US: a
powerless peace broker
JAMAL
KANJ*
December 26, 2013
http://www.gulf-daily-news.com/NewsDetails.aspx?storyid=367597
Palestinians and Israelis have met more than twenty times
since July 2013 with little progress. Israel security
issues dwarfed the final
status negotiators while it continued to build, at an accelerated rate,
"Jewish only" colonies
undermining the very peace talks.
Fearing its collapse, US Secretary of State
John Kerry amassed earlier this month a team of 160 American diplomats
and
security specialists led by General John Allen, former commander of the U.S. forces
in Afghanistan to draft a
framework "that could help both Israelis and
Palestinians get to an agreement."
Inarguably, President Barak Obama and Secretary
Kerry are much more serious on pushing a peace agreement than
any previous US administration.
Nevertheless, they have proven equally powerless overcoming Israel's mercurial
demands.
Since Oslo, Palestinians have endorsed all of the
US and Israel's pre conditions starting with UN resolution 242,
recognition of
Israel and annulling the Palestinian National Charter without any reciprocal
recognition of their rights
by Israel.
Today, Israel is requesting to prequalify previous
Palestinian recognition of it, not just as a nation of people, but as
an
ethnocentric "Jewish state." It is also demanding that any future peace
agreement must codify its occupation of
parts of the West Bank ─Jordan River valley─ under a euphemism called "security
arrangements."
In the meantime, the American administration
who promised current talks would focus on reaching a final status peace
deal by
April of 2014 is already backpedalling.
In a speech at the Zionist Saban Center for
Middle East Policy earlier in December, President Obama described the
negotiations'
objectives to reach a “framework that would not address every single detail,"
then referring to Palestinians
he added "they don't get everything that
they want on day one."
US mediating team led by an ex-staff of the
American Israel Public Affairs Committee has already championed Israel's
position urging Palestinians to forgo a final settlement and settle instead for
a "framework" interim agreement.
Information from Kerry's mid-December meeting
with Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas has revealed that the US
was on the
verge of proposing an outline for an interim peace plan addressing "everything
(Israel) want" while pushing
aside Palestinian sovereignty, the status of Jerusalem,
and the refugees' question.
Fearing a repeat of the Camp David meeting in 2000─ when then US President Bill Clinton adopted
the Israeli position─
Palestinians President Abbas briefed a special meeting of Arab foreign
ministers on the impending American peace plan.
Abbas informed the gathering of
the Palestinian refusal to enter into another interim understanding, a new
racialist
recognition of Israel or any proposal favoring extended Israeli
presence in any part of the West Bank or at the border
with Jordan.
Following the 5+1 agreement with Iran, the US
is posed to appease Israel vis-à-vis its professed security concerns.
Indeed,
conflicting reports have surface in the past few days regarding the American's
position.
The Israeli army radio claimed the US plan
would include provisions for extended Israeli military presence in the Jordan
River valley. Other reports however have pointed that the postponement of Kerry's
trip─ initially planned for the
last
week of December─ was to
address strong Palestinian opposition which could change the proposal to replace
Israeli
troops with American soldiers along the border with Jordan.
More than twenty years since the original
Interim accord, and fourteen years since the failure of Camp David, the illegal
Jewish only settlers have more than doubled in Occupied West Bank.
Interim Peace II is likely to quadruple the Jewish only colonies and only change the
Palestinian Authority's role from
a coordinator to endorser of the Israeli
occupation.
