What's next, Abbas?

[ProgressiveMuslim]

Spurned in Washington, can President Abbas defer any longer the imperative of re-establishing Palestinian national unity, asks Khaled Amayreh in Ramallah


The obvious failure of Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas's latest visit to Washington has been reverberating through Palestinian society, with many intellectuals and pundits advising Abbas to "quit" or at least stop acting at the US administration's beck and call. Some critics have even called for dismantling the PA and abandoning the two-state solution strategy in favour of the one-state solution of a democratic state for all its citizens.

Abbas, in a frank and daring admission, told reporters following his meeting with President Bush at the White House last week that he failed to obtain a commitment from the US administration to pressure Israel into halting its wave of Jewish-only settlement building in East Jerusalem and the West Bank. The intensive settlement expansion drive brazenly defies US-led peace efforts, including the Quartet-backed roadmap and last year's Annapolis conference.

For their part, the Israelis deny that they are reneging on commitments or pledges. Israeli leaders argue that they are only meeting housing needs related to "natural growth" within existing settlements. They also cite a private "understanding" contained in a letter sent by President Bush to former prime minister Ariel Sharon whereby Israel was given a green light to continue expanding settlements irrespective of peace talks with the Palestinians.

The Bush administration has been reticent to acknowledge this supposed "understanding". However, its enduring refusal to rebuke Israel for its continued colonisation of Palestinian land underscores the extent of US-Israeli connivance against Palestinian interests and exposes the duplicity of US political calculations with regard to the Israeli-Palestinian issue.

Palestinian sources close to PA-Israeli talks last week reported that Israeli negotiators on many occasions confronted their Palestinian counterparts with a series of written "pledges" and "letters" from the Bush administration assuring Israel that major Jewish settlements, at least, would be annexed into Israel in the context of a final-status deal with the Palestinians. Hence, according to Israeli negotiators, there was no justification for "vociferous" Palestinian protest every time Israel decided to build additional settler units in the West Bank.

Reportedly, Abbas was also especially upset by President Bush's refusal to pledge that any contemplated Palestinian "state" would be created on 100 per cent of the Palestinian territories occupied by Israel in 1967. The implications of Bush's refusal are as clear as they are painful for the Palestinian leadership; namely that the Palestinians should stop dreaming of a full and total Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

read on, dear readers!
http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2008/895/re1.htm

[bemildred]

1. Why won't Lucy keep that football down on the ground? nt