So now we have, finally, a ceasefire in Gaza that is reciprocal but not negotiated and not durable at all.
People and governments around the world should pay some attention to ensuring the durability of this ceasefire and also– certainly– to providing the massive relief effort that the survivors of the Gaza assault so desperately need.
But please let’s not see people getting hung up on side-issues like “how to police the Gaza tunnels.” There should be no tunnels between Gaza and Egypt, or between Gaza and anyplace else, since the tunnels were only ever a side-effect of the siege/blockade to which Gaza was subjected. Now, the emphasis must be on:
- 1. re-opening Gaza fully and safely to the outside world, and
2. moving with greatest speed and seriousness to the securing of the final peace agreement between Israel and all its Arab neighbors, including the Palestinians.
Some friends have told me this is premature, dangerous, and un-doable because the state of relations between Hamas and the Fateh/PA leadership remains so tense and/or uncertain. I think that is a very dangerous argument, since it is one that– once again!– permits a postponing of the international effort that is needed more urgently than ever before to secure the final peace.
In many episodes in the lengthy history of British de-colonization, the withdrawing (British) power and its allies actually helped to form the coalition with which Britain negotiated the withdrawal agreement. These coalitions of nationalist forces– many of which had previously been fighting against each other, quite often at the active instigation of the colonial power– came together in the course of the independence negotiation, partly in response to the positive momentum that the negotiation itself generated.
All that is needed in the broad negotiation are some basic and universally applied ground-rules such as: As many parties as possible should be included, provided they agree to a ceasefire during the course of the negotiation (though disarmament prior to talking is not a necessary requirement); All parties should be willing to prove their support by participating in a peaceful election or referendum; No topics of concern are out of bounds…
So let the negotiations for all three remaining strands (Israeli-Palestinian, Israeli-Syrian, Israeli-Lebanese) of the final peace begin! Within weeks! Let’s see the international community– including the US– commit to reaching final agreement on this comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace accord within nine months. A nice gestational period. But actually, one that is also quite doable since so much of the legwork on the details of a final peace was completed during the 1990s.
At the Annapolis summit in November 2007, President George W. Bush (remember him?) and Condi Rice promised that they would reach a final peace agreement on just the Palestinian track “within a year.” They did not succeed, for a large number of reasons. Firstly, they didn’t really try very hard. Secondly, they were never prepared to apply even-handed pressure to both “sides” in the negotiation. Thirdly, they were meanwhile working hard not just to exclude Hamas and its allies from the negotiation but also, indeed, to encircle and crush Hamas, despite the fact that it represents a considerable portion of the Palestinian public. Fourthly, they were trying to engage only the PA/Fateh in the negotiation while preventing any kind of parallel Syrian-Israeli negotiation from progressing. Fifthly, they really weren’t serious.
But another failure of the whole post-Annapolis effort was a failure of the rest of the international community. All the other, non-US powers seemed quite content to let the US continue to monopolize the (mis-)handling of this important item on the international agenda.
The “Quartet” has only ever, up until now, been a mechanism used by Washington to harness the power of others in the international community to its own goals and policy.
Now, if it continues to exist, the Quartet must become much more effectively a coordinating body for the entire international community.
Actually, why do we need a Quartet at all? Why not just let the UN Security Council run this last, sorely needed phase of the too-long-running Israeli-Arab “peace process.”
An interesting addendum to Ms. Cobban’s commentary at;
Posted – 01/18/2009 : 11:43:58
http://www.amconmag.com/article/2009/jan/26/00006/
Chancellor Merkel and French President Sarkozy add their support tot Ms. Cobban’s recommendations as reported by AFP.
1/
As a fragile cease-fire starts in Gaza, the French President and German Chancellor claim that it is time for the creation of a Palestinian state.
Admitting that the task ahead will be a difficult one, Nicolas Sarkozy and Angela Merkel said at the end of a summit in Egypt on Sunday that now was the time to speed up efforts for the ultimate goal of creating a Palestinian state.
A summit by European and Arab leaders in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheik aimed at shoring up a fragile truce after Israel’s three-week war against Gaza, concluded that the next steps will include a humanitarian summit organized by Egypt in the coming days. They also said that a way should be sought to open Gaza’s sealed border crossings to allow humanitarian aid to suffering Gazans.
The 22-day Israeli onslaught against the impoverished strip has killed 1,300 Gazans, including 411 children and 98 women, and has wounded over 6,000 others.
Hamas has announced that it would halt fighting for one week and demanded that all Israeli troops must vacate its territory by next Sunday.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek, Turkish President Abdullah Gul, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, Jordan’s King Abdullah II, Spanish Prime Minister Jose Zapatero, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Italian President Silvio Berlusconi attended the summit, which was chaired by Sarkozy and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.
This kind of foolishness has been the foundation of the misery of the Palestinian and other Middle Eastern peoples for fifty years.
First recognize what kind of Israel all the governments of Israel have stood for since its founding, and that their project is incomplete, and that they do not intend to compromise until it is complete. The rest is buying time.
Second, recognize that as long as most western governments feel compelled to act against their own interests there will be no peace, because Israel has no intention of permitting there to be peace in any form you would recognize or the Palestinians would accept.
Change those things if you can.
But don’t blather about the international community and ‘negotiations’. That is a smokescreen behind which Israel will continue on its current path, brutalization, humiliation, and dispossesion.
“Why not just let the UN Security Council run this last, sorely needed phase of the too-long-running Israeli-Arab ‘peace process.’”
As long as the United States and Great Britain are there to use their coercive powers, not to mention their veto power in order to look after what Israel considers to be its “interests”, the UN Security Council is not a viable body to fix the situation.
It now seems that Hamas has one-upped Israel in the struggle to win the PR war. Israel put the onus on Hamas by its unilateral ceasefire without considering any of Hamas’ conditions. Thus they could blame Hamas when it was “necessary” to resume the slaughter because Hammas would not honor the unilateral ceasefire. Now that Israel has declared that it has accomplished all its military objectives, and Hamas has chosen to honor the cease fire on condition that all Israeli troops withdraw within a week, Hamas has shifted the onus back to Israel. Having “achieved all its military objectives” – a play to the Israeli public for the upcoming elections – Israel cannot justify keeping its troops in Gaza. So if the ceasefire fails because Israel does not withdraw, Hamas wins. I believe that Israel will now try to finesse the issue by withdrawing some, but not all, troops within a week and thereby trying to shift the onus of the failed ceasefire back to Hamas in the eyes of the international community. The silwhile realy,childish games continue l people stand to die.
WASHINGTON DC, 21 January – In a bold, brave move signaling that the change spoken of so incessantly during his long campaign for the Presidency had finally become reality President Barak Obama outlined his plans this morning for what’s being termed The Obama Plan for:
US Restitution to Palestine
1. The US Mediterranean fleet will immediately put ashore medics and medical supplies in Gaza, and the Seabees will begin to restore essential Palestinian infrastructure destroyed in the recent holocaust.
2. The US will work closely with the elected government of Palestine to ensure that the Palestinian people are safe from further attacks by neighboring countries.
3. The US will call upon all the world’s nations to join a coalition of the willing to solve once and for all the terrible suffering and strife that has plagued the region for decades.
4. President Obama pledged to ask the US Congress to allocate one billion dollars as “seed money” for the reconstruction of Palestine, including the construction of a four-lane tunnel connecting the Gaza strip on the Palestinian coast with the Palestinian interior on the western bank of the River Jordan.
President Obama called upon the Palestinian people not to lose hope and to “keep their eyes on the prize”. He pledged that the US would not dwell on the mistakes it had made in the region in past, but would push ahead with his vision of peace for “the land of milk and honey.”
President Obama said that he would be undeterred by special interests with regard to Palestine. “I am the President of the United States of America, the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave” he said, “and it is in the interest of all the American people that there be peace on earth, everywhere, and especially in Palestine, where so much of our financial and moral treasure has been wasted.”
What was essentially President Obama’s Declaration of American Independence and Emancipation was met with dancing in the streets in Washington DC, New York and Boston, in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland and Seattle, in Las Cruces, Flagstaff, Elko, Greeley and Missoula, in Detroit, Chicago, Cleveland, Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, in Brownsville, San Antonio, Austin, Dallas and Houston, in New Orleans, Miami, Atlanta and the Research Triangle, and in every American borough, burg, and bury between.
The fact that at least 80% of Israelis supported this war despite the huge number of women and children butchered makes it crystal clear what kind of a people they are. And this is just the latest in a long series of massacres of Palestinians and Arabs.