Under heavy pressure from the US, the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has paid grudging lip service over the past four years to the goal of Palestinian statehood. But his real agenda was always transparent: not statehood, but what he termed “economic peace”.
Ordinary Palestinians, in Netanyahu’s view, can be pacified with crumbs from the master’s table: fewer checkpoints, extra jobs and trading opportunities, and a gradual, if limited, improvement in living standards. All of this buys time for Israel to expand the settlements, cementing its hold over the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
After 20 years of pursuing Palestinian statehood implied in the Oslo Accords, the US indicated last week it was switching horses. It appears to be adopting Netanyahu’s model of “economic peace”.
The US secretary of state, John Kerry, flanked by the Israeli president, Shimon Peres, and the Palestinian Authority chairman, Mahmoud Abbas, at the World Economic Forum in Jordan, revealed an economic programme for getting peace talks on track.
Some 300 Israeli and Palestinian business people were on board, he said, and would invest heavily in the Palestinian economy in a venture that was “bigger, bolder and more ambitious than anything since the Oslo accords”.
No more details were forthcoming, except that it will be overseen by Tony Blair, Britain’s former prime minister who has been the Quartet representative, the international community’s “man in Jerusalem”, since 2007.
He is a strange choice indeed, given that the Palestinian leadership has publicly dismissed him as “Israel’s defence attorney” and privately argued — as revealed in the Palestine Papers leaked in 2011 — that he advocates “an apartheid-like approach to dealing with the occupied West Bank”.
Kerry’s claims for his programme were grand yet vague. Some $4 billion in private investment over three years would boost the Palestinian economy by 50 per cent; agricultural production and tourism would triple; unemployment fall by two-thirds; wages rise by 40 per cent; and 100,000 homes would be built.
But the proposal left few impressed, and for good reason.
Kerry is simply repackaging the task Blair was entrusted with six years ago. His job has been to develop the Palestinian economy and build up Palestinian institutions in preparation for eventual statehood, so far to little effect.
As David Horovitz, editor of the right wing Times of Israel newspaper, scoffed: “If there was $4 billion to be had in private investment in the Palestinian economy, you can rest assured that Tony Blair would have found it.”
Or seen another way, the Palestinian economy’s problem is not a lack of investment; it is a lack of viable opportunities for investment. Palestinians have no control over their borders, airspace, radio frequencies, water and other natural resources, not even over the currency or internal movement of goods and people. Everything depends on Israel’s good will. And few investors will be prepared to bet on that. Israel has repeatedly shown itself more than ready to crush the PA’s finances by, for example, withholding Palestinian tax revenues it collects and is mandated to pass on.
Blair’s role has been heavily criticised because his narrow focus on economic development has not only failed to foster a climate conducive to talks but has served as cover for Israel and Washington’s inaction on Palestinian statehood. Instead of rethinking Blair’s failed mandate, Kerry appears set on perpetuating and expanding it.
Abdallah Abdallah, a senior Fatah official, summed up the Palestinian response: “We are not animals that only want food. We are a people struggling for freedom”.
Israel, meanwhile, is only too ready to push Kerry down this hopeless path.
From Israel’s perspective, the US plan usefully distracts attention from the Arab Peace Initiative, the Arab states’ renewed offer last month of full diplomatic relations with Israel in return for its withdrawal from most of the occupied territories.
Netanyahu, worried the offer might corner him into serious talks, has responded with stony silence. At the same time, Yair Lapid, the supposedly centrist finance minister who was originally promoted by the West as a peacemaker, has squashed the idea of a deal with the Palestinians as unrealistic. He told the New York Times last month that he supported expanding the settlements.
Israel, it seems, hopes that the Palestinian Authority, now permanently mired in financial crisis, can be arm-twisted with promises of billions of dollars in sweeteners. According to Palestinian sources, Abbas is facing intense pressure from the US, with the Kerry plan intended to leverage him into dropping his condition that Israel freeze settlement growth before negotiations restart.
Israel is keen to win that concession. Despite reports that Netanyahu has quietly promised the Americans he will avoid embarrassing them for the next few weeks with announcements of settlement building, a rash of projects is in the pipeline.
At the weekend, media reports disclosed a plan for 300 new homes in East Jerusalem, while nearly 800 more are to be released for sale. Several settlement outposts established without authorisation from the Israeli government are expected to be made legal retrospectively, including hundreds of homes in Eli, near Ramallah.
Reuters reported yesterday that Kerry expects a decision on restarting peace talks within two weeks – or, his officials say, he will walk away from the peace process. He told a meeting of the American Jewish Committee the same day: “If we do not succeed now, we may not get another chance.”
For Netanyahu, such threats are hollow. If the US absents itself from the conflict, Israel will simply be left with a freer hand to intensify its subjugation of the Palestinians and the theft of their land.
Even though much more is at stake for the Palestinians, the PA has so far been quietly dismissive of the Kerry plan. It has stated it will not make “political concessions in exchange for economic benefits” – a diplomatic way of saying it will not be bribed to sell out on statehood.
But the real danger for the Palestinians, as they remember only too well from the 2000 Camp David talks, is that they are being set up as the fall guy. Should they refuse to sign up to the latest version of economic peace, Israel and the US will be only too ready to blame them for their intransigence.
This is win-win for Netanyahu, and another moment of disastrous slippage in the diplomatic process for the Palestinians.
A version of this article first appeared in The National, Abu Dhabi.
The US is not going to get in the way of Israel’s slow suicide
Bush or Condy would never have said the following back in 2005 :
http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/kerry-to-u-s-jews-next-few-days-will-determine-middle-east-fate-for-decades-1.527615
“Kerry warned that without a two-state solution, Israel will have to choose between its Jewish and democratic nature. He also stressed the need to recognize the fundamental aspirations of the Palestinian people.
Those who believe the Israeli-Palestinian status quo is sustainable and that the separation fence will bring security to Israel are “lulling themselves into a delusion,” the U.S. secretary of state said.
“The absence of peace is perpetual conflict. … We will find ourselves in a negative spiral of responses and counter-responses that could literally slam the door on a two-state solution,” he said.
Kerry also warned that Israel would be isolated in the international arena if the standstill continues. The Palestinians have already begun considering opting for unilateral efforts at the United Nations, and if they do so, they will garner more votes than they did last time, when they sought – and achieved – non-member observer state status, he said. Furthermore, the eruption of a protest movement in the West Bank would result in greater deligitimization of Israel, said Kerry, cautioning against the dire potential of what might happen if the Palestinian Authority were to collapse. “
The difference this time is that the Palestinians have nothing to lose. This will be the end (finally) of the vichy Palestinian government and it will force their hand. They will have to admit defeat resign and hand over the keys to Kerry. It has been said all along that the Obama administration will preside over the death of the so called two state solution. And the unshakable bond will serve to protect the apartheid Kim Crow state. Ironic isn’t it that the first black President will be the Jim Crow enforcer
Yeah. The Palestinians will remain on Israel’s specially prepared “diet” for them. Israel would “get rid” of all the natives except for what a bad PR move that would be in the 21st Century. Even the US congress would blink…
It is time for the Palestinians to realize that there are pretty much no viable alternatives until the US stop providing support to Israel. Violence has not worked; negotiations have not worked. Trying again the same approach with the balance of power unchanged will only generate the same results.
Maybe it is time for the Palestinians to try another approach: ask Israel what would Israel want the Palestinians to do. No negotiations, just state your “want”. Beyond vague statements, Israel has never stated what is their ideal solution. Let them do that, let us see if they have the courage to state what everyone already knows they want. Israel’s grand project is to weaken and dilute the Palestinians to oblivion . The blueprints are under everyone’s eyes to see: the Native Americans. If the US got away with a project that large, why can’t Israel? Then take their answer and share it with the world.
As pointed in the article, all the commotion following fatuous plans serves only Israel’s purpose to label the Palestinians as unreasonable.
This development project will be overseen by Tony Blair? Tony Blair gave an interview with the Daily Mail in which he said that there is “a problem with Islam.”
He said , “There is a problem within Islam – from the adherents of an ideology which is a strain within Islam,” he wrote. “We have to put it on the table and be honest about it. Of course there are Christian extremists and Jewish, Buddhist and Hindu ones. But I am afraid this strain is not the province of a few extremists. It has at its heart a view about religion and about the interaction between religion and politics that is not compatible with pluralistic, liberal, open-minded societies.”
“At the extreme end of the spectrum are terrorists, but the world view goes deeper and wider than it is comfortable for us to admit. So by and large we don’t admit it,” he added.
Of course the irony is that he joined Bush in invading Iraq and killed tens of thousands of Iraqi citizens, but of course, the problem is Islam. He does not need to be overseeing a development project in the West Bank. At least his inclusion tells us that this project is a joke, a smokescreen, and a cover by the West for Israel, and not to be taken seriously. And of course, the problem is within Islam.