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Donald Ian Rankin Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat May-08-10 06:18 AM
Original message
Choose between settlements, peace.
Israel must choose between a peace agreement and the settlement enterprise, top Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said on Friday as US Middle East envoy George Mitchell conducted yet another round of meetings with officials from Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

"Now the Israeli government has a choice, either peace or settlements, and it can't have both," he said, adding that the Palestinian Authority was willing to give the negotiations a chance.

The Chinese news agency quoted Erekat as saying that Israel must recognize its commitments to previous peace agreements. "Denying and neglecting these commitments and the signed peace treaties were the reasons behind the retreat and the standstill in the Middle East peace process," he reportedly said.

More at link

http://www.jpost.com/Israel/Article.aspx?id=175006


Blindingly self evident. Widely denied.
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Shaktimaan Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat May-08-10 07:30 AM
Response to Original message
1. huh...
The Chinese news agency quoted Erekat as saying that Israel must recognize its commitments to previous peace agreements. "Denying and neglecting these commitments and the signed peace treaties were the reasons behind the retreat and the standstill in the Middle East peace process," he reportedly said.

So THAT'S why, huh? Weird. I remember Israel doing quite a bit to uphold it's end of various treaties, while the Palestinians neglected to fulfill a single commitment. Oslo was a shining example of that. The Palestinians received quite a lot of benefits from it, while Israel, right from the get go, primarily received an increase in violence.

I wonder what Erekat's referring to.
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Douglas Carpenter Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat May-08-10 10:16 AM
Response to Reply #1
2. oh bullshit
Edited on Sat May-08-10 11:00 AM by Douglas Carpenter
Israel almost doubled its settlement expansion during the Oslo period from 1993 to 2000 and used the whole Oslo process to cut up and dissect the Occupied Territories into multiple cantons - restricting movement and making life far more difficult and living stands far lower for the vast majority of Palestinians than it was even before Oslo.



From Avi Shlaim:

Netanyahu spent his two and a half years in power in a relentless attempt to arrest, freeze, and subvert the Oslo accords. He kept preaching reciprocity while acting unilaterally in demolishing Arab houses, imposing curfews, confiscating Arab land, building new Jewish settlements, and opening an archaeological tunnel near the Muslim holy places in the Old City of Jerusalem. Whereas the Oslo accord left Jerusalem to the final stage of the negotiations, Netanyahu made it the centrepiece of his programme in order to block progress on any other issue. His government waged an economic and political war of attrition against the Palestinians in order to lower their expectations.
Intense American pressure compelled Netanyahu to concede territory to the Palestinian Authority on two occasions. The Hebron Protocol was signed on 15 January 1997, dividing the city into a Palestinian zone and a Jewish zone. This was a milestone in the Middle East peace process, the first agreement signed by the Likud government and the Palestinians. The second agreement was brokered by President Bill Clinton at Wye Plantation in Maryland on 23 October 1998. By signing the Wye River Memorandum, Netanyahu undertook to withdraw from a further 13 per cent of the West Bank in three stages over a period of three months. But a revolt of his ultra-nationalist and religious partners brought down the government after only one pullback. The fall of the government was inevitable because of the basic contradiction between its declared policy of striving for peace with the Arab world and its ideological makeup, which militated against trading land for peace.

Under the leadership of Ehud Barak the Labour Party won landslide victory in the May 1999. Labour’s return to power was widely expected to revive the moribund peace process. During the election campaign Barak presented himself as Rabin’s disciple, as a soldier who turned from fighting the Arabs to peace-making. He was given a clear mandate to resume the quest for peace with all of Israel’s neighbours. Within a short time, however, Barak dashed the hopes that had been pinned on him. He lacked the vision, the political courage, and the personal qualities that were necessary to follow through on the peace partnership with the Palestinians. During his army days Barak used to be called Little Napoleon. In politics, too, his style was arrogant and authoritarian and he approached diplomacy as the extension of war by other means.

The greatest barrier on the road to peace with the Palestinians raised by Barak was the expansion of Jewish settlements on the West Bank. Settlement activity is not contrary to the letter of the Oslo accord, but it is contrary to its spirit. True, settlement activity had gone on under all previous prime ministers, Labour as well as Likud. But under Barak settlement activity gathered pace: more houses were constructed, more Arab land was confiscated, and more access roads were built to isolated Jewish settlements. For the Palestinian population these settlements are not just a symbol of the hated occupation but a source of daily friction and a constant reminder of the danger to the territorial contiguity of their future state.

http://users.ox.ac.uk/~ssfc0005/The%20Rise%20and%20Fall%20of%20the%20Oslo%20Peace%20Process.html



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Shaktimaan Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat May-08-10 10:54 AM
Response to Reply #2
3. I believe...
a lot of that had to do with the huge surge in violence against Israelis. Israel initially made good on giving the Palestinians far greater autonomy and the ability to police themselves, and even froze all settlement activity for the first six months.

The result was a huge spike in terrorism, corresponding to Israeli concessions, NOT to settlement activity. You're right, Israel certainly DID expand the settlements. But they also made good on their commitments under Oslo. The Palestinians had one main thing they were responsible for and they absolutely failed in that regard.
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Douglas Carpenter Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat May-08-10 11:18 AM
Response to Reply #3
4. the first suicide bombing inside Israel did not occur until 6 April 1994
Edited on Sat May-08-10 12:08 PM by Douglas Carpenter
following the massacre of 29 Palestinians in Hebron's Ibrahimi Mosque by the American-Israeli settler Baruch Goldstein -long after Israel's closure policy on the Palestinian Territories were made permanent in March of 1993, By that time the Israel policy of using the Oslo divisions of areas A, B and C as a pretext for severe restrictions on movement were well under way. Israel's escalation of land confiscation and building of illegal settlements along with game playing with visas to inhibit the development of a viable independent economy certainly could only make the Palestinian Authority appear in the eyes of ordinary Palestinians as a collaborator in their occupation, The PA could hardly allow themselves to be seen as doing Israel's dirty work for them when all the people saw were increased restrictions - activity that prevented development of viable independent economy and quality of life in general deteriorating and the likelihood of a viable state disappearing before their own eyes,
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