Another futile meeting

Israel's Olmert remains determined to undermine any genuine effort towards peace in the Middle East, writes Khaled Amayreh in the West Bank

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As was expected, the West Jerusalem meeting between Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian Authority (PA) Chairman Mahmoud Abbas on 11 March ended without reaching any result of substance. The two-and-a-half-hour meeting was requested by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and was seen as a continuation of the 19 February three-way meeting involving Rice, Abbas and Olmert, which also failed to garner any tangible results.

Abbas presented Olmert with a host of demands, including alleviating draconian restrictions on Palestinian freedom of movement in the West Bank, releasing at least a portion of the hundreds of millions of dollars of Palestinian tax revenue seized by Israel as a means of collective punishment for Palestinians electing Hamas to government, freeing elderly and ill prisoners, and extending the ceasefire to the West Bank.

Olmert's response to all these demands was "No", prompting Fatah Leader Mohammed Dahlan to describe the meeting as "very difficult" and a "fiasco".

Olmert reportedly reiterated Israel's usual demands and threats, telling Abbas that Israel wouldn't negotiate with the PA unless the upcoming Palestinian government recognised Israel. He also demanded the release of an Israeli occupation soldier captured by Palestinian resistance fighters in Gaza nearly eight months ago. Olmert was careful to promise no release of Palestinian prisoners in reciprocity, as if the Israeli soldier's freedom was more important than that of thousands of Palestinian prisoners languishing in Israeli jails.

Israel keeps in its dungeons and detention camps as many as 10,000 Palestinian political and resistance prisoners, including more than 1,000 detainees without charge or trial. Among the multitudes of prisoners held by Israel are more than 40 lawmakers, cabinet ministers and government officials taken hostage by the Israeli army in the course of the past few months, ostensibly to pressure the Hamas-led government to release the legally captured occupation soldier.

The Israeli army, which rounds up an average of 15-20 Palestinians per day, this week arrested Palestinian Lawmaker Ahmed Mubarak in Ramallah. Mubarak was released from Israeli detention only five weeks ago. Similarly, an Israeli military court sentenced another lawmaker, Hatem Qafisha of Hebron, to six months detention for introducing himself in a press conference as a Hamas MP.

This unrelenting repression, some say, is aimed at forcing Hamas to resume its armed resistance against Israel, including the possibility of suicide bombings, which in turn would enable Israel to vilify Hamas and forestall any possible change of heart towards the movement, especially on the part of European states, following the signing of the Mecca Accord with Fatah that laid the foundation for a Palestinian national unity government.

It is uncertain why Abbas and Olmert decided to hold another doomed meeting, the second in less than a month, apart from assenting to an American request to that effect. Olmert's popularity has dwindled to an all-time low, with only two per cent of Israelis believing he is doing a good job. Similarly, Abbas doesn't appear to reap any benefit from holding one failed meeting after the other with an Israeli prime minister viewed by the vast bulk of Palestinians as a liar and deceiver only interested in stealing more Palestinian land and outmanoeuvring the Palestinians on the international arena.

The Americans may have their own reasons for requesting these meetings, irrespective of their outcome. Some observers suggest that such meetings, accompanied by all the ceremonial trappings and fanfare, might give the American public, subjected to a heavy daily dosage of bad news from Iraq, the impression that the overall outlook in the Middle East is not that bleak and that the Palestinians and Israelis are at least talking to each other.

This is a misperception at best and an ignorant miscalculation at worst. The overall atmosphere between Israel and the Palestinian remains as volatile as ever as more Palestinians lose hope in the feasibility of the two-state solution and more Israelis join quasi-fascist political movements advocating the expulsion and/or extermination of Palestinians, not only in the occupied territories but also in Israel as well.

The poisoned atmosphere in the West Bank is expressed in daily and often deadly incursions by the Israeli occupation army into Palestinian population centres. Normally, during such raids, young people are arrested, civilians are beaten and humiliated and their property and belongings vandalised.

In East Jerusalem Saturday, paramilitary Israeli police ganged up on a Palestinian driver, Wael Kirrawi, dragging him to the ground and beating him savagely on the head with the butts of their rifles and with their boots. The 28-year-old father of one suffered a massive brain haemorrhage and died on the spot.

An Israeli police spokesman claimed: "There is no evidence that Wael Kirrawi died as a result of the beating." After it became it clearer, however, that Kirrawi was indeed beaten to death, the spokesman said: "An investigation will be carried out to determine the circumstances surrounding the incident."

Seeking to amend his image as a perpetual naysayer, Olmert on Sunday declared for the first time that there might be some "positive elements" in the so-called "Saudi initiative". He said that Israel could accept the positive aspects, but couldn't accept other components of the initiative.

The Saudi initiative calls for total Israeli withdrawal from all the territories occupied by Israel in 1967 as well as a just settlement of the Palestinian refugee plight pursuant UN General Assembly Resolution 194. In return, the Arab world would normalise relations with Israel.

It is widely expected that Arab leaders attending the upcoming Arab League summit in Riyadh later this month will re-launch the Saudi initiative without introducing any changes of substance to it. Olmert, however, dreads the disintegration of his fragile coalition of mostly right-wing allies. Agreeing to give up the occupied territories, even if the price is full and lasting peace in the region, is out of the question. In addition, Israel is expected to reiterate its firm rejection of the right of return for Palestinian refugees.

There is also apprehension that the revival of the Saudi initiative, which is being done in coordination with the Bush administration, is actually a disingenuous effort on Washington's part to enlist Arab support ahead of a possible attack on Iran. Palestinians and other Arabs remember too well how the US appears keen on resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict every time Washington plans to attack or invade an Arab or Muslim country, only to fall back into the embrace of Israeli intransigence and territorial expansion once US strategic goals are achieved.