[Have we mentioned how much the terrible Qalandia checkpoint is clogged up by the huge double-dump truck convoys loaded with cut stone and spraying rock dust all over the area? These huge stone transport trucks mix with tens of thousands of stressed and some crazed-aggressive drivers, on a two-lane road -- with just one lane in each direction. Many tens of thousands of people, and perhaps more, are forced to drive on this dreadful route around or through Qalandia every single day, for lack of any alternative routes...]

Ross’ piece in the Washington Post is entitled, How to break a Middle East stalemate…

It is an astonishing reading of the Israeli Supreme Court ruling.

In effect, as we have written earlier [on December 28] here, the Israeli Supreme Court rejected a petition filed by Tel Aviv-based lawyer Michael Sfard on behalf of the Israeli human rights organization Yesh Din against the Israeli exploitation of Palestinian natural resources in the occupied West Bank.  The only argument from the Yesh Din petition retained by the Israeli Supreme Court is that there should be no more Israeli-owned stone quarries.  The Israeli government supported that argument in the Yesh Din petition, too — so it wasn’t really very hard for the Israeli Supreme Court to back it.

But, for Dennis Ross to extrapolate from that Israeli Supreme Court decision rejecting the petition, and argue that the Israeli Supreme Court has now opened the way to Palestinian ownership, is a surprising logical leap.

Dennis Ross wrote [referring to the Haaretz story here as his source], in his Washington Post opinion piece:

To give one example, there are Palestinian stone masonry factories in Area A, but Palestinians have limited access to the rock quarries in the West Bank, which are in Area C. In a case brought against Israeli ownership of the rock quarries, the Israeli Supreme Court ruled late last month that no additional quarries should be Israeli-owned. That ruling creates an opening for private Palestinian ownership, should any new quarries be established — and there clearly is room for more”.

Ross then leverages his argument to suggest a slight opening in Area C to more Palestinian “economic activity”.

Maybe what Ross is really suggesting is simply that it would be nice if Israeli stone quarry operations simply put figurehead Palestinians as their titular heads, so that they would merely seem like Palestinian-owned operations? But, are there Palestinians who would accept this role?

But which Palestinians, exactly, would be in a position to own stone quarries in Area C [Israeli-controlled] of the occupied West Bank? Maybe those with East Jerusalem IDs [and, if so, what recourse would they have, if any dispute should arise over the stone quarry operations]? Maybe those with Israeli citizenship?

Such hybrid co-owned stone quarries in the West Bank would still employ Palestinian workers — which the Israeli Supreme Court thought was good, so good that it argued for the continuation of the present situation where some 11 stone quarry operations are Israeli-owned,.

But, would the hybrid co-owned stone quarries still pay “royalties” to the Israeli Ministry of Defense’s “Civil Administration” that manages the Israeli occupation in the West Bank. [Note: the word "taxes" was not employed in the Supreme Court decision].

Ross is disingenuous, if not deceptive, in his description of the complicated situation in the West Bank, which the Oslo Agreements between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization divided up into three Areas [reminiscent of the four Areas stipulated in the Israel-Egypt Camp David agreements of 1979-1981]. Ross writes:

“From the fall of 1995 to the spring of 2002, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) largely stayed out of Area A, which constitutes about 18 percent of the territory and includes all the major cities in the West Bank. According to the Oslo agreements, the Palestinians are to have civil and security responsibility in this area. But in 2002, at the height of the second intifada and the horrendous suicide bombings that Palestinians were executing in Israel, the IDF began operating in Area A again to try to stop the attacks. Though the intifada ended in 2005 and Palestinian security forces have been generally effective in preventing terror attacks, the IDF still carries out periodic incursions into Palestinian cities to reinforce local security efforts. This grates on Palestinians, reminding them who remains in control”.

But, even if Palestinian entepreneurs might be offered a limited economic space in Area C, according to Ross’ theoretical argument, they would not be able to rely upon Palestinian security to protect or enforce their rights in Area C.

For, Ross is not supporting the call made in previous years by Palestinian negotiators for the IDF to withdraw from Palestinian cities and a return to the positions of 2001. [This call has now apparently been abandoned by Palestinian negotiators in favor of the single-minded focus, advocated by Obama envoy George Mitchell but since withdrawn by Obama, on halting further Israeli settlements, while merely chastising continuing IDF incursions into Area A.]

Now, Ross merely suggests that:

“…one meaningful step would be either to stop all such incursions in Area A or, if there are continuing security concerns, to phase them out based on the security situation”.

Ross does not argue strongly, either, in this piece, that parts of Area C [60% of the West Bank] should be converted to Area B, or parts of Area B should be converted to Area A, and effectively transferred even in part to Palestinian security [an idea that was floated by Obama administration officials, other than Ross, as a possible "confidence-building" measure that could help restart direct negotiations]. No.

Ross adds, merely, that:

“In Area B, about 22 percent of the West Bank, Palestinian police maintain law and order but are not permitted to deal with terrorist threats. Israel could allow their presence to grow. From my discussions with Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak, I know that he is open to increasing the number of Palestinian police stations and broadening the areas where Palestinian security personnel operate. Now would be a good time to take these steps, as any such expansion would certainly be noticed, and welcomed, by the Palestinian public”.

Ross has evidently not spoken to very many Palestinian citizens in the West Bank, who have complained of the continuing onerous Palestinian security presence at the expense of basic rights.

“We used to call the Palestinian policemen ‘blue flles’ or ‘mosquitos in blue’ — meaning that they were not effective, but merely minor nuisances. Now, the Palestinian police are showing us their authority by coming to call us for questioning on the grounds that we are monitoring or even spying on them. But they never interfere with the Israeli operations at all hours of the day and night to come to our homes to arrest people — even the elderly or infirm — for security questioning on any pretense or pretext whatsoever”.

It has been a long and difficult transition — still clearly far from complete — to imbue the Palestinian security forces with ideas of human rights and rule of law. They have been generally, but not totally, less intrusive on the streets — [see our earlier piece here on interception by men in civilian clothes in an unmarked car who showed no identification and gave no reason for the interception].

But the Palestinian security forces do love to show off all their new patrol cars, uniforms, trained German Shepherd dogs, helmets, and plexiglass riot shields identical to those deployed by the Israeli Border Police in the Old Cities.

A film, entitled Donor Opium, viewable on Youtube, here, focuses on the current Palestinian economic dependency, and contains an interview with development expert Khaled Nakhleh, who says that Palestinians in the West Bank can see the need for traffic police and ordinary security, but fail to understand why there is a Presidential Guard and Special Forces that are heavily armed for special military operations…

Because the idea of the Palestinian Security forces acting in any way in defense of the Palestinian people was thrown out following their defeat in the Second Intifada, when the Israeli military reoccupied the major Palestinian cities, there is now no idea at all that serving in the Palestinian Security is a national duty. It is merely another job — one better paid than most, and more privileged if only because they get to order other people around…

Ross’ argument is a restatement of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s economic proposals to keep Palestinians satisfied, while still occupied and without the normal range of human rights or democratic freedoms, by giving them greater “economic freedom” in the West Bank:

“There is no practical reason that the Palestinians cannot be permitted dramatically more economic access and activity in this area. Expanding the Palestinians’ economic opportunities in Area C would do wonders for job creation and the overall Palestinian economy … These steps should be feasible from an Israeli standpoint. First, these or similar changes could be implemented without altering the territory’s political status and could be done in a way that would not put Israeli security at risk, particularly if coordinated closely with the IDF. Second, Netanyahu has said repeatedly that he does not want to rule over Palestinians and that the stronger their economic base, the better the prospects for peace. These steps would certainly demonstrate that the prime minister means what he says…”

The reason for supporting the Netanyahu economic proposals is, simply, as Ross argues, that the negotiations are not working out:

“…there should also be no illusions about the prospects of a breakthrough any time soon. The psychological gaps between the parties make it hard to resolve their differences and have bedeviled all the work for peace talks over the past few years … While there may be no early breakthrough on holding negotiations, it is possible to overcome the stalemate. One way to do so — and to validate those Palestinian leaders, such as Abbas and Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, who believe in nonviolence and coexistence — is for the Israelis to change the realities on the ground. After all, these Palestinian leaders need to be able to show that their approach is producing a process that will, in time, end the occupation…”.

This Dennis Ross opinion piece in the Washington Post can be read in full here.

Noam Sheizaf pointed out, on Twitter, that there is a mistake in the date of the Oslo Accords on a graphic that illustrates Dennis Ross’ piece on the Washington Post:
“@nsheizaf: Does Dennis Ross believe the bizarre stuff he write? & btw, WPost got the date of Oslo accord in the graphics wrong wapo.st/yOl0Ru”

Sheizaf wrote wrote about the Israeli Supreme Court’s rejection of the Yesh Din petition on Israeli-owned stone quarries in the West Bank on his blog, The Promised Land, here, noting that:
“The court also cites previous cases, in which it declared the circumstances of the Israeli occupation ‘unique’, in a way that demands certain ‘adjustments’ to the rights and duties of the occupiers. What is the reason for this unique situation? Among other things, that the Israeli occupation has been going on for so long. Israel, the court says, ‘is responsible for the development and growth of the area, in various ways’ (article 10 in the ruling). Only in the Orwellian language of the occupation can developing the area be interpreted to mean profits through the shipping of its natural resources to Israel”…

Sheizaf also states, in my opinion incorrectly, that the Israeli Supreme Court “verdict also quotes the fact that in the Oslo Accords, the Palestinians agreed to let the quarries operate until the final agreement on the status of the land”. Without being able to read the original Hebrew of the ruling [which Sheizaf does], all the other commentaries on the verdict, including an email sent by Yesh Din, indicate that the Israeli Supreme Court stated that Palestinian “agreement” to let Israelis operate stone quarries in the West Bank [and not only help support the occupation via "royalties", but also very kindly to sell the quarried stone to Palestinian stone engravers who cannot access the quarries unhindered] was implicit in the Palestinian overall agreement to the Oslo Accords, but was not explicit, as Sheizaf states.

It is interesting to contrast Dennis Ross’ disingenuous piece on How to break a Middle East stalemate, with Henry Siegman’s piece, The Mideast Peace Process in 2011: Hopes and Disillusionment, published on 6 January here.

Siegman, now a research professor at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London,
wrote:

“The Israeli notion that the Occupied Territories beyond the 1967 border are ‘internal’, allowing Israeli governments to do with them as they please without regard for the rights of the Palestinian people or for international law, has not just ‘complicated’ the peace process, as the United States and other governments have often put it. It has turned the peace process into a farce, for it exposes the strategic choice of Israel’s current and previous governments of territory over peace, and leaves no doubt that the goal of Israel’s settlement project is the prevention of Palestinian statehood … In his speech to the United Nations General Assembly in September, President Obama asserted that Palestinians can achieve statehood only through direct negotiations with Israel, effectively subjecting the Palestinian right to national self-determination to Netanyahu and Avigdor Lieberman’s veto. If Netanyahu and his government choose to present Abbas terms for an agreement that no Palestinian leader could conceivably accept—which, by insisting on Israel’s annexation of all of Arab East Jerusalem is exactly what they have done—they will be able to keep the West Bank and its population under permanent subjugation … Despite the U.S. administration’s rhetorical objections to Israel’s settlements and its equally rhetorical support of Palestinian statehood, Obama’s rejection of international intervention and his insistence that a Palestinian state can come about only as the result of a bilateral Israeli-Palestinian agreement sent a clear message to Netanyahu’s government. For all practical purposes, a Palestinian state is no longer on America’s political horizon”.

[Thanks to Sam Bahour for sending the Siegman article today via his email list...]

And, Daniel Levy [now in Washington, but once the chief aide of Yossi Beilin and lead drafter of the Israeli team of the Geneva Inititative] has written that:

“While 2011 will be remembered as a tumultuous year in the Middle East, that most headline-grabbing of regional issues—the Israel-Palestine conflict—barely merits a footnote. The glacial pace of developments on that front could not have been more out of sync with the surrounding frenzy. There has been no Palestinian Spring to date (although there have been weekly demonstrations in Palestinian villages impacted by Israeli land confiscations) and the entire year passed without even a day of Palestinian-Israeli peace talks (those were in part resumed on Jan. 3 in Jordan, albeit surrounded by realistically low expectations). Instead, 2011 was marked more by continuity than by change—more occupation, more settlements, more Palestinian disunity, and the continued prevalence of strategic myopia on all sides”…

Levy also says that:
“…something else has also been going on: Israel’s maintenance of an illegal occupation and thoroughly undemocratic system beyond the Green Line (only partially mitigated by the creation of a Palestinian Authority lacking in sovereign powers). Under any circumstances, it would be difficult for a democratic entity to run a democratic system in one space and an undemocratic one in another over a prolonged period of time. This has been the Israeli reality for 44 years and counting. The shortcuts taken by a nondemocracy in depriving people of rights (how Israel manages the Palestinians in the territories) have started to seep back over the Green Line into ‘Israel proper’. The inevitable moral corrosion that accompanies the maintenance of an illegal foreign occupation has blunted Israeli moral sensibilities at home. These are long-term trends”.

Meanwhile, people like Dennis Ross continue to try to camouflage what is really happening…

At least three Egyptian military personnel — Egyptian officials are more consistently now mentioning five — were reportedly killed by IDF soldiers in pursuit, apparently, of people they assumed were among the attackers.

Haaretz said that “IDF soldiers fired across the Israel-Egypt border as they intercepted the terrorist cell behind the attacks near Eilat”.

According to the report in Haaretz, published here, “Barak ordered the IDF to investigate the incident after which a joint investigation will be conducted with the Egyptian military to determine the circumstances of the incident”.

Barak reportedly “expressed appreciation for the ‘discretion and responsibility’ shown by Egypt”.

Demonstrations were held outside the Israeli Embassy in Cairo on Friday, while Egyptian politicians have demanded the recall of Egypt’s Ambassador to Israel. On Saturday morning, Egyptian reports indicated that the Ambassador had already been recalled — but after some hours of confusion, this was refuted during the afternoon. Egyptian statements, however, were adamant about a demand for an official and public apology [despite a private verbal apology which some sources indicated had already been extended].

However, Al-Ahram reported that an Egyptian official “acknowledged some attempts from influential Western capitals to dissuade Egypt from an overly harsh, angry reaction over the killing of Egyptian soldiers on the borders with Israel Thursday night. The soldiers were killed in the wake of an Israeli attack on the besieged Gaza strip that spilled into Egyptian border and territories”. This is published here.

Another report in Al-Ahram said that Egypt still made a strongly-worded request for an explanation of the Egyptian deaths.

The Haaretz article added that “Barak’s statement came after he held a special situation assessment with IDF Chief of Staff Benny Gantz and other security and intelligence officials … According to a senior Israeli source, the statement said that ‘the main aim is to halt deterioration [in bilateral ties] and prevent the departure of the Egyptian ambassador’.”

Earlier Saturday, Haaretz said, Barak participated in discussions with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman.

Barak also said, according to the report in Haaretz, that “The attacks came from the Gaza Strip… Most of the perpetrators were killed and the officials responsible for sending them were eliminated shortly after the attacks. The IDF has been striking hard over the past two days against those responsible for [Thursday's] attacks in the south and is operating efficiently against rocket launchers in Gaza in order to protect Israel’s citizens”.

Egyptian officials have disagreed with Israel’s instantaneous conclusion that the attackers came from Gaza.

So, we asked IDF Spokesperson Avital Leibovich today, via Twitter, “what has happened to the bodies of the August 18 attackers killed in fighting in the Eilat area, who they are, + how many?”

Her reply was: “They are terrorists originating from #Gaza. We have targeted 6 terrorists on Thursday. There’s a cemetery for terr. bodies”.

Clearly, some must have gotten away… Eyewitness reports say there were at least 7 attackers. Other Israeli military officers with intelligence information said they estimated at least 10 were involved in the planning of the “multi-pronged” attack on
18 August.

We then asked her “Can you please also tell us how many Egyptian soldiers were killed on 18 August near Eilat? Their bodies left in Egypt?”.

But, the IDF Spokesperson has not yet replied…

In any case, with this new information, we can now issue an UPDATED Eilat attacks deathtoll: 8 Israelis [incl 1 soldier, 1 police sniper]; 5 Egyptian military; 6 attackers [via @AvitalLeibovich] = 19 total. This is a downward revision from yesterday’s estimate of 21 [changes are: 1 fewer Egyptian military death, 1 fewer attacker death...]

Egypt’s Ambassador to the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah, Yasser Othman, told Maan News Agency that recalling Egypt’s Ambassador to Israel would send “a strong message to Israel that Egypt stands by its civilians and soldiers”. The Ma’an report said Othman noted that “Israel knows well Egypt’s critical role in maintaining security in the Sinai area, he said, and it shares responsibility for the attack Thursday in Eilat because both sides are responsible for protecting the border. He pointed out that investigations into the Eilat attack were ongoing”. The Ma’an report is posted here.

Ma’an noted that “The Egyptian government had asked ‘for an official apology from Israel’ at the end of a crisis meeting overnight, the state-run MENA news agency reported in a statement. Information Minister Osama Heykal said the policemen were killed ‘inside Egyptian territory as a result of an exchange of fire between Israeli forces and armed elements inside Israeli territory’.”

YNet noted that the Israeli Defense Minister said “The appropriate conclusions shall be drawn in line with the inquiry’s findings”. YNet added, it its report, that “While Egyptian officials accuse the IDF of killing the Egyptian troops during the battle against the terrorists, Israeli military officials have not yet ascertained the circumstance of the incident. One of the possibilities being looked into is that the Egyptian forces were killed by explosive devices or shots fired by the terrorists.  Meanwhile, referring to reports on Egypt’s envoy to Israel, Egyptian sources told Ynet: ‘We have not received official instructions. We are waiting for orders from Cairo; the procedural aspect has not yet been finalized’. Another indication that Egypt may be looking to terminate the tensions is the Egyptian information minister’s comments in a press conference, where he said Cairo was demanding an official Israeli apology but did not say Egypt’s ambassador will be recalled”.  This is published on the YNet website here.

The Jerusalem Post reported that Israeli Foreign Minister Lieberman has, however, taken the occasion to say that “The Palestinians Authority leadership is fully responsible for the murderous terror attack against innocent Israelis for the crime of going on vacations … The Palestinians have no suitable leadership and the only thing that unites the Hamas regime in Gaza and the [PA] in the West Bank is terrorism and hatred of Israel”. The JPost report, published here, added that Lieberman was “expected to gather senior Foreign Ministry officials at 8 p.m. Saturday to discuss the diplomatic implications of recent events”.

[[YNet translated the same Lieberman remarks slightly differently. According to the YNet report, Lieberman said: "The Palestinian Authority, which constantly glorifies terror and incites against Israel, bears full responsibility for the murderous attacks on innocent Israelis Thursday. The Palestinians are devoid of proper leadership and the only thing that unites Hamas rulers in Gaza Strip and the PA rulers in Ramallah is their hatred for Israel".  This is published here.]]

The same JPost report noted that “Also on Saturday, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas called for an emergency session of the United Nations Security Council [in New York] in an effort to halt Israeli airstrikes on the Gaza Strip, according to a statement by Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat cited by Palestinian media. According to the statement, Abbas instructed Palestinian representative at the United Nations Riyad Mansour to call for an urgent session of the Security Council to discuss the airstrikes on Gaza”.  And, the Arab League will hold an emergency meeting on Sunday, in Cairo.

A report received from UNHQ/NY overnight was published in Haaretz today, which said that Israel’s new Ambassador to the UN Ron Prosor tried, for the first time, to actually get a presidential statement from the UN Security Council. This is a deviation from previous practice, as Haaretz reported –normally Israel just write letters of complaint and denunciation without asking for any specific action. What Israel wanted, however, was a condemnation “of the terror attack killing 8 and injuring dozens, and of its perpetrators”.

However, Lebanon — which now is a non-Permanent member of the UNSC for a two-year term, and which will be SC President in September — wanted the statement to include criticism of “the escalation in Israeli bombardment of Gaza”.

And, Haaretz reported, “Israel preferred to give up on the presidential statement altogether rather than adhere to the Lebanese request”. Another member of the Israeli delegation told Haaretz that: “It isn’t a coincidence that Lebanon, the only Security Council member state to oppose the condemnation, is a country controlled by a terrorist organization”. This is posted here.

The New York Times reported, meanwhile, that Israeli officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, “portrayed the Egyptian reaction as unfair, noting that they believe the militants who carried out the attacks had come across the Egyptian border out of a security vacuum in the Egyptian Sinai. Israeli officials asserted Saturday that some of the attackers had worn Egyptian uniforms. ‘The feeling is that all of this should not have happened’, said one official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the fraught diplomatic situation. ‘Now we have to take the heat, as if we were responsible for the attack’ … The officer acknowledged that some Egyptian soldiers might have been killed accidentally by Israeli fire during the battles with the assailants on Thursday night. ‘It is a possibility that it happened by mistake’, he said, adding, ‘We are sorry that Egyptian soldiers and officers died in any case’. The Israeli military said an investigation was still at an initial stage. Israeli military officials described Thursday’s battlefield as complex and confusing as Israeli soldiers rushed to the scene of the initial attacks and spent hours in pursuit of an unknown number of assailants”…

According to the NYTimes story, published here, “Egyptian officials in North Sinai have denied the attackers came across the border, though most analysts here consider such a possibility very likely because of the lack of security there. Egyptian police have all but completely withdrawn from the Bedouin-dominated North Sinai since the revolution, and in recent days the Egyptian military had been carrying out its own operations there to try to crack down on suspected militants. The Camp David accords limit the Egyptian military presence in the border area, so the Egyptian government had sought and received Israeli permission to send 1,000 additional troops to carry out the operation”.

The NYTimes added that “The senior Israeli military officer said the operation began weeks before and probably involved 10 to 15 terrorists. He said that a number of them crossed the border from Egypt into Israel in daylight, only about 150 feet from an Egyptian police post, with rifles, explosive belts and grenades. Others were carrying heavier weapons, he said. He said that some of the attackers might have been wearing Egyptian uniforms. The Israeli drivers of one of the buses and one of the cars that were attacked both said they saw men dressed in Egyptian military fatigues shooting at them”…

This comes after a bitter, extremely bitter, rivalry between the two largest Palestinian political factions

Here is an account — to mark this date, and “in the spirit of things”, as a colleague has written elsewhere –of the time that Mahmoud Abbas gave Ismail Haniyah, Hamas leader in the Gaza Strip, refuge to save his live when Haniyeh feared being killed in an Israeli bombing or targetted assassination.

This story was told to me in an interview in Ramallah in late 2008 by Mahmoud Abbas’ oldest surviving son, Yasser Abbas [Mazen, the first-born male child in the family, died after surgery in Qatar some years ago].

I have since been told by others that Abu Mazen often tells people this same story:
“Do you know a story – it’s important, before I tell you other stories about me – that this house that they [Hamas] seized [in Gaza in mid-June 2007], that Ismail Haniyeh took refuge in it twice. When he thought that Israeli jets were chasing him, he came to my parents’ house at 3:30 in the morning. To be exact, it was 3:25, because my Mom told me the details. They were still up, and they heard the bell ringing. And my Mom told my Dad, ‘Hold on, I’ll open the door’. She went to open the door, then she saw Ismail Haniyeh in her face. And then she saw Maher, one of the guards there, and he said to her, ‘Madam, we have so-and-so coming here’. And she ran back and told my Dad,’“Ismail Haniyeh is at the door’. He said, ‘Tell him to come in. Tell him to come in’. So, she automatically puts the lights on in the living room, for him to come in. She told him, ‘Come in, come in. Mr. President will come to see you in a minute’. So he came, and he was complaining to my Dad. He took refuge at his house in Gaza, because he was afraid that the Israelis were trying to nail him. And it happened again, three days later. He took refuge there for two or three hours, and then they left in the morning“…
:

Video streaming by Ustream.

In his speech, Dr. Abu Sitta — described here as a historical geographer and researcher who writes about Palestinian refugees and their right to return — introduced the results of his research on the Palestinian Nakba, or forced dispersion of Palestinians in the fighting that surrounded the creation of the state of Israel in 1948.

“Israel expelled half the total number of refugees before any Arab regular army set foot in Palestine [in May 1948. The other half was expelled in the following months", he said in this lecture.

Still, he said, "88% of the Palestinian people [including refugees and displaced persons] are in Palestine, and only 12% are outside”. He is including in this figure those Palestinians who are physically inside Israel itself, as well as in the West Bank and Gaza.

However, this is at variance with other figures, which suggest that over one-third of the Palestinian people are refugees outside Palestine.

Dr. Abu Sitta is famous for his work suggesting where and how Palestinian refugees can return without displacing other people. In the summer of 2000, he co-authored an article in the Israeli media [Haaretz] suggesting that all the Palestinian refugees in Lebanon and many of those in Gaza — over one million people — could be resettled in Israel’s Galilee and southern Negev desert “without anybody even noticing”.

In his lecture in Washington on Thursday, Drl Abu Sitta said that 84% of the whole Israeli Jewish population live in only 17% of
the land inside Israel — “the rest is used for the Army, and by kibbutzes”, he said. “If we bring back the refugees who are from the Galilee — some 800,000 people — they will be met by 500.000 family members living there” [who would, presumably, put them up and take care of them?]. While in the south of Israel, he said, “all the Jews are less than a single refugee camp in Gaza” [here, he also seemed to be arguing that there was room to resettle Palestinians from crowded Gaza]…

Dr. Abu Sitta said his research showed that people were forced to leave during military operations — when there was a truce, nobody left, he said. “All expulsion was directily coordinated with Israeli military operations”. 31 military operations that took place in Palestine over several months were associated with 71 massacres — about two massacres per operation, he said. And 675 Palestinian villages were depopulated in this period . “Many [of these] massacres were related to the corridor between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, or the corridor between Tel Aviv and Haifa”.

Most of the destroyed villages were between Jerusalem and Jaffa, and Jerusalem and Haifa, he said. Other destruction took place along the River Jordan, and around Tiberias, and also around Gaza.

In the massacres, he said, the men and women were separated. The women were forced to turn over their jewelry, then sent to Arab forward lines. Twenty percent of the captive men were massacred, and the rest — 80% — were sent to do hard labor”, Abu Sitta said.

In Gaza, he said, “people from 247 villages were herded into this place, an area the size of 1% of the total land of Palestine”.

He shows how the UN-negotiated armistice lines were altered: the northern boundary of the Gaza Strip, fixed by an armistice line agreed on 24 February 1949, was chopped by 200 square kilometers [all around the Gaza perimeter, according to a graphic chart he showed during his presentation] — reducing Gaza’s size from 550 square kilometers to 362 square kilometers. This was achieved, he said, as a result of coercion on Egypt’s King Farouk to agree on a “temporary modus vivendi line” that would “keep the border quiet”. By 1956 — the Suez War — this temporary line had become permanent, he said.

The West Bank armistice line of 2 April 1949 was moved after coercion exercised on Jordan’s King Abdullah — “Israel threatened to take over all of the West Bank, otherwise”, Abu Sitta said. As a result, an area called the “muthallath” or “triangle” in the north-western West Bank suddenly became Israeli [including the town of Um al-Fahm].

In the Jerusalem area, Abu Sitta said, Glubb Pasha and Moshe Dayan had agreed on a line. Then, Israel said it was no good for them, because it excluded the railway line from Jerusalem to Jaffa. As a result, he said, [part of] Walajeh, Beit Safafa, and the Latrun area became Israeli.

“As a result [of these alterations], 111 villages have been dissected by this armistice line.

Dr. Abu Sitta, who has published an Atlas of Palestine, also described his research results from compilation of elaborate computer databases. One of the projects he is working on is an international competition to redesign the destroyed Palestinian villages, with modern infrastructure. “We want to defy the dispossession”, he said, “and you have to have a plan for reconstruction of these Palestinian destroyed villages”.

In the spirit of the “Arab Spring”, he said, there will be a “masiirat al-awda” [a demonstration about return ] to mark Nakba ["catastrophe"] Day on May 15. This is also the anniversary of the date that Israel was established, according to the Common Era calendar. [The demonstration will probably be held on 13 May, a Friday, he said.] “It will be a peaceful demonstration but highly symbolic”, Dr. Abu Sitta said. “People will carry banners and signs with the names of their villages…Some of these people can actually see their home villages” from their refugee camps and places of exile.

He said that this “masiirat al-awda” will be held on all borders [of Israel] — the West Bank and Gaza, as well as Jordan, Lebanon and Syria”.

The email says: “President Abbas has invited the leadership of the Israel Peace Initiative to the Mukaata [sic] in Ramallah to present their new regional peace initiative. The invitation follows the Palestinian President’s recent statement regarding his willingness to relinquish the plan to appeal to the UN General Assembly, if the political negotiations, based on the ’67 borders, are renewed”.

A report by Israel National News today — along the same lines — said Israel’s Ambassador to the United States Michael Oren told Israel Radio “that Washington is attempting to convince its European allies that a unilateral declaration of statehood for the Western-backed Palestinian Authority will bring conflict and not peace”, and that “Israel is trying to renew negotiations with the PA in order to draft an agreement of two states for two nations in the Land of Israel”. The report is posted here.

So, if these two assertions are correct, both the Palestinian and the Israeli leaderships are looking for a way to create a Palestinian State by September. Could that be true?

One of the problems with the email sent out by the Israeli PR firm about tomorrow’s [Thursday's] meeting at the Muqataa is that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas seems not to have made the statement attributed.

It was Yasser Abed Rabbo who said it — he is Secretary (and member) of the PLO Executive Committee, and he is also head of Palestinian Television, and he was (and still may be) the head of the Palestinian team in the “civil society” Geneva Initiative [signed December 2003]. He reportedly said it in an interview in the London paper Al-Hayat, according to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz here.

There are, in fact, a number of signatories to the Israeli Peace Initiative who are associated with the Geneva Initiative. Before he was elected President, Abbas himself was involved in drafting the Geneva Initiative through the efforts of his staff member Ghaith al-Omary, now at the American Task Force on Palestine in Washington D.C. This is one of several indications of the tacit approval given was to the effort by the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat Israeli former Justice Minister Yossi Beilin was Yasser Abed Rabbo’s counterpart, and Beilin’s staff assistant Daniel Levy, now also in Washington at the New American Foundation, was al-Omary’s counterpart in the drafting process.

The Geneva Initiative was viewed with hostility in Israel — mainly because the Israeli government at the time said it had not been informed in advance. The Swiss government, which did give substantial diplomatic and financial support to the Geneva Initiative, was surprised and flustered by the Israeli rejection. The Swiss support since then has fluctuated. Other European states, the United Nations, and the U.S. were cool — though former U.S. President Jimmy Carter was at the signing ceremony in Geneva on 1 December 2003.

Since then, the Geneva Initiative Israeli team has been much more active than the Palestinian team — though they seem to have revived a bit, and recently held a meeting in Nablus on the Right of Return, one of the points in the Geneva Initiative most criticized by Palestinians and their supporters.

A recent Tweet from the Israeli Geneva Initiative office (@genevaaccord on Twitter) said, based on the Haaretz report, that: “Geneva Initiative’s cofounder Yasser Abed Rabbo: PA prefers negotiations to unilateral declaration of Palestinian… http://fb.me/y2FruuVl”

According to the Haaretz report, “The Palestinian Authority will defer its attempts to unilaterally declare a Palestinian state at the United Nations if “real and serious” negotiations with Israel begin, an official was quoted saying Monday. Secretary General of the Palestine Liberation Organization Yasser Abed Rabbo told London-based Al-Hayat newspaper on Monday that the basis of any negotiated agreement must be according to ‘the 1967 borders, very limited exchange of land and no exchanges of populations’. Abed Rabbo called on the Middle East quartet, comprised of the UN, the European Union, the United States and Russia to ‘tackle these negotiations in accordance with the timetable we previously agreed on, which ends in September’, he told the London-based daily … ‘Otherwise’, the PLO official said, ‘we will go to the United Nations, then ask them to deal with the military presence and the Israeli settlements as an assault on the sovereignty of another state, which is a member of the United Nations’. He added that ‘these are the two solutions for international powers, especially Washington. We do not have a third option’. Abed Rabbo said that the PA will honor all of its internal and external obligations as a formal state, but that it would not accept Israeli military or civilian presence in its territories”…

But Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has never said anything publicly like this, and has continued to insist that the Palestinians would present their request for recognition of a Palestinian state to the UN in September.

Given the track record, however, that doesn’t mean he disagrees with the proposition.

Maybe there is something in the works that we all don’t know about, yet.

The head of President Abbas’ press office, Mohamed Edwan, said Wednesday “No, the President has never said that he was willing to relinquish this plan” if political negotiations are renewed. However, Edwan noted, “if we reach that [a Palestinian state] by negotiation by September, that would logically change the current plan, IF…”

The website of the Israeli Peace Initiative, we are informed by today’s email, is here.

The email sent out by the Israeli PR firm also says that “The Israeli Peace Initiative is a new regional peace initiative, calling upon the Israeli government to take action that will ensure the existence of Israel as a Jewish and Democratic State, its security and prosperity, and also to ensure normal relations between Israel and the Arab and Muslim world, and not be dragged along by the political events. More than 70 Israeli leaders from the fields of economy, defense, education, media, diplomacy and academy have already signed the initiative”.

This is the same Israeli PR company that is representing another group of Israelis who made their own recent peace initiative in Tel Aviv last week, the Declaration of Independence from the Occupation (as we wrote about here yesterday, see our post, A Tale of Two Translations, here.

Though both groups are represented by the same Israeli PR firm, only one is being taken to the Muqataa tomorrow to present their plan to the Palestinian President.

Is this a conflict of interest? Does one group of Israelis simply pay a better retainer to the Israeli PR firm?

Or are their other reasons for this selection? Does the Palestinian leadership prefer to deal with ex-military and ex-security officials? Does it judge that they have a greater chance of success? Does it feel that this particular group of Israelis will be in a better position to make accusations against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu if there is no other development between now and September? Is it the linkage (though not explicit) with the Geneva Initiative part of the charm?

This Israeli Peace Initiative has already been welcomed by the U.S. as a “positive contribution”, according to a report by AFP posted here.

That, of course, is polite, but falls short of a full endorsement. It’s not a cold shoulder, however.

According to AFP, the U.S. State Department spokesperson Mark Toner said: “We remain committed to achieving an agreement… we also support the goal of fully normalized relations between Israel and the Arab world … We welcome all ideas to achieve those goals and we look forward to hearing more about the Israel peace initiative. We believe it could possibly make a positive contribution”.

Akiva Eldar, Israeli journalist who is big supporter of Arab Peace plan, and one of the signers of this new Israeli Peace Initiative, has said that the biggest problem, for Israelis, with the Arab Peace Initiative is its name.

This is not a joke.

A number of other Israelis I’ve questioned over the last three years all agree — Israel can never sign on to an “Arab Peace Initiative”. It has to be Israeli, they said.

So, now we have it — the Israeli Peace Initiative (proposed by private Israelis, not the government).

However, it is written as if by the government.

The full text of the proposed Israeli Peace Initiative [IPI], posted here.

*************************************************

Full text follows.
It says:
“The State of Israel,
• Reaffirming that Israel’s strategic objective is to reach a historic compromise and permanent status agreements that shall determine the finality of all claims and the end of the Israeli Arab conflict, in order to achieve permanent and lasting peace, lasting and guaranteed security, regional economic prosperity and normal ties with all Arab and Islamic states,
• Recognizing the suffering of the Palestinian refugees since the 1948 war as well as of the Jewish refugees from the Arab countries, and realizing the need to resolve the Palestinian refugees problem through realistic and mutually agreed-upon solutions,
• Realizing that wide-scale multilateral economic cooperation is essential in order to ensure the prosperity of the Middle East, its environmental sustainability and the future of its peoples,
• Recognizing the Arab Peace Initiative of March 2002 (API) as a historic effort made by the Arab states to reach a breakthrough and achieve progress on a regional basis, and sharing the API statement ‘that a military solution to the conflict will not achieve peace or provide security for the parties’,
accepts the API [Arab Peace Initiative] as a framework for regional peace negotiations and presents the IPI as an integrated response to the API, and as a vision of the regional final-status agreements to be negotiated and signed between the Arab states, the Palestinians and Israel, based on the following proposed principles”…

1) CONFLICT RESOLUTION PRINCIPLES
The key principle of all regional peace agreements shall be Israeli withdrawals, guaranteed security, normal relations and end of all conflicts, while recognizing the security needs of all parties, the water resources challenges, the demographic realities on the ground, and the interests and needs of the followers of the three monotheistic faiths; Furthermore, the Israeli Palestinian conflict shall be resolved on the principle of two states for two nations: Palestine as a nation state for the Palestinians and Israel as a nation state for the Jews (in which the Arab minority will have equal and full civil rights as articulated in Israel’s Declaration of Independence). On this basis, the following parameters are proposed:

1a) Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Resolution Parameters
1. Statehood and Security – A sovereign independent Palestinian state shall be formed in the West Bank and Gaza Strip on territories from which Israel withdrew. The state shall be demilitarized, exercising full authority over its internal security forces. The International community shall play an active role in providing border security and curbing terrorist threats.
2. Borders – The borders shall be based on the June 4, 1967, lines, with agreed modifications subject to the following principles: the creation of territorial contiguity between the Palestinian territories; land swaps (not to exceed 7% of the West Bank) based on a 1:1 ratio, including the provision of a safe corridor between the West Bank and Gaza, under de facto Palestinian control.
3. Jerusalem – The greater Jerusalem area shall include the two capitals of the two states. The line shall be drawn so that: Jewish neighborhoods shall be under Israeli sovereignty; the Arab neighborhoods shall be under Palestinian sovereignty; special arrangements shall be implemented in the Old City, ensuring that the Jewish Quarter and the Western Wall shall be under Israeli sovereignty; the Temple Mount shall remain under a special no-sovereignty regime (“God Sovereignty”), with special agreed-upon arrangements, ensuring that Islamic holy places shall be administered by the Moslem Waqf, and Jewish holy sites and interests shall be administered by Israel. The implementation of these arrangements will be supervised by an Israeli-International committee .
4. Refugees – The solutions for the Palestinian refugees shall be agreed upon between Israel, the Palestinians and all regional parties in accordance with the following principles: Financial compensation shall be offered to the refugees and the host countries by the international community and Israel; the Palestinian refugees wishing to return (as mentioned in UNGAR 194) may do so only to the Palestinian state, with mutually agreed-upon symbolic exceptions.
1b) Israeli-Syrian Conflict Resolution Parameters
1. Borders – Israel shall withdraw from the Golan to a border-line to be designed based on the June 4, 1967 status, with agreed minor modifications and land swaps based on a 1:1 ratio, reflecting the 1923 international border. The agreement shall be mutually implemented in stages, based on the Sinai model, over a period not to exceed 5 years.
2. Security Arrangements –A comprehensive security package shall be mutually agreed, defining, inter alia, the scope of demilitarized zones on both sides of the border and the deployment of peace keeping international forces.
1c) Israeli-Lebanese Conflict Resolution Parameters
1. Borders – Israel and Lebanon shall establish permanent peace based on UNSCR 1701, subject to which Israel concluded its withdrawal to the international border.
2. Lebanese Sovereignty – In addition to the full implementation of UNSCR 1701, Lebanon shall exercise full sovereignty over its territory through the Lebanese army.
1d) State of Peace
In each of the Israeli-Palestinian, Israeli-Syrian and the Israeli-Lebanese peace agreements the respective parties agree to apply between them the provisions of the Charter of the United Nations and the principles of international law governing relations among states in time of peace; to settle all disputes between them by peaceful means; to develop good neighborly relations of co-operation between them to ensure lasting security; to refrain from the threat or use of force against each other and from forming any coalition, organization or alliance with a third party, the objectives or activities of which include launching aggression or hostility against the other party.

2) REGIONAL SECURITY PRINCIPLES
1. The parties will create regional security mechanisms, addressing shared threats and risks arising from states, terrorist organizations, marine pirate groups, and guerrilla organizations. to ensure the safety and security of the peoples of the region.
2. The parties shall build regional frameworks to jointly fight against crime and environmental threats.

3) ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT PRINCIPLES
Based on significant economic support by the international community, the parties shall implement wide-scale regional cooperation projects in order to ensure the stabilization, viability and prosperity of the region, and to achieve optimal utilization of energy and water resources for the benefit of all parties. Such projects will improve transportation infrastructure, agriculture, industry and regional tourism, thus addressing the rising danger of unemployment in the region. In the future, the parties shall create the “Middle East Economic Development Bloc” (inviting all Middle Eastern countries to join), aiming at reaching a special status in the EU, the US and the International Community.

4) STEPS TOWARDS NORMAL RELATIONS PRINCIPLES
Israel, the Arab States and the Islamic States commit to implement gradual steps towards establishing normal relations between them, in the spirit of the Arab Peace Initiative, which shall commence upon the launching of peace negotiations and shall be gradually upgraded to full normal relations (including diplomatic relations, open borders and economic ties) upon the signing of the permanent status agreements and throughout their implementation.

*************************************************

The text of the proposed Israeli Peace Initiative [IPI], published here.

UPDATE: Ethan Bronner went over the translations with me by phone just now, and agrees that the English version we published is closer to the Hebrew text that he received.  He says he did not do the translation into English, which was sent to him in the same mail as the Hebrew document… see below for more.

Last week, as we reported on our sister blog, Palestine-Mandate, here, some of Israel’s traditional and now-very-privileged elite held a demonstration in Tel Aviv, outside the hall where Israel’s independence was proclaimed on the night of 14-15 May 1948.

This demonstration, scheduled during the Jewish holiday of Passover — which celebrates freedom, while reminding Jews that they were once slaves — was timed to offer the support of this particular group of Israelis (called “eminent” and “distinguished”) for the anticipated Palestinian move to seek full UN membership and recognition of a Palestinian State, probably in September when the UN General Assembly holds its annual high-level debate in New York, opened by the U.S. President (leader of the UN’s host country).

At the demonstration in Tel Aviv, which was nearly drowned out by a noisy “right-wing” counter-demonstration, the Israeli group read out a document they had signed, which they called a “Declaration of Independence from the Occupation”.

After I posted the story on my blog, I received a comment from someone (the name is probably fictitious) saying that the version of the Declaration I had posted was different from the document posted on the website of the New York Times.

In the meantime, I was having an exchange on Twitter with Ali Abunimah, who disagreed with my view that the Declaration was something new. What’s new, in my view is above all the statement, according to the English-language version sent to me, that (1.) “The complete end of occupation is a fundamental condition for the freedom of both peoples”.

After that, in my view, this Declaration (2.) made a clear endorsement of a Palestinian State on the 1949/1967 borders — the very ones claimed by former PLO leader Yasser Arafat in his Declaration of Independence in 1988. The Declaration states, in the English-language version I posted on Palestine-Mandate: “Therefore we are here assembled, on April 21st, 2011, to welcome the coming Declaration of Independence of the Palestinian State, neighboring the state of Israel, according to our borders of independence, shaped at the end of the War of Independence in 1949. The borders known today as the ‘67 borders”.

This excludes equivocal arguments for any kind of partial or temporary “state” [or "bantustan"], or any entity with provisional borders. And it excludes any lingering presence of the Israeli military occupation.  It  seems to argue for full sovereignty for both states.

These things do matter, and taking this stand now is significant.

The Document — which is an Israeli paper, and not a joint initiative — argues for full rights within Israel. The signers of this text are not empowered to speak for the future Palestinian state, after all.

As the Twitter conversation continued, Ali was quoting things from the Declaration that were not in the version I had read (which I had posted on my other blog, Palestine-Mandate). He then kindly sent me the link to the document posted on the NYTimes site.

I was very surprised to discover that the two documents were different.

The one I had was sent from the group which had made the Declaration.

On Sunday morning, I started my investigation into the discrepancy between the two versions of the Declaration, and called them to ask about the difference in the two.

I was told by Roy Yellin of Ben-Or (a smooth and professional public relations firm in Tel Aviv which specializes in Israeli human rights organizations) that the Ethan Bronner, Jerusalem Bureau Chief, had written the story in the NYTimes, and had done his own translation of the Declaration from the Hebrew version — “he speaks Hebrew, you know”.

UPDATE: Yes, Bronner speaks Hebrew, but he says the rest of this is nonsense — “He’s wrong”, he said about Yellin’s assertion. Bronner told me he was sent the Declaration in Hebrew, and an English translation which he then passed on to the NYTimes web designers, without comparing it to the Hebrew version.

Yellin told me that he believes the translation they did (which is the one I published on Palestine-Mandate) is more accurate — but that there areas that are always “open to interpretation to a certain degree”.

He said indignantly that they did not try to soften the language of the Declaration for PR purposes — “Never!” If anything, he said, he would have wanted it to be harder…

“Our purpose is not to jostle over nuance”, he said, “we wanted to offer an alternative to the present Israeli policy, and to say that September is an opportunity, rather than a threat”.

And, he added, “I’m not getting into an argument with the New York Times”.

Well, this is probably one reason why Israeli-Palestinian negotiations are conducted in English — and it’s not only because the Americans have been involved as facilitator or mediator or whatever since the Oslo process went public in September 1993. [The year-long secret Israeli-Palestinian contacts before that were conducted, also in English, by the Norwegians.] English is simply, now, the world’s lingua franca. English is also the obligatory second language in both Israeli and Palestinian educational curricula. [And, though some will bristle at the memory, English was one of the three official languages in Palestine from the time of the British conquest by General Allenby in December 1917, during the First World War.]

The battle over the subtle linguistic difference between the English-language version of UN Security Council Resolution 242, adopted after many months of diplomatic wrangling following the June 1967 Middle East war, and the French-language version [withdrawing from territory occupied, or from the territory occupied, involving an intense and bitter dispute over whether this means all or only some territory] , is enough of a lesson learned to recommend designating one language, and only one language, for purposes of negotiating and concluding an agreement — certainly here.

Yellin did tell me that in any case, the NYTimes, or Ethan Bronner, didn’t translate the whole thing, but only a few sentences.

In fact, looking at the whole translation published by the NYTimes — which Yellin said was done by Ethan Bronner, but which Bronner has now confirmed was in fact NOT translated by him — some sentences were not translated at all, some were moved, and some stuff that wasn’t in the original Declaration was added.

The article Ethan Bronner wrote was published here, and the translation Ethan Bronner did from the Hebrew is posted on the New York Times website here, http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/world/PalestinianState.pdf, where it is entitled: “ISRAELI INTELLECTUALS WELCOME AND ENDORSE AN INDEPENDENT PALESTINIAN STATE NEXT TO ISRAEL”.

Following is a comparison of the two English-language texts.

[A]
DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE FROM THE OCCUPATION: The land of Israel was the birthplace of the Jewish People, where Jewish identity was shaped. Palestine was the birthplace of the Palestinian People where it formed its identity.
vs
THE NEW YORK TIMES TRANSLATION: The land of Israel is the birthplace of the Jewish people where its identity was shaped. The land of Palestine is the birthplace of the Palestinian people where its identity was formed.

[B]
DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE FROM THE OCCUPATION: On a Friday 63 years ago, Israel’s Declaration of Independence was read. The declaration promised “complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex”. The declaration reached out for peace with all our neighbors. The declaration was based on the UN’s partition plan, calling for the foundation of two states in Israel – a Jewish democratic nation state and an Arab democratic nation state. It is the natural right of the peoples, the Israeli and the Palestinian: “to be masters of their own fate, like all other nations, in their own sovereign State”.
vs
THE NEW YORK TIMES TRANSLATION: 63 years ago Israel’s Declaration of Independence was announced in this place. The declaration expressed the commitment of the new state “to ensure the complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex”. The founding fathers of Israel stated further “we extend our hand to all neighboring states and their peoples in an offer of peace and good neighborliness…” Now is the moment to live up to this promise!

[C]
DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE FROM THE OCCUPATION: Therefore we are here assembled, on April 21st, 2011, to welcome the coming Declaration of Independence of the Palestinian State, neighboring the state of Israel, according to our borders of independence, shaped at the end of the War of Independence in 1949. The borders known today as the ‘67 borders.
vs.
THE NEW YORK TIMES TRANSLATION: (there is no translation of this phrase) ??????????????????????????

[D]
DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE FROM THE OCCUPATION: The independence of both peoples mutually strengthens them. It is both a moral and an existential necessity, and it is the basis for the possibility of good neighborhood. We call all the citizens of Israel, the Knesset, the Government, all the citizens of the world and their governments, to recognize the two states, in which the right of the two peoples to self determination is expressed, as well as the general principles of democracy and equality.
vs
THE NEW YORK TIMES TRANSLATION: Israel’s Declaration of Independence was made in accordance with the United Nations’ decision to divide the land between two states: a democratic Jewish and a democratic Arab state. Each people were expected to fulfill its natural right of self determination in a sovereign state. We consider the independence of the two states and the unqualified end of the occupation a moral and an existential imperative as well as a necessary condition for a good neighborhood.

[E]
DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE FROM THE OCCUPATION: We, the undersigned, call every peace and freedom seeker and all nations – to welcome the Palestinian Declaration of Independence, to extend a helping hand and encourage the citizens of the two states to maintain peace based on the ’67 borders and other agreed settlements.
vs
THE NEW YORK TIMES TRANSLATION: We the undersigned citizens of Israel call upon all our compatriots, all the members of the Knesset, the Government of Israel and the governments and citizens of the world to join us in welcoming and endorsing a newly born Palestinian state on the basis of the 1967 borders which were formed at the end of the 1949 war and on the basis of further agreed arrangements between the two sides.

[F]
DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE FROM THE OCCUPATION: The complete end of occupation is a fundamental condition for the freedom of both peoples, for the fulfillment of the Israeli Declaration of Independence – and for the independence of the State of Israel.
vs
THE NEW YORK TIMES TRANSLATION: The end of the occupation and the endorsement of the creation of a free Palestinian state Along independent Israel in the spirit of Israel’s Declaration of Independence will liberate the two peoples and open the way to a lasting peace.

************************

These are not two equivalent texts. One is different from the other in significant ways. One has additions and ommission from the other. If the Israelis who made this Declaration care about their words, and want to make a difference with what they did, they should take another stand, and make clear what they mean…

Blair’s presence — and its overbearing security requirements — has contributed to ruining the American Colony Hotel’s former unique atmosphere as the meeting place for Palestinian political and economic notables with international visitors and the occasional Israeli official.

The American Colony — now a five-star establishment, one of the Leading Hotels in the World, run by Swiss hotel management — is also now too expensive for most Palestinians, who have moved en masse up the road and up the hill to the Ambassador Hotel, where le-tout-jerusalem-est can now be seen doing business throughout the day and evening [nobody stays up late in East Jerusalem, where there is no night life, but insomniacs].

[The American Colony has managed to fill the void by receiving the Shabbat weekend business of nouveau riche Israeli businessmen and their highly made-up fertility goddess wives in skin tight clothes, who feel safe enough there despite the titillatingly exotic location, and who do enjoy the buffets. The late-Ottoman-era central courtyard with bubbling fountain and lemon trees, and the summer garden with tall palm trees and a grassy lawn remain popular places to sit and relax, despite the change in clientele.]

Now that Blair has ruined the American Colony, he’s following the Palestinian notables up the road and up the hill to a new building, constructed by a member of the Nashashibi family, just below the Ambassador Hotel on Nablus Road.

There goes the neighborhood.

And the parking availability.

Last year, during the UNRWA strike, its management moved out [or were blocked out] of their Sheikh Jarrah field headquarters, and decamped — with all their UN cars and their drivers and their laptops — to the Ambassador Hotel, sorely testing the staff and the regulars. The Blair presence will probably be about the same, if not worse. And, the greater expense account capability of his colleagues and visitors will also probably have a severely inflationary impact on the Ambassador Hotel restaurant menu.

Blair will reportedly be renting the whole new almost-finished Nashashibi building on Nablus Road for something around $1.2 million dollars a year, which is just about what his office used to be paying the American Colony Hotel until now.

The payment was being processed through the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), which in Jerusalem has run for almost two decades a special Program of Assistance to the Palestinian People [PAPP].

Blair’s security people are putting the final touches on the special systems they are installing, and construction is being rushed to completion.

It’s a sign, of course, that neither Blair nor the Quartet is about to throw in the towel and quit — even though the peace process they were supposed to encourage is now moribund, and the situation is at a tense and dangerous impasse…

(It is not clear if Blair’s residential address, for the one-week-per-month that he spends in Israel/Palestine will change as well, or whether Blair will keep a room in the American Colony Hotel, or will simply check in whenever he arrives, like any ordinary business traveller.)

The Avnery article continues: “Minister of Defense Ehud Barak has announced that he is going to ask the US for a grant of another 20 billion dollars for more state-of-the-art fighter planes, missile boats, a submarine, troop carriers and so on. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu had his picture taken surrounded by female soldiers – like Muammar Qaddafi in the good old days – looking beyond the Jordan River and announcing that the Israeli army would never ever leave the Jordan valley. According to him, this occupied strip of land is Israel’s vital ‘security border’. This slogan is as old as the occupation itself. It was part of the celebrated Allon Plan, which was designed to surround the West Bank with Israeli territory. Incidentally, the father of the plan, Yigal Allon, was also a leader of the Kibbutz movement, and the Jordan valley looked to him like an ideal area for new Kibbutzim – it is flat, well watered and was sparsely populated. However, times have changed. When Allon was a legendary commander in the 1948 war, he did not even dream of missiles. Today, missiles launched from beyond the Jordan can easily reach my home in Tel Aviv. When Netanyahu declares that we need the Jordan valley in order to stop the Arabs from smuggling missiles into the West Bank, he is, well, a little bit behind the times. When the politicians bravely face the new world, the army dares not lag behind. This week, several division commanders announced that they were preparing for Tahrir-style ‘non-violent mass uprisings’ in the West Bank. Troops are trained, riot control means are stocked. Our glorious army is being prepared for yet another colonial police job … In the meantime, a dozen top politicians, from Avigdor Lieberman down, have been dusting off moribund plans for ‘interim agreements’ – old merchandise sitting sadly on the shelves, with no buyers in sight”.

Can Israel build bridges to possible new “progressive, multi-party” Arab societies?, Avnery asks … and answers: “I believe we can. But the absolute, unalterable precondition is that we make peace with the Palestinian people. [Yet] It is the unshakable – and self-fulfilling – conviction of the entire Israeli establishment that this is impossible. They are quite right – as long as they are in charge, it is indeed impossible. But with another leadership, will things be different? … A peace agreement – signed by the PLO, ratified in a popular referendum, accepted by Hamas – will radically change the attitude of the Arab peoples in general towards Israel. This is not simply a matter of form – it goes deep into the bedrock of national consciousness. Not one of the ongoing uprisings in the various Arab countries is anti-Israeli by nature. Nowhere do the Arab masses cry out for war. Indeed, the idea of war contradicts their basic aspirations: social progress, freedom, a standard of living which allows a life in dignity. However, as long as the occupation of Palestinian territory goes on, the Arab masses will reject conciliation with Israel … Therefore, Israel will crop up in every free election campaign in the Arab countries, and every party will feel obliged to condemn Israel. ONE ARGUMENT against peace, endlessly repeated by our official propaganda, is that Hamas will never accept it. The specter of Islamist movements in other countries winning democratic elections – as Hamas did in Palestine – is painted on the wall as a mortal danger. It may be worthwhile remembering that Hamas was effectively created by Israel in the first place. During the first decades of the occupation, the military governors forbade any kind of Palestinian political activity, even by those who were advocating peace with Israel. Activists were sent to prison. There was only one exception: Islamists. Not only was it impossible to prevent them from assembling in the mosques – the only public space left open – but the military governors were told to encourage Islamist organizations, as a counterforce to the PLO, which was considered the main enemy … On the outbreak of the first intifada, the Islamist movement constituted itself as Hamas (“Islamic Resistance Movement”) and took up the fight”.

Now, Avnery asks, “Will Hamas accept peace? It has declared as much in a roundabout way: if the Palestinian Authority makes peace, they have declared, and if the peace agreement is ratified by a Palestinian referendum, Hamas will accept it as an expression of the people’s will”.

This Avnery article is an interesting compliment to remarks made by former Mossad Director [he served three terms] Efraim (Ephraim) Halevy to members of the Foreign Press Association at a briefing at the Foreign Press Association last Thursday.

Halevy was presenting the results of a study — entitled “Future Borders between Israel and the Palestinian Authority” — done by the Shasha Center for Strategic Studies, which he heads, at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s Federmann School for Public Policy and Government.

Halevy — who told the journalists: “I was an intelligence officer for 48 years — noted that the study is an academic effort which will be sent to “both addresses” (Israeli and Palestinian?), and which was conducted entirely independently of any developments within the current Israeli government (which he said at another point was “weak”), although Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu has announced that he plans to present, soon, some kind of “long-term” but “interim” solution.

Halevy said that the study concluded that the most viable solution would be “no solution” to the Palestinian-Israeli dispute. Paradoxically, he said, the participants agreed that an “agreed-upon international border”, meaning a peace treaty (or a part of one) was not possible, though it was desirable, because “We believe that the penalty or price that would be paid for keeping a no-solution situation is so high and so prohibitive … that both sides would prefer any other solution”.

For the Palestinians, he said, “saying that after all these efforts there is no solution, might well mean the end of existence of the Palestinian Authority (PA)”. And, he added, “even if a Palestinian State is declared, but it’s not operative, this would be political bankruptcy”.

“Israel can live longer with no solution”, Halevy said, “but the penalty the Palestinians will pay is much greater … They can’t live with no solution … and for us [Israel], the existence of the PA is a major interest”.

What is needed is not an “end of conflict” (a term used by previous Israeli governments from Ehud Barak to Ehud Olmert), Halevy noted, but rather an “agreement on co-existence”. While the initial reaction might be, “Oh no, we don’t want this”, Halevy said, “at the end of the day, if you have to choose between bad and worse”, this might be the better option.

This would be better, he said, because [a] the time frame would be less, therefore the chances for implementation would be greater (“you cannot make a commitment for somebody else in the future to implement”); and also because [b] the opposition is much less on both sides, because “we wouldn’t be signing off in the end of the conflict, and in Israel we’ll continue to live the kind of live we have today — in terms of economy, education, and style of life”. For the Palestinians, he said, such an agreement on co-existence would also have a virtue: “maybe we really don’t want a referendum because we can’t guarantee the results”, while for Hamas in particular, he said, “they have been asking for a while for a temporary solution, and they, as spoilers, would give the Palestinians the necessary consensus” to support this “agreement on co-existence”.

Halevy said, in answer to a journalist’s question, that yes, he did see such an agreement as a step along the way to a permanent solution and not an end in itself, as the Palestinians fear it would be. He added that ultimately borders would not have the same significance that they have today – but, he said “it will take generations, and much education”.

In any ase, he said there is now “growing unrest in the West Bank — in terms of conflict between Jewish and Arab populations — and a whole list of possible developments that could be negative for Palestinians in the West Bank that would make the whole solution fall apart, and would cause the loss of the benefits if sitting around in cafés in Ramallah and Nablus”. However, he said, he saw “no great appetite to go back to [Intifada-style] violence in the West Bank”.

He noted that he had recently written in Yediot Ahronot that “Israel is a threat-prone society … but fear is not a policy”.

And, he said, “we’ll know in a couple of weeks what the consequences will be in the West Bank and Gaza” of the uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and elsewhere. “I do not feel there will be a copy-cat phenomenon”, but “I do feel there are pressures on the PA to do something, and to do it quick”.

The result of the uprisings, he said, is that “the timetable is much shorter now, and if by September nothing happens, it’s too late”. He indicated later that he was referring to the end-date of Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad’s two year program for the establishment of institutions of a Palestinian State (not, he said, to the possible, or probable, moves in the UN Security Council and UN General Assembly to secure full UN membership for such a Palestinian State).

He said, however, that he didn’t think it’s going to happen, but he did say that by the end of the year we’ll be in a new situation”.

“We don’t have time to mess around”, Halevy added, because the net result is that the uprisings in North Africa have “accelerated the pace of events”.

It was earlier predicted that 2011 would be critical, Halevy said, and “I think yes, 2011 is a critical year”.

(0Pt = UN terminology, adopted from the 2004 Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice on the Wall, which she mentions below).

In a statement to the media, Pillay said “The settlement of Israeli citizens in the occupied Palestinian territory is clearly prohibited under international law. As a result, all State actions in support of the establishment and maintenance of the settlements, including incentives to create them and the establishment of infrastructure to support them, are illegal under international law. They should be stopped altogether. The idea that a partial or temporary halt is a valuable concession in the peace process, to be traded against something else, is turning the law on its head. The annexation of East Jerusalem contravenes customary international law, as confirmed by Security Council and General Assembly resolutions. This has also been recognized by the International Court of Justice. Because of its illegality, the annexation has not been recognized by any State. Under international law, East Jerusalem remains part of the West Bank and is occupied territory. All settlement-related activities, and any legal or administrative decision or practice that directly or indirectly coerce Palestinians to leave East Jerusalem, including evictions, demolitions, forced displacements and cancelation of residence permits on a discriminatory basis, should be halted and restrictions on access to East Jerusalem by other West Bank inhabitants should be lifted…”

Pillay said, in remarks to the media at the American Colony Hotel in East Jerusalem, that “The confiscation or expropriation of private property in the occupied territory, including East Jerusalem, is in almost all cases also illegal. East Jerusalem is being steadily drained of its Palestinian inhabitants, in clear-cut defiance of Security Council resolutions. The International Court of Justice, in its 2004 advisory opinion, stated that establishing the Wall, or barrier, inside occupied territory is prohibited under international law. Some 85 percent of the wall, when it is completed, will be located inside occupied territory, and therefore illegal. It will also have effectively sequestered around 9.5 percent of West Bank territory. The combined effects of the illegal settlements and the Wall, that has been diverted illegally to protect them, have been devastating on the social, economic and cultural rights of many thousands of Palestinians. Families are divided from each other and from their neighbours, from their agricultural land and other sources of income, from their water sources and from other important infrastructure and services, including schools, health clinics and hospitals. Their new neighbours, the illegal settlers, often treat them with contempt, hostility and even physical violence. The settlers receive massive protection from Israeli security forces, but hardly any protection is being provided to the Palestinians living next door”.

She also said, “You have to see for yourself the contortions of the Wall as it snakes around settlements, dividing lands and villages, sometimes boxing in single dwellings, and scarring the landscape and the lives of thousands; and you have to talk to its victims, to get a glimpse of the intensely negative impact the fragmentation of the West Bank by the Wall, settlements and checkpoints is having on human rights, peace, development and the Palestinians’ right to self-determination. Many of the affected Palestinians facing displacement because of the grave deterioration in their way of life, are refugees who have already been displaced once or twice before and during the 1948 and 1967 wars. I have been struck by the complacency with which the entirely avoidable predicament of Palestinians affected by the Wall and settlements is treated by Israeli authorities with whom I have discussed these issues. They tend to be brushed aside as though they are minor matters. They are not. They are clear-cut violations of human rights on a very large scale. Another overarching human rights concern is the lack of accountability on many fronts. Individual officials and members of the security and military forces in Israel and the oPt, including the de facto authorities in Gaza, have been violating international human rights law for years, with few prosecutions, successful or otherwise. War crimes and crimes against humanity are two of the most serious crimes, and credible allegations that they have been committed must be properly investigated.
In addition, extremists among the Israeli settlers who commit abuses against their Palestinian neighbours, including both physical attacks and destruction of property, such as olive trees, and infrastructure including mosques, tend to escape unpunished.
This culture of impunity leads to more abuses against and between civilians, stimulates anger and resentment on all sides, and impedes the peace process”.

And, she added,”I did express my concern to Palestinian National Authority officials relating to recent reports about arbitrary detention and ill treatment in detention, and emphasized the need to respect and protect the role of a vibrant civil society and the Independent Commission for Human Rights”.

She also said: “I commend Gaza human rights defenders and civil society organizations for their courageous efforts to promote human rights, accountability and the respect for the rule of law. In particular, I wish to salute the many organizations devoted to the rights of women in Gaza. Their work is absolutely essential. Recent crackdowns by the de-facto authorities, including forced closures of NGOs as well as efforts to limit the independence and unity of the Independent Commission for Human Rights, are unacceptable. One human rights defender told me that civilians were in the ‘eye of the storm between Fatah and Hamas.’ I also met fishermen, families and individuals in Gaza affected by the so-called buffer zone linked to the blockade. The blockade of Gaza is illegal, and is not warranted by Israel’s legitimate security concerns. It must be lifted. Rockets continue to be fired from Gaza into Israel, including at least eight since I began my visit last Sunday. I urge the militants in Gaza to halt firing rockets immediately. They are not only committing war crimes and continuing to terrorize large numbers of civilians, they are also doing a disservice to the Palestinian people…”

And, yes, she repeated her call for the release of captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, captured at Kerem Shalom in a cross-border raid in late June 2006: “Gilad Shalit has now been held by Hamas for more than four and half years. While I was in Gaza I repeated my call for his release on humanitarian grounds, and conveyed the message that, at a minimum, regular visits by the ICRC and communications with his family must be permitted”.

She balanced this with another comment: “Many Gazans still feel the tragic impact of Operation Cast Lead on their daily lives. Accountability for war crimes and crimes against humanity committed during the conflict remain to be addressed by all parties. I was deeply moved by the extremely distressing situation of family members of Palestinian detainees and prisoners in Israel who have not been able to visit their relatives and loved ones for more than four years”.

And, she also said: “Israel’s Supreme Court is strong and independent and has often acted as a restraint on the executive in matters relating to human rights, including for Palestinians. There are however question marks about the implementation of Supreme Court decisions by the army and other state authorities. During my visit, I met with both the former and current Presidents of the Supreme Court. Discrimination is a problem that has been highlighted to me. It is most apparent in the markedly different treatment of Palestinians and settlers living side by side in the occupied territory. Palestinians in the oPt who are suspected of crimes are dealt with by military courts, whereas settlers are dealt with under civil law. I am concerned at the repeated demolition of ‘unrecognized’ Bedouin villages in the Negev Desert, and after meeting one man who told me his village had just been demolished for the 15th time, I dispatched two members of my team to visit this and neighbouring villages and report back to me. This is an issue we will continue to watch closely. Perhaps the clearest manifestation of institutional discrimination is the fact that during all my meetings with government and state officials, I do not believe I met a single Palestinian citizen of Israel, which is quite striking in a state with a sizeable Palestinian minority. One of my main concerns is the current pressure that is being applied to Israel’s famously strong, independent and generally very professional human rights defenders. This is manifested in a dramatic increase in inflammatory rhetoric aiming to discredit them and undermine their work. This is a very troubling development. A strong and independent civil society is, like a free media and an independent judiciary, a cornerstone of an open democratic society. Israel should defend and be proud of its civil society organizations”.

These problems are all soluable, she said: “Palestinians and Israelis are equally entitled to security and human rights, neither of which can be pursued at the expense of the other”.

Netanyahu did specifically mention Egypt in the announcement on Friday, saying: “Most of our [natural gas] supply today is coming from Egypt”, Netanyahu said. But, he added immediately, “It’s important for us to develop additional resources”.

The exact situation on the ground, resulting from the Egyptian-Israeli natural gas deal, is rather unclear.

The announcement – as CNN’s Jerusalem correspondent Kevin Flowers pointed out in a Tweet on Friday afternoon – came on the eve of the first meeting of the Middle East Quartet principles of 2011 on Saturday (February 5) in Germany, on the margins of the Munich Security Conference.

The Quartet meeting will be chaired by Catherine Ashton, European Union High Representative for Foreign and Security Policy, and will be attended by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and the Quartet Envoy Tony Blair.

In a statement released by the EU on Friday, Ashton said: “This meeting comes at a crucial time when we are witnessing significant events in the Middle East region. It is therefore extremely important that we stay the course in the Middle East Peace Process. We must remain focused on making progress on a negotiated peace agreement between Israel and Palestine — a key component in bringing about peace and stability in the wider region.”

In his announcement in Jerusalem on Friday, Netanyahu didn’t utter a word about Gaza (nor did he mention Hamas, who now control the Gaza Strip) – he mentioned only the Palestinian Authority (PA).

Netanyahu said: “It’s important for us to develop additional resources but it’s also important for the Palestinians. There’s a Palestinian Authority gas field adjacent to an Israeli gas field. We need to develop both simultaneously. This is something that the Palestinian Authority expressed interest in. I think we’re going to begin discussions and negotiations to facilitate both, where the revenues from the Palestinian field go to the Palestinian Authority and the revenues from the Israeli field go to the Israeli government and I think this is good for stability, good for prosperity and good for peace”.

Previous hard-nosed Israeli negotiations with BG (formerly British Gas – whose commercial interests in a long-pending Gaza gas deal were strongly backed by Tony Blair when he served as British Prime Minister) were stuck for some years on an Israeli insistence on negotiating a highly-concessional long-term and below-market price for the gas it would buy from the Palestinians – similar to the deal it had signed with Egypt.

These negotiations were conducted between BG and the Israeli Ministry of National Infrastructure (then headed by Benjamin “Fouad” Ben Eliezer, who is of Iraqi origin).

However, BG was consulting closely throughout the negotiations with the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah – and could not have concluded a deal without PA approval. The PA position was, and still remains, that it will not sell Palestinian natural gas for anything less than the going market rate (apparently, at any given time).

The broad outlines of the deal were that the gas would be piped, underwater, to an Israeli refinery near Israel’s southern port city of Ashkelon, which would process the gas and then re-ship a small quantity back to Gaza for the Palestinians’ own needs (at the time, it was assumed that the Palestinian usage would be small – but this might not be realistic any longer).

The gas could be used to fuel Gaza’s only power plant, and a possible water desalination plant, as well as other domestic needs. A pipeline to the West Bank was not apparently envisaged. The PA in Ramallah would receive about 25% of the profits, which was projected at the time to be about $1 billion dollars.

Somewhat surprisingly, these profits would not go to the PA governmental coffers directly, but would instead go to the extra-governmental Palestine Investment Fund (PIF), originally set up to receive many of the assets in the portfolio of the late Yasser Arafat, when donors demanded greater transparency in PA operations. The PIF itself, led by a group of prominent Palestinian businessmen, has itself adopted a policy that seems rather less than transparent.

Political and legal challenges to the highly-concessional Egyptian-Israeli gas deal were raised by the Egyptian opposition in the wake of the unprecedented Israeli military operation, Cast Lead, ostensibly against Hamas forces in Gaza from 27 December 2008 to 18 January 2009. These challenges were discussed, then dismissed, first in the Egyptian parliament then in the courts.

But, there appear to be significant technical problems that have not been overcome. It had been announced with much fanfare in May 2008 (after an earlier disappointment in March) that gas had started flowing from Egypt to Israel in an underwater pipeline. Since then, not much clear information has been given publicly.

There have been indications of problems with the pipeline itself, then with the particular mix or chemical composition of the Egyptian gas being fed through the undersea pipeline, which apparently was not suitable to the needs of the Israeli refinery (though this is something that is usually clarified at a very early stage in any negotiation).

Before these disappointments – but within weeks of the BG announcement that it was freezing negotiations with Israel – then-Minister Ben Eliezer told participants at the right-wing Jerusalem Conference in Jerusalem in January 2008 that even with the 15-year Egyptian gas deal in place, Israel needed to diversify its sources for security needs – because it lived in a “rough neighborhood” and had relational problems. Ben Eliezer specifically said at that time that Israel should ideally have at least five different sources of supply for natural gas.

Despite the BG statement that negotiations had been frozen, Ben Eliezer said Israel was still interested in concluding a deal with the Palestinians. But, it became clear that the real problem – as much for the PA in Ramallah as for anyone else – was Hamas. Israel had increased its price offer to about half of the going market rate – still not enough to satisfy Ramallah’s requirement – by the time of the Hamas rout of Fatah/Palestinian Preventive Security Services in mid-June 2007. When it became clear, about six months later, that the resulting split between the two parts of the occupied Palestinian territory was not about to change any time soon, BG “froze” its negotiations with Israel, and closed its office in Herzliya, north of Tel Aviv (though a small Ramallah office has been maintained).

The unstated reason was that nothing could be done as long as Hamas was in control in Gaza.

Hamas had said in late 2007 that it wanted to have a say in the negotiations, and suggested it would like to see a revision of terms already agreed.

Since then, everything went quiet.

Some thought that Israel would completely lose interest in pursuing any gas deal with the Palestinians following announcements, first in 2009, and then in 2010, of one large natural gas discovery, then a second, possibly huge, gas under the Mediterranean Sea off Haifa on Israel’s northern coast (more or less on the same latitude as the Israeli city of Hadera, a bit inland). If the promise lives up to expectations, and all arrangements put into place, these wells could come online in 2012 or 2014, respectively.

Netanyahu said, in the announcement with Blair on Friday, that “Israel has of course its own gas supplies down the line in the close of the decade, but we have interim gas needs”.

A day before (on Thursday 3 February), the largest-circulation Israeli newspaper, Yediot Ahronot, published an article discussing “the day on which Egypt will close the [natural gas] pipe.” The Yediot Ahronot article said, according to an English-language translation provided by the Israeli Government Press Office, that “It has become clear, in the wake of the recent events, that it is difficult to depend on others. Accordingly, what is necessary is to prohibit natural gas exports [from Israel, once these new finds become productive]…That would ensure the supply of gas to Israel for decades.”

But, Netanyahu’s remarks suggested a far more wide-reaching strategy.

The Israeli Prime Minister’s remarks on Friday, with Blair by his side, are yet another of several indications that some kind of multi-sided deal has already been sketched out, and agreed in private, with both Hamas and the PA on board.

The move also sends a signal (the significance of which is not yet totally clear) to Egypt.

This implies a deal on Palestinian reconciliation is in the works, which would be another a major shift in the regional equation – but it is one demanded by most Palestinians.

Egypt had been playing a role in inter-Palestinian reconciliation talks for the last couple of years, without results. These efforts may have been, in part, a stalling tactic.

It also signals that Israel is not quite as dependent on Egypt as some in Egypt may have thought.

For Israelis, it may remove anxieties about Israel’s dependency on Egypt.

For international actors, it suggests a way to defuse the ramifications, in Palestinian territory, of the potentially-destabilizing effects of major changes that are now expected in Egypt.

The discovery of these large – possibly huge – offshore deposits of natural gas in areas of the eastern Mediterranean that Israel in effect must share with neighboring countries, not all of them friends, has been expected to cause a positive change (a “mellowing”, one regional diplomat predicted) in Israel’s regional and international outlook.

Israel will have to clarify its Mediterranean maritime claims by reaching negotiated agreements with its neighbors. So far, Israel has only reached agreement with Cyprus (and this is still subject to parliamentary ratification, but no problem is envisaged).

With Lebanon, it is another story. Israel has asserted that it possesses rights that, in reality, must be negotiated. But, the two countries remain in a state of war, and Lebanon has said several times that it is prepared to defend its own economic interests in Mediterranean waters. Even more, Lebanon is not ready to negotiate with Israel (unless there are big regional changes – including Israel’s acceptance of the Arab Initiative offering recognition and full normalization of relations if Israeli withdraws from territory occupied in the June 1967 war.

This will also require Israeli ratification of the Law of the Sea treaty – a move that Israel had been considering anyway, apparently even before the discovery of the large new undersea gas deposits.

Netanyahu also said on Friday that “We’ve had a series of meetings and we’re concluding with the announcement of several steps that we take to, first of all to enhance stability. I think people understand that stability is important at all times, but it’s especially important now and the first set of steps that we’re taking are to continue the policy we’ve advanced to enable economic growth in the Palestinian areas. I think this has contributed to stability; it’s contributed to a better life for the Palestinians and I think it’s contributing to peace and security in the long term”. Netanyahu added that Israel was also going to take steps which he said were “intended to make Gaza independent of Israeli infrastructure by helping to develop their electricity plants; water, sewerage treatment. I think this is important. There are significant international projects that we want to advance. We talked about the ways to do it in specific concrete terms”.

Netanyahu added: “I don’t delude myself for a second that an economic peace is a substitute for political peace. We need both, and I hope that Abu Mazen [Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas] will heed my call and enter direct negotiations with us. And one of the things that I think people can appreciate today is the importance we attach to the security arrangements on the ground because as recent events have shown us, the peace agreement has to take into account not only the situation that is present today, but the situation that could unfold tomorrow. So I look forward to resuming these negotiations with the Palestinians”…

The Palestinians suspended direct negotiations with Israel in December 2008, a few days after the start of Operation Cast Lead. Under pressure from the Obama administration that took office in January 2009 (just hours after two unilateral cease-fires — one by Israel, one by Hamas — that ended the massive Israeli military operation) the Palestinians agreed in March 2010, then again in September, to engage in indirect talks, but only if Israel stopped its settlement building. There are no negotiations at the moment.

This article was first posted on Bikya Masr here.

UPDATE: Haaretz reported the following, in an article by Barak Ravid published here:
“The package of confidence-building measures that Israel will offer the Palestinian Authority is seen as a bid to moderate the Quartet statement at the end of its deliberations, which is expected to criticize Israel for its continued construction in West Bank settlements … In the end, Netanyahu’s offer did not include measure that would enable the PA to take over land required to build the new town Rawabi. Blair added, however, ’5000 Gaza-registered residents of the West Bank will be given West Bank identity cards’. Israel’s forum of seven senior ministers discussed the proposed gestures to the Palestinians last week. Netanyahu, Defense Minister Ehud Barak and minister Dan Meridor supported the gestures, while ministers Benny Begin, Moshe Ya’alon, Avigdor Lieberman and Eli Yishai objected. The gestures will also ease the blockade on Gaza, permitting more items for export and permitting a limited amount of construction materials. Blair also announced the agreement to establish ‘mobile desalination plants to meet Gaza’s needs for clean water and approval in principle for a larger permanent desalination plant’. Netanyahu agreed to the Palestinian Authority’s request to renew discussions on the development of an offshore natural gas field opposite Gaza’s shores, and agreed in principle for the gas to power the new power plant to be built in Gaza, which he also specifically approved. Netanyahu said that although Israel’s natural gas needs will be satisfied by its Leviathan and Tamar gas fields in ten years’ time, it needs other sources of natural gas in the interim, and it is currently dependent upon supply from Egypt. Netanyahu pointed out that the profits from the Palestinian gas field will go to the Palestinian Authority, and not to Hamas, who rules Gaza”…