Intifada Part Three?

New settlements being built under Abbas's nose are a time-bomb

By Khaled Amayreh
Al-Ahram Weekly

"......However, on the central subject of settlement expansion, which is a central final-status issue, Olmert made it clear to Abbas that he couldn't and wouldn't halt the construction since such a step would mean the collapse of his coalition government. Interestingly, this is the same pretext and the same rationale that successive Israeli prime ministers have always cited whenever they were pressed, even by the US, to stop or freeze settlement expansion.

Olmert didn't tell Abbas outright that Israel would fly in the face of the Annapolis spirit and go ahead with building new settler units all over the West Bank. Instead, he resorted to prevarication and stratagems. He told Abbas that Israel wouldn't create new settlements in the West Bank, but made no mention of plans to expand existing settlements by building thousands of apartments on newly- confiscated private Arab land in the vicinity of these settlements. The extent of Olmert's deception and mendacity was revealed soon after his photo-op with Abbas......

The latest meeting between Abbas and Olmert was dismissed even by pro-Fatah pundits as a fiasco, with Hani Al-Masri, a prominent columnist, accusing the PA leadership of effectively dropping East Jerusalem from the negotiations. "If beefing up Jewish settlement activities in Jerusalem, the future capital of the Palestinian state everyone is talking about, isn't prejudicial to the final status settlement, then what issues are they talking about," asked Masri......

Having to repeat the same platitudes every day and mouthing words about the illegality of Jewish settlements, Palestinian officials are finding themselves facing an unenviable situation. On the one hand, they realise, although they wouldn't say so openly, that talks with Israel are doomed to failure, even if these talks go on for 100 to come. They also realise that neither the Bush administration nor any other subsequent American administration have either the will or the inclination to pressure Israel to end the occupation that started in 1967......

The frozen rage accumulating as a result of the murderous Israeli onslaught, coupled with the Israeli policy of deception, as evident from continuing settlement expansion, is deepening in the hearts of Palestinians. "I think most people are convinced that Israel is deceiving the Palestinian leadership and that it is not sincere about reaching peace with the Palestinians. To put it in a nutshell, the policy of murdering Palestinians and expanding settlements is not compatible with a genuine desire for peace," said Ziad Abu Zayad, himself a former Palestinian negotiator......

Fayyad recently alienated many in Fatah when he reportedly stopped paying salaries to thousands of Fatah cadres who had been on the PA payroll since the mid-1990s. Fayyad also infuriated many Palestinians recently when he publicly offered condolences to the families of two off-duty Israeli soldiers killed by Palestinian guerrillas in Hebron in the southern West Bank. Israel killed many hundreds of Palestinians in 2008, including dozens of children.

According to some Palestinians observers, the most expected scenario in case the peace process collapses, which most Palestinians see as a foregone conclusion, will be a new Intifada, this time against both Israel and the PA government itself."