Monday, September 21, 2009

The NY meeting

It has finally been announced that Pres. Obama, PM Netanyahu and Pres. Abbas will meet on the sidelines of the annual UN conference in NY this week.
The meeting was uncertain because Pres. Abbas was balking unless Netanyahu accepted as precondition that all Jewish construction on the West Bank and East Jerusalem be frozen. Abbas was depending on America to force a freeze on Israel, but Netanyahu resisted. He excepted East Jerusalem building from the freeze and also retained the need for "natural growth" in the large settlements of the West Bank, including Ma'ale Adumim, Ariel and Etzion.
These settlements are really towns with ca. 30,000 people each and you simply cannot stop their development, and Israel will not give them up in any agreement. Already there are 2,500 building projects in progress, including children's playgrounds, schools, shelters, roads, as well as apartments and houses. By initiating a further 250 projects, to satisfy his right wing coalition, Netanyahu was prepared to impose a temporary moratorium on building for 6-9 months, but agreement could not be reached with US envoy John Mitchell. However, since Obama wants the meeting, it will go ahead even without agreement between the US and Israel on the freeze and without a precondition for the Palestinians.
Pres. Obama is intending to announce his new plan for Middle East peace at the UN meeting, since every President must have such a plan. He is not deterred by the failure of all previous plans. His plan is supposed to include concessions by the Arab States towards Israel, but none have been announced so far. However, there are two things that are different this time. First, the parties have emphasized the economic aspects of the Palestinian's plight, and have helped to improve it. With PM Fayyed, who is an economist and a moderate and who is neither Fatah nor Hamas, in charge of the PA, their economy is improving. Israel this week removed a further 100 roadblocks, that was hardly noted in the media, but it was a measure to help improve Palestinian mobility and hence improve the economy. While there have been no reciprocal confidence building measures from the Palestinians, nevertheless the situation for ordinary Palestinians in the West Bank has improved, and there has been little terrorism from there for several years.
Second, the PA Government has announced that if there is no agreement between the PA and Israel under US auspices within two years, then they will unilaterally proclaim a Palestinian State on all of the West Bank. This presents a serious challenge to Israel, since Israel claims all the areas of dense Jewish population settlement on the West Bank, as well as demanding a demilitarized Palestinian State. Israel wants to be able to prevent the same kind of situation developing there as happened in Gaza, namely the takeover by a pro-Iranian militia such as Hamas and the turning of the West Bank into a terrorist enclave at the heart of Israel. Either mutual progress under Obama's mediation will be fast and fruitful, or in two years there is likely to be a very unstable situation, possibly leading to war.
The PA Government would be breaking international law, including UN resolutions that require the conflict to be settled mutually by agreement, by declaring a State unilaterally. However, international law has not bothered them before. Also, so far the West Bank and Gaza are split, and it would be an anomaly for the West Bank to be declared a Palestinian State without Gaza. How this is to be resolved after months of intense negotiations under Egyptian mediation, is still uncertain.
So the meeting in New York may be the start of a new era of progress towards peace, or it may simply be a meeting about meeting with continued stalemate, or it may presage a breakdown and an intensification of the conflict.

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