-style policies toward the occupied Palestinian will force Israel to accept them.

At the same time, Netanyahu tried to throw sand in peoples’ eyes by talking about recognizing an ‘interim’ Palestinian state with “temporary” borders.

Palestinian leaders reject this formulation, which is intended to allow the Israelis to continue aggressively to colonize Palestinian territory while pretending that they are engaged in a ‘peace process.’ The Palestine Authority, established in the 1990s, was already a sort of interim state then, and Palestine’s borders were then ‘temporary.’ So temporary that Israel has made deep inroads into them through massive colonies and building a wall on the Palestinian side of the border, cutting residents off from their own farms and sequestering entire towns and cities.

Netanyahu’s various moves this week, from illegally expelling a Palestinian from the West Bank to Gaza to blowing off the president of the United States and hitching his wagon to massive increased colonization of Palestinian land: all of these steps are guaranteed to mire Israel in violent disputes for years and perhaps decades. And the US, which has already suffered tremendously in Iraq and elsewhere from its knee-jerk support of illegal and inhumane Israeli policies toward the Palestinians, will suffer further.

Meanwhile, in the wake of a vicious attack on Barack Obama by New York senator Chuck Schumer, Steve Clemons of the Washington Note frankly wonders whether Schumer understands he is in the US Senate or whether he is under the impression he is serving in the Israeli Knesset.

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.

Israel-Palestine Follow-Up:"Apartheid" Deportation Orders; Settlements

Responding to Israel's new military order which can deport tens of thousands of Palestinians from the West Bank, the Palestinian Authority's chief negotiator Saeb Erekat said Sunday:

These military orders belong in an apartheid state. Extensive in scope, they make it infinitely easier for Israel to imprison and expel Palestinians from the West Bank. They are an assault on ordinary Palestinians, and an affront to the most fundamental principles of human rights.

Palestine: Israeli Military Order Threatens Mass Deportation

These orders have the effect of turning Palestinians into criminals in their own homes, while directly undermining the efforts of Palestinians to run their own internal affairs. They also open the flood gate for Israel to target foreign-born spouses, foreign workers, and even Israeli citizens as ‘infiltrators’, as well as anyone participating in demonstrations in support of Palestinian rights and against Israel’s occupation.


Most of all, they reveal the invidious design behind Israel’s settlement policy. The fewer Palestinians there are in the West Bank, including in occupied East Jerusalem, the more settlers there will be. Israel’s endgame is not peace. It is the colonization of the West Bank.

By systematically violating past agreements, as for example in its refusal to freeze settlements, and undermining international efforts to resume negotiations, Israel is turning the Palestinian-Israeli conflict into a zero sum game. At a time when the international community is trying to create an environment conducive to negotiations, these military orders achieve the exact opposite result.

Palestine has long been a litmus test of the international community’s commitment to international law and its defense of basic rights and liberties. The international community must live up to its responsibility and protect the rights of Palestinians. Peace demands nothing less.

Israel will argue that expulsions are justified because Palestinians are breaking the law. But this argument counts for nothing when that law belongs to a system of apartheid and only serves to strengthen Israel’s 43-year long illegal occupation.

Meanwhile, Haaretz says that construction requiring the approval of Jerusalem's district planning committee has been halted for more than a month through instructions sent to the Jerusalem District Planning and Building Committee.

On Sunday, the Jerusalem municipality said that they were showing sensitivity to the issue but added that there was no intention to stop the work of the local committee. .

The Prime Minister's Office has issued a statement:

The building and planning policy in Jerusalem has not changed and is identical to that conducted by all Israeli governments. In the course of drawing lessons from the incident at the time of U.S. Vice President Joe Biden's visit to Israel, procedure is currently being developed that will ensure that an incident such as this is not repeated with respect to the timing of the release of proceedings of diplomatic sensitivity.