US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas standing in front of the Palestinian National Authority headquarters (Muqata), in Ramallah.
Tuesday night, 28 August, ended US Secretary
of State Condoleezza Rice’s latest visit to the region. Her seventh this year, the
trip was touted optimistically as an effort to boost the momentum of what Rice said
were ongoing “intensive” talks towards reaching a comprehensive
Israeli-Palestinian agreement before Bush leaves office in the beginning of 2009.
In the run-up to Rice’s visit, the Israeli
government authorized the release of 198 Palestinian prisoners, almost all aligned with the Fatah Party of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. Fundamentally
a token gesture to the US administration—as this is only a miniscule fraction
of the some 10,000 Palestinian political prisoners Israel continues to hold—its
most observable political result was to provoke accusations by the Hamas Party
that Israel was attempting “to boost the interior Palestinian split by
supporting one party against the other."
While Secretary Rice reiterated on Tuesday at
a joint news conference with President Abbas that ‘‘God willing […] we have a
good chance of succeeding,” it appears that more than divine help will be required;
there exists little evidence to support Rice’s optimism, little is being done
to change what is happening on the ground, and very little public belief exists
on either the Palestinian or Israeli side that there is any chance of success,
especially in the unrealistic timeframe of the Bush administration.
At its core, even
setting aside the issue of the political unknowns and instabilities regarding the
upcoming change in leaderships both in Israel and the United States, and the
ongoing political and territorial fracture between the Hamas and Fatah in Gaza
and the West Bank respectively, Israel’s continued expansion and entrenchment
of its occupation and settlement makes all the present show of niceties,
gestures and discussion superficial and almost wholly unlikely to lead anywhere.
President Abbas in fact stated after meeting with Secretary Rice that he made
clear to her that Israeli settlements “without a doubt are the main obstacle
in the political process.”
This point is further illuminated by the most
recent report
by Peace Now, published on 26 August during Secretary Rice’s visit, which shows that not only has Israeli settlement construction continued at pace
in the occupied West Bank, but has in truth
nearly doubled. The report states that “Over 1000 new buildings are being
constructed in the settlements, in which [there are] approximately 2,600
housing units,” and goes on to point out that the
Israeli housing ministry "initiated 433 new housing units during the
period of January to May 2008, compared to just 240 units during the period
January to May 2007." And in East Jerusalem,
according to the Peace Now report, the increase in settlement is even steeper,
where the number of tenders has increased by a factor of 38, from 46 units in
2007 to 1,761 in 2008. Moreover, the shape of recent settlement expansion lays
bare the lie of Prime Minister Olmert that his
administration’s intention is to make “The course of the fence […] in line
with the new course of the permanent border." Yet, according to the Peace
Now report, “approximately 55% of the new structures are located to the east of
the constructed Separation Barrier.”
Despite this, during her visit, Rice’s only public
statement regarding the expansion of Israeli settlements was that it is
"not helpful" to the negotiations process.
This total lack of any substantive critique by Secretary Rice or the
rest of the Bush Administration regarding Israeli settlement policies is in
fact longstanding, as the US
government has in the past reiterated its support for Israeli settlement
policy. As far back as 2005, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice stated on
Israel Radio that “no one should say there’s no agreement between our two
governments. […] there is; it was reached on April 14 last year [2004] and it’s
clear […] the ‘existing major Israeli population centers’ will have to be taken
in account in any final status negotiations.” And, moreover, as reported, “Rice
[…] made it clear that the term ‘Israeli population centers’ refers directly to
the ‘large settlement blocs.’”
So, given the objective situation on the
ground, particularly the settlement expansion, and the likely inability of any
of the parties involved to implement an agreement should it be ever agreed
upon, why the active continuation of all the superficial rituals of
negotiation? I can’t help but be reminded here of Slavoj Zizek’s
discussion of “the obsessional neurotic who talks all the time and is
otherwise frantically active precisely in order to ensure that something—what
really matters—will not be disturbed, that is will remain immobilized.” All three parties know perfectly well that in
the present circumstances—Israel’s refusal to end it’s military occupation and
make the necessary concessions for a just settlement, the United States’
refusal to put pressure on Israel to abide by international law, and the
Palestinian Authority’s lack of popular support and/or political mandate to
sign an agreement that would overstep Palestinian red lines—no agreement is
possible. Yet all are willing to
mutually prop up the edifice of progress and turn a blind eye to the false
position of the other, in order to obscure the true weaknesses of their own positions
and what each would have to face were the faux-negotiations to end.
News 
