Thursday, November 26, 2009

The building freeze

The Israel Government today announced a 10 month temporary building freeze on all settlements in Judea and Samaria (the West Bank). This is a result of months of negotiations between the Obama Administration and PM Netanyahu. The freeze explicitly does not include East Jerusalem but does include all aspects of "natural growth", i.e no expansion of existing settlements. This was the maximum that Netanyahu could get through the Israeli cabinet without causing rifts and breakdown of his coalition. Notably FM Lieberman, who was against a building freeze previously, supported it. The Palestinian spokesman Saeb Erakat immediately rejected this freeze as "insignificant." Any hopes that the Palestinians would show even a minor amount to interest in restarting the peace negotiations with this major concession from the Israeli Governemnt have been dashed.
There are many who blame Obama for the current stalemate in the peace process, mainly because he raised the expectations of the Palestinians and led them to believe that he was going to force Israel to accept a total building freeze, presumably including East Jerusalem, without really knowing what he was doing. You would think that his advisors, including Rahm Emanuel, who is supposed to know Israel well, would have advised him to speak to the Israelis before making any such commitments.
Now the Palestinians feel they cannot accept anything less than a complete freeze, including Jerusalem, because they have gone public with that position. Never before have the Palestinians made such a precondition to talks resuming, except under Obama.
No doubt Pres. Abbas is worried that if he accepts a resumption of talks with this Israel concession he will be considered weak by his people, while at the same time it looks as if Hamas will be rewarded with the release of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails in exchange for Sgt. Gilad Schalit. Presumably that is why Netanyahu announced this freeze at this time. But that is not the Israeli concern, the Government has made a significant concession and if it is not accepted within 10 months they will go back to building as before. Then once again the Palestinians will only have themselves to blame for missing this important opportunity.

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