Palestinian rhetoric on Israeli settlements is just talk

Anybody can say anything about whatever they want to about anything, and it is with that understanding that Sunday's statement by former Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Ahmed Qurei about Israeli "settlements" in Jerusalem being a "time bomb" should be viewed. Qurei and Israeli opposition leader Tsipi Livni, the former foreign minister, urged moderates on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to work harder to settle their differences. "The Jerusalem situation, I think, is a time bomb if it continues in this way," Qurei said a meeting of academics in Jerusalem, according to the Reuters international news service. "It has an impact on the Palestinian people . . . and on trust on both sides." Qurei was discussing Israel's continuing construction of housing for its citizens in formerly Jordanian-controlled East Jerusalem, often after demolishing Palestinian-owned housing. "It is 19 years since Oslo and things remain as is," Qurei said, referring to the historic agreement that recognized Palestinian sovereignty over the West Bank of the Jordan River, which Israel captured, along with East Jerusalem, in the 1967 Mideast war, and led to the return from exile of Yasir Arafat. Arafat, the Palestinian leader, and then-Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for reaching the Oslo Accords. But the lasting peace that seemed within reach in 1993 no longer appears at hand, not after the years of violence and mistrust that supplanted what turned out to be naive optimism -- on both sides. If the Israelis assumed that their Arab enemies, with whom they had already fought three all-out wars, were now willing to accept their Jewish neighbors as equals, and if Palestinian leaders assumed they were on the fast-track to statehood without having to undo the hatred they had been planting in the hearts of their people and convince them to work for peace, they both were tragically mistaken. The repeated failure of all parties to accept these realities are responsible for the current situation.

Israelis get an earful from Biden

If Tuesday's announcement of new East Jerusalem housing sparked such outrage from U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, imagine what he's going to say when he finds out the eastern half of the city is already part of Israel and has been for more than 40 years. Biden was sharply critical of Israel following the announcement on Wednesday, saying the move would "inflame tensions" with the Palestinians, who want East Jerusalem to be the capital of a future West Bank state, according to the Reuters international news service. It may be news to all of them, but Israel has been in control of East Jerusalem since 1967, when its soldiers drove Jordan from the West Bank in yet another war started by Israel's Arab neighbors. Jews had been prevented from entering the historic old city after Israel's founding in 1948, even though East Jerusalem contains sites sacred to Jews and Muslims since before the birth of Christ. But Israel agreed to negotiate the future of Jerusalem with the Palestinian Authority in 1993, and considered the possibility of East Jerusalem becoming the Palestinian's capital in 2001. A lot has changed since then, including the election of a conservative government in Israel that opposes territorial concessions. Tuesday's announcement of 1,600 new units in East Jerusalem sparked the expected outrage from Arab nations but the United States' criticism apparently surprised Israeli leaders. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had ordered a partial freeze of West Bank settlement construction last year in an effort to encourage the Palestinian Authority to return to negotiations over a future Palestinian state in the area, but specifically excluded East Jerusalem. "It is incumbent on both parties to build an atmosphere of support for negotiations and not to complicate them," Biden said Wednesday in a meeting with PA President Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah. "Yesterday, the decision by the Israeli government to advance planning for new housing units in East Jerusalem undermines that very trust, the trust that we need right now in order to begin ... profitable negotiations." Abbas urged Israel to cancel its housing plans, Reuters said. British Foreign Secretary David Miliband also condemned Israel's decision after giving a lecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Mass., Reuters said.

Indirect peace talks between Israel and Palestinian Authority are pointless

Word from Ramallah yesterday that Palestinian leaders had agreed to take part in indirect peace talks with Israel is at once good news and bad. It's good news, of course, because the Palestinians and Israelis are going to have to be in constant and constructive contact with each other if there is any hope of the two societies living together in peace. But it's bad news, too, because the Palestinian Authority agreed only to hold indirect talks with Israeli leaders in Jerusalem, with the United States acting as mediator, and that's a huge step in the wrong direction. Nothing can come from indirect talks that will be better than what the Israelis and Palestinians can achieve together, and whatever comes of them is likely to be a lot less useful for both. Sunday's agreement to hold indirect talks for four months was arranged after the Arab League endorsed the talks at a meeting in Cairo on Wednesday, according to the New York Times. The PA had refused to resume negotiations until Israel agreed to freeze settlement activity in the West Bank and in East Jerusalem, which it wants for the capital of a future state. The new agreement comes one day before U.S. Vice President Joe Biden is expected to arrive in the region for the highest-level talks since the election of Biden and President Barack Obama. Israel accepted the indirect talks offer last week; the talks will be the first between the two sides in 14 months. But all the maneuverings and nuances cannot hide the real problem that keeps the PA from reaching a comprehensive peace deal. The Palestinian leadership doesn't want one, even though it promises tremendous benefits for the Palestinian people. Have Palestinian Authority-run schools stopped teaching children to hate Jews? Are Palestinian children still taught to mistrust their Israeli neighbors? It will take at least two generations to fix the years of hatred deliberately sowed by the PA, and Hamas-run schools in Gaza are undoubtedly worse. It will take generations to fix this, but the PA hasn't even started yet. This is the work that any real peace will require, and it's not getting done. Palestinian leaders prefer to dither over boundary lines and eschew any real compromises, because they know -- and the radical elements that dominate regional political discourse know, too -- that they are simply unwilling to accept Israel.

Israel rejects Palestinian rejection of peace moves

Maybe Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman was only kidding Thursday when he said Israel was more interested in winning international support for its efforts toward peace with Palestinians living in the West Bank than what the Palestinians themselves think. Or, maybe, just maybe, his remarks reflected Israel's frustration with the Palestinian Authority's blanket refusal to begin talks on a peace settlement until Israel stops building homes on land the Palestinians want for their own country. "The last thing that should interest us is the Palestinians' concern," Lieberman said on Israel Radio, according to the Reuters international news service. "Before the Palestinian issue, what should interest us is our friends in the world. We spoke to them and most said, 'help us to help you.'" Lieberman's statement was in reaction to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas' outright rejection of Israel's announcement of a 10-month partial freeze of settlement activity in the West Bank. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu offered the partial freeze in an effort to get the PA to agree to restart peace negotiations. But Abbas, who is threatening to leave government if and when his current term ends, demands a total freeze on building on lands claimed by his stateless people including East Jerusalem, which Israel captured in 1967. Israel has annexed East Jerusalem and made it part of its capital, but most of the world's nations have not accepted it. Yet Western nations lined up behind Netanyahu's proposal despite Palestinian objections, Reuters said. French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner called Israel's move "a positive contribution to peace, and British Foreign Secretary David Miliband urged that Israel's proposal "become a step toward resuming meaningful negotiations." Israel's chief backer, the United States, has called for the resumption of negotiations without preconditions. But Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat told Israel's Army Radio that Israel's proposal was merely a bid to deflect pressure from the United States, Reuters said. "At the end of the day, Netanyahu needs to make peace with us, the Palestinians, he doesn't need to make peace with Americans," Erekat said. "If that's what he wants, that is his business. The last I know, Washington is 6,000 miles from Jerusalem, while Jericho is 67." More than 500,000 Israelis live in the West Bank and East Jerusalem alongside 2.7 million Palestinians, Reuters said.

U.S. effort in Middle East appears doomed for now

The United States certainly may want it to happen, but the likelihood is extremely small that U.S. envoy George Mitchell will be successful in convincing negotiators for Israel and the Palestinian Authority to agree to resume peace talks. Mitchell said today that he hoped to wrap up an agreement in the next few days, according to the Reuters international news service. But that hope, if he really has it, seems unrealistic or, worse, dangerously naive. While Israel would love to be able to continue to relax its oppressive -- and expensive -- and oppressive military presence around territory it captured in 1967, and the PA needs statehood to fulfill the Palestinian people's desire for independence and to bolster its standing with its people, the two sides have rarely seemed further apart. The Palestinian Authority, of course, is insisting on a complete freeze of construction of housing for Israelis on land it wants for its state, including East Jerusalem. Israel, now led by a conservative prime minister, has offered to temporarily suspend future construction but refuses to stop building homes that are already planned or to give up any part of Jerusalem. "While we have not yet reached agreement on many outstanding issues, we are working hard to do so, and indeed the purpose of my visits here this week is to attempt to do so," Mitchell said Sunday with Israeli President Shimon Peres at his side, Reuters reported. Mitchell is scheduled to meet tomorrow with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyau and Tuesday with PA President Mahmoud Abbas in his effort to put together a deal that would freeze settlements and require Arab nations to move towards diplomatic recognition of Israel. But a look at the issues here underscores the impossibility of Mitchell's assignment. Israel is talking about where to put the border between the two countries, the PA and most of the rest of the Arab world is still pretending that Israel doesn't exist. That's a very long road to travel in three days. It's going to take a diplomat on the same level as, say, the late Anwar Sadat, to achieve a breakthrough, and it appears, sadly, the Netanyahu and Abbas are simply not up to the task. As for Mitchell, he might have had an distinguished career as a politician but he will more easily be remembered for botching the Major League Baseball steroids investigation than anything else he accomplished as a public figure.