From Annapolis to Har Homa

Haaretz Editorial, 13.12.07. US. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice expressed fear that the construction in Har Homa would disrupt the Annapolis process. No one in the world recognizes Israel's annexation of East Jerusalem. It is enough to examine the official maps published by the U.S. State Department and the CIA: Everything beyond the lines Israel held on June 4, 1967, is occupied territory. That is true for the Golan Heights, and it is true for the new neighborhoods Israel built in Jerusalem. The Annapolis festivities have ended, and the test will be in the dull implementation. Thus far, not a single outpost has been evacuated, not the slightest diplomatic progress has been made, and Israel is retreating into the worst of all possible worlds - subject to terror attacks that the Palestinians are still not really trying to restrain, yet putting itself, with its own hands, on the diplomatic defensive. At this rate, and with this sagacity, the Annapolis conference will prove no more than a barren footnote.

US. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice demanded explanations from her Israeli counterpart, Tzipi Livni, last week about the plan to build another 300 apartments in the Har Homa neighborhood of East Jerusalem. Rice did not make do with posing a question to Livni; she hastened to go public with the Bush Administration's objections to the plan.

Administration spokespeople normally oppose any moves liable to damage Israeli-Palestinian final-status negotiations - namely, the settlements. But this time, Rice also expressed fear that the construction in Har Homa would disrupt the Annapolis process. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas claim to be racing toward George W. Bush's goal - concluding the negotiations and establishing a Palestinian state within a year - but the talks are still at the takeoff stage, and the presumption that the process is going quickly is threatening to crash into Har Homa.

Israel has no good answer to the American objections. An internal matter? Har Homa is within Jerusalem's municipal boundaries and under Israeli sovereignty? A bureaucratic issue? An Israel Lands Administration tender whose turn had come to be published? These claims are ridiculous. No one in the world recognizes Israel's annexation of East Jerusalem. It is enough to examine the official maps published by the U.S. State Department and the CIA: Everything beyond the lines Israel held on June 4, 1967, is occupied territory. That is true for the Golan Heights, and it is true for the new neighborhoods Israel built in Jerusalem. Israel's unilateral steps are a game of make-believe that obligate nobody but itself - and especially not the world's greatest power, which is also the only country that gives Israel vital military and diplomatic assistance.
Nor can Israel rely on Bush's April 2004 letter to former prime minister Ariel Sharon in which the U.S. president said the reality created by settlements in the territories must be taken into account. Bush's declaration was not a commitment to refrain from evacuating settlements, does not bind his successors and has even been demonstratively omitted from other diplomatic documents, including an almost identical letter he sent at the same time to King Abdullah of Jordan. In any case, anything that has happened in the three and a half years since then is surely not covered by the Bush declaration.

It is no surprise that Israel's move has been interpreted as a provocation, or at best stupidity, coming as it does on the threshold of a fateful diplomatic breakthrough that Israel is ostensibly happy to participate in, not one it has been dragged to. The old tricks - like expanding the settlements' external boundaries, building new settlements under the guise of neighborhoods of existing settlements or, the most beloved excuse of all, "natural growth" - deceive nobody. They merely provide the Palestinians with ammunition for their propaganda, help Hamas to claim that Olmert is humiliating Abbas and push Bush and Rice into taking a stand against Israel.

Demands of a thief

Gideon Levy, Haaretz, 29.11.07. The public discourse in Israel has momentarily awoken from its slumber. "To give or not to give," that is the Shakespearean question - "to make concessions" or "not to make concessions." It is good that initial signs of life in the Israeli public have emerged. It was worth going to Annapolis if only for this reason - but this discourse is baseless and distorted. Israel is not being asked "to give" anything to the Palestinians; it is only being asked to return - to return their stolen land and restore their trampled self-respect, along with their fundamental human rights and humanity. This is the primary core issue, the only one worthy of the title, and no one talks about it anymore. Just as a thief cannot present demands - neither preconditions nor any other terms - to the owner of the property he has robbed, Israel cannot present demands to the other side as long as the situation remains as it is. After 40 years, one might have expected that the real core issue would finally be raised for honest and bold discussion: Does Israel have the moral right to continue the occupation? No one is talking about morality anymore. Justice is also an archaic concept, a taboo that has deliberately been erased from all negotiations. Two and a half million people - farmers, merchants, lawyers, drivers, daydreaming teenage girls, love-smitten men, old people, women, children and combatants using violent means for a just cause - have all been living under a brutal boot for 40 years. Meanwhile, in our cafes and living rooms the conversation is over giving or not giving.
Lawyers, philosophers, writers, lecturers, intellectuals and rabbis, who are looked upon for basic knowledge about moral precepts, participate in this distorted discourse. What will they tell their children - after the occupation finally becomes a nightmare of the past - about the period in which they wielded influence? What will they say about their role in this? Israeli students stand at checkpoints as part of their army reserve duty, brutally deciding the fate of people, and then some rush off to lectures on ethics at university, forgetting what they did the previous day and what is being done in their names every single day. Intellectuals publish petitions, "to make concessions" or "not to make concessions," diverting attention from the core issue. There are stormy debates about corruption - whether Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is corrupt and how the Supreme Court is being undermined. But there is no discussion of the ultimate question: Isn't the occupation the greatest and most terrible corruption to have taken root here, overshadowing everything else?
Security officials are terrified about what would happen if we removed a checkpoint or released prisoners, like the whites in South Africa who whipped up a frenzy of fear about the "great slaughter" that would ensue if blacks were granted their rights. But these are not legitimate questions: The incarceration must be ended and the myriad of political prisoners should be released unconditionally. Just as a thief cannot present demands - neither preconditions nor any other terms - to the owner of the property he has robbed, Israel cannot present demands to the other side as long as the situation remains as it is.

Security? We must defend ourselves by defensive means. Those who do not believe that the only security we will enjoy will come from ending the occupation and from peace can entrench themselves in the army, and behind walls and fences. But we have no right to do what we are doing: Just as no one would conceive of killing the residents of an entire neighborhood, to harass and incarcerate it because of a few criminals living there, there is no justification for abusing an entire people in the name of our security. The question of whether ending the occupation would threaten or strengthen Israel's security is irrelevant. There are not, and cannot be, any preconditions for restoring justice.

No one will discuss this at Annapolis. Even if the real core issues were raised, they would focus on secondary questions - borders, Jerusalem and even refugees. But that would be escaping the main issue. After 40 years, one might have expected that the real core issue would finally be raised for honest and bold discussion: Does Israel have the moral right to continue the occupation? The world should have asked this long ago. The Palestinians should have focused only on this. And above all, we, who bear the guilt, should have been terribly troubled by the answer to this question.

Annapolis agreement: full text

Guardian, 27.11.07. "We express our determination to bring an end to bloodshed, suffering and decades of conflict between our peoples; to usher in a new era of peace, based on freedom, security, justice, dignity, respect and mutual recognition; to propagate a culture of peace and nonviolence; to confront terrorism and incitement, whether committed by Palestinians or Israelis.

"In furtherance of the goal of two states, Israel and Palestine, living side by side in peace and security, we agree to immediately launch good-faith bilateral negotiations in order to conclude a peace treaty, resolving all outstanding issues, including all core issues without exception, as specified in previous agreements.

"We agree to engage in vigorous, ongoing and continuous negotiations, and shall make every effort to conclude an agreement before the end of 2008. For this purpose, a steering committee, led jointly by the head of the delegation of each party, will meet continuously, as agreed.

"The steering committee will develop a joint work plan and establish and oversee the work of negotiations teams to address all issues, to be headed by one lead representative from each party. The first session of the steering committee will be held on 12 December 2007.

"President Abbas and Prime Minister Olmert will continue to meet on a biweekly basis to follow up the negotiations in order to offer all necessary assistance for their advancement.

"The parties also commit to immediately implement their respective obligations under the performance-based road map to a permanent two-state solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict, issued by the Quartet on 30 April 2003 - this is called the road map - and agree to form an American, Palestinian and Israeli mechanism, led by the United States, to follow up on the implementation of the road map.

"The parties further commit to continue the implementation of the ongoing obligations of the road map until they reach a peace treaty. The United States will monitor and judge the fulfillment of the commitment of both sides of the road map. Unless otherwise agreed by the parties, implementation of the future peace treaty will be subject to the implementation of the road map, as judged by the United States."

L'intégralité de la déclaration israélo-palestinienne lors du sommet d'Annapolis

Testo in italiano della "dichiarazione comune d'intenti" <http://www.infopal.it/testidet.php?id=6930>