Israel’s ongoing aggression weakens pro-US Abbas

Taking down the PLO   Nicola Nasser in Al Ahram for full analysis

Israel is intensifying its colonial settlement strategy, exploding any prospects of peace talks and driving Abbas into a corner.

Linking the aliyah (Jewish immigration) to what Jewish literature describes as Eretz Israel (Greater Israel) -- Israeli colonial settlement of Palestinian land, which the Hebrew state occupied in 1967, while at the same time negating the Palestinian right of return -- is torpedoing whatever prospect is left for a peaceful solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict, undermining the latest US-sponsored Palestinian-Israeli talks in Annapolis and further splintering the only viable Palestinian partner Israel has in any viable peace process, the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO).

Rabbi Eric Yoffie, head of the North America Reform Movement, in an interview published by The Jerusalem Post, 25 December, hailed Israel's creation as a "miraculous, momentous event", adding: "Every day that goes by with Israel surrounded by a wall of Arab hatred is a miracle." He may have had the aliyah in mind when he noted that "anti-Israel feeling among Jewish Americans" was an "aspect of the problem". On the evening of 26 December new Jewish immigrants from Iran landed in Israel in the framework of a special Jewish Agency covert operation in the wake of falling Jewish immigration into Israel, according to the Ministry of Immigrant Absorption.

Judging by the one-million-strong aliyah of Soviet Jews in the late 20th century, a high percentage of the newcomers this year -- 19,700 -- will end up in Israeli colonial settlements built on confiscated Palestinian land in the West Bank, notably in East Jerusalem where at least 12 per cent of the Soviet aliyah settled. The "absorption" of newcomers in the occupied Palestinian territories is not a result of Israel's inability to accommodate them in Israel proper, but rather Israel's strategy of territorial expansion. Moreover, Israel is capable of absorbing the return of Palestinian refugees it dispossessed and displaced from over 500 towns and villages in 1948. According to refugee expert Salman Abu Sitta, "ninety per cent of the villages are still vacant; seven per cent are partially built-over, and only three per cent are totally built over in Tel Aviv and West Jerusalem."

The declared Annapolis plan of Israel and the Quartet (the US, UN, EU and Russia) to shore up ruling Palestinian "peaceniks" in the West Bank with promises of the creation of a Palestinian state according to the two-state "vision" of US President George W Bush, while at the same time sealing off the Gaza Strip, already dependent on foreign charities, is proving a non-starter, essentially because Israel refuses to act on what it verbally committed itself to in Annapolis, especially commitments to halt settlement building. Meanwhile, the Palestinian Authority (PA) was pledged $1.8 billion more than it requested at the donors conference in Paris, but donors were only "showing financial generosity because of the absence of political audacity and political courage," according to Afif Safia, representative of the Palestinian people in Washington, DC.

During the 20 days that separated the Annapolis conference on 27 November from the Paris donors' conference on 17 December, Palestinians were optimistic, viewing the two events as complementary en route to Palestinian statehood. Less than a month on, however, Israel is not only "torpedoing" the modest results that emerged from Annapolis, but also threatening to drain the $7.4 billion pledged by donors into the political abyss that siphoned more than $10 billion donated to the PA since 1993.

...Israel unofficially refuses to make peace with the PLO. Israel's colonial war in the West Bank is much more detrimental to the Annapolis process and prospects of creating a Palestinian state because it focuses on strategically destroying the territorial contiguity of this prospective state and severing it from its capital, Jerusalem. Israel announced an aggressive three-pronged drive to expand its colonial settlements in and around East Jerusalem, including creating the brand new colony of Atarot, with 35,000 Jewish only houses, on the Palestinian land of Qalandia...

According to Israeli Minister for Jerusalem Affairs Rafi Eitan, the colonies to be expanded in Israel's latest settlement drive are "an integral, organic part of Jerusalem", and that "no promise was ever given to anyone that we wouldn't continue to build" in them, because they are "within the municipal borders of Jerusalem".

...Popular and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP and DFLP respectively) demanded in official statements last week that President Abbas sever all contact with Israel in protest against its military escalation and settlement expansion. The fronts represent the third strongest electoral and political power after Hamas and Fatah.

By calling for a halt to all contacts, both fronts are in fact adopting a key Hamas demand, reinforcing the Islamic movement against the Abbas-led PLO. Indeed, the PFLP decided to attend a 10-faction Hamas-led Palestinian "national conference" that was scheduled to coincide with the Annapolis conference in the Syrian capital, Damascus; Syria's participation in Annapolis had led to postponing the conference. Fatah's 40-year old monopoly of decision-making and finances in the PLO and later the PA has kept coalition member factions under control. But the deadlocked peace process with Israel and corruption of the PA has all but exhausted the credibility of the national liberation movement.

...the major threat to Fayyad's government remains Israel's military occupation. The World Bank warned Thursday that even if donor countries meet all of the PA's demands for financial aid, the Palestinian economy will continue to deteriorate, and Palestinians get poorer, if Israel does not lift its siege on Gaza and its restrictions on free movement in the West Bank.

All indications confirm that Israeli policies of settlement expansion, siege and blockade will endure. Thus Fayyad can promise his people only more of the same as opposition to his government and the PLO deepens by the day, dispelling whatever illusions of peace remain left over from Annapolis.

* The writer is a veteran Arab journalist based in Bir Zeit in occupied Palestine.