Anapolis
26/11/2007
The simple fact that George Bush is holding “peace talks” should have all the laughable irony it takes to be sceptical of what is happening in Maryland this week. It could only be topped by making Harold Shipman the Chairman of Age Concern. However, peace talks there is, though optimism surrounding these is significantly less than the optimism that surrounded the Madrid talks in 91. Although there are a considerable number of groups attending, little will be achieved by what is essentially a PR exercise.
Mahmoud Abbas is seen largely as a Western puppet by Palestinians, particularly in the prison that is the Gaza Strip. Unfortunately he is their only option since the democratically elected
Hamas are designated a terrorist organisation by the US and UN. Without the backing of Hamas there can be no peace settlement. With less of a backbone even than Arafat, Mr Abbas, it is suspected will concede rather too much in return for the long fabled Palestinian state.
Whatever the outcome is, western media organisations cannot revert to their mendacious ways of post Camp David in 2000. The truth must be reported. After the meeting of Yasser Arafat with Ehud Barak it was reported and unchallenged in almost all media outlets that Barak offered “90 per cent” of the West Bank which Arafat ignorantly refused. The truth is somewhat different. Israel rejected the Palestinian offer of a state for Israel including some land captured since the six day war of 1967, including a large majority of its “settlers”; the largest Jewish Jerusalem in history; and Jewish security guaranteed by a US led international presence. The Israeli offer that was ultimately refused was a cessation of no more than 12% of occupied territory, and certainly none of Greater Jerusalem was to be relinquished. The majority of illegal settlements controlling 42% of the West Bank and Gaza would stay, with the land given back mostly infertile, and used for Israeli toxic waste dumping. This offer when worked out mathematically left a Palestinian homeland on 15% of pre-Israel Palestine. Noam Chomsky called it “a Bantustan proposal of the kind that South Africa instituted in the darkest days of Apartheid”. The tiny part of east Jerusalem being offered could not be used as the desired Palestinian capital. This, it was proposed, should be moved to Abu Dis, a village which the Israeli's used as a rubbish dump. On top of this, Israeli courts would hold a veto over any proposed Palestinian legislation, which equates to self-government, what this is all about really, would have been null and void.
Should the current talks reflect the manner the Camp David talks took, then Abbas should get up and casually leave and settle for nothing less than a reasonable outcome for the impoverished people he has been charged with representing. Integrity must win the day, one way or the other.
