Behind the 'peace process'

As Ehud Olmert busied himself shaking hands with Abbas and correcting uninformed journalists from calling the Annapolis summit a “peace conference”, the IDF yesterday ordered the expropriation of over 1,100 dunams of land from four Palestinian villages (Abu Dis, Arab al-Sawahra, Nebi Musa and Talhin Alhamar) in the West Bank, between East Jerusalem and Ma’aleh Adumim. The land will be used for a new Palestinian road connecting East Jerusalem with Jericho, thereby freeing up the so-called E-1 area for Israeli development.

This follows a recent report that Israel’s police force in the West Bank is moving its HQ to the E-1 area.

This is part of Israel’s cherished ‘E-1 Plan‘ to construct 3,500 apartments and a business park in the area between East Jerusalem and the illegal settlement of Ma’aleh Adumim, connecting the two under Israeli control and severing the West Bank into two, territorially non-contiguous cantons. It would also cut East Jerusalem off from the rest of the West Bank.

In short, as veteran Ha’aretz correspondent Akiva Eldar writes,

“This order is synonymous with putting an end to working on an agreement between Israel and the Palestinians on the basis of the principle of two states with territorial contiguity”.

Three years ago, the E-1 plan was permanently ‘frozen’ after the Bush administration and the international community voiced strong objections. It seems Olmert has encountered a more welcoming climate, with media attention largely focused on the diplomatic theatrics, away from the hard realities on the ground.

The road being built represents the Israeli government’s generous gift to the Palestinians of “transportational contiguity” – that is: the separate cantons that will make up the Palestinian “state” will, at least, have roads running between them. The prisoners from each camp will be able to visit each other. Needless to say, anyone advocating this “transportational contiguity” for the Israeli state would be laughed off the stage.

This is the classic Israeli bantustan plan, rejected by Arafat at Camp David in 2000 and now being implemented unilaterally by force. If the E-1 development goes ahead, we can say good-bye to a two-state settlement.

Update: Abbas has come out explicitly with his territorial demands: a Palestinian state must include all of the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem, allowing for mutual and minor border alterations (land-swaps). This actually represents a significant Palestinian concession, but otherwise is simply a demand that Palestinians receive what they are entitled to under the law. Unfortunately, as Ha’aretz comments,

“the Palestinian demands appear to exceed anything that Israel would be willing to offer.”

Cross-posted at The Heathlander

3 Comments

RustyPipes on October 10, 2007 at 3:08 pm

Thanks for the diary, heathlander! I see you made the leap to the frog pond.

shergald on October 10, 2007 at 4:08 pm

Just to repeat it, Thanks for the diary, heathlander.

People are listening too much and not observing what is actually happening on the ground.

Here’s the scoop on Olmert, the Likud hawk who continues Sharon’s deceptions.

“There, I am a minority of one,” Olmert has often joked. The leader of the centrist Kadima party is viewed among Israelis as a hawk. But his wife and their four children are firmly rooted in Israel’s far left.

“It would be the equivalent of George W. Bush running for election with a family full of communists,” explains Efraim Inbar, a political science professor at Jerusalem’s Bar Ilan University.

Olmert’s wife, Aliza, is a well-known artist and screenwriter. She supports Peace Now, a group that fiercely opposes Israel’s security barrier and Kadima’s plans to complete it. It also promotes the division of Jerusalem for a Palestinian state and Israel’s withdrawal to its 1967 borders.

The Olmerts’ daughter Danna is a university lecturer of literature and a self-professed lesbian who lives openly with her partner in Tel Aviv. She is a member of Machsom Watch, a group of Israeli women who monitor checkpoints for human rights abuses and often confront Israeli soldiers on behalf of Palestinians. Her older sister, Michal, holds a master’s degree in psychology and runs creative thinking workshops. Married, she lives in Tel Aviv and is known to share her siblings’ leftist political leanings, but is not as outspoken.

The Olmerts’ son Shaul completed his military service, signed a petition of Yesh G’vul, a group of Israeli Defense Force soldiers who refuse to serve in the occupied territories, and now lives in New York.

Their younger son, Ariel, dodged military service altogether and is studying French literature at the Sorbonne in Paris. Both sons have retained their Israeli citizenship and are eligible to vote.

Olmert downplays any hint of conflict. “There is a complex and, I think, fascinating dialogue between my children and me,” he said in a recent interview with the Hebrew daily Yediot Ahronot newspaper. “They have influenced me, and I am proud of it. I would like to think that I have also influenced them.”

Aliza Olmert for Prime Minister. “No sex until elected.” That should be her rallying call.

I hope that no one will ask for a link as I lost it, but this is the reality, I assure everyone.

shergald on October 11, 2007 at 11:02 am

EU quiet over Israeli land expropriation
David Cronin, The Electronic Intifada, Oct 10, 2007

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article9035.shtml

BRUSSELS, Oct 10 (IPS) – Representatives of the European Union’s two most powerful institutions remained silent this week on new efforts by Israel to expropriate Palestinian villages, triggering accusations that the bloc’s Middle East policy suffers from double standards.

During a 10 October debate in Brussels, speakers from the Portuguese government, which holds the Union’s rotating presidency, and the European Commission did not refer directly to the Israeli order to seize control of four Arab villages located between East Jerusalem and the West Bank city of Jericho.

Their reticence drew angry response from some members of the European Parliament, the EU’s only directly-elected body.

“As Palestinians see all hope of a viable Palestinian state disappear before their eyes, what is the EU going to do?” asked Chris Davies, a British Liberal MEP. “You know very well it will do nothing, except mouth a few words. There will be no tangible action.”

RustyPipes on October 10, 2007 at 3:08 pm

Thanks for the diary, heathlander! I see you made the leap to the frog pond.
shergald on October 10, 2007 at 4:08 pm

Just to repeat it, Thanks for the diary, heathlander.

People are listening too much and not observing what is actually happening on the ground.

Here’s the scoop on Olmert, the Likud hawk who continues Sharon’s deceptions.

“There, I am a minority of one,” Olmert has often joked. The leader of the centrist Kadima party is viewed among Israelis as a hawk. But his wife and their four children are firmly rooted in Israel’s far left.

“It would be the equivalent of George W. Bush running for election with a family full of communists,” explains Efraim Inbar, a political science professor at Jerusalem’s Bar Ilan University.

Olmert’s wife, Aliza, is a well-known artist and screenwriter. She supports Peace Now, a group that fiercely opposes Israel’s security barrier and Kadima’s plans to complete it. It also promotes the division of Jerusalem for a Palestinian state and Israel’s withdrawal to its 1967 borders.

The Olmerts’ daughter Danna is a university lecturer of literature and a self-professed lesbian who lives openly with her partner in Tel Aviv. She is a member of Machsom Watch, a group of Israeli women who monitor checkpoints for human rights abuses and often confront Israeli soldiers on behalf of Palestinians. Her older sister, Michal, holds a master’s degree in psychology and runs creative thinking workshops. Married, she lives in Tel Aviv and is known to share her siblings’ leftist political leanings, but is not as outspoken.

The Olmerts’ son Shaul completed his military service, signed a petition of Yesh G’vul, a group of Israeli Defense Force soldiers who refuse to serve in the occupied territories, and now lives in New York.

Their younger son, Ariel, dodged military service altogether and is studying French literature at the Sorbonne in Paris. Both sons have retained their Israeli citizenship and are eligible to vote.

Olmert downplays any hint of conflict. “There is a complex and, I think, fascinating dialogue between my children and me,” he said in a recent interview with the Hebrew daily Yediot Ahronot newspaper. “They have influenced me, and I am proud of it. I would like to think that I have also influenced them.”

Aliza Olmert for Prime Minister. “No sex until elected.” That should be her rallying call.

I hope that no one will ask for a link as I lost it, but this is the reality, I assure everyone.
shergald on October 11, 2007 at 11:02 am

EU quiet over Israeli land expropriation
David Cronin, The Electronic Intifada, Oct 10, 2007

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article9035.shtml

BRUSSELS, Oct 10 (IPS) – Representatives of the European Union’s two most powerful institutions remained silent this week on new efforts by Israel to expropriate Palestinian villages, triggering accusations that the bloc’s Middle East policy suffers from double standards.

During a 10 October debate in Brussels, speakers from the Portuguese government, which holds the Union’s rotating presidency, and the European Commission did not refer directly to the Israeli order to seize control of four Arab villages located between East Jerusalem and the West Bank city of Jericho.

Their reticence drew angry response from some members of the European Parliament, the EU’s only directly-elected body.

“As Palestinians see all hope of a viable Palestinian state disappear before their eyes, what is the EU going to do?” asked Chris Davies, a British Liberal MEP. “You know very well it will do nothing, except mouth a few words. There will be no tangible action.”

Behind the ‘peace process’

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