In an otherwise uninteresting commentary published as an opinion piece in the Washington Post, Dennis Ross, adviser to several American presidents on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, suggested that … as Israel’s Supreme Court has just recommended that there should be “no additional quarries” in the West Bank that are Israeli-owned, there is now some sort of “opening” for Palestinian ownership!
[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:
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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:
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“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…