Fresh US efforts towards ME peace
WE have had a flurry of important US officials visiting Syria, Israel, Jordan and Egypt. It has been an indication of President Obama's resolve to mediate a comprehensive Middle East peace settlement. The officials have included George Mitchell, President Obama's Special Envoy, Robert Gates, the US Defense Secretary, James Jones, US National Security Adviser and Dennis Ross, the US President's Envoy to the Gulf States. Their visits were preceded by a stop-over by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
George Mitchell, who had earlier been involved in weaving threads of peace among the combatants in Northern Ireland, has described his present efforts as 'historic endeavour' and the restarting of peace talks between Syria and Israel as a 'near-term goal.' Mr Mitchell was the highest level US official to visit Damascus since 2005. It has assumed greater importance because of known Syrian support for the Palestinian militant group Hamas (the de-facto government in the Gaza Strip), its backing for Hezbollah in Labanon and its close links with Iran -- all anathemas for US strategic policy planners.
The past Bush Administration identified Syria as a pariah and cut virtually all ties with that country. Now Mitchell's visit is being seen as 'the first step of dialogue' aimed at removing the atmosphere of hostility and moving towards comprehensive peace on the basis of a constructive engagement.
Another practical measure has also been taken. USA has decided to send an Ambassador back to Damascus to replace the envoy it recalled in 2005 after the assassination in Beirut of Rafiq-al-Hariri, the former Lebanese Prime Minister. It may be recalled that the killing was blamed on Syria although Damascus steadfastly denied any involvement.
Such efforts lead one to believe that the USA now seriously thinks that Damascus is the key towards the forging of a new peace process in the region.
Comments by politicians of that area however suggest that US strategists will have to address certain issues not only to regain meaningful credibility but also to persuade Syria to be more amenable. They relate to the question of full Israeli withdrawal from occupied territories including the Golan Heights (formally annexed by Israel in 1981), removal of more than 20,000 Israeli settlers from occupied territory and re-settlement of the internally displaced Syrians who had to flee Israeli occupation. There is also the question of resolving the outstanding matter of re-settling 400,000 Palestinian refugees who have taken shelter inside Syria near Yarmouk.
Turkey has already tried to jump start an Israeli-Syrian understanding but appears to have failed. Four rounds of preliminary negotiations were held last year but eventually suspended after Israel's brutal invasion of the Gaza Strip towards the end of 2008. Hopefully the new US Administration will be able to move ahead and disprove the assumption that Israel is involved in occupation and colonisation in contravention of international legal principles and that USA is not committed sufficiently enough to stop them from doing it.
Both Mitchell and Gates during their visit to Israel have denied that there was any impasse with Israel over Jewish settlement activity in the West Bank. Nevertheless, it was also clear from reading between the lines that there have been differences with Israel and that the US officials have been unable to dissuade Israel from the continuation of building settlements in east Jerusalem or in the expansion of settlements based on the contentious Israeli principle of 'natural growth.'
The resolution of this factor is vital if the process is to move forward. It is a major obstacle to peace. The Jewish population in the territories occupied in the 1967 war is thought to have topped half a million. It has also not helped matters when another recent Israeli declaration indicated that Israel had approved the construction of 50 new residential units in Adam settlement, to house settlers evicted from an unofficial outpost. Such a measure is totally contrary to Israel's commitment to freeze settlement construction under the 2003 'road map' peace plan.
There is a possibility that we may eventually hear of a limited Israeli decision to 'suspend settlement activity.' One hopes that sustained US and European pressure will make that happen. Such a step would be a significant psychological boost for the demoralized and growingly desperate Palestinian community.
It would be useful to remember here that the creation of each illegal Israeli settlement, also leads to further loss of land and economic harassment for the Palestinians. Each settlement tends to be surrounded by a buffer zone -- land that Palestinians cannot farm. Settlements are also usually serviced by roads that Palestinians are not allowed to use. A growing disaster and a case in point is the Effrat settlement, close to the Palestinian town of Bethlehem. It now houses 9,000 people but expects to grow to 30,000 in the coming years -- taxing the already depleted ground water resources available to the Palestinian population resident in that region. Such a prospective scenario is being repeated throughout the occupied West Bank, and for obvious reasons is not palatable for the already marginalised Palestinian community.
Interestingly, the Israeli human rights group 'Peace Now' says Israeli government has construction plans to double settler numbers in the West Bank, an allegation the Israeli housing ministry denies. However school maps, used in schools across Israel, do not mark the occupied West Bank as a separate territory. One would be tempted to draw one's own conclusion from this.
The USA, as expected, has reiterated its strategic support for Israel's security. However, this time round, the US officials appear to have moved slightly forward in their quest for facilitating a truly comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace that would include facing up to the challenges pertaining to Palestinians and Israelis, that between Syria and the Israelis and between Lebanon and Israel. This is hopeful -- particularly Mitchell's comment that normalisation of relations between the Arab countries and Israel could be consistent with the Arab peace initiative first proposed by Saudi King Abdullah in 2002 and re-launched five years later.
Gates has urged the Palestinians to refrain from 'words or actions that might make meaningful and productive negotiations impossible'. However he has to understand the extreme frustration of the Palestinians. Saeb Erakat, the Palestinian negotiator encapsulated this in his scathing comments after Mitchell's meeting with Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah. He accused Israel of failing "to fulfil any of its roadmap obligations, including a settlement freeze, the reopening of Palestinian institutions in East Jerusalem, removal of outposts, the release of Palestinian prisoners". He also gave vent to Palestinian exasperation by stating that "if the US cannot have Israel comply with obligations like stopping settlement activities including natural growth, who will believe that the US will be able to have Israel comply to withdraw to the '67 borders or solve the problems of Jerusalem, refugees, water, security?"
We have the purported honest intentions of a new US President. We also have the past failures of the US Administration in meting out even-handed treatment of the problem. One can only hope that both Israel and the United States realise that the ultimate sustainable security of Israel lies not in spending more money in sophisticated weapons but in investing in peace through compromise, based on the international legal process.
Muhammad Zamir is a former Secretary and Ambassador and can be reached at mzamir@dhaka.net.
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