Israel's conditions make talks with the Palestinians futile By Rami G. Khouri

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Israel's conditions make talks with the Palestinians futile
By Rami G. Khouri

The contrast is startling between the slow pace of attempts to restart talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority headed by President Mahmoud Abbas and the relentless Israeli drive on many fronts to dominate and effectively destroy the concept of a distinct and sovereign Palestinian people in the historic land of Palestine. Israeli actions in recent weeks clarify the futility of trying to negotiate peace with an Israeli state that wages war on the idea that Palestinians have national rights in the same land that Israel claims as its exclusive patrimony.

Recent Israeli actions include driving Palestinians out of their homes in East Jerusalem and replacing them with Zionist settlers; assassinating a Hamas leader in Dubai; attacking targets in the Gaza Strip while maintaining the siege there; continuing to expand settlements in the occupied West Bank; and, most recently last week, declaring two sites in occupied Hebron and Bethlehem as part of Israel’s eternal national heritage.

The two sites are the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron, that is thought to be the burial place of Abraham and that Israelis call the Cave of the Patriarchs, and the shrine in Bethlehem called Rachel’s Tomb. The Israeli declaration does not change anything on the ground for the moment, because the Israeli Army is in full control of the sites. Its significance is in the signal it sends to Palestinians that if the Arab-Israeli conflict is ever resolved through negotiations, this will only happen according to rules dictated by Israel that give priority to Israeli-Zionist claims.

The Israeli decision prompted young Palestinians to clash with Israeli troops in Hebron. On Monday, the chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat said the declaration “shows there is no genuine partner for peace, but an occupying power intent on consolidating Palestinian lands.”

The Israeli move is so provocative that it even sparked some life in the United Nations special coordinator for the Middle East peace process, Robert H. Serry. He declared: “These sites are in occupied Palestinian territory and are of historical and religious significance not only to Judaism, but also to Islam, and to Christianity as well. I urge Israel not to take any steps on the ground which undermine trust or could prejudice negotiations.”

The startling aspect of all this is that it occurs while both sides look toward the United States to continue efforts to rekindle Israeli-Palestinian talks. There is no possible way that the US or anyone else could realistically reconcile the two parallel dynamics that are under way – engaging in negotiations that seek to achieve the legitimate and equal rights of both parties, and a process of Zionist colonization and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians that has been going on for a century or so.

No wonder the chief Palestinian negotiator described the Israeli decision to keep control of archaeological and tourist sites as “part of the continuing Israeli settlement enterprise.”

The Palestinians view Israeli actions in this light, as part of a long process of evicting the Palestinians from their ancestral lands and making room for Zionist Jews to come from abroad and reclaim what they consider to be their ancestral land. Valiant attempts to negotiate a resolution to the conflict have failed, and will continue to fail if the negotiating process largely reflects the same imbalance on the ground that is manifested in the unilateral Israeli actions that we have recently witnessed on a continuous basis.

That imbalance sees Israel maintain the status quo through its superior military power, its ability to control the movement of people in and out of Palestinian areas, and its reliance on unilateral actions that respect only Israel’s own priorities, rather than the dictates of peacemaking through negotiations that affirm the validity of parallel Israeli and Palestinian national narratives.

The futility of negotiating peace under these conditions is obvious to any but the most politically blind. The two most important players dealing with the Palestinians – Israel and the United States – remain unwilling to come to terms with the single most important issue for the Arabs, which is the continuing ethnic cleansing and refugee status of the Palestinians; and they refuse to deal seriously with pivotal actors like Hamas in Palestine and Hizbullah in Lebanon.

Such distortions in the negotiating context are depressing enough for anyone who seeks a peaceful resolution of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict; they are infinitely more troubling when we realize that they are coupled with continued Israeli predatory and unilateral moves on the ground, and an apparent American penchant for acquiescence rather than transformation in dealing with this situation.

Rami G. Khouri is published regularly by THE DAILY STAR.